heart in a cage

Photo

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:12:59 -0400

Video

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:43:19 -0400

"Like most writers, I seem to be smarter in print than in person. In fact, I am smarter when I’m..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:03:52 -0400

“Like most writers, I seem to be smarter in print than in person. In fact, I am smarter when I’m writing. I don’t claim this merely because there is usually no one around to observe the false starts and groan-inducing sentences that make a mockery of my presumed intelligence, but because when the work is going well, I’m expressing opinions that I’ve never uttered in conversation and that otherwise might never occur to me. Nor am I the first to have this thought, which, naturally, occurred to me while composing. According to Edgar Allan Poe, writing in Graham’s Magazine, ‘Some Frenchman—possibly Montaigne—says: ‘People talk about thinking, but for my part I never think except when I sit down to write.’ I can’t find these words in my copy of Montaigne, but I agree with the thought, whoever might have formed it. And it’s not because writing helps me to organize my ideas or reveals how I feel about something, but because it actually creates thought or, at least supplies a Petri dish for its genesis.”

- Arthur Krystal

A Conversation at the Atheist’s Car Garage View...

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:24:00 -0400

A Conversation at the Atheist’s Car Garage

View full-size

Heh.

"He was warm from his jaunt. The dusky glen laid cool hands on him. He rolled up the hems of his blue..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:08:16 -0400

“He was warm from his jaunt. The dusky glen laid cool hands on him. He rolled up the hems of his blue denim breeches and stepped with bare dirty feet into the shallow spring. His toes sank into the sand. It oozed softly between them and over his bony ankles. The water was so cold that for a moment it burned his skin. Then it made a rippling sound, flowing past his pipe-stem legs, and was entirely delicious. He walked up and down, digging his big toe experimentally under smooth rocks he encountered. A school of minnows flash ahead of him down the growing branch. He chased them through the shallows. They were suddenly out of sight as they they had never existed. He crouched under a bared and overhanging live-oak root where a pool was deep, thinking they might reappear, but only a spring frog wriggled from under the mud, stared at him, and dove under the tree root in a spasmodic terror. He laughed.”

- The Yearling, 1938

"…much of present-day biological knowledge is ideological. A key symptom of ideological..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:13:12 -0400

“…much of present-day biological knowledge is ideological. A key symptom of ideological thinking is the explanation that has no implications and cannot be tested. I call such logical dead ends antitheories because they have exactly the opposite effect of real theories: they stop thinking rather than stimulate it. Evolution by natural selection, for instance, which Charles Darwin originally conceived as a great theory, has lately come to function more as an antitheory, called upon to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings that are at best questionable and at worst not even wrong. Your protein defies the laws of mass action? Evolution did it! Your complicated mess of chemical reactions turns into a chicken? Evolution! The human brain works on logical principles no computer can emulate? Evolution is the cause! Sometimes one hears it argued that the issue is moot because biochemistry is a fact-based discipline for which theories are neither helpful nor wanted. The argument is false, for theories are needed for formulating experiments. Biology has plenty of theories. They are just not discussed—or scrutinized—in public. The ostensibly noble repudiation of theoretical prejudice is, in fact, a cleverly disguised antitheory, whose actual function is to evade the requirement for logical consistency as a means of eliminating falsehood.”

- Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert B. Laughlin, quoted by Vern Poythress

"[Ezra] Klein is analyzing this in terms of ordinary political gamesmanship. But he has it backward...."

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:42:13 -0400

“[Ezra] Klein is analyzing this in terms of ordinary political gamesmanship. But he has it backward. Suppose the IRS’s abuses were not ordered or explicitly encouraged by the White House. That would mean, as Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin puts it, that the agency “has so thoroughly absorbed the views of its political masters that it doesn’t even recognize when it has crossed the line into illegal activity.”

In other words, if this is the case, the left’s hateful and slanderous campaign against its political foes, especially the Tea Party—the demagoguery of Obama, his fellow Democrats and their supporters in the media, led by the New York Times editorial page—was sufficient to prompt the IRS agents to cast aside their professional obligations and embark on a campaign of political abuse whose effect was to ease Obama’s re-election.

