Thank God for the Alcock-Paczynski test!

Tags

airport security, astronomy, dark matter, environmentalism, feminism, GOP, Mike Huckabee, money laundering, religious right, Sarah Palin, science, terrorism, Tom Delay

At last, perhaps I can get a good night’s sleep again! I haven’t had one since that dark (pun) day in 1998, when I learned the awful truth: the universe seemed to be expanding at a faster and faster rate! My once cozy pulsing home was threatening to shred itself and leave me forlorn in an ever darkening sky as old friends rapidly flew off into a cold inky black.

Well, no more worries. It appears not to be happening. That demon “dark matter” is a truth we must accept, but it appears that the Alcock-Paczynski test may well prove that our universe is “flat” or what we used to call steady state or static. Just enough gravity, just enough dark matter to keep it in a comfortable rocking to and fro.

I know we just finished Thanksgiving, but this is a whole-nother-level of thanksgiving. I will never not see my beloved Orion, my dippers, my Pleiades. Oh sweet God, I knew you would come through. Let’s have a party!

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Speaking of Thanksgiving, hope your’s was a good one. Mine turned out most excellently. The meal was sublime, and we feasted until we could force in no more. We liked it so much, we are gonna do it all over again today! And Saturday, and Sunday. You see the method to my madness?

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I confess! I really do, or did, and am going to continue. I was simply delighted when I learned that “the Hammer” got hammered and may be heading for the slammer! Tom DeLay was convicted in that old state of Texas (good for something!) for money laundering.  I don’t think they execute for that, money is God in Texas along with football you recall. But here’s lookin’ for some good old time for the man who thought he ruled the world when he was in Congress. Oh let the sentence be fair: LONG. (H/T to Crooks and Liars for the link)

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I have to give it to WordPress. The new linkage system is up and running, and they have added a few new features that don’t concern readers, but are certainly nice. One of which I think is not so new, but I just found out how to do it, and it sure speeds up my game. I can now reply to comments through e-mail which is soooo much faster than publishing replies again and again and waiting for it to refresh. Hurrah!

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Again from Crooks and Liars we get a link to Whiskey Fire and a post on our Sarah. It’s not what you might expect, but it’s an interesting take. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Are Dems the ones who have missed the chance to have a salacious babe mouthing their talking points? I would hate to think so. Yet the point is made, much of Sarah’s following has zero to do with policy or politics, it’s pure sexy appeal and the “it” factor.

AlterNet also has a nice piece on Sarah about her brand of “feminism” which amounts to nothing more than narcissism-namely hers. If it affects her, then it matters, if it doesn’t, than as the article says, “women suck it up and be strong”. Which explains why women don’t cotton to the Moosilla Maven so much.

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Speaking of snake-oil sales persons, I’ve decided that the “know what we are doing” crowd consists of Palin, Beck, O’Reilly, Coulter and probably most of the house and senate wacko-heads. Those that are seriously stupid include Hannity, Bachmann, O’Donnell. The aforementioned know they are bilking the US for as much as they can for as long as they can. The give not a rip about anyone. Bank accounts matter. Your list?

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Ahab at Republic of Gilead has a great post of a lecture he attended on Christian escatologies and environmental issues. It is really an eye-opener if you are puzzled why some sects of Christianity continue to literally ignore the damage we are doing. These don’t deny it’s happening so much as they don’t care and believe that we should not waste our time to help the planet heal. It’s an amazingly good read.

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And 180° it is. I’m going back to my original position on the airport patdowns. After watching Fox and jerks like Huckabee all malign the administration for this “outrage” I can but conclude that this is nothing much more than “any way at all to make Obama look bad.” Huck has demanded that Obama submit his family for this search if it’s all that good.

I guess Mikey was just trying to protect his son who got caught carrying a GUN in his luggage at Little Rock National Airport. What his son needs a concealed weapon for, (being a son of a preacher man) is beyond me, but we see where Mike is coming from.

While I conclude that there may be legitimate reasons why these searches aren’t as useful as they might be assumed, I’ll stick with support as long as the idiots at Foxy are trying to take down a President via this means. And something like 70+% of the public is behind the TSA on this. It was higher, but the rightwing (those bastions of security) has done its thing again.

Enough for now. Time to hit those leftovers again and watch a little more football.

