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Durham, N.C. — A Durham couple charged with kidnapping, rape and assault was involved with a satanic cult, a prosecutor said on Monday. Joy Johnson and Joseph Craig appeared at a bond hearing Monday. A judge set Craig's bond at $590,000, but refused a prosecution request to increase Johnson's bond from $270,000 to $500,000. Prosecutors said a man and a woman met Craig through a shared interest in Satan worship, but the pair never consented to physical abuse. Craig shackled his victims to beds, kept them in dog cages and starved them inside his Albany Street home, prosecutors said. He was charged with beating the man with a cane and a cord and with raping the woman. "This goes well above what they were interested in doing," Assistant Durham County District Attorney Mark McCullough said. Johnson, who was third vice-chair of the Durham County Democratic Party and vice-chair for the Young Democrats, was charged with two counts of aiding and abetting. Prosecutors said she knew her husband planned the crime and watched as they were committed. She has resigned her positions with the Democratic Party, said state Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham. "She seemed to be a very open, reasonable, responsible person, but certainly, the allegations that have been made are shocking to everybody who has known her," McKissick said. "We wish her the best going through this difficult and trying time." Johnson also resigned her position as office manager for the Durham People's Alliance. Craig and Johnson operate a business called Indigo Dawn Inc. that is described on a Web site as a spiritual growth service offering "past life reconstruction" and "communication with spirit guides." The site talks about Johnson's activism and describes Craig as a reverend and a "devout student of magick." Among the accusations leveled by two state grand juries: Former top legislative staffer Mike Manzo got his lover, a twenty-something former rural beauty queen, a $29,000 job and $7,000 bonus mostly for doing her schoolwork. State Attorney General Tom Corbett announced the charges against the 12, all Democrats, in a news conference in Harrisburg. "It's a very sad day in Pennsylvania," Corbett said. The long-running investigation began with a Harrisburg Patriot-News story about secret bonuses to legislative employees. The 12 are accused of using public funds to finance political activities, a vacation, meals for friends and Manzo's no-show job for his girlfriend. The charges could harm Democrats in legislative battles this fall, and some have accused Republican Corbett of a partisan focus in the investigation. Corbett said yesterday he'll probe Republicans and Democrats and that he had focused first on House Democrats because investigators discovered they were beginning to destroy documents relevant to the case. Labels: politicians behaving badly Labels: global warming, low standards of journalism Labels: terrorism Labels: movie reviews Labels: politicians behaving badly Labels: 2008 presidential candidates PARIS: One day after threatening to strike Israeli and U.S. interests if attacked, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were reported Wednesday to have test-fired nine missiles, including one that Tehran claims has the range to reach Israel. State-run media, quoted by Western news agencies, said the tests near the Strait of Hormuz included long- and medium-range missiles, among them a new version of the Shahab-3, which Tehran maintains can hit targets 2,000 kilometers, or 1,250 miles, away. The reported tests coincide with increasingly tense negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program, which Iran says is for civilian purposes but which many Western governments suspect is meant for building nuclear weapons. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates, Islamofascism Labels: 2008 presidential candidates The woman, 43, had drawn the gun from a holster under her left arm, intending to shoot mice scurrying across the floor of a small travel trailer on Highway 20 in Potter Valley, according to the Sheriff's Office. The revolver instead slipped from her hand and fired as it struck the floor, according to the Sheriff's Office. The bullet went through the woman's right kneecap, then hit keys hanging on the belt loop of a 42-year-old man in the trailer, officials said. The bullet glanced off the keys and tore a hole in the man's pants. The bullet grazed the man's groin before stopping in his coin pocket, where it was recovered for evidence, according to the Sheriff's Office. Labels: humor On a personal level, from the perspective of a pudgy family man who's scarfed down, say, about 100 too many Quarter-pounder-with-cheese and Big Mac meals in my lifetime, McDonald is an ideal boycott target. Unless you're supremely loyal to McDonald's brand of fattening, greasy burgers, McChicken sandwiches and fries, etc., it's pretty easy to drive to another fast-food joint or — better for your body — substitute healthy food instead. Come to think of it, this is one of the few protests against unhealthy lifestyles that can lead you to live a … healthier lifestyle. Two birds with one stone. This is easy for me. The only item on the McDonald's menu that really qualifies as awesomely tasty to me is the Filet-O-Fish sandwich (the only form of fish that I can eat since a traumatic experience with a fish when I was about five years old). Labels: homosexuality As it turns out, scholars have already done some work quantifying problem citations, divided into two categories, “incorrect references” and “quotation errors.” The authors of the paper, J. Scott Armstrong of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Malcolm Wright of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute at the University of South Australia, Adelaide, write of the former type, “This problem has been extensively studied in the health literature ... 31 percent of the references in public health journals contained errors, and three percent of these were so severe that the referenced material could not be located.” More serious than such botched references are articles that incorrectly quote a cited paper or, as the authors put it, “misreport findings.” For example, in the same study of health literature3, they write, “authors’ descriptions of previous studies in public health journals differed from the original copy in 30 percent of references; half of these descriptions were unrelated to the quoting authors’ contentions.” Labels: history Labels: gun history To say the subject of morals in the church is a sensitive topic would be an understatement. An element in many churches is legalistic, placing demands on people that scripture does not place. I was in one church where we were told not to drink root beer from brown glass bottles because people would think we were drinking alcohol. Never mind that even drinking alcohol is never strictly forbidden in the scriptures, though drunkenness is. Some elements demand pastors prescribe rules on courtship and schooling found nowhere in scripture. These preachers focus on cleansing the outside of the cup through external rules, rather than letting God work to change hearts. Many have been spiritually abused by such legalists and my heart goes out to these wounded souls. Yet I’m reminded of the passage of the Screwtape Letters where Screwtape advises Wormwood to get Christians to focus on the exact opposite of their most pressing problem. Legalism is a minor problem compared to the church’s refusal to stand for biblical truth. There is a maxim: “Where the scriptures speak, we will speak. Where the