Ryan's World: A Window to My Soul

Basic Computational Complexity

2009-03-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

It normally seems that around this time of the spring semester, my adviser, John Hitchcock, has to attend a conference or a meeting of sorts that takes him away from Laramie for a week or two, and I have the privilege of lecturing in his place.

I would like to do more teaching, but as our department has a hard enough time keeping all but the core classes open, and there aren't very many assistantships (due to our department nearly folding last school year), I don't have the opportunity. I might have the chance at a community college after Sara and I graduate--a community college since that will probably be the closest institute of higher learning in the area--but that's for the future.

Anyway, the class, COSC 4200: Computation and Complexity, covers some basic computation theory in the first half of the semester, focusing on regular languages and the associated finite automata, and context-free languages and their associated grammars and push-down automata; and then delving into Turing Machines and some complexity theory in the second half of the semester.

Since these theory topics are within my area of study, I'm always fascinated by them. Personally, I find playing with DFAs and PDAs quite enjoyable. I tried to describe them as the tinker toys of computational theory to my wife, but sadly she felt that meant that talking about them was a waste of time. Sigh.

I personally find it interesting how some very simple paradigms of computation can actually accomplish a fair amount of work. It is also interesting noting the closure properties of such languages. Regular languages, for example, are closed under union, intersection, complement, concatenation. Context-free languages are closed under union and concatenation, but not complement or intersection. More importantly, under regular languages, nondeterminism is not any more powerful than determinism, one of the few cases where we know this happens (one other being PSPACE=NPSPACE, due to Savitch's Theorem). Of course, we can argue that we can only make this assertion since we restrict ourselves to a finite number of states with no memory devices (like a stack or a queue), and that there is still an exponential blowup of states when converting from NFAs to DFAs. This exponential blowup is the reason why it seems that P is strictly contained in NP.

On the other hand, context-free languages are essentially defined nondeterministically, and CFLs are strictly more powerful than DCFLs, a case where separation between determinism and nondeterminism is known.

One of the neat things about playing with DFAs is that they are memoryless. They consume the input as they work, and what memory they have is a tiny, finite amount. For example, we can craft DFAs to remember the last c bits it has read, where c is some constant. Useful, but very limited, considering that most problems require us to have unbounded amounts of memory to solve them.

This limited factor of DFAs makes moving up to PDAs more exciting (at least for me), because PDAs are essentially NFAs with a stack. A stack operates on a LIFO (last in, first out) property, but has infinite capacity. This means we can remember what we've read--only when we try to re-read the input, we read it backwards.

One of the considerations I wondered about when I first learned about these was what would happen if we used a queue, instead of a stack. The answer is: we have the equivalent of a Turing Machine. So having a queue gives us all the computational capabilities (minus a speed factor) of the PCs we have in front of us.

I was rather pleased when the class thought to ask about that during lecture yesterday.

Time Changes Strike Again

2009-03-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

So Sara and I agreed to swap with Greg (our guitarist) and Janelle (our other pianist) this last weekend, since Greg and Janelle wanted to run to the slopes while they still could. Normally Sara and I play and sing at the Saturday 5:00 Mass, while Greg and Janelle take the 11:00 Sunday. We agreed to the swap, and even decided to show up for the 8:30 Mass, since it typically suffers without a pianist, relying instead on the player-piano.

However, we were not prepared for Daylight Savings Time. Perhaps we've been a little out of the loop on that, or perhaps we simply never worried about it, since our Sundays tend to be a little lackadaisical. But I had set my watch to beep at 6:30, giving myself time to shower and shave before waking Sara up at 7:00, and then heading over to St. Paul's Newman Center at 7:15 or so.

Well, as Sara worked her way through her morning donuts, she had a terrifying suspicion that something was wrong. So she checking on my computer, and the time was not 7:00, it was 8:00. Panicking, she checked our cell phones, and sure enough, they registered 8:00 as well. So we dressed in a hurry, threw things together, and hurried over to the Newman Center--15 minutes before Mass was to start, as opposed to 15 minutes before practice!

Ugh. It is a mess when there's no time to practice liturgy music prior to Mass. We're not quite coordinated, and there's always these little hiccups that make us feel sheepish--or even a little guilty for volunteering our time and subjecting people to our mistakes.

Oh, well. At least the 11:00 Mass went well.

Mental Illnesses

2009-03-05T09:14:00.000-08:00

This little story reminds me of a discussion I was having with my wife a few days ago. We were talking about demon possession, or demon influence, especially concerning some friends of ours who are into Wiccan. So the question is: is there demonic influence in mental illnesses?

I proposed the following solutions:

1) Some mental illness are purely physiological in nature. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

2) Some mental illnesses are exacerbated by demonic activity.

3) Some mental illnesses are not mental illnesses at all, but are demonic activity disguised as mental illnesses.

Certainly having read an article at InsideCatholic about demonic possession, I am much more willing to believe that 3) actually happens.

I wonder which of the three is the case for this gruesome bus beheading and ensuing cannibalism?

Ouch!

2009-03-05T09:12:00.000-08:00

The dangers of French Kissing in Britain. Or a vindictive significant other. One of the two, I'm sure.

Who Is Responsible?

2009-03-03T08:53:00.000-08:00

I just had a conversation with a friend who is in a "Gender and Society" Business Writing class. (I know--it just makes you want to say, "huh?") Apparently the class is one part writing (in the six or seven weeks of the semester they've covered the important topics of cover letters and thank-you's) and three parts bickering about how poorly society, mainly American society, treats women.

As a note, my friend is female, and she is absolutely fed up with the class. One of the "class discussion" topics of late was whether or not a woman in a miniskirt and a neckline down to her navel bore any responsibility for her rape. The general consensus was that, no, the woman wasn't responsible. Nor was she responsible if she was drunk and walking down a dark alley at night.

Now, that's somewhat flippant of me to say, let's look at the issue a little closer. First of all, rape is committed by someone against someone. The one committing the rape is fully responsible for all his actions. Ultimately, he bears all legal consequences for his actions. But is there any blame that can be attached to the woman?

This is where the argument gets tricky, and where most people simply want to duck their heads and mumble, "Of course she's isn't *muttermuttermutter*..." The reason for this sheep-like response is because it isn't at all politically correct to attach any blame to a victim, and the reason it isn't politically correct is because it appears hurtful to the one who has already been cruelly wounded. There's certainly understanding to be had there, especially since rape victims often carry a deep sense of not only shame, but guilty, for their violation.

But simply because something is painful doesn't make it false. That's a fallacy we fall for too often these days. So let's consider the situation. A woman dresses provocatively and enters a dangerous situation. It could be a party at the local fraternity, where there will be alcohol in excess, possibly some drugs, and of those maybe some of the date-rape variety. Or it could be the proverbial dark alley in Manhattan. It doesn't matter. The potential rapist sees her, identifies her as a potential victim, starts scoping out the situation. He concocts a plan in his head on how to rape her, and then goes through with it.

Okay, so far everything seems to agree with the lack of culpability on part of the woman. However, there's a catch, and this falls back on solidarity, and the partial responsibility of the community for the sins of the individual. First, there is such a thing as the profile of a victim. If you examine rapists and other sex offenders, you'll find that there's a type of person, a list of descriptions, that makes a person more vulnerable than others.

Now, one of the things about dressing provocatively is that it is meant to arouse sexual desire. A woman might try to couch it in simply "looking attractive", but the reality is that flaunting the body in a sexual fashion is meant to boost the woman's ego when men start drooling over her. Never mind that such an attitude merely reduces the woman into a sex object (a living centerfold, as it were), and thus the attraction is hardly genuine, or even the sort the woman wants.

Next, people insist that rape is about "power", but that's a rather broad statement, almost empty of meaning until it is put into context. In general, rape is about making the rapist feel better through sexual means. Sometimes the sexual aspects of rape are almost incidental--such as the desire to degrade a woman through the violation of intimacy--but other times rape is very, very sexual. Date rape, for example, is about the victory of "scoring" with a girl, either by getting her too drunk to say either "yes" or "no" to sex, or by using a date rape drug so that's she unconscious at the time of the violation.

I make this distinction because there are some profiles that one cannot help. Sometimes a rapist is simply turned on by, say, little boys, regardless of dress or situation. But other aspects one can help. And this is where responsibility comes into play.

When a woman dress provocatively, or flirts outrageously, or anything that is sexually arousing, she tempts. Now, our modern society views behaving in such a fashion a good thing, a harmless thing, and thus nothing the woman should be blamed for. However, temptations exist for one purpose alone: to weaken the will. We pray "...and lead us not into temptation..." (or more literally "...put us not to the test...") because we know that temptation weakens the will, makes us more readily accept sinful behavior.

Thus a woman is culpable for as much temptation she provided. Granted, this culpability is by far less than the terrible crime committed against her, but that crime does not expunge her own guilt in the matter. She made herself temptation, she weakened wills around her, and thus pulled down a mountain on her head.

So yes, there is some responsibility on the part of the woman for her rape. But now the caution. That responsibility varies from situation to situation. Sometimes actions for which she would be held culpable in one circumstance is completely irrelevant to another circumstance. Dressing provocatively means little if the rapist attacks her simply because she's a woman who wandered nearby. On the other hand, if the rapist picked her out specifically because she was dressed provocatively (as more tends to be the case), then she bears some small blame for making herself a temptation.

For those who think is incredibly unfair, misogynistic, bigoted, or whatnot, you need to stop and think. Our actions affect others. Our behaviors can lead others to sin (lead, not force, mind you), or at least make others more susceptible to sin. Thus we bear some partial blame for those sins. That is part of being the social creatures we are. That is part of not living in a void.

Paper Money

2009-02-26T14:19:00.000-08:00

With Obama's announcement of a $3.55 trillion budget, which includes hundreds of billions for even more bailout projects, it seems to me that the connection between dollars and anything (be it gold, products, or even fiat) is broken. We're throwing monopoly money around now, with no end in sight. Obama's promise to reduce the budget deficit by half come 2013 is laughable at this point. Never mind that reducing the budget deficit he inherited by half still leaves us at deficit levels beyond Bush's wildest dreams. With all the money Obama and his Congress are throwing around, it doesn't seem possible that he'll meet that goal. With all the money they're throwing around, it doesn't seem possible that they're seriously intending to meet that goal. They seem to think the money will continue to be there forever, that the golden goose can keep laying eggs indefinitely.

Well, it can't. Soon this is going to catch up to us, and then we're going to be in serious trouble.

There has to come a time when our elected officials throw up their hands and say, "I'm sorry, but there's no more money we can spend. It just isn't there." That they haven't done so by now tells me that they're all out of touch with reality.

Our money is paper money at this point in time. It only exists in wishes and dreams.

I'm an Economist!

2009-02-23T08:17:00.001-08:00

What is interesting (or scary) is that I predicted this months ago. You can ask my office mates.

This means one of two things. Either I'm an economic genius, or our top economists have no clue, either.

Which do you think it is?

Should Kids be Drug-Tested?

2009-02-20T10:45:00.000-08:00

Currently a policy is in consideration in Goshen County regarding drug testing of students in extracurricular activities. The usual cries come forth: it is unjust to treat students as criminals unless they pee in a cup. It is a violation of Fourth Amendment rights. It is cruel to do this to the students least likely to engage in drugs.

But is it? It seems to me that we once again facing the dilemma of what to do when general moral breakdown means abandoning the current rules for either no rules at all, or even harsher, more invasive rules. People don't seem to realize that this drug-testing policy wouldn't be in consideration if drug use wasn't already a problem, both among students involved in extracurricular activities, and those who are not. The problem has to be addressed somehow, and if students are willing to use drugs, the only fair way to go about this is by random drug tests. It seems to be a case of a few miscreants ruining the party for everyone, but there's two things to say to that.

First, it is a matter of solidarity. It is fair and just to treat all students like this because students are isolated beings that happen to congregate at the same place. There are social interactions involved both with students at school and the families outside of school. If we are so lazy about dealing with our neighbors--too afraid of confrontation to speak out against drug use and terrible conditions--then we reap the rewards of our cowardice. It isn't just that the druggies at school ruin it for everyone--everyone ruins it for everyone.

Of course, people will deny that, but gosh, isn't it nice when I can say I can do whatever I want and everyone else can roast in Hell for all I care? People should realize that our lack of involvement with each other is another one of those things that is causing dissolution in our society.

Second, getting irate over drug-testing is an overreaction. Peeing in a cup really isn't any big deal. It can be an annoyance (especially if you have to super-hydrate yourself just manage, and then suffer peeing every 30 minutes for the next few hours), but that's all it is. I think there's a definite problem when a student says that random drug testing would make him reconsider joining sports. Is this a matter of too much pride, or this a matter of hiding drug use?

Amazing how that wouldn't even be a consideration if we were more responsible as a society about drug abuse.

Capital Punishment

2009-02-20T09:32:00.000-08:00

This story wrings my heart. Some will say that I'm being soft on a murderer and a drug dealer, that my namby-pamby left-bent feelings on the issue ignore the real truth that this man had murdered another man and deserved to die for it.

Yet I don't think having compassion on a man who was scared of dying is of any particular ideology. Part of it is that if I put myself in that man's place, I'd be terrified myself. I have utter faith that my soul will live on, and that one day the Resurrection will restore a body to me, but death itself scares me. No matter what assurances we have, death is a great unknown. We leave this life for a completely different one--one marked for a time by disembodiment (is that uncomfortable? is the transition painful? how utterly foreign will that be to us?), and then marked either by a return to the flesh, and then either eternal torment in Hell, or eternal bliss in Heaven. We're told time and again that "eye has not seen, nor ear hard, what God has prepared" for us.

Worse, in the case of this felon, is that this is a cold, premeditated process. This isn't the heat of the battle, where death is a possibility but still comes as a surprise. This isn't laying down one's life for a great cause. This is having one's life deliberately snuffed out for actions that can't be changed, for a past that is fixed, for sins that--while they can be repented of and forgiven--are an indelible part of the past.

Some will say that he deserves death for the pain and grief he caused his victim's family. Some will say that we should have no pity on him. Indeed, he proclaimed his innocence to the grave, which shows that he was definitely unrepentant of his deeds. (Although there will always be that grain of doubt. Did he really do it? I don't know the particulars of this case at all, so I don't know how compelling the evidence was.)

Yet I can help but feel compassion. He is still one of God's children. His soul was created at the moment of conception. God knew the extent of his life, and still chose to allow him to exist. God's love is so vast that we cannot even comprehend how great it is, yet we can at least try to fill our lives with that love. We know we are called to love our enemies, to forgive them their misdeeds, to help them. Of course we aren't called to be stupid about it. A criminal needs punishment and correction, and if he proves too dangerous to release from prison, he deserves to remain there. But we are still called to offer our love and our mercy.

May God have mercy on the soul of Edward Nathaniel Bell, and may His grace comfort Bell's family and friends, and bring peace to the family of Ricky Timbrook, whom Bell killed. May He move their hearts to love and forgiveness, and may He guide them back to His fold.

Dissent Is Important

2009-02-19T09:37:00.000-08:00

I have heard from several sources that dissent is essential for a government, for a church, for any body that seeks to lead people. The reason? Dissent keeps people examining the issues, never letting them settle their heels and fall into complacency. To a large extent, that is why a two party system in our nation is so vitally important. We need each party to balance the other, to always challenge the other's beliefs. We've seen what damage can be done with an unquestioned Republican majority; we might be on the verge of seeing what damage can be done with an unquestioned Democratic majority.

Here we have an excellent story of a great dissenter in Congress. We need more men like H.R. Gross--not because he was a Republican, but because he was a voice constantly challenging his colleagues.

Per Diem

2009-02-19T09:21:00.001-08:00

Now there's some hoopla over Gov. Palin not paying income taxes on per diem she received as a governor living at home and commuting into the capital.

It seems that some people went and dug up some lines of tax code that now state that per diem is to be treated as "income" rather than "tax-free living expenditures." When I worked for TIC, I received about a third of my take-home from per diem, none of which was reported as income. I wonder if now that means I have to pay taxes on the roughly $6,000 I took home of what everyone said was tax-free cash. (Everyone also includes my father, who is a CPA.)

To me, this whole article is a bunch of hoopla about nothing. Someone, perhaps maliciously, perhaps because he's trying to be as scrupulous as he can about things so that Palin has a clean record (which do we believe, folks?), "discovered" that what most people expect to be tax-free income is instead taxable income, and now Palin has to pay thousands of dollars in taxes.

The reporting, gleefully attempting to lump Palin in with the other tax-dodgers we've heard about in the news, doesn't seem to realize that, even if this is a case of tax-dodging, it's non-news. If the other tax-dodgers get a pass due to errors of judgment or not knowing the laws, so does Palin. On the other hand, if Palin is to be lambasted for this, so should the other tax-dodgers.

What to do, what to do...

Skynet is Coming!

2009-02-19T09:12:00.001-08:00

We have word that government officials are discussing the potential disaster of robots used in the military of turning on their makers, Terminator-style.

To this, I can only roll my eyes. People out there have way too much imagination on this kind of thing. Let me ask a question:

If I presented you with a robot that I had programmed, and I said I knew so little about how its programming would manifest, would you buy that robot from me?

I'm sorry, but these things do what we program them to do. They can only operated within the parameters of their codes. If they "turn" on their makers, it is because someone other botched his share of the programming. There will be no sentient maliciousness towards any robot "attacks" on their creators. Accidents, maybe; Terminator-style scenarios? Not in our dreams.

Bristol Palin Says Abstinence 'Not Realistic at All'

2009-02-18T10:16:00.000-08:00

Which just goes to show that reporters like to latch onto key phrases and ignore anything else a 'celebrity' might say to expound on the situation. Apparently Bristol Palin was interviewed about her pregnancy and her views on teenaged sex. She gave the view that teenagers should refrain from sex, but that abstinence is not realistic.

There are two things to be said about that. First, we can't simply accept that just because Sarah Palin's daughter said it, it must be the end of the story. Second, there is much to be said about "realistic expectations regarding abstinence." No, it is not realistic to expect that abstinence-only eduction will somehow keep teenagers from having sex, or that even those teenagers who want to abstain will never have pre-marital sex. The temptation is obviously present, and people will act on temptation. Premarital sex has been around practically since human beings first started having sex, no matter how strict laws have been against it.

On the other hand, this is not suddenly a blanket approval of promiscuity. Just because it is not realistic to assume that abstinence will happen does not mean that we have to put in safeguards to protect people from choosing to have sex. It does not mean that we shouldn't teach that abstinence is the best way to avoid pregnancy, STD's, and lives ruined from the callous treatment of the opposite sex that is so markedly present in our culture today. Rather, I find that it means that we shouldn't make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Really, the best thing of all would be teach people some theology of the body, and go from there.

Cloud Seeding in Wyoming

2009-02-16T09:25:00.000-08:00

An interesting experiment going in Wyoming is cloud seeding, the attempt to yoke more snow out of passing clouds, especially important as we're trying to struggle our way out of a drought. It might not work--proof is very sketchy and hard to come by. Even so, it is nice that such experiments are going on here.

Hat Problems

2009-02-13T09:57:00.005-08:00

I'm currently looking at the infamous Hat Problem devised (or at least reported in his PhD thesis) by Todd Ebert. Or, more specifically, I'm looking into the problem of autoreductions to random sets, but the whole process begins with the hat problem.

The hat problem goes like this: A group of N players are each assigned independently at random either black hat or a white hat. They can see the hats of all the other players, but they do not see their own hat. Nor can they communicate once they receive their hats (though they can devise a strategy before the game begins). Each person then either ventures a guess to what his hat color is, or passes, but has no idea how anyone else guesses. The goal is for at least one person to guess correctly the color of his hat, while none else incorrectly guess the color of theirs. (A pass does not count as an incorrect guess.) If there is at least one incorrect guess, the whole party loses.

Depending on how malicious one is feeling, one can add "There's $N million prize if the team wins, but everyone is executed if they lose" conditions, but that's besides the point.

Obviously, there's at least a 50-50 chance of winning. The strategy that easily attains that is simply: one person guesses white, while everyone else passes. But can one do better?

Part of the problem is that the hats are chosen randomly and independently from each other. So, a majority or minority of black hats does not mean anything about one's own hat. Thus it would seem that anyone's guess is at best a 50-50 shot, for the information of others' hats does not tell him anything about his own.

Now, in the completely unrestricted sense, there's no guaranteed winning strategy. The independent randomness guarantees that. However, if there is assurance of at least one black hat and one white hat (at at least two players), then there is always a winning strategy. But we won't worry about that now.

If we suppose there are three players, we can actually form a strategy that wins about 75% of the time. With three players, we have eight possible combinations of hats, two in which all hats are either black or white, but six in the case where two are one color, and one the other. Thus we can devise a strategy that makes use of that fact. Suppose, in that case, you are wearing the off-color hat. You'll see two hats of the same color, and it is fairly safe to surmise that yours is different. If you don't have the off-color hat, you'll see one hat of each color, and thus you really don't have any clue. In the first case, you'll announce the off-color, and in the second, you'll keep silent. A quick analysis shows that you only lose in the case of everyone's hat being the same color, or only 25% of the time. In effect, we've bumped up the winning percentage from 50% to 75%. (This is provably optimal, so that's about as good as it gets.)

How does this work for more players, though? It certainly gets more complicated. If we just move it up to four players, we can try to keep the same kind of strategy. If every hat you see is the same color, you declare that your hat is the opposite color. So, here again you lose if all hats are the same color, but you win if there's a 3-1 split. But about a 2-2 split? In that case, no one sees all the same color, so we have to add in some more analysis.

This would be easy if we could know how others guessed and figured in some kind of time delay. For example, if a person sees all one color, then within 10 seconds he would make his guess. Then, if no one has guessed after ten seconds, everyone would then correctly guess his hat color by guessing the color that would make a 2-2 split. However, that's not part of the rules. What else can we do?

It turns out that any strategy we assign to deal with the 2-2 split is going to overlap with our 3-1 split strategy. So we'll try to be a little creative. We're going to "designate" a few possible combinations that we'll automatically put off limits. For example, in our 3 man scenario, we designated WWW and BBB as off-limits--i.e, we act as those won't happen and go from there.

How do we choose these "designated" strings? We'll, there's a complicated way to describe these using the Hamming distances and error-correcting codes, but we won't delve into that just yet. But for starters, suppose (in our 4 man case), that the actual arrangement is BWWB. Player 3 then sees two blacks and a white, and so he know there are only two possible combinations the hat arrangement could be: either BWWB or BWBB. Notice these two combinations only differ in one place. Now, suppose we had previously "designated" BWBB as off limits. Then Player 3 has only one choice: he'll state that his hat is white.

In reality, we only have good means of "designating" combinations if the total number of players is N=2^k-1 for some k. Why? When you have this many players, you can "designate" small fraction of combinations such that every other combination only differs from exactly one of the "designates" in one position.

When we had 3 players (3=2^2-1), when we "designated" WWW and BBB, notice that three of the remaining combinations (WWB, WBW, BWW) fall only one place different from WWW, and the remaining three (BBW, BWB, WBB) fall only place different from BBB. (This is what is called having a Hamming distance of 1. The Hamming distance between two strings is simply the number of positions where they differ.) Thus every non-designated string has a Hamming distance of 1 to exactly one designated combination.

We reach N=2^k-1 by the following reason. The number of strings with Hamming distance of 1 to a particular string is N, where N is the length of the strings involved. If we form a ball of these, we have N+1 strings per ball (out of a total of 2^N strings). Now, we want to partition all strings into such balls such that every string is contained in exactly one ball. The number of balls we form is 2^N/(N+1), which is an integer if and only if N+1 is a power of 2: N+1=2^k for some k.

Now, there are methods in cryptology for determining how to properly form these balls, but we won't delve into that here. Needless to say, the centers of these balls will be our "designated" combinations, and our strategy will follow this line: when you observe your teammates, if one of the two possible combinations is "designated", choose the other one. If neither are designated, then pass. Our success probability becomes 1-1/(n+1) overall.

But how do we handle the 4 player case? Well, it should seem like we could designate 3 three strings (3 balls with 5 strings per ball is 15, one less than the total 16 strings), and go from there. However, it's not actually possible to form 3 disjoint balls. Consider this. Let the center of the first ball be WWWW (it doesn't matter what we pick, as the answer will be the same, but this is easier to work with). Now, the strings in the ball around it are every string with one B: BWWW, WBWW, WWBW, and WWWB. Strings with two or more B's will be outside the ball. Now, the center of the next ball has to have Hamming distance of 3 from WWWW. Why? If it has a Hamming distance of 2 (say it is WBBW), then the balls will over lap (in this case, the ball around WBBW will contain WWBW and WBWW, which are in the ball around WWWW). Well, we can find a string with Hamming distance 3 from WWWW, such as BBBW. But in order to find the center of third disjoint ball, we have to find a string with Hamming distance 3 from both of the previous centers. However, any string with a Hamming distance 3 from WWWW will have Hamming distance 2 from our second center! (Just compare BBBW, BBWB, BWBB, WBBB, and you'll see that's true.)

Well, this just means we won't be playing as optimally as we'd prefer. We could pick 4 designates, which would then cover the space with some amount of overlap, and then additionally specify that if our choices are two designates, that we pass, and we would then succeed in our strategy with probability 1-4/16=.75, which is 75% of the time (which is down from 1-1/5=.8, or 80% we would have hoped). That's still good odds, though.

Common Sense Has Left England

2009-02-13T07:54:00.000-08:00

An Episcopal Bishop was arrested for photographing his kids. The first thought that comes to mind is: were those kids naked? Is this a child porn case? Is this yet another example of Christian clergy run amok? (Never mind that the Bishop is not Catholic, and thus would escape the speculation of sexually repressive roles that can only find an outlet in molesting little boys.)

But no, it turns out that he securely harnessed his kids, took them up onto the roof of his house, and took pictures of them like that for a school competition.

So instead of being hailed as a model father--doing something creative with his kids, while taking all the necessary precautions to ensure their safety (this man could be a Boy Scout leader!)--he is arrested and accused of child abuse, though eventually no files were charged.

Has common sense completely deserted England?

Liturgical Music Concerns

2009-02-11T14:21:00.000-08:00

This is the body of the letter I sent to the coordinator of the music ministry at our parish, in regards to a particular piece of tripe we're to sing this weekend.

...

My gripe, this time so important that I feel have to e-mail you my concerns, is with "A Place at the Table" we've selected for our closing song this weekend. I know people know it and seem to like it, but to me it is very disconcerting theologically. I feel that it is a poor song to bring into Mass (or even to consider Catholic for that matter).