Related Articles

• Dark energy on firmer footing (nature.com)
• Dark Energy Theory Gets a Boost From New Galactic Measurements | 80beats (blogs.discovermagazine.com)

The Schizophrenia of Christendom

Tags

bible, Christendom, denominations, environmentalism, fundamentalism, God, Jesus, poor, social issues, sola scriptura

If you are a Christian, you already know this. We are a bunch of rather schizophrenic folk. Yes admit it, we are. The chart at the right only barely glosses over the real tragedy locked within the pretty bands of green and blue.

We can’t agree on what we believe. Never have really, though at times, one faction or another was powerful enough to subdue the others and put them out of business. Not so much today. We add something like three hundred brand spankin’ new “We got the truth” sects per year and no end seems to be in sight.

I’m not sure whether such a state exists in other faith traditions, but I doubt any can meet our level of splintering. I’m not just talking bout the self-styled, “spiritual but not religious” types. I’m not talking about the “I am a spirit driven determiner of what God wants” type, though I have met one of those deluded nuts. Forms churches in her home and sends them out to do as she defines is right. She has no need of church herself, being a true prophet, just sent to explain the bible to the rest of us.

No, I’m talking about our penchant in Christendom to set up strong hierarchies of correctness and then jealously clinging to our dogmas as if only we could possibly get it right. It turns out that Anglicans are trying to pave the way for depressed Roman Catholics to find a home with them. And it turns out that Roman Catholics are now making it easier than ever for depressed Anglican/Episcopalians to find a home with them. Read group inclusion here.

The radicalized bible thumpers point at the Romans and yell, “whore of Babylon,” and five minutes later, inquire whether those same Romans will be at the “anti-abortion” rally tonight. The once properly outraged Catholic, retorts with “crazy Catholic-hater” and then makes a date for the next anti-Obama town meeting with their evangelical counterpart.

Christendom makes, as they say, strange bedfellows. Worse, Christendom and politics make dangerous bedfellows. Finding it odd that ultra conservative evangelicals (biblicists) join ranks with ultra conservative Protestants and Catholics to oppose health care reform, death penalty reform, wars, and climate change? So do we, but then, listen up.

The truth of the matter is that most of these “conservative” social “Christians” are just flat out conservatives who don’t want taxes, and don’t want to personally pay for the eradication of social ills. They prefer to live their “good life” and dabble in personal “charity.” That’s not so bad of course, if you will call it what it is. Jesus, doncha know said the poor would always be with us, and that some don’t deserve our help. They tell me he said that, though I can’t find it anywhere.

Unfortunately, they don’t stop there. They pick and choose the scriptures they sola scriptura their way through to defend their racist, selfish agenda, claiming they in some fit of righteousness, are actually doing God’s work. And worse, they have the temerity to point their finger at the social liberals of the world, many of whom are deeply religious, and call us captured of Satan.

No honesty is being promoted on either side, or among anyone. We are spiraling into the same morass as the country is with increasingly belligerent “sides”. No fairness is being upheld. No reference to the abiding love and compassion of our God and our savior Jesus is being promoted or even acknowledged.

We are poaching each other’s congregations, and at the same time, sniping away at anyone who thinks differently. We have the temerity to “speak for God.” Worse, we have the awful tendency, some of us at least, of demanding that God personally be responsible for that which God deliberately placed in our hands–the stewardship of both planet and each other.

Instead, we are holding shut out pocketbooks, claiming God will take care of it. Perhaps he will, but perhaps not in the way you expect. Perhaps, just perhaps he expects something more on our part than merely pointing a finger, and chastising each other for unfaithfulness to scripture and to God herself.

This is not a game of who has the most signed up on whose side. This is not a game of theological right or wrong, more right, more wrong. This is life, and we are here for a finite time and we have work to do.

Yesterday, as I exchanged pleasantries with dozens of people less fortunate than myself, I was forced to see that if the least among us can find reason to smile and share a laugh, to find common bond in simply being human, that perhaps the rest of us should take note.

Who are we that we pick and choose the verses that support the result we desire? We all do it dont’ we? Who are we to limit a God to a series of pages in a book, a book brilliant in it’s entirety, but convoluted and confusing, doubled back on itself in places, contradictory often and for good reason–it was written by human beings, with faulty information and sometimes faulty memories.

