Son of MacPhisto

More NSA News

2005-12-24T09:30:00.000-05:00

'The Secret Sound of the NSA' is one of the coolest rock band names ever.

I'm insanely jealous I never thought of that.

I Want My MTV

2005-12-20T21:27:00.000-05:00

Living in a soundbyte world...

Sandra and I finished the first season of LOST on DVD. Amazing. Love it. What a fantastic show! Our favorite characters seem to be Sawyer, Locke, and Sayid (sp?). Oh, and Kate is freaking ripped!

I can't wait for the new episodes to start running again. We watched the second season as we were making our way through the first, so things were a little odd. Now we're all up to date!

-------------

Heard a great sound lyric today: Marriage isn't for the faint of heart.

-------------

Got a new guy at work, it's his first week on the job. Forgot what it was like when you didn't know how to do crap... yowza.

-------------

Thanks to work I can at LEAST type 80+ words a minute. Freakin' sweet!

-------------

Been playing lots of Halo lately. It's replay value is just never ending... or maybe it doesn't take much for me to be amused. Regardless, I've come to terms with the fact video games are my hobby. Speaking of which, video games will be to my generation as music was to the Boomers and movies were to the 'Greatest Generation.'

-------------

Peter Jackson is my generation's George Lucas.

-------------

Really interested in seeing 'Munich.' Heard a review of it on NPR today. It deals with questions of retribution and whether it's worth it.

-------------

With the 'Holidays' coming up gonna be seeing a lot of friends and family... pretty excited about that. It will be nice to have some time with nice, fun folks.

-------------

And finally, your 'No Shit Sherlock' moment of the week:

The NSA is spying on us.

Pins and Needlers

2005-12-13T21:34:00.000-05:00

I've come to the conclusion that the least understood weapon in Halo is the needler. Most consider it the worst weapon in the game, but this is mainly because they have no clue how to use it.

Use it in close quarter situations against anything but Jackals and Hunters. It is the supreme Elite killer, especially those pesky yellow ones with the all powerful plasma swords. It's even better then the plasma pistol/human pistol combo. Yes, I said it. Better.
---------------------
Editor's note: Yes, I realize this probably has little to no impact any of my readers current life situation, but it's been on my mind lately. Gosh darn it, I just had to tell someone!

Pimp My Refrigerator

2005-12-04T17:09:00.000-05:00

The new WholeFoods Market up on the corner of 161 and Sawmill Road is awesome. If you haven't checked it out yet I highly recomend that you do. It has single handedly raised the quality of life in Central Ohio.

It's like the food version of Wal-Mart... only not evil. :)

This Season's War Cry: Commercialize Christmas, or Else

2005-12-04T16:45:00.000-05:00

By Adam Cohen; published 12/04/05 in The New York Times
-------------------
Religious conservatives have a cause this holiday season: the commercialization of Christmas. They're for it.

The American Family Association is leading a boycott of Target for not using the words "Merry Christmas" in its advertising. (Target denies it has an anti-Merry-Christmas policy.) The Catholic League boycotted Wal-Mart in part over the way its Web site treated searches for "Christmas." Bill O'Reilly, the Fox anchor who last year started a "Christmas Under Siege" campaign, has a chart on his Web site of stores that use the phrase "Happy Holidays," along with a poll that asks, "Will you shop at stores that do not say 'Merry Christmas'?"

This campaign - which is being hyped on Fox and conservative talk radio - is an odd one. Christmas remains ubiquitous, and with its celebrators in control of the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and every state supreme court and legislature, it hardly lacks for powerful supporters. There is also something perverse, when Christians are being jailed for discussing the Bible in Saudi Arabia and slaughtered in Sudan, about spending so much energy on stores that sell "holiday trees."

What is less obvious, though, is that Christmas's self-proclaimed defenders are rewriting the holiday's history. They claim that the "traditional" American Christmas is under attack by what John Gibson, another Fox anchor, calls "professional atheists" and "Christian haters." But America has a complicated history with Christmas, going back to the Puritans, who despised it. What the boycotters are doing is not defending America's Christmas traditions, but creating a new version of the holiday that fits a political agenda.

The Puritans considered Christmas un-Christian, and hoped to keep it out of America. They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible, their sole source of religious guidance, and insisted that the date derived from Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration. On their first Dec. 25 in the New World, in 1620, the Puritans worked on building projects and ostentatiously ignored the holiday. From 1659 to 1681 Massachusetts went further, making celebrating Christmas "by forbearing of labor, feasting or in any other way" a crime.

The concern that Christmas distracted from religious piety continued even after Puritanism waned. In 1827, an Episcopal bishop lamented that the Devil had stolen Christmas "and converted it into a day of worldly festivity, shooting and swearing." Throughout the 1800's, many religious leaders were still trying to hold the line. As late as 1855, New York newspapers reported that Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist churches were closed on Dec. 25 because "they do not accept the day as a Holy One." On the eve of the Civil War, Christmas was recognized in just 18 states.

Christmas gained popularity when it was transformed into a domestic celebration, after the publication of Clement Clarke Moore's "Visit from St. Nicholas" and Thomas Nast's Harper's Weekly drawings, which created the image of a white-bearded Santa who gave gifts to children. The new emphasis lessened religious leaders' worries that the holiday would be given over to drinking and swearing, but it introduced another concern: commercialism. By the 1920's, the retail industry had adopted Christmas as its own, sponsoring annual ceremonies to kick off the "Christmas shopping season."

Religious leaders objected strongly. The Christmas that emerged had an inherent tension: merchants tried to make it about buying, while clergymen tried to keep commerce out. A 1931 Times roundup of Christmas sermons reported a common theme: "the suggestion that Christmas could not survive if Christ were thrust into the background by materialism." A 1953 Methodist sermon broadcast on NBC - typical of countless such sermons - lamented that Christmas had become a "profit-seeking period." This ethic found popular expression in "A Charlie Brown Christmas." In the 1965 TV special, Charlie Brown ignores Lucy's advice to "get the biggest aluminum tree you can find" and her assertion that Christmas is "a big commercial racket," and finds a more spiritual way to observe the day.

This year's Christmas "defenders" are not just tolerating commercialization - they're insisting on it. They are also rewriting Christmas history on another key point: non-Christians' objection to having the holiday forced on them.

The campaign's leaders insist this is a new phenomenon - a "liberal plot," in Mr. Gibson's words. But as early as 1906, the Committee on Elementary Schools in New York City urged that Christmas hymns be banned from the classroom, after a boycott by more than 20,000 Jewish students. In 1946, the Rabbinical Assembly of America declared that calling on Jewish children to sing Christmas carols was "an infringement on their rights as Americans."

Other non-Christians have long expressed similar concerns. For decades, companies have replaced "Christmas parties" with "holiday parties," schools have adopted "winter breaks" instead of "Christmas breaks," and TV stations and stores have used phrases like "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings" out of respect for the nation's religious diversity.

The Christmas that Mr. O'Reilly and his allies are promoting - one closely aligned with retailers, with a smack-down attitude toward nonobservers - fits with their campaign to make America more like a theocracy, with Christian displays on public property and Christian prayer in public schools.

It does not, however, appear to be catching on with the public. That may be because most Americans do not recognize this commercialized, mean-spirited Christmas as their own. Of course, it's not even clear the campaign's leaders really believe in it. Just a few days ago, Fox News's online store was promoting its "Holiday Collection" for shoppers. Among the items offered to put under a "holiday tree" was "The O'Reilly Factor Holiday Ornament." After bloggers pointed this out, Fox changed the "holidays" to "Christmases."

The Fool Speaks

2005-11-30T20:51:00.000-05:00

Found this on Harpers. It reminds me of some analysis I heard on NPR regarding Bush's big Iraq War speech today. The commentator was discussing some of Bush's specific claims, like the size of Iraq's security forces. He claimed that because of earlier controversies Bush has almost zero credibility when making such statements. You can only 'cry victory' so many times.

Hence, the following wouldn't be so disturbing if it wasn't for that little thing called 'track record.'
---------

It was reported that President George W. Bush had, on April 16, 2004, revealed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair a plan to take 'military action' against the headquarters of the Al Jazeera news network in Doha, Qatar. According to a leaked transcript, Blair talked Bush out of attacking the television station. The White House called the report 'outlandish and inconceivable,' and Blair called the report a 'conspiracy theory.' David Keogh, a former U.K. Cabinet Office official, was charged under the Official Secrets Act with leaking the memo, and U.K. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith warned British media that any further reporting based on the leaked memo could be subject to criminal charges. Al Jazeera demanded an inquiry.

(So why was Keogh charged if it was so outlandish? Perhaps an inappropriate sense of humor?)

Writing on the Wall

2005-11-19T14:47:00.000-05:00

There's this sign I pass every day going to and from work. If you ask me it's almost iconic.

Prayer is Powerful
Shirt and Jean Sale

'Revision Thing'

2005-11-10T22:33:00.000-05:00

Brought to you by the fine folks at Harper's:

A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies
Posted on Monday, November 7, 2005. All text is verbatim from senior Bush Administration officials and advisers. In places, tenses have been changed for clarity. Originally from Harper's Magazine, October 2003. By Sam Smith.
Sources

Once again, we were defending both ourselves and the safety and survival of civilization itself. September 11 signaled the arrival of an entirely different era. We faced perils we had never thought about, perils we had never seen before. For decades, terrorists had waged war against this country. Now, under the leadership of President Bush, America would wage war against them. It was a struggle between good and it was a struggle between evil.

It was absolutely clear that the number-one threat facing America was from Saddam Hussein. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda had high-level contacts that went back a decade. We learned that Iraq had trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and deadly gases. The regime had long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist organizations. Iraq and Al Qaeda had discussed safe-haven opportunities in Iraq. Iraqi officials denied accusations of ties with Al Qaeda. These denials simply were not credible. You couldn't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talked about the war on terror.

The fundamental question was, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer was, absolutely. His regime had large, unaccounted-for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons--including VX, sarin, cyclosarin, and mustard gas, anthrax, botulism, and possibly smallpox. Our conservative estimate was that Iraq then had a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent. That was enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets. We had sources that told us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons--the very weapons the dictator told the world he did not have. And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as forty-five minutes after the orders were given. There could be no doubt that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more.

Iraq possessed ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles--far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations. We also discovered through intelligence that Iraq had a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We were concerned that Iraq was exploring ways of using UAVs for missions targeting the United States.

* * *

Saddam Hussein was determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. We knew he'd been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believed he had, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. The British government learned that Saddam Hussein had recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources told us that he had attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear-weapons production. When the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied-finally denied access, a report came out of the [International Atomic Energy Agency] that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I didn't know what more evidence we needed.

Facing clear evidence of peril, we could not wait for the final proof that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. The Iraqi dictator could not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons. Inspections would not work. We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. The burden was on those people who thought he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they were.

We waged a war to save civilization itself. We did not seek it, but we fought it, and we prevailed. We fought them and imposed our will on them and we captured or, if necessary, killed them until we had imposed law and order. The Iraqi people were well on their way to freedom. The scenes of free Iraqis celebrating in the streets, riding American tanks, tearing down the statues of Saddam Hussein in the center of Baghdad were breathtaking. Watching them, one could not help but think of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Iron Curtain.

It was entirely possible that in Iraq you had the most pro-American population that could be found anywhere in the Arab world. If you were looking for a historical analogy, it was probably closer to post-liberation France. We had the overwhelming support of the Iraqi people. Once we won, we got great support from everywhere.

The people of Iraq knew that every effort was made to spare innocent life, and to help Iraq recover from three decades of totalitarian rule. And plans were in place to provide Iraqis with massive amounts of food, as well as medicine and other essential supplies. The U.S. devoted unprecedented attention to humanitarian relief and the prevention of excessive damage to infrastructure and to unnecessary casualties.

The United States approached its postwar work with a two-part resolve: a commitment to stay and a commitment to leave. The United States had no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq's new government. That choice belonged to the Iraqi people. We have never been a colonial power. We do not leave behind occupying armies. We leave behind constitutions and parliaments. We don't take our force and go around the world and try to take other people's real estate or other people's resources, their oil. We never have and we never will.

The United States was not interested in the oil in that region. We were intent on ensuring that Iraq's oil resources remained under national Iraqi control, with the proceeds made available to support Iraqis in all parts of the country. The oil fields belonged to the people of Iraq, the government of Iraq, all of Iraq. We estimated that the potential income to the Iraqi people as a result of their oil could be somewhere in the $20 [billion] to $30 billion a year [range], and obviously, that would be money that would be used for their well-being. In other words, all of Iraq's oil belonged to all the people of Iraq.

* * *

We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. And we found more weapons as time went on. I never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country. But for those who said we hadn't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they were wrong, we found them. We knew where they were.

We changed the regime of Iraq for the good of the Iraqi people. We didn't want to occupy Iraq. War is a terrible thing. We've tried every other means to achieve objectives without a war because we understood what the price of a war can be and what it is. We sought peace. We strove for peace. Nobody, but nobody, was more reluctant to go to war than President Bush.

It is not right to assume that any current problems in Iraq can be attributed to poor planning. The number of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region dropped as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. There is a lot of revisionist history now going on, but one thing is certain--he is no longer a threat to the free world, and the people of Iraq are free. There's no doubt in my mind when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind.

About the Author
Sam Smith is the author of four books, the latest of which is Why Bother?: Getting a Life in a Locked Down Land. He is the editor of The Progressive Review.

Case in Point...

2005-11-05T17:03:00.000-05:00

Turns out information has been leaked to the Washington Post that the CIA has been hiding terror suspects in 'black prisons' in Eastern Europe - by request of the US government the names of the complicit nations were withheld.

I also heard a report on NPR saying it is likely they have been there for a long time - starting relatively close to 9/11. Since then the captives have more then likely been rendered 'stale' intelligence-wise. They are hardly worth interrogating anymore.

President Bush also wants the CIA exempt from new rules recently approved by the Senate banning 'cruel and degrading' treatment of prisoners.

Additionally, Amnesty International and the International Red Cross increasingly are putting the US in their sights...

Through all this I'm trying hard to not be vindictive and bitter, but I have to ask how people who promote Bush for having high morals and 'Christian values' explain this?

'Revisonist History'

2005-11-02T22:56:00.000-05:00

If you ask me, 9/11 is looking more like the Reichstag Fire then Pearl Harbor.

Further Insanity

2005-10-31T17:37:00.000-05:00

As if some of the recent things I've read haven't solidified the fact that the 'War on Terror' is turning us into demons...

The House's Abuse of Patriotism - from the New York Times
In the national anguish after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress rushed to enact a formidable antiterrorism law - the Patriot Act - that significantly crimped civil liberties by expanding law enforcement's power to use wiretaps, search warrants and other surveillance techniques, often under the cloak of secrecy. There was virtually no public debate before these major changes to the nation's legal system were put into effect.

Now, with some of the act's most sweeping powers set to expire at the end of the year, the two houses of Congress face crucial negotiations, which will also take place out of public view, on their differences over how to extend and amend the law. That's controversy enough. But the increasingly out-of-control House of Representatives has made the threat to our system of justice even greater by inserting a raft of provisions to enlarge the scope of the federal death penalty.

In a breathtaking afterthought at the close of debate, the House voted to triple the number of terrorism-related crimes carrying the death penalty. The House also voted to allow judges to reduce the size of juries that decide on executions, and even to permit prosecutors to try repeatedly for a death sentence when a hung jury fails to vote for death.

The radical amendment was slapped through by the Republican leadership without serious debate. The Justice Department has endorsed the House measure, and Representative James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Judiciary Committee chairman, who is ever on the side of more government power over the individual, is promising to fight hard for the death penalty provisions.

There are now 20 terrorism-related crimes eligible for capital punishment, and the House measure would add 41 more. These would make it easier for prosecutors to win a death sentence in cases where a defendant had no intent to kill - for example, if a defendant gave financial support to an umbrella organization without realizing that some of its adherents might eventually commit violence.

Any move to weaken the American jury system in the name of fighting terrorism is particularly egregious. But the House voted to allow a federal trial to have fewer than 12 jurors if the judge finds "good cause" to do so, even if the defense objects. Under current law, a life sentence is automatically ordered when juries become hung on deciding the capital punishment question. But the House would have a prosecutor try again - a license for jury-shopping for death - even though federal juries already exclude opponents of capital punishment.