scriptures are silent, we will be silent.” Yet in many cases, where the scriptures speak, churches are silent. Issues such as divorce and cohabitation are rarely preached on from most pulpits. In a select few pulpits is the issue of abortion discussed. Churches often appeal to Matthew 7’s command to, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” In the context of scripture, when one reads the whole passage, it’s clearly about hypocrisy. Religious post-modernists turn it into a requirement to abandon all moral judgment about many things scripture speaks to. In other words, they use it, ironically, as a pretext to judge as acceptable what the bible condemns as sin. Labels: poverty “This is not what we’re interested in seeing,” said George Price, Superintendent of the National Seashore. “Over the last couple of years, public (sex) acts like this have been viewed by visitors.” Price said officials are baffled as to why the vacation mecca has suddenly become a hotbed of public sex for randy exhibitionists. “Laws and enforcement have not changed - it just seems to be something that some people decided we want to see,” Price said. Complaints have included whale-watchers sailing past large groups of nude men, and families stumbling upon people engaged in sex acts on the pristine national shore that attracts tens of thousands of vacationers from throughout the world each year. One complaint, issued in 2007, was from a New Jersey family walking in the dunes who encountered couples and a large group of men having “sex in the nude, including oral and anal sex right out in the open,” the Cape Cod Times reported last week. “The majority is gay, but we’ve had issues with hetero sex as well. Families are upset and outraged,” Price said. Labels: homosexuality American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror. After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda’s dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant “last stand” in the northern city of Mosul. A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10. Operation Lion’s Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the Americans’ 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the Al-Qaeda leader, and the capture of more than 1,000 suspects. The group has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen yesterday, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians. Last Friday I joined the 2nd Iraqi Division as it supported local police in a house-to-house search for one such bomb after intelligence pointed to a large explosion today. Even in the district of Zanjali, previously a hotbed of the insurgency, it was possible to accompany an Iraqi colonel on foot through streets of breeze-block houses studded with bullet holes. Hundreds of houses were searched without resistance but no bomb was found, only 60kg of explosives. American and Iraqi leaders believe that while it would be premature to write off Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni group has lost control of its last urban base in Mosul and its remnants have been largely driven into the countryside to the south. Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, who has also led a crackdown on the Shi’ite Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad in recent months, claimed yesterday that his government had “defeated” terrorism. “They were intending to besiege Baghdad and control it,” Maliki said. “But thanks to the will of the tribes, security forces, army and all Iraqis, we defeated them.” Oh, and here's something that represents Bush's single biggest mistake of the whole war--perhaps even more serious than the failure to send in enough troops to occupy Iraq: Closing paragraph: Labels: terrorism Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Labels: 2008 presidential candidates The National Children's Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care. This could include a child of as young as three who says "yuk" in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food. The guidance by the NCB is designed to draw attention to potentially-racist attitudes in youngsters from a young age. ... The guide goes on to warn that children might also "react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying 'yuk'". Staff are told: "No racist incident should be ignored. When there is a clear racist incident, it is necessary to be specific in condemning the action." Warning that failing to pick children up on their racist attitudes could instill prejudice, the NCB adds that if children "reveal negative attitudes, the lack of censure may indicate to the child that there is nothing unacceptable about such attitudes". Labels: political correctness A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following: 1. frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5. 2. a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. 3. identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self. 4. impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5. 5. recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior 6. affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days). 7. chronic feelings of emptiness 8. inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights) 9. transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms Labels: cars CAMBRIDGE, Idaho — Using his trusty BB gun to help him return to Earth, a 48-year-old gas station owner flew a lawn chair rigged with helium-filled balloons more than 200 miles across the Oregon desert Saturday, landing in a field in Idaho. Kent Couch created a sensation in this tiny farming community, where he touched down safely in a pasture after lifting off from Bend, Ore., and was soon greeted by dozens of people who gave him drinks of water, local plumber Mark Hetz said. "My wife works at the City Market," Hetz said. "She called and said, 'The balloon guy in the lawn chair just flew by the market, and if you look out the door you can see him. "We go outside to look, and lo and behold, there he is. He's flying by probably 100 to 200 feet off the ground. "He takes his BB gun and shoots some balloons to lower himself to the ground. When he hit the ground he released all the little tiny balloons. People were racing down the road with cameras. They were all talking and laughing." Couch covered about 235 miles in about nine hours after lifting off at dawn from his gas station riding in a green lawn chair rigged with an array of more than 150 giant party balloons. Labels: welcome to Idaho The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program _ a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium _ reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans. The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" _ the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment _ was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions. ... Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger _ and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims _ led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration. Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam's nuclear efforts. Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said. Labels: Iraqi WMDs
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Senator Craig Looks Downright Behaved Compared To This
From July 1, 2008 WRAL-TV:
And here are Democrats who are far less interesting, from the July 11, 2008 Philadelphia Daily News:A SORDID TANGLE of corruption, cash and sex rocked the Statehouse yesterday in a political scandal that left one current and one former legislator and 10 current and former staff members facing criminal charges.