Let us consider the lyrics:

For everyone born, a place at the table
For everyone born, clean water and bread
A shelter, a space, a safe place for growing
For everyone born, a star overhead

Okay, that's how it begins, and already I have complaints. What table are we talking about here? The Eucharistic table? I think that message is clear from clean water and bread, but there's a grave difficulty here. Part of it falls back on the "for the many" and "for all" debate--in that Christ's redemptive sacrifice is offered for all but only efficacious for those who are willing to repent and follow Christ's commands--but the concern here is the confusion of what the offer really is.

Consider the parable of the wedding feast (Mt 22:1-14), which ends: But when the king came in to meet the guests he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment. He said to him, "My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?" But he was reduced to silence. Then the king said to his attendants, "Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth."

Consider also, from the sermon on the mount, when Jesus says "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?' Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers." (Mt7:21-23)

Note that there are conditions that have to be met before one is welcomed at the table. In the parable, the guest needed to be wearing wedding attire, but since he was not, he was refused a place. In the sermon, Jesus is even more explicit: only those who do the will of God will have a place. To simply speak of a place for everyone born to partake unconditionally of the banquet set before mankind is misleading and bad theology.

I also feel it is remarkably naive and outrageous to call the place at the table "a safe place for growing". True, we grow in grace by partaking in the sacraments, most especially the Eucharist, but we are hardly "safe" at the table. (I would digress at this moment that the table cannot be Heaven, if we are to speak of growing, and Heaven is the only place we will truly be safe.) Temptation abounds everyone, and the devil can act within the walls of a church, even at the altar, though it costs him quite a bit to do so. Moreover, to speak of the Eucharistic table as a safe place for growing casts a blanket over the fact that Jesus was crucified in this very sacrifice we're celebrating. When we're at Mass, we are re-presenting that very same sacrifice, the suffering and death Our Lord endured for our sins. Though that act offers to us a path to salvation, I'd hardly characterize it as safe. In addition, when you consider that our calling to the Eucharistic table demands that we be willing to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of the faith, as so many martyrs have in the past, and as so many people are do so even today around the world--to call the table "safe" spits on the sacrifices made throughout history. The only safety is the security of salvation, and that is only guaranteed if we persevere to the end.

The last line of the verse is simply inane, but has its own dangers. A star overhead? Well, if we are willing to interpret that star as the "bright morning star" that is Jesus (cf Rev 22:16), there's no problem. But there's a lot things this phrase could also mean, and the context is vague enough that the meaning isn't at all clear. There's the pagan notion that every time a child is born, a new star appears in the sky, that is the child's guardian star. Or there is the equating of the self with the divine in comparison to the Star of Bethlehem which marked Jesus' birth. Or are we somehow referring to the fact that every human alive has a guardian angel looking out for him? And the confusion comes: do we mean a distinct star for every person, or one star alone for all people? The former interpretation is probably the most problematic, but is also the most likely because the whole verse follows the line of: each person has his own place, each person gets his own food, each person gets his own space. Thus each person gets his own star. Taking the latter interpretation breaks the symmetry of the verse, and thus is much less likely. If it isn't clear from the text of the song, if you have to take time and do contortions in order to give a proper Catholic reading of the text, then there is something decidably wrong.

Phew. Cleared the first verse. Now let's look at the chorus:

And God will delight
When we are creators of justice and joy
Compassion and peace
And God will delight
When we are creators of justice... justice and joy

Now, there's nothing wrong with seeking justice, joy, compassion, and peace, but there's one word in there that runs sour: creators. We are most certainly not creators of justice, joy, compassion, or peace. All of these come from God. We can be ministers of justice, etc; we can be channels as such. (Think St. Francis' prayer: "Make me a channel of your peace".) But we do not create those things. The sheer hubris, the sheer deification of humanity in such a thought, should make any Christian shudder.

Second verse:

For woman, for man, a place at the table
Revising the roles, deciding the share
With wisdom and grace, dividing the power
For woman and man, a system's that fair

I'm sorry, but I struggle enough with the political hijacking of the liturgy with "inclusive language". I really struggle here with this blatant slap in God's face of the order He created. Now, I understand the intent, and that is ostensibly restoring the order that God created, but the lyrics around that notion are atrocious. We don't revise the roles--we conform to what God presented us. For the most important matters, there's no debate on this. Deciding the share? How is that part of being "at the table"? Coming to the table requires us to leave injustice and sexism and misogyny and power struggles and whatnot behind. It isn't settled at the table; it has to be settled in order to come to the table, else we are like the wedding guest without the proper apparel, who is tossed out. Dividing the power? What power are we even talking about? Political? Social? God's? I'm sorry, but this verse is so obviously agenda-charged and focused especially at the male-only priesthood that it isn't simply bad theology, it is dangerous.

Third verse:

For young and for old, a place at the table,
A voice to be heard, a part in the song,
The hands of a child in hands that are wrinkled,
For young and for old, the right to belong

I don't have too much to gripe about here, other than the last phrase. We don't have any "right" to belong whatsoever, and that's why in particular this song is so terrible. Our existence is completely gratuitous. We have no right to exist; we exist through God's love and by His grace. We have no right to salvation, either. God's offer of forgiveness is also completely gratuitous, and contingent upon our willingness to repent, have faith, love God, and keep His commandments. To suggest there is any "right" to any of this flies in the face of doctrine. It isn't just bad--it is flat out wrong and contradictory to our faith.

Fourth verse:

For just and unjust, a place at the table,
Abuser, abused, with need to forgive,
In anger, in hurt, a mindset of mercy,
For just and unjust, a new way to live

And the same ugly problems just keep rearing their heads. There is no place at the table for the unjust or the abuser. There is only a place when the unjust renounces the injustice, and the abuser repents of his abuse.

Fifth verse:

For everyone born, a place at the table,
To live without fear, and simply to be,
To work, to speak out, to witness and worship,
For everyone born, the right to be free

Once again, that whole "right" thing that is bad theology. The only freedom that fits with Catholic doctrine is the freedom from sin, the freedom to choose God. There's no right about that. We don't have a right to be free from sin--we have to deliberately choose not to sin. That's the whole point of the free will thing. We choose. There's no right to escape sin no matter what we happen to choose; if we choose to sin, we're going to suffer the consequences.

Ah, but you might argue that this is statement about escaping slavery and oppression and persecution. Well, I'm sorry, but we have no right to be free from those, either. God permits those things to exist for a reason, at the very least because we grow as people and in faith when confronted with dire challenges. Now, we know that it is wrong to enslave, to oppress, and to persecute, but that doesn't grant us any right to escape from them. Consider the final beatitude: "Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven." (Mt 5:11-12) Indeed, we are warned several times that we will be persecuted, end of story.

Overall, this song is simply terrible. To quote Lucy Carroll (cf http://www.adoremus.org/0506LucyCarroll.html ), "sort of sounds like a campaign song, doesn't it? (A chicken in every pot!)". Rife with bad theology and inconsistent, contradictory, and confusing messages, it rates as the worst sort of music to use in our worship space. I know I'm being rather vehement about this, but I feel this is incredibly important. If we're singing about things that distort the message of our faith, that proclaim rewriting the order God has made, that claim in places roles that only rightfully belong to God, and that completely dispense with our obligation to our Creator (by making a "right" out of everything), then we're singing judgment down on ourselves.

There are many pieces we've sung that I've felt miss the mark or get something wrong theologically, but haven't felt concerned enough to object. This piece, though, is so contrary to our faith, though, that I cannot help but protest.

I would ask that this piece never be considered again for liturgy.

Scientology in Wyoming

2009-02-11T08:43:00.000-08:00

I suppose it has to happen somewhere, but why does it have to be in my state? I suppose Wyoming has places that are expected to survive nuclear holocausts and whatnot, which makes it appealing as a storage place for copies of important documents and even a hiding hole in case of the apocalypse, but still.

Thoughts on RINOs

2009-02-10T11:43:00.000-08:00

One of things that seems to avoid mention in talking about Republicans banding together to prevent the passing of bills, especially when it comes to the dissident RINOs, is: what if a Republican's conscience tells him that the bill should be passed? One of the things we should truly consider is whether party unity is more important than doing what one believes is right. Sure, I believe that any who voted for the stimulus package is wrong, but I think it is wrong to demand a person vote against his conscience for sake of party loyalty, as well.

Moreover, it wasn't the three Republican Senators that broke rank that passed the bill--it was the unanimous Democratic support for the bill. If anything, those Democrats deserve the censure of those who believe the bill is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Frankly, my concern about the politicking of placing party before conscience is just as stern for the Democrats. How many Senators decided to cave and not break rank, either because of internal or external expedience?

Granted, I think those three RINOs need to go. But it isn't because they broke rank; it is because they voted for something that shouldn't have passed. So in a similar vein, I'd like to see all those current Democrats out of office, as well.

The public deserves better.

RINOs strike again

2009-02-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

The stimulus bill passed the Senate. Now our only hope of its defeat is that the differences between the House and Senate versions prove so irreconcilable that the bill goes down in flames. (Primarily, I'm hoping Pelosi will fight so hard for her odds and ends that even the RINOs in the Senate, or maybe a few dissident Democrats, will block the bill from passing.)

My Wife Could Find Employment Here

2009-02-09T10:46:00.000-08:00

If it makes the news, it must happen, right? The paper reports that the proposed gassification plant planned for between Elk Mountain and Medicine Bow will start construction in 2010 and be online in 2013. This is a scaled down version of what a full plant could do, but with hope it will actually happen and start this nation on the road to oil independence.

Of course, environmentalists still have the chance to kill this plant, and our wonderful national legislature can wreak all kinds of havoc on the economy before the fourth quarter 2009, when the company producing this plant will seek public funding.

But here's to hoping.

Wyoming Fails in Legislation

2009-02-09T10:42:00.000-08:00

And so two of the important bills facing the Wyoming legislature this spring have failed: the bill to improve the reporting doctors are required to make when performing abortions, and the bill to propose an amendment to Wyoming Law so that only heterosexual marriages are recognized.

I had so much hope for this legislative cycle, and they're slowly being crushed.

Keeping Teachers We Need

2009-02-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

One of the most prominent memories of high school for both my wife and myself, other than the fun extracurricular activities we engaged in, were the poor quality of a number of the teachers we had. We each recall English teachers that were particularly ineffective. Sara will speak at length about her teacher that taught in this fashion: read along in the book while the audio tape plays, and then watch the movie based on the book; take a test; if you don't know the answer on the test, ask the class favorite to ask the teacher, and receive the correct answer as it filters back down from the class favorite; and try not to be on the teacher's bad side, else you'll receive low marks for a work identical to another classmate's (yes, this was tested). I'll regale people with stories of how the Honors English Class in 10th grade was the easiest class in the entire school, where we weekly regurgitated vocabulary words and made stupid little 5 minute speeches that never received anything less than an A; yet in the Regular English Class, students worked their butts off learning the dynamics of grammar, literature, good writing (which, even when exhaustively reviewed by other English teachers, still received a B or a C because it wasn't up to a clearly identifiable objective standard), and good speech skills.

It doesn't come to either of us as any surprise that Wyoming ranked "D" in effective teacher identification and retention, and in ineffective teacher dismissal.

I'm not entirely sure what the problem is, myself. But bad teachers hung around like the stench of a decaying woodchuck (credit Scott Adams for the phrase), and good teachers were few and far between. Average or mediocre teachers were about par. I have no idea if we simply have good teachers available who, due to bureaucracy and low performance standards, chose not to exert themselves because it didn't matter, or if (as we sometimes expect) that our College of Education was simply the last stop for people who couldn't make it in other fields.

I personally tried out our Education department for a year, and eventually I caved because--while I would still love to teach--the crap you have to put up with is excessive. I was particularly disenchanted with the extremely liberal bent of the department, which seemed more interested in coddling the low-end students out of sake of their fragile self-esteem than in actually teaching meaningful material. On the other hand, a visit to our local charter school here in Laramie, the Snowy Range Academy, told me that the militant disciplinary response--which was a matter more of just rote memorization and moving on--wasn't the answer either. But I do think that our College of Education churns out by far more mediocre teachers than even adequate teachers.

Part of the problem, too, is coaching. Perhaps because of Wyoming's low population, and the fact that so many schools need to have teachers doubling up (or even tripling up) on positions, but it seemed that four out of every five teachers were also coaches. And it felt telling that most of the poor teachers (I can think of a few glaring exceptions, but they're exceptions) were coaches. And I suspect that their poor teaching was in part caused by the fact that they were coaching, as well, and thus didn't have the time and energy needed to focus on the classes. That isn't to say that there weren't good teachers who were also coaches. I can think of a couple of those. But the connection is certainly troubling.

Other factors seem to be that Wyoming just doesn't appeal to many people, which is why we remain at the bottom of the totem, barely earning the one representative to the House we have. People complain that there is nothing to do in Wyoming. I suppose when you compare to Colorado or California for the Six Flags and Disney Land parks, Wyoming is lacking in that. But most of the great things to do in Wyoming are of the out-of-doors sort. People tend not to like the hiking so much, though many are okay with the skiing. But if they're going to ski, they'd rather do it in Vale, or somewhere else in Colorado.

Salaries have always been a problem. Why work for $25 K a year when you could work for $40 K a year, even if the cost of living around the $40 K job is $17 K a year higher than in Wyoming? But then, Wyoming offers so many other ares of employment that can easily net one $80 K a year that it is no wonder that many prefer those jobs to teaching.

Yet, I don't think money or location are the biggest problems. I think most teachers bail for the reason I did: the bureaucracy, and the unfriendly environment to those who wish to actually do what needs to be done. Like actually teach and grade and use red ink and discipline students who are out of line. I left in part because I felt like I wouldn't be able to be tough on my students, challenging the smart ones to excel beyond where they were already at, and encouraging or even dragging the slower ones forward. I think that environment needs to change before we throw more money at the problem.

I think it might also help if we change the image of teaching as one of the most vital roles one can play in our nation, as opposed to the crap job you fall back on if you can't make it in other fields.

How Does Wealth Disappear?

2009-02-09T07:54:00.000-08:00

One of the basic principles in economics is that currency is based, more or less (in our case, less), on the connection with some material good that backs the currency. Now, our dollar is no longer tied to our gold reserves, but it still represents the worth of our goods.

To understand how wealth disappears, we have to understand how wealth is created in the first place. First and foremost, wealth is created through effort. At the very least, the effort is from picking fruit from a tree, or berries from a bush, or hunting an animal, or so on. The worth of the item is based upon need and availability. A cup of water during a flood season isn't worth very much because water abounds everywhere. A cup water to a man dying of thirst in the desert is practically worth his life. But this is simply stating the principles of supply and demand. No one can really question that supply and demand play a role in matters; what is arguable is how much government should tamper with market forces.

Now, wealth is essentially created through effort, as I just said. I can take some raw material, each component fairly cheap because of availability and low demand for just raw components, and turn those pieces into, say, a house. Because of the effort I placed into the house, the worth of the house is more than the worth of the materials individually; worked into the price is the time and talent I've expended. Supposedly, anyone could invest their time and talent to build a house, but in reality, housebuilding is best suited to one who knows how to build houses, especially given the quality of amateurish buildings. That's why my effort adds to the cost of the house.

Now we examine how supply and demand work on the houses I build. Suppose I build one house, and three people want to buy. That means the house increases in value because of the competition. How? I can simply raise the price until two of the three people are no longer willing to buy the house, and then sell it to the one left standing. The thing to note is that this increase in price is somewhat artificial, because it does not necessarily accurately reflect the cost of the materials and the value of my labor. Those two factors are a baseline of worth; the inflated cost is variable and due to other conditions. For example, if two of the three decide they're better off in tents before I inflate my price, then I can no longer inflate the price. With no competition, my one remaining customer can demand that I sell at the base price, or he won't buy at all. Alternatively, I could build two other houses so that all three can buy, and then only be capable of offering a base price. Or I could build more houses than are demanded, which could potentially artificially deflate the actual value of the first house (depending on the cost of the other houses), because the threat is there to go with a cheaper model, and leave the most expensive house unoccupied.

The government can step in and tamper with prices, too. It can mandate that every house be sold for at least some amount. This causes some reverberations in the market, but eventually it settles down. The reverberations come because some houses aren't worth that amount, and won't sell. But soon the new houses built will be built with the minimum price tag in mind, which has two effects. One is that, since cheaper housing is no longer available, there are fewer people looking for houses, and thus fewer new buildings are constructed. With fewer buildings made, the supply goes down. If the demand remains constant, then the value of the cheaper buildings rises, perhaps finally equating with that bare minimum, and the balance is restored. The second is that the base worth of a house is artificially inflated. As I said before, the cheaper houses might eventually rise value as the supply and demand evens out, but other houses will see an increase in value, as well. If this cheap house and this average house sell for the same price, there will be a higher demand for the average house due to quality concerns. Thus its price will rise.

Now suppose that the government changes its mind and removes its regulation that houses must be sold for some amount. Suddenly the price of houses collapses. People can offer cheaper houses for much cheaper than before, and the higher priced houses lose value as people steer towards the cheaper housing. In an instant, thousands of dollars per home just vanish. All manner of wealth just disappears.

This is the sort of thing that happened with the housing market crash. The government effectively mandated a minimum housing cost by making sure a much wider spread of the marketplace could afford housing (via the subprime loans). So if everybody and their cat can receive, say, a $100,000 loan, all houses are now worth at least $100,000, and all the more expensive houses rise in value. This continues in an upward surge for a time, especially as people build more houses to accommodate the influx of people looking for homes. The bubble builds for a while, but eventually--and most people seemed to forget this point--the market balances out again, and the bubble stops increasing. Due to other factors, the economy slowed, people defaulted on loans, and ultimately many banks closed and credit froze. This had the effect of suddenly reversing the $100,000 minimum mandate, and the price of houses dropped. All the wealth that had been there before evaporated.

That's the thing we need to remember in this world of ours. Wealth can not only be created, it can be destroyed. I can pump thousands of dollars into a business that ultimately fails, and that money for the most part may as well have never existed. Now, some may argue that the money I invested at least went to paying the bills, paying employees, and so on, and that even though the business failed, the money still circulated. But that money also went to purchase products that are never sold, or equipment that then lies unused and is sold off at bargain prices. The wealth effectively disappeared.

So how exactly does wealth disappear? It isn't necessarily correct to say that it disappears because it never existed, that it was an artificial wealth that ultimately would be shown to be the phantom it really is. In some cases this is correct. But for the majority of wealth that has disappeared, it disappears because natural drop in demand leads to a drop in worth of items considered.

The Stimulus Bill

2009-02-06T13:27:00.000-08:00

Currently, as of about 4:30 pm Easter Time, it seems unlikely that the Senate is going to succeed today in passing the stimulus bill, which makes me happy. The longer we hold off on passing this monstrosity, the more chances we have at making it a better bill.

Now, I'm not one to sacrifice good on the altar of perfection, but this bill doesn't attain good. It doesn't even attain mildly distasteful. As opposed to an economic stimulus package, I would have called it a Government Goody Bill, in which all the branches of the government, including a few new branches, get heaps and heaps of money. In a 600+ page document, I saw maybe 30 pages that even came close to addressing the financial sector, the dilemma of private businesses, and the needs of anything non-governmental. The rest of the bill endlessly detailed handouts to various government agencies.

Somehow, I don't see how that will help stimulate our economy. But then, I suppose that the slow, creeping spread of the government over all economic aspects eventually will mean that government and economy are one and the same.

I personally hope that the Senate will pare the spending back by a few hundred billion dollars, and contemplate how wise it is to spend in all the places they are spending. I can kind of see how many of the items will make or preserve jobs, but only if we're considering government jobs. That, I think, is telling.

Sexual Freedom Strikes Again

2009-02-05T15:40:00.000-08:00

As society continues to press on its mindless chanting for sexual freedom and lambasting anyone who dares disagree as retrogressive and brainless religious, we have beautiful tales likes these:

Teen Accused of Blackmailing Fellow Students For Sex

and

Teen 'Sexters' Charged with Child Pornography.

So what are to make of these? Maybe we should have considered that our view of free sex, sex without consequence, and teenage sex would have led to these things. The first article, of course, is pretty heinous, and will receive a tut-tut because he was forcing fellow male students into having sex, thus violating the whole consensus thing.

It is actually the second article that worries me more. Some states make it illegal for minors to have sex with each other, but others don't. For those that don't, does it make sense to allow minors to have sex with each other, but not take naked pictures of each other? Heck does it make sense to forbid even a minor from taking a naked picture of herself, in that light?

The inevitable result, as I see it, is that eventually we start pulling down the barriers. Those kids that were prosecuted for child pornography will fight, and eventually interest groups will step in, and we'll have a court ruling that as long as the picture is of yourself, you can send it where you will. That will open the door for all kinds of leeway in child pornography cases, and we might see a fair amount of breakdown there. It might be that child porn is limited to preadolescence, and see we start seeing a plethora of junior high or high school girls submitting themselves to become amateur porn stars. And our ultimate situation grows much, much worse.

If we dare to ask, "Didn't anyone tell these kids not to do something like this?" we're immediately confronted with slogans like "teens will have sex anyway, so we just try to make it safe", and "do whatever you like, just be responsible about it" and so forth. We can't interfere because it is an invasion of privacy. Or an assault against sexual rights. Heck, if parents aren't supposed to be involved in whether or not a kid has an abortion, why should they be involved with sexual choices, up to and including texting friends with nude photos?

Slippery slope? More like an icy cliff. It will be interesting (and bone-chilling) to see where these cases end up.

Zone In on the Ozone

2009-02-04T09:28:00.000-08:00

Now ozone is in the news again, not because there is too little of it in places (thanks to nasty CFC's that have depleted the ozone, especially over Antarctica), but because there is too much of it in the wrong place.

Apparently, concerns of ozone have been around for a while. The EPA has information on the molecule and its effects. But the gist of the matter is this. The molecule O3 (three oxygen atoms) are formed when oxygen and nitrates (NOx) interact. Specifically, NO2 (produced from car engines) is somewhat unstable, and when struck with light breaks apart into NO and O, and that spare O is highly reactive. (An oxygen atom on its own is fairly reactive, and it likes to bond with many other things, like hydrogen to produce water, or other oxygen atoms to produce the typical O2 molecule, or carbon, or nitrogen, or a host of other elements.) This lone, drifting oxygen can then latch onto the more stable O2 molecule, forming O3.

Now, chemists and chemical engineers have known for a long time that SOx and NOx were dangerous molecules responsible for lung aggravations and acid rain and various other detrimental features. These things have a very measurable, very immediate effect on the environment and on people, and they've been addressed for quite some time. However, given the concerns of ozone, especially in areas of heavy industry, or huge amounts of chemical traffic (such as the oil-field heavy regions around Pinedale), it seems to me that the real environmental concerns posed by NOx and SOx have been systematically ignored in favor of the harmless CO2.

But then, SOx and NOx aren't quite so politically expedient to lambaste in the news, so I guess they get a pass.

News Articles on Gay Marriage

2009-02-04T08:49:00.000-08:00

One of the first I find is an article about British homosexual unions having a failure rate of less than one percent. I'm not inclined to give this statistic much weight, given that the numbers were drawn from a 2 year period, starting when such unions were legitimized. If the average first marriage lasts about 8 years, we wouldn't necessarily expect to see breakdowns in gay marriages right away.

The news is apparently more grim in Sweden, where homosexual unions are 50% more likely to break up within an eight year period.

But then, in Denmark, it seems that gay marriages are out-performing heterosexual marriages.

In general, is skimming around the web, it seems that jury is still out on how well homosexual unions succeed. Since such marriages are only a very recent phenomenon, or because so few nations keep track of statistics in this regard, it is very difficult to make any conclusions. I personally would not be surprised to see gay marriages ending in roughly the same percentage as normal marriages.

Why? Because anymore, marriage is about legitimized sexual acts, not about true devotion to another person coupled with the life-giving aspect that produces family. When the sex aspect is what it is all about, who cares if your partner is male or female?

Not Surprising at All

2009-02-04T08:42:00.001-08:00

It seems that the premiere couple leading the gay marriage march are filing for divorce, and in fact had been separated since 2006. (Fox News has the story here.)

Now, I know this is just one story, but it seems to me that it says something that the people who fought hardest to marry are now filing for divorce. It kind of makes the whole endeavor seem pointless, doesn't it? I mean, if you're going to get together with someone for a couple of years and then slip apart and get together with someone else, why fight for marriage?

Of course, we know that plenty of heterosexual marriages fail, as well, but that doesn't somehow validate what's going on here. What is needed is a strong understanding of what marriage is about. It isn't about legitimizing your sexual relationship with a person, and it isn't about tax deductions or social acceptance or anything like that. It is about a commitment to, for the rest of your life, devote yourself fully to another person.

I don't think very many people in the whole gay marriage debate understand this.

Weddings

2008-12-29T10:45:00.000-08:00

As a note, my sister Brenna got married this past weekend to Brett Philbrick. Brett is the younger brother of Ryan Philbrick, who was part of the skater crowd back in high school. I always felt the skaters were a group that tormented me, though looking back I have a hard time recalling exactly how they were. I know sometimes we were at odds, especially those skaters who were Catholic, but as far as the name-calling, tripping in hallways, and so on... I recall that those things happened, but not who did them anymore. I guess I'm growing up.

Anyway, I was uneasy at first with Brenna dating Brett, but as we got to know him better, I started feeling comfortable, and then appreciative of the man who has now become my brother-in-law. We have few things in common, true, but I respect him and am happy for both him and my sister. I hope to earn his respect, as he has earned mine, and I hope our future occasions together will be close.

NFL Week 17

2008-12-29T10:32:00.000-08:00

I didn't quite get around to making my picks, but here's the rundown of how I would have called the games:

NYG @ MIN: NYG
STL @ ATL: ATL
NE @ BUF: NE
DET @ GB: DET
CAR @ NO: NO
CHI @ HOU: CHI
CLE @ PIT: PIT
KC @ CIN: KC
TEN @ IND: IND
OAK @ TB: TB
JAC @ BAL: BAL
MIA @ NYJ: MIA
DAL @ PHI: DAL
WAS @ SF: WAS
SEA @ ARI: ARI
DEN @ SD: DEN

This would have given me a record of 7-9, not very good. So this is how my season went:

Week 17: 7-9
Week 16: 9-7
Week 15: 7-9
Week 14: 13-3
Week 13: 13-3
Week 12: 13-3
Week 11: 13-3
Week 10: 11-3
Week 9: 8-6
Week 8: 8-6
Week 7: 6-8
Week 6: 8-6
Week 5: 9-5
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4

My tally will be 31 games short, missing weeks 1 and 2, but for the 15 weeks I did call, I was 144-81, which means overall my guesses were much better than coin flips. (If you flipped a coin, you'd expect to have guessed correctly on around 104-120 games in that duration. For all 256 games, the range is about 120-136.)

