elegance

posited: "Y'all" and "y'all's" are infinitely more elegant than "you guys" and "you guys's"

What your $4 Billion a week is buying you, part 250; and a dare

This past week in Iraq: First week of January '08. Week 250 of the US$1 Trillion (that's $1,000,000,000,000) illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq: Civlian deaths

Sunday, January 6. 26 dead, including Rabee'a: US planes bomb car, kill driver -it is the 13th civilian killed by US forces so far in January, including 3 children.

Saturday, January 5. 28 dead, including Mosul: US forces open fire and kill civilian, after their patrol is targeted by roadside bomb. It is the 12th Iraqi civilian killed by US fire this month.

Friday, January 4. 4 dead.

Thursday, January 3. 34 dead, including

Baghdad: New Baghdad; US forces kill civilian during raid
Baquba: US forces kill civilian crossing the street.
Ghalhiya: US forces open fire on car, kill 2 civilians.
Mosul: = 3 (father and 2 children) shot dead by US forces after roadside bomb explodes next to their patrol.
Tal Afar: US forces kill 2 (one of them a child), after roadside bomb explosion.

Wednesday, January 2. 32 dead, including Baghdad: 6 family members (5 of them children) shot dead in minibus;

Tuesday, January 1. 62 dead, including

Buhriz: US forces kill Awakening member during raid.
Tahwela: father and his 16-year-old son are shot dead outside their house.
Mosul: US forces kill woman when missile fired from helicopter misses its target; 3 bodies.


But don't worry. There not real. They're just numbers in a blog post, from place names that mean nothing to us. Whatever you do, don't stress about it.

On the other hand: Here's a little dare for you. Choose a story above, or any other story from the full account of this past week at iraqbodycount.org, which resonates with you, and let yourself sit with it, and try to imagine the reality of it, for a mere 10 minutes. I mean turn off the t.v., the phone, get somewhere quiet, and just sit with that particular story, and those particular people, and use your imagination, and try to fill in details, and emotions, and back story, and so forth. And let me know how how it goes.

To weep, or scream?

Shall the

Strait of Hormuz

be like the

Gulf of Tonkin?

Dear God I hope not.
My sympathetic nervous system is aroused over this one.
Wish I believed in the efficacy of prayer.

I've only ever met one Iranian person, and she was ... delightful. The history of Iran goes back *5000* years--even longer than the history of Vietnam. The history of white people in North America goes back .. *500* years. We don't have a fucking clue. Wish there was some quick way to get one.

the gamblers know

As a sometime gambler myself, I'm telling you that the professional gamblers know things other people don't know. Or as Brian McClaren put it, economists are the people who know everything, and they know they know everything.

So Ireland's largest bookmaker, Paddy Power, have declared Obama the winner in the race for the democratic nomination and are already paying out*. Go figure.

*(disclaimer: this news item is possibly somewhat suspect, as it is from Fox news.)

A Hell of a Thing to say

So do you want the person who said this earlier today to be your next president?:

She did not spare President Bush in her remarks, either. In Hampton on Sunday night, Mrs. Clinton ribbed Mr. Bush for saying he had looked into the soul of President Vladimir V. Putin. “I could have told him Putin was a K.G.B. agent,” she said. “He has no soul.”
Very presidential. Nice way to improve relations with a nation that still has 7200 active strategic nuclear weapons.

Can someone please explain to me what the *hell* is up with Ms. Clinton *saying* something like that?

Welcome to American Christianity--the Matthew LaClair story

Wanted to share this fascinating story with y'all about Matthew LaClair and his experience with his overbearing high school teacher.

In short, Matthew is the high school student who taped his history teacher raving about Creationism, how evolution was untrue, and how non-Christians belonged in hell, among other things.

Recently pollsters David Kinnaman and Gable Lyons published UnChristian, What a New Generation Thinks about Christianity, and Why it Matters. They found that young people in America pretty much find Christians unbearable, and that their negative opinions are largely based on their personal interactions with Christians. Matthew LaClair's story helps illustrate why this is the case.