Downright respectable, at least compared to Satanic torture and rape! By the way, what's the message that Corbett started on this bunch? That Republicans are too honest to destroy evidence of criminal activity? Or too stupid to destroy evidence of criminal activity? Or too smart to destroy evidence of ethically questionable but perhaps lawful misbehavior?
Look, I know that not every Democrat is a crook. But I got rather tired of hearing nothing for a couple of years but ranting and ravings about corrupt Republicans--and scandals like these make some of the sleazebags that helped us lose control of Congress in 2006 look almost like choir boys by comparison.
Global Warming Increasing Skin Cancers--But Only Among Women
A reader pointed me to this July 11, 2008 CBS News report where Katie Couric interviews an "expert" about skin cancer:New research shows there's been a disturbing increase in melanoma among young women. In 1973, there were five-and-a-half cases per 100,000 women, ages 15-39. But by 1980, the rate had nearly doubled. And it went up another 50 percent by 2004. During that same time, the melanoma rate for young men leveled off. Melanoma is the most serious form of skin cancer.
Okay, that's a real worry. Skin cancer rates rose dramatically from 1973 to 1980--and then rose dramatically again (but just for women) to 2004. And the explanation for this, from their expert?Couric: Dr. Downie, when I heard these numbers I thought "Has the sun gotten stronger? Are young women spending more time outdoors?" What's behind this disturbing trend?
Look, ozone level thinning as a cause of increased skin cancer? Plausible. Ozone reduces UV exposure. Greenhouse gases? What? This the first that I have heard that they are changing the amount of UV reaching the surface. But here's the big problem: skin cancer rates for women increased 50% from 1980 to 2004--but didn't increase for men. What's with this? Is the ozone hole only present over women? Do greenhouse gases only let in UV light that causes skin cancer in women?
Downie: It's really worrisome. The ozone level is thinning so because of that, the greenhouse gas emission, the sun is stronger. This is not our grandmother's sun.
Come on. When something global affects men and women differently, it's usually not global. Yes, there has been some measurable increase in solar output (about .05% per decade since the 1970s--which is not much). But those of us who grew up in the 1960s remember when suntans went from something that identified a person who worked outside to something fashionable. One of my sisters spent as much time as possible on Santa Monica Beach trying to get that cool bronzed look--and in winter, she used a sunlamp. And unsurprisingly, a few years ago, she ended up melanoma. She was not alone in her worship of UV.
One of the saddest aspects to the ignorance that passes for television journalists is that the general population doesn't seem to be any smarter--and so stupid people on TV can panic stupid people watching TV.
You Know, There's a War On
At least, when I read stuff like this from Democratic National Platform complaining about how the administration has been using military law in the midst of a war, and trampling on civil liberties:the subversion of the civil by military law...; the arbitrary military arrest, imprisonment, trial and sentence of American citizens...; the suppression of freedom of speech and of the press; the denial of the right of asylum;... is calculated to prevent a restoration of the Union and the perpetuation of a government deriving its just powers from the consent of the government.
Amazingly enough, this isn't the current Democratic Party platform. It's that of August, 1864, quoted at Edward McPherson, Clerk of the House of Representatives (U.S.), Political History of the United States of America During the Period of Reconstruction… (Washington: Solomons & Chapman, 1875), 118. The complaint was, of course, all about civil liberties--but that the people Lincoln was fighting were also, overwhelmingly, Democrats--and northern Democrats had been very reluctant to oppose slavery--why, I'm sure that was just a coincidence.
The Awful Truth (1937)
My wife and I watched this Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, and Ralph Bellamy comedy this evening. I confess that a lot of 1930s comedies are, at most, good for a few grins, but this was uproariously funny--almost to the sides aching level. Some of it is very amusing physical comedy--Cary Grant's antics with a chair breaking up are brilliant, and the incredibly well-trained dog with the hats--and a lot of terribly witty dialog! And once you get past the misunderstandings that start the divorce proceedings, it is a terribly romantic comedy.