The House's simplistic vote for another "crackdown" gesture can only further sully the notion of patriotism in a renewed Patriot Act.

Shame Defined

2005-10-31T17:06:00.000-05:00

From William Pfaff's latest article in this month's Harper's; What We've Lost: George W. Bush and the Price of Torture.

...in March 2003, a memorandum from a Defense Department legal task force held that nation-security considerations alone freed the President from adherence to any international treat or federal law...

...U.S. Army regulations on dealing with prisoners of war were similarly bypassed, despite objections within the military services and from Secretary of State (and former General) Colin Powell, who said such a policy reversed "over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva Conventions" and would undermine both the protection of U.S. troops in the future and allied support for American operations. In February, CIA lawyers prudently asked from and obtained from the administration a formal exemption from President Bush's pledge to abide by "the spirit" of the Geneva Conventions. The CIA was aware, if no one else seemed to be, that the new White House policy authorized American officers to commit acts for which the Second World War Allies had hanged Gestapo and SS officers and Japanese prison-camp commanders.

...Our government also adopted a system for holding persons in secret prisons and "holding facilities" in foreign locations (denying them legal recourse even if American citizens), interrogating them there, and imprisoning them indefinitely when it suited American purposes. The resemblance to Nazi practices during the totalitarian decades, particularly in the deliberate denial of any legal recourse to such prisoners, presumably permanently, was obvious and dismaying. In contrast, Russian prisoners were always subjected to a form of trial and condemnation, however spurious and arbitrary. People were discharged from the gulag.

...An Australian citizen named Mamdouh Habib, sent to Egypt for interrogation, said after release that during his six months in Egypt he had been hung from hooks, repeatedly shocked, beaten, and nearly drowned. When he arrived at Guantanamo most of his fingernails were missing.

...The most horrendous official account thus published, after the New York Times obtained the report of a secret arm investigation, is probably that of a man tortured to death at Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan in 2002 by interrogators who actually believed him to be innocent. The man had simply driven his taxi by a military base "at the wrong time."

...The Bush Administration simply denies that it authorizes torture... In response to an Amnesty International demand for an independent inquiry into abuse at U.S. detention centers, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said: "The United States is leading the way when it comes to protecting human rights and promoting human dignity."

...The Bush Administration has created a state of expectation and mode of conduct hostile to traditional norms of military behavior, and it has inspired an attitude of contempt and fear towards Iraqi, Afghan, and other Islamic enemies that has opened the way to atrocities, licensing sadism and gratuitous cruelty - always near the surface in war. War is awful, but guerrilla and terrorist war is the worst war of all. The people who fight against it can keep their bearings only if the moral structure of their own army is intact. You might think Americans had learned that in Vietnam.

...The fall of Baghdad did not end the war, and the well-advertised assaults on Fallujah... the real purpose was intimidation of the population: a message to all Iraqis that this is what the United States can do to you if you continue to resist, and, in the case of Fallujah, a collective punishment off the city's residents for having allowed terrorists to operate there.

...The President has invited this judgment by repeatedly justifying his conduct of the war on terror in religious terms, declaring the prisoners held by the U.S. "evil" when resisting the extensions of them legal protection and basic human rights... former Vice President Al Gore [said] "one of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's own soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded (my italics)."

...Knowledge about history's dialetical progressions authorizes - indeed demands, in mankind's own interest - ruthless exploitation of the human material at the leader's disposal. Bertolt Brecht expressed this "higher realism" when he demanded "what vileness would you not commit to exterminate violence...?"

International illegality, the deliberate repudiation of international law, and torture, gratuitously employed in defiance of the moral intuitions of ordinary people, all show that the Bush Administration has chosen to place itself outside the moral community of modern Western democratic civilization. This is not an unwarranted or outrageous judgment; it logically follows from the evidence. It seems a strange choice to have been made by an American government that more than any other in history identifies itself with righteousness and with Christianity.

In that respect, if one is to invoke religious judgments, I would cite Andre Malraux's remark to the novelist Georges Bernanos, who had returned to France from wartime exile and asked what judgment Malraux made on Europe in 1945. Malraux replied, "With the camps, Satan has visibly reappeared over the world."

How to Dance to Coldplay

2005-10-30T20:36:00.000-05:00

Caught the 'Fix You' music video this morning...

For whatever reason the skip Curtis Martin does makes me smile. It's kind of endearing, actually.

(Yeah, I know I'm pushing gender identity boundaries, just bear with me.)

Lost My Harper's?

2005-10-29T21:48:00.000-04:00

Been making our way though the first season of Lost...

Wow. What a great show. The character development on this thing is stellar.

Anyway, that's really about it...

Oh, the lastest issue of Harper's is a mind blower... anyone checked it out?

Courtroom Drama

2005-10-17T21:48:00.000-04:00

Heard a report on NPR today about a controversy surrounding the upcoming trial of Saddam Hussein. There are numerous human rights groups that are raising a ruckus regarding the likelihood of Saddam getting a fair trial.

I mean, granted it sounds crazy to actually expect he deserves one but I believe for anything we're doing in Iraq to keep the slightest SHRED of legitimacy it must be fair.

Without a fair trial true justice will not be served, it would simply become a drawn out, glorified assassination. We're supposed to be above this, but the Bush Administration will probably talk about how well things are going and Bush will crack a couple jokes about how he got the bad guy.

As of right now, apparently Saddam hasn't actually been CHARGED with anything, his lawyer doesn't know the rules of the court, if given the death penalty it must be exercised within 30 days, and Saddam's silence in response to any questions can be interpreted as evidence of guilt.

This is a problem, and we should have a problem with it.

Geek Out!

2005-10-06T21:20:00.000-04:00

Peter Jackson is going to executive produce the Halo movie, due out summer of 2007.

Can we say rapturous joy?

Technical Support

2005-10-03T22:17:00.000-04:00

Hey, I'm working on some new links and such. Anyone know how to get them to stop doing that annoying spacing? It just looks bad!

Perchance to Dream...

2005-10-03T19:12:00.000-04:00

Regarding recent comments by Pierce Brosnan as to who should be the next Bond:

Clive Owen is to James Bond

As

Christian Bale is to Batman

I Think It Goes 'Yo Joe!'

2005-10-02T19:54:00.000-04:00

Of course with every protest comes the counter protest. One of the slogans I've heard above the din is 'Give War a Chance!' When the country was gearing up for the war in Iraq I saw this slogan often on my college campus.

One of their strongest arguments it seems when people question the use of war is 'Well, it got rid of Hitler, didn't it?' I agree if that there was any war worth fighting this was it.

But of course, I wouldn't be talking about it if I didn't have something to say (c'mon, it's a blog!). Using World War Two as the poster child for warfare has two problems; it's terribly short-sighted and horrendously cruel.

What I mean by short-sighted is that like all historical events it didn't happen in a vacuum. The forces that set the stage for the war began long before anyone thought of Nazi Germany. Of course there was the worldwide depression to aggravate the standard of living, many country's peoples were destitute and desperate for relief. However, only Germany moved in the direction of nationalist, racist militarism.

The primary reason I believe is that from my perspective at close of World War I the Allies squandered the chance to rebuild Europe on a basis of reconciliation. Blame for the war was unjustly lumped on Germany and the Allies vengefully took advantage of her defeat. They stripped the country of its dignity and ruined its economy, institutions, and social structure (much unlike the end of the sequel, with the massive reconstruction efforts in the former Axis powers).

This national rape sowed the seeds that Hitler would later nurture and reap. Think it wasn't about revenge? Hitler forced France to sign its surrender treaty in the exact railcar in the exact location as Germany years earlier. After the ceremony the whole area was blown up.

My point is that if at the close of World War I all countries acted with justice and mercy World War II would never have happened. I believe that as we marched against Hitler our hands were hardly bloodless.

World War II as 'Exhibit A' in the pro-war argument is cruel because it often glosses over the horror.

While we get our endorphins going watching the endless streams of World War II documentaries on The History Channel, do we stop to think of the endless terror our campaign caused? What about the small child whose entire family was butchered by the Allied bombing campaign? What about the rape of Berlin? Hiroshima? Nagasaki?

Now, I'm not trying diminish the atrocities committed by the Axis powers through events like the Holocaust of the Rape of Nanjing. I'm simply trying to shake us free of the wholesale approval we often accord World War II and how we often use it to justify whatever particular conflict suits our fancy.

When we come up with funny little rejoinders like 'Give War A Chance' we need to stop and look into the eyes of the victims, of the civilians and soldiers on both sides. War is a tragedy regardless of the ends. We lose our soul if we forget this.

Community Service

2005-10-02T10:24:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I did that, sort of.

I was driving to the post office in Worthington and I don't know if anyone else has seen them, but there is a group (Central Ohioians for Peace I think) who regularly have people protesting the war in Iraq on the corner of 161 and 23. They were holding banners with various anti-war slogans. One said 'Honk for Peace!' On my way back up from the post office I did.

It felt good. As small and silly as it seems I think I get the point. I honk, someone goes 'Why's that fool honking?' They look around and see the anti-war protest and hopefully it says something to them. Or at best at least gets under their skin.

Anyway, here's to speaking out, in a sense.

Alias: Can't Get Here Soon Enough

2005-09-23T19:17:00.000-04:00

I'm just amazed that I had this thought. While doing my hair the other morning, I realized I could sort of push the sides forward while arranging the rest in a sort of messy yet styled look.

"Hey! That kind of makes my hair look like Michael Vartan's!"

BREAKING NEWS: BUSH ADMITS MISTAKE - HELL FREEZES OVER

2005-09-18T20:43:00.000-04:00

So when I saw that President Bush had actually fessed up to some responsibility and admitted mistakes had been made in the federal, state, and local levels re: Hurricane Katrina I couldn't help but feel that every national newspaper and turned into 'The Onion...'

But in all seriousness, I could appreciate his words if it were not for the fact his poll numbers have been so low. Looks like he was getting desperate enough to try anything... even apologizing.

Now Hiring?

2005-09-11T20:38:00.000-04:00

Not that this is directly related to the last post...

But I'm looking for a new job. Anyone out there hiring, know someone who's hiring, or perhaps has a good idea?

We've already thought about me teaching somewhere... but I'm not sure I feel really prepared for that. Anyway... comment away!

Work: An Observation

2005-09-10T13:54:00.000-04:00

Genesis 3:17-19

Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

That's about right.

The Ride of The Rohirrim

2005-09-08T22:03:00.000-04:00

After reading E's latest post on his life's most important books, I felt compelled to share this.

My all time favorite scene from the 'Lord of the Rings' (I think) is King Theoden's speech and charge of his riders outside the walls of Minas Tirith in 'Return of the King.' As he rides down the line smashing his sword on the pikes and shields of his men the glory of it is outrageously sublime to the point of ecstasy. When I read the books I imagined the roar of the Rohirrim as the most fearfully loudest sound you've ever heard; the very vibration of it would crush your soul if you heard it. As they crashed into the ranks of Mordor and utterly shattered their forces I imagined it as one of most wonderful things you could ever see (especially if you were an poor hobbit holed up in the besieged city!). For whatever reason it has always hit a deep spiritual note with me (ironic, considering how outrageously pacifist I've become).

Plus, it doesn't help that Peter Jackson freaking NAILED it! Booyah!

From Russia With Love

2005-09-06T21:38:00.000-04:00

I absolutely love Blogger's 'word verification' system. Three cheers for blocking spam. However, I am afraid we may have some human rights abuses here...

To me, it seems like they kidnapped a bunch of Russians, locked them in a room, and forced them to type out the entire Russian dictionary. This way, there will always be plenty of words for us to verify.

Frank Rich, Fight Club, Etc.

2005-09-04T14:58:00.000-04:00

Check out Frank Rich's latest NYTimes column, 'Falluja Floods The Superdome.' (I kind of like the fact that this is stuff Sandra has been saying all along.)

A sample: 'But a president who flew from Crawford to Washington in a heartbeat to intervene in the medical case of a single patient, Terri Schiavo, has no business lecturing anyone about playing politics with tragedy. Eventually we're going to have to examine the administration's behavior before, during and after this storm as closely as its history before, during and after 9/11. We're going to have to ask if troops and material of all kinds could have arrived faster without the drain of national resources into a quagmire. We're going to have to ask why it took almost two days of people being without food, shelter and water for Mr. Bush to get back to Washington.'

That's part of my answer to those champion the administration's response. Evevn though the buck never apparently stops with THIS President the overall response by the government on both state and federal level is too little too late (besides, shouldn't they realize that relying on people's personal fortunes to save them is just bad PR? C'mon! Read your Marx!).
-------------

Fight Club was on FX yesterday. So choice.

'If you could fight any world leader, who would it be?'

Gandhii.'

'Good answer!'

Regarding Blog Comments

2005-09-04T14:37:00.000-04:00

Erik had a recent comment on John's most recent post re: blog comments. Instead of posting it there I felt it would be worthwhile to make it the subject of my next post here.

I too regularly check my own blog to see who has commented on what. Supreme disappointment arises when I don't find any at all. Like the last post I had, I was really hoping to find other people's ideas and hopefully have a discussion start.

I find so much value in comments because one of the primary reasons for this site is to throw out ideas into the 'marketplace.' Hopefully, my logic goes, others feedback and ideas will fuel my own and make me a better writer/thinker in the end while having fun all along the way.

Now I see it is completely empty to blog only to keep score on the number of comments you get. While I was hoping to have creative discussions I was falling into this trap. As works doesn't make faith, so traffic does not make a worthwhile blog.

Besides, if anything I create is worth anything at all the true sign will be an increase in public consumption upon my death (morbid writer's joke, pardon me).

In this pursuit of ours we must do it for simply for the love of it and of the fact that creativity is intrinsically worthwhile.

Again, before reading Erik's comment, my previous view put a high value on comments. Of course, being an American human I naturally latch on to results as a measure of how valuable something or someone is. The biggest reason that I mostly formed this view though is because of when I started blogging: in the middle of the 2004 election. During that time many blogs were blowing up on a regular basis (MG was the champion), after the election posting/comments dropped to almost nothing. Having this as my first blogging experience I'm not surprised that I made connections between traffic and literary/intellectual value.

With that decrease I lost a lot of my interest in blogging (although not having internet helped) and hence my recent hiatus. With internet restored, I came back because of a renewed passion to simply write and be creative. With this new idea in my mind the circle is now complete (cue Darth Vader breathing).

Now I shall see comments like C.S. Lewis saw friendship; in a way, it's 'more the merrier' because the love gets spread around. Even if they don't come though, it's still worth it.

News and Notes

2005-09-01T20:30:00.000-04:00

Greetings. Here's a classic update post.
----------

Coldplay: Sandra and I went to the show last night. Amazing. I agree with MG, they are more then likely the next U2. Their show deeply impressed me for I too became bleary eyed during several songs.

For me the highlight was 'The Scientist.' In a word, uplifting. These guys are the real deal, and I love them for that.

I also signed their 'Make Trade Free' petition and obtained a ONE campaign Lance Armstrong-like wristband. I now wear it all the time. Already got to talk about it with someone at work. I am excited about this.

I'm tooting your horn MG, but some of your posts as of late regarding your lifestyle choices are really hitting home with me specifically. I'm also finding Sandra coming to many of the same conclusions, which is helpful no doubt.

Now I'm finding the strength to live out my convictions. I believe the reason is because my convictions are finally becoming strong and focused enough. For example, we're probably going to buy a hybrid vehicle, we are shopping at more socially responsible businesses and speaking more freely to all about it.

One exciting development is that my company is engaging in many relief efforts for the victims of Katrina. My wife and I called my HR manager today about offering our home to a displaced employee. While it will be some time before the ball really gets rolling, I am excited for this opportunity and hope that it brings great results. Maybe no one will need it, but I hope the gesture would be a source of strength for them. Hopefully many others in my company's region will agree and this will become an integral part of our aid package.