Now, we just have the playoffs, which Denver so gracefully missed, having a 3 game lead on San Diego with 3 games to go. But this is Denver we're talking about. And I can only say: better luck next season.

Right now, I'm hoping for a Manning-on-Manning Super Bowl. I think that would be the greatest showdown in football yet.

American Catholic Doings

2008-12-29T10:29:00.000-08:00

I have a new post up at the American Catholic detailing the problem with premarital sex. It was tough to sit down and figure out how exactly I wanted to write this one, which is why I procrastinated two weeks on it, writing a filler pointing a post by Steve Greydanus and writing about Catholics and guns. Ah well. It is finally up. I originally wanted to include adultery in this post, but the topic of premarital sex ended up filling my quota (which is keeping the post to a length that first covers all the points I want to make and second isn't too long). So I'll try to hammer out some good things on adultery for my next post.

NFL Week 16

2008-12-18T14:12:00.000-08:00

IND @ JAC: IND 24-22

BAL @ DAL: BAL 16-14

CIN @ CLE: CIN 17-12

PIT @ TEN: TEN 13-9

SF @ STL: SF 24-10

SD @ TB: TB 34-20

MIA @ KC: KC 21-20

NO @ DET: NO 33-21

ARI @ NE: NE 24-21

HOU @ OAK: HOU 27-16

BUF @ DEN: DEN 30-20

NYJ @ SEA: NYJ 24-17

ATL @ MIN: ATL 24-23

PHI @ WAS: PHI 31-14

CAR @ NYG: CAR 22-14

GB @ CHI: CHI 30-21

Confidence: 10-6

Week 15: 7-9
Week 14: 13-3
Week 13: 13-3
Week 12: 13-3
Week 11: 13-3
Week 10: 11-3
Week 9: 8-6
Week 8: 8-6
Week 7: 6-8
Week 6: 8-6
Week 5: 9-5
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4

Day Without a Gay Bust

2008-12-11T09:33:00.000-08:00

So it seems that the "Day Without a Gay" protest drew little attention and few participants. Apparently a few people have commented that, given the bad economy, it simply wasn't prudent to strike, that such a an effort would have a backlash on the gay community.

That explanation doesn't seem to work, to me. Maybe I'd be a bit more ruthless in this, but a poor economy would, to me, be the best time, so that the message hits home hardest. But then, I suspect that maybe the reason the protest didn't find wide participation is because, in contrast with similar protests by blacks and Hispanics, homosexuality doesn't manifest visually in terms of unalterable traits. While I'm willing to concede to the theory that "homosexuality is not a choice", nevertheless homosexual actions do involve choice. One can choose to engage in homosexual sex, or one can choose to refrain. One can choose to be "flaming", or one can choose to appear no different than any other random Joe on the streets.

The problem the gay movement is having, I think, is this. The black movement truly and honestly dealt with discrimination that targeted something blacks simply could not change. Moreover, blacks were fighting to be recognized as far more than just a skin color. Those in the gay movement, though, are largely discriminated against for their behavior (and not their sexual preference per se). What this amounts to, then, is that in order to equate their struggles as being discriminated against as something that they are, they have to reduce themselves to nothing but gay, and I don't think most people with homosexual tendencies want to completely subsume themselves under a single label.

To simplify, because the onus is on the behavior, not on an unchangeable trait, people in the gay movement have to make that behavior an unchangeable part of their being, essentially make "gay" the sole qualifying detail about themselves. They have to reduce themselves to a single label in order to make this discrimination fit, and I would conjecture that the human mind find such a reduction of self unappealing.

NFL Week 15

2008-12-11T08:04:00.000-08:00

NO @ CHI: NO (It is a big gamble betting on NO on a road game, but CHI has been just an inconsistent as NO. While Ortan may be back in good shape and the passing defense has stepped up, Brees should still be able to pick apart CHI. I expect this to be high scoring and close. 32-28)

SF @ MIA: MIA (Two things will work against SF: the first is turnovers, and the second is traveling to the east coast. 19-10)

TB @ ATL: ATL (I see no reason to believe that TB will upset the home-streak in the NFC South. But then, all four teams are very capable, and this will be a showdown as much as any other NFC South game. 35-33)

WAS @ CIN: WAS (CIN's woes just continue unabated, and while WAS has struggled, they should be equal to CIN. It will probably be a low-scorer. 17-9)

SD @ KC: KC (I have a feeling SD is going to try too hard and blow this game. I think Rivers will throw two critical interceptions that will undermine the whole game, and SD will lose a close one in Arrowhead Stadium. 21-20)

GB @ JAC: GB (GB should be able to top the woeful JAC, who are without their best receiver and might be short one of their two primary running backs. Couple that with poor performance overall, and GB should not have to worry about a last minute comeback for victory. 27-18)

TEN @ HOU: TEN (It is hard to see how TEN could blow this one. They're still driving strong, and while HOU is resurgent late in the season, they will fall to 6-8. 27-21)

SEA @ STL: SEA (I give this to the team with the exiting coach, who will want to play hard for him. Maybe, having played close several games against play-off contending teams, SEA will find the opportunity here to post another W. The least that can be said is that at least one of the teams will have 3 wins after this game. 24-10)

DET @ IND: IND (DET seems to be on the verge of running through QBs the way DEN is running through running backs. This mix-up will make it very difficult for DET to mount an offense, and its woeful defense will not stop Manning. 30-10)

BUF @ NYJ: NYJ (Mainly, due to Edward's injury, I doubt that BUF will manage their first AFC East victory. After two losses, Favre will be ready to go. 27-13)

MIN @ ARI: ARI (MIN at times has been inconsistent, and they might be having some problem with the QB position, after Frerotte's injury. But I pick the home team in a contest that should be close. 30-28)

NE @ OAK: NE (I think we might see a reprise of Favre's performance in blowing OAK after his father's death. Cassel--and let us all offer prayers for his father--might come back and lead NE to a much needed victory. OAK, on the other hand, is struggling and struggling and, more important, struggling. If NE can keep OAK from scoring on special teams, they might be able to keep OAK from scoring altogether. 17-6)

PIT @ BAL: BAL (Of the two, BAL has shown more resilience of late, but it will be a nail-biter. 19-17)

DEN @ CAR: DEN (Once again, just making my team the winning pick. CAR should have this one in the bag, but DEN has been surprising before, and might just sweep the NFC South. 34-30)

NYG @ DAL: NYG (I expect the woes to keep piling up on DAL, and NYG to be resurgent after last week's loss. But then, DAL should win if NYG receivers still can't catch the ball. 24-22)

CLE @ PHI: PHI (If this is a contest, then Reid and McNabb better be working on their resumes. 30-9)

Confidence: 10-6

Week 14: 13-3
Week 13: 13-3
Week 12: 13-3
Week 11: 13-3
Week 10: 11-3
Week 9: 8-6
Week 8: 8-6
Week 7: 6-8
Week 6: 8-6
Week 5: 9-5
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4

NFL Week 14

2008-12-04T11:10:00.000-08:00

OAK @ SD: SD (While SD has had its share of struggles and is only one game ahead of OAK in the division, I expect they'll come out swinging harder than OAK. It will be a tough game, though, just like the game against KC was tough. 17-6)

JAC @ CHI: CHI (Expect CHI to regroup from last week in their typical swing of good to bad to good. JAC, on the other hand, is pretty much out of the playoff picture, is in disarray, and is only fighting to avoid losing a fifth straight game. The only boon is that they're on the road, where they're 3-3, versus 1-5 at home. 21-17)

HOU @ GB: GB (I think this game will just be a matter of GB outscoring HOU, especially since HOU has such a bad track record away from home. 33-28)

MIN @ DET: MIN (It is hard to see how MIN can give this one away, which probably means they will. It is a division rivalry game, and those are always harder than any other games. 24-16)

CIN @ IND: IND (CIN seems to be continuing to spiral downwards in Palmer's absence, while IND seems to be creeping back to healthy players and healthy play. 24-14)

CLE @ TEN: TEN (Losing both first and second string QB's is a blow. CLE will play their hearts out, I'm sure, but it won't be near enough. Mistakes will only seal the deal for TEN. 27-9)

PHI @ NYG: NYG (This should be a close game. Missing Burress will have an effect, undoubtedly, but NYG is still running strong. PHI, on the other hand, has been inconsistent, and it likely the NYG defense will pressure McNabb into a few costly mistakes, especially late. 34-30)

ATL @ NO: NO (Home field is magic in the NFC South. NO is especially prolific at home. I expect Brees to throw for 380+ in a high-scoring game. 33-28)

MIA @ BUF: MIA (Edwards is either out or questionable, and that will make a huge difference. Playing in Canada probably won't aid BUF, either. 17-14)

NE @ SEA: NE (After the bruising PIT handed them last week, NE will probably come back in peak performance. SEA, on the other hand, just isn't doing well, even with Hasselbeck back. The 34-9 loss to DAL does not bode well for this meeting, even if it is at home. 24-20)

KC @ DEN: DEN (Hopefully DEN will keep consistent from last week. They had spark and fire and played defense moderately well. They have to keep in mind that any division game won't be easy, no matter the records. That destroyed them in Week 4, and again against OAK in Week 12. But they should be able to avenge their previous loss to KC. 34-12)

NYJ @ SF: NYJ (Last week was a wake-up call to NYJ, and wide awake, they should manage to win handily against SF. 31-17)

STL @ ARI: ARI (Home field and a weak opponent, even a division rival, should be enough to set ARI back into action. 30-20)

DAL @ PIT: PIT (I expect snow to make a difference, but this will be a game to watch. 10-9)

WAS @ BAL: BAL (It is possible that WAS will stand up to BAL's defense, but their record in the past few games hasn't been impressive. 21-14)

TB @ CAR: CAR (This is a tough call. TB might be the better team, but I think it is reasonable to stick with the home field magic in the NFC South. It is by no means a guarantee, but the NFC South leads the league in home wins, having only lost 2. (The AFC West is worst, with 16 home losses.) 34-33)

Confidence: 10-6

Week 13: 13-3
Week 12: 13-3
Week 11: 13-3
Week 10: 11-3
Week 9: 8-6
Week 8: 8-6
Week 7: 6-8
Week 6: 8-6
Week 5: 9-5
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4

Doing a Little LDS

2008-12-02T06:16:00.000-08:00

So I've been meeting with a couple of Mormon missionaries. Before anyone gasps in horror and shock, I must say that the reason is merely to learn more specifically what their doctrine is through personal interaction, as opposed to reading books. Now, a missionary may not be as well catechized as some Mormons, but they are supposed to know enough to make conversions, so it is a good place to start. There's some hope that as we compare Mormon doctrine to Catholic doctrine, they'll start to understand Catholicism a little better. I'm not seeking any conversions here, but a chance to learn the particulars of another faith through a non-hostile lens (I won't say unbiased), and a chance to know where I'm particularly lacking in my own faith.

One thing I'm doing to help meet with the missionaries is to actually read the Book of Mormon. In a way, I feel bad about spending time on it, since I haven't read the full Bible yet, but it is a chance to see what is there and make critical evaluations of it. At the very least, I'll be able to tell future missionaries that I've read it!

I must say that I'm in agreement with other skeptics that the BOM overuses the phrase "And so it came to pass", but that's a literary critique, not a theological critique.

So far, I've felt at times the warm fuzzies that are supposed to convince one that the BOM is true, and at other times I've felt absolutely disgusted with what I've read. (An example of the latter is the portion in Moroni where Mormon writes, calling anathema on any who preaches infant baptism; an example of the former was actually in 2 Nephi talking about the role Christ's sacrifice plays in the history of salvation.)

The biggest sense I have from the BOM (and I'm by no means done with it; I've read bits and pieces of all four Nephi's, Alma, Mormon, and Moroni. That's not the whole thing by far) is a sense of incredulity. 600 years before the birth of Christ, Nephi recorded with vivid accuracy just what Jesus would do, and how it would play into the role of salvation. I find this foreknowledge, so clearly written down, a little far-fetched, given the foreknowledge (or lack thereof) that the Jews in Israel and Judah had of the Messiah. Unlike the Jews, who were very concerned with the Law of Moses and the covenant, the Nephites were already ready for Jesus to come, knowing full well what He would do. From this, I feel most people are justified in claiming that the BOM is the work of a man in the 1800's who had knowledge of what Christ's sacrifice at Calvary meant.

At the same time, I feel I understand why people are swayed by the BOM. I think it is primarily because of the clarity. If one is willing to believe that it was written between 600 B.C. and 400 A.D., one finds a very clear description that isn't obfuscated behind hundreds of lines of poetry or songs of praises. The Old Testament is as clear as a brick wall in comparison. One reading what Nephi purportedly inscribed on brass tablets finds doctrines spelled out and explained (though hardly in an orthodox manner).

There's also, for Americans, a particular allure in believing that Christ came personally to the Americas. Just as the British like to believe that Christ came to England (And did those feet in ancient times / walk upon England's mountains green / and was the Holy Lamb of God / on England's pleasant pastures seen?), and the original inhabitants of England were Trojans who left from captivity and sailed to the misty isles in search of a new home (see Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of England), so would Americans enjoy a special connection with Christ that makes them a chosen people.

I myself am not satisfied with what I've seen so far. I hope to learn more, but--and I apologize to my Mormon friends--I have no intention of leaving the Catholic Church.

NFL Week 13

2008-11-26T13:22:00.000-08:00

TEN @ DET: TEN (DET is struggling so much, and just when it seems they might be able to start putting things together, more things fall apart. I don't think they'll have the ignominy of being the only team to go 0-16, but this won't be the game to reverse their fortunes. Collins is still doing very well, and if his receivers can catch the ball, TEN should be able to deliver on both the pass and the run. 27-12)

SEA @ DAL: DAL (Two quarterbacks back in action for the third game after injuries, and Romo looks pretty good, while Hasselback is still struggling. What with the passing game and a decent run defense, DAL should dominate. 33-21)

ARI @ PHI: ARI (Frankly, right now Philadelphia is probably going to be more hostile towards their home team than the other team. If McNabb isn't stellar, he is going fighting down the resounding chorus of boos. That kind of strips away the benefit of home field advantage. PHI seems to be crumbling, and at the moment, I don't see any reason to believe that the crumbling will stop. McNabb seems to be on his way out, and a big rebuilding process looms in the horizon. On the other hand, ARI--while coming off a loss--is a team that is all together and performing well. The only problem will a west team going east, which so far has spelled doom. We'll probably see a first half controlled moderately well by PHI, but ARI will probably come alive in the second half and win not just the game, but their division. 24-23)

SF @ BUF: BUF (Hopefully Edwards has rediscovered confidence, especially after a high-scoring thumping of KC. SF is doing all right, but they have a number of factors against them. Their season is essentially over, while BUF is still fighting for a playoff berth, and they are a west team coming east. While I think ARI will overcome that, I don't think SF will. 32-19)

BAL @ CIN: BAL (A top notch defense against the league's worst offense should at least keep this a low scoring game for CIN. Flacco is doing well, still, and I expect that he'll keep the race alive atop the AFC North. 24-9)

CAR @ GB: GB (It wasn't until the second-half, as NO started to open the divide between the two teams, that GB progressed from workman-like to forced to struggling. Against the league's highest powered offense, GB stood toe to toe until one mistake really turned the game against them. Both teams, though, have fluctuated with lopsided victories and losses. However, CAR in the last three games has lost big, and then played very close games, very sloppy games, against two of the league's worst teams. In GB's last three games, they lost big to NO, thumped CHI, and very nearly beat MIN. I think they have the edge this game. 30-27)

NYG @ WAS: NYG (NYG is steamrolling at the moment, and WAS has just started to get their feet back under them. However, they are at home, and this game is by far more important to them than to NYG. If WAS wins, then they'll have only split their games head-to-head, not devastating by any means, and NYG will maintain a 2 game lead in any case. Normally this would lead me to lean towards WAS, but NYG's defense is still playing strong. They won a high-scoring match against ARI, squashed BAL, and won a shoot-out against PHI. WAS has lost against DAL, lost against PHI, and only picked up a win against hapless SEA. It will take some serious effort on their part to win, and I don't think we'll see it. 24-20)

NO @ TB: TB (While NO is great at racking up the yards, they don't do well on the road. Moreover, TB has a top-rated pass defense, which means that Drew Brees might struggle. NO is predominantly a passing team, and it will be interesting to see if TB can truly ruin the passing game. Either way, it will be tough. If it comes down to a shootout, TB will still probably eek out a win, but it will probably be TB in the lead the whole time, though never comfortably. 27-24)

IND @ CLE: IND (Manning seems to be back in rhythm, while CLE has to go on without their star rookie QB, as Quinn has a broken finger. We'll probably see more of a running game, but IND should keep the game well in hand. 27-16)

MIA @ STL: MIA (MIA has been doing fairly well this season, though their record might make them seem slightly better than they are. But while STL has won a pair of interesting games, they've done nothing since, dropping five straight. In the past three games, they've averaged barely more than a touchdown a game. MIA should be able to run all over STL. 27-13)

ATL @ SD: ATL (I think that what we'll see is a game predominantly controlled by ATL's running game, assisted by a passing game that should do well against SD's last-place pass defense. While Rivers will probably be able to keep it close, ATL should be able to punch it home with their running duo. 31-21)

KC @ OAK: KC (While OAK managed to run up the score on DEN, KC has been more consistent in their play of late. They've managed to score points and play some good games in their recent losses. Even the blowout against BUF shouldn't be that demoralizing considering KC scored 31 points. KC should be able to move the ball against OAK and score. OAK, on the other hand, is struggling, even with their victory over DEN. In their four prior games, they barely managed to meet that total they scored against DEN. In this case, the more consistent play should win. 28-13)

PIT @ NE: PIT (This will be NE's first big challenge to their offense, and it is quite possible PIT will shut them down. Expect this one to be close. 20-17)

DEN @ NYJ: DEN (And only because I feel obligated to pick DEN. NYJ looks to have this well in hand, with a power offense that has taken on beaten down the league's last undefeated team. DEN looks sloppier and sloppier, though that in part is due to injuries. The hope will be that Cutler will be able to throw the ball sufficiently to keep the game a tight race, and that DEN will come through at the end with a last-second field goal. 34-31)

CHI @ MIN: MIN (In CHI's last four game, two have been losses, and the two wins were against teams that currently have two wins between them. When CHI and MIN last met, it was a 48-41 shootout, and it will probably seem that way at first. MIN will probably take control of the game late in the third and never look back. 30-21)

JAC @ HOU: HOU (HOU played it close last time, and for their record they're doing fairly well. JAC, on the other hand, is really struggling. Isn't about time that HOU didn't end up at the bottom of their division? Well, if they win this one, they'll have at least one week not there. 23-20)

Confidence: 10-6

Week 12: 13-3
Week 11: 13-3
Week 10: 11-3
Week 9: 8-6
Week 8: 8-6
Week 7: 6-8
Week 6: 8-6
Week 5: 9-5
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4

NFL Week 12

2008-11-20T10:15:00.000-08:00

CIN @ PIT: PIT 24-10

NE @ MIA: NE 33-20

PHI @ BAL: BAL 17-10

HOU @ CLE: CLE 28-24

SF @ DAL: DAL 34-26

NYJ @ TEN: NYJ 24-23

BUF @ KC: BUF 21-19

CHI @ STL: CHI 24-10

MIN @ JAC: MIN 28-27

TB @ DET: TB 21-9

OAK @ DEN: DEN 34-16

CAR @ ATL: ATL 31-25

WAS @ SEA: WAS 24-20

NYG @ ARI: NYG 21-17

IND @ SD: IND 30-22

GB @ NO: GB 34-30

Confidence: 11-5

Week 11: 13-3
Week 10: 11-3
Week 9: 8-6
Week 8: 8-6
Week 7: 6-8
Week 6: 8-6
Week 5: 9-5
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4

American Catholic Doings

2008-11-20T10:12:00.000-08:00

I have a new post up at the American Catholic, another Screwtape letter like this one, only addressed back to Wormwood, like C.S. Lewis' original work.

NFL Week 11

2008-11-13T08:59:00.000-08:00

NYJ @ NE: NYJ (I just think that it is time. Favre has improved with NYJ continually, and they're capable of racking up the points. NE is still a a great team, but will be hard pressed. 30-21)

OAK @ MIA: MIA (OAK is terrible, and while MIA is only about average, they have everything they need to keep their winning streak alive. 20-9)

DET @ CAR: CAR (DET is still floundering, and a couple of weeks isn't quite enough to work a new quarterback into an offense. 28-17)

CHI @ GB: GB (This will probably be a tough struggle for both teams. I expect turnovers to make a large difference, and GB will sneak past with a fourth quarter field goal. 31-29)

NO @ KC: NO (KC did well against SD last week, but SD's offensive performance left much to be desired. Brees will probably throw for another 400+ yard game, but this time I think he'll find the endzone often enough to carry a win. 27-21)

BAL @ NYG: NYG (In the end, I think Manning will lead his team to victory, though Flacco will have played his heart out. 21-20)

PHI @ CIN: PHI (McNabb will probably lead his team to some big scoring. 28-17)

MIN @ TB: TB (I give this to the home team, but this will be a game to watch. 24-21)

HOU @ IND: IND (IND finally seems to have found traction, and HOU looks to have lost what they had. Still, this will probably be a close game. 24-18)

DEN @ ATL: DEN (Home team call on this one. If Cutler can cut back on throwing interceptions, he should be able to lead the Broncos to score. And I'm predicted that Ryan will be so surprised at how BAD the DEN defense is, that he'll fumble the ball. 31-27)

STL @ SF: SF (This is a great match up. Hopefully one team will emerge with third victory this season. I think SF is better prepared to do that, and has the home field advantage. 24-10)

ARI @ SEA: SEA (I'm picking this as my upset of the week. Hasselback looks to be coming back, and that could revitalize SEA. ARI was not exactly stellar on Monday, and now they're at SEA, which is notoriously hard to play in. 27-23)

TEN @ JAC: TEN (I don't think it is time just yet. JAC will probably struggle on the run, but keep up with TEN until the end. 16-13)

SD @ PIT: PIT (I think Big Ben will tear apart SD's secondary, and SD won't mount much on offense. 24-14)

DAL @ WAS: DAL (Romo's back, and PIT showed what it takes to crush WAS. I think the rivalry makes it a tough game, but DAL will avenge its home loss to WAS. 26-20)

CLE @ BUF: BUF (I just don't find CLE to be a convincing team. They were doing well against BAL, true, but their score against DEN isn't that surprising, given how terrible DEN's defense is. I think Quinn will make mistakes, Edwards will be a little more consistent, and BUF will pull out a close win. 22-20)

Confidence: 11-5

Week 10: 11-3
Week 9: 8-6
Week 8: 8-6
Week 7: 6-8
Week 6: 8-6
Week 5: 9-5
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4

Atheists At It Again, This Time in DC

2008-11-12T09:10:00.000-08:00

There's a new story today about atheists running ads saying "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake." What is so disturbing about this is that it is attack against the religious, and their only justification is this:

Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion.

This is beyond absurd. First, there's a spirit of Christmas that all can share. Second, these atheists who feel a little alone during the holidays, if they really do exist in any significant number, are whiners at best. They're the equivalent of the sulking child who didn't want to go to the party, and once there refuses to have fun. If they're feeling alone and left out, especially because of the religious traditions surrounding Christmas, that's because they're determined to be alone and left out, isolating themselves because they cannot be bothered to accept that most other people appreciate Christmas in one form or another.

This is as just as idiotic as becoming upset about someone wishing you "Merry Christmas" when you don't celebrate Christmas. The only reason to take offense at someone wishing you well at the holiday times is because of a chip on a shoulder and a grudge against religion.

American Catholic Doings

2008-11-10T09:02:00.000-08:00

I have a new post at The American Catholic blog, talking about the benefits of a well-applied eighth commandment for the Republican Party. I know that the Democratic Party would benefit from it as well, but I'm more concerned with the party that at least claims to represent my views.

Good News in AIDS Research

2008-11-10T08:53:00.001-08:00

It seems scientists have developed a new killer T cell that is much improved in tracking down the HIV virus, even in infected cells where HIV tends to hide quite nicely.

Yet there are some questions to ask. While I'm all for developing a vaccine or cure, I have to wonder. How much would this treatment cost? Hopefully not much, but we're talking about genetically engineering white blood cells. I would almost think that they would have to be taken from the patient to avoid the immune system from battling the augmented T cells themselves.

I ask about cost for one reason alone. We funnel billions of dollars annually into AIDS research, AIDS awareness programs, AIDS treatment, and so on. And yet, AIDS would practically vanish from the world in a generation if those who had AIDS stopped having sex. And not having sex is free. I know that is highly impractical, and that there are other ways to contract AIDS than from sex, even ones that don't involve drug use with needles. Yet still I wonder just how much money is spent every year because we humans believe that it is more important to enjoy momentary physical pleasure than to stop the spread of this lethal disease.

NFL Week 10

2008-11-06T07:37:00.000-08:00

DEN @ CLE: DEN (Two struggling teams, but I think DEN's offense will be able to move the ball against CLE. I expect it will be a tough game for both teams, with lots of mistakes, and lots of blown defensive opportunities. 28-25)

NO @ ATL: NO (NO has had a rocky season thus far, but ATL is not as impressive as they may seem. They blew out OAK last weekend, but more impressive was NO's defeat of SD in London. Even with injuries, I think NO's high-powered offense will come through. 32-20)

TEN @ CHI: TEN (I think Grossman will have a difficult time moving the ball against TEN, but I think it will probably be another close one. 16-14)

JAC @ DET: DET (This is probably a mistake, but I think this is DET's chance to make their first (and possibly only) win this season. 24-23)

SEA @ MIA: MIA (I still don't think MIA is all that good, but SEA is doing pretty poorly, as well. IF MIA can slow down SEA's 31st-ranked offense, they should win handily. 21-10)

BUF @ NE: NE (I think BUF has the ability, but that homefield advantage will be the deciding factor. 21-19)

STL @ NYJ: NYJ (STL is having issues, and despite two wins after changing coaches, they're not on track to do much better than they started. Favre might make a few more mistakes this week, but I don't think that will be enough to turn the game around for STL. 24-14)

GB @ MIN: MIN (I don't have any good feel for this, so I'll take the team with a good rusher over the team with a poor run defense. 28-24)

BAL @ HOU: BAL (BAL seems to be chugging along strong, while HOU is struggling somewhat with injuries. 14-12)

CAR @ OAK: CAR (CAR should have this one handled. 27-13)

IND @ PIT: PIT (Even without Big Ben, PIT's defense may be more than Manning can handle. 21-18)

KC @ SD: SD (If SD loses this one, they're in a world of hurt, but I sincerely doubt KC stands much of a chance. 31-13)

NYG @ PHI: NYG (It will be a tough game, but NYG has the defense to shut down PHI (although that doesn't mean the defense will do so) and Manning is doing well this season. If he avoids throwing three picks like he did against CLE, this should be a NYG victory. 28-27)

SF @ ARI: ARI (ARI is doing well, SF is struggling and went down hard against a poor SEA team. 26-19)

Confidence: 9-5

Week 9: 8-6
Week 8: 8-6
Week 7: 6-8
Week 6: 8-6
Week 5: 9-5
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4

Indoctrination.