Black Hole: A Star From Which No Light Escapes
Okay, I'm oversimplifying a bit. (I actually attended a lecture at CalTech by Kip Thorne, one of the early experts on the field, back when I was in high school--I know a bit more than that.) So what happened when a local official used the term to refer to the Dallas County ticket collection system? Why, he was called a racist by a Dallas County Commissioner and a judge! See July 9, 2008 Fox News Dallas for coverage.
You know, the argument for requiring a certain minimum level of education or knowledge to vote or hold public office looks better and better. My guess is that the standard would not have to be very high to exclude John Wiley Price from holding office. It gets better, according to this July 10, 2008 Fox News Dallas report: Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price is sticking to his comments that the term "black hole," which a colleague used, is racist. Price also says language such as "angel food cake" and "devil's food cake" are also racially insensitive.
Is The Candidate Not A Natural Born Citizen? No, Not Obama
I'm having trouble downloading the paper, but the abstract argues that because of deficiencies in the law, McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone eleven months before U.S. law was changed to make him a natural born citizen. I don't know if the paper is correct or not (as I said, I'm having trouble getting it to download)--but it isn't too late for the Republican Convention to short-circuit a potentially disastrous problem by picking someone that isn't going to be subject of legal challenges.
Nosy: Your Email Provider Refuses My Emails
If you can add me to a whitelist of accepted emailers, I could respond.
Iran's Ballilstic Missile Test
From the July 9, 2008 International Herald Tribune:
Hmmm. Ballistic missiles. What even our European allies are concerned is a nuclear weapon development program. A president who talks about wiping Israel off the map--and who thinks the Twelfth Imam's return is imminent--who Shiite eschatology teaches will lead Islam in an overwhelming military defeat of the non-Islamic world. What do you suppose the chances are that this is going to lead to war?
Obama thinks we can talk to Iran. Well, yeah. But I rather think that talk is going to be effective only with the prospect of serious destruction as a backup threat.
Stupid Things To Do In Stupid Places
Having sex on a public beach is a bad idea. Doing it in an Islamic country, when you are a foreigner? Doubly stupid. And while drunk. And then insulting the police officer arresting you with an insulting comment about Islam? Triply stupid. All the details--told salaciously--are in the July 9, 2008 British newspaper, The Sun. I hope, when this dingbat Michelle Palmer gets done with her legal troubles, she doesn't go back to Britain and complain about how narrow-minded Islam is. Islam is rather narrow-minded, but I am completely sympathetic to Abu Dubai's reaction to this rude, crude, and utterly stupid person.
"Your Children Should Learn To Speak Spanish"
Or so Barack Obama says. He has something of a point about the importance of learning a foreign language--there are some significant advantages in learning to write English well, once you have a standard of comparison--but that he phrased it primarily as American children should learn to speak Spanish--not just some other language--shows where Obama expects America to be headed.
Obamaa may deliver speeches well, but this must have been an off-the-cuff remark--or he is too stupid for the job he wants.
Some People Shouldn't Have Guns
A point that I often make to reporters--and they are usually surprised to hear me say this--is that not everyone should have a gun. There are people who the law prohibits from having guns--and I agree, such as violent felons. There are also people who the law does not prohibit, but whom I discourage from owning guns.
If you find yourself coming back to consciousness after a night of Jack Daniels wearing a leopard skin loincloth, holding a chicken, and a crowd of people around you is shouting, "Kill it! Kill it!" Well, maybe having a gun wouldn't be wise.
If you are prone to severe depression, or you have a history of severe mental illness--even if you are doing okay now--having a gun might not be a good idea.
If you are short-tempered, and prone to flying off the handle, having a gun might not be a good idea.
If, like the person in the news report below, you lack anything approaching the common sense that an electric toaster has... Well, this July 8, 2008 Santa Rosa Press-Democrat news story tells it all:
For those of you not familiar with guns, shooting a mouse with a .44 Magnum, assuming that you actually hit the mouse, will create a large red splatter where the mouse was. This is the right caliber for black bear, PCP-crazed body builders, moose, and (in a pinch), grizzly bears. This is clearly a person with a serious judgment problem, and she would be well-advised to not have guns. Or power tools. Or cars. Or ladders. Or maybe anything but a pacifier and a blanket.Woman tries to kill mice, shoots self
A Potter Valley woman wounded herself and a man July 3 while attempting to kill mice with a .44-caliber Magnum revolver, according to the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office.
The McDonald's Boycott
Peter LaBarbera at Americans for Truth About Homosexuality is often a bit more strident and shrill than I like (even though I am often in agreement with him), but I got a good laugh out of his recent call to join the American Family Association's boycott of McDonald's because one of their vice presidents is serving on the board of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce:I've talked to many pro-family people who already have been boycotting McDonald's for weeks. The idea has obviously caught on because it's an easy step to take for the many Americans who are sick and tired of rewarding and subsidizing corporations that promote homosexuality.