I realize more now that these are the kinds of things we must do if we hope to see positive change in the world.
----------

Gas prices are getting freaky kids. Freaky deakey. But, what I'm worried about is not so much 3.09/gallon or gas shortages, but more about what we as a nation may or may not do in response to these kinds of situations. Desperation can breed some serious injustice. A 'la Pat Robertson, is it really that hard visualize some political destabilization situation in an oil-rich county like Venezuela (perhaps aggravated by the CIA through a Central American third-party?) and then us rushing to the rescue in the name of freedom and justice while also securing some pretty convenient oil contracts? Like Iraq maybe it officially wouldn't be about the oil, but gee golly there sure is a whole hell of a lot there!

In relation to this I'm thinking more and more that our nation has more or less two directions in which we are tempted to go. One is towards cooperation and peace with the peoples of the world, channeling our energies, talents, and ingenuity to really impact the world in a positive way (see Africa and debt relief, AIDS, economic development, etc.). The other is in the mold of the totalitarians of old, where we withdraw into a paranoid, delusion world where problems are fixed with the gun and the bomb (circumventing the UN, pre-emptive invasions, spying on allies, etc.). If these two temptations are true undoubtedly the end would be a mix, but I fear lately the trend is toward the later.

Last week my wife and I had a scary conclusion. We think that in the world the country that is most likely to turn in a direction resembling Germany in the mid 1930's is the United States. We have more power then anyone to impose our will and have no qualms about military engagement. Most of our citizenry is not involved in the political process and can pretty much be swayed any way the conductor pleases (WATCH MORE TV) and usually find justifications satisfactory by simply being 'American.'

When bread (or gas?) costs hundreds of thousands of dollars people are shockingly open to any answers to the problem. Colossal, society-ending, national pride-crushing threats tend to have a very negative effect on a people.
----------

Multicultural note of the week:

If you need more evidence on how diverse our society has become, it's 'Hip Hop Week' on NPR's Fresh Air, BIATCH!

...to clarify this joke picture the people of the NPR community and the hip hop community coming together in someone kind of big rave with MC ringmastah Terry Gross.

Karen James Is My Poop Hero

2005-08-28T11:43:00.000-04:00

Ok, what is more amazing?

The fact that Karen James had the guts to post about poop, in all its gruesome detail? Or that the post got 37 comments!?

Holy fecal matter, Batman!

Bust Out The 'Way Back' Machine

2005-08-25T20:35:00.000-04:00

I talked with an old, old friend today. We've know each other since the eight grade and have stayed relatively close since graduating high school.

He is one of a pack of friends that I ran with while in high school. We were all very different and unique in our own ways yet each the same in our extreme passions for art. In another way, picture six reflections of me colliding together in a hysterical typhoon of goofy madness. Yes, frightening, I know!

We've played in bands together, made movies, seen movies, spend way to much time eating doughnuts and pizza, and going to fantastic concerts. We did life together for a solid five years and have continued past then into college and 'real life.' One was my best man, my friend today was a groomsmen, and all attended my wedding.

Or maybe just hauling around in that old Astro van my parents had (it's a wonder I never tipped it). Anyways, the conversation was great. We caught up. He's living in California making movies. His girlfriend has moved out there as well and works for Dreamworks. He also part-time teaches at a film college and writes interviews of camera working' people for a relatively prestigious sounding film magazine.

Most of my friends are following their artistic passions. One plays music in Cleveland and would have turned a profit on a tour if it were not for the fact they had to buy a van (which is pretty damn decent apparently). One will start grad school in Pittsburgh for writing, his girlfriend (the only female member of the pack, ironically) is attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City. One buddy is finally going back to school full-time and couldn't be happier. The list goes on, more or less.

I had a sad thought though. I'm the only one who didn't continue that way. Granted, I still play bass, but I've lately felt lost not being in a fundamentally creative position.

When I hung up with my friend I was tempted to feel the past year since school has been a waste. It just hasn't though... the decisions I made where smart ones and in the end and have lead me to the current passion I now have towards my future. Had I not done this I might have go straight forward to grad school or some other some-such and actually sabotaged my passion - I've found doing things just 'to do them' or 'it's the next thing to do after all' is a pretty good way to blow it all up.

I guess that comes with being such an emotional creative type. Sandra usually calls me forgetful in this respect... forgetting the good reasons I did things when the times get hard or when I see the next road around the bend.

I'll look back and be glad... it will have been a harder couple of years for some particular reasons, but a worthwhile couple.

Hell, the way my wife and I are dreaming now in the next five years I could have finished my doctorate and be studying international politics in the heart of Paris while Sandra knocks out her MBA in 10 months at a premier business school... kinda makes the grinding part doable.

(While this might not be the worst piece of prose ever written... I feel dangerously close to wandering into 'Footprints' land. I guess with Whitman's post about his daughter I feel strangely inspired...) :)

-----------
"Fo-shizil Iaco-zizil. If the ride is more fly, then you must buy."

I just saw the Chrysler commercial with Snoop Dogg and Lee Iaccoa (spelling?)... so awesome.

Fun Latin American Style

2005-08-24T19:56:00.000-04:00

Hopefully what I saw on CNN the other day is not a foreshadow of our next military adventure. On The 700 Club Pat Robertson declared that the United States should assassinate Venezuela’s socialist president Hugo Chavez. Look, Chavez is not a great guy but if it were not for our history of dealing with Latin American issues (see Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, and San Salvador) and the current militarism of the Bush Administration this would be a lot more funny then it is.

Here are the reasons a guy like Robertson usually makes it hard for Christians like me to identify ourselves as such. Number one, killing Chavez would simply be illegal. International law as well as our own expressly forbids us from official sponsoring the assassination of a head of state (all though it is ok to invade their county under false pretensions, capture them, setup a new government to try them for war crimes, and then have the new government execute them). If we were foolish enough to pull something like this, it is hardly a good thing for a country with such complex political situations as Venezuela. Remember, Chavez almost lost power in a popular uprising. What would we expect from an untimely demise? Does Robertson not realize he probably has plenty of cronies plotting secretly to seize power in such a situation? What about those opposition groups – they are not going to stand idly by. Robertson needs to understand the kind of chaos that would erupt, thousands would likely die and an already suffering nation would be further devastated.

The most infuriating thing for me is that several times Robertson disgustingly puts a price on human life. At one point he quoted that killing Chavez would be ‘a lot cheaper then a $200 billion war.’ Again, I know Chavez is not a bad guy but I remember Christ saying something about ‘Forgive them Father for they know not what they do’ as those people nailed him to a cross. But maybe that is not the case; perhaps (against all hope) Robertson is losing faith in God’s use of America’s righteous military might.

At least he was honest on one point – Chavez rules a country with a whole hell of a lot of oil. He could not imagine the idea that such a man (with ties to Castro – boo!) would have such control over something so valuable to American interests. To him the fact of the matter is clear, we have to make sure someone friendly and nice is in control to drive down the price of our gasoline. Apparently, gas costing less then $3 a gallon is more important then the thousands of innocents that would be caught in the crossfire of a political upheaval.

In spite of all this however the issue that really worried me was how really, this was just a lead-in by CNN into a story detailing Chavez’s potential threat to our interests. They go on to detail his close personal and ideological relationship with Fidel Castro – in fact, in exchange for training Venezuelan doctors Chavez sells Cuba 90,000 barrels of oil per year at ‘preferred pricing.’ Looks like CNN might agree with Robertson.

Good grief.

Oh, Syria, Iran: you may breathe now.

Three Cheers for Christian Fascism

2005-08-22T17:41:00.000-04:00

Reading more Harper's... (see what you've done Maureen!?)

Has anyone else heard of Dominion Theology? Scary stuff!

As far as I can read it now it seems these folks believe in a peaceful subversion of the United States government, by which they will then impose a theocratic system modeled after the Hebrew Bible. Once this is in order they would then use the might of the US to begin a great evangelical campaign across the world...

Auschwitz, anyone?

Three Magazines

2005-08-17T10:41:00.000-04:00

I'm thinking I need some subscriptions...

The Economist, Harper's Magazine and PASTE.

Discuss.

Travelin' Man

2005-08-17T10:19:00.000-04:00

Yikes. Getting up at 5am EST and then traveling all day, only to get to your condo at 12pm EST is for the dogs...

At least we got a solid night of sleep. But seriously folks, check this out.

We shot out of bed at 5am. Got ready to go and got our butts over to CMH. Hopped on a flight to Chicago, had some layover action then sauntered on over to Denver. There we had to wait a couple of hours because our traveling partners were an hour delayed.

We then get to our rental cars and discover Interstate 70 has been covered in a rock slide. D'oh!

So that adds a couple hours... regardless, we roll in to Keystone at about 10:30pm MST.

This makes for a long day!

But it's worth it, I'm now hanging with the wife in a super nice condo, enjoying complimentary internet access and streaming The Clash via CD101.com.

Joy!

News and Notes

2005-08-13T22:33:00.000-04:00

I think it's about time for an update post. This will be more or less stream of consciousness... but there are a few things I DO plan on saying.

Maureen Sullivan Made Me Do It:
That excerpt from Harper's on your site made me buy the magazine. I greatly anticipate reading the article... :)

U2 Thoughts:
To me, City of Blinding Lights is the new Where the Streets Have No Name. No matter what anyone says, I still think Vertigo is a KICKASS pop song!

The Killers Thoughts:
I totally want to perform All The Things That I've Done. Smile Like You Mean It is also a primo example of a verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus x2 song. Also, have you REALLY listened to their rhythm section? They freaking rock.

Sandra's Thoughts:
'You are a poopy head! You should put that on your blog. Cause then you'll get a lot of people going 'I know!''

Foreboding yet Hopefull Thoughts of our Future:
Like the Gallaughers, we're noticing our passionate beliefs in right and wrong and how we should live are translating into actions in our life. I'm not really sure why I consider it foreboding... maybe I'm just thinking it's a little awful (as in, full of awe). Anyway, we think there are many things wrong in this world. We also have tremendous talents, abilities, and resources. Therefore, we need to not sit on our asses. We gotta DO something!

Grad School Developments:
Yes, we're considering getting me butt back in the class room. And dig this, I've finally accepted the fact I am what I hate, a pundit. So... we're thinking it'll be political science for me! :) My wife is also planning on doing an executive MBA program... she needs a few more years experience before she can do that so that gives me a good opportunity to squeeze in a doctorate or two.

Blog Thoughts:
There are definitely things you can't talk about on your blog. It's either inappropriate, too personally offensive to people you actually encounter in real life, or useless to actually mention. But man, it sure would help to get it off my chest.

War Made Easy developments:
Every paragraph shocks me more and more. Not only do I think I should smack them, but Johnson, Nixon, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr. all deserve/deserved prison time. A LOT of it. Their cell mates can be McNamara, Kissinger and Rumsfeld. Even Powell, he probably at least deserves probation.

Possibly Even More Controversial Thought Then My Last Thought:
The Bible tells us to pray for our leaders. Is it ok if we pray for them to be removed from power?

Alright, forgive me... that's it for now. :)

Storytellers

2005-08-12T21:06:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about the latest round of American casualties in Iraq. The mother currently protesting (her name eludes me at the moment) at President Bush's ranch has brought up some pretty profound ideas.

I think what she represents is much more then the mounting civilian and military casualties. The core of what she brings up is what happens to these people's stories after they are dead.

Personally, I feel the living try their hardest to use them to whatever advantage they may. The President talks about 'giving the ultimate sacrifice' for our 'just and noble cause.' Islamic extremists become 'martyrs' of God.

I wonder what the dead would say. Some would probably agree with their obits, some would rage against them. Others might be surprised it actually happened to them and others would joke sardonically.

I believe we should strongly resist the spinsters on both sides that try to define the meaning of the dead. They seek there own objectives in matters that should be left to the grieving next of kin.

To me, coming from a perspective that we live in a 'fallen from grace' state, where death was never even supposed to enter in the equation, each and ever death is a colossal tragedy that nearly defies forgiveness. Each casualty is the elimination of a living, thinking, remarkably unique and beautiful human being. What cause can truly justify that?

To put it crudely, why do so many suffer so much because the few with so much can't keep their shit together?

Clevelander's on the Warpath

2005-08-07T21:28:00.000-04:00

Sandra and I spent most of this weekend in Cleveland visting my family and her sister.

One of the big stories up there right now is regarding the losses suffered by the Marine Corps unit from Lima. It's been front page news for several days now.

Two columns by Clevelanders Dick Feagler and Sam Fulwood stood out to me. Both used the news to issue scathing criticisms of President Bush's handling of the war. Fulwood reminded us of Bush's 'Bring them on' speech. He painted it as a terrible prophecy. While Bush huffs and puffs from the comfort of Washington Americans and Iraqis die by the thousands for a cause that becomes more murky by the day. Feagler re-iterated his anti-war position elaborating on the 'love the soldiers hate the war position' - 'the soldiers are precious while the war is not.'

Sandra and I are extremely sympathetic to their positions. One of my wife's friends brother recently joined the military because of school loan debt. She talked about how it is due to recent military advertising showcasing all the skills and character you can learn in the armed forces. While promising financial security and excessively marketable skills and appealing to one's hopes and fears the military risks people's lives to further their own questionable agendas.

The columnists, my wife, and I do not see the purpose of our current war. What is the Bush Administration really trying to accomplish? Defeating a terrorist sanctuary? Uncovering weapons of mass destruction? Fighting the war 'over there' so we don't have to fight it over here (apparently it is better for for Iraqi civilians to die then ours)?

With all of Bush's original reasons shot to hell, it seems the best we can do is some vague notion of 'freedom and liberty' and putting a very bad man (that we used to support in his war with Iran) in jail.

Even those reasons seem empty to me. Since when is true freedom and liberty brought by the sword from a conquering power? And how can we trumpet putting Saddam in jail while we let turn a blind eye to places like Sudan?

The best we could do with Bush's strategy is this: at best he hopes to 'kickstart' democracy by creating a strong, liberal government in Iraq. At worst, we're setting up another America-friendly nigh-puppet government to support our own interests in a strategic area of the world.

With developments in Lebanon, Iran, and Syria it seems the only true kickstart will come from the ground up. As much as we try we can not force it through naked militarism.

With the worst case scenario I fear Iraq will join the ranks of Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Panama. It will be another failed adventure in furthering our hedgemony in a particular part of the world. Thousands will die, a country will be devastated and we will simply shrug, pat ourselves on the back and change the channel.

The problem is not that people misunderstand our benevolent virtousness or of 'anti-American sympathsizers' within or without. Our ultimate moral failure comes from being like every other superpower throughout history: in the end we are only interested in our own bottom line and when shit hits the fan, we reach for the gun.

We must change before we can rightfully demand such change in others. A speck is a speck and a board is a board if it's Saddam's eye or our own.

My Two Cents On the TV

2005-08-07T21:22:00.000-04:00

With all the talk about TVs lately, it got me thinking about an experience I had my senior year of college.

My roommates and I had one TV, but we only had an antenna and therefore, local channels.

One of the things I've found with cable is that it promotes absolutely mindless TV watching. You can flip and flip and always find something to watch.

With such limited selection, we became much more intentional about what we watched. Often it was The Simpsons, a little local or national news, a couple of network dramas and late night staples David Letterman and Conan O'Brien. We watched these shows together, which I feel enhanced our life together as a whole.

In a strange way, I felt like TV actually added to my life instead of detracted from it. Now, not that any of those shows I mentioned have some huge redeeming social value, but when TV watching became deliberate, a pure matter of choice, I felt dramatically different about it.

It didn't feel so 'Idiot Box-y'.

From Fred Kohn's Blog...

2005-08-06T17:14:00.000-04:00

Loved this. Hence, here it is.

from http://www.bruderhof.com/articles/zabelka-hiroshima.htm

Father George Zabelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Air Force, served as a priest for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and gave them his blessing... Over the next twenty years, he gradually came to believe that he had been terribly wrong, that he had denied the very foundations of his faith by lending moral and religious support to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Zabelka died in 1992, but his message, in this speech given on the 40th anniversary of the bombings, must never be forgotten.

"The destruction of civilians in war was always forbidden by the church, and if a soldier came to me and asked if he could put a bullet through a child’s head, I would have told him, absolutely not. That would be mortally sinful. But in 1945 Tinian Island was the largest airfield in the world. Three planes a minute could take off from it around the clock. Many of these planes went to Japan with the express purpose of killing not one child or one civilian but of slaughtering hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of children and civilians—and I said nothing.

