Mark Byron

Afternoon Musings

Sorry for the late start today; we were up visiting my parents, who were up in the Orlando area for the week. My parents treated us to the Dixie Stampede show last night (more on that later), stayed at their time-share overnight and did some shopping in Mount Dora today before parting company. I did bring my laptop, but opted not to get them charged $0.65/local call to get my blogging in; normally, time-shares aren't that nickle-and-dimey.

My folks are at the airport by now. I just dropped off Eileen at a mother-daughter tea at church; the hostest of our homegroup has "adopted" Eileen for the afternoon. However, I had some problems getting back thanks to the First Lady; she's in Winter Haven today for Operation Troop Salute at the Indians' stadium. I used an alternative route home, for the normally three-lane US-17 was being shunted into one lane as it got past the stadium.

For better or worse, today marks the official entrance of the ten new EU members.

For the first time in ages, Detroit has a decent team. They've not had more than a two-game losing streak yet this year. They used Pudge as a DH today and he hit a two-run homer that was the difference in a 4-2 win this afternoon. When you start DHing your catcher on a Satuday afternoon rest day, you know he can hit.

Edifier du Jour-Proverbs 18:22 (NASB)

22: He who finds a wife finds a good thing And obtains favor from the LORD.

Yes, indeed. I've been fighting off being depressed over the lack of a job offer, and Eileen has been a godsend on that front.

It is Finished

I taught my last class at Warner Southern today. I'm giving take-home finals in my two semester-long traditional classes, so all I have to do is wander in on Thursday morning (I made the finals due Wednesday 5PM) and grade them.

I still don't know where I'll be heading next. I put in applications earlier in the week at West Virginia State and (don't laugh) Black Hills State University. Hey, I told you not to laugh; the area came well recommended by Dr. Shmidt. I don't know if you can get more Flyover Country than southwestern South Dakota.

I'm still waiting on my previous applications, including Mount Vernon Nazarene, who I visited three weeks ago.

Fundamentalists-Part II-Inefficient Exuberance

I took a look at this Mark Cuban piece on the stock market last week and I promiced to come back to it "in a little bit." Well, that little bit was eight days. I wound up basing one of the answers on my Investments take-home final on the article. If my Investments students are hitting Google, they might stumble into the answer to question #2 on their take-home exam. I'll take my chances and nail them for plagairism if they copy this.

A RIMLID Majority

This is an interesting Zogby poll that Ben cites.

Here's the overall take on abortion

Should be illegal-18%
Illegal with exception with when the mother's life is in danger-15%
Illegal with exception for rape, incest and mother's life in danger-23%

Thus, a 56% majority would accept what I call a RIMLID (rape, incest, mothers life in danger) stand on abortion. That's going to cover most abortions. Those numbers are higher (60%) for 20-somethings and even higher (62% and 78%) for blacks and Hispanics.

However, it would be hard to tell that by sitting in Blue-State land. Via Jason Steffens, we get this Peggy Noonan piece on New Yawkers at a Broadway perfomance of Raisin in the Sun cheering a decision of one of the characters to have an abortion. The audience may have been skewed into the bohemian direction by Sean Combs' theater debut, but it's a reminder of how different the big metropolitan areas are from the rest of America.

People often forget that blacks, as a group, have stronger moral sensabilities than whites, given that they tend to be less secular. We've seen the Goodies (white blue-collar evangelicals) get moved over to the Republican column. Might stats like these point to a block of black voters that might swing Republican if they can get past the Jesse Helms/Strom Thurman stereotype of the redneck Republican?

Edifier du Jour-Psalm 30:10-12(NASB)

10
"Hear, O LORD, and be gracious to me;
O LORD, be my helper."
11
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
You have loosed my sackcloth and girded me with gladness,
12
That my soul may sing praise to You and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give thanks to You forever.

We have a "homework assignment" from church; we're supposed to write a thank-you letter to God for all the good things he's entrusted us with. With all the stress and anxiety I'm under, coming into my last day of teaching today not knowing where my next one will be or whether they'll even be another day of teaching, I'm not the most thankful today. My line of the week has been "The Lord tests those he loves; you don't have to love me quite that much, Lord."