I'm So Surprised
July 8, 2008 Inside Higher Education reports that there is a problem with the accuracy of citations in much scholarly publication:Citations figure prominently in academic promotion and peer review. Theoretically, scholarly references serve a dual purpose: They indicate an author’s familiarity with established literature and assign credit to previous work, while from the other direction many would argue they signal a paper’s relevance and standing within a discipline.
...
J. G. Davies' The Early Christian Church
Originally published 1965; this edition was published by Barnes & Noble 1995. This is a scholarly history of the Christian church from its Jewish roots through roughly the fourth century. There's a lot of important information here, but unfortunately written in the style that you might expect of a British professor of that era. Don't expect to sit down and blast through it in a couple of afternoons. But if you want a detailed, objective analysis of the subject, this is certainly one book to consider. I consider myself to have a pretty substantial vocabulary, but I on a number of occasions found myself having to look up a word in the dictionary. It would have helped if some of the more technical terms had been defined at first use.
My impression from reading the book is that while he is writing a scholarly, objective account, Davies was a Christian--although of a rather liberal theological bent. I suspect that pp. 8-15 will irritate many fundamentalists, since Davies accepts the validity of the Quelle theory of common origins of the materials in the Synoptic Gospels, and gives some credence to the German Form Criticism school that played such a prominent role in destroying Christianity as a literal faith--provoking twentieth century fundamentalism (which creates its own set of problems for Christians of an intellectual bent). At the same time, Davies doesn't seem to have followed the dusty road down to complete disbelief that led to Social Darwinism and ultimately, to Auschwitz.
This more mainstream Christianity (where mainstream is understood as a more intellectual, more questioning form of the faith that was Protestantism before about 1860) makes Davies' book a worthwhile counterbalance to a more fundamentalist approach. Truth is often reached by examining multiple theories and models.
One of the areas where I have always been rather weak in my knowledge of the history of Christianity is from the end of the period covered by the book of Acts to Constantine. I recognized a lot of the names--Eusebius, Tertullian, Cyprian, John Chryostom--but I generally knew the name and nothing else--just that they were "church fathers." They came after the Apostles, before Constantine, but I often knew little more than the name and "second or third century A.D." This book gives a detailed description of what dozens of bishops, theologians, and Roman emperors did with relation to the Church.
I will warn you that the detailed discussions of the fine theological points that seemed terribly important in many of these early struggles are often sleep inducing. In some cases, I can see why the differences of opinion mattered, because they influenced how people lived. Gnostic teaching (which Davies asserts absorbed bits of Christian lingo and literature, but was not a Christian offshoot), by teaching that the spirit and the body were separate, was able to justify that the sins your body committed had no effect on the soul, and therefore there was no reason to put any great effort into doing what you wanted. It is pretty clear where that leads--and why that's a bad idea.
But many of the other disputes were over such subtle points that classical Greek (a language awash in specialized words for subtle philosophical points) was sometimes unable to adequately explain them--and his attempts to render these distinctions in modern English bored me silly. I guess third century theologians had insufficient important points to argue.
Davies examines the changing style of worship, which varied significantly from region to region and century to century, as well as how architecture changed for church buildings--something a bit less abstract that I found a welcome change. I was both surprised and saddened to see how early a cathedral was established at Abu Dubai--one of those reminders that the aggressive militancy of Islam crushed Christianity out of a part of the world that had Christians for hundreds of years when Arab armies came through, giving people the choice (on the battlefield) of conversion or death, and off the battlefield, the choice of an extraordinarily heavy taxation on assets, or conversion. Islam's pretense that its success was because people wanted to believe it is pretty well belied by the methods used to achieve that success.
This is a pretty grim book in places. There are plenty of embarrassing reminders that the early Christian church wasn't filled with saintly figures who cared only about spreading the Gospel. As Davies makes clear, when Christianity went from a persecuted underground cult to a religion that was recognized and then finally established by the Roman Empire, it attracted people whose motivations left much to be desired. This should not be a surprise, of course, but it does remind you that there are times that being a persecuted minority can be an advantage.
Felonies & Early America
I've run into an interesting historical question: how did America punish ex-felons (those who had served their sentence, and were still breathing) when the Bill of Rights was adopted?
Before the Revolution, there were something like 168 capital crimes in English law. American colonial law somewhat followed English law, and somewhat didn't, varying by colony. I see that New York in 1770 and again in 1771 (after the Crown vetoed the first try) made counterfeiting a capital crime, punishable by "the Pains of Death, without Benefit of Clergy." 5 The Colonial Laws Of New York From The Year 1664 To The Revolution 38, 163. There are two 1772 private relief acts that provide for the same penalty for perjury in relation to bankruptcy cases. Ibid., 421, 424.
Pennsylvania, as another example, from 1718 until 1776, had a pretty impressive stack of capital crimes, including burglary, rape, "the crime against nature," malicious maiming, witchcraft by conjuration, arson, and counterfeiting. O.F. Lewis, The Development Of American Prisons And Prison Customs, 1776-1845 12-13 (Albany, N.Y.: Prison Association of New York, 1892). I know that Penn. was hanging people for burglary in this period--or at least, newspaper accounts are reporting that they are doing so.