I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to the men who were doing it. I was brainwashed! It never entered my mind to protest publicly the consequences of these massive air raids. I was told it was necessary—told openly by the military and told implicitly by my church’s leadership. (To the best of my knowledge no American cardinals or bishops were opposing these mass air raids. Silence in such matters is a stamp of approval.)"

"For the last 1700 years the church has not only been making war respectable: it has been inducing people to believe it is an honorable profession, an honorable Christian profession. This is not true. We have been brainwashed. This is a lie.

War is now, always has been, and always will be bad, bad news. I was there. I saw real war. Those who have seen real war will bear me out. I assure you, it is not of Christ. It is not Christ’s way. There is no way to conduct real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. There is no way to train people for real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus.

The morality of the balance of terrorism is a morality that Christ never taught. The ethics of mass butchery cannot be found in the teachings of Jesus. In Just War ethics, Jesus Christ, who is supposed to be all in the Christian life, is irrelevant. He might as well never have existed. In Just War ethics, no appeal is made to him or his teaching, because no appeal can be made to him or his teaching, for neither he nor his teaching gives standards for Christians to follow in order to determine what level of slaughter is acceptable.

So the world is watching today. Ethical hairsplitting over the morality of various types of instruments and structures of mass slaughter is not what the world needs from the church, although it is what the world has come to expect from the followers of Christ. What the world needs is a grouping of Christians that will stand up and pay up with Jesus Christ. What the world needs is Christians who, in language that the simplest soul could understand, will proclaim: the follower of Christ cannot participate in mass slaughter. He or she must love as Christ loved, live as Christ lived and, if necessary, die as Christ died, loving ones enemies."

"The bombing of Nagasaki means even more to me than the bombing of Hiroshima. By August 9, 1945, we knew what that bomb would do, but we still dropped it. We knew that agonies and sufferings would ensue, and we also knew—at least our leaders knew—that it was not necessary. The Japanese were already defeated. They were already suing for peace. But we insisted on unconditional surrender, and this is even against the Just War theory. Once the enemy is defeated, once the enemy is not able to hurt you, you must make peace.

As a Catholic chaplain I watched as the Boxcar, piloted by a good Irish Catholic pilot, dropped the bomb on Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, the center of Catholicism in Japan. I knew that St. Francis Xavier, centuries before, had brought the Catholic faith to Japan. I knew that schools, churches, and religious orders were annihilated. And yet I said nothing.

Thank God that I’m able to stand here today and speak out against war, all war. The prophets of the Old Testament spoke out against all false gods of gold, silver, and metal. Today we are worshipping the gods of metal, the bomb. We are putting our trust in physical power, militarism, and nationalism. The bomb, not God, is our security and our strength. The prophets of the Old Testament said simply: Do not put your trust in chariots and weapons, but put your trust in God. Their message was simple, and so is mine."

'War Made Easy'

2005-08-05T19:38:00.000-04:00

I'm reading Norman Sullivan's new book, 'War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits are Spinning Us To Death.'

He is basically exploring how nearly every President since Johnson have used good PR to lead the nation to war. He also rages against the national media and how they constantly 'toe the line' coming from Washington and the Pentagon.

It's some pretty fascinating stuff. I'm still working my way through it, and I plan on posting on it pretty regularly.

Anyway, two instances that stood out to me:

President Clinton and his Administration really tried to show us that they were honestly trying to negotiate w/ Milosevic in Yugoslavia. The one part they didn't tell you is that in the terms set before Milosevic were that NATO would essentially be allowed to occupy the entirety of Yugoslavia (not just Kosovo) with whoever and whatever they wanted.

As Solomon asks, WHAT leader would accept those terms? Essentially, they inserted a poison pill they knew Milosevic would reject. Thus, by hiding this fact from the public, they present the facade of actually negotiating while the entire time polishing the proverbial cannon ball.

In the current Iraq war, a similar trick was used. Remember the UN weapons inspectors? One of the reasons they were kicked out of Iraq was because the US was being accused of using the teams as cover for intelligence agents. Eventually this was admitted by the United States. Regardless of what you think of Saddam, it seems pretty reasonable to me for him to want the teams kicked out if they were mostly just cover for US intelligence.

Now, when Bush was making big, grand speeches about the righteousness of the war he constantly brought up Saddam's mistreatment of the UN inspection teams. Nevermind that whole spy thing... A little inconsistent, don't you think?

I don't even know why getting kicked out was such a big deal... it's not like there were any weapons there to begin with.

'Who We Are'

2005-08-01T19:10:00.000-04:00

An excellent editorial. Enjoy!

Bob Herbert from the 'New York Times.'

There was a dramatic encounter during the floor debate last week when Senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican from Alabama, spoke out against the legislation, saying there was no need for it because, as he put it, the detainees are not prisoners of war, "they are terrorists."

Senator McCain, of Arizona, argued that the debate "is not about who they are. It's about who we are." Americans, said Mr. McCain, "hold ourselves" to a higher standard.

The stakes in this confrontation are high. Senators McCain, Warner and Graham are all influential members of the Armed Services Committee (Senator Warner is the chairman), and they have introduced the legislation in the form of amendments to the nearly half-trillion-dollar Pentagon authorization bill for fiscal 2006.

That such an initiative would come from high-ranking, hawkish Republicans is extraordinary, and the White House is not happy about it. In addition to prohibiting cruel and degrading treatment, the legislation would restrict military interrogation techniques to those authorized in a new Army field manual.

The senators seemed clearly to have been moved by the dismay expressed by current and former members of the military over the lack of uniform standards for the treatment of detainees. Many have argued that the lack of standards and clear guidance from the highest levels of government have led inexorably to abuses.

Senator McCain has been the point person on the legislative amendments, and his office has released a letter from more than a dozen retired officers, including generals, admirals and former prisoners of war, offering support for his effort to establish standards designed to rein in the abusive treatment of prisoners.

The letter said, in part, "The abuse of prisoners hurts America's cause in the war on terror, endangers U.S. service members who might be captured by the enemy, and is anathema to the values Americans have held dear for generations."

Senator Graham, who is from South Carolina, successfully sought the declassification and release of memos from current high-ranking military lawyers who were critical of the legal interpretations by the Bush administration that led to the harsh interrogation policy at Guantánamo. One of the memos, from Maj. Gen. Jack Rives, deputy judge advocate general of the Air Force, said, "Several of the more extreme interrogation techniques, on their face, amount to violations of domestic criminal law" as well as military law.

The White House has fought intensely, but so far unsuccessfully, against this revolt in the usually steadfast Republican ranks. Vice President Dick Cheney, in a meeting with Senators Warner, McCain and Graham, said the legislation would interfere with President Bush's ability to fight terrorism. He was not able to change their minds.

Unable to fend off the amendments, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, put off further consideration of the defense bill until September. Senator McCain and his allies will try to build further support for the amendments during that period. The White House has threatened to veto the defense bill if the amendments are approved.

We should take a moment, however this debate turns out, to applaud the effort by three Republican senators to stand up to the White House and insist that the United States not just fight harder than its enemies, but also stand taller. No one should be surprised that these voices of reason are coming from men experienced in the ways of war. Senator McCain was a P.O.W. for five years in Vietnam. Senator Graham spent many years as an Air Force lawyer. And Senator Warner is a veteran of World War II and Korea.

A few days ago I spoke with John Hutson, a former admiral who is now president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H. He was one of the signers of the letter to Senator McCain. He stressed that this is a very big issue for the country. If the United States fails to get its act together with regard to the humane treatment of detainees, he said, we will "have changed the DNA of what it means to be an American."

I'm Back!

2005-07-31T10:46:00.000-04:00

More to come kids... we got INTERNET access!

Booyah!

Quickie

2005-05-31T14:07:00.000-04:00

We are moved in. The house is still mostly a disaster, so most of my time is being spent making it completely liveable.

Sandra and I celebrated our 1 Year Anniversary with a trip to Niargra Falls, my sister's place and a night at home in Cleveland. It was a blast.

Our house doesn't have internet. That means this could be the last post for a long while. Heck, with the way these blog things go it could be the last one ever.

Just in case, my cell phone is always on. :)

Calling All Cars

2005-05-05T12:26:00.000-04:00

We're moving!

We close on our house Friday, May 20th. We'll move in the following day. To say the least we would like some help!

If you can lend a hand, even for a little bit, shoot us an e-mail at sethandsandrajewett@yahoo.com

I'll get back to you all shortly with time and place.

-----------

Sleepy Boy Update: I have my sleep study next week. I'm getting very anxious about it. Main reason being that I am taking a personal day today because near the end of my shift yesterday I came very close to passing out and collapsing. Not good. Fortunately I fell towards the wall so I was able to catch myself and stay alert.

I realize how much effort I put in lately to just keep myself awake. Anyway, please be praying everyone - I hope this medical stuff does as much good as I'm thinking it will.

Battle of Bands! Come Vote!

2005-05-02T18:21:00.000-04:00

My band, El Remedy, is doing a Battle of the Bands at Billiard Club/Pub 161 on May 14th.

I believe the show gets started at 8:30pm. Cover is $5 for over 21 and $8 for 18-21. We need to round up some support to vote for us. Winning would be a good thing. :)

Let me know if you can come, and if you'd be willing to help us out. I have voting tickets for you. So just let me know if I gotta get you that. The more people who can completely commit to coming the better off we will be. SO let m eknow if you can do this for us. :)

Again, Billiard Club/Pub 161 on 911 E. Dublin Granville Road. Website: www.bcpool.com

Moron Watch

2005-04-30T21:22:00.000-04:00

This is from Frank Rich's latest column in the NYTimes:

'Last week President Bush signed a Family Entertainment and Copyright Act that allows "family-friendly" companies to sell filter technology that cleans up DVD's of Hollywood movies without permission or input from the films' own authors and copyright holders. That sounds innocuous enough until you learn that even "Schindler's List" isn't immune from the right's rigid P.C. code. As the owner of CleanFlicks, the American Fork, Utah, company that goes further and sells pre-sanitized DVD's, once explained to The New York Times: "Every teenager in America should see that film. But I don't think my daughters should see naked old men running around in circles." And so Big Brother can intervene to protect our kids from all that geriatric Holocaust porn.'

What is 'missing the point,' Alex?

Permanent Nap Time

2005-04-19T18:31:00.000-04:00

I went to the doctor today. Some of you knew this was happening, here's what happened.

I've been greatly fatigued and 'zoned out' the past couple of weeks. My boss recommended that I get my thyroid checked out because that's the problem she had when her's was screwy.

I got some blood work taken and I'm going to a sleep clinic. Completely sure that I have sleep disorder. My doctor is pretty sure I actually have narcolepsy.

It is a disorder of the central nervous system - in its most extreme cases people fall asleep at random.

I'm nothing that bad - the general deal though is that if I'm narcoleptic my mind is basically not firing on all cylinders, I am not fully awake like I should be.

It's relatively easy to treat - Doctor has got a nice drug that will wake up my mind but is not a stimulant, so it's very safe.

The part that rocked me though was the fact that treatment would be 'life changing.' I'll literally wake up.

Wow. I've apparently not been normal for several years now. The scary part is that I'm wondering what I'll feel like when I'm 'normal' again.

Best Time Ever!

2005-04-14T09:51:00.000-04:00

Days like this are when I love living in Ohio. No where can possibly have a better spring then we do!!!!

'...That Don't Agree'

2005-04-13T20:19:00.000-04:00

I've come to the conclusion that in the homosexuality debate my sympathies tend to lie more with homosexuals then evangelical Christians.

It's not because I condone their lifestyle, it's because their movements tend to be focused more on 'stop abusing us' then Christians are.

Maybe I'm totally wrong, but I was reading about this 'Day of Silence' and 'Day of Truth' stuff and that was the feeling I got.

The Day of Silence protests mistreatment of gays by highlighting their harassment and isolation - students do not speak the entire day. The day after conservative Christians are going to do a Day of Truth and wear t-shirts and hand out literature proclaiming the 'Truth Cannot be Silenced.'

What? The fact that 85% of homosexual students report verbal abuse and that 40% report physical abuse isn't something to stand with?

Sure, conservatives say Day of Silence supporters have the goal to widen society's acceptance of homosexuality. Maybe that is the case, but I find it really hard to level that charge when your supporters are the ones dishing out the beatings.

When are we going to have actual even-handed responses to things? We Christians polarize too much - I believe events like this will actually promote additional harassment and nothing like what Jesus is looking for.

Regardless of our opinion on any life-style choice we must be for their fundamental dignity as human beings. We should stand with any movement that seeks to raise awareness of abuse and oppression. If anyone is going to care about what we have to say we MUST support their general well-being first. Like the AIDS crisis, while we encourage responsible sexual behavior in marriage we need to care for those who decide different choices and contract AIDS.

Spring has -achoo!- -Snif snif-

2005-04-13T18:10:00.000-04:00

What a wonderful few days it has been lately!

Unfortunately, our apartment complex mowed the grass today so I have been sneezing like crazy.

Anyway, had a wonderful lunch with Andy Whitman - we discussed many things: life, art, the nature of writing.

I cooked a roast - successfully even. So awesome!

My band also wrote a new song today, I really like it. It will be really good once we polish it up a bunch more.

Yeah, that's really about it. Hope all is well with everyone.

A Culture of Death, Not Life

2005-04-09T21:03:00.000-04:00

This is Frank Rich, from the New York Times:

It takes planning to produce a classic chapter in television history. "We've rehearsed," Thom Bird, a Fox News producer, bragged to Variety before Pope John Paul II died. "We will pull out all the stops on this story."

He wasn't kidding. On the same day that boast saw print, a Fox anchor, Shepard Smith, solemnly told the world that "facts are facts" and "it is now our understanding the pope has died." Unfortunately, this understanding was reached 26 hours before the pope actually did die, but as Mr. Smith would explain, he had been misled by "Italian reports." (Namely from a producer for Sky Italia, another fair-and-balanced fief of Rupert Murdoch.) Fox's false bulletin - soon apotheosized by Jon Stewart, now immortalized on the Internet - followed the proud tradition of its sister news organization, The New York Post, which last year had the scoop on John Kerry's anointment of Dick Gephardt as his running mate.

Yet you could also argue that Fox's howler was in its way the most honest barometer of this entire cultural moment. The network was pulling out all the stops to give the audience what it craved: a fresh, heaping serving of death. Mr. Smith had a point when he later noted that "the exact time of death, I think, is not something that matters so much at this moment." Certainly not to a public clamoring for him to bring it on.

Mortality - the more graphic, the merrier - is the biggest thing going in America. Between Terri Schiavo and the pope, we've feasted on decomposing bodies for almost a solid month now. The carefully edited, three-year-old video loops of Ms. Schiavo may have been worthless as medical evidence but as necro-porn their ubiquity rivaled that of TV's top entertainment franchise, the all-forensics-all-the-time "CSI." To help us visualize the dying John Paul, another Fox star, Geraldo Rivera, brought on Dr. Michael Baden, the go-to cadaver expert from the JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy and Laci Peterson mediathons, to contrast His Holiness's cortex with Ms. Schiavo's.

As sponsors line up to buy time on "CSI," so celebrity deaths have become a marvelous opportunity for beatific self-promotion by news and political stars alike. Tim Russert showed a video of his papal encounter on a "Meet the Press" where one of the guests, unchallenged, gave John Paul an A-plus for his handling of the church's sex abuse scandal. Jesse Jackson, staking out a new career as the angel of deathotainment, hit the trifecta: in rapid succession he appeared with the Schindlers at their daughter's hospice in Florida, eulogized Johnnie Cochran on "Larry King Live" and reminisced about his own papal audience with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.

What's disturbing about this spectacle is not so much its tastelessness; America will always have a fatal attraction to sideshows. What's unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living.

When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding John Paul's vision of a "culture of life." This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time. Yes, these politicians oppose abortion, but the number of abortions has in fact been going down steadily in America under both Republican and Democratic presidents since 1990 - some 40 percent in all. The same cannot be said of American infant fatalities, AIDS cases and war casualties - all up in the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, potentially lifesaving phenomena like condom-conscious sex education and federally run stem-cell research are in shackles.