Nonetheless, I can jam with David.

First of all, thank You for loving me; loving me enough to send part of Yourself to die for me.

Thank You for the promise of eternity with you, lessening the fear of death and of growing old.

Thank You for your Holy Spirit, who is there to calm me down when I need it desperately.

Thank You for Eileen, my soulmate and helpmate and lifetime roomie-buddy. She's a true blessing; even in the times when she's struggling emotionally, the love for me You've placed in her heart shines through.

Thank You for the fellowship of other believers. At times like this, I may want to crawl into a shell and not have to answer "No, I haven't heard back yet" for the umpteenth time, but their prayers and friendship have seen me through some rocky patches.

Thank You for my parents. Although their quirks can get on my nerves, they've been there more than I've deserved, helping me through a growing process that took four decades rather than two.

Thank you for a sharp mind and good memory.

Thank You for a good job. While I'm still wounded by my non-renewal, the team that was in place last year was exactly the people I needed to have in my corner as I transitioned into being a college professor.

Thank You for the Blogosphere and all my on-line friends. My church friends are there on Sunday and Thursdays, but You've given me a set of on-line friends who are there (albeit on an asynchronous basis) 24/7. They've been a blessing the last two-plus years.

Thank You for a comfortable lifestyle. A nice apartment, a nice car, furniture, clothes, computers, etc.

Thank You for allowing me to live on and serve You.

That might not be the most eloquent list, but it's what's on my heart this morning

Only 4% Growth?

That's a tough crowd-

The Commerce Department said gross domestic product, or GDP, that measures total output within U.S. borders expanded at a 4.2 percent annual rate in the January-March three-month period — well under the 5 percent rate forecast by Wall Street economists.

So, the economy grew 1.05% last quarter rather than 1.25%. Life is tough all over. Normally, people are happy with a 3% annual rate; that 8.2% figure from the third quarter has spoiled them rotten.

This is continued bad news for the Kerry folks. He can point to a loss of manufacturing jobs as he stumps in the Rust Belt, but I'm not sure Kerry could do much about it. I don't see Smoot Hawley II getting through Congress or Kerry issuing shoot-to-kill orders on all incoming freighters from Asia.

However, the unemployment figures are improving even if certian sectors of the economy haven't. It would cost the rest of us a lot in the way of higher prices and fewer choices in order to make a lot of our less-efficient industries competitive. Such economic isolationism would also get in the way of Kerry's desire to "rejoin the international community." It would be hard for him to scrap the WTO in order to protect American manufacturing jobs.

Autarky isn't pretty, nor is it desirable. Kerry may talk a good game about "fair trade," but it's unlikely to revitalize the Rust Belt.

Morning Musings

Via Charles Austin, we get the first distributor of clue-sticks.

Disclaimer: the Castle Argghhh! Cluebat^TM is intended for display and/or moonbat-threatening purposes only. While it may in fact be useful for actually imparting "clue" to the clueless, laws regarding assault and battery in your state and/or municipality will certainly frown upon such use.

Yes, you do have to use caution, even threatening a moonbat with application of said cluebat can get you up on charges.

I got a chuckle out of the definitions of clue-by-four and LART (Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool). At Banc One's Akron tech department (I worked there briefly in the mid-90s), they might have liked to use a LART in UHF cases. When a tech call was prompted by something stoopid, like not plugging something in or failing to turn something on, they'd jot down UHF on their report as the cause of the problem; it looked techie and official, but it stood for "User head failure."
_____

Da Mouse is safely independent for now; the run-up in Disney stock that came after the Comcast bid made it pricier than Comcast wanted to pay.

_____

Chronically un-PC Don Cherry may be let go by the CBC at the end of this season. He's been the voice of Hockey Night in Canada (a Saturday Night TV staple and cultural equivalent of Monday Night Football) since Hector was a pup (we used to get CBC's Windsor Channel 9 on our Midland cable) and gets the kind of following that a good local baseball broadcaster gets down here.

While there is still a whiff of a chance that the broadcaster will sign Mr. Cherry back to Coach's Corner — a huge audience draw and bottom-line booster — sources close to both parties predicted Mr. Cherry will be a free agent at the end of this season, which could run into early June.