In his testimony to the Senate Watergate Committee—whose hearings opened 40 years ago today—John Dean famously called that scandal “a cancer on the presidency.” If Obama, his campaign or his White House aides are directly implicated in the IRS’s abuses, this will be another cancer on the presidency, remediable by resignation or impeachment.

But if the IRS acted without direction from above—if it “went rogue” against the Constitution and in support of the party in power—then we are dealing with a cancer on the federal government. That, it seems to us, is a far direr diagnosis, one whose treatment is likely to be radical and risky.”

- James Taranto

"Now, from the perspective of the journalists defending a consistent use of the term “fetus,” even..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:13:06 -0400

“Now, from the perspective of the journalists defending a consistent use of the term “fetus,” even when the term is inaccurate (see Gosnell coverage), here is the hard-news question of the moment. If the prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty for [Ariel] Castro in this case, who did he kill? What human persons with full dignity and legal rights, under this nation’s current legal regime, died during these alleged crimes?”

- Terry Mattingly

I love buying used books!

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:38:02 -0400

I love buying used books!

Kermit Gosnell and the Logic of "Pro-Choice"

Tue, 14 May 2013 23:15:53 -0400

Kermit Gosnell and the Logic of "Pro-Choice":

Kermit Gosnell has been the equivalent of the American slave-dealerâsomeone who has done work rendered absolutely necessary by the twisted laws of his regime, but who has nevertheless been ignored or regarded with unease, and even repulsion, by his fellow citizens.

Gosnell, whose clinic was shut down by the Philadelphia authorities who charged him with murder, is the ne plus ultra of the abortion trade. Not because of the filth, the squalor, the jars of amputated keepsake baby feet, the employment of unlicensed incompetents, the promiscuous use of narcotics on unwitting patients, or the poisonous racism of a physician who preyed upon women and babies of his own race—although all of these are no surprise at all in America’s most unregulated branch of medicine.

No, Gosnell is the “slave-dealer” par excellence because, even if he had run the cleanest, brightest, most professional clinic in the country, he was simply following out the remorseless logic of the abortion regime installed forty years ago by the Supreme Court.

Women came to him for the very latest of late-term abortions, and he made sure their children were dead. Whether he accomplished their deaths in utero or ex utero—before or after their births—didn’t really matter to Gosnell. And, as we have heard from Planned Parenthood officials, from then-Illinois state senator Barack Obama, and from “pro-choice” politicians like Senator Barbara Boxer, it doesn’t matter to them, either.

Their insouciance about infanticide, moreover, is given intellectual respectability when a leading academic publication like the Journal of Medical Ethics publishes a symposium on infanticide in which the majority of the contributing scholars cannot bring themselves to condemn it.

And there is something inexorably logical about this attitude. How can it really matter where an innocent human being’s life is deliberately snuffed out? If it’s a legally protected “baby” after birth at 24 weeks’ gestation, but only an unprotected “fetus” before birth at 25 weeks’ gestation, how does that make any sense? Yet this is the kind of gyration the law produces, just as it was shot through with contradictions and inanities under the regime that sanctioned slavery.

How some kids with a van are changing the pro-life movement

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:00:17 -0400

How some kids with a van are changing the pro-life movement:

The Stork bus…is a bright, lovely blue on the outside, and the inside is clean and free of clutter, with a welcoming but no-nonsense clinical feel. There is a little couch for the mother to sit on and speak to a counselor, and a padded bench where she can lie comfortably.

The ultrasound machine pulls out from underneath the bench. It is operated only by a licensed sonographer whose work is frequently reviewed by an OB/Gyn. In the back there is a small private toilet for pregnancy testing. It isn’t the slightest bit cramped or unpleasant; these mothers get only the best. The completed bus with the ultrasound machine was paid for by private donations to the tune of about $140,000.

The Stork bus is by no means the first mobile ultrasound vehicle…but it may be the smallest, lightest, and most practical. It doesn’t require a permit or special permission to park. It will fit in a parking space or even at a meter.

It is an abortion clinic’s worst nightmare.