I like this person's photographs

Something about them ... draws me.

Predicting a win

So I don't know if any of y'all (H/T Kristie) follow the Iowa Electronic Markets. It's a non profit, actual money market that trades in presidential futures (among other things). Anyone who wants to can open an account for between $5 and $500, and basically they can bet on who will win the republican nomination, the decmocratic nomination, or the overall election for U.S. president. Each winning share is worth one dollar, and each non-winning share is worth $0, payable after the two party nominating conventions and after the actual election.

Well, okay, I'm no economist by any stretch of the imagination, and I guess it's at least a little more complicated than that. But you get the idea. Apparently (by some accounts) the IEM has been a bit more accurate than traditional polling in predicting who will win the nominations and/or the final election.

All that to say that for the Democratic nomination, Clinton shares have been selling for over 50 cents (out of a dollar split among all candidates) for quite a while now, and today, for the first time in ages, she slipped below 50 cents, while Obama has risen to 54 cents. Which is yotta kewl. From January 5, 2008, IEM, 8:30 PM Pacific time: (ok, the formatting is shocking here. I'm too lazy to fix it.) Just look at the actual web page

Symbol....Bid....Ask....Last...Low....High...Average
CLIN_NOM..0.426..0.439..0.430..0.426..0.533..0.472
EDWA_NOM..0.030..0.037..0.031..0.030..0.040..0.036
OBAM_NOM..0.538..0.544..0.539..0.450..0.543..0.482
DROF_NOM..0.005..0.007..0.005..0.003..0.008..0.006

and here's the history (again. not very clear below. Click on the link to see the real version. Obama is green, Hillary is blue)

"A Confirming Election" and "The spirit of Party"--why Obama matters

Scott Rasmussen of the polling organization Rasmussen Reports recently wrote a really fascinating commentary entitled "The United States Needs a Confirming Election". He says:

The United States is in dire need of an election where somebody wins big, an election that confirms someone with a real majority, and an election that provides the nation with some sense of a prevailing public perspective. Big Victories in Presidential elections don’t make everyone happy, but they do help to unify the nation and improve the health of our political system.

He defines a Big Victory as winning at least 55% of the popular vote and 75% of the electoral votes. He says only 1 of the last 8 elections have been a big victory (Reagan in 1984), whereas 9 of the 14 elections before 1976 were big victories.

I think he has a great point. I mean how nice would it be to see the nation united instead of so bitterly divided? And I think it's exceedingly clear that Obama is the only candidate from any party who can accomplish that. He's certainly the one who promotes the ideas of national unity and dialogue rather than partisanship the most, and has been doing so for the longest.

George Washington, called by some "the father of our nation", seemed to agree with Rasmussen and Obama. In his farewell address, Washington said:

Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.

Barack's Iowa Victory Speech: HOPE

"We are choosing hope over fear, we're choosing unity over division"

"This was the moment when we finally beat back the politics of fear and doubt and cynicism--the politics when we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up"

"For many months, we've been teased, even derided for talking about hope.

But we always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it.

Hope is what I saw in the eyes of the young woman in Cedar Rapids who works the night shift after a full day of college and still can't afford health care for a sister who's ill; a young woman who still believes that this country will give her the chance to live out her dreams.

Hope is what I heard in the voice of the New Hampshire woman who told me that she hasn't been able to breathe since her nephew left for Iraq; who still goes to bed each night praying for his safe return.

Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause.