Sources said that TSN, Rogers Sportsnet and Leafs TV have made overtures to Mr. Cherry

They didn't mention ESPN as a possible suitor; I wouldn't mind hearing him south of the border.

Chicken Hawk Versus Chicken With its Head Cut Off

Thank you, I'll take the former. That's a bit of a headline cheap shot, but the Democratic chicken hawk meme isn't going to hunt, for its going off in irrational directions like the proverbial chicken in the headline. Here's how you'd properly use the chicken hawk gambit

-Senator Kerry has served his country honorably. He didn't run to Canada. He didn't hide behind a student deferment, like many conservative politicians, including the Vice President. He didn't use connections to get into the National Guard, like Dan Quayle and the President. He went and served in combat, with multiple Purple Hearts to prove it.

When the Republican attack machine says that he's weak on defense, remember that he did his duty in Vietnam, being wounded while serving his country. He saw what war was like up close while this administration was boning up on history books or flying trainers in Alabama.

That would be a fair shot. However, the counter shot is that being a soldier in one's youth is well and good, but what is called for in a president is an understanding of the tasks that the military needs to do and the equipment it needs to properly do it. Kerry's a natural skeptic of new military systems, rarely wanting to spend money on them. It's that skepticism of new military systems that conservatives are criticizing, not his Navy days.

Meanwhile, let's look at some decapitated barnyard fowl, shall we. Exhibit A-Frank Lautenberg

We know who the chicken hawks are. They talk tough on national defense and military issues and cast aspersions on others, but when it was their turn to serve, they were AWOL from courage.

Two problems. The "aspersions" being cast by the Bush folks are on his Senate voting record, not on his Navy stint. Second, Lautenberg lamely tries to get the Bush-AWOL story into the loop without directly stating it, merely using it against Cheney's courage.

The problem with this meme is that when people actually look at what the "aspersions" are, the meme blows back in the Democrats faces.

Here's a second failed meme that won't go anywhere; Cheney as Spiro Agnew.

Mr. Nixon, Mr. Agnew and Mr. Cheney share common characteristics as vice presidents, Mr. Donatelli said: A penchant for tough rhetoric, conservative ideology and polarizing stands on foreign-policy and military issues.

    "In addition, Cheney is generally recognized to be the most influential vice president ever, especially on national-security matters," Mr. Donatelli said. "As such, he generates stronger support and opposition than would a more marginal figure."

    Indeed, the fire directed at Mr. Cheney is fierce and nonstop.

    "I can't think of a vice president since Agnew that spent so little time working on the people's problems and more on attacking decorated veterans to deflect on their own failures," said Kerry spokesman David Wade. "Frankly, this is Spiro Agnew Jr."

Comparing Cheney to Hitler would have been laying it on way to thick, so they try to link him with a felonious tax cheat who popularized "nattering nabobs of negativism" and "nolo contendere." If the guy were a bit less competent, they’d try to use Quayle, but they know that won’t stick, so they’ll try the Nixon gambit. I was a pre-teen during Agnew's day, but I don't recall him attacking decorated veterans to deflect from his legal problems.

Hope you didn't dislocate your shoulder, Mr. Wade, for you really had to overreach for that one.

Edifier du Jour-Psalm 71:13-19 (NASB)

13: Let those who are adversaries of my soul be ashamed and consumed; Let them be covered with reproach and dishonor, who seek to injure me.

14: But as for me, I will hope continually, And will praise You yet more and more.

15: My mouth shall tell of Your righteousness And of Your salvation all day long; For I do not know the sum of them.

16: I will come with the mighty deeds of the Lord GOD; I will make mention of Your righteousness, Yours alone.

17: O God, You have taught me from my youth, And I still declare Your wondrous deeds.

18: And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me, Until I declare Your strength to this generation, Your power to all who are to come.

19: For Your righteousness, O God, reaches to the heavens, You who have done great things; O God, who is like You?

One thing that struck me here is verse 18. It points out the job of the elderly as the keeper of history. Even if they can't "do anything productive" on the job front, they still have knowledge and wisdom to tell of what God's done for them and others in the past.