By 1786, Pennsylvania repeals capital punishment for burglary, robbery, and buggery (which includes bestiality, oral sex, and anal sex). In 1794, they repeal it for everything except first degree murder. 2 Congressional Globe 456, 19th Cong., 1st sess. (1826). A lot of other states are a lot slower than Pennsylvania on this.
Felony in English law is a very muddled concept. Blackstone's Commentaries, Book 4, ch. 7, makes the argument that the defining characteristic of felony was not that it was capital, but that you were subject to loss of all your lands or goods. Loss of limb or life was a "superadded" penalty, common in English statutory law, but by no means certain for all felonies.
Until the development of prisons (which develop slowly in the early Republic, especially in the South), what happened to violent felons who weren't executed? I'm looking to see what sort of legal disqualifications were imposed on them. I presume that they lacked the right to vote--I recall seeing that Connecticut passed such a measure around 1816. But what about before then--especially in the Constitutionally critical period around adoption of the Bill of Rights? If you didn't get your neck stretched--or you served your sentence in one of the small number of prisons then in existence--what penalties did you suffer on release?
If you can find anything that answers this question, it sure would be helpful for a law review article I am trying to finish and shove out the door.
Drinking Root Beer From Brown Bottles
Adam Graham points out that, for all the hazards of legalism, the problem that most churches have now is quite the opposite:
I'm gratified to report that my pastor is preaching increasingly serious sermons calling people to consider fully the morality of their lives. Adam points out that many pastors are reluctant to call people to Biblical lives for fear of losing too much of the congregation. I've seen this a lot. We're reaching the point where many churches either need to start preaching the importance of following Jesus, or stop pretending.
I'm also pleased to see Adam's coverage of this Declaration of American Values by a group of conservatives in Denver recently. There's nothing that I can fundamentally disagree with, but I am pleased to see this point made early on, both because liberals pretending to be Christians have been hammering away at this for some time, and because it Scriptural:Every person is made in the image of God and it is the responsibility and duty of all individuals and congregations to extend the hand of loving compassion to care for those in poverty and distress.
While I understand the reluctance to acknowledge the government's role in this "responsibility and duty," the fact is that it is part of the American tradition from the beginning of settlement here for the government to play a role.
Gee, You Wonder Why This Is Suddenly A Problem?
You don't suppose it might have something to do with the changing moral climate caused by courts deciding that homosexuality is okay? While the article does acknowledge that not all of the cavorting is gay, it does acknowledge that a majority of it is--which is pretty impressive, considering that only 4% or so of men are gay or bisexual. From the July 7, 2008 Boston Herald:Angry Cape Cod National Seashore officials said they are cracking down on public sex acts along the picturesque shoreline after the number of citations for public sex acts more than tripled, from an average of 40 to 132 last year.
The article does acknowledge that there are "members of the gay community" that are also upset about this, which doesn't surprise me too much. But as I pointed out in 2003, there are plenty of gay men prepared to argue that prohibiting sex in public places is just one step from being shipped off to Auschwitz.
Some of the comments from those who live in the area are pretty startling:Last time (10 or so years ago) my wife and I were in P-Town we felt like we'd stumbled into a casting call for a movie on exhibitionism. Taking children there is out of the question. Now, apparently, it's gotten explicitly worse.
and this one:I haven't been to P-town in 6 years. My wife and I were made to feel very unwelcome when we went for lunch with her sister and our baby.
and this one--which makes me wonder if I should skip plans to visit Key West:if you live in massachusestts you know what you're getting into if you go,if you're from out of state they should have some kind of warning about the public sodomy that occurs there...i remember taking my wife to key west when my son was just an infant,6 years later we were going to Marathon Key and flew into Key West....we rent a car and as we're driving out of key west my son sees 1 guy walking another with a dog leash...
and then he describes the state of exposure of those involved.
As a number of commenters point out--why, oh why, does anyone start to see homosexuality as a problem?
You Won't Be Seeing This In The Idaho Statesman
It doesn't fit the model that the left wants. From the July 6, 2008 Times of London:The number of foreign fighters coming over the border from Syria to bolster Al-Qaeda’s numbers is thought to have declined to as few as 20 a month, compared with 120 a month at its peak.
Major-General Mark Hertling, American commander in the north, said: “I think we’re at the irreversible point.”
McCain At Least Knows To Copy Good Ideas
I haven't seen a lot of clever ideas coming from McCain, but at least he can copy good ideas from others. From the July 7, 2008 Idaho Statesman:"I will double the child deduction from $3,500 to $7,000 for every dependent," McCain said in the prepared remarks. He also cited his plans to cut the estate tax, although Democrats note that it applies to only a fraction of Americans.