What a fantastic, encouraging article.

Heh.

Tue, 14 May 2013 01:13:19 -0400

Heh.

Audio

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:50:51 -0400

"Americans should remember that this same corrupt IRS will be in charge of enforcing Obamacare."

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:40:00 -0400

“Americans should remember that this same corrupt IRS will be in charge of enforcing Obamacare.”

- Sarah Palin

I seldom quote her, but she nails it here.

"…since 2009 there has apparently been a four-point rise in support for gay marriage every..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:37:45 -0400

“…since 2009 there has apparently been a four-point rise in support for gay marriage every year. Some see this as a good thing; but I’m more inclined to agree with Christopher Caldwell, who says: ‘Public opinion does not change this fast in free societies. Either opinion is not changing as fast as it appears to be, or society is not as free.’”

- Gay marriage: a case study in conformism

“Public opinion does not change this fast in free societies. Either opinion is not changing as fast as it appears to be, or society is not as free.”

Wow.

Most Transparent Administration in History Releases Completely Redacted Document About Text Snooping - Hit & Run : Reason.com

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:29:19 -0400

Most Transparent Administration in History Releases Completely Redacted Document About Text Snooping - Hit & Run : Reason.com:

hilker:

Completely. Redacted.

"But if it turns out that health insurance is useful mostly because it averts financial catastrophe —..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:22:26 -0400

“But if it turns out that health insurance is useful mostly because it averts financial catastrophe — which seems to be the consensus liberal position since the Oregon data came out — then the new health care law looks vulnerable to two interconnected critiques.

First, if the benefit of health insurance is mostly or exclusively financial, then shouldn’t health insurance policies work more like normal insurance? Fire, flood and car insurance exist to protect people against actual disasters, after all, not to pay for ordinary repairs. If the best evidence suggests that health insurance is most helpful in protecting people’s pocketbooks from similar disasters, and that more comprehensive coverage often just pays for doctor visits that don’t improve people’s actual health, then shouldn’t we be promoting catastrophic health coverage, rather than expanding Medicaid?

Liberals don’t like catastrophic plans because, by definition, they’re stingier than the coverage many Americans now enjoy. But this is where the second critique comes in: If the marginal dollar of health care coverage doesn’t deliver better health, isn’t this a place where policy makers should be stingy, while looking for more direct ways to improve the prospects of the working poor? Some kind of expanded health security is clearly a good thing — but if we want to promote economic mobility as well, does it really make sense to pour about a trillion dollars into a health care system that everyone agrees is deeply dysfunctional, when some of that money could be returned to Americans’ paychecks instead?”

- Ross Douthat

Rob Bell and Andrew Wilson Discuss Homosexuality In a recent...

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:34:33 -0400

Rob Bell and Andrew Wilson Discuss Homosexuality

In a recent episode of Unbelievable, Andrew Wilson and Rob Bell have an engaging dialogue about the legitimacy of homosexual relationships within Christianity.

This is Rob Bell at his most disingenuous. He wants Andrew to just accept that they have a disagreement on how to interpret some verses and just move on to take communion together as brothers.

Obviously there are a lot of issues that fall into this category: strong disagreement among believers where both positions are still considered orthodox, and where nobody asserts that the other doesn’t “take the Bible seriously”—issues like baptism, eschatology, political engagement, and dispensationalism. And then there are issues that have either always had universal agreement, or issues about which the church has developed a unified theology in the face of a challenge—issues like the Trinity, Christ’s simultaneous full humanity and divinity, and (until recently) the atonement as propitiation. When people challenge the second group, the whole church rallies in defense of orthodoxy. When people challenge the first group, you end up with denominations, but not heretics.

Historically, homosexuality has been in the group of non-negotiables—not because of its central importance, but because it simply wasn’t controversial until the 20th century. Now it’s being challenged, and Rob Bell wants to treat it like baptism. Either he is trying to conflate and flatten these two distinctions using homosexuality, or he thinks that homosexuality should move to the “agree to disagree and move on with our fellowship” category. I think the burden of proof is on him to justify why it should switch. Maybe it could be trans-categorical. But which bathroom would it use?