The other thing that stuck me is the depth of God's goodness. From a math standpoint, you know that the goodness of an infinite God isn't countable or fully knowable, but "not knowing the sum of them" is a down-to-earth way of saying it.

Weevil Empire

Cotton farmers aren't happy-the WTO has ruled that US cotton subsidies are illegal under WTO rules; hat tip to Jane Galt. The actually remedies aren't on the table yet, but this opens up a can of worms that may transform international trade.

If ag subsidies aren't allowed, more international trade of agricultural products should follow, as inefficient producers won't be propped up by those subsidies. American farmers won't like this much, but consumers will. There may even be some of our more productive farmers that may be able to get a higher price once over-subsidized products elsewhere are off the market. Cotton may not be one of those markets, however.

Brazilian farmers are happy; they're a lower-cost producer of cotton. However, if other subsidies are knocked off, American producers of other products will be the beneficiaries.

This is a bigger deal than it looks; expect a longer take in the near future.

No, the Disagreement's Not Settled

Specter won a 51-49 squeaker yesterday

Now is the time, having settled our family disagreement within the Republican Party, to unify, re-elect President Bush, and maintain the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate.

No, Arlen, the family disagreement ain't over. Keystone State conservatives will likely hold their nose and vote for you in November, but the RINO hunt is only on hiatus.

There are some states, like in New England, where RINOs are the best conservatives can get elected. Santorum proves that Pennsylvania doesn't have to be like them. This one has "to be continued" on it.

Edifier du Jour-Psalm 72:1-3 (NASB)

1: In You, O LORD, I have taken refuge; Let me never be ashamed.

2: In Your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; Incline Your ear to me and save me.

3: Be to me a rock of habitation to which I may continually come; You have given commandment to save me, For You are my rock and my fortress.

We're always welcome at out Father's house.

Spin Doctors

Check out this LaShawn Barber piece. I've got a good one in that vein, adopted from an old Cold War joke.

Kerry and Bush wound up getting into a one-on-one 100-yard-dash. Bush won. The Washington Post headline- "Kerry comes in second in political track meet; Bush finishes next-to-last."

Evening Musings

Overheard at Chateau Byron
Eileen-"I need to check my e-mail. The server was down this afternoon."
Me-"Well, go cheer it up."

Vulture Ben's circling over the political corpse of Arlen Specter, giving ongoing coverage of today's election, a veritable Wall of Political Sound. Just remember, Ben, when you fly back to DC, you only get one carrion per passenger.

AC-130s going after some hard-case strongholds in Fallujah. That may well be a sign of some seriously bad juju for the bad guys there, as the US is tiring of the call-and-response game.

You don't expect Syria to be going after terrorists. It reminds me of the M&Ms ad-"You don't eat your own kind. It's not natural."

Kerry's looking for traction and isn't getting much

-"All they do is attack," he said. "They've spent $70 million in the last seven weeks trying to destroy my record, my reputation. But Americans are smarter. Americans want leadership. Americans want to move forward."

Yes, and that's why your poll numbers are falling. They want leadership (not followership of Jacques Chriac) and want to move forward, not back to the Clinton years.

He even tried to resurrect the AWOL Air National Guard issue to deflect from scrutiny of his post-war efforts; the media doesn't seem to be biting. The last guy who manage to raise something that dead is still being worshiped today; ain’t gonna happen, John.

School Bomb Threats

I was thumbing through the Mount Vernon News and saw this piece on a bogus bomb threat at their middle school. I've yet to see a school actually be bombed. Schools seemingly have to take every threat seriously, for they don't want to have multiple deaths on their hands if the threat proves real.

However, given the lack of "success" of bomb threats, I wonder if reacting to a bomb threat at a school does more harm than good. If you add up the student-hours lost by evacuations (even though it will only be a handful of days for a particular school) over the year, the creators of chaos seem to have won. Cancelling school upon receipt of a bomb threat makes the pranksters powerful.

Might it be time to not respond when a prankster cries wolf?