This agenda is synergistic with the entertainment culture of Mr. Bush's base: No one does the culture of death with more of a vengeance - literally so - than the doomsday right. The "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins all but pant for the bloody demise of nonbelievers at Armageddon. And now, as Eric J. Greenberg has reported in The Forward, there's even a children's auxiliary: a 40-title series, "Left Behind: The Kids," that warns Jewish children of the hell that awaits them if they don't convert before it's too late. Eleven million copies have been sold on top of the original series' 60 million.

These fables are of a piece with the violent take on Christianity popularized by "The Passion of the Christ." Though Mel Gibson brought a less gory version, with the unfortunate title "The Passion Recut," to some 1,000 theaters for Easter in response to supposed popular demand, there was no demand. (Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that at many screens the film sold fewer than 50 tickets the entire opening weekend.) "Passion" fans want the full scourging, and at the height of the protests outside the Schiavo hospice, a TV was hooked up so the assembled could get revved up by watching the grisly original on DVD.

As they did so, Mr. Gibson interjected himself into the case by giving an interview to Sean Hannity asserting that "big guys" could "whip a judge" if they really wanted to stop the "state-sanctioned murder" of Ms. Schiavo. He was evoking his punishment of choice in "The Passion," figuratively, no doubt. It was only a day later that one such big guy, Tom DeLay, gave Mr. Gibson's notion his official imprimatur by vowing retribution against any judges who don't practice the faith-based jurisprudence of which he approves.

This Wednesday the far right's cutting-edge culture of death gets its biggest foothold to date in the mainstream, when NBC broadcasts its "Left Behind" simulation, "Revelations," an extremely slick prime-time mini-series that was made before our most recent death watches but could have been ripped from their headlines. In the pilot a heretofore nonobservant Christian teenage girl in a "persistent vegetative state" - and in Florida, yet - starts babbling Latin texts from the show's New Testament namesake just as dastardly scientists ("devil's advocates," as they're referred to) and organ-seekers conspire to pull the plug. "All the signs and symbols set forth in the Bible are currently in place for the end of days," says the show's adult heroine, an Oxford-educated nun who has been denounced by the Vatican for her views and whose mission is underwritten by a wealthy "religious fundamentalist." Her Julie Andrews affect notwithstanding, she is an extremist as far removed from the mainstream as Mel Gibson, whose own splinter Traditionalist Catholic sect split from Rome and disowned the reforms of Vatican II, not the least of which was the absolution of Jews for collective guilt in the death of Jesus.

It's all too fitting that "Revelations," which downsizes lay government in favor of the clerical, is hijacking the regular time slot of "The West Wing." Perhaps only God knows whether it will prove as big a hit as "The Passion." What is clear is that the public eventually tires of most death watches and demands new meat. The tsunami disaster, dramatized by a large supply of vivid tourist videos that the genocide in Darfur cannot muster, was so completely forgotten after three months that even a subsequent Asian earthquake barely penetrated the nation's Schiavo fixation. But the media plug was pulled on Ms. Schiavo, too, once the pope took center stage; the funeral Mass her parents conducted on Tuesday was all but shunned by the press pack that had moved on to Rome. By the night of his death days later, even John Paul had worn out his welcome. The audience that tuned in to the N.C.A.A. semifinals on CBS was roughly twice as large as that for the NBC and ABC papal specials combined. The time was drawing near for the networks to reappraise the Nielsen prospects of Prince Rainier.

If there's one lesson to take away from the saturation coverage of the pope, it is how relatively enlightened he was compared with the men in business suits ruling Washington. Our leaders are not only to the right of most Americans (at least three-quarters of whom opposed Congressional intervention in the Schiavo case) but even to the right of most American evangelical Christians (most of whom favored the removal of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube, according to Time magazine). They are also, like Mel Gibson and the fiery nun of "Revelations," to the right of the largely conservative pontiff they say they revere. This is true not only on such issues as the war in Iraq and the death penalty but also on the core belief of how life began. Though the president of the United States believes that the jury is still out on evolution, John Paul in 1996 officially declared that "fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis."

We don't know the identity of the corpse that will follow the pope in riveting the nation's attention. What we do know is that the reality show we've made of death has jumped the shark, turning from a soporific television diversion into the cultural embodiment of the apocalyptic right's growing theocratic crusade.

Brave New World

2005-04-08T08:08:00.000-04:00

Maybe this kind of thing is common in every age but that still does not stop it from creeping me out.

Two stories that I have followed loosely over the past few weeks have to do with a supposed conservative assault on traditional 'liberal' strongholds: academia and the judiciary. Many are championing new laws that would allow students to strike out at professors that they feel discriminate against their viewpoints. Proponents argue that colleges are bastions of liberalism that at worst create a strong anti-American (really, anti-conservative) paradigm in youth.

With the judiciary some (including Tom DeLay, I believe) have grossly over generalized recent violence against judges (including the shootings and escape of a suspected rapist in Atlanta and a case where the murderer killed the judge and their spouse because they dismissed his frivolous lawsuit) as evidence of frustration within in the general public. Somehow in the same breath they say how it is still wrong to kill but with the way judges have been acting lately there is no way to blame people for it.

Paul Krugman and others in the New York Times have linked these ideas together and Krugman especially argues that conservative Republicans more and more are favoring (in my opinion a self-originated) revelation instead of research. He writes:

'Scientific American may think that evolution is supported by mountains of evidence, but President Bush declares that "the jury is still out." Senator James Inhofe dismisses the vast body of research supporting the scientific consensus on climate change as a "gigantic hoax." And conservative pundits like George Will write approvingly about Michael Crichton's anti-environmentalist fantasies.

Think of the message this sends: today's Republican Party - increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research - doesn't respect science or scholarship in general. It shouldn't be surprising that scholars have returned the favor by losing respect for the Republican Party.

Conservatives should be worried by the alienation of the universities; they should at least wonder if some of the fault lies not in the professors, but in themselves. Instead, they're seeking a Lysenkoist solution that would have politics determine courses' content.

And it wouldn't just be a matter of demanding that historians play down the role of slavery in early America, or that economists give the macroeconomic theories of Friedrich Hayek as much respect as those of John Maynard Keynes. Soon, biology professors who don't give creationism equal time with evolution and geology professors who dismiss the view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old might face lawsuits.

If it got that far, universities would probably find ways to cope - by, say, requiring that all entering students sign waivers. But political pressure will nonetheless have a chilling effect on scholarship. And that, of course, is its purpose (my italics).'

More and more the Republican party is the evangelical Christian party. As a Christian I do not think this is how God wants people of faith to act. We are not engaging real world challenges that all of us agree on or debating conflicts the secular world has with the claims of the Bible. What we are doing is using the political pressure of mob mentality to win our battles. It has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit but the strong arm tactics of a few headstrong politicians and the unthinking devotion of their ignorant followers.

I feel like today's politicians are like Boss Hog from The Dukes of Hazzard then ones interested in civic duty and social service. But, this is nothing new I suppose (insert cliché politician joke HERE!). When we Christians sell out to them we cheapen the Gospel - we discard the armor of God for lobbyists, campaigns, websites, and even voting. We as a whole need a better balance in our faith life - one that sees the value of politics and the need to fight for truth in its realm but at the same time not doing it in a way that triumphs by undermining.

We need to oppose crazy ideas like the ones I mentioned above. If there are ideas out there that we want to challenge and change we need to do it in the marketplace: conferences, debate, literature, and other avenues of real scholarship. I think we dismiss scholarship because we do not believe like we should - we have no faith that our religious thinking is potent enough so we resort to underhanded tactics in order to show God we can 'win.' Men like Pope John Paul II completely devastate that sort of thinking. The Christian faith is completely valid in the 'marketplace' and we should engage everything with it without fear.

One final thought, when we resort to underhanded political tactics we dip our toe in the demonic - like the Pharisees thought: why engage Christ when you can just crucify the bastard?

Homage to Karol Wojtyla

2005-04-05T21:33:00.000-04:00

I heard this fantastic story on 'News Hour' on PBS.

It was told by an ex-intelligence agent from the Soviet Union. He was talking about the impact the Pope had on bringing down Communism.

The story goes that in Poland some local Communist bigwigs were having a meeting. One of them was giving a speech on 'subversives' in Poland, and Karol Wojtyla came up in the conversation as a major opponent of Communism.

In the middle of the speech an operative burst in and announced that Wojtyla had been elected Pope. Two of the men sitting near the speaker didn't quite realize how loud the microphone was turned up and their conversation was broadcast over the loudspeakers. This is how it basically went.

First Communist, somewhat exasperated, 'This is terrible! Now we will have to kiss HIS ass too!'

Second Communist, fairly weakly, 'And that's only if he'll LET us!'

Fun With Words

2005-04-03T15:43:00.000-04:00

One tidbit that I caught in the whole Schiavo case is Tom Delay's fun use of words. He called the starvation of Terry 'medical terrorism.'

Reminds me of when - I forget who - called the teacher's union a 'terrorist organization' because of their criticism of No Child Left Behind.

I can't wait until someone calls me an 'Intellectual Terrorist.' :)

Hmm... might have found a title for a nice song...

Grudge Match: Ireland vs. Lima, Ohio

2005-04-03T12:35:00.000-04:00

I went to Lima, Ohio yesterday. It's north of Dayton and south of Toledo - kind of in the middle of two. It has a real run down, old steel town/railroad junction feel to it. It's a solidly small place.

I was there with a band, we were playing a 'battle of the bands' thing. It was at this 'Christian Hang Out For Teens' kind of place call Stage Right. Not a bad little place at all, certainly was a fun room to play. Craziest thing was apparently besides churches, it's the ONLY place for music in Lima.

Kids, this is small town USA.

Anyway, you probably wonder what the hell Ireland has to do with all of this. It has to do with the drive to and from Lima. The view of the Ohio countryside was reminding me heavily of the Irish countryside. Rolling green hills, blue sky peppered with white clouds, and small homes scattered about.

There was a difference though - this is America, not Ireland, and there was a difference poking at me relentlessly.

It was a sense of detachment, of wanderlust, of not quite feeling at home on the land. One of my most powerful memories of Ireland was its completely homogeneous sense of completeness. It felt like everything there belonged - all of its people, places, and things and they all felt at home. They probably should, since civilization has existed there for thousands of years. I am certain we talked with people whose families have lived and worked in the same area for generations.

It's wholly unlike this country. We've been around as a nation less then 300 years, and the people and culture are all aliens. All of us can go back three or four generations and find our country or origin.

I think that might have been part of the reason for my odd feelings. I was looking at an old, old land yet the people, places and things upon it felt alien. It was a strange disconnect and was fairly unsettling.

I didn't belong. I was a stranger. Everything about me - my base identity as a person - felt like it should be somewhere else.

The real kicker though is that I don't think I was gaining some profound insight into the nature of America - lest this dissolve into a pathetic anti-America rant. I think I am the reason for these feelings of detachment. Basically, this has nothing to do with Lima or Ireland, but Seth.

Welcome to my early twenties, I guess. I am in a great place, I love where I am and the people I am with. Yet, the idyllic dreams of my youth have gone unrealized (and thankfully I might add,, they were pretty atrocious). However, those dreams were still imagined by Seth, and not Seth is not quite sure what to make of it.

Why is the emergence of human personality so slow, so deliberate? I remember a friend of mine relating a conversation he had with older German fellow. He commented on a object in the person's lawn and how in America, our culture didn't have anything comparable. He retorted that Germany had been around for thousands of years, and that America did not yet have a true culture.

I kind of feel like that. I am young, my personality is not yet fully developed. I am not sure who I am going to be, but I am pretty comfortable with the realization that I am not much yet.

That's comforting because once I thought I was figured out, that my destiny was set - nevermind that I didn't like it very much. Fortunately that future was destroyed, and now I moving towards something better.

May human personalities can be like countries and their cultures - rich, nuanced, sophisticated and very, very old. Maybe I am just moving towards that - towards a moment like the unicorn in C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle, where he finally finds the home he has been looking for all his life, though he never knew it.

Heck, whatever it is, if the beer is anything like Ireland's then here's to human maturity! :)

Massively Huge Issues

2005-03-31T21:20:00.000-05:00

Listenin' to the BBC tonight and this is what rattled out: Terry Schiavo has died, Pope John Paul is not doing so hot, and Paul Wolfowitz has been confirmed as the President of the World Bank.

My opinion of the Schiavo situation is that I'm not intimate enough with the details to really decide. I'm kind of glad I don't have to, and that there's no requirement that I have to.

In general I think in these cases that I should be left up to the individual families. I can think of hypothetical situations where the moral choice can be either to keep a person alive or to let death take its course.

In this particular situation however, it's almost impossible to tell what the right one is. There's lots of baggage on both sides of the table and in general it feels like the only conclusion I can make is that no one in this situation is totally honest and looking out for the pure interests of Schiavo.

------

Next, when Johnny Cash died I cried. When Pope John Paul II dies I will cry as well. Good men. Big men. Important men.

------

I was disapointed to hear that Wolfowitz was confirmed as the new World Bank president. Too bad that the World Bank board couldn't throw the nomination back in Bush's face. It's a terrible choice, esspecially considering the recent report that has come out re: pre-war Iraqi intelligence. That doesn't really look good on Wolfie's resume.

------

My wife and I are watching The Apprentence. Whenever they show big, panoramic shots of New York City it blows me away that if you take a dozen or so of those buildings you have downtown Columbus. Oh my Je-bus!

New York City is a gosh darn wonder of the world.

Update Post

2005-03-27T18:13:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone -

I have two unspoken requests for you all. They both have to do with major changes in my life. One is new, exciting and fun while the other is painful, hard and confusing.

Things are good - just life happening, that's all.

Technical Difficulties

2005-03-18T11:00:00.000-05:00

Not really sure what's up here.

If you go to www.sonofmacphisto.blogspot.com you see three posts of the same thing and not my latest one.

If you go to sonofmacphisto.blogspot.com you see it how I want it to be seen.

Don't really know what's wrong... I'll holla once I figure this out.

The Wolfman Cometh

2005-03-18T09:31:00.000-05:00

Wolfowitz, eh?

I am frustrated with Bush's nomination to be president of World Bank.

Like many people have voiced already, this is the man who so passionately made us believe Saddam had WMDs, who underestimated the number of troops we would need, how the population would receive us, and word is that around the water-cooler is considered a colossal jerk.

Yeah, awesome Bush, way to screw something else up.

I hope the World Bank board has enough guts to shove this nomination back down Bush's throat. It's stupid, inconsiderate, short-sighted - basic cronyism at its best.

What? No one else is qualified for it? How about Bono? Bill Gates? How about anyone involved with DATA and other like-organizations? How about someone who actually has experience in developing nations - and not just screwing up invasions?

Some Lighter Fare

2005-03-17T08:43:00.000-05:00

Happy St. Patty's Day everyone!

Huzzah! Huzzah! Tonight I shall drink several pints of Guinness with the family! Huzzah!

(Ok, so maybe like 1... or 2 if I'm lucky... but still!)

Quick thing before I forget: does anyone know how to install an aftermarket car radio? I have one. My car doesn't. I'd like to combine those two and at least make the '95 SL 'Deuce' a little more enjoyable.

Bonoism of the day: (To Bruce Springsteen) Born in the USA my arse... he's Irish... gift of the gab... I'd say you're also tall for an Irishman.

Guinnessism of the day: If you order a pint at Byrne's pub on W. 5th Street it's like 4 or 5 dollars. If you order a pitcher it's $300. It costs you $13 for the beer and rest is a penalty for being such a wanker. Who in their right mind drinks it out of a blasted pitcher? Freakin' light beer morons who don't know a pilsner from an ale.

Ah. To be Irish. I kick your ass then freakin' sing about it. :)

Let The Games Begin!

2005-03-13T17:44:00.000-05:00

My wife and I bought board games at Meijer. We got 'The Game of Life: The Simpsons Edition' and 'Risk.'

I've already blabbed to some at church about it... but I'd really love to get together with people and play.

Of course, Johnny Mac's idea of a massive Unreal Tournament-fest is number one...

Think maybe we could get a little Half-Life lovin' in there too... you know, for us old timers? :)

Close Calls and 'Hey Beaver!'

