Matthew, That POOH BEAR THING has to be a spoof.  I read it and thought it was funny, but then there was no disclaimer that I saw….  Anyway.. where was the disclaimer I missed?????

I think I might break something.  The follow-up to the Poohcharist.

What’s the difference between “cummin” and “cumin”?

Bob: Here’s the post.

It’s my understanding that a hierarchical Trinity is not the teaching of orthodox Christianity, despite the fact that a lot of people cite it as authoritative evidence that marriage/gender in the church is hierarchical.

Subordinationism is discussed here.

Whoever signed my E-mail up to the Dag Heward-Mills Ministries e-update list should know that I bought a new rifle today.

I agree that Driscoll is wack on the house husbands thing.  But, and I know I’m a few days behind here, I don’t get what you all were talking about re:subordinationism.  I have frequently made the point in defending complementarianism that submission does not imply inequality and if you think it does, you deny the Trinity.  Is someone saying that makes me some kind of “subordinationist” heretic?  It’s been 17 years since I took that course in seminary, so you may have to help me even remember what that heresy is.

Southern Baptist Math.

The Diocese of Pittsburgh has left the ECUSA, and is taking steps to recall Bishop Duncan.

Wordpress tricks and hacks.

Jared: How about just bringing your wife up there to answer questions. SO you closed the Bible and sat on a couch, so she’s submissive and not teaching men. Of coruse…. This is like tithing your mint and cummin. Technically correct and missing the whole point. Women can’t teach men, but my wife can sit with me and answer Q&As on Sunday a.m. UGh.

On the original comment: It’s a road hazard that a lot of preachers don’t see. It’s like getting into a maneuver in an airplane that you can’t pull out of. Here’s what I mean.

The Bible has a lot of different kinds of truth. Some of it, in wisdom literature and applications in the epistles, can get very specific. So you can sometimes say some very specific kinds of good advice BASED ON SCRIPTURE.

Then you start saying other kinds of RELATED good advice, NOT based in scripture. You start saying that ALL of this is “Biblical,” or is from the “Biblical worldview.” But you don’t have texts, or even verses.

Pretty soon you are preaching common sense, making aside references or reading verses that have no Biblical authority whatsoever. And then you and all your friends have to defend everything you say.

Of course, your routines, especially the sexy and funny ones, put butts in the seats, and that means God is on your side.

It’s a mess.

Stick to what the Bible says. If its not in the Bible, then don’t go there. Even then, use good hermeneutics and stick with context. Have a sense of proportion and what the Bible is saying. Don’t mistake what you feel deeply about for what the Bible is passionate about.

Driscoll linked to his post-sermon SAHD q&a thingy, so I finally watched it. The money quote for me was something about not appealing to culture. “It’s not cultural, it’s biblical.”

I wanna know why his wife isn’t wearing a headcovering.
That command is more direct and specific than “Make money, dudes.”

And I’d like him to explain that without appealing to a cultural argument.

This is becoming a trend in this country and it is a caution to all who aspire to a career in politics: Don’t Blog

I like keeping a journal though I’m really very bad at it (one Moleskine Journal can last me a couple of years!). I thought this story about astronaut Ilan Ramon’s journal, which fell from the sky along with debris from the doomed Columbia shuttle, is compelling.

Very interesting post on the future of the Orthodox Church in America.

Kevin Kelly, who is a Christian, on the next 5,000 days of the web. If you are a dispy paranoid looking for the Beast, this is your talk. But if you are a Christian optimist/humanist, you’ll find this to be fascinating.

Don’t order Diablo? That tells me to order double, and dare the chef to make it really hot!

I’m always thinking about Bill Mckinnon’s adverse reaction to Bluegrass music :-) But for those of you who understand the appeal of pure old style bluegrass, here’s one of the masters of the genre: Del McCroury.

Meanwhile, here’s a book about a Thousand Recordings You Need To Hear Before You Die.

Advice: If it has “Diablo” in the title, don’t order it in a Mexican Restaurant.

Thank you Randall McRoberts for a wonderful and much appreciated birthday package!

Here Crichton takes on Global Warming as pseudo science.   He makes a strong case for SKEPTICISM about Global Warming, and about government spending money on this. 

Of course, one of the infallible proofs that Global Warming is a hoax is that both political parties now support it.

Michael Crichton’s take on the complexity theory and environmental management. 

I’m impressed with this article, and how it exposes the disaster environmentalists have brought on Yellowstone National Park,  by well intentioned interventions that have done the opposite of what the environmentalists intended.   You can extend this by implication to why the bail out of the banks is such a stupid idea.  His basic premise is that we wrongly assume the environment or some other big system is a linear system that responds to our tinkering without our tinkering having unintended consequences.  Appeals to my increasingly strong inner-libertarian!