As Dr. McGrath says in his post day, what does it matter if Jesus thought that the “kingdom” would descend in its completeness within the lifetimes of many of his hearers? What is so wrong with Jesus showing us his human limitations? Whose agenda are we pushing here? Jesus or our own?

Have we become so invested in our rightness that we no longer even hear? How can we pollute the land and think that this doesn’t violate our responsibilities as stewards? How can we let any person lack for health care or food because they have violated one of our precepts of entitlement? How dare we? Indeed.

Just sayin’.

I’m Off To See the Wizard, Blasphemous Woman!

Tags

bible, Bill O'Reilly, environmentalism, flu shots, global warming, God, Michelle Bachmann, swine flu

If you had seen me this morning, you might have questioned my, shall we say, collection of marbles? My brains in other words. My capacity to logically move from place A to B without swerving off to F. Got that?

I’ve been assaulted this week with certain adjectival and nounish bullets that would put a less well put together psyche down. Not to worry, I have a strong constitution (no not the “we the people” stuff), and an army of disparate fellow travelers who encourage me, and reassure me regularly. I am not crazy, and I’ve said that before. It’s time you took that as a given.

I must say, it does dawn on me often, that I should question my own sanity. Others certainly do. I mean I don’t ask for much, just a reasonable logical explanation of things. This I often do not get, and thus the worry that all is not so well upstairs in the attic of my flashing neurons.

Reading the following, I seriously questioned once again whether I was legally able to fulfill the duties of citizen of planet Earth. It seems that one Billy O’Reilly, Foxy blatherer extraordinaire, suggests that Ms. Bachmann’s detractors are just jealous of her good looks. Yes indeed, Billy Bob Boob, that’s the reason all right. We are jealous cuz she is lovely to be behold. Now that takes care of the lesbians, what about the rest of us straight women? Huh?

Sorry Uncle Bill, but I still find her intellectually bankrupt and morally absurd, or intellectually absurd and morally bankrupt.

Which brings up the whole ugly issue of intelligence. I was recently, or my brains were, compared to a piss-ant. Imagine that? It was also suggested that it was a modern marvel that I could walk and breathe at the same time. This from the paternalistic/defender husband of a woman who told me that I hated Jesus since I couldn’t believe in her wacko notions of creationism.

 I can of course consider the source, and move from this personal assault on intelligence, noting that for some uneducated persons, “common sense” is vastly more important and doesn’t require any actual work. It comes naturally, like the wisdom just there for the asking from God.  No matter that just perhaps, God might have thought books could be a way to acquire wisdom. No we shouldn’t go there. One remembers the man who drowned, waving off all boats because he trusted that “God would save him.”

Some months ago, I started a forum thread about the environment. The environmental catastrophe we are flirting with is something like evolutionary theory, so well known worldwide as to not really be in question any more. Even the Bushites, playing it down of course, grudgingly admitted that it appeared true.

Anyway, my question was, if you claimed there was no environmental climate change, did you base this on scripture or something else. To a person, all claimed that their doubts stemmed from a general conservatism which somehow translates into suspicions about science and scientists in general. Why they don’t have the same suspicions about oil companies and other polluters is not known. In no case did anyone claim there was a spiritual reason.

But now we have one. I have recently seen a FaceBook entry which cited the bible, specifically Genesis for the proposition that we need do nothing regarding the environment. The verses are Gen. 8:22.

As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night,
shall not cease.”

From this we are to deduce (if we so self-interpret) that the earth will remain until such time as God in his good pleasure decides otherwise. Well, I think that’s a pretty big stretch, and even if so, it makes no claims as to the condition the earth will be in “as long as the earth endures.” Frankly, I find it as meaningless as the claims by some Catholics that “go forth and multiply and be fruitful” is God’s direction against contraception. But no matter.

It’s pretty flimsy evidence upon which to bargain the life of one’s children and their children and theirs on. At least as I see it.

 

Speaking of which, I saw another set of links to UTube, you know that academic land of excellence, wherein parents were warned not to let their kids get flu shots this year. Given that people are DYING from swine flu, and that the target groups are the very young (who can’t decide for themselves) and pregnant women, who can, I’d say it’s pretty irresponsible to invite people to make up their minds based on UTube.