2005-03-08T12:38:00.000-05:00

If you watched the news Sunday you probably saw my little Saturn SL2. My wife and I were on our way to pick up some breakfast from our favorite little place when we got stuck in a load of traffic on I-270 just after Cleveland Avenue.

Of course, being the short tempered little snot I am I cussed at our unfortunate luck. I really wanted that bacon and cheese omelet! Stupid Sunday morning traffic!

Then four cop cars came screaming by. Them some more. Then firetrucks and ambulances with a 'move or be moved' attitude came barreling down the highway, scattering our lock-jammed cars like cockroaches. Two helicopters pretty much cemented in my mind that there were more important things going on - and a quick word of rebuke from my wife showed that I should shove breakfast up my ass.

Maybe you saw me, I was standing in the window of my car trying to get a better look.

Anyway, I am speaking of that horrible wrong-way crash. I realize now how lucky my wife and I are - good thing that when the TV is on I tie my shoes slower. Like many we were very forunate.

Heck, I could have thrown a rock at the old ladies' trashed car. When I found out a mother died, I kind of wish I did.

We'll probably never know how on earth someone drives on the WRONG SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY for SO LONG and doesn't DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. Therefore, pray for the victims and their families.

I'm now completely in favor of legislating driving tests for the elderly. This reminded me of when that older gentleman plowed through a market in California and killed eight people.

If I can't handle driving when I'm old please, take my car away. Driving is a privilege, not a right.

-----

In other news I was surfing through AM radio. I've never really listened to it and I wanted to see what so many people get their information and entertainment from.

Absolutely love NPR, of course. The Spanish station was hip as all get out too. Sport-radio annoys me - seems like fumbling the ball in a big game deserves the same amount of condemnation as genocide.

I was disappointed by the liberal talk station - the show on at the moment was some Steph girl. The 'Aggressive Progressive' apparently - i.e. the liberal version of Ann Coulter. I see why so many think politics has sunk to the level of the 4th grade playground.

What actually got my noodle cooking was a quick little report I heard from 'Focus on the Family.' It was some sort of 'Family Values' news report thing.

They were talking about burning the American flag - seems some want to get together a constitutional amendment making flag burning a crime. What bothered me the most - and I realize I popped in halfway through the clip, not hearing any 'opposing view' - was what felt like the unspoken assumption that such an amendment has something to do with good, moral family values. Or at least making the 'troops' feel better.

What this reminded me of was the shameless blending of American patriotism and Christian spirituality some Christians advocate in this country. To me, it's just seems like a desire to get back to a 'magically moral' time in American history - that inconveniently has never existed.

It's like the 'Gospel of Nick at Nite' or something.

Anyway, I absolutely support the right to burn the American flag in protest. Abolishing that right seems to me more of an attempt to squash reform and prop up the status quo. I realize however that mostly there is a sense that the flag should be respected - it's an icon that deserves a special position.

But respect for the flag doesn't come from legislation - it comes from the character of the country the flag represents. I think it is clear out national character has taken some serious hits over the past 50 years. To that I say let the burnings continue - because perhaps we are too in the dark to see without that light of protest.

Burning the flag is such a powerful act of symbolism that sometimes I feel it is necessary to communicate a point. If anyone has read Flannery O'Connor's 'Revelation' it is a national equivalent of the book between Mrs. Turpin's eyes.

War! What's It Good For?

2005-03-02T10:27:00.000-05:00

I see that my previous post re: Jesus and violence blew up a little bit... eight whole comments. :)

I had posted a reply... but I think I'll just make a whole new post.

Anyway, to everyone in general I think my anti-violence streak lately is excessively colored by the experiences I've had in the past year or so. I realized this when John challenged me about OT God/NT Jesus and how to deal with the supposed contradictions.

I don't think God opposes all violence. Alluding to an earlier post at Mrs. Coleman blog I think it's more like 'If anyone's gonna kick ass around here it's going to be Me.'

As far as us people go when it comes to violence we're like Glock toting toddlers. We have no freaking clue what we're doing but someone's gonna get capped.

Here's where it hits with me personally. I suscribe to just war theory. But except maybe for World War Two and the Civil War (and even then, only on a purely theoretical level) I know of no conflict in human history that fits the criteria for just war. I mean that, not even something like the American Revolution (tea taxes - or the economic interests of the white upper-class - justify killing people?).

What comes next in my mind is this digusting adventure in Iraq. What screws me up is that yes, I am glad the elections were a relative success. But over 100 more people got blown up by insurgents the other day, adding to the tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of innocent lives that are on everyone's hands since this whole crapshoot got started. Nevermind that the original reasons for going to war everyone has forgotten - nevermind that they were never valid in the first place.

Is anything worth those lives? I have a hard time finding anything. Even being free of life under Saddam - I wonder how many Iraqi's feel totally great about that considering their country's future at the moment.

Beyond that, both presidential candidates were war hawks - one cause he hoped for votes and the other cause he actually believes it - and uttely alienated me.

Now, before anyone lambasts me for being ungrateful towards the 'great freedom, oppurtunity, and liberty America provides me' - I say stop using the Bill of Rights to bribe me. Would I give up liberty if it meant those thousands of innocents would come back? That maybe this insanity we call 'geopolitical relationships' would end?

Probably would, 'comrade.' :)

I also work in a customer service industry. I see the worst and best people have to offer on a daily basis.

Most people will blow you up if it takes more then ten minutes to fax something. Nevermind that I have 15 customers in front me. You need it now. Right now.

The other day I was delivering a car and instead of letting me do my job the customer barricaded herself inside her apartment and flashed a gun at me through the door window. Sure, that's a resonable response to a problem. Would you flash a gun at McDonald's if they got your order wrong, too?

But seriously. How quickly do we reach for violence (physical and otherwise) to solve our problems? Almost every time? I know I'm tempted too.

This all comes to a head when I consider Christ's ministry and death on the cross. The only person in the world who would be completely justified in using violence more or less forbade it. Instead of killing so that others may live he DIED so that may do so.

Throws you for a loop, doesn't it?

Obsession of the Moment

2005-02-22T13:47:00.000-05:00

Ok, so Vertigo might be one of my favorite U2 songs.

I mean, what a deliciously upbeat and compact pop song. To boot, it exudes a brand of mischieviousness that only ex-members of an Irish street gang could know.

Gosh Durn Forgot!

2005-02-22T10:44:00.000-05:00

I was going to post some interesting thought I had. But I started surfing blogs and forgot it.

Probably for the best (har har!).

Oh! I remember something though. Did anyone watch The Simpsons on Sunday? My wife said it was totally awesome.

Way to go guys for not being afraid of the topic. It also looks like Smithers will finally get the nerve to ask Burns out.

Better, But Not Quite There Yet

2005-02-18T15:40:00.000-05:00

I read a really good editorial in Times Magazine the other day. It was about how people – Democrats especially – should give President Bush some kudos for how well the Iraqi election with. I agree with him – as much as I dislike and distrust the President (and how in my heart of hearts I shamefully hoped for disaster) I’m really glad things went relatively well.

Good, some positive progress certainly is nice!

What I still can’t reconcile is the amount of death that has resulted from our actions. As I’ve posted before my light survey of Mahatma Gandhi’s life has pushed me further to the pacifist position then I ever could imagine.

It gets even harder to be American when I realize Jesus never advocated violence for any reason. Jesus shed his own blood to the point of death rather then harm one single person. God’s ways are certainly NOT like ours.

All of this thinking climaxes in my mind as one desperate question ‘What do I do?’ - I mean a tragic ‘my very life itself shatters upon the rock of this idea/I’m ready for my close up Mr. Deville’ kind of struggle.

I guess in another way if I’m really a Christian, then what?

This Could Be Our House

2005-02-13T15:09:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone-

My wife and I found a house that we are very serious about. It is a wonderful home and it well within our price range. A mortgage on this one would leave plenty of 'wiggle room.'

I'm looking for opinions on the area of town it is in.

The address is 5290 Crawford Drive, Columbus Ohio 43229.

Basically, if you head west on Lincoln Ave. (Mikey G's street) you cross over the tracks and Sinclair Road. Lincoln dead ends, you hang a couple of quick rights and there you are. It's less then 30 seconds driving from Sinclair. The whole area is just north of Morse Road.

I guess the Pickerill's used to live over there. Jeff C. also said it is where Johnny Mac grew up.

So, please, give us your opinions! Call us, even! We want to put an offer on the table soon.

UPDATE

Looks like this won't be the one. It went into contract a few days after I posted this. No worries though - Sandra and I loved the house and the price but had gotten seriously mixed reviews on the area.

It seems like a nice place right now, but the consensus seemed to be that it was heading down hill and in 4-5 years we might have a serious problem re-selling it. Besides, we've found some other ones that we're really excited about (in BEXLEY, amazingly enough!).

Tally ho!

Run Of The Mill Post

2005-02-08T15:49:00.000-05:00

Hey folks-

Just posting today cause I can.

One actual thought - I wish some days I was in some sort of L'Abri community. I just have ideas, and they have to get out and be discussed. Probably the intellectual in me. Anyone interested in starting something like that? A buddy of mine was, I'll have to get a hold of him.

-------------------------
Rabbit Trail:

Does Ann Coulter make anyone else scream with fury? Talk about facism. For example, she defends Joe McCarthy's communist witch hunt - which is really nothing more then a veiled proposal to incarcerate 'liberals,' i.e. people who disagree with radical conservatism. YARG!

Desperate House... blogger?

2005-02-03T09:35:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone-

Internet's been down and the old house for a while, so I haven't posted.

Life is good in Jewett-land. I got a raise! Woo hoo! Things are going well in that department, that's for sure.

Also, Sandra had an idea at work that is going to lead to a VERY exciting development. I don't know if I can talk about the details yet, but my baby-cakes had a multi-million dollar idea! Imagine that!

Anyway. I watched Desperate Housewives for the first time ever this week. I have to admit I was deeply impressed. Of course, who doesn't love the 'American Suburban Life Is Ironically Shitty' angle? On a better level though, there are actually some good stories being told here, and in its own goofy way they are believable.

I absolutely loved the story involving the mother with 4 kids who was going absolutely nuts. The way the wrapped it up at the end of this weeks episode was brilliant.

I know I probably sound like a total goof for saying it, but this is a good piece of television... and I daresay there is some authentic creative art happening over there on ABC.

The Issue of Torture

2005-01-25T15:46:00.000-05:00

I've been following loosely the debate swirling around W's nomination for Attorney General. Guess this guy drafted a memo that stated since 9/11 the need to gather intelligence quickly has increased. Therefore, certain methods of interrogation - that historically are considered torture - are permissible. In so many words, the rules of the game have changed so the Geneva Conventions don't apply to the current 'enemy' we are fighting.

In regards to torture I have two primary objections. I find it morally abhorrent to abuse a person in any way - no matter who they are or what the end is. The end should never justify the means, and in essence 'two wrongs don't make a right.' As I've stated before, we do not get anywhere exchanging evil for evil. As Gandhi said, we must be willing to die for a cause but never kill for one.

Second of all, I side with those who claim torture is an ineffective method of interrogation. There are serious doubts within the intelligence community on the value of torture. There are many people that believe that other, less abusive methods of questioning are more effective.

With that said, in our country's particular place in history I believe there are problems that should give us pause. First of all I believe our rampant nationalism and un-said belief in an 'American Golden Age' has blinded us. As a nation we cannot and will not cause effective positive change in this world if we do not repent of our collective hubris. This hubris is partially what causes us to even consider violence. Hubris also prevents us from considering the following.

What makes it ok for us to torture terrorists? Because they're terrorists? Because they're evil? Because we stand for freedom? Because we're American, Christian even? Because we represent modern civilization? Because after 9/11 'things changed?' If an entire group of people is being oppressed because of their skin color then a loving answer like Martin Luther King Jr.'s is correct. But if Muslim terrorists fly airplanes into buildings then it's off to war? I thought 'love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you' - like all of Jesus' teachings - were true all the time.

In another way I believe that we've missed this admonishment from the book of Romans: that we are not fighting flesh and blood but powers and influences much bigger then ourselves. People, even terrorists, are not the real enemy.

I also think there is an anger - stoked by pride in ourselves and unforgiveness towards those who hurt us - that is boiling just below the surface of this country. It tempts us to engage in the most brutal of methods, yet I feel the need for 'good PR' has mostly stayed our hand. If we could let loose a Rwandan level of terror and horror I believe we would. Just because we live in America doesn't exempt us from that response, just ask the Native Americans, Germans, Japanese, and Vietnamese. We need to be careful of the human tendency for irrational revenge. God is the judge and He will avenge wrongs.

A typical response I hear though is that God uses nations for His work. I believe that He does. What we need to realize though is that just because He does doesn't mean He IS - especially when its our own actions we're talking out. We seem to assume today that God is using our country. Maybe He is - but like with David and the building of the temple there is often bad mixed in with the good.

At base we still don't have our heads on straight regarding the War on Terror. We think we can exchange evil for evil in the name of good and accomplish something. It is simply not possible. Hopefully this administration will reject torture; as of right now it's another example of hate proving we don't know what we're doing.

Go Bill!

2005-01-25T15:36:00.000-05:00

From a NYTimes article:

The Gates Foundation is doubling its donations to Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations. With 1.5 billion dollars, more than 42 million children had been vaccinated against hepatitis B, that more than 670,000 premature deaths had been prevented from 2001 through 2003 and that 991 million syringes had been used to improve vaccine safety, since they could only be used once.

Now Where Did I Put My Sackcloth...

2005-01-21T08:37:00.000-05:00

This hurt a lot when I read it; that any person in the world would feel this way. Personally, I think it might be the biggest tragedy of the Clinton Administration. I read about it Philip Yancey's 'Soul Survivor.'

Once, President Clinton invited Yancey as well as twelve other leading evangelicals to meet with him.

He apparently had only one question for them: 'Why do Christians hate me?'

---------------

Check out the comments from the previous post. Johnny Mac had some great comments that really reflect my idea of the 'culture war' situation. I also posted some more from 'Soul Survivor.' It's about the effect of Henry Nouwen on Yancey's view of the 'culture wars.'

State Of The Seth

2005-01-19T15:59:00.000-05:00

Once again gaining inspiration from a fellow blogger, like Mikey G. I will do an 'update post.'

The job thing is starting to move forward. I should be out of the airport relatively soon... I know they are looking for my replacement. I'm looking forward to that. Mainly so I can get back to some more regular hours but also that I can move on with my career. Unless I'm missing something, I'm pretty sure I've learned all there is to learn at my position there.

Sandra and I are continuing the house search. We found a nice little place in Worthington... and it might be the one. It's got great value, great amenities and is in a really nice neighborhood (by that I mean, it looks pretty, like all Americans, God knows if we'd actually MEET anyone).

It's closer to CV then our current apartment, which is great. I think it's very easy to get to and very close to the stuff we want to be close to.

I wish we could find a place in Clintonville, but the matter of fact is that we can just get more in a place like Worthington... so much more that the extra 5-10 minute drive from friends is A-OK.

I spent lunch with one of my best friends Dan Remein today. It was great. We went to this little vegetarian place (right across the street from Element, go fig!). Good grilled cheese sandwiches there.

It was a good conversation. We hadn't hooked up in a while, so it was nice to catch up. Hopefully we'll get together more.

I really appreciate Dan. He is a complex individual who even more amazingly seems comfortable with his complexity. Granted, it doesn't always make sense to him but he really seems to be doing the 'human thing' well.

Something on his car blew me away. He has a drawing of an Iraqi flag in the passenger window with '100,000 civilians dead!' scrawled on it in red ink. It's in his own handwriting, which is pretty scraggly to begin with... but it's rough precision communicated such a clear and precise anger it hurt me.

Considering I've been reading about Gandhi (more later) who would wear a pencil down to nothing out of respect for the person who made it and who said there are many causes he would die for but none that he would kill for I think I nearly broke into tears.

Moving on... I've been doing well since Sandra and I's decision to stay in Columbus. It's been very freeing, and I feel like a lot of things are starting to happen now that I actually have direction for the next few years.

Thinking a lot about addictions lately. Especially some of the ones that affect me... it's so hard to feel trapped to particular vices, and you constantly wonder when God is going to finally get rid of it. I suppose that's what He uses death for, but I don't like it when I find myself looking forward to it... 'Oh good, I'll finally stop struggling with 'such and such.''