Well yes, that's true. Only a fraction of Americans pay estate tax. But when a family-owned business above about $2 million in value goes through probate, to pay the estate tax, the heirs often have to sell the business--and who usually buys the business? A much bigger fish. If your goal is to consolidate small businesses into bigger hands, then I suppose the estate tax makes sense.McCain would provide refundable tax credits of $2,500 for individuals, and $5,000 for families, for all those who buy health insurance. Employer contributions toward health insurance would be treated as income, meaning workers would have to pay income taxes on it, but not payroll taxes.
This is likely to be bad for the majority of Americans whose employers provide them more than $5,000 worth of health insurance benefits, and good for the minority of Americans who have no health insurance at all.
There is a fraction of Americans with little or no health coverage assistance from their employer. A lot of small companies contribute nothing, but at least make coverage to employees available at cost. This would be a big gain. Right now, these employees are paying several hundred dollars a month for coverage, and it comes out of their own pockets alone. This would at least give them some federal tax relief with which to pay for health insurance that they already have. For the most part, the beneficiaries aren't the rich, but the working poor.Obama says the plan would seriously undermine the employer-based system that provides health insurance to about 158 million workers. He would require most employers to provide health care for their workers or pay into a national health care plan.
No, it would mean that we would no longer have a system whereby those of us with big employers and reasonably generous health insurance plans would no longer have a huge federal tax subsidy--while 15% of the population has no coverage at all. Obama is taking a position that is perilously close to "Let them eat cake."
This Bush plan that McCain is recycling would likely have the effect of equalizing the current system, whereby those of us with good jobs have decent health insurance, and those with bad jobs have nothing. And the Democrats are complaining that the Republicans are pushing a plan that creates equality?
Probably Too Good To Be True
But since the accusation involves not very competent forgery--and the Texas Air National Guard memo about President Bush turned out to be a not very competent forgery by Democratic operatives--this makes you wonder! There are people claiming that Obama wasn't really born in the U.S., and that the Hawaii birth certificate that Daily Kos put up is a forgery. From Andy McCarthy at National Review Online:Our Jim Geraghty seemed to pooh-pooh the birth certificate controversy about a week ago, but according to the above cited report (at a site called DougRoss@Journal) and a new one from Israeli Insider, there are new developments, and the Obama campaign appears to be stonewalling. Shouldn't it be a fairly easy matter to prove he was born in Hawaii if he really was? Why wouldn't Obama just end this quickly?
Like I said, too good to be true, and I am sure if there was any real question about this, Hillary Clinton's flying monkeys would have driven this story like it was stolen. (Unless, of course, that is who is driving this story, behind the scenes.) But this should be an easy one to resolve. Obama's Fight The Smears website has a completely illegible birth certificate here. The Los Angeles Times has one that is legible--although like Fight the Smears, they have blacked out the certificate number.
...
My predisposition on the many stories floating around about Obama and his circle is to ignore them on the following theory: If there was really anything to this or that, the Clintons would have found it and gotten their media friends all over it. This story about Obama's eligibility puzzles me because (a) it is so basic, (b) it should be so easy to prove the relevant facts of his birth, (c) the Obama campaign's response to the story is bizarre, and (d) it seems to be getting worse rather than resolved.
Now, I can somewhat understand why you might do that to prevent identity theft--but it isn't like someone is going to successfully do an identity theft on a high profile person like Barack Obama. ("Why, Mr. Obama, from the television news I would never have guessed that you were so short, white, and female.")
I'm more bemused by this than willing to believe it. (Remember when people were raising questions about McCain's eligibility to run because he was born outside the United States?) But I can hope!
UPDATE: It occurred to me that some of you may find the entire notion absurd--how could this guy have reached the U.S. Senate if there was anything questionable about his legal status?
1. If Obama was a naturalized citizen, that would not be a legal obstacle to Illinois state legislature or U.S. Senate. I'm not suggesting that this is likely--just that it isn't completely absurd to think that no one might have checked this before.
2. Who checks to verify that you are a citizen? I don't believe that I have ever been asked to provide proof of citizenship when I have registered to vote--and I am sure that I didn't have to prove citizenship--or even legal residence in my district--to run for Idaho State Senate a few months ago. I don't recall having to provide such proof when I ran for Santa Monica City Council in 1981. A person who was not a legal resident could easily slip through the cracks when running for public office. You have to show more proof of citizenship to get a job washing dishes than to be a member of the government.
With Good Behavior...
He should be eligible for parole in the 33rd century. From the July 7, 2008 Fort Worth Star-Telegram:A Springtown man was sentenced to 4,060 years in prison Wednesday for sexually assaulting three teenage girls.
Hard decision, I guess.
James Kevin Pope, 43, will be eligible for parole in the year 3209, according to the Parker County District Attorney’s office.
...
urors convicted Pope of 40 counts of sexual assault of a child and three counts of sexual performance of a child, authorities said. They sentenced him to life in prison for each sex assault conviction and 20 years for each sex performance conviction.
At the request of prosecutors, District Judge Graham Quisenberry ordered Pope to serve the sentences consecutively, Swain said.