Single Digit Midget

At least that's what my late, great friend Dave would have called such a "short-timer" in Navy-speak. I only have seven days of official business left here at Warner Southern. Three more days of classes, two days of exams and two meeting days later in May. I've been fighting off massive regrets this afternoon, dwelling on how I seemed to be not reaching about half my Financial Management class and how a too-busy schedule early in the semester and pink-slip-and-pending-move-but-to-where-anxiety late in the semester has left me delivering a less-than-stellar Investments class.

However, a spreadsheet sent from the registrars' office of pending graduates started to cheer me up. The rationale for the sheet was to let the registrar's office know if anyone on the list is in danger of flunking a class (or getting a D in a class that they'll need to get at least a C in); if so, they might not get a diploma next weekend.

There were 21 Business Administration students on that list. I had all of them in at least one class (mostly Macro and Micro) and some more than once. Many good memories. The Swedish basketball center who defies the dumb jock label. The smart, quiet, sweet (but very stubborn) Kenyan gal. The outgoing theology professor's kid. The suck-up from Micro. The bubbly blonde who always seems to say "Hi, Dr. Byron" as we pass on campus. The studious 50-something businessman coming back for a business degree (in our traditional day program, no less).

Yes, there are a few slackers who have more talent than showed in their work. However, there were quite a few of them that have a warm spot in my heart.

When I think back over the last two years here, and I think about those students, I start to ask myself-"Are they better people because they've known you? Have you made a difference in their lives?" I've not always been the best teacher, but I've tried my darnedest to live out a life of compassion and transparency as well as being a competent teacher. I guess I'm a better professor than I am a teacher, as I try to walk out my faith, warts and all, in front of my students.

Yes, I think I have made a difference. Maybe not in ways that the Warner higher-ups appreciate and maybe not as much as they'd like, but I've tried to teach them finance and economics (and frequently succeeded) but also taught how to think about them from a Christian perspective and tried to be a person of character through it all.

Let me put this in writing-I'm not going to let Ol' Sloughfoot make me feel like the last two years have been a failure. They haven't been. I've grown as a teacher, grown as a husband and grown as a man of God and managed to teach some college business classes awkwardly but competently. Oh, and I've gotten in some good blogging on the side.

The other thing that Sloughfoot is trying to do is to make me think that my next employer will be doing me a favor in hiring me, that I'm some overly-wounded charity case. I'm still healing and growing, but I can teach and teach well and can improve on my teaching.

A prayer request for the Peanut Gallery-pray for patience and confidence; getting let go has been rough on the latter and the long wait for a replacement job is doing a number on the former.

A 160 P/E? What Do You Think This is, the 90s?

Via Crooked Timber, we get this piece on a pending Google IPO. If Google has net income of $125 million and is expected to have a market capitalization of $20 billion, the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio would be $20,000m/$125m or 160.

To put that into perspective, the average stock these days has a P/E of about 25. Eventually, Google will stop growing faster than the economy and settle in as a normal company. At their current market capitalization, they'd have to raise their net income to $800 million to get to a P/E of 25. How will Google do that? Will they get six times the traffic? Three times the traffic but double the profit margin?

Even if they do start getting more traffic, will they be able to keep it? It wasn't that long ago that Alta Vista was my search engine of choice; Northern Light held the honor for a while. It wouldn't take too much for someone to build an alternative Google; they may not put Google out of business, but it might slow their growth enough to bring their P/E back down into double digits.

I could buy a P/E of 50 or 60, since there's still room for growth there; doubling net income could be very possible with the right brand extensions. I don't see a six-fold increase. Once the opening-day feeding frenzy hits, it might not be a bad idea to short Google.

No, I'm not dissing Google, it's still my search engine of choice. It's sorta like making Michigan a 60-point favorite over Northwestern; they'll win, yes, but I don't think the Maize and Blue would cover the spread. Google's good, but it's not going to cover that 160 P/E point spread.

British Political Futures

On a more serious note, this bottle of fine whine from former British diplomats might be yet another move towards a demarcation of British politics; they're blasting Blair for acquiescing to a US middle-east policy that is "doomed to failure." The Blair administration is brushing off the letter.

I'm not sure how things are going to shake out, but British politics is about to be overhauled. Blair has been moving Labour to the center, albeit a center that's a notch to the left of the US's center. The Liberal Democrats, traditionally the party of the center, has become the party of the left. It started out as the Liberal Party, which got squeezed out of influence a century ago by the rise of Labour, keeping on as a middle class party until expanding out to include liberal Conservatives and centrist Labourites.