If you have a teenager, or if you invest in the stock market, you know very well that a complex system cannot be controlled, it can only be managed.  Because responses cannot be predicted, the system can only be observed and responded to.  The system may resist attempts to change its state.  It may show resiliency. Or fragility. Or both.  An important feature of complex systems is that we don’t know how they work.  We don’t understand them except in a general way; we simply interact with them.  Whenever we think we understand them, we learn we don’t.  Sometimes spectacularly. 

And again: 

It’s no surprise that predictions frequently don’t come true.  But such big ones!  And so many! All my life I worried about the decay of the environment, the tragic loss of species, the collapse of ecosystems.  I feared poisoning by pesticides, alar on apples, falling sperm counts from endocrine disrupters, cancer from power lines, cancer from saccharine, cancer from cell phones, cancer from computer screens, cancer from food coloring, hair spray, electric razors, electric blankets, coffee, chlorinated water…it never seemed to end. 

Anyone want to worry about Global Warming and climate change? 

It’s an unlucky 13 for America’s most famous murderer. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall in that jury room.

I’m no Lutheran, but this made my kidneys hurt:

“Look, this is all about updating the sacrament to give it relevance again,” she said.

The rest is here.

There goes my career as an analyst.  I’ve called every single game wrong this postseason.  And TMH has been right about everything except the only one that matters.

Hmmmm. The BHT meets the fairness doctrine. Does that mean we’ll get to go to teampyro and post pictures of Barth and say “poop?”

Camp has now expanded his attack to Josh Harris. He faults Harris for his fan-boydom of reformed celebrities. Pot, meet kettle.

Meanwhile, the Catholics are having a three day conference on Romans. If you can hear Wilken, do it.

Heard this on Michael Medved.  If President Obama enacts the fairness doctrine, one strategy would be for people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to declare themselves unbiased just like the main stream media.  They should do this, and then not change anything in how they conduct their show.  It would be fought in court for years and years….  and of course the state would have to judge their content and whether it was news or opinion.  That’s what’s scary…  

Why wouldn’t a Christian radio station need to devote programming to Richard Dawkins?  Why wouldn’t Jesus Shaped Spirtuality have to devote part of it’s post to the TR perspective?  Why wouldn’t TR’s have to let Brian McLaren have equal time?  And where will the huge bureacracy needed to police this stop?  Hey, I can save them a lot of money.  Just make me the Umpire and the Unappealable Decider of what’s fair.  

 Hmmmm…... If I get to decide then I have a different attitude towards the fairness doctrine….. Oh yeah, now I understand why liberals like this idea….

Alan Creech, Denise and I went to noon mass at St. Peter’s today….St. Peter’s in Lexington. Then Alan and I had a wonderful lunch at Ramsey’s. Alan is a good friend and brother. Many good laughs.

I’ve read the ultra-partisan laundry lists of lies.  I don’t like FactCheck.org because it pretends to be non-partisan.  I figure a really extreme site will leave no stone unturned, reporting even the smallest exaggeration as an OMG LIE!!!!  Here’s what I gather about each candidate’s character from the “lie lists:”

1. McCain haters’ lie lists are chock-full of the “exaggerate and overstate my opponent’s flaws” type.  While I would say few such statements are actually lies, even actual lies I’ve found are basically hyperboles that go so far as to not be justifiable at all.  That says to me that McCain is the sort who sees people not on his side as bad guys and lumps them with whatever other bad guys he’s run into.  The main potential liability is that he will be a polarizing figure who demonizes whomever’s not with his program.


2. Obama’s lie lists tend to have knee-jerk reactions denials of something he’s been called out on, made-up, heartwarming stories about himself or his father, reinventing his political record, and doing overnight 180s on policy decisions.  My assessment is that Obama is a cynical chameleon, saying whatever he thinks will make people happy and expecting everyone to buy it.  The potential liability is that you won’t ever be able to take him at his word, promises will mean nothing, diplomacy will be of the back-stabbing sort, and scandal will be dealt with in Nixonian fashion.


3. Biden lies throughout his whole career are all of the “pathological liar politician” type.  He plagiarizes other people’s life stories, makes up his record and everyone else’s, invents figures and facts, creatively embellishes stories with false details, fabricates the events of the latest week or two of his life, and on and on and on.  He’s a pathological liar reminiscent of Bill Clinton, except without the cleverness.  His potential liability is that he could be a constant source of embarrassment to Obama.


4. Palin’s lie lists tend to quote her espousing McCain campaign talking points and her tendency to highlight the successful or positive aspects of the things she’s done.  In other words, they’re really grasping at straws.  My assessment is that Palin is a pretty normal person with no serious character liabilities.

But there’s a difference between that, and denying the fundamental legitimacy of his presidency.

It has gotten worse, and  if Obama wins talk radio will be shut down with the fairness doctrine.  It will be interesting to see what happens with that.  But I suspect that if they suppress dissent, it will get more virulent, and maybe even violent.   Now  the Mainstream press is totally left wing, and not trying to hide it. They’re no less biased than talk radio is right wing, but talk radio was always willing to admit it was biased.  I have no trust in the press anymore, and I think that has made each side more strident, and each side only plays to one point of view.    I think one of the saddest things I’ve witnessed is the loss of respect that the Press has completely earned. 