Particularly so, when the link has to do with mercury being in some flu shots. Actually the truth of the matter is that some shots are stabilized with thimerosal. I know about this since I am allergic to it. This is easily solved by asking for the vaccine without the preservative. Simple. It is not wrong to raise some concern, but surely the way to do that is to direct people to their physicians? rather than UTube?

But then again, some folks have no sense of “sourcing.”  Bad sources make for much laughter. But in the hands of the wrong trusting people, they can lead to tragedy. Beware giving advice when you have zero in the credential field.

So it just goes to show you, that if you are crazy enough, you ensure that I am sure that I am not. I don’t need no stinkin’ shrink for that!

Just sayin’.

Benedict and Obama

Tags

Catholic, encyclical Caritas in Veritate, environmentalism, new world order, Obama, Pope Benedict XVI, redistribution of wealth, social issues, unions, Vatican Pontifical Council

No doubt you have heard that President Obama met with Pope Benedict XVI yesterday. By all accounts the meeting was cordial on both sides, and both men got their respective points across. This is in keeping with reports from the Vatican, that insiders there actually have great hope for working with this President, contrary to the beliefs and dare we say hopes of the reactionary conservative Catholic branch in this country. As one  forum poster put it, “I just don’t understand why they were smiling at him like they actually were happy to have him there!” Another answered cryptically, “Why it’s perfectly understandable that the Pope would be friendly with Obama, the last Pope is friendly with the antichrist.” So much from the peanut gallery.

Such bizarre thoughts are no doubt fueled by the release of Pope Benedict’s encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, or Charity in Truth. In it, while addressing as one would expect, the usual issues of abortion and other life issues, the Pope took a bold step in calling for a move away from a free market economy so beloved by the religious right in this country. In fact, he called for what some would argue sounds much like a “new world order.”

Now, to some in the extreme right of the Roman Catholic Church, and surely to all those fundamentalist evangelicals, such talk is dare we say apocryphal? It brings forth all that noise about the antichrist and Armageddon and all that jazz. Right in line with the barely subtle argument that Obama will be the leader of the NWO and that will make him, according to some, the antichrist, which brings on Jesus and his legions returning from heaven, all just after I guess the faithful are gathered into the clouds in a twinkling, no doubt to get their horses to join in the Jesus army.

This all comes from our dear friend Jack van Impe, linked above. He’s been a preachin’ the end times for 50 or more years, always that said times were “any minute now.” He’s been claiming that Benedict was on the same page with him, though I find that highly doubtful. Jack has a way of stretching the scripture and most else he reads (400 periodicals a month he claims) a tad. So I’m not sure if the encyclical supports or not his current views of how close we are to Jesus return. He can improvise pretty darn quickly in my opinion.

In any event, the Catholic right is not so very pleased with the Pope’s pronouncements. More or less, they tend to be in favor of business, and free markets, and against any such nonsense as global warming, labor unions, and stuff like that. Worse, the Pope actually talked about REDISTRIBUTION of wealth. You remember the horror that caused with Plumber Joe and all the sanctimonious Fox Noise people as they screamed that Obama was a socialist about to “redistribute wealth” across the nation.

The political left, and religious left, as you might imagine are rather more warming to the Pope on this encyclical. They find much to be pleased with, and see in some sense that the Roman Church is acknowledging what they have believed for a long time, namely that the Church has always evinced a strong socially aware message to the world. Echoes of Rerum Novarum cannot be missed here.

A more reasoned approach comes from Catholic Culture, which sees this as a clash between Benedict and his more liberal Pontifical Council for peace and justice.  Benedict, it is claimed rejected 2-3 drafts of the encyclical, determined to keep it within his theological framework. Still, it seems the progressives in the Church have much to be happy about, for it is being widely reported that it leans to left, and as we have seen again and again, perception is everything in politics.

I don’t know what all this means in practicalities since it doesn’t seem that the Vatican wields much power across the globe in terms of real pressure. But it is gratifying to see that the progressive arm of the church still seems to have some input into the decision making process, and it seems the Obama administration can feel that in some sense it has a ally in the Vatican City. Meanwhile, the ultra conservative left will attempt to spin this in a manner than most favorably supports their views.

It seems, that both sides got something, but on balance, I think politically the left is a bit happier today.