Obviously homosexuality is not a first-tier, gospel-defining issue, at least not directly. But it’s clearly not “just another issue we can disagree on and remain in fellowship,” right alongside baptism and whether we tithe on the gross or the net. To frame it that way does a disservice to the robust theology that orthodox Christianity has developed about human sexuality and marriage. Our doctrinal conclusions about homosexuality were not composed in a vacuum, cut off and unrelated to everything else in the Bible, fashioned by some stuffy straight theologian who saw two guys holding hands and went “Akkkk—gotta do something about that.” These doctrines don’t just sit off to the side, twiddling their thumbs with no relationship to any other ideas. No. They are not the center of our theology, but they are directly informed by our central doctrines. They aren’t the roots or trunk of the tree, but they are the leaves at the end of a branch. They are connected to the tree, and are dependent on the tree. The orthodox view on homosexuality is like my finger—connected to my hand, which is connected to my arm, and all the up to my torso, my center. It’s not like the lone finger that lady “found” in her bowl of chili at Wendy’s: “Whoa! How’d that get there?!”

The strongest arguments against homosexuality are not contained in the short list of verses that negatively address it (or maybe don’t address at all, if you ask Rob Bell and others). Rather, the strongest arguments are from the verses that positively detail God’s desire and plan for human relationships and flourishing.

Despite the Church’s many failures to love and “accept” (a word that means whatever you want) homosexuals, let’s not forget that we didn’t bring this battle to the cultural front burner; the culture brought it to us and is now demanding that we put up or shut up. There is little to no room left in the public square to even engage in intellectually honest discussion about this issue anymore; it’s all demagoguery about hate and bigotry. The tolerance crowd is anything but tolerant; they are a buzz saw waiting to cut down anyone who opens his mouth with an unapproved point of view, no matter how irenic. Of course, we have passively ignored our responsibility to speak the truth about the sexual revolution (and other things) over the past 40 years, so in a sense it is our fault.

There is a great danger that the church will succumb to secular pressure and roll over on this issue in an attempt to placate the current gods of the age, and of course it won’t work and of course it would be disastrous. But I think the greater danger comes from those within the church who should know better but instead like to ask, just like the serpent, “Did God really say….?”

Fortunately, I don’t think this will actually happen. I think this will be one of the defining issues of our time, as the vestiges of our Christian cultural heritage slowly bleed away. We will be forced to choose, and do so publicly. We will lose some degree of freedom of speech, and quite a bit of religious freedom. But hopefully it will sharpen us and prepare a fresh harvest.

"We just baptized a number of gay men in our church recently. It’s just wonderful. But each one of..."

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:51:00 -0400

“We just baptized a number of gay men in our church recently. It’s just wonderful.

But each one of them is saying, “But now, when I get baptized, I die to the old me. I rise again to the new me that is Christ-shaped, that’s eschatologically-informed and transformed. Resurrection life which is a completely different type of creature. A lot of the desires I have had, a lot of the things which I’ve wanted to do, I – like Paul did in the season in which he wrote 1 Corinthians, and like Jesus did – I put on hold sexual desires. I die to a lot of the things I want, in order to follow Christ. And I rise to new life…”

We look and say, “What does Christ-shaped new creation look like?” We’ve got gay guys in our church (and women as well) who say, “Dying to my old life and being risen again to new life in Christ means dying to all the acts of the flesh, including some of the sexual things that – yes, I wanted to do them, just like lots of people want to have sex with lots of people, some may want to have sex with two or three people simultaneously, that doesn’t mean I’m okay to do that. It means I am just like anyone else (greed or desires to slander or swindle) regarding any number of other sins. We say those things die with me. We repent and get baptized.”

To not put that in front of someone is to say, “You can have the kingdom, but if it costs too much, we’ll just lower the asking price…””

- Andrew Wilson

theworldhereinmymind: Fantastic Mr. Fox The film was okay (on...

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:10:40 -0400

theworldhereinmymind:

Fantastic Mr. Fox

The film was okay (on its own merits), but the book is one of my all-time favorites.