Pope abused the girls during a 20-month period that began in May 2006, prosecutors said. The abuse came to the attention of authorities in February 2008 after Pope made several "inappropriate comments" to a friend who notified Child Protective Service.
During the trial, the teens testified about the abuse and sexually explicit photographs of the victims were offered as evidence to corroborate their stories, Swain said.
At sentencing, a U.S. Secret Service agent testified that while examining Pope’s home computer he found "hundreds of photographs of scantily clad children in suggestive poses."
The jury deliberated for about 90 minutes before returning the sentences.
Someone Please Tell Me That This Report Is Wrong
The alternative is that multiculturalism in Britain has lost all touch with reality. From the July 7, 2008 Telegraph:
Obviously, these multiculuralists have never had toddlers.
Stop Walking on Eggshells
I read about five to six books a month--and I don't review enough of them. I just finished reading Paul T. Masson and Randi Kreger's Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder. What is Borderline Personality Disorder? Here's the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria:
If this describes a really difficult person in your life--you might want to read this book. BPD was only recognized in the 1990s--for what was previously considered just cranky, difficult, unpleasant people. Mason and Kreger provide a very readable description of why those suffering from BPD do these seemingly irrational actions--repeatedly hurting people that love them and try to help them--and then reacting in frustration and anger when they have done so. This book also explains why BPDs do this primarily to people that they care about--and manage to remain on reasonably cordial terms with people that they barely know.
Fundamentally, someone with BPD is in dread fear of abandonment, and seeks proof that loved ones won't abandon them--by repeatedly putting those loved ones to tests designed to drive them away. If their mistreatment drives the loved one away--it proves that the abandonment concerns are legitimate. If the mistreatment doesn't drive the loved one away--it proves that they are truly loved.
Stop Walking On Eggshells provides some discussion of the theoretical models. There appears to be some biochemical origin. There may be family dynamics that contribute. Those who have been sexually or physically abused seem to be at higher risk, although most BPDs are not in this category.
However, the book is primarily about methods by which those who have relationships with BPD sufferers can deal with those relationships--with a strong emphasis on boundary setting, methods for discussing the relationship that don't set off BPDs (discuss how what they have done makes you feel, not making statements about what the BPD sufferer is feeling), and for those who have the misfortune to be married to a BPD sufferer, how to handle the relationship. If the spousal or child abuse becomes so severe that it requires divorce, how to handle it to protect yourself and your children.
BPD seems to be primarily a female disorder. As the book points out, a lot of what might be recognized as BPD in men usually ends up in the criminal justice system--and this may explain the apparently female disproportion.
National Automobile Museum
I mentioned a couple of days ago that the one bright tourist part of our visit to friends in Reno was the National Automobile Museum, what used to be Bill Harrah's car collection. Because I brought my little pocket camera, many of the pictures didn't turn out all that well. If you are passing through Reno, I encourage you to visit. But here are some pictures of interesting, sometimes significant, and occasionally startlingly beautiful pieces of automotive art.
This is the Thomas Flyer, which won the New York to Paris race of 1908. (And yes, there's a centennial memorial web site for it.) And in case you were wondering--no, they didn't drive across the frozen ice as in that ridiculous Tony Curtis movie loosely (very loosely) based on it.
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Something of the simplicity of the designs can be seen from how they kept the chain drive lubricated:
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One of the galleries is done as as 1930s American street, with this rather attractive car, which I think is a Pierce-Arrow:
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The swan hood ornament is quite elegant:
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Of course, items like this don't survive today because of pedestrian collision issues.
If my memory serves me correctly, this rather unusual vehicle is a 1930s Rolls-Royce. They were apparently all custom bodies at the time--and someone with lots of money decided a copper body would be really distinctive:
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Trust me, it was really, really beautiful. The lighting just doesn't convey it well at all. I shudder to think what was required to keep it from developing the green patina.
This was one of those very unusual cars that looks like it belongs in the old Dick Tracy comic strip. It was a prototype that never received enough funding to go into production:
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Some details:
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Here's one of those cars that had real potential to get America headed down the path towards compact, fuel-efficient automobiles. But, of course, a progressive (by wild coincidence, from an Arab-American family) decided that it was Unsafe At Any Speed. 
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I have read that the very first technical report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration--set up because of Nader's efforts--found that the Corvair was about average for small cars of its era. No surprise: Porsche did much of the engineering work on this rear-engine, rear-drive automobile. But Nader had done his job. With a little help from the heavy-handed sorts at GM hiring private detectives to dig up dirt on Nader, the little sedan was dead.
Another Lawn Chair Flyer
I remember seeing the news reports back about 1981 when a Torrance, California man in a lawn chair passed several jetliners--leading to some rather bizarre questions from air traffic control, who found the reports from pilots... somewhat difficult to believe. Someone in Oregon decided to replicate this. From the July 6, 2008 Idaho Statesman:
Remember "Yellowcake"?
Remember the concerns about Saddam Hussein's efforts to buy this uranium ore in Africa? The concerns that the left said were entirely manufactured? So what's with this July 5, 2008 Las Vegas Sun story?