2008-11-03T07:46:00.000-08:00

You just have to catch them young and tame them, right?

Funny how when you do it, it is simply teaching the children the truth about life, the universe, and everything. When someone else does it, it is brainwashing.

It would be nice if there were some kind of objective standard to measure against, wouldn't it?

American Catholic Doings

2008-11-03T07:31:00.001-08:00

I have a new post on American Catholic, an acerbic quiz showing how Obama fails on many Catholic social teachings, things that seem to keep cropping up whenever debating with people on the left.

NFL Week 9

2008-10-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

HOU @ MIN: HOU (I think HOU has the drive and the ability, but they still have yet to prove themselves. MIN has been inconsistent as well. They're weak on defending the pass, but strong offensively on the run. It will be interesting to see which proves to be the dominant factor. 24-23)

NYJ @ BUF: NYJ (I think Favre is going to have one of his "on" games, and if he can strike early, it will mean that BUF has to scramble to keep up. With the mistakes Edwards has been making, it is quite likely NYJ will break is losing streak to BUF. 21-15)

DET @ CHI: CHI (I'm not quite willing to say this will be the week for DET. It is coming, though. 27-20)

BAL @ CLE: CLE (Back in the Pound, CLE will probably do well. 17-14)

TEN @ GB: GB (TEN losing. It has to happen one of these days, right? 30-17)

ARI @ STL: ARI (Against a division rival that ARI has performed well against, we should see the NFC West leader pick up another game. 31-20)

TB @ KC: TB (Either KC will show up like they did against DEN, or this will be an excellent chance for TB to turn their game around after last week's loss to DAL. 35-10)

JAC @ CIN: JAC (CIN needs a high-powered offense to keep up with what its defense lets through, and it just isn't up to snuff yet. 27-15)

MIA @ DEN: DEN (Home team sentiment here. DEN has to prove they can stop the opponent on defense. If it becomes a high-scoring punch-out, DEN can't keep slipping by with last second luck. 33-23)

ATL @ OAK: OAK (Two rookie QB's combat! I think this might be a battle of pratfalls. 23-20)

DAL @ NYG: NYG (I think NYG's defense will prove the crucial factor here, sacking Johnson at least 4 times. 28-19)

PHI @ SEA: PHI (PHI is just the better team. SEA made strides against SF, but hasn't managed anything decent against tough opponents. 35-26)

NE @ IND: IND (This might just be a prejudice pick, but I think IND will put NE down. IND is capable, even banged up as it is, to go the distance, and NE's last two victories have been over STL (total of 5 wins over the past 23 games), and DEN, who folded like a lawn chair. IND showed some capacity at defense last week, and that might be the difference. 24-21)

PIT @ WAS: PIT (PIT's defense should shut Portis down, and while Big Ben might face a few more sacks and a lot of blitzes, he can manage his team to victory. 23-20)

Confidence: 8-6

Week 8: 8-6
Week 7: 6-8
Week 6: 8-6
Week 5: 9-5
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4

Solidarity in action

2008-10-30T07:39:00.000-07:00

A very touching article about a woman who purchased a foreclosed home and then gave it back to the original owner. That we could all be this charitable.

American Catholic Doings

2008-10-29T09:24:00.000-07:00

I have a new post up at The American Catholic, rambling about how Obama isn't a cause, he is the effect. To say it here as I didn't in the article: Obama is not the face of change. He is the face of what change has brought about. He is not the leader; he is the poster child. He is the graven idol that the left worshiped before the left even knew his name. He just happened to step into the mold.

We reap what we sow. We have sown anti-life, pure materialism, and elitist relativism. We have reaped Barack Obama. So don't blame Obama--he's the just the rubber stamp on what has been here for years.

Random Thoughts

2008-10-29T09:07:00.000-07:00

Having a cold is terribly uncomfortable, but most colds are not life-threatening and run their course in a week or so. Seeking a doctor is usually a waste of money because the doctor can’t really do anything but prescribe medication for the symptoms, and you can usually buy just as effective medication over the counter. But there are some tragic cases where the cold becomes much more than just a cold, even to the point of hospitalization. Insurance exists for this reason; it is an attempt to pool money together from many, many people to help pay for those things which very rarely happen. It is a gamble. When someone has insurance that covers everything, that no longer is insurance but health care. When everyone has this insurance, it is universal health care. The question becomes: who pays for this? If we divide up the costs, the people who need the insurance can’t pay their portion, else they wouldn’t actually need the insurance. The deficit has to be made up by those who have more money. This isn’t problematic assuming that the rich are voluntarily covering the difference. If they are not, then this becomes theft.

I look at taxes to the government as renewing my subscription to the services the nation has to offer. I just wish that I could pick and choose the services for which I pay. But then, I might not pay into the services the nation really needs.

Part of the difference between left and right seems to be who we trust to have money. The left doesn’t trust the rich to have money because they fear the rich will hoard it and never help the poor unless forced. The right trusts the rich to invest wisely and donate to charities. Catholics understand that wealth can corrupt, and thus there are rich people who do despicable things in the pursuit of more wealth. Catholics also acknowledge that a man who works hard to earn wealth shouldn’t be punished for working hard. Work is one of the great means with which we glorify God, and when you punish the rewards of work, you deter man from working.

We hear a lot on the campaign trail about the merits of a man who is willing to come across the aisle and work with the other party to pass bills. We hear endless talk about partisan politics dividing the nation. We see so much activity in Congress directed towards blocking bills from the floor, keeping bills from debate, filibustering bills, and in general accomplishing nothing. The message of change continually bantered about is a change in which all differences are set aside and Congress actually passes bills the help our beleaguered nation.

Yet there is a fallacy inherent in this thirst for change, and I hear it from people who view partisan politics with cynicism and dismay. They hear radically different views from the left and from the right—there is global warming, there isn’t; capitalism, socialism; pro-choice, pro-life—and conclude that the reality must be somewhere in the middle. Maybe there is global warming, but it isn’t as bad as the Democrats make it sound. Surely some amount of socialism is necessary to rein in the unbridled greed of the capitalists. Obviously abortion is bad, but it shouldn’t be eliminated for some of those rare, tough situations. Thus all the stalling and partisan politics should take a back seat to compromise.

The fallacy is this: compromise works in favor of the party that realizes it can eventually pass its agenda by forcing the other party from its position. If we feel anything should go on television, we get the prudish critics to approve some mildly offensive language. And then we get them to approve some adult situations. Then we ask for scenes that are somewhat sexually explicit, and after long rounds put them on primetime television. And then we go for more and more offensive language, more adult situations, more sexually explicit material. After so many compromises, it looks as though one side completely folded, and the other held firm to its guns.

It is amazing how far we have compromised ourselves from the truth, from what is right. As bad as an Obama presidency would be, we still must realize that a McCain presidency is a compromise.

As a final note, there is something uncompromising about “You shall love your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength.”

NFL Week 8

2008-10-23T08:03:00.000-07:00

BAL @ OAK: BAL (A good defense can stymie OAK, and BAL has a good defense. I don't expect a high score, though. 17-13)

ARI @ CAR: CAR (I simply give this to the home team. CAR has shown the ability to both trounce and be trounced. ARI has a history of not doing well, and this season has not been doing well on the road. I think this is a game to watch, though. 24-20)

TB @ DAL: TB (Losing quarterback hurts, and last week's loss against STL highlighted problems with DAL other than offensive woes. The combination of Romo's absence and a defense that has for most of the season permitted the opponent to remain in the game does not bode well. 27-17)

WAS @ DET: WAS (In trying to debate a potential upset, I looked at a couple of factors. One, while WAS lost to STL, STL has done a major transformation in the change of head coaches. This isn't necessarily a huge negtaive for WAS. Two, WAS has done well, and they shut down a CLE offense that is quite capable of racking up the points. Three, while DET has played two close games in the past couple of weeks, consider that neither HOU nor MIN have the greatest defenses. True, MIN's defense is good against the run, but consider that MIN gives up 21 points a game and gave up over 40 against CHI. HOU is rank 31st in giving up points. These factors suggest to me another loss for DET. 24-10)

BUF @ MIA: BUF (MIA's success has come from some very well-executed gimmicks, and other teams have adjusted enough to dampen their victory march. Still, should be a good game to watch. 23-20)

SD @ NO: NO (The question becomes who can put up the more offense. SD has not been running the ball well and might try to make gains there, but NO's run defense isn't terrible. The passing game will be key, and SD is rank 32nd in pass defense. I think this will be a high-scorer. 36-30)

ATL @ PHI: PHI (I give this to the home team just off a bye week. I expect the defense will harry ATL's rookie QB, and McNabb will put up some good numbers. 27-10)

KC @ NYJ: NYJ (KC has lost Croyle and Huard for the season; Johnson is not going to play because of legal charges; the whole team is still reeling this season. I won't say it will be a cakewalk for Favre and NYJ, but I think Favre will redouble his efforts after last week's disappointing loss to OAK. 26-9)

STL @ NE: STL (DEN has a tendency to make third-stringers look like Pro-Bowlers, so NE's victory over DEN doesn't mean a whole lot. At the same time, winning against DAL and an absent Romo doesn't necessarily mean much for STL. If NE thinks it has a running game and a defense just from playing DEN, they'll choke on STL. This will probably look more like STL's win over WAS, though--uncertain until the final play. 17-14)

CIN @ HOU: HOU (HOU is better than their record shows, and CIN is just as bad as their record shows. Without Palmer and with Ocho-Cinco not performing very well, HOU should manage to force CIN to 0-8. 28-20)

CLE @ JAC: CLE (I'm going out on a limb here, but if CLE can put together a game like they did against NYG, they should do well. Consider that JAC's last victory came over DEN, who has been playing notoriously poorly of late, the two teams should be well matched up. 20-19)

NYG @ PIT: PIT (I think PIT is a slightly better team and has home-field advantage. It should be a predominantly defensive game. 17-13)

SEA @ SF: SF (Really just a home team pick here. Potential things that favor SF: new coach, division rival, has already beat SEA. Potential things against SF: new coach, division rival, has already beat SEA. 22-21)

IND @ TEN: IND (I pick this as an upset game. I don't think IND is back together yet, but who knows? 16-14)

Confidence: 9-5

Week 7: 6-8
Week 6: 8-6
Week 5: 9-5
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4

O the Secular Outside is Frightening...

2008-10-23T06:32:00.000-07:00

Recent news relates how a campaign is starting in London to pull ads promoting God off the side of the famous red, double-deck buses. Prominent among the protesters is Richard Dawkins, famed evolutionist and author of the "God Delusion". Apparently, the protesters are upset about messages posted by Christian groups that nonbelievers will go to hell, and they wish to counter with

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Being a devout Catholic myself, I look at that statement with a mixture of amusement and disbelief. I know that they really want to say "There is no God", but could not pull that off because of the defensible public outrage. They can't make it a definitive statement because they don't have any proof there is no God. (Oh, they offer arguments against God, but believers aren't convinced any more than atheists are convinced about arguments for God.)

I can understand the atheists' dismay at the Christian message of "Believe or go to Hell", because that tends to be an abrasive statement. And it is partially misleading, because ultimately none of us make the decision as to someone else's eternal destination. That is truly between a person and God. But the message is partly right, as well, because a disbelief in God could very easily put a person's soul at risk. If Hell is the chosen eternal separation from God, proclaiming and trying to adhere to a disbelief in God is very risky.

The reason that I can qualify that even an atheist might not face eternal damnation is because he might be seeking the Truth, the justice, and righteousness that is God, but have a fundamentally mistaken notion of God. Because of this notion, he cannot in good conscience believe in God, but he would if he had the correct understanding.

Practically, though, it must seem that the above case is vanishingly rare. Too many atheists we come across don't want to believe in God because God interferes too much with their lives. Thus the "stop worrying and enjoy your life." They think God ruins all our fun.

(John Zmirak has some good articles here, here, here, and here on how God takes all the fun out of life.)

My complaint about the protesters' slogan, though, is not their denial of God. That's their prerogative, not mine. What irks me, though, is the "stop worrying and enjoy your life" part. I know for me, coming to an understanding of the nature of God and the teachings of the Catholic Church connected all the disparate pieces together that once upon a time seemed in odd and even contradictory juxtaposition. Coming home to my faith removed a huge amount of worry from my life. It gave my life meaning. It offered clear reasons why certain actions the religious always condemn are wrong. It offered clear solutions to problems that plagued my life and plague society as a whole. It isn't easy, by any means, following these teachings, and they do carry their own bundle of worries with them, but I'm fundamentally better off for my belief in God.

Absent that, how can I stop worrying? If this life is all there is, how can I but worry? How can I hope to make a good life, when a single stupid decision or even a freak accident can ruin everything? Consider the hurricanes that have ravaged our coast lines. Consider the financial crisis. Consider the terrorists in the world. Consider all the things we do in our lives that make relating to other people difficult if not impossible. With so many calamities that threaten to destroy our fragile, ephemeral existence, how can we but worry?

Indeed, I could go on to argue that as a society grows increasingly secular and people become increasingly agnostic if not outright atheist, they find themselves with a fundament anxiety they cannot shake. They seek to fill their lives with material possessions, emotional fulfillment, and physical pleasure in order to dilute the anxiety, or at least keep their minds off of it for the time being. As we progress away from God, we only become more keenly aware of something missing in our lives. The result? We devote our lives to toys, where having the latest video game console and a high-bandwidth internet connection is the most important aspect of our lives. Or we devote ourselves to pleasure, and fill our lives with rampant promiscuity, ever on the lookout for that perfect orgasm that will fulfill our lives--for the next thirty seconds. Or we sit before the TV and vicariously experience life from the couch with the remote in one hand and a bag of potato chips in the other. (Or it could be corn chips with salsa, like at my apartment.) And all of these things can be taken away from us at a moment's notice. Our toys can break, or be stolen, or be lost in an accident. Our fall lineup can be a total flop, and then we're stuck on reruns and the miserable boredom in that nothing new is on. Or we experience that orgasm, and then try to seek it again and again with new and different people (different sex, same sex, same age, different age, animal...), degrading those people to nothing more than a penetration device or an orifice.

No thanks. I'll keep God in my life, I'll explain time and again that in all likelihood God exists, and I'll even keep the worry that hell awaits me if I ultimately choose against God. There's less worry for me that way.

Deaths in the family

2008-10-20T06:17:00.000-07:00

As a quick note, Sara's step-grandfather, David Bollinger, died Saturday night after a long struggle with Lou Gehrig's disease. He was Zita's third husband (Zita being the mother of Sara's mother).

Also, on Sara's step-father's side of the family, Estella Graham passed away Friday night after dealing with a malignant brain tumor. She had undergone extensive treatment, and during one of her surgeries, she suffered from a stroke.

Please pray for the repose of the souls of Dave and Stella.

Dropping Heath Care Already?

2008-10-17T07:09:00.000-07:00

Apparently Hawaii decided it couldn't continue its universal health care. Proponents of this system were greatly disappointed, to be sure, but here are a few crucial factors everyone should pay attention to:

A state official said families were dropping private coverage so their children would be eligible for the subsidized plan.

"People who were already able to afford health care began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free," said Dr. Kenny Fink, the administrator for Med-QUEST at the Department of Human Services. "I don't believe that was the intent of the program.

and:

State health officials argued that most of the children enrolled in the universal child care program previously had private health insurance, indicating that it was helping those who didn't need it.

When you're willing to offer free care, who wouldn't want to opt for it instead of paying for their own?

Of course, this program was dropped because of funding shortfalls, even though the program only costs the state $50,000 or so a month. Keep in mind that this amount covers only about 2000 of the 3500-16,000 uninsured children the state hoped to cover. Assuming Hawaii was willing to spend the same $25 per child once it had every kid on board, that would amount to $87,500 to $400,000 a month, or $1,050,000 to $4,800,000 a year. That doesn't sound like a whole lot, considering the amount of money the federal government throws around, but it is a fair amount for a state's budget.

Week Seven Picks

2008-10-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

SD @ BUF: SD (BUF is a decent team, but they don't have a high-powered offense. The defense will hopefully make it a game, but SD will probably dominate the whole way through. 27-17)

NO @ CAR: NO (NO has the ability to play a fabulous game away from home. They just need to not hinge the game on a last-minute field goal attempt. 26-18.)

MIN @ CHI: CHI (It might be risky routing for CHI again, but MIN barely eked out a win against DET last week, and their stunning victory over NO came courtesy of NO running out of feet to shoot themselves in. It will be touch-and-go, though. 22-21)

PIT @ CIN: PIT (Two key factors are for PIT, namely that Palmer is still out and that Big Ben plays very well in Ohio. The one factor against PIT is that a team at 0-6, looking at a potential 0-7, against a division rival can play very, very hard. 20-16)

TEN @ KC: TEN (I think KC will need one more game to start pulling things together, now that Croyle is back. 17-13)

BAL @ MIA: MIA (It seems this season that MIA is no longer M.I.A. Their heartbreaking loss to HOU last week should compel them to make sure BAL won't ever come close to closing the deal. 33-14.)

SF @ NYG: NYG (I expect that NYG might be a little more conservative on play calling this week, given the trouncing last week against CLE, but the defense should harry O'Sullivan and shut down Gore, and Ward should have a good running game. 24-14)

DAL @ STL: DAL (Without Romo, it will be tough, but their running game should push them through. 17-12)

DET @ HOU: HOU (HOU managed to pull it all together against a high-scoring MIA offense, and they nearly had it won against IND. DET, however... 27-10)

IND @ GB: IND (I think this will be a slugfest, as Manning and Rodgers face off. 38-35)

NYJ @ OAK: NYJ (New coach, reeling from losses, facing an ever-improving NYJ offense. I expect OAK will actually perform adequately, but it won't be enough. 24-22)

CLE @ WAS: CLE (Sometimes a big win kickstarts everything, other times it is a let down. Everything clicked last week for CLE, and think it will stick this week. 27-21)

SEA @ TB: TB (As well as TB is playing, and as poorly as SEA is doing without Hasselback, this should be another dominating performance by TB. 21-7)

DEN @ NE: DEN (Maybe I'm just playing my favorite here, but DEN definitely has the capability of mimicking SD's performance last week. It doesn't mean they will--this is DEN after all. But with SD surging behing them, they need the win, and hopefully the loss to JAC will spark them to greater efforts. 31-23)

Confidence: 9-5

Week 6: 8-6
Week 5: 9-5
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4

American Catholic Doings

2008-10-16T07:32:00.001-07:00

I have a new post up on abortion. I hope I made my point clear, but sometimes it feels like you can write for pages upon pages and never stress the severity of the situation.

Credulity at its best...

2008-10-16T07:18:00.000-07:00

It goes to show what people will believe. What is really wonderful is how our tax and tuition dollars went to bringing this fellow here. I did appreciate how he was willing to throw a bone to Christianity:

In fact, many think it is silly to believe in such things, he said. But even traditional Christian beliefs place importance on the supernatural.

“There was a guy a long time ago. This guy was walking along in the desert … and, there was a bush there, and all the sudden the bush just flamed up and the bush began to talk,” Fixico said, smiling.

Yup. Christianity is just another take on all this spirituality stuff.

Wyoming Monastery

2008-10-16T07:12:00.000-07:00

It is small, but growing, and is a great tribute to our tiny state.

As is our growing Catholic College near Lander.

Some important links

2008-10-15T14:36:00.000-07:00

Abortions due to rape at 1%.

AGI studies on abortion.

A 2001 discussion giving 9 reasons against abortion.

2005 abortion statistics.

Some risks of having an abortion.

A Kantian take on abortion.

A nice collection of abortion facts.

Wyoming's Attitude Toward Homosexuals

2008-10-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

Check it out here. 10 years later, I still know nothing about Matthew Shephard except that he was a practicing homosexual and was killed by a couple of drunk people who took exception to his homosexuality.

What gets me about the article is how it immediately introduces a mother worried about whether or not one of her children might be homosexual, and how after Shepard's tragic death, she realized that homosexuals have as much value as anyone else.

The problem with the description of this mother's change of opinion is that it makes the mistake of confusing two issues. The first is the potential for self-serving, sinful behavior that occurs when one seeks sexual pleasure outside of a loving, committed marriage; the other is the value and dignity inherent in each human being, regardless of behavior or sexual orientation.

I have homosexual friends, and I value their friendship greatly. Their choices to live in an actively homosexual lifestyle are not choices I can condone. There is no contradiction here, and no homophobia. It is one thing to think a friend's behavior is harmful; quite another to despise him in entirety for it.

My satire on child abandoment wasn't satirical enough

2008-10-14T07:06:00.001-07:00

I just learned about Nebraska's safe-have laws a couple of days ago while talking with our department's Systems Administrator, and now we have this. It is sad that parents would come to Nebraska to abandon their children, but should we be surprised?

We live in a society that hates children. Oh, there are plenty of people remaining who see children as blessings, but our society itself hates children. They get in the way of careers and free time and all the promiscuous, mind-blowing sex we think we should be having. It isn't any wonder that there are 1.5 million abortions a year in the U.S., and that a tragically high percentage of babies with identifiable problems are killed because of the inconvenience they would cause.

I suppose the cynic in me is surprised that more children are dumped off at Nebraska hospitals. Maybe most people feel that if they stick with it through pregnancy and the first year or so, they may as well continue.

What ethics remain?

2008-10-14T06:52:00.001-07:00

In a recent "stunning" revelation, another congressman, Democrat Tim Mahoney, allegedly paid $121,000 dollars to a mistress who worked with him during his campaign against Mark Foley. Mahoney is married.

I understand quite well that Foley deserved to be removed from his post due to his philandering around with the interns. Grooming homosexual partners is a terrible wrong, not necessarily for the homosexuality, but for the larger picture of what Foley was doing: preparing people to have sex with him in an uncommitted relationship. I'm sorry, but I find it despicable that an older man would try to groom an under-aged person, even if the intent is to wait until majority. The only reason to wait is to narrowly evade the letter of the law. It doesn't change the fact that Foley was only looking for a means to glut himself on pleasure at another person's expense.

And now his replacement has followed a similar path. There must be something about Florida, I guess. Can't figure out how to hold elections, can't seem to elect decent candidates.

The only way to be sure to avoid a sex scandal is to realize that sex isn't recreation. It isn't about getting your pleasure fix. It is about a surrender and giving in the most intimate way possible. I would say that it is about true love, but people don't even know what love is anymore. Love is a choice to willingly devote oneself to another. Most people seem to think love is just the warm, gushy feelings. Those are nice, but they're not always present. But that doesn't mean that love goes away.

I hope this Mahoney is canned. A man who would cheat on his wife isn't someone I want in office.

Blogging

2008-10-13T14:50:00.000-07:00

There must be some kind of knack to blogging. Maybe it's because I think that everything I write should be earth-shattering, heathen-converting mind-candy. But when I stop and think about it, I find that I spend a couple hours each day just keeping up on all the news and viewpoints. Then it takes a couple of hours to write a decent, well-thought-out post. Then there's all the rest of the stuff that I need to do, and there never seems to be enough hours in a day for it all.

Maybe you have to be professional about it. Maybe you can't just blog in your spare time. Or maybe there is a particular knack. You go out, you see things, you write quickly about them. You link to other blogs, write a witty sentence, and then move on. Maybe part of blogging is just repeating what others have said. If you're popular enough, maybe you can become one of the stops on someone's cruise through relevant material.

I don't know. Sometimes I feel intimidated. Whenever I look at Mark Shea's Blog, I feel inadequate. Sure, he's been doing this stuff for years, but he manages something like 10 posts a day, and that's by mid-morning.

Maybe my problem is that I'm too theoretical. Maybe I have problems getting to the point with practical issues. Maybe I'm too uninterested in every detail that occurs in the world, since I tend to only concentrate on big issues.

I just peeked in at Michelle Malkin's Blog. I know she's famous, I know she's published books, and I know she speaks on Fox News like every other day. And yet her blog is rife with things. Is this just a case of her being more motivated than me, or is it her years and years of experience?

I guess I'll just have to step up my efforts. I'll have to learn how to type 1000 words in five minutes, making every one count. I'll have to learn how to read through 10,000 websites in half-an-hour, to make sure I can catch everything important and still have time to write and research.

Oh, yeah, research. I should probably get back around to that someday. I'm a terrible student, I really am.

Global Warming Conspiracy Theory

2008-10-13T10:17:00.000-07:00

I don't keep track of very many blogs, but I thought I'd try to be among the first to connect the dots and blame Bush, not for wasteful spending and bad economic policies, but for deliberately wrecking the economy for the sake of the oil companies.

Here's how it goes:

1) Everyone knows that Bush is in the pay of big oil. He's an oil man himself. When oil profits, he profits.

2) Congress was getting dangerously close to passing a bill that would require reductions in greenhouse gases, specifically carbon dioxide. The passage of that bill would hurt big oil, because after all, burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide.

3) The big factor with "going green" was that it would cost a lot more, both to fund subsidies for "clean" and "renewable" sources of energy and for average Joe Six-Pack to pay for his energy costs.

4) Crashing the economy was the only viable way to preserve the dominance of the oil companies. With the economy in a tailspin, Congress wouldn't dream of passing their bill to reduce emissions. The cost of doing so on top of the huge loss of savings would spark lynch mobs.

So it is all Bush's fault. The economic crisis was entirely his doing, and was a deliberate attempt to forestall world-saving bills that would have hurt his oil company cronies.

What is it that you do here?