A first-past-the-post system doesn't work well with three national parties; one of the parties will either co-opt the issues of the weakest of the three or one of the three parties will settle into a niche status, like the NDP in Canada. However, as the British left gets more and more dissatisfied with Blair, the Liberal Democrats may become the new home for the British left, giving British a Conservative party, a centrist Labour party and a leftist Liberal Democrats.

The fight in the next few years will be over whether Britain wants to be part of the Anglosphere or part of Europe, to be US-centric or Euro-centric; this ex-diplomat whine is a shot from the Europhiles. Blair is Anglospherian on geopolitical issues but European on economics. The Liberal Democrats and the left wing of Labour is full-bore European. The Conservatives are reluctant Anglospherians; Euroskeptic is the phrase in play for people who aren't comfortable with being tied in with the EU.

The first question that comes to mind is whether Labour becomes Blair's party or reverts back to the Europhile socialism of the Kinnock years. If the Europhiles take the party back, British politics becomes very dangerous for the US. It would be good short-term news for the Conservatives and may very well cost Labour control, but would leave the US with the real possibility of losing a key ally. If Labour lurches back to the left, the Liberal Democrats go back to being a suburban niche party.

However, if Blair keeps moving Labour into a Anglospherian tack, they will lose votes to an emboldened Liberal Democrats, who will likely become the socialist party by default. Disgruntled Labour lefties (as if they were ever gruntled in the first place) will jump shift to the new party of the left. You'd then see three parties gravitating around 30% of the vote and a likely coalition government, which, as strange as it sounds, would likely be Labour-Conservative rather than Labour-Liberal Democrat.

That format will make it real hard for the Conservatives to get into power and roll back the size of government, but they can help keep the UK in the Anglospherian camp and from sliding into continental economic malaise. Blair may be bad for the Conservatives but he may be good for Britain’s long term future, for the damage that could be done by an unified, Europhile socialist British left is immense.

Morning Musings

Still no results on the job-hunting front. I had an interview with Indiana Wesleyan's assistant dean Friday, but they're ideally looking for someone with backgrounds in finance and accounting rather than my finance and economics. I do have a bachelor's in accounting, but to teach at the college level, you're supposed to have either 18 graduate semester hours in your field or so much experience that becomes the equivilent thereof; unfortunately, three hours of graduate accounting and a three-year stint as an accountant in a hospital comes up a bit short there.

The World Turned Upside Down. The Tigers are 11-8 and the Yankees are 8-11. Life is good.

Life's even better when the Pistons come to play, going up 3-1 after last night's win in Milwaukee. One of the smart moves was to limit Big Nasty's playing time; the Bucks figured him out in game two and Brown adjusted by giving Prince more playing time in the last two games.

The Dumpster Ad

Here's a couple of crisis preganacy center ads that came to mind in the wee hours of this morning. The core of the ads will show a shot of a dumpster being lifted up and emptied into a garbage truck in the back of a nondescript strip mall; no, you don't see any tiny bodies, just a standard-issue dumpster. An authoritative female voice does the narration; I'd suggest Patricia Heaton from Everybody Loves Raymond, a vocally pro-life actress.

On average, the remains of four thousand abortions are discarded every day.

Not every week.

Every day.

There is a better choice.

You then have the narrator come on screen and put in a plug for a crisis pregnancy hotline.

Another ad would feature Ahnold, if you can get him. We start with the same dumpster shot

Each day, the remains of four thousand terminated pregnancies are discarded.

Not every week.

Every day.

Hasta la vista, baby!

There is a better choice

Then, Ahnold puts in the plug for the crisis pregnancy center. That might actually be doable, since even though he's pro-abortion-rights, he'd likely admit that there is a better choice.

Edifier du Jour-Judges 8:22-27 (NASB)

22: Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, "Rule over us, both you and your son, also your son's son, for you have delivered us from the hand of Midian."

23: But Gideon said to them, "I will not rule over you, nor shall my son rule over you; the LORD shall rule over you."

24