The hardest thing for me is to find someone to trust. When I really open up the dark places of my soul I find I've either been hurt or left to drift on my own.

I'm becoming more comfortable with coming to grips with my self WITH God. Yet I feel this pressure to involve other people... almost as if I don't talk with someone 'mentor-like' and just pray through it with God, it's not as authentic.

While I know having folks to confess and speak with is excellent, I wonder if I have an undue preoccupation with it. For example, if I think or do something and feel guilty about it, I must speak to someone or I'll never find absolution.

I can't decide if that's normal or if I'm stuck in some unhealthy cycle.

Anyway, time to put on the intellectual hat: Things I've Thought Lately

I've been reading more of 'Soul Survivor' and I have been blown away by Mahatma Gandhi. The man is absolutely insane, brilliant and darning. I want to get basic biography of him, just so I can be exposed a little more to what he was about. Anyone have an idea?

I wonder if modern Christians are off base with the idea of the 'culture wars.' I wonder if the cultural wars are a bunch of hooey and that it's not quite the titanic struggle it seems. Or, if they're not then the game has changed and something else is really happening in culture now.

Now before you scream, let me say this. I got this idea from talking with many people at work... just in the everyday interactions with them. They don't seem like people who have much at stake in anything like morals or ethical stances; much less anything religious.

They just want someone to love them. I see that very blatantly sometimes. So then I wonder, what good is it for me to rally against the 'secular liberal left' or whoever is trying to take this country away from its 'Christian foundations' when I see such desperate need right in front of my face? Sure maybe we 'disagree about abortion or homosexuality, but sounds like what you need right now is a pint and some good fellowship.'

I guess all I'm saying is that most of my life I thought it was important to fight (what? not exactly sure) by championing right belief instead of just living out the right belief and letting the natural results follow.

Who Woulda Thunk It!

2005-01-16T16:02:00.000-05:00

Jeff C.'s most recent post about unexpected reunions inspired me to share this with you all. It's an event that set the course of my life. It's always sort of freaked me out, honestly... so, here it is.

My freshman year of high school I was sitting in math class with my friend Evan. He and several other of my good high school buddies wanted to start a band. They had guitar, singing and drums all down but they couldn't find a bassplayer. Either they were all older and wouldn't want to jam with stupid freshmen, or they sucked hard.

So, he turns to me and says,

'Hey Seth, I think you should play bass.'

'Um. Ok!'

I asked my parents for a bass for Christmas that year. I began to play, joined my friends band, joined the bands at school, got really good, etc.

Then comes the time to decide what college to go to. Since I like music a lot, my family and I decide that would be a good avenue to pursue. I eventually chose Capital University in Columbus and moved on down there.

While the music major thing didn't work out, I became a history major, got a great job and met my beautiful wife. I still play bass tons, I've played three Campus Crusade Conferences, played probably hundreds of worship sets and heck, who knows where else it will take me.

This reminds me of another, probably even more random, event. The only thing to impact my life more was a spur of the moment decision to start attend Young Life, at which I was introduced to Jesus.

Something makes me think He had a hand in both of these instances. It's spooky. I can trace where I am at today back to two events. A random decision to attend a party (Young Life) and a request by a friend (bass).

Does this mean everything I've done to this point is built upon an 'Um. Ok!' and a 'Eh, I think I'll go to that'?

I feel like that ancient man who's outside of his cave in the middle of the night looking up at the billions of stars in the sky - hoping to Whatever that he's not gonna get chomped by Whatever Knows What - experiencing Numenous Awe for the first time.

In a human life I guess it's par for the course.

Something Missing Today

2005-01-11T22:04:00.000-05:00

I'm reading Phillip Yancey's 'Soul Survivor.' This is from the section on MLK Jr., one of my heroes.

'King had developed a sophisticated strategy of war fought with grace, not guns. He countered violence with nonviolence and hatred with love. King's associate Andrew Young remembers those turbulent days as a time when they sought to save "black men's bodies and white men's souls." Their real goal, King said, was not to defeat the white man but "to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority... The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community."'

Also...

'We have only our bodies, King said, and in the end that was what brought the civil rights movement the victory it had been seeking so long. When I was in high school, the same students who cheered the news of President Kennedy's assassination also cheered King's televised encounters with Southern sheriffs, police dogs, and water cannons. Little did we know that by doing so we were playing directly into King's strategy. He deliberately sought out individuals like Sheriff Bull Connor and state-managed scenes of confrontation, accepting jail, beatings, and other brutalities, because he believed a complacent nation would rally around his cause only when they saw the evil of racism manifest in its ugliest extreme.'

I wish we would have had this in our minds when we responded to 9/11.

Interesting, None The Less

2005-01-11T17:34:00.000-05:00

Person Introducing Me To Person: 'Person, this is Seth. Seth, this is Person.'

Person: 'Nice to meet you Seth, I've read your blog. I also go to CV.'

Seth Thinking: 'Hmmm. Interesting. You've read my blog yet I've never met you at church, of which roughly 130 or so attend. This is happening a lot. It's quite odd, in fact. I think I need to make sure I don't go to CV by extension of my blog.'

Nah, that won't happen. :)

The Joy of Obsession

2005-01-08T21:56:00.001-05:00

Until working for a car rental company I never really got into cars. Since then I've driven TONS of different makes and models. One particular make that has captured my imagination is Volvo.

This is silly, but that is ok. They have provided me with something that has always been missing from my masculinity: a dream car.

So I present to you the Volvo S60 R!

Basically, a luxury S60 souped up all high-performance like with a freakin' awesome 300 horsepower off the hook engine. It's not just a car, it is a work of engineering art.

Starting in the high 30s, and with everything I wanted about $43,000 MSRP.

I'll never have it, I'll never need it. But like Bono said of ZooTV, 'Some of this s--- is pretty cool!'

Quote of the Day

2005-01-07T18:22:00.000-05:00

This is from Paul Krugman, of the NYTimes. I thought it was interesting.

'How did we find ourselves living in a bad novel? It was not ever thus. Hypocrites, cranks and scoundrels have always been with us, on both sides of the aisle. But 9/11 created an environment some liberals summarize with the acronym Iokiyar: it's O.K. if you're a Republican.

The public became unwilling to believe bad things about those who claim to be defending the nation against terrorism. And the hypocrites, cranks and scoundrels of the right, empowered by the public's credulity, have come out in unprecedented force.'

Breaking News: World Exclusive

2005-01-06T21:20:00.000-05:00

Not a really big deal, but big annoucement for the Jewett household.

We've decided that I should put off graduate school for a few years at least. We're going to stick around in Columbus, find a house, and maybe even 'expand' the family a little bit while we're here.

The are several big reasons we're doing this. The first and foremost is that we don't want to leave all the great things we have going on here. We both have great jobs, a great church, and a really cool group of friends.

We're not ready yet to pick everything up and completely start over in a different part of the country.

Also, I'm not sure why I wanted to go to graduate school. I'm debating whether or not I took the fact I loved my senior year so much that I thought grad school was the next logical step. Maybe it was just a good year, and I should leave it at that.

Personally, I have a real 'gut feeling' that now is not the time. It's also coupled with a profound sense of unfufillment; there are things here left undone.

It's extremely exciting now, to be living in Columbus, putting down more solid roots with people we love. After talking with some good folks, we feel comfortable with this decision.

With luck, MG and I will even get a rock band going... :)

Klein and Trudeau Weigh In

2005-01-04T08:50:00.000-05:00

Here are two things I've read recently. I thought they were very interesting. Enjoy!

This is from bassist Larry Klein, writing in Bassplayer magazine:

Many listeners have become numb to the theater of technical virtuosity. Considering the accelerated pace at which most people today live - and the diversity of visual, aural, and virtual sensations available 24 hours a day - the power of a piece of art that speaks in a syntax of understatement gradually becomes greater and greater. I believe there is a reason people are drawn back, for example, to Elton John's early records. Consciously or unconsciously, I think a part of the beauty and power they are compelled by is the stark and minimal bass playing of Dee Murray and Herbie Flowers. Why are people, more than ever, drawn to the great understated, lyrical singers like Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson, or Norah Jones? They strike directly at the heart, without the connotation of artifice or ambition. I believe that in this era, more then any, the art of subtle nuance is divine. The soul communes with itself only when the heart is stirred.

This next piece is Garry Trudeau, it was the forward he wrote for the first collection of Calvin and Hobbes comics:

There are few wellsprings off humor more consistently reliable than the mind of a child. Most cartoonists, being childlike, recognize this, but when they set out to capture the hurly-burly of the very young, they almost always cheat, shamelessly creating not recognizable children, but high annoying, wisecracking, miniature adults. Chalk it up to either indolence or defective recall, but most people who write comic dialogue for minors (up to a including the perpetrators of the Cosby "kids") demonstrate surprisingly little feel for - or faith in - the original source material, that is, childhood, in all its unfettered and winsome glory.

It is in this respect that Bill Watterson has proved as unusual as his feckless creations, Calvin and Hobbes. Watterson is the reporter who's gotten it right; childhood as it actually is, with its constantly shifting frames of reference. Anyone who's done time with a small child knows that reality can be highly situational. The utterance which an adult knows to be a "lie" may well reflect a child's deepest conviction, at least at the moment it pops out. Fantasy is so accessible, and it is joined with such force and frequency, that resentful parents like Calvin's assume they are being manipulated, when the truth is far more frightening: they don't even exist. The child is both king and keeper of this realm, and he can be very choosey about the company he keeps.

Of course, this exclusivity only provokes many grown-ups into trying to regain the serendipity of youth for themselves, to, in effect, retrieve the irretrievable. A desperate few do things that later land them in the Betty Ford Center.

The rest of us, more sensibly, read Calvin and Hobbes.

I'm Back, With Awards To Be Given

2005-01-01T18:37:00.000-05:00

Hey folks, back from Christmas Conference!

It was great. A good time for Sandra and I and the music was rocking. The Awards To Be Given I refer to is in reference to something Campus Crusade did at the conference.

Every year they 'pass the hat' for various ministries within the organization. Last year they raised something like $47,000. A good part of it went to opening up an English language coffee house in Germany, which has led to numerous Germans hearing and accepting the Gospel.

This year they did the same, but in light of the tsunami disaster in South East Asia they tweaked their financial goals. This year they hoped to raise $10,000 each for two respective ministries, and $25,000 for tsunami relief.

The students gave $36,000 that night, and pledged another $57,000 over the course of the next year for a total of $93,000! What an awesome outpouring of love and support for the people who were affected by this terrible tragedy.

If you figure it percentage wise, it's at least $51,000 going to tsunami relief, although they will probably allocate more.

Kingdom of God kudos to Campus Crusade! First off, they had to have made this decision last second meaning that their original beneficiaries were going to get less and maybe nothing at all. What an awesome willingness to change priorities, and what a great response by the 2500+ students that were there.

I have never been more proud of this particular organization, and it is another awesome example of how people are responding to this disaster.

Kudos also to the U.S. and President Bush for pledging $350 million more in relief. Also kudos to countries like Spain giving $68 million and for people like Bill Gates who are also giving millions from their private fortunes and foundations. Although some are using giving as a political tool, if it saves people's lives I don't give a crap.

Most importantly, massive congratulations to all the people in the affected nations that are doing the ground work. They are some of the heroes of our Age.

Talk Amongst Yourselves

2004-12-28T22:20:00.000-05:00

I found this in USA Today.

'Righteous Living' built USA

After reading Charles Haynes' and Jim Wallis' commentaries on values, I can conclude that both of these men miss a key point: Our great nation was founded on the holy Bible and on God's providence, protection and blessings upon our land.

Early citizens and leaders of our nation realized that they had an obligation to live in a morally upright manner that honors God in return for all he'd done for us. But as a nation, we have slipped from that humble position to one of increasing decadence led by Hollywood and the extreme liberal left. Many would seek to remove any semblance of faith and spirituality from all aspects of society, and have misinterpreted the First Amendment as a pseudo-rationale for their position.

Such a humanistic, proud attitude is a slap in the face to a gracious God who led our leaders as the risked their lives on the battlefield so we could become a free country in the first place.

I believe Bush is a sincere Bible-believing Christian. And, yes, the 2004 election was in large part a victory for those moral citizen who finally stood up and said, "We aren't going to sit idly by while a liberal minority of practical atheists send us further down the tubes."

As a nation, what do we now and whether we come back to righteous living will determine whether we fall like Rome in a heap of destruction, or prosper with God's continued blessing.

---------------------

What follows is my response I e-mailed to USA Today's opinion editor. Unfortunately I couldn't send what I REALLY think, so I came up with this instead. Names were changed to protect the innocent.

Dear Editor,

I am saddened by John Smith's comments regarding Charles Haynes' and Jim Wallis' articles. His views are at best bad history and at worst a compromise of faith to the idols of patriotism and unilateral partisanship.

He claims that 'Our great nation was founded on the holy Bible and on God's providence, protection and blessings upon our land.' I do not dispute that Biblical principles impacted our nation, but it is hardly the end all be all of our development.

There are many historical refutes to his view. One is that our nation was largely crafted from the outright conquest of North America. Millions of Native Americans died in our power grab for land and resources. Biblical principles were desecrated in the name of guns, gold, and glory. That fact is largely the reason we enjoy such luxury today.

Secondly, while President Bush may be an upright Christian individual who is against gay marriage and abortion, he is a staunch proponent of pre-emptive unilateral warfare, no friend of the poor, and encouraging of America's pride and arrogance. He is hardly the full 'Christian package.'

I love Christ and my country with all my heart, but the U.S. and President Bush an absolutely not archetypes of Biblical values. It breaks my heart, but I believe the U.S. has more in common with Revelation's Babylon then Jerusalem. As a result, I am afraid instead of blessing us God may be ready to toss us on Smith's 'heap of destruction.'

A Happy Christ's Mass To All!

2004-12-25T15:50:00.000-05:00

Happy Christmas everyone, and a great new year as well.

This will probably be my last post for a while. I'm at the 'rents in Cleveland right now, and I'll be back to C-bus tomorrow then off to Indy the next day.

Hope all is well with all.

My favorite part of the holidays is this: the time off spent with the people you love. It's been great, and to me, that's the redeeming part of it all (and also the fact Sandra got me a CBGB t-shirt! Huzzah!).

So Happy New Year to all of you, and may you not freeze or get stuck in the snow.

Thoughts from Rev. Jim Wallis

2004-12-23T16:29:00.000-05:00

I thought this was really good. I present it for the benefit of the viewing public.

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20041220/religion_two.art.htm

It's Like When Bart Got An F

2004-12-23T09:39:00.000-05:00

Well, you know it's bad outside when Enterprise Rent-a-Car won't pick you up.

Went outside, our cars were covered in 3 inches of ice. I could only get into them because the driver side doors were apparently not facing the way the ice blew last night.

3 of 4 doors and both trunks were frozen shut. After about a half hour of running my car and 20 minutes of scraping (and breaking one of 'em!) I got it about 60% clear.

At this point I call work to say I'm going to be late. My manager graciously says forget about it - half the office lives in areas where it's level 3 - and tells me to enjoy the day. She said our regional rental manager said we'll make it work, don't risk employees and their cars just to get in.

Also. We're not picking you up today. So forget about it. :)

Anyway, beyond that Sandra and I's two friends Megan and Elania are extending their stay at the old Jewett household. Driving to Chillicothe last night just wasn't in the mix, and this morning isn't much better.

Elaina just wants to see her parents! Damn snow!

We'll see how that works out. At least it's supposed to stop today and more or less clear out by the weekend. That will make travel to Indianapolis doable.

Alright, that's all. Have a great day everybody, enjoy the snow, and if you were praying for it so you could have more time to study that history test, you owe God big time. :)

Muffin Films and the Future As I Know It

2004-12-22T22:10:00.000-05:00

Want to see something cool, that might just creep you out?

muffinfilms.com

Hysterical stuff, if any of you are into the realultimatepower stuff you should get a kick out of this too.

I had an interesting thought the other day. Very compelling.

I'm planning on going to grad school... really want to... I think...