2008-10-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

One of the problems of being a theoretical computer scientist is that it is difficult to justify to the lay person just what it is that we do. In a flippant moment, I just say, "I stare off into space and try to think of theorems to prove." It is easier than the following: "I examine the relations between classes defined by reductions to sparse sets, because the ramifications of those sets having measure zero have implications for the relation between P and NP." The reason it is easier is because in this second explanation, I have to explain classes and reductions and what it means for a a set (i.e. a language) to be sparse, and then I need to explain P and NP why the question as to whether they are equal is important. And then I need to explain why sparse sets are important in the relation between P and NP, which involves not only those classes themselves, but also Boolean circuit classes like P/poly, and the ramifications into derandomization... It is a mess to explain, and most people don't have the hours it takes just to understand the basic principles at play.

Still, there's an answer I wish I could give, but I can't since it isn't my research. I could simply say: "Theoretical computer science tells us that it is impossible to have a 100% reliable virus detector." The explanation of that is probably a little too complex for the lay person, but here it goes.

There's a problem in computer science, a language (a set of strings) defined as follows:

HALT = { < m,x > | Program M halts on input x}

This is the notorious halting problem, which no computer program can solve. Why? Well, suppose such a program exists, and call it N. We can encode N as a string, as we can do with all programs (how do you think they're stored on your hard drive, after all?). Then we can make a new program P:

P: Input x. If N halts on x, run forever. Else, halt.

Now, in similar fashion, we can encode P as a string (which, of course, depends on being able to encode N as a string). Furthermore, we can feed P itself as an input! But then, what do we have? Does P on input P halt? Well, if it does, then P should run forever (i.e. doesn't halt), and if it doesn't halt, it does. Obviously this is a contradiction. Since this was based on assuming the halting problem has a program that decides it. So there must be no program for the halting problem.

Now let's turn to the problem of our foolproof virus checker. Current day virus checking programs look for signatures, i.e. particular patterns in the binary code of a suspicious program. But we know that isn't successful, because that requires knowing the signature ahead of time, and besides, suppose we had the signature somewhere in the code, but the program is built to never execute the signature. Then it might not be a virus at all. So we want our foolproof virus checker to be capable of examining a program and telling us decisively if it is a virus (i.e. the program is capable of replicating itself, and perhaps does damage in the process).

But here's the thing. Having a foolproof virus checker would give us a program to solve the halting problem, which we have already shown cannot have a program. Here's the proof:

Suppose we know that Program A is a virus, i.e. if it runs, it will replicate itself and perhaps do some damage to the computer. We can pad A with useless instructions that do not affect how A functions (save maybe that A will run a little slower). This is one method virus-writers use to defeat signature checking, by the way. So let's take an instance of the halting problem, some pair < m,x > . We want to know if M halts on input x. Well, we create Program B by "padding" A with the code of running M on x. In other words,

B: Run M on x. Then run Program A.

In other words, if M halts on x, B has the same properties of A. Since A is a virus, B must also be a virus. However, if M doesn't halt on x, B never executes A, and thus can't be a virus, since it doesn't replicate itself or damage the computer (besides running forever, of course).

Here's the catch: our foolproof virus-checker can then decide the halting problem. It examines B, and if B is a virus, then M must halt on x. If B isn't a virus, then M must run forever on x. But, as we said before, no program can decide the halting problem, so our foolproof virus-checker is a sham. It can't exist.

I think this statement in justification of theoretical computer science is one that would help explain our field's importance in once sense. But then, it might also turn people off to the field, if all we can do is assure the public that no computer is 100% safe from viruses!

Week Six Picks

2008-10-09T10:42:00.000-07:00

DET @ MIN: MIN (MIN put together a good defense against the high-powered NO offense, with the result of two recovered fumbles, a blocked field goal run back for a touchdown, and general mayhem. DET, on the other hand, hasn't pulled anything together yet, and I don't expect they will do so. 24-10)

CHI @ ATL: CHI (CHI is going to shut down ATL's running game, and that will pose a big problem for QB Matt Ryan. 19-9)

OAK @ NO: NO (Head coach changes may or may not have a large effect, especially if the removal of Lane Kiffin relieves tensions. On the other hand, OAK has not managed to hold onto leads and in general has not played well. That gives NO the advantage on offense, but it will probably be close. 28-24)

CIN @ NYJ: NYJ (I expect this to be a close game with lots of points, though possibly with Favre making points for both teams with big plays and interceptions. 33-30)

MIA @ HOU: HOU (HOU performed well against IND until a last minute debacle. If they're ready for MIA's tricks and protect the ball, they'll do well. 21-17)

CAR @ TB: CAR (CAR's success has largely been due to shutting down the run and forcing QB's to throw. Against KC, they totally remove Larry Johnson from the picture, and they did similarly well against ATL. This will probably be close, though. 24-21)

BAL @ IND: IND (Just picking favorites here. BAL has a good defense, but if Manning shows his stuff, that won't be a huge hindrance, especially since IND isn't running the ball much. On the other hand, BAL could finally have a good scoring game due to IND's defense. It will probably come down to the line again. 24-23)

STL @ WAS: WAS (STL hasn't managed to do anything in any of its 4 games, and WAS has shown an impressive performances against DAL and PHI. 28-13)

JAC @ DEN: DEN (This probably just another picking my favorite, but DEN can move the ball on offense, and its defense actually showed up last week. There's a chance. 28-26)

DAL @ ARI: ARI (ARI is capable of putting up the points, and I expect this to be a shootout. 35-30)

PHI @ SF: PHI (This will probably be more of a defensive battle than it should be. 17-13)

GB @ SEA: GB (I simply think GB is struggling less, and will manage a sound offensive battle against SEA. In addition, looking at SEA's miserable loss to NYG might help the GB defense to pull together. 26-20)

NE @ SD: NE (I predict another heart-breaking loss for SD, but that might just be wishful thinking. 22-21)

NYG @ CLE: NYG (This could be CLE's chance to turn their game around. Supposing, of course, that NYG fails to show up in the same fashion that DEN failed to show up in Arrowhead Stadium in KC. 31-14)

Confidence: 9-5

Week 5: 9-5
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4

American Catholic Doings

2008-10-09T10:22:00.000-07:00

I have a new article up at The American Catholic, dealing with the place of religion in politics. Simply put, I am grotesquely verbose about a simple fact: everybody has religious beliefs, and those influence their policies. You cannot remove religion from politics, and simple honesty demands that we acknowledge our religion so that people can better evaluate our claims.

I didn't want the whole article to devolve into a finger-point mess, so I'll state it here. Part of the problem with our presidential candidates at the moment is that it is very, very hard to fully understand what they believe. Obama especially has spent so much time hiding his past and has such a small record that it is impossible to know where he's coming from (other than 20+ years under Reverend Wright). In addition, once politicians seize the nomination and start "moving towards the middle" to attract the undecided voters, it becomes even more difficult to tell what they really believe.

I think an honest discourse in which each candidate reveals his religious viewpoints, especially regarding the origins and ends of mankind, would help immensely figuring out whether or not we can believe them when they flip-flop on issues or change course.

Give blood!

2008-10-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I donated two units of red blood cells, which is always entertaining. They remove a pint of blood, separate out the blood cells, and then return the plasma, which is mixed with a room-temperature saline solution. Brr! And then they repeat the process one more time.

Donating blood does wipe a person out, but it is a great thing to do. I would ask everyone who is capable to donate as frequently as possible. There are lives at stake, and every bit helps.

The Second Debate is Over

2008-10-08T09:26:00.001-07:00

I missed most of the second debate. My sister was visiting, and Sara and I were busy introducing her to Mario Kart Wii. But she left around 8, allowing me the chance to catch the last half-hour, and then the endless punditry following.

Some quick personal thoughts:

1) History does matter. I though Palin's remark to Biden during the VP debate, "Say ain't so, Joe. There you go again, looking back...", was a flake (not to mention forced and deliberately Reagan-esque). Biden was right. History is the prologue. We have to look at history to know causes and possibilities. We need to know how we reached the present, and seeing the interrelation between cause and effect will help us judge what might happen in the future. Thus it is valuable to know voting records. They help us judge how likely it is that a candidate will follow through with his campaign promises.

2) Honesty matters. A candidate who cooks the books and spins the facts is not one I want to vote for. Unfortunately, that apparently disqualifies both candidates. They repeatedly, ad nauseum, misrepresent the other's position, exaggerate numbers, and make false accusations. Each time they get called on their fouls, it hurts their causes. Unfortunately, McCain seems less capable of making firm, indignant responses to Obama's charges, and thus he loses there.

3) A person can be guilty by association. But people can change, too. Whether or not the William Ayers connection has any merit depends greatly upon how radical Ayer's views are now, and how much those views influence Obama. Dick Morris, in his interview on Hannity and Colmes, noted that there are still radical elements to Ayer's modus operandi, and that there is strong evidence that Obama is in lockstep with him in terms of education. This could be an important point.

4) Obama's campaign manager tried to force Sean Hannity to back away from the guilt-by-association charge by accusing Hannity of being anti-Semitic for having an anti-Semite on his show. He obviously wanted Hannity to say something along the lines of, "I'm not anti-Semitic because I was in the same room as an anti-Semite," which would have been a great "gotcha" moment. And it was a good point, until he kept belaboring it when Hannity wouldn't fall into his trap. Hannity made a clear point: on his show, he hosts many people who ideologically disagree with him, the point being that sometimes you have to show how crazy the crazies really are. In addition to that, we don't see Hannity making policy based on his association with his anti-Semitic guest.

5) Health care is an issue I can only gawk at. Programs like Medicare and Medicaid, imprudent health insurance policies, and out-of-control lawsuits have driven the price of health care through the roof. I feel great sympathy for those who have been forced into bankruptcy because of high medical bills. (The commercial running quite often, featuring people who had to file for bankruptcy due to medical costs could have done better than someone who couldn't fit a $50,000 bill. Sara's cousin Jason was involved in a motorcycle accident that nearly killed him, and the treatment required to save his life ran over a million dollars.) But I don't see how Obama's plan will help matters. Insurance for pre-existing conditions? It is a nice dream, but makes no sense in practice. In fact, it doesn't make sense in terms of what insurance is about. But McCain's message on health care could use a few rewrites. He needs to explain exactly how his plan will benefit the average American, and how Obama's won't. As long as that is missing, Obama can keep promising fantasies.

Who I Believe Brings Change

2008-10-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

On a quick note, I just have to say that I don't believe Obama will bring change as president of the United States. Part of the problem I have simply comes from listening to the candidates talk and what solutions they propose. Obama, better than McCain, scores political points, has talking points a mile long, and is, in his own right, decent at identifying problems.

It is his solutions that terrify me. Part of my reaction is sub-rational: when I look at what McCain proposes, as modest as those proposals are, I have a gut-feeling that he won't do much to hurt things, though I might remain skeptical as to where he will fix things. When I read Obama's proposals, or listen to him speak, I have a gut-feeling that he is going to tank the economy, and in general make matters worse.

I have some basic knowledge of economics. That can be boiled down to three points:

1) Supply and demand. You get full points on a Econ 101 exam by simply drawing an X on a chart and labeling one as supply and the other as demand. The reason is simple: the concept itself is simple to understand, but it is vital.

2) A man can increase capital through his own blood, sweat, and tears. In agriculture, assuming decent weather conditions, a farmer could increase capital by growing more crops. Simple as that.

3) When the costs are hidden, or something is free, people will take as much as they can, regardless of need. (This excludes those rare cases of something being so bad you couldn't give it away.)

What does Obama want to do with his economic policies? He wants to ignore supply and demand; he wants to cripple capital-making processes; and he wants to hide costs.

I might be completely out on a limb on economic policies, but this seems like a recipe for disaster. In my opinion, only someone who doesn't have the slightest clue of where money actually comes from could possibly think Obama's economic strategies are sound.

It seems like if you ask a liberal where money comes from, his answer will be (with a deer-in-headlights type expression): "The rich?"

The American Catholic Is UP

2008-10-06T08:52:00.001-07:00

The American Catholic is up and running, and I've even made my first post. I'm excited to be on board, and I hope I live up to everyone's expectations. My Catholic faith is very important to me, and this is, I hope, a first step in a lifelong journey of active apologetics and living the faith.

Hidden Costs

2008-10-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

The problem with trying to determine the moral path through economic policies is rooted in unforeseen consequences. In almost any plan, there are hidden costs that somehow make inexpensive plans require much more funding than originally anticipated.

In college, I see this all over the place. I came to the University of Wyoming in 1999 on the Trustee's Superior Student Scholarship, which paid for tuition, fees, room, and board, so I didn't necessarily have to worry so much about costs (and therein lies a problem), but I could see how numerous costs were inflated due to good intentions, but poor policies.

In the dorms, where I lived for four out of my five undergraduate years, I had the opportunity to witness just how hidden costs keep hurting us. Now, the dorms at UW were operated fairly simply. There was a fixed cost of living in a dorm room, and that covered phone, electricity, water, heating, and internet services. There was a fixed cost of any particular meal plan for dining in the Washakie Dining Hall.

The idea behind fixed costs is that some use more and some use less, and it is more effective to charge the average. Thus you tend to lose out with some customers, but on others you gain back the difference. And fixed costs are attractive to people. I know nowadays when I page through the classifieds looking for a new place to live, the places where utilities are a fixed part of the rent seem more appealing, and for a good reason. If I don't have to worry about the electricity bill, I can use all the electricity I want without worry. If I don't have to worry about water or natural gas, then I can take all the long, hot showers I want.

Perhaps where I would like to focus my attention the most, though, is on the Washakie Dining Hall, because that is where I've seen the most waste. And it is telling. While any particular meal plan carries a fairly high cost per meal, once you're inside the hall, you can take as much as you want and keep going back for more, if you so desire.

What you tend to see, then, is people who grab the main course, or possible two, heap up their trays with all kinds of side dishes, pick at their food, and then send most of it back to the kitchens to be thrown away.

What was really interesting was that people actually justified their waste. "If Washakie is going to charge so much more a meal plan, then I need to make sure I'm getting my money's worth." Friends of mine would load up their trays with stuff they didn't want and let it all be thrown away in an infantile desire to "stick it to the man."

For some odd reason, the cost of meal plans kept increasing every year.

I know a number of universities will offer meal plans, but then have a price attached to each course a person could select, which provides incentive to only take what one could afford. In addition, those plans carried with them much less waste, as people realized if they didn't finish what they took, then they had wasted their money. There's obviously a hidden cost factor at play here. At UW, that hidden cost factor drives the cost of food up every year, but though the students grumble, they continue to waste, because a fixed cost is a fixed cost.

The question then becomes, is it immoral then to offer fixed cost plans when it is obvious that people abuse the system? Not necessarily. A fixed plan can be very beneficial to many people, both those who offer the plan and those who accept the plan. The immorality comes from those who would abuse the system. But this comes back to matters of restraint, which we Americans don't seem to have. The moral course of action is to not waste, even when we have the opportunity to waste as much as we want without repurcussion.

Why Obama Will Win

2008-10-02T07:03:00.000-07:00

Susan Estrich, a Fox News contributor, has new article posted on the Fox News website regarding a friend of hers who will not be voting for McCain. I find Estrich's columns to be some of the most thoughtful, well-articulated, to-the-point left-wing writing I've ever said. After all the vitriol we tend to her in the left-wing news and blogsphere, coupled with a large dose of finger-pointing and idiocy from the right, it is refreshing to read her posts.

That being said, I think there's a subtle clue in this particular column as to why I think Obama will win. It isn't because he's the new face of change, or that McCain is a warmongerer, or anything like that.

I believe it is because Obama promises goodies. End of story.

Right now, we're in a bit of a financial crisis, and there's concerns of whether this crisis will continue to develop until we're in a widescale depression. On the minds of the people of the United States is not: "how am I going to work through this?" Instead, it is "how is the government going to save me?"

I understand very well that the government exists to protect us. It gives us our laws, it maintains a military against outside forces, it provides a legislative system to adjust laws to be fair, it offers an executive system to enforce those laws for our protection, and in even hands us a judicial system to ensure that disputes are settled, be they civil or criminal. This is all very moving, very touching, very assuring.

So the government protects us from outsiders (or at least it is supposed to), and the government protects us from our neighbors. But the big crisis in our nation, and why I think Obama now will win, is that many of us want the government to protect us from ourselves.

Now, Estrich raises legitimate concerns.

[Rosie] does not believe [McCain] will help people like her: People who are "lucky" to be covered by an HMO where the lines are endless and the care is too often haphazard. It was not her first choice, it was the only insurance she could get. Blue Cross twice rejected her, the first time because she took medication for gastritis. Gastritis? She was lucky to get coverage by the HMO. If she tried now, with arthritis and high blood pressure, not to mention a fussy stomach, even they would turn her down.

The problem of getting health care to those most in need is one of the hot topics in this presidential debate. Who should have insurance and how much that insurance should cover are vital questions. The answers people want is "everyone and everything." Obama wants to promise that; McCain doesn't. And for this, Obama is heralded as a savior, and McCain out of touch with the common person.

I don't necessarily understand the problem Rosie is going through. I have insurance and don't have any health factors that will greatly impede getting insurance. But my mother-in-law suffers from Rosie's problem. For a time she had some strange abdominal pains that no one could explain, and because of this health risk, insurance agencies won't cover her. She's lucky to be on her husband's plan, though it carries a huge deductable, but on her own, she's out of luck. That hardly seems fair, especially considering that in a crisis she could find herself facing backruptcy. No one with any amount of compassion would ever wish that on someone.

Politicians, especially those on the left, want to make sure everyone has insurance, as though health insurance is this magical entity that mystically reduces the cost of health care. But health insurance isn't a panacea by any means, and the idea of making sure everyone is covered ignores the very principles that makes insurance work.

Insurance isn't a basic right owed anyone. If any thing is a basic right owed, it might be the health care itself, which is a subtle distinction, and even then there are arguments to make about it.

Insurance is really just a business. People who started insurance noted that personal disasters can be devastating and practically impossible to recover from. But such disasters are relatively rare. Now, in normal course of events, back in the days when we actually cared about our neighbor and didn't have the government looking over our shoulders to ensure we played nice and fair, lest there be a lawsuit, if one of our neighbors fell into hard times, everyone (or at least a large number of people) pitched in to help. They provided food, water, and shelter, and contacted a friend who had a brother who knew a person who could employ the downtrodden unfortunate.

In some ways, though, this neighborliness can be inefficient and no effective enough. In a small community, no one is going to be able to provide the $6 million needed for the lifesaving operation to rescue the victim of a terrible accident from the brink of death. Thus it isn't necessarily effective. Furthermore, even if at some point in time the community could have afford the $6 million, there was no guarantee that $6 million would be at hand when needed. Thus it isn't necessarily efficient.

The insurance people then offered a service. They would regularly collect small donations that would be put into a fund. When disaster hit, disaster beyond the economic capability of the members, money would be drawn from that fund to aid the victim. It was more efficient because regular payments meant a continual, calculable, and immediately accessible source of money, and if it could attract enough customers, from many communities, then it would be more effective, as well. Of course, since the insurers are offering a service, a portion of those payments would go to salaries.

Now, insurance agencies cannot cover everyone. In order to survive, in order to be capable of helping its customers, it has to have a relatively large body of low-risk customers. It has to rely on the probability that most of the people who pay insurance in fact will never need the insurance. And this immediately creates tension. People at high risk of cancer--like my grandfather, who smoked like chimney and drank like a fish--are those who will most likely face expensive medical procedures beyond their economic capabilities. But these are the people insurance agencies want to cover the least, because they will in turn need large withdrawals from the funds. It is almost self-contradictory. Insurance exists to help people who have to pay enormous amounts of money, and yet if insurance covers those people, it risks going out of business due to have all its funds drained dry.

There are a lot of calculations that need to be made in order to determine, then, who to cover and who not to cover. The agency has to take on some amount of risk, for otherwise it cannot cover anyone. But how much risk is a difficult balancing act. If an agency discovers that 75% of smokers require expensive surgeries, respirators, or other medical services, that agency might decide that covering smokers is too risky. The payouts will be more than the pay-ins, and the company cannot keep afloat. But if the agency instead discovers that only 30% of smokers require expensive treatment, then it might be willing to gamble by covering smokers.

Obama wants to offer health insurance to every American, regardless of medical history. It sounds nice. Those like Rosie and my mother-in-law would finally be able to have insurance. It would certainly be a relief and a boon, especially as the financial crisis tightens budgets, increases unemployment, ruins retirement plans, and cast a cloud of doubt on the future. But the question becomes: if offering health insurance to everyone can be done, why hasn't it been done?

There are two potential answers. One is that the insurance companies are greedy and would rather rake in the money and never pay it back out. The other is that the insurance companies are already stretched as far as they can go, and taking on additional risk would endanger them. If too many risky customers demanded payments all at once, the company could go under.

You know, now that I mention it, that sounds remarkably like something else I've heard about just recently. What was it? Oh yeah! It had something to do with the Democratic government demanding that mortgages be offered to people that couldn't quite make the credit checks, down payments, and other factors required for qualification. When all those people couldn't meet their payments when the housing bubble burst and the economy slowed down, what happened to all those banks? That's right, they collapsed, forcing us to attempt a $700 billion bailout plan.

Of course, the analogy only works if the second case holds, the case where insurance companies are already taking on as much risk as they think they can afford. Who knows? Maybe Obama is right in thinking the insurance providers can take on unlimited amounts of risk and not suffer for it. It's a nice delusion.

The problem isn't that McCain is out of touch with the ordinary person. The problem is more that McCain doesn't have a satisfactory answer for the ordinary person. What is he supposed to say? If he toes the line Obama is, wouldn't he be saying "Well, I'll make sure you get insurance at the risk of the whole system collapsing in ten or fifteen years, just like the mortgage agencies"? Or maybe, "I'll make sure you get insurance, but at the cost of thousands of people losing their jobs as high taxation slows the economy down and forces companies to lay off their workers?" If he follows his principles, could he possibly hope to win by saying, "Sorry, but I can't make thousands of people suffer just for your benefit, so you'll have to regretably fall through the cracks" or "the reality is the government simply can't guarantee you insurance, so you'll have to rely on providence and your neighbors"? Of course he can't say anything like that. But that doesn't mean he's out of touch.

But Obama offers the goodies, which must mean he's in touch with the ordinary person. And that, of course, is why he'll make the presidency.

Vampires

2008-10-01T08:42:00.001-07:00

For a while now, I've had the urge to write about vampires. But then, so has every would-be writer out there. The literature is rife with vampire stories, many of them absolutely atrocious. Of course, if you really want to see bad vampire literature, check out any of the creative writing forums. There's usually a vampire post every few days, and most of them will have your eyes rolling as you think, "oh, please".

If I were to write about vampires, how would I escape the terrible vampire writing that is so prevalent? This is actually quite a daunting task, especially in light of the typical trend towards "good" vampires. You know, the ones that only suck blood of willing victims, or ones that only take their blood from hospitals, or ones that try to get by without drinking blood at all. Part of the reason we see this trend is because historically, vampires have been absolutely evil, and typically only appear in the horror genre. In order to really work with the romantic aspect of the vampire, though, especially if you want to justify your protagonist throwing herself at a vampire, then there has to be some leeway towards goodness. Yet I don't necessarily agree with that trend, because the very concept of a vampire seems to require insurmountable innate evil.

I come to this conclusion because I see vampires through a Catholic lens. Let's see what we can deduce from Catholic teaching applied to some of the common details surrounding vampires. Vampires are undead, drink the blood of the living, and are usually vulnerable to holy relics in some form, sunlight, a stake through the heart, and perhaps even garlic.

Let's look at the undead aspect, of which we first need a good working definition. What does it mean for a creature to be undead? Some might try to describe "undead" as both dead and alive, or neither dead nor alive. In the first case, we see something more akin to one who has died and yet remains supernaturally animated, whereas in the second, one is somehow in a limbo between life and death, with death somehow not complete, but full life somehow incapable of being restored.

Catholic doctrine tells us that the soul is the form of the body. It is the life force, the animating factor. Without the soul, the body is nothing but dust; it is dead. Human beings are a union of body and a spiritual soul; in other words, our animating force is not some material thing, like the souls of plants and animals, which can break down and decay. Our souls are eternal, lasting beyond the death of the body.

With this in mind, we turn to death itself. Death is the complete separation between body and soul, which is obvious since the soul is life force. When the soul leaves, the body cannot be alive. While the soul remains, the body is alive and could potentially be resuscitated. This seems pretty clear-cut. But where could the undead enter? It seems to me that with such a distinction, it makes it hard to argue about a state between life and death, in which life pretty much over but death not quite complete.

What then about the other option? We know from Hebrews that we die once, and after that are judged. What we don't know is exactly what transpires when a soul leaves the body. We know that it goes to Hell if it is in a state of mortal sin, and we know it goes to Heaven if not, maybe via Purgatory. But, given that souls are not spacial entities, what does it necessarily mean for a soul to go to Heaven or to Hell? It is difficult to conceive of these things without any spacial references. Nor do we know how a soul can or cannot interact with the material world once in Heaven or Hell. It certainly seems that entities in Hell have some limited access to the material world. At least, if we believe that the Devil is in Hell, and has been since the rebellion, it seems that he and his legions of fallen angels have some interaction with the material world.

If being undead means having died and then somehow becoming reanimated supernaturally, then it seems that it must follow a procession like this: A person dies, and at the moment of death is judged (his position fixed in eternity), but due to being capable of interacting with the material world, before reaching Hell somehow latches onto his former body and through some supernatural process re-inhabits it. Perhaps the only fictional part of this process is the reestablishment of the soul in the body, which pretty much contradicts Church doctrine.

So which do we pick? Do we suppose some potential interim state between life and death, a point where we can claim that there is no longer life, but death hasn't quite taken complete control, or do we suppose that the soul somehow returns to the body, however imperfectly? The difference, of course, is important in the way that the vampire is ultimately handled. If the former is permitted, then the vampire always stands a chance of redemption, and could potentially be moved by grace. If the latter is to be the case, then vampire is beyond redemption, having already been damned, and yet somehow lingers in the world.

In my humble opinion, the latter seems the easier swallow. We have Biblical evidence of demon possession of living creatures, both human and animal. While there's not anything to say that demons possessed dead or nonliving things, this still gives us the idea that the damned can potentially interact with the world in a more physical sense than just tempting the faithful into sin, and that they can somehow inhabit a material form. It isn't a stretch to apply that to a soul seeking to take back its own decaying body. Whereas to suggest a state between life and death really stretches the notion of the role of the soul as the animating force and the nature of death.