Hope-hope-is what led me here today - with a father from Kenya; a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have the courage to remake the world as it should be."

this guy really does get to me

Not only is Obama the winner in Iowa, the candidate with the kewlest spouse (although hillary runs a close second here), the only candidate who manages to cut through my relatively well developed cynicism, and by far the most presidential--he's also got the cutest kids.

biblical worldview

Posited: "Biblical worldview" is ... gibberish. It's a mismatch of types. It's like saying "the curl of the div of a vector field" or ... "the escape velocity from a black hole". It has no meaning. It's an attempt to force onto a diverse body of literature a metanarrative, metatheme, and typology which just isn't there. It's like saying "American accent". No such thing. Such a broad generalization becomes meaningless. It's like saying "Latin American culture". When you attempt to make a telescope to see that far or that broadly, you end up seeing nothing--the image becomes meaningless. All you end up actually talking about is "My worldview".

done ranting now.

Barack!

So the Barack Obama campaign is working toward the goal of 500,000 owning a piece of the campaign before the Iowa caucuses tomorrow. Right now they're sitting a ~485,000.

If you want to donate to the campaign, you can do it here.

I guess I feel ... hopeful about this guy. Which is pretty wierd for me, since I tend to be super cynical. No doubt my hopes will be crushed, one way or another. Oh well.

John McCain on foreign policy

Would it be evil for me to hope that John McCain wins the republican nomination, so that Barack (who's about to win Iowa!) can soundly trounce him in the general?

Here's McCain's new ad from today against Mitt Romney regarding foreign policy experience.



Note how he not so subtly implies the same thing that W and co have been telling us for years: "The world is a very dangerous place, full of islamic terrorists who want to kill you. You need me and lots of military power to keep you safe"

And here's McCain from about 8 months ago regarding his own intended foreign policy.



Asked later how he would respond to critics charging his ("bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran") comments were insensitive, Mr. McCain responded, “Insensitive to what? The Iranians?”

stealing music

a poll

How about this, to get you to vote! This poll has 5 questions:

1. Do you think downloading music from the internet without paying for it is stealing?
2. Have you ever done so?
3. Do you do so now?
4. Do you think that making copies of CD's or MP3's that you legitimately own, for your own or your immediate family's personal use, is stealing?
5. Your further comments?

Tigers and The Shining Four

On LOGOS II, when I was there, there was this super amazing group of four people who I referred to as The Shining Four. They were two guys, and two girls, and the four of them were very close, and were working through some really intense shit in a way that made them seem, to me, to shine. I got to marry one of them, and two of them married each other. The fourth also married a fellow LOGoid.

Anyway, one of the things that I associate with The Shining Four is an image of them all lying in the main meeting room--just the four of them--listening to this. At rather high volume levels. And singing along. (and they could all sing). I'm not totally sure that this memory is perfect in detail--but it captures them. They were a group of Christians who were willing to face the darkness--a rarity, in my experience. Tigers were a metaphor for them--for that darkness. Been reminded of all this by the recent tiger horror at the San Francisco Zoo. (this 10th anniversary iteration of the musical at royal albert hall will always be my favorite)



The tigers come at night, with their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart, as they turn your dream to shame.

...

I had a dream my life would be so different from this hell I'm living.
So different now from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

If that lives you feeling a bit down, you might try this as a chaser.

obama

Can I just say I think it is incredibly kewl that Barack Obama and co. have decided not to take *any* money from lobbyists or PAC's? They're working toward a half million donors and 800,000 donations before the iowa caucuses. If you study this a bit, you can see that obama is raising more money from small donors, and thus from more people, than clinton. That is kewl. None of his opponents have taken the same nearly crazy stand refusing all "soft" money. At least as far as I can tell.

I'm telling you, this is the guy.

I'm always telling Megan "There are no good leaders." So I say all this with a grain of salt. Probably he'll win, and then the power will altogether corrupt him, and he'll turn into an evil monster like the current guy, and america will go down in flames. Alas.

Joe's Things I relearned this advent.

Wanted to direct your attention to Joe's "Things I relearned this Advent". If found it very readable and provocative. Thank you Joe.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

Offputting Christmas

I went to a Christmas eve service tonight at an evangelical protestant church which shall remain unnamed (because I *really* like lots of people in this church, and I don't want them to feel bad, and my comments are more about christianity in general).