John – the loopy comment is true enough! But I will maybe delete the adjective “little”.

Meanwhile, the English debate in Canada passed without anything earth shattering. I did not watch (had visitors), but I liked the round table format they employed, rather than the separate podiums. The interesting feature of this election is going to be how far the liberals will decline in favour of the NDP, and how much Bloc will loose. Also, while it seems pretty certain the Conservatives will cling to power, it is not clear if they will win a majority or not. Only 11 days to go.

Perhaps it’s just that I’ve been more exposed to this election than previous ones so don’t know this is just “how it’s done”, but as someone with a great deal of affection and respect for the US, the Manichaean terms in which both sides express themselves – in a way that goes far beyond “demagoguery” – alarms me.

Both sides seem to be talking themselves into a situation in which the winner will not simply be the victor in a democratic election, but a fraud who has stolen power from the hands of a duped electorate. So Obama and Biden are telling “outright lies”, in particular about Obama’s “past and connections”. Whereas McCain is a “racist”, a “warmonger” and, yes, an out-and-out liar.

Similarly in the debate over the bailout: neither side (and I’m as guilty of this as anyone) seems able to conceive of the other side legitimately prevailing over the other.

Now, I’m a pretty strong supporter of Obama over McCain, and if McCain wins I’ll be utterly dismayed for any number of reasons. But there’s a difference between that, and denying the fundamental legitimacy of his presidency.

I think Richard (or whoever it was) the other week was right: the US elections just go on too long. Everyone gets polarised, and the long-term intensity can drive people a little loopy.

Thought so. The prosperity Gospel certainly played its part in the crisis we have today. Blame politicians, Wall Street and those nutty preachers!

[quote]She’s a lightweight, pure and simple.  She is in no fashion ready to be president.[/quote]

I thought Palin did fairly well, probably about as well as someone who’s been on the national scene for such a short time could be.  She’s definitely not ready to be President, but I think she would be ready to be President after a couple years of being Vice President.  As another pundit (I think a Slate writer) said, in four years, she’s going to be so far beyond Hillary it’s not even funny.

Biden gave many (including me) the impression of being a “master of the facts.”  However, in the ensuing day, it’s becoming more and more clear that a lot of his facts are outright lies.

And Bill, I guess in politics, my standard of “lying” is different. 90% of the “lies” that get cited everywhere are things like exaggerating one’s own importance in this or that, focusing on your opponent’s one specific instance of opposing X instead of his 300 instances of supporting it, not changing your rhetoric every time your opponent 180’s on an opinion or scrubs his website, exaggerating the doom and devastation your opponent’s policies will cause, or overstating the incoherence and ineptitude of your opponent’s plans, etc.  It’s mostly demagoguery.  I don’t even have time for calling a “lie” getting some detail of a fact wrong that any normal person could goof up.  I’ve been reading “Count the Lies” over at mccainpedia.org, and a huge number are simple demagoguery.  Some of them are idiotic, like saying it was a “lie” to call Normandy the “greatest invasion in history.”  Are there actual lies on the list?  Yes.  But once you pare away the “usual campaign rhetoric” type stuff, there’s really not that much IMO. And, in my estimation, they are not as numerous or (to me) as troubling as Obama’s pathological lying about his past and his connections.

Bill MacKinnon said:

“I plant to vote for the least odious choice.”

There is one?

I found the debate hard to watch.  Palin did ok, but she way overdid the folksiness.  She’s a lightweight, pure and simple.  She is in no fashion ready to be president.

Let me repeat something I said a few days ago.  They are all liars.  How do Christians enthusiastically support any of them? I plant to vote for the least odious choice.

From an email I just got from Over the Rhine:

“Join Over the Rhine, Saturday, October 11, 2008, at the fabulous Elk Creek Winery in Owenton, Kentucky.”

TMH: I don’t know if you’re familiar with Over the Rhine, but I could virtually guarantee you and your wife would love this show. I’ve seen them before, they sound even better live than on cd – and that is saying a lot. Just giving you a heads-up about a great show in your neck of the woods.

Check ‘em out HERE

While nothing has changed the dynamics of the race, “dog gone it”, I thoroughly enjoyed watching her, and hearing her talk about “Putin rearing his ugly head”, “say it ain’t so Joe”, shouting out to a 3rd grade class, etc. 

I actually saw glimpses of Biden being charmed by her, liking her, and that kind of made me like him more.   One fruit of this campaign is that I think Obama will govern more moderately than he would like…...

Assuming Obama wins, I hope Palin runs next in the GOP primary and that there are tons of debates to season her.  I’m not saying she should be at the head of the ticket in 2012, but she’s refreshing to have in the mix.   After 6 years as Governor it may be a different story.

A good night for me, cause how about Victorino’s GRAND SLAM HOME RUN!  GO PHILLIES!

John,

the Irish unilaterally guarantee 100% of bank deposits

That has got to be one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard of.