In my next posts, I'll work with the notion that a vampire is a being that died and is attempting to reanimated its former body, and how that works, in a Catholic sense, with some of the other legends surrounding vampires.

NFL Week 5 picks

2008-09-30T12:50:00.000-07:00

TEN @ BAL: BAL (Maybe I just have something against TEN. But BAL's defense is pretty good, and Flacco is pretty impressive. 20-16)

KC @ CAR: CAR (DEN made KC look like Super Bowl contenders, but it is still KC. 24-10)

CHI @ DET: CHI (Da Bears. 20-6)

ATL @ GB: GB (Defensively GB should do well, and as long as Rodgers is good to go, the offense should move the ball. 23-17)

IND @ HOU: IND (The bye hopefully rested IND players enough to start patching things back together. 28-20)

SD @ MIA: SD (MIA might think they're explosive after drubbing NE, but SD is getting back the confidence. 34-30)

SEA @ NYG: NYG (SEA just doesn't have it together this season, and they're on the road. 21-17)

WAS @ PHI: PHI (Defense and McNabb. It will be harder for PHI if Westbrook is still out, but I think they'll manage. 24-20)

TB @ DEN: DEN (Though Griese has shown himself capable of winning against former teams, I think DEN should have its act together for this one. 24-20)

BUF @ ARI: ARI (No feel on this one. 22-17)

CIN @ DAL: DAL (Surely DAL won't lose this one. 30-15)

NE @ SF: NE (Coming off a bye might be the only good thing to say about NE. 21-20)

PIT @ JAC: PIT (JAC is struggling, but the PIT defense is still very strong. Probably another low-scorer. 19-12)

MIN @ NO: NO (MIN tried to be resurgent and didn't do much, but expect a good running game. 21-17)

Strength of confidence: 10-4

Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4

Finger Pointing

2008-09-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

If there is anything that is a bi-partisan measure, it is passing the buck. Regardless of where one might stand on the issue, it is still abhorrent how politicians point fingers, cast off blame, and try to score political points.

On the left, Nancy Pelosi tried to use the necessity of passing the bailout package as an advantage to grandstand and point fingers at the Bush Administration for bringing us here. As far as she is concerned, she is both right and wrong. This government failed to read the writing on the walls and thus curtail bad policies that had been implemented in past administrations. However, Bush's economic policy raised federal revenue to levels previously unseen by cutting taxes to the wealthy and to corporations. On the other hand, Bush's administration did also raise spending to heretofore unseen levels, which also carries part of the blame.

On the right, Republicans in the House used Pelosi's grandstanding as an excuse not to vote for an unpopular bill.

On both sides, there were a large number of Representatives that hoped that they could vote "no" and still have the bill pass. In part because they felt they could score political points, and in part because they feared they would lose reelection if they voted "aye".

Overall, there was a complete failure of conscience, a willingness to place pride and ego ahead of what needed to be done. Now, I think the measure should have failed, and I think we can make it through this crisis without government intervention. There's no guarantee that government intervention will avert crisis in the first place, and though there is precedent that this might actually work, there are so many factors involved that there is no way to predict what will happen. But if a Congressman is willing to vote "no" on a bill in order to secure reelection when his conscience tells him that he should vote "aye", there is a severe problem.

There are a number of things that we need to keep in mind when dealing with our political system. First, there is no divine mandate for the United States of America. God did not direct us to create this nation as He directed the Hebrews to create Israel. The USA is just one nation among many. Someday, it too may just be another chapter in a history book. True, there are many good things about the USA, many things that make it the greatest nation in the world. But that is today. That there is no God-given mandate means that there is no guarantee we'll be the greatest nation in the world tomorrow. The lesson here is that we cannot as a nation feel assured that we will always be on top, that fortune will always favor us, that we can do no wrong.

Second, there is no God-given mandate that we should be a democratic republic. If we cherish our system, we have to realize that we can lose it, that we can hand it over to people who will abuse it, that we can let fall apart through apathy. God won't intervene to save our democracy.

Third, there is no God-given mandate that any particular candidate should take office, no matter his credentials, no matter what office. Any person has only a finite span in office, can only accomplish so much once there.

The lesson here is humility. When we as a nation start speaking, "Our way or the highway," then we had better be sure that our way is the right way. Note: it is not necessarily wrong to say "my way or the highway", because my way might indeed be right. But I also need to act humbly when saying it, and I need to have good reasons for saying it. When we start saying "our way or the highway" for no other reason than other people, other nations disagree with us, then we have abandoned humility and fallen to pride.

When we starting forcing our governmental system on other nations, we need to watch out. We may be right in suggesting they change, but then, we might be wrong as well. We need to make sure our reasons are something more than, "It's what we do."

When we start falling for the mentality that this candidate or that candidate must or must not attain office, we start falling to pride. We, not God, are the ones who know everything, and thus can definitively state that candidate A will bring ruin and wreckage, while candidate B will save us from all sins and bring us to everlasting toys, Amen. Now, we might have very good reasons to believe that candidate A might do terrible things while in office. But he is still one man, and can only do so much. We might have very good reasons to believe that candidate B will issue in an era of prosperity, and that would be nice, but he is still only one man. His era will be finite, and he will probably do other things that will tick us off.

The problem I see in Congress is this. A person runs for office, wanting to make a difference. He finds he has to cater to the voters if he wants to get elected, and so he has to compromise his policies to make it in. Once he's in, he finds himself in a dilemma. Accomplish his agenda, or accomplish what his voters--especially interest groups that funded his campaign--want him to do. Sometimes that isn't too difficult, when policies and agendas coincide. But when there is conflict, we start to see just how our system corrupts our politicians.

It starts out so simply. A candidate thinks that he cannot make a difference if he isn't elected, and so he changes his tune to attract the most voters. Once he's in, he faces the dilemma that if he doesn't please his constituents, then he can't stay in and effect change. Thus he can either keep compromising his policies, perhaps even against his conscience, or he can keep to his conscience and risk losing the next election. It seems like a double bind. He's damned either path he takes.

It reminds me a little of the musical version of "Les Miserables". Valjean sings: "If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned." In this scenario, Valjean, a convict who broke parole and disappeared, only to later establish himself as first a successful businessman and then mayor, faces the horror of learning of some other man accused in his place, accused of being him. If Valjean speaks out, he'll lose his business, and the whole town will return to the economic shambles from which he raised it. He sings: "I am the master of hundreds of workers. They all look to me. Can I abandon them, how will I live, if I am not free?" And yet he eventually comes to the right conclusion.

There was no God-given mandate that the town should be economically prosperous, that Valjean should be mayor, that Valjean should be the savior of all those people. There was a God-given mandate to seek the redemption of his own soul, and there was a God-given mandate that one cannot use evil means to seek a good end. Thus the choice to forsake the town and reveal himself as the true escaped convict was the only one Valjean could justifiably make.

The same situation applies to Congress. No single candidate is our savior. At least, I don't see any of them dying on a cross to redeem our sins. Thus no single candidate has the right to claim the importance of staying in office over doing what is right. Perhaps there is some justification of doing wrong if the Congressman's conscience tells him that the wrong act is somehow right, but that's as far as it can extend. No Congressman is justified in voting against his conscience in order to gain political points and hold onto his office.

It is pride that leads one to believe that somehow the fate of all the nation, perhaps even all of mankind, hinges upon him remaining in office. And yet such a person should be humble. He has been entrusted with an enormous task, that of guiding a nation of hundreds of millions of people, in trying to craft legislation that is good for the nation, and in trying to defeat legislation that he believes will hurt the nation. He should be humble, for he has been given a chance few people ever get. He should be humble, for only then will he be capable of setting aside partisan politics, politics as usual, scoring political points, and so on. He should be humble, do what he believes is right, regardless of party lines or popularity. If he loses office by doing so, then so be it. He did what he could, and if people won't accept what he did, then that's that.

God Himself only showed us the way. He didn't force us to take it. Our politicians should be so humble.

Week 4 Results, with Soapboxing

2008-09-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

Well, as predicted, I only scored 7-6 this week in my picks. The question one might ask: if I could guess that I would only succeed 7-6, why not change my picks to something stronger? The answer: some of these defeats I just couldn't see.

To be perfectly honest, I suppose I could have conceived of Kansas City toppling Denver, since I knew Denver has historically had problems in Arrowhead Stadium, but the Chiefs have been particularly bad this year, whereas Denver at least had an explosive offense. We will see if that continues. Dallas, too, was supposed to be so strong that there was never any hope for Washington, but they, too, were upset. I did call the Jets beating the Cardinals, though certainly not in such a devastating fashion; I did call Tampa Bay over Green Bay; I did call Carolina over Atlanta; likewise Chicago over Philadelphia. The reason I mention those is that they were risky games, ones that I either couldn't call one way or the other, or was taking a gamble. I will admit that picking Houston over Jacksonville and Minnesota over Tennessee were big gambles I made that didn't pay off, but the lesson is this: any given Sunday, anything can happen. A titan will continue plundering or will fall. A weak team comes together for a few brilliant moments to make an upset, or continues playing poorly. Close teams battle it out to the last nail-biting seconds. Games go into overtime and are largely decided by the coin toss.

As Chris Burman says, that's why they play the game.

I was happy to lose my pick last night on Monday Night Football, but in a sense I still feel justified in my choice. A touchdown--finally, after 11 quarters without a touchdown--seemed to bring Pittsburgh back into the game, but then sacking rookie quarterback Flacco, forcing a fumble that was returned for a touchdown, placed the game firmly into the Steelers' hands. Just like that, a game that had gone all Baltimore had become all Pittsburgh. Of course, that didn't mean the game was over--they fought hard for the rest of the half, and then battled it out in overtime. I like Pittsburgh, and so I'm happy they managed a much-needed win.

There's a lesson to be learned from this, though. In games, the tides can turn quickly. In real life, the tides can turn quickly. When we look at the political sphere, a couple of changes in the nation's fortunes can turn the voters from tending to the right to tending to the left, just as a terrorist attack can swing them back right.

The difference: football is game. Yes, some jobs are at stake, but those predominantly are the coaching positions and starting lineup. Politics, while people seem to treat it like a game, is real life. It is deadly serious. Right now, national politics affect some 300 million people.

When we watched the candidates debate, we see them struggling to maintain a good outward appearance while trying to tear the opponent to shreds. It is all about making cheap political points and not giving any away. In this sense, campaigning and legislating and so on is treated as a game, and that is dangerous. If politics is just a game, then the mentality easily becomes that we're not dealing with real people, real money, real problems.

The economy doesn't crash when Kansas City topples Denver 33-19. It does when bad bills are passed in efforts to score political points. When governing this nation is all about posturing, making a better show than the other guy, and trying to benefit a small target constituency rather than doing what is right, then it does seem like a game.

A game we all lose.

Bailout Failure

2008-09-29T12:06:00.001-07:00

So the bailout was voted down, and surprisingly not so much along party lines. The vote count was 205-228. Those voting "yeah" numbered 140 (of 235) Democrats, and 65 (of 199) Republicans, so a sizable portion of each party broke from party lines in regards to this bill.

I must say that I'm not particularly pleased that my own representative, Barbara Cubin, voted "aye", but then, I suppose I'm against the bailout plan.

The larger question is the impact on our nation at the failure to pass this piece of legislation. The headlines scream about plummeting prices on the stock market (Dow Jones down 600+!), and there is rampant concern about savings, job safety, and paying the bills. On the one hand, I think that this is the natural consequence of the bubble bursting, and in a short period of time (a matter of months, perhaps), the economy will stabilize and we'll start our merry way upwards once again. People find out that no too many jobs were lost, and that the "fundamentals" of the economy, i.e. that portion that is still connected to the real world, are indeed still strong.

In this sense, I'm more of a do-nothing economist. The markets will right themselves. And while I feel fairly justified on this position (keep in mind I'm a computer scientist, not an economist), there is still the worry that this does portend even more dire events to come. Certainly our government thinks that a failure to do anything will open the door to doomsday scenarios, but that could simply be that our politicians believe they at least have to make a show of doing something, have some piece of legislation to point back at and say, "See? We did something about this."

I think lancing this sore is good for us, and we can't just cover up the wound with bailout packages. But then, is the infection so widespread that the healing process of bloodletting will bleed us dry before the infection is purged?

I don't have any strong answer on that. I do know that tomorrow morning, I'll wake up at 6:00 AM, have breakfast, read a little from my Bible, come to work around 7:00, and proceed with my normal daily routines. Life will move onward. If the economy tanks, well, I'll handle that somehow. I'll take whatever employment I can get to pay the bills, maybe even work two jobs for insurance.

I do know this. God will provide. It may not be what we want, but it will certainly be what we need. If I can't get my dream $75,000 a year job, well, maybe I should learn to be content with at $15,000 a year job, and live much more simply. Finances will be tight, but I can manage. And if we're willing to quit sniveling and act responsibly, the rest of us should be able to manage, as well, one way or another.

Earmarking a "Venial Sin"

2008-09-29T06:48:00.000-07:00

One of the most important things McCain said in his debate against Barack Obama came early in the talks on economic issues. McCain quoted a friend of his on how pork-barrel earmarking was the gateway drug of wasteful spending. I think it was a point that McCain could have pressed forward on, and properly phrased it would have resonated well with Catholic voters, at least. Obama did not seem to understand, and that is intriguing given that Obama has typically been good at identifying the source of problems. And his lack of understanding should have been exploited, but unfortunately could not have been without taking extra time or wandering far off topic.

McCain cited $18 billion dollars in earmarks made this last fiscal year, and how Obama had earmarked nearly $400 million himself over his short career in the Senate. Now, this does not seem like a lot of money, especially in light of the $700 billion bailout package being debated in Congress, or the trillions of dollars of debt our nation is in. Obama tried to minimize the $18 billion, and I think to an extent he succeeded in diverting McCain’s message about the wasteful spending in earmarks. But McCain did get a parting shot in: “Maybe $18 billion isn’t a lot of money to Senator Obama…”

In the issue of earmarks, McCain is absolutely right. One of most important means of reining reckless government spending is to clamp down on earmarks. True, taking care of earmarks won’t necessarily solve the overall problem, but it takes care of certain interior dispositions that makes reckless spending so easy.

Earmarking is a temptation. Right now, Congressmen can slip in a few hundred thousand here, a couple million there, attaching those dollars to bills that need not have anything to do with the earmark itself. Passing an amendment to remove those earmarks from the bill is not necessarily easy, especially since “everybody” slips in egregious spending from time to time. The whole “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” really is one of the strongest bipartisan efforts in our federal government. On top of that, often it becomes the case of either voting through the earmarks, or letting a good bill that would help thousands of people die.

Our Congressmen have a duty to the American people, and that is to be fiscally responsible in their legislation. They tax income, spending, savings, investments, and so on in order to fund all the government projects. While these projects can be of vital importance—such as the military and Social Security—members of Congress have a duty to make sure that their spending is within the money the government brings in.

The problem is a disconnect between Congress and the money it plays with. Congress feels it can simply throw money around, and if it runs out of money, it can issue bonds, take out loans, or print more. If necessary, it could try to raise revenue by raising taxes, though who to tax is a hotly debated issue. But with this disposition, it is very hard to have even the incentive to be fiscally responsible.

Believe it or not, but this mentality starts with earmarks. There’s a little voice that whispers to us: “it isn’t a lot of money” and “this will please our constituents” and “everybody else does it.” Oddly enough, this sounds very much like temptation that leads us into sin.

If we had to apply labels in this analogy, then we would probably say that earmarking is a venial sin. It is so small in proportion to the larger problem that surely it doesn’t constitute to grave matter. One could easily argue that earmarking pales in comparison to spending hundreds of billions of dollars wastefully in bailing out rich CEOs of failing banks that made insensible risks and now are paying the price for their lack of prudence.

Of course, one could argue that knowingly spending millions of dollars wastefully for political points could only constitute to grave matter, but I won't argue that point. For the sake of analogy, we'll claim that earmarking is a venial sin while running a deficit of trillions of dollars, mortal sin.

Labelling earmarking as venial in this situation is not dismissing it as unimportant. Venial sin is not “sin that doesn’t matter”. It does matter. Venial sin wounds God’s grace within us. Repeated venial sin makes future sin easier and easier to commit. It causes our moral integrity to decay. It makes us shut our ears to our consciences and leads us to make excuses that further lead us down the road towards serious sin. The accumulation of venial sin inevitably allows for the commission of mortal sin.

Worse, venial sin is itself a roadblock to seeking forgiveness and living a virtuous life. We could easily see the gravity and severity of our mortal sins and truly feel remorse. But when it comes to venial sins, these are the things we tend to cling to fiercely because they are such “small” sins. These are the attachments to temporal goods that have a tendency to make our repentance something less than genuine.

This is exactly what we have going on in Congress, and why McCain is right to state that earmarking is the gateway drug of reckless spending. A little bit here, a little bit there, and who cares where this money comes from, as long as it goes someplace that will help with my reelection. But this mentality builds. If we have a bill that increases government sponsored health care for families making less than $40,000 a year, why not pay a few extra billion and bump that up to $55,000 a year? If we’re drafting a bill to send $20 billion in aid to hurricane ravaged states, why not tack on a few extra billion for struggling farmers in other states? Those few extra billion aren’t all that much, and they’re for good causes, right? And before we know it, we’re running a huge deficit because we think we can keep expanding the spending, using the rationale that we’re not spending that much more on any one particular bill.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

If we want to rein in our reckless spending, we have to radically change the mindset of those who represent us in Congress. And to root out that wasteful mentality, a key component has to be the squashing of earmarks.

Getting rid of mortal sin permits God’s grace to return to our souls, but getting rid of venial sin allows our souls to grow in grace and become ever more fortified against sin. If we want our Congressmen to stop committing the mortal sin of huge budget deficits, then they must root out the venial sin of earmarking. McCain understands this. Obama does not.

NFL Week 4 picks

2008-09-26T06:16:00.000-07:00

ATL @ CAR: CAR (ATL has won against KC (0-3) and DET (0-3), which isn't all that remarkable, though they were solid victories. CAR has played tough against SD and CHI, and their loss to MIN shouldn't be considered too detrimental. Though MIN is 1-2, both losses come against tough teams: IND and GB. However, ATL is starting to get their feet under them, and CAR is plagued by penalties. 14-12)

CLE @ CIN: CIN (No real feel for this one. CLE's defense has done moderately well, especially against PIT, but offensively they haven't put up points. CIN is on the up, having played NYG into overtime, and it may be that Palmer is back on target. However, any game between these two can be a rough and tumble match. 28-24)

HOU @ JAC: HOU (Expect an upset here. HOU needs the win, and JAC is cocky after defeating IND last week. 21-20)

DEN @ KC: DEN (If this isn't a blowout, I'll be disappointed, but then, the past two weeks should have been blowouts, as well. Division rivalries are always tough, but DEN should be able to march the ball all day long on the KC defense. 34-17)

SF @ NO: NO (SF is on the rise, and though NO is 1-2, there's still a lot to be said about NO. It will be hard fought and probably moderately high-scoring on both sides. 33-28)

ARI @ NYJ: NYJ (No real feel on this one, either. I expect that after seeing the kinks last week when Favre was actually allowed to throw the ball, NYJ will have smoothed things out a little. 27-24)

GB @ TB: TB (The main reason, I think, that GB lost to DAL was because GB could not put pressure on Romo. TB's line has been very strong at keep the defense off Griese, and if they do that again, they'll in, hands down. 23-20)

MIN @ TEN: MIN (This is going to be a defensive battle, and when Collins is called forward to make good on passes, he'll cough a couple up. 13-9)

SD @ OAK: SD (This game should be close early, but SD will probably pull away late in the third. 38-24)

BUF @ STL: BUF (STL is changing up their quarterback, but that doesn't fix a beleaguered defense. BUF should take charge of this game and stay afloat all the way through. 24-10)

WAS @ DAL: DAL (WAS will hang with DAL for the first half, but DAL will break it open in the second half. 36-21)

PHI @ CHI: CHI (Expect CHI to have one of their on games this week, but with a huge defensive battle. 17-14)

BAL @ PIT: BAL (Roethlisburger probably won't be 100% in this game, either, and unless the offensive line gets their act together, Big Ben might wind up hurt even worse. 20-10)

Week 3 results: I was 12-4, a record good enough for playoffs. Expected record for Week 4: 7-6

Is What We Have What We Want?

2008-09-25T12:34:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that one of the most frustrating aspects of the political realm is that the politicians we have seem to be power-hungry and corrupt. We want new elected officials in Congress to fix the problems that previous officials have made, and yet when the new ones reach Congress, they're practically indistinguishable from the ones we voted out.

Probably for most of us in the average American realm, we can scarcely see anything that happens in D.C. as anything other than politics as usual. Take the minor rebellion led by House Republicans over the month-long break. Pundits applauded the move as initiation of change, a bold step forward, and a sign to the nation that these members of the House, at least, were serious about fixing the energy problems confronting us.

I think that perhaps there was some demonstration of resolve, some definite interest in debating the problem and trying to find solutions, and yet cynically I can only see it as "politics as usual". It was nice grandstanding, and it certainly caught attention, and I was even excited for a while. But then the break passed, Speaker Pelosi didn't bring the House back early from vacation, and then the same politicking returned to D.C. that we've all seen before.

The real problem in Congress is that Congress does not act like a governing body, but a business. People in the business want to stay in the business. People in the business are interested in giving people what the people want, not what they need. Giving people what they need isn't popular, especially if a majority of people polled in the latest survey don't want what they need.

There is something intriguing about a politician that will actually hold firm on an issue and not change direction with the blowing wind. For that, President Bush and Speaker Pelosi deserve respect. The problem is that this kind of tenacity rarely wins reelection. If a politician has a firm stand on a point that is practically a non-issue at the time of his election, no one notices. But if the non-issue becomes an issue, and people want change in the opposite direction of where that politician wants to go, he loses the election.

From the politician's point of view, if he wants to remain a politician, the winning strategy almost seems to be to follow whichever way the wind is blowing.

In addition to policy, in order to win reelection, a politician needs to campaign, both so that people can see the good he has done so far, and also so he can make promises for the future. Campaigning, though, costs money, and thus the politician's winning strategy is to go where the money is.

The net result is that the logical outcome is the production of politicians that only care about money and votes, and have no real interest in crafting real policy. Real policy that fixes problems isn't good, because removing problems removes the need for the politician to be in office. Real policy that gives people what they need is unpopular. Real policy that cracks down on corruption, pork, and bribes chokes off the much needed money to stay in office. Is it any wonder that our new, bright, honest, hopeful candidates go to D.C. and become like all the others?

Sometimes I wonder if this system is what we really want, and if it is what we want, what we can do, if anything, to fix the seemingly inherent problem.

Greed Has Led Us Here

2008-09-25T09:47:00.000-07:00

We need a serious self-examination when dealing with financial crisis at hand. The whole problem is not necessarily a result of capitalism run amok, though there is certainly that factor. Any economic plan seems to be the perfect economic plan, until the human factor is worked into the equation.

Search around the web, and you'll find endless articles about how this current crisis is the fault of the Clinton Administration. At that time, lenders were given incentive to offer sub-prime loans to those with poor credit, little resources at hand, and income that could be measured with welfare or unemployment checks. On the surface, this seemed like a humane move. Let us get these people their own homes! But there is something implicit behind the scenes.

The lenders were eager to offer these loans, both to avoid litigation and to earn a potential profit. And that could happen, as long as the housing market continued to rise. Anyone risking foreclosure could simply sell their house for more than they bought it. They would not suffer too much, and the lenders would still earn money off the loan. It seemed like a win-win situation.

Mark Shea takes umbrage at those who would blame the poor, and that is understandable, because we have a duty to help the poor. But that doesn't mean that the poor are completely free of blame in this, either.

Greed is the factor driving us into this financial crisis, no doubt about it. The lenders took insane risks to earn greater profits, buoyed by the hope that the government would bail them out if things turned sour. But there was greed at the lower levels, too.

Perhaps we don't notice it, because we're so used to it. We see car commercials that talk about $3000 cash back, and we're ready to jump to our feet and buy the car for that screaming deal offered us. We see all kinds of junk that we did not know existed 10 seconds before, but offered to us at a discount of 80% if we only call in the next twenty minutes. We see the Big Mac back on sale for $2, and Arby's regular roast beef on special at 4 for $5. We're now seeing regularly advertising for people who will magically dig us out of debt.

We've been trained to want everything, to want everything now, and to want everything cheap. Greed is everywhere, rampant in our society. The instant gratification generation is now.

How does this relate back to the poor? In part we're deluded. We think every family must have their own house. The poor in particular see homeowners, and the message that we send the poor is that it is all right to covet, all right to be greedy, because somehow you're entitled to the same things those homeowners have. And so when a deal comes along too good to be true, do they look at it with skepticism, or do they buy into heart and soul?

True, we've inundated them (and everyone else) with the message of have now, forget the cost. But they, too, are responsible for living within their means, responsible for paying attention to what is reasonable and what is just fantasy, and in that regard they, too, failed.

But the greed goes deeper. It comes from the generations that lived through the Great Depression who, in the aftermath of WWII, found that they could actually have things again. Everyone could have their own home, two cars, a television, a toaster, a refrigerator, and so on.

And our government not only told us that we could have this, but that we could have more, and in perpetuity. Let's see what all we've come across, thanks to this mentality.

Debt: we have immersed ourselves up to the eyeballs in debt. Why? Because we believed we had to get things immediately, even when we couldn't afford them. We worked on the assumption that, because we didn't have to pay immediately, we could have, because assuredly the funds would be there later on to pay back the debt. We see how well that has worked.

Social Security: our government started plundering Social Security back under the Johnson administration, thinking that we could simply keep paying out social security as long as our work force kept expanding as quickly as it was at the time. The Baby Boomer generation was aptly named. But then the Baby Boomers turned around barely reproduced at all, and suddenly the work force didn't grow as expected, and all that plundering started to catch up with us.

American Vehicle Industry: Back at their height, the American vehicle manufacturers started handing enormous retirement packages, working under the assumption that Americans would keep buying new cars at an ever increasing rate, and thus providing funds to make sure those packages were honored. But then came the bust. Due to foreign imports and a number of other factors, the American companies lost a large share of the market, and their profits dwindles. They could not longer honor the retirement packages, and they had to be bailed out.

Dot-com Industry: A lot of people lost out on this because they thought they could set up little dot-com industries, get bought out, and live off of that money. This also ended in a bust.

Housing Industry: Again, people believed they could keep playing the market under the assumption that the housing market would keep expanding, that property value would keep rising, and they could buy beyond their means, hold on for a while, then sell and make a profit.