They sang lots of traditional christmas songs, had a traditional christmas play in which they read from the accounts in luke and matthew, and there were a couple playing mary and joseph, and a little baby playing jesus, and children playing sheep and shepherds and angels and wizards from the east and ... well, you know. If you live in America, you've no doubt seen this whole thing at least a couple times in your life.

It was astoundingly upbeat. God loves us. God gave us the most beautiful gift ever in Jesus, the precious little baby who would grow to become the god man and who can help us get our lives straitened out, and help us overcome our sins, and ... someday he's gonna fix all the problems and injustice and take the people who believe in him to heaven to be perfectly happy for all eternity. Ok see that? all that wasn't in there tonite. somewhere between the beginning of this paragraph and the end, I stopped objectively describing the Christmas eve service, and started talking about what I see as the underlying implications. But where that happened is something I can't quite nail down.

Some lyrics "He rules the world, with truth and grace" and "In his name all oppression shall cease."

I was mostly asking myself, "Self, are things *in general* worse or better than they were in ... say ... 1 C.E. (or A.D., as you wish)"

Now there is a question that is worthy of a doctoral dissertation. It's pretty hard to get at. It's just way too general and not defined nor operationalized.

Having said that, while the answer may not definitely be "worse", neither is it by any stretch of the imagination definitely "better"

Let us consider...

Upper estimates of world population in 1 C.E. are about 300 million. Yep. 300 million people alive worldwide. Or about 1 for every 22 people alive today. Another way to look at that is it's approximately the current population of the United States of America.

Alas--see that? I'm about to segue into an intellectual discussion of poverty, war, and human suffering. Stop that.

How about a quote from Brian McClaren's Everything Must Change

Why hasn't the Christian religion made a difference commensurate with its message, size, and resources?
Brian McClaren

When I got older, I realized that my entire life had been lived against the backdrop of genocide and violence, poverty and corruption. Over a million people died in my country (Burundi) in a series of genocides starting in 1959, and nearly a million in Rwanda, an din spite of huge amounts of foreign aid, our people remain poor, and many of them, hungry. So much death, so much hatred and distrust between tribes, so much poverty, suffering, corruption, and injustice, and nothing ever really changed. Eventually I realized something. I had never heard a sermon that addressed these realities. Did God only care about our souls going to heaven after we died? Were our hungry bellies unimportant to God? Was God unconcerned about our crying sons and frightened daughters, our mothers hiding under beds, our fathers croucing by windows, unalbe to sleep because of gunfire? Or did God send Jesus to teach us how to avoid genocide by learning to love each other, how to overcome tribalism and poverty by following his path, how to deal with injustice and curruption, how to make a better life here on earth--here in East Africa? ... Over the years, I have come to understand that something is wrong with they way we understand Jesus and the good news. Something is missing in the version of the Christian religion we received from the missionaries, which is the message we now preach ourselves. They told us how to go to heaven. But they left out one important detail. They didn't tell us how the will of God could be done on earth.
Claude, from Burundi

I guess what I'm saying is that the Christmas story is making some pretty freaking enormous claims, and it seems reasonable to me to say "Well, it's been 2000 years. What's the evidence for and against the claims?" Maybe Christians need to reconsider the way they interact with the Christmas story in light of the implicit demands that it makes on them.

I mean what if the Christmas story implies a demand from God that you act like Jesus, and wratchet your pleasure and your consumption down to third world levels, kinda like Jesus wratcheted his pleasure and consumption down to 3rd world levels. According to the story, the distance he had to move to make that shift was a lot further than any of us would have to travel. Just a thought.

Or maybe I'm just way off base, and instead that it's totally kewl with Jesus that we 20% of the world richest continue to consume 80% of the worlds resources while 30,000 children starve to death on Christmas day? But I just don't see that in the story. Maybe I'm just missing it.

Here's a 2005 photo of the little town of bethlehem (population: ~29,000)

Alas, I'm slipping