But the idea of staying in Columbus, starting a family with Sandra, buying a house, and continuing in my career at my job, maybe even starting a band with Michael Gallaugher and NOT completely starting over for the 3rd time in 5 years seemed really appealing.

It was an absolutely wonderful feeling, to know that I could do that right now.

Anyway, confusion. But that's ok.

Fun With Words

2004-12-13T13:41:00.000-05:00

I was reading an article, and when you move the words 'Christian' and 'Conservative' around I get very different feelings.

Please, I'm not assigning these labels to anyone in particular. In general, I get two completely different feelings. I thought it was interesting, that's all.

Conservative Christians

vs.

Christian Conservatives

I won't say what I think, but I think those are two completely different people.

Checking In and Checking Out

2004-12-13T13:13:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone-

Just saying hello. Another day off from the old job, and sitting in Panera, eating lunch and about to work on my grad school applications.

The CV Christmas Party is this week. This should be fun... get to play a little bass to some fun Christmas tunes. :)

I get Dec. 25th to Jan 1st off of work. I will be with my wife, my dog, my family, and playing a lot of bass guitar during that entire time.

Praise be to Jesus!

This One's a Doozy!

2004-12-07T16:41:00.000-05:00

First, some self-examination! I visited Element last week and John made a really good observation about me. I’m an intellectual, not an academic. I don’t really get excited about crossing my Ts and dotting my Is. Thinking about stuff rocks! Three cheers for thinking! Anyway, that was sort of fun to mull over this past week, so thanks John!

Next off, in the past couple of weeks I’ve heard a couple things on NPR that have really gotten me thinking.

One was on the Tavis Smiley show. He had been hosting a series of round-table conversations regarding religion and morals in today’s American society. One of the commentators was a Rabbi, and he made one of the most insightful observations I’ve heard in a long time.

He stated that the moral crisis in America today has nothing to do with homosexuality or abortion but with our obsessive selfishness and materialism. Conservative Christians are simply wrong when it comes to the most important moral issues of the age. We have a bigger problem he says. It is that our economy of capitalism and society of radical individualism often quickly degrades our values to ‘what can I get out of others?’ This attitude is the one that pervades our paradigm.

While this might be very effective for making money, it is absolutely devastating when we take this attitude home to our friends, families, and communities; selfishness abounds! Now, I’m not dogging on anyone in that plank/speck way, but it’s amazing we live in a world where Lance Armstrong can beat cancer, win 6 Tour De Frances in a row but not keep his marriage together. Donald Trump amazingly has made billions of dollars, lost it, then made it all back again; but all while watching his marriage hit the skids. It’s kind of odd to me that at six months of marriage I’m in a position to give numerous people valuable advice on ‘making it last’ (I’m still waiting for Britney to call). Maybe this is why: do we allow capitalism and individualism inform our perspective too much? Do we then become fish, not knowing that the water is wet? I think he is very right. More frighteningly however is that in general, most people live in a general ignorance of the subject. People have never really thought about this, and generally assume there is nothing really wrong with the foundational structures of our society.

The other commentary I heard is related to this, it has to do with the continual general outrage we hear about ‘decadent’ Hollywood. Too much sex and violence! We’ve all heard it; Hollywood is corrupting our morals, families, lives, ad nauseam.

However, the commentator pointed out that the ‘media’ wouldn’t be so sex and violence soaked if it didn’t sell; if we didn’t buy. We as a whole share part of the blame.

Again, we see the almighty dollar driving the decisions of the media, but also our nearly blind - and nigh hypocritical - acceptance of it.

He also pointed out that most of the people who criticize Hollywood champion free markets. While I don’t entirely agree with him, he said you’ve got to pick one or the other: free markets that allow the possibility of decadent media, or government regulation to keep it clean and family friendly. I do however agree with his conclusion, free markets are a big reason why sex and violence are so prevalent. To paraphrase Voltaire, it sells therefore it is.

I think this all ties together, especially for us as Christians. It seems in general that Christians support free markets ignorantly, criticize Hollywood’s filth hypocritically, and claim homosexuality and abortion as the biggest threats foolishly.

It seems free markets contribute to our overwhelming selfishness, materialism and general ignorance of the real situation; allow, and because of our over-sensual natures encourage, decadent media programming; all the while keeping us blind to our destructive indulgence in it. While I’m tempted to think that will simply assume everything is ok because it so brilliant works for us, I think the real truth is that were more compassionate then that, and that we simply haven’t thought enough. Selfishness and materialism has killed a lot more people then abortion and done much more to break up families then two guys kissing. I’m certainly not the first person to say stuff like this, yet why - especially in the church – do we persist with the general un-critical assumption that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with our society and economics? Are we really falling for the devil’s classic slight of hand? We hold up sins that we don’t really struggle with, and ‘eat and drink while tomorrow they die.’

I’m no expert, but whatever the answers are there is just a little too much tension involved in holding capitalism, individualism, moral crisis, and a Biblical outlook together.

---------------------------------

As a side note, I highly doubt if ‘free markets’ have any real, biblical sanction, per se. The worst part about is that like most people I think, at best I’ve never thought about and at worst I just assumed it was ok (the logic can be humorously wrong, ‘Well, of course free market capitalism is the best economic system, we got filthy stinking rich and kicked everyone else’s ass didn’t we?’).

I think of this because of Old Testament, when they talk about the ‘Years of Jubilee,’ Jesus’ admonishments to care for the downtrodden and the early churches very socialist sharing and caring for each other’s needs. It seems to me that the Bible accepts free markets, competition, supply and demand, rich people and poor people as facts of life. However, the injustices that arise from those facts are to be addressed and challenged with mercy and justice. Yes, the world is such that some are so rich that others go hungry, but never is that right or to be even tolerated. The basic principle that should
inform the way we approach the world’s problems is people trump profits every time. Now, I’m not Biblical expert or economic guru, but that’s what I see. I see we don’t believe that in this country, and our materialism proves it. I think we should examine it more critically, and not assume it’s the best way to run things. We Christians should especially examine it more critically; I fear we may unthinkingly hold it as ‘Scriptural’ when in fact it is excessively problematic.

I know though that some say free markets are the best way to go in providing for people because it provides motive like nothing else can. When folks are motivated because they get something out of it, they work hard and produce a lot! Even better, it’s also self-correcting so when something goes wrong it gets fixed. This does make sense to me. My old history professor used to live in the U.S.S.R., and while I believe he’s not a total free market capitalist, I see his point when he says the Soviet Union collapsed because no one was motivated to do anything! He said he sat around at his plumbing job and smoked. No one could fire him, and he got food, clothing, and housing no matter what! What a deal!

But the problem is the free market is limited in what it can really provide for people. It’s too slow primarily. Take the Enron scandal. Sure the market corrected itself and took care of some problems, but only after thousands of people got screwed. Also, it’s plain as day that the problems plaguing Enron could have been fixed with a little proactive problem solving and investigation. It seems that for the sake of the ‘free market’ idol and staying away from ‘regulation’ we deal with problems after the bomb drops. What is wrong with applying a little critical thinking and foresight? For me totally free markets are too slow; especially when it so often results in such hardship and suffering.

Now, I’m not advocating communism or socialism or some pinko-liberal nonsense. We need a mix, something that is as powerful, effective, and productive as we are now yet with adequate protections created with critical thinking and foresight to prevent problems and abuses before they happen.

Friedman on 21st Century Energy

2004-12-05T20:45:00.000-05:00

I thought this was cool. So I thought I would post it. It's Thomas Friedman of the NYTimes. Tell me what you think!

'Fly Me To The Moon'

Of all the irresponsible aspects of the 2005 budget bill that the Republican-led Congress just passed, nothing could be more irresponsible than the fact that funding for the National Science Foundation was cut by nearly 2 percent, or $105 million.

Think about this. We are facing a mounting crisis in science and engineering education. The generation of scientists, engineers and mathematicians who were spurred to get advanced degrees by the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik and the challenge by President John Kennedy to put a man on the moon is slowly retiring.

But because of the steady erosion of science, math and engineering education in U.S. high schools, our cold war generation of American scientists is not being fully replenished. We traditionally filled the gap with Indian, Chinese and other immigrant brainpower. But post-9/11, many of these foreign engineers are not coming here anymore, and, because the world is now flat and wired, many others can stay home and innovate without having to emigrate.

If we don't do something soon and dramatic to reverse this "erosion," Shirley Ann Jackson, the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told me, we are not going to have the scientific foundation to sustain our high standard of living in 15 or 20 years.

Instead of doubling the N.S.F. budget - to support more science education and research at every level - this Congress decided to cut it! Could anything be more idiotic?

If President Bush is looking for a legacy, I have just the one for him - a national science project that would be our generation's moon shot: a crash science initiative for alternative energy and conservation to make America energy-independent in 10 years. Imagine if every American kid, in every school, were galvanized around such a vision. Ah, you say, nice idea, Friedman, but what does it have to do with your subject - foreign policy?

Everything! You give me an America that is energy-independent and I will give you sharply reduced oil revenues for the worst governments in the world. I will give you political reform from Moscow to Riyadh to Tehran. Yes, deprive these regimes of the huge oil windfalls on which they depend and you will force them to reform by having to tap their people instead of oil wells. These regimes won't change when we tell them they should. They will change only when they tell themselves they must.

When did the Soviet Union collapse? When did reform take off in Iran? When did the Oslo peace process begin? When did economic reform become a hot topic in the Arab world? In the late 1980's and early 1990's. And what was also happening then? Oil prices were collapsing.

In November 1985, oil was $30 a barrel, recalled the noted oil economist Philip Verleger. By July of 1986, oil had fallen to $10 a barrel, and it did not climb back to $20 until April 1989. "Everyone thinks Ronald Reagan brought down the Soviets," said Mr. Verleger. "That is wrong. It was the collapse of their oil rents." It's no accident that the 1990's was the decade of falling oil prices and falling walls.

If President Bush made energy independence his moon shot, he would dry up revenue for terrorism; force Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to take the path of reform - which they will never do with $45-a-barrel oil - strengthen the dollar; and improve his own standing in Europe, by doing something huge to reduce global warming. He would also create a magnet to inspire young people to contribute to the war on terrorism and America's future by becoming scientists, engineers and mathematicians. "This is not just a win-win," said the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum. "This is a win-win-win-win-win."

Or, Mr. Bush can ignore this challenge and spend the next four years in an utterly futile effort to persuade Russia to be restrained, Saudi Arabia to be moderate, Iran to be cautious and Europe to be nice.

Sure, it would require some sacrifice. But remember J.F.K.'s words when he summoned us to go to the moon on Sept. 12, 1962: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

Summoning all our energies and skills to produce a 21st-century fuel is George W. Bush's opportunity to be both Nixon to China and J.F.K. to the moon - in one move.

TPS Reports and Other Matters

2004-11-29T17:03:00.000-05:00

It's official.

I'm looking for another job. If any of you out there know anyone who is looking for a bright, strapping 23-year old college graduate give me a holler! :)

Writing for AIDS

2004-11-29T16:18:00.000-05:00

This is GREAT!

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/29/books/29gord.html

Story in the NYTimes about writers getting together their talents to help raise awareness to the AIDS plauge. Just like our good rock and roll friends.

Highlight:

"If the musicians can get up and sing, we can get up and write," said Ms. (Nadine)Gordimer, 81, in a telephone interview from her home in Johannesburg. "It was more than one and a half years ago and there were so many gigs and performances by musicians and singers, people like Bono. They were giving their talents to help people and raise awareness about this pandemic plague. I thought: 'This is awful. We writers collectively have done nothing.' "

'Reason is on our side'

View From the Back End

2004-11-29T13:36:00.000-05:00

I've got problems
I've got shit to deal with.

But

I don't want biblical counsel
I don't want advice
I don't want to be taken to coffee
By a stranger

Don't tell me of your politik
Don't blame it on my upbringing
Don't construct some psychological fantasy
To shift the pain away

Artificial

Don't give me a book to read
Don't quote some obscure Bible verse
Don't flip to 104.9
Or give me a ride to the concert

I don't need a pastor
I don't need an 'older brother'
I don't need the 'truth'

I need a friend

Heeeeeeere's Bono! (Where's Johnny?)

2004-11-23T21:14:00.000-05:00

Well folks... welcome to an 'update' post.

1) I'm listening to the new U2 for the first time now. I really like 'Love and Peace or Else.' It's TRIPPY. Like, Pop/Zooropa trippy. No matter what anyone else says, I really loved those albums. All of it has been really good so far... I'm excited to think about it and listen to it more... and also discern it's place in the pantheon that is U2. :)

2) For the second night in a row crap has come home from work and resulted in a fight with Sandra. We've gotten over them both very quickly, which is good... and I'm slowly pulling my head out of my arse as well... but I'm really struggling at work. I'm considering looking for another job. There's a lot of reasons... and I may spell them out in a later post. Anyway, prayer would be appreciated.

3) I heard a report on ABC News tonight about some Evangelical Christians who believe that they are directly responsible for W's election victory. Now he owes the values they believe in big time, or God will smite us, so to speak. More on that later.

4) Church has really ruled lately. Playing Sunday was a blast in a half, and Vertigo was just rockin'.

I think that's about it. Hope all is well with all! :)

I'm Getting Old/U2 Freakin' Rocks

2004-11-21T16:33:00.000-05:00

Watched the boys on Saturday Night Live last night.

They rocked hard. Just like always. Played 'Vertigo' as well as 'Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own.' I guess they also busted out 'I Will Follow' but since I figured they'd just play two like SNL guests do, I turned off the T.V. and zonked.

Needed a nice big 16oz'er of coffee this morning to get through church and make it to nap time...

So, in conclusion... I'm getting old and U2 rocks the house.

Geopolitcal Goobidy-Gook

2004-11-20T10:35:00.000-05:00

I was pondering this today.

Who's the next superpower? Europe? China? What does that mean for us?

Or are we just going to have hedgemony over everyone forever?

Not Bad

2004-11-20T09:46:00.000-05:00

'George W Bush. I was surprised that he agreed to see me at all. He didn't have to, especially as I used to crank-call his dad at the White House from the stage during U2's 'Zoo TV' Tour. Dressed as the devil with 70,000 of my closest friends singing along, I would call at about 10 o' clock at night. We usually got Operator 2, and we would sing at the top of our voices, "I just called to say I love you". Still, since I posed for a photo with W in 2003, he agreed to pledge $15bn for five years to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa.' - Bono

'Shaping Noise Into Music'

2004-11-20T08:23:00.000-05:00

This is another brilliant quote from Bassplayer magazine.

It's from Ben Allison, a bassplayer and contributor to the latest edition. What he said here really blew me away.

'In the early '90s, I was at the beginning of my career and was playing in restaurants and bars for small money. I was glad to have a chance to play. But at times it was a frustrating existence, made all the more so by restaurant managers who would often complain about the music we were playing. On one gig, the manager grumbled that we never played anything "old" that people would recognize. This was particularly annoying since the tune we were playing at the time was "Sophisticated Lady" - which was written in the early '30s. How far back did this fool want us to go?

Instead of arguing the point, I tried a little experiment. I asked the guys in the band to play a fully improvised tune, but to play it in a "vintage style." So we made up a tune on the spot, complete with a simply melody, a random cycle of IIm/V chord progressions, and a bridge that happened to go to the IV chord. At times it sounded a bit atonal, but the tenor player pulled out all his Ben Webster licks, the drummer set up a nice brushy swirl, and I thumped some simple rhythms. The manager walked by, gave us the huge thumps-up, and said, "Finally, a tune people will recognize. What is it, by the way?" I told him it was a classic called "Fools Believe," and he nodded with an air of recognition.

I now see this small moment as a turning point in my musical development. I began to realize that it is not what you play but how you play that is important. Most of what we musicians focus on, in terms of the technical side of music, is lost on many listeners. The audience is listening to the music and experiencing it for what it is. They don't want to know the grammar behind the poetry. In many ways, all the theory and mental gymnastics become irrelevant.'

Who Woulda Thunk It?

2004-11-19T20:44:00.000-05:00

Weeks later, I'm surprised by something.

With all the energy we put in to discussing the election and who would be the best choice, once it was all over no one has revealed who they voted for and why.

Granted, a fight isn't worthwhile, but continuing the discussion might be... I figured we all might be inclined to do that.

But regardless, just an observation.