We've seen this pattern again and again and again. The trend is the same. We see trend in the market. We take a huge risk and play that market under the assumption that the trend will keep on going forever. And when the trend changes, we lose.

And it is greed that makes us do that. We gamble, not with what we can afford to lose, but with everything, because we think we found the magical means of getting everything right now.

I'm sorry, but we don't need the brand new car, the 8 bedroom house, the 48 inch HD TV, an Xbox 360, a PS3, a Wii, every movie known to man, 6 4-wheelers, a boat, some jet skis, an RV, and so on. We especially don't need to put ourselves into the red to acquire all of these. But we've been taught that we have to have all of these, that we deserve all of these, and when we don't get them immediately, we fall prey to greed. The poor were as guilty as anyone else in this. The only difference is that they are the ones going to pay heaviest, while the ones who committed the most atrocious crimes are going to get bailed out and suffer little to no consequence at all.

A Response for Palin

2008-09-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

Joseph Farah makes a an observation that Sarah Palin might face a difficult question that could make a big difference in how she is viewed. He speculates that if asked if she believes that, since salvation is through Jesus alone, that Muslims and Jews will go to Hell, that there is no direct answer to the question that won't land her in trouble. If she answers yes, then she shows herself to be a bigot. If she answers no, she loses the evangelicals. If she replies with a wishy-washy non-answer, she loses credibility. He offers the solution:

Palin: I know exactly why you are asking that question in this forum. You want to play the "gotcha" game. You want a headline from this interview. You want something sensational. You want me to say something controversial and provocative and maybe even offensive to millions of Americans of other faiths. But I'm not going to play that game with you. I already have told you what I believe about salvation and redemption. It's the same belief hundreds of millions of other Christians around the world share. I am firmly committed to my faith, just as others are committed to their faiths. I respect the faiths of others, just as I hope they respect my beliefs. This is a serious issue that cannot be addressed adequately in bumper-sticker slogans or sound bites. Therefore, I'm not going to fall for that bait. I love to talk about my faith. That's something I'm qualified to do. I welcome the chance to talk about the issues facing this country today. That's something I'm qualified and prepared to do. But I'm not going to talk about the faiths of others. Nice try. Next question.

While I feel that this reply is in keeping with a spirited, on-the-offense campaign, it is still dodging the question, and people who really care about the issue will notice it. The evangelicals will feel slighted that she didn't have the chutzpah to make a simple assertion that every evangelical believes is true and vital to their faith, and the people on the other side will see her as playing politics as usual by not giving a definite answer.

Part of the problem is that Palin, as an evangelical Christian, doesn't have a good answer, or at least, not one that is good politically. Going by the Bible, the only way to salvation is through Jesus. It doesn't become much clearer than that.

The Catholic Christian, on the other hand, has a somewhat easier recourse (though neither the Catholic nor the Evangelical has a nice brief means of answer the question). The evangelicals have to fall back solely on the Bible. Catholics can speak about natural law, and the genuine desire each human has to follow natural law. Furthermore, Catholics can talk about an earnest yearning for the Truth, which is Christ, without knowing that the Truth is Christ. Finally, Catholics can talk about the mitigating factor of invincible ignorance. Thus the Catholic response is:

"Communion with the Church and faith and obedience to Christ are necessary for salvation. However, due to circumstance, it is possible that a person visibly outside the Church is still invisibly in communion with the Church through a desire for goodness, piety, and truth. Thus, while it is normative to achieve salvation through the Church, the visible body of Christ, and thus through Christ Himself, it is possible that mercy is bestowed on those raised in invincible ignorance who yet thirst for the glory of God."

In other words: "I cannot say that Jews and Muslims are going to Hell. By ignorance of the truth, but also through a true desire for holiness, Jews and Muslims may be unknowingly seeking Christ, and in the end achieve salvation."

For Palin, not being a Catholic, I would recommend she respond:

"As all Christians, I believe that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. Salvation is through Him. However, Jesus Himself warned us not to judge the eternal destination of our fellow man: "judge not, lest ye be judged". There is always hope that those visibly outside of Christianity may be saved. This is no different than how we deal with the courts: a man is assumed innocent until proven guilty. Will I say that it is much more difficult for someone outside of Christianity to be saved? The answer is: of course. Is it easier to get to San Francisco from D.C. by taking the interstate or by walking through countryside? Of course. Walking through the countryside is a lot harder and a lot longer path to take, and the temptation to give up and go home is much stronger. Is it impossibly difficult? That I cannot say. That requires knowing a person's inner disposition towards to God, and none know that save God Himself."

Democrats Pass No-Fault Child Abandonment Act

2008-07-17T06:49:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011
Associated Press

Washington D.C.-- Today lawmakers in Washington have passed the National Fathers' Responsibility Act amidst a wave of criticism and bipartisan squabbling. The act passed the Senate with a 53-46-1 vote divided almost entirely along party lines, with only Michael McConnel (D-WY) breaking from his party block. It had earlier cleared the House with a narrow 218-214-3 majority. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the Act into law on Monday.

The National Fathers' Responsibility Act is a measure intended to bring fathers back into the lives of their children. "For decades we've heard how detrimental the absence of a child's father is," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). "It is criminal that this problem has been left unaddressed for so long." The Act, widely hailed by national Democrats as "the final solution to a pervasive problem", entitles women to demand, and receive, whatever care deemed necessary for her child from the child's natural father.

President Obama had ealier expressed enthusiasm for the Act. "We have suffered far too long from absent fathers, from men who will not take responsibility for the lives they brought into this world. The message of this bill is clear: men, it is time to own up. Either take responsibility for yourself, or we'll ensure that you take responsibility anyway."

Women nationwide have expressed their endorsement of the Act. "This is a big step to ending sexual inequality," stated one woman who asked to remain anonymous. "For a long time woman have suffered because of an unfair legal system that demands that the woman always take the children after a divorce. So there she is, alone, trying to handle four kids and a job because child support payments are so small, and the father's out there somewhere with a new girlfriend, getting ready to start the whole process over again. It's disgusting."

Annette Jergens, from Denver, Colorado, added her own testimony. "I was only sixteen when I got pregnant with our first child, and while I wanted an abortion, he fought and fought, promising that he would always be there to care for us." After deciding to keep her child, Jergens married her high school sweetheart, Alex Reynolds, after which they had three more children in rapid succession. "Times were tough," Jergens explains. "I had to get help many times from my parents because Alex only waited tables." And then one day, Reynolds just walked out. "I was devastated," a tearful Jergens continues. "Eventually the courts gave us a divorce and required that Alex make child support payments, but when he does work, he only makes minimum wage, and the pittance we get from that doesn't even buy used clothes for my children."

Under the National Fathers' Responsibility Act, men like Alex Reynolds will be required to provide for the entirety of the childrens' financial need, regardless of size of paycheck. In addition, he could be required to take his children into his custody whenever Jergens feels she is incapable of providing for them herself.

"If it is no big deal to force a single woman to care for all the children," said Denise Actinson, a prominent social worker for the rights of women, "then no one can complain that it is a big deal to force a single man to care for all the children, either. This Act is just common sense, something we've been without for ages."

National Republicans find the passage of the bill sobering. Calling it the "No-Fault Child Abandonment Act," they predict a rampant spree of women across the nation dumping their children into the hands of unsuspecting fathers and wiping their hands of any further involvement.

"This is exactly the kind of braindead nonsense we'd expect from men-hating, child-loathing, frothing-at-the-mouth radicals--I mean Democrats," said pundit Ann Coulter. "Liberals have this pervasive blind spot when it comes to dealing with problems, namely that they think more of the problem will provide a solution." When asked to clarify her comments, Coulter replied, "This just cuts the mother out of the picture. Looks, the courts are already insanely in favor of the woman in a divorce. She can take everything and leave the man with nothing. Now, when the going gets rough, she take the kids, dump them off with their father, who still has nothing, and drive away in her Mercedes, never looking back."

A few Republicans believe the criticism for the bill is exaggerated, but they still are concerned. "What concerns me is the potential for abusive situations," said Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE). "If a woman decides she just needs to leave the kids with their father for a month or two, and the father doesn't want them, what's to prevent abuse? The Act makes failure to comply a felony, but sending the fathers to prison doesn't do a thing to ensure the children are provided for."

Other Republicans expressed concerns that the Act will further tear families apart. In a society where over half of all marriages end in divorce, a majority of children are raised in so-called fractured families, and a significant percentage are raised by a single mother. "We're going to see a rift where children are no longer treasured members of the family, but instead are a grave threat and a potential divide between husband and wife," said Senator Michael Enzi, (R-WY). "A woman could walk away from the marriage, take the children with her to collect on the child support, and then leave the children with their father indefinitely while still collecting child support. A man would almost have to be an idiot to walk into a situation posing that kind of risk."

The net result? Sen. Enzi predicts fewer marriages, higher abortion rates, fewer children even in stable families, and a growing mistrust between the sexes.

Democrats scoff at the Republicans' concerns, calling them "fearmongering and an attempt to weasel their out of the responsibility they share for creating this situation and doing nothing to fix it." "If a man knows he'll have to take care of the children no matter how hard he tries to escape from it," said Speaker Pelosi, "he'll approach childrearing more carefully, more responsibly, and that can only benefit our children.

The root of all sexual evil

2008-07-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

At the very least, sex needs to be an act that is respectful and giving. But consider masturbation. Masturbation is inherently an act that says: I'm seeking sexual pleasure for my own benefit. This immediately turns us in the wrong direction, and if we keep doing it, we acquire the habit of seeking sexual pleasure for our own gratification. This can very easily transfer over to sex, so that sex then becomes an act of taking, rather than giving, and is only respectful as long as one is respecting the other's ability to give pleasure. In other words, masturbation sets the precedent of seeking personal gratification, which can easily become the use of others to reach that gratification. It could very well be that masturbation is the root of all the sexual dysfunction a person can encounter.

Was Jesus God?

2008-06-27T06:27:00.000-07:00

One of the proofs that Jesus is God goes along the following. Historical records, in this case the gospels, state that Jesus claimed to be God. Specifically, he applied the name I AM to himself: before Abraham was, I AM (John 8:58). We know both from the book of Exodus and the Jews' reaction that I AM is effectively the secret name of God, who when Moses asked for his name, said I AM WHO AM. From this we can conclude a few possibilities: either Jesus was telling the truth, he was deliberately deceitful, or was crazy. By eliminating the latter two, we arrive at the conclusion that Jesus was telling the truth, and is indeed God.

However, there seems to be arguments against this proof, claiming that it sets up a false dilemma. A false dilemma is when two (or more) options are pitted against each other and are claimed to represent the whole of possibilities, when this is not the case. For example, a false dilemma is to state: Either you support Barack Obama's bid for the presidency, or you're a racist. This doesn't actually partition the whole space. A true partition that makes use of both is the following. First divide the populace between those who support Obama and those who don't. Then divide the populace between those who are racist and those who are not. We end up then with four categories: Barack/not racist, Barack/racist, not Barack/not racist, and not Barack/racist. What the false dilemma actually tries to assert is that the categories of Barack/racist and not Barack/not racist are empty, but is this really the case? A simple poll will show that some people support Barack simply because of his skin color (which is a racist view), and some people who have no problems with a black president don't like Obama simply because they disagree with his policies (which is not racist).

The claim that the original argument is a false dilemma simply states there must be other alternatives than what is offered in the argument. Suppose, for example, Jesus was simply a holy man, a good philosopher, but not God, as a number of different groups might claim (e.g. Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, agnostics, and even some atheists). But do alternatives really hold any water?

Let's examine the divisions that are made in the original argument. Either Jesus was telling the truth, lying, or crazy. Let's handle truth first. Either Jesus' claim was true, or it was false. There's no fuzziness there, so let's move onto the second division that is made, i.e. Jesus' intent. Either Jesus intended to tell the truth, or he intended to deceive. Now we have four categories:

1. Jesus' claim was true and he intended to tell the truth
2. Jesus' claim was true and he intended to deceive
3. Jesus' claim was false and he intended to tell the truth
4. Jesus' claim was false and he intended to deceive

We could, potentially, further divide the categories, or we could discard these particular categories and invent new ones, but it is obvious that these completely partition the space. (But wait, some might argue, couldn't his claim be either true and false, or neither true nor false? Couldn't Jesus have had no intent at all? I hope these aren't strawmen arguments, but they're all I could think of at the moment. But a proposition is either or true or false. It cannot be both, and it cannot be neither. And to deny that Jesus had an intent flies in the face of what he set out to do.) If we have completely partitioned the space, there can be no false dilemma.

The first case is obviously the one the original argument means to prove. The second is tricky. If Jesus was indeed God made man, then the only way he could intend to deceive (by claiming to be God) was to believe he wasn't God. Could such a thing really happen? Because this is such a tricky case, it is often lumped together with the fourth argument, where the consideration of deceit is handled by reference to empirical evidence. What is the intent of someone who goes about claiming to be God? What does it say that Jesus freely chose to give himself up to death, and how does that work with the intent of someone falsely claiming to be God? In other words, we only handle the "liar" aspect of both the second and fourth argument. For the third argument, we have a word for someone who claims to be God, truly thinks that he is God, but is not actually God. That word is crazy.

So now we're back at the original argument. It posed that either Jesus was telling the truth, was a liar, or was crazy, and we have just shown how these three conditions fully partition the possibility space. One might object to arguments against Jesus being a liar or crazy, but one cannot claim that the argument itself poses a false dilemma.

In Honor of C.S. Lewis...

2008-06-26T07:58:00.002-07:00

To all junior demons,

We are about to launch a new seminar to prepare you or to aid you in dealing with your patients. We believe strongly that too many of our field operatives, and yes that includes some of our finest workers dedicated to Our Father Below, have failed to keep ahead of recent trends in the mortal realm. We have every indication to believe that our past efforts have sparked this monumental surge forward in divisiveness of our Enemy's ranks and the increasing flood of deserters from our Enemy's cause. However, this does not permit us to be lax in our management of our patients--to the contrary!

It is the unfortunate result that our Enemy designed these pitiful bipeds with the capacity of reason. How more providential to our cause if He would have disdained rationality for emotionality, abandoned all necessity of reasoned thought to the dictates of gut feelings! For we all know, being able to see the entirety of our Enemy's Church, the inevitable success our Enemy must attain, and how against reason it is to declare its defeat, much less its nonexistence. As our efforts continue to, temporally, bear fruit in these realms, we must in turn step up our efforts to distract our patients from noticing how unreasonable they are being.

Our seminar will comprise six sessions, and attendance will be mandatory unless our advisory board deems that a patient cannot be left unattended for the duration. Thus, unless the patient displays imminent, but reversible, inclination towards the Enemy's camp, the mandatory requirement will not be waived.

Our first session will deal with the new advances in the biped's notion of love, how it has developed in recent years, and how difficult our battle will be to continue to nurture this notion of love. Remember, we are not opposed to love, only that love for our Enemy that we find so distasteful. Self-love, on the other hand, provides us with no end of entertainment, and it is towards this that we have worked so hard. And it has indeed born fruit in unexpected arenas, and deserves direct attention so we can properly handle its cultivation.

Our second session will stress the recent upsurge in atheism. In some of your reports, I have seen gross complacency when the patient embraces a wholly materialistic view apart from anything supernatural, and this must be curbed. The atheist, while deep in our camp, holds the most untenable position of them all, and we must, I repeat, must be diligent in our efforts to maintain this position. We must keep forward in our efforts all those feelings that would lend credence to this ridiculous notion that our Enemy does not exist, including foremost that the biped's notion of the Enemy must be correct and thus contradictory. We will visit classic arguments, such as "Can the Enemy create a rock He cannot lift?" While this is elementary for most of us, it deserves to be revisited, for it encompasses most of the flawed arguments the bipeds will latch onto.

Our third session will address the topics of suffering and addiction. The bipeds in the developed world have discovered lifestyles that, initially, seem to remove even the slightest discomforts from their lives. Always in the past, our efforts have been directly predominantly at the unfairness of the immense suffering man has had to endure, but in the developed world, we can no longer guide our patients down this course. The ease of their lives and the abundance of their wealth, coupled with that accursed reason bestowed by the Enemy, eventually gives rise to the notion that they can actually help those worse off than themselves. All thoughts in this direction must either be curtailed or monitored carefully. We advise that any charitable thoughts must be redirected back at the patient, so that the patient uses the semblance of charity for personal benefit. However, this is a fine line to walk, and we will discuss how best to approach this.

Our fourth and fifth session will be devoted to those recent medical discoveries that have raised controversial issues across the developed world. We will touch upon the materialistic demotion of man to an expendable resource and review how that ramifies into all areas of the bipeds' society. We must be careful in this area to always keep the patient's focus on the utility of discovery, even at the expense of others. This past century has seen some of the most delightful evils come to pass in the mortal realm because of this misguided notion, and with care, we should be able to cultivate an even greater harvest in the future.

Our last information will cover the dissemination of information. In the modern world, anyone has the ability to make his viewpoint, his findings, his opinions, and even his blatant lies known to thousands if not millions of others. This in turn is a great resource we must tap into. We must always keep in mind that a lie repeated a thousand times is no longer considered a lie. And when the patient has, at his fingertips, a thousand times a thousand differing accounts for a single action, a single decision, or a single moral point, even the most blatant lie can been an adequate bludgeon against his reasons. Always keep the patient confused, unsure of who to trust. Keep him away from the only consistent authority there is, namely the Enemy and His abominable Church, and keep him focused on the worldly authorities, whose flaws are depicted and denounced by thousands of disagreeing factions, who are in turn denounced by others, and so on. This vast confusion is a great boon to our cause, but we must be sure to keep the resulting cynicism grounded so that he does not turn to the Enemy as a last recourse.

At the conclusion of this seminar, we expect to notice vast improvements in your reports and a renewed dedication to the work of Our Father Below.

Senior Administrative Assistant,
Screwtape

Reasons against contraception

2008-06-19T08:06:00.000-07:00

In our world, it seems insane to speak out against contraception, yet I feel I must. For references, I will simply defer to www.pureloveclub.com. It is a Catholic site, but it has a list of references that are fairly useful.

1. Contraceptives don't stop pregnancies

What? Isn't that what contraceptives are for? Yet the answer should be obvious. No contraceptive is 100% effective. They do greatly decrease the chance of pregnancy, true. But consider the following scenario.

A. I have a 50% chance of becoming pregnant if I have unprotected sex. I have sex 0 times, and thus have a 0% chance of becoming pregnant.

B. I have a 1% chance of becoming pregnant if I have protected sex. I have sex once, I have a 1% chance of becoming pregnant. I have sex 10 times, I have about a 10% chance of becoming pregnant. I have sex 50 times, I have a 40% chance of becoming pregnant, and so on.

As the usage of contraceptives (with maybe the exception of the pill for hormonal regulation) almost automatically implies sex, and some sex quite often implies lots of sex, the conclusion is clear. Granted, these statistics don't cover all possibilities, but a nonzero chance of becoming pregnant from having protected sex once eventually because a significant nonzero chance of becoming pregnant when having sex numerous times.

Society proves this point. Since the legalization of contraception, unintended pregnancies skyrocketed. Recent downward trends in teen pregnancies are due entirely to teens abstaining from sex. When looking only at teens that are sexually active, the rates of teen pregnancies have actually increased.

2. Contraceptives don't prevent STDs

The reasoning here is quite similar. While contraceptives like condoms greatly reduce the chance of catching an STD from one sexual encounter, they fail to provide foolproof protection. Enough sexual encounters will raise the probability of catching STDs from unlikely to quite probable.

3. Contraceptives propagate the mentality of using people as objects

Consider the following analogy. Suppose I won't talk to you unless you have blond hair. Or, at the risk of sounding racist, suppose I won't sell you a drink unless you have white skin. It doesn't matter how you get your hair or skin the appropriate color. You could dye your hair or paint your body. Once you do, I'll deal with you. Until then, I won't.

Anyone with an ounce of sense will argue that in the above scenarios, I'm being unreasonable (and racist). And yet no one makes this connection with contraceptives. Here's the underlying principle:

If you have to alter the fundamental nature of a person to make them acceptable, you are treating that person as an object.

Contraceptives essentially state: "I can't accept my/your ability to conceive, so I'm going to change you so that you don't." Pretty straightforward, isn't it?

As for those of you who would object, saying, "But what if I don't mind being (or even want to be) used as an object?" I want you to just take 10 minutes and seriously reflect on that. And consider it in light of other cases of being used as an object (such as the absurd case of a doctor coming around to harvest all your organs while you are still alive and healthy).

4. People can control their urges. Expecting abstinence until marriage (or even lifelong) is reasonable.

Let's carry the objections to this one to their full conclusions. What this is saying is that we can't say no to sex. We have to get it, one way or another. (Sounds like an addiction, right?) So what happens when a man runs out on his endurance, absolutely has to have sex, and an eight-year-old boy walks by? By the reasoning of the objector, the fact that boy was raped is an unfortunate as if he had walked out in front of a semi. It is sad, and the boy was hurt or killed, but no one's to blame. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyone who would object to this conclusion obviously believes we have the ability to control our sexual desires. Thus abstinence is hardly unreasonable.

Greater Good

2007-09-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

In taking a class on energy policies, I've learned that very rarely do the best ideas for energy production and consumption ever so much as appear before policymakers. That is why we have politicians talking about the Kyoto Protocol and ethanol and hydrogen fuel cells instead of focusing on things that work. But why are they focusing on these? Who is the heavyweight pulling the strings that make it so that no one seems to realize that ethanol is a very poor choice for fuel, especially when it is produced from corn?

We have to understand that what we are talking about here isn't necessarily so much energy policy, but survivability. For example, I look at tax reform and I think tax reform is a good thing. We should switch to a simple tax code that taxes everyone an equal percent. This eliminates all the loopholes, hopefully a large portion of fraud, and doesn't leave people guessing as to how much of their paycheck is actually theirs. However, a simple system like that will hit the accounting market hard, meaning my father could potentially lose a significant portion of his clients, and his firm could go under. So I'm not personally eager for tax reform to go through.

See, what we would be asking here is for certain people to sacrifice their livelihoods for the greater good. Now, there is nothing wrong with the greater good, in and of itself. The greater good is what helps the most people. In a utilitarian point of view, that greater good is not just morally right, but a moral imperative as well. But we also need to understand that when a person's livelihood is at stake, the very thing he or she has worked their entire lives to build, we cannot expect them to simply roll over without a fight.

So how does this relate to energy policies? Whose livelihoods are at stake? We would think that the oil and coal companies would have the loudest voice, since things like ethanol and the Kyoto Protocol gravely threaten these industries. Why then aren't ethanol and the Kyoto Protocol quashed (as they probably should be) instead of sitting on lawmakers' desks receiving intense consideration?

The answer is this. First, the policymakers are professional at one thing: making policies that satisfy their constituents. They are not experts in fields of science, be it medicine or environment or energy or economics. Thus they have to rely on reports from advisers, who in turn receive their data from "experts." This is where survivability comes into play.

The reports that land on politician's desks are in agreement with the source of funding for the reports. In other words, if a researcher is receiving money from the coal or oil industries, their reports are bound to be biased towards the coal and oil industries. Similarly, if the research is funded by environmental groups, the research will find all kinds of horrors that the coal and oil industries are committing against the environment.

So why isn't there an equal share between competing voices? It is because there are self-feeding loops going on. The first is the politician-constituent loop, in which the politician tries to pass policies that will please his constituents. When he pleases his constituents, he gets reelected. The second loop is the politician-funding loop, in which the politician tries to pass policies that will please his or her source of funding.

Now, these loops intertwine. The politician has a hard time reaching his base if he doesn't have the funding to make his voice heard and show how he/she is better than the opposition and getting the people what they want. Therefore, he/she has to convince the people, if they are not already, that what they want is in line with the politician's source of funding. (Or the politician has to find funding from industries already in line with the people.)

Now, who's survivability are we talking about? We are talking about the people's survivability: they want lawmakers to pass laws that help them and stop bills that will hurt them. Thus the people focus on, not the greater good, but their own survivability. But we are also talking about the policymaker's survivability: through both funding and votes, the politician survives by passing legislation, not for the greater good, but for their constituents. And we are also talking about the researcher's survivability: the researcher has to report what is in line with what his/her funding desires, for otherwise they have no funding to live off of.

So, when enough public outcry demands something, policymakers scramble to satisfy, finding constituent groups that will satisfy, who in turn fund studies that will satisfy. The best ideas are lost in that mix because the best ideas focus on the greater good, not necessarily on the majority outcry of the people.

The world darkens

2006-12-08T10:14:00.000-08:00

9/11. Al Qaeda. The Taliban. Pakistan, and its unwillingness to expulge the terrorists in its northern regions. Its caving to terrorist demands. Its tensions with India. Iraq, and its insurgencies. The guerillas funded by Syria and Iran. Syria, who is aiding Hezbolla against the Lebanese government. Hezbolla and Hamas, striking against Israel. Iran, developing nuclear power and nuclear weapons at a daunting pace. Iran, who threatens to nuke Israel into oblivion. Iran, who seeks a day without the United States. Iran, who negotiates with China. China, who holds our economy in its hands, and who backs North Korea. North Korea, who has nuclear weapons and hates the United States. Indonesian riots. The caving of Europe to Islamic threats, especially France and England. The relapse of Russia. Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, and their expanding influence. There is no corner of the globe where some threat does not exist to the United States.

This is not a failure of President George W. Bush and his foreign policies. This is the natural consequence of opposing ideologies. What people fail to realize is that any friend who demands we change our entire identity and bow in subservience to them is not, in fact, a friend. If the only way to be friends with someone is to abandon our identity, our dignity, and our integrity, then we are better off without them.

Why do these people hate us? Petty dictators like Hugo Chavez hate us because we are powerful enough that we diminish their power. Our words carry more weight, and we can ignore them without much worry. It can be infuriating to be taken so lightly. We threaten them with the possibility that we might step in and remove them from power, a very real threat when their people are oppressed and look to the United States as a model and potential savior. We can make their lives difficult through sanctions, and we have economic might to make those sanctions uncomfortable at the least. We threaten these dictators merely through what we can do, through what we are, because we are what the world could be without petty kinglets like Hugo Chavez. People, when they see what that world is like, do not tolerate dictators for long. Thus those dictators have to hide the truth from their people and demonize as best they can in a Machiavellian attempt to maintain power.

Alone, these dictators offer very little to worry about. We can play at negotiations with them when they have no allies to make contention troublesome. We can use peaceful measures to cripple them when they have no allies to resupply them. But when these dictators have allies, they can be bold and fling defiance at us and believe themselves removed from threat through strength in numbers. And it seems these numbers are growing at a frightening pace.

The Islamic people hate us for the same reason that evangelical Christians are so fervent in their hatred of evolution. Just as evolution contradicts their most sacred text (by saying it cannot be literally true, at least in the first chapters of the Book of Genesis), our very way of life--the freedom of religion, freedom of expression, our free market, our civil rights movements--is abhorrent and contradictory to Islam. Everything about us breaks their code of ethics, contradicts the will of their deity. Our very existence is temptation, a path to what they see as corruption and darkness. As long as we in the United States value those traits we hold the most dear, the Islamic people will ever and always fight us, for our beliefs are anathema under their tenets.

There can be no compromise with these people. Either they conquer us or we abandon our identity and take on theirs. That is the only outcome they will accept.

And their numbers are growing. They gather allies. Islamic terrorists and petty dictators see a common goal in our destruction. They work with cunning and guile against us. They have no benevolent intentions for us. Any reform they wish to force on us would revoke every founding belief we have.

And so few people understand what it is we face. So few people understand where we came from. Why does our prosperity exist? They do not know. They display their lack of knowledge in the succor of our enemies, in the protest of every move we make against our enemies, in endless efforts spent to make the United States the guilty party.

They do not understand that we are guilty in our enemies' eyes simply because we exist. There is no other reason. To accept that guilt is to embrace annihilation.

Giving money away isn't the answer

2006-12-07T08:41:00.000-08:00

For some reason, many people decry the rich for being rich. They have the wealth and all the trappings that accompany it, whereas the poor people have to make do with so little food, having to choose at times between eating and having a roof over their heads. The rich, they claim, should be giving more (money) to the poor to ease their difficult existence. More money would aid single mothers in putting food in the empty bellies of their children. More money would provide clothing, medicine, and school supplies for those same children. More money would mean the difference between a leaking roof and patched one. More money would provide the means to ensure the old clunker saved from the scrap heap would still run tomorrow. And that money should come, no strings attached, no return obligations from the recipient of such beneficience.

And why shouldn't the money given from the rich to the poor be a charitable donation? If religious calling doesn't compel one to give to the poor, at the very least it is humane to ease the suffering of people who are worse off. And consider this--a person worth $2 billion could give $40,000 to 25,000 people and still have a cool billion left over. That's 25,000 people who could, in an instant, have as much money as a middle class person makes in an entire year. And that's only half of the fabulous wealth said billionaire had acquired. That certainly leaves plenty left for him. Right?

It seems so nice and respectable. But, I may ask, what then? Once that money is given away, what then? A family of 4 needs something around $15,000 a year to barely eek by, assuming no great calamity strikes. Assuming one such household receives the aforementioned $40,000, that money will not even last 3 years. Supposing that this household is a single mother with three children, where the mother only brings in $10,000 a year, she could possibly make that wealth last for 8. But what then? Well, what if she brings home $12,000 a year? She could stretch the $40,000 across a little over 13 years. If she brings home $13,000, we jump to 20 years. She could see her kids out of high school by that point. Why, if she managed $15,000 a year, she could just save that $40,000 for emergencies and sending her children off to college. In fact, if she invests that $40,000 in stocks, bonds, or even just a CD, she could more than double that $40,000 by the time her kids leave home for college.

But life does not run so smoothly. The additional $40,000 to supplement her meager income won't last near that long. Her car will break down. Her kids will catch pneumonia and require medication. She might decide that her kids will be healthier if they have something other than ramen noodles for each meal. They might fare better in school if they had nicer clothes. At the very least it will give the bullies one less reason to pick on them. And maybe now she can afford that new stove so she doesn't have to cook all their meals in the microwave, two of which have already burned out from overuse. Even a conservative spender making $15,000 a year will probably see that $40,000 disappear rapidly, probably in fewer than 3 years.

So what then? Should that billionaire channel another billion dollars to all those families that have spent his generous gift? Surely in 3 years' time he'll have recouped a portion of his losses. But how long did it take to make that $2 billion in the first place? 20 years? How long will it take him to earn half of that back? 3 years is probably an underestimate. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that he could. So every three years he gives out $40,000 to 25,000 people. So that's 25,000 households out of a projected 7 million taken care of. And he can't afford to give away any more, else he'll start losing all the money he has, preventing him from making an everlasting commitment. But hey, with another 299 billionaires, we could more or less keep the entire poor population somewhat afloat, right?

However, this ignores the realities of how the billionaires (with the exception of inheritence) are acquiring their money. That billion dollars isn't just sitting around at home in piles of fat stacks of hundred dollar bills. That money is tied up in investments. A large portion is probably tied up in the billionaire's business. Another chunk is probably in the stock market. What people fail to realise is just what it means to have money invested like that. When someone invests, they are essentially loaning the money to other people, expecting them to make enough of a return in whatever business endeavors they embark upon to pay that loan back with interest. Investing in the stock market, or even just putting money in a bank account, is not some magic method of making money. That money goes somewhere, to someone, who hopefully increases the overall money in the system.

So what then, if a billionaire pulls a billion dollars out of investments? That's a billion dollars less going to people who would otherwise use that money to start or upkeep their own businesses. That overall money out of their pocket, which is additional money out of the billionaire's pocket. But some would argue, why is that so bad? That money was just going to people who had enough money to begin with, right? Not necessarily. A business is expensive to start up, and so loans are often necessary just to get off the ground. But where does that loan come from? In fact, loans borrowed from a bank are nothing more than the investsments people make! If there are no investments, there are no loans, because the money just isn't there. And that means businesses that never get started, or fall apart, and that's just increasing the poor population.

So, let's leave the billionaires alone, or at least not expect so much of a contribution from them. Instead, why not simply ask for the extra money people have lying around, money that would be spent on frivolous odds and ends anyway? Suppose, for example, we shopped smart and cooked all our own food and never went out for fast food. We'd save money, since cooking for ourselves is almost always cheeper than ordering out. And we could use that money to donate to the poor. Everything is happy, right?

Not really. If we estimate the poor population initially at 10% of the country, that's 30,000,000 people. Now, there are at least 6,000,000 people employed in the fast food industry (probably a very conservative estimate). If everyone stopped buying fast food, those 6,000,000 people are unemployed. That increases the poor population by 20%! That wasn't something we intended, now was it? But we had better take care of those additional 6 million as well, so we'll cut back on something else. And lo and behold, another several million people are out of jobs. We keep going at this pace, and pretty soon, nobody's will be employed, everyone will be poor, and then there will be no money to distribute around.

Giving money away isn't the answer. A solution to many problems is to see the poor employed in jobs that will earn them enough money. But where do those jobs come from? There have to be businesses that employ, and there has to be a need for those businesses. Not only do businesses have to sell items to make a profit, people have to buy those items for the products to be sold. The conclusion then is that people need to buy more--that will increase the demand for products, which will increase the number of businesses that provide those products, which will finally increase the number of jobs available. At that point, a billionaire servers a poor person better by creating a large enough business that he can afford to hire that individual.

Perhaps there's more wisdom in that adage "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime" than we originally thought. Certainly, we can provide for our poor better by giving them the opportunity to provide for themselves than trying to take care of them directly.

Hopefully the last time I'll mention Foley

2006-10-11T06:41:00.000-07:00

The more I read about the Mark Foley scandal, the more disgusted I become. I was wrong earlier to denounce Republicans for pointing fingers at the Democratic Party for Gerry Studds et al. While I still feel there was a fair amount of minimalizing by Republicans, as more and more facts surface about the issue, I start to feel that there is a fair amount of justification behind the finger-pointing.

Let's get this straight. What Mark Foley did was wrong. It was wrong because he was seeking sexual contact with anyone who would give it to him. Such behavior is degrading and demeaning both to the pages he encountered and himself. It would be entirely different if Foley had been seeking a long-term, committed relation with the pages, but so far that doesn't seem to be the case. Such loose sexual behavior is an ever-increasing aberration in society, and our politicians more than anyone else need to be above that. And yet, we find so many who aren't.

But for the Democrats to denounce Foley and whatever supposed coverup there is? Yes, it is hypocritical, and it is also hysterical. The age of consent in Washington D.C. is 16. That means that there was nothing illegal about Foley making advances on 16, 17, or 18 year-old boys. Even if the e-mails and the instant messages were sexually explicit, no crime was committed simply because of the age of the boys. Now, I'm not sure about the proprieties a member of Congress has to observe, but if Foley can be charged with anything, it is sexual harrassment.

But what is really aggravating is that some people had information about Foley's behavior for over a year before finally acting on it. And these people denounce Hastert of endangering pages? Let's keep in mind here that the pages, being of the age of consent, are more or less on their own to deal with sexual advances, and therefore only warrant the same protection any other adult is afforded, which is probably whatever sexual harrassment policy is in place. And yet if some extra protection is warranted, what about these "conscientious objectors" who sat on the information instead of going to someone?

Oh, wait. They did. They went to media outlet after media outlet. Those are certainly excellent authorities to deal with a sexual harrassment case. They can intervene how? Oh wait, they'd also have to go to the authorities than can actually deal with it. So they did give the information to the FBI? And the FBI said they didn't see anything worth investigating?

All right, so either there's a worldwide plot to cover-up Foley's behavior, or perhaps this is blown way out of proportion to begin with. Regardless, Foley is gone, dismissed and shamed, and if officials feel there is any criminal activity, they'll investigate and determine what happened. And yet, the noise just gets louder, and the finger-pointing at the Republican "culture of corruption" just continues to be pressed on melodramatic scales.

And all of this comes from people who support open sexuality--whomever and whenever, and consequences be damned. These are the people who dismiss Clinton's infidelities and sexual harrassment of interns as "just about sex". Well, if sex is so casual for them, why all the hoopla? Why the denouncement?

There is really only one answer, and it disgusts me. The answer is political gain, and that is sad, because no one should gain off of corruption in Congress, regardless of who commits the crime. And yet, there it is.

Decisive Victory

2006-10-10T07:50:00.000-07:00

The game between Baltimore and Denver was nerve-wracking for spectators on either side of the board. Consider that, up until late in the fourth quarter, the spread between Denver and Baltimore was never more than 3. Baltimore scored first in the first quarter, shortly after Tatum Bell's fumble, to go up 3-0. Then in the second Denver drove to tie it up at 3-3. Then in the third, Denver managed another field goal to go up 6-3. At that point in time, the defenses had held very strong on both sides, and the game was still up in the air. Baltimore seemed by far more capable to drive the ball and score than Denver had--Plummer's 8 completions for 6 yards in the first half was testimony to that--so it seemed that perhaps we would be looking at either a 6-6 entry into overtime, or a 10-6 last minute battle.

Can you imagine what would have happened if this game was a war? Can you imagine the people demanding the Broncos to just throw in the towel, even though the score was a marginally favorable 6-3, because it seemed unlikely the Broncos would win? Well, maybe they wouldn't demand the Broncos give up, but they might, turning off the TV in disgust or leaving the stadium early because they can't bear to watch Baltimore advance on the game winning drive. But either way, they would have missed out on Denver's tide-turning interception and the subsequent drive that put them up 13-3 to stay.

What was missing in this game was a decisive victory. Neither team had a strong advantage over the other. Each quarterbacks made mistakes, each team's running game and passing game were held in check, each team turned the ball over several times, and the score was near dead-even for the majority of the game. Things would have been much different if at half, one team was leading the other 35-0.

The war in Iraq has a few similarities to the Broncos-Ravens game. First off, their is no descisive victory in sight. While we have many advantages, so does the opposition, and though they strike and we strike back, no headway seems to be made. The insurgents are still killing people at an atrocious rate, but the expected civil war has not broken out, and the American military is still in Iraq. If anything, right now the Americans are up 6-3 against the insurgents, and currently the insurgents are driving.

The difference is that most of the fans have left the stadium. The few die-hards are still cheering for all they're worth, but they can't muster the noise to force the insurgents to false start, or miscommunicate a play. Thus we need to kick our players into gear and have them make a few spectacular plays that will change the flow of the game. Keep in mind, we want to win in Iraq, so we can't just throw in the towel and write it off as another game lost.

To this effect, I will mimic a number of pundits who are calling for more troops. We should increase our numbers in Iraq to 500,000 or more. We should take immediate action to seal off the boarders with Iran and Syria. Finally we lock down the cities with continual patrols. We will catch and kill more insurgents, we will cut off their supplies from outside, and once peace a stability start taking hold, then we can start letting the Iraqis take charge. Otherwise we are trying to defend five wide receivers with one man--he might be excellent at pass coverage, but he is still one man defending against five. Someone is bound to be open.

So let's put our men on the field and win this.

Enough, Already

2006-10-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

When my father went to court to testify against a former employee of his accounting firm, he and I discussed the possibility that some good might come out of the trial. While it was certainly harmful to the firm that a former employee was found to be embezzling from his clients, surely the fact that the firm was swift in taking action and prosecuting the employee would tell the clientele that the firm was serious about it its ethical standards. Yet at the same time, it still an uphill battle to remove the taint from the firm that one of its employees was guilty of embezzling in the first place. At the same time, accountants are often stereotyped as crooked anyway, so this rogue former employee merely exacerbates an already difficult stigma.

I feel that this Mark Foley scandal is a parody of what my father went through with his firm, only blown up to national proportions. The GOP is responding exactly as my father did. Mark Foley resigned, and the GOP is no looking into whether any criminal charges should be leveled. What is outrageous is the bickering between the GOP and the Democratic party. While a staunch Republican myself, I am embarrassed by my party's repeated references to Gerry Studds and Mel Reynolds.

I am embarrassed because when a Republican does something wrong, the GOP should be concerned with finding all the facts, not pointing out hypocrisy of Democrats. Or at least, they should not be beating that issue to death. First of all, no matter how Republicans try to couch it, they come off as trying to cast blame on the other party, and no one can respect that. (It is the reason why we don't respect people who defended Bill Clinton by saying Ken Starr was starting a witch hunt.)

Yes, I understand that when push comes to shove, the public should be aware of what people are saying and doing, especially if it is blatantly hypocritical. But at this moment, Republicans should be worried about discovering all the facts in the case. They should ignore any Democratic hoopla, and refuse to be baited into these "holier-than-thou" debates. Sean Hannity, that goes double for you.

When all the facts are in, then speak out. Don't descend to the Democrat's level. Tell the public that you are ashamed of Foley's actions, and that you are doing everything you can to reach the bottom of the case. But don't point fingers at the Democrats. At least, withhold doing that until you have something worthwhile to accuse them of. We all know that Democrats have a double standard. That doesn't mean Republicans should have one, as well.

Tyranny of Political Correctness

2006-10-03T09:26:00.000-07:00

The current administration believes that the course to addressing the grievances of the world is to convert the world to democratic governments. Seeing how well democracy is working in the United States, it is a wonder, sometimes, that we are not simply laughed at for our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The idea of democracy is to empower the people. The heart of democracy is avoiding tyranny. The method of democracy is allowing people to have their say, for they are the government. But what happens when the people decide they want to be allowed the right to do whatever they want? What happens when the people say, "To hell with rules! Down with morals! I can do whatever I feel like doing!" What happens when the people decide that it is a major sin to use a politically incorrect epithet, but is perfectly acceptable to lie, cheat, commit adultery, or commit other crimes? What happens when the people decide that reason is unlawful, and feelings are what should be upheld in a court of law? What happens when the people as a whole, or even a majority, decide to embrace a course of self-destruction?

In our great nation, we have started on a course towards self-destruction, and it is backed by the tyranny of political correctness, which was adopted as a whole by we the people of the United States. We make a virtue out of being poor and accepting government handouts, and we condemn as politically incorrect anyone who dares to speak against that system. We make a virtue out of excessive promiscuity, and then condemn as politically incorrect anyone who would object to promiscuity as "forcing their views on another", or "being prude", or, worst of all, "acting on Christian values." Then we ostracize any who object to legal abortions, denouncing them as heartless, forcing women into back alleys for coat-hanger abortions or filling up orphanages with unwanted children that will just become a burden on society.

We make virtues of vices and condemn virtues as vices. We then protect our vices with namecalling and political smearing. We the people of the United States have chosen this of our own accord, and through democracy have passed it into law. Is it any wonder that there is question whether or not democracy is truly the path to follow?

Responsibility

2006-09-27T07:19:00.000-07:00

If anything is missing in this society, it is the willingness to accept responsibility. Currently, former President Bill Clinton is organizing a campaign against the Bush administration regarding who did more to capture Osama bin Laden. At this point, I have to ask, who cares who did more than who? bin Laden is still at large, and that's the problem we need to focus on. Or at least one among many. What many people forget is that, while at times it is necessary to apportion blame in order to teach and correct, we cannot change the past. We cannot, by blaming others--even if that blame is justified--make the present situation vanish. We can only start from now and work forward.

What President Clinton needs to do is simply say, "I did not catch bin Laden, so he's still at large and we need to go after him. End of story." If there's trust at stake here, then that trust has already been lost by failing to capture bin Laden. If trust needs to be regained, then all President Clinton can do now is work to rebuild that trust. Instead we see him playing a blame game with President Bush (who also has had plenty of failings, don't get me wrong), and the only reason to do something like that is the childish "well, what I did wasn't as bad as what Joey did", trying to make one's fault less by comparing it with someone else's fault.

Here's the point. If I steal a hundred dollars from someone, and then point at all the bank robbers and car thieves who steal by far more than I did, I am still culpable for stealing a hundred dollars. The comparison with other crimes does not alleviate my guilt. Granted, I should not be punished as though I committed grand theft auto, but I am still deserving of punishment. President Clinton needs to stop playing these games with public opinion, stop trying to pull "less corrupt than thou", and move on.

And while he's considering that, we also need to move on. So he didn't catch bin Laden. So what? Tarring and feathering him on Fox News is not miraculously going to catch bin Laden. If we feel that President Clinton's failure is grave fault for a United States president, then all we can do now is put the pressure on President Bush to fix the problems that prevented bin Laden's capture and make good on his promise to fight the War on Terror.

Disinformation

2006-09-26T07:37:00.000-07:00

In theory we have the media to present us with the facts of today's complex world. We have television broadcasts with breaking news reports, radio shows, newspapers, and the internet to keep us abreast of what is occurring in the world. And yet, with all these forms of communication, the world seems as foggy as it was before any of these devices of mass communication. Today there are conflicts both abroad and at home that must be distorted by at least some of the news outlets. Consider such topics as evolution, global warming, political scandals, the war in Iraq, and even 9/11. All of these have conflicting messeges in the news. Scientists who publish in scholarly journals claim that almost every scientific discovery supports the theory of evolution (and those that don't just do not relate) while mountains of literature have been published in the mainstream to debunk evolution and forward some form of intelligent design. Al Gore makes a movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", about the imminent danger of global warming, and environmentalists are up in arms about the damage done to the atmosphere by carbon dioxide and other chemicals that cause global warming, while skeptics claim that there is little proof to substantiate the claim that humans have any effect at all on the warming global climate. Karl Rove and Libby Scooter endured years of investigation for a leak that was no leak, all the while one side claiming they are guilty of outing a covert agent and perjury while on the other side their innocence is shouted to the high heavens. And let us not forget such matters as the reasons we went into Iraq, or what really happened on 9/11!

The problem is that there is too much information for any one person to swallow. In computer science, even, there are too many fields one person to know all of them intimately (though one can made a decent stab at keeping abreast of all new papers and keeping new findings under tabs). In theory, when one is confronted with two conflicting reports--i.e. mankind is causing global warming, mankind is not causing global warming--one will look into the matter and find where the facts lay. However, for most people this is a daunting task, especially given the sheer number of conflicting claims we see. But it is not even a collective laziness that allows these conflicts to perpetuate.

Many matters in which we see conflict these days are high risk issues. Consider how important the topics of Iraq and education are to people. Some believe that our survival as a nation is tied up in the Iraq war, in that if we fail there, our very nation wil be endlessly besieged by terrorists. Others believe that the terrorists are only active because of our overt aggression in Iraq, and that we would not have to worry about terrorist attacks or loss of troops if we withdrew. Protected by oceans and by our global power, we would not have anything to worry about. These two fundamentally conflicting beliefs lead people to conclude fundamentally different outlooks on the exact same situation. Moreover, these beliefs lead people to accept claims based more upon their previously held beliefs than on actual fact. That is not to say that there is no fact to justify their beliefs, but rather that fact is not as important as similarity to those previously held beliefs. Simply put, people will believe what they want to believe, and the stronger they want to believe something, the more they will justify that belief to themselves.

But why the conflict in information? If news is supposed to be simply reporting the facts, why are there conflicting messages in the media itself? This happens in part because facts themselves can mean little in a void. Suppose I said person A shot and killed person B. That one fact, especially as stated, would make person A a perpetrator. But suppose I phrased it differently, or sprinkled in a few details. Suppose I said Person A was awakened in the middle of the night by person B, who had broken into person A's home, and person A grabbed his gun. In the ensuing struggle, person A shot person B. The police arrived shortly after that, and person B was carted off to the hospital, where he died from the bullet wound. Now, the story is quite a bit different, isn't it? Now suppose I report that person A was person B's boss, and worked person B murderously. Person B was an excellent employee and, despite the work overload, completed all of his tasks on time and well-performed, but he never received any recognition for his work, while all his coworkers received much higher starting pay, enjoyed numerous raises, and even substantial bonuses. Person B had a wife and six children, and they could not make ends meet. The children were poorly clothed and suffering from malnutrition. Person B would try to talk with person A about his situation and how he felt he deserved more money, but person A claimed he never had time to meet him, and at least, in desperation, person B broke into person A's home at night with the intentions of forcing person A to deal with him. Now we are sympathetic with person B. But now suppose I continue by revealing that person B was an illegal alien and convicted felon, having dealt with drugs and sexually abused a neighbor's daughter, and he when he broke in person A's home, he was high on crank and bearing a large knife? Each time we reveal more of the facts, we put the situation further into context, and the meaning of those facts develop.

People discovered a long time ago that by putting facts into the proper context, they could present an issue in whatever light they chose. By carefully selecting facts, people can make a bold, brilliant idea that would help millions of people look like a crass attempt at personal gain at the expense of those very same millions. These are half-truths. They are facts utilized to present something falsely. But people will present these half-truths for personal gain, and especially to further a political agenda. The extensive resources at hand to investigate these half-truths only make it easier, not more difficult, for the half-truths to spread and take hold. When anyone can publish on the internet any idea, be it insightful or daft, when any page can be filled with words supposedly quoted from experts, the picture only becomes murkier.

Logic

2006-09-20T07:07:00.000-07:00

Consider the implication (A&B=>R)=>(A=>R | B=>R). If we were to assign statements to these variables (as most Discrete Structures teachers will do to try to make logic more intuitive), we might be inclined to disagree that this statement is valid (i.e. a tautology). After all, if we let statement A be "over 18" and statement B be "male" and R be "draftable", it says that "over 18" and "male" together are what makes a person draftable, but not either of those alone.

If we look at the proof, though, or even just a truth table, we find that the statement above is valid. What does this mean? It means that if A&B is sufficient evidence for R, then either A alone or B alone is sufficient evidence for R, but we cannot really tell which it is. Note that the converse does not hold.

So how does this work? Suppose we have evidence for A&B=>R (if we do not, then the statement is vacuously true anyway). Then suppose we have no evidence for A&B. Then we have no evidence for one of A or B, and that means one of A=>R, B=>R is vacuously true. Note that at this point, we encounter the problem of not knowing which of A or B fails, just that one does. Then suppose we have evidence for A&B. Since we have evidence for A&B=>R and for A&B, modus ponens tells us we can conclude R.

Here's the tricky part, where intuition breaks down. Since we have evidence for A&B, we must have evidence for both A and B separately. Our statement says knowing this evidence for both A and B separately is sufficent to conclude that R is a necessary conclusion from just one. Or does it?

This statement might just be the result of the non-discrimitive classical form of implies, which is logically equivalent to not A | B. Taking this into account, the antecedent (A&B=>R) is a limitation on the relation between A, B, and R. If A and B are true but R is false, the whole statement is vacuously true. If one of A or B is false, the whole statement is vacuously true. Thus the only information this statement has is when A, B, and R are true. But then the implications hold by grace of T=>T is T. What this makes is more of a relation than a strict necessary/sufficient pairing, a coincidence of construction rather than a statement with actual meaning.

Salvation

2006-09-14T07:22:00.000-07:00

Being a not-so-devout Catholic, I am familiar nonetheless with a few of the tenets of the Christian faith. Love thy God. Love thy neighbor. Turn the other cheek. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Despite the thousands of religious observances, this is really the core of the Christian faith. Do these things, we are told, and we will attain the rewards of Heaven. Fail, and we will burn in Hell.

I do not care much for reward-based systems. Part of that is a skepticism ingrained in public schools, where the reward rarely had anything to do with behavior invovled. Bullys were rewarded for having their way; the bullied were punished if they dared to lift a hand to fight back. Those who expended exorbitant amounts of effort maybe succeeded, but many who barely bothered to try passed with flying colors. I'm not saying I have any idea of how to fix that, or if it should be fixed. But the end result is that the rewards given in the system do not motivate me very much. In schools, particularly the University of Wyoming, what motivates me is a love of learning and a desire to know, not necessarily the grades I receive, the degree I'll earn, or the job I'll hypothetically get later on.

The doing good and making others happy should be the reward of doing good, not the promise of eternal rewards. Otherwise, we can justify our own selfishness, our own unwillingness to act, by claiming "we are damaging our immortal souls" by doing what needs to be done.

One of the classic ethical questions is the following: Suppose there is some maniac who has captured you and tells you either to kill one innocent person or he'll kill a thousand innocent people. Some will say to refuse to kill, for then it will be the manic killing, not you. Some will argue that you should kill the one innocent, for then only one dies, instead of a thousand. There is no good answer here. Either you kill the one, and are guilty of killing one innocent person (and furthermore acceding to the demands of a terrorist) or you refuse, and you have doomed a thousand people. So which is it?

In the War on Terror, we are facing a very similar issue. None of these are: which is the moral path? Instead, which is the path that is least wrong? Because, just as in the ethical dilemma above, there is no true moral way out. Either we refuse to fight the terrorists, and doom thousands to their brutal methods, or we fight the terrorists, and doom thousands of soldiers and civilians to violent death.

Some argue that not fighting is taking the moral high ground. This is because we are not dirtying ourselves, and thus being rewarded with approbation of the other nations in the world as well as saving our souls for Heaven. But would we really achieve Heaven by refusing to do what needs to be done to ensure the safety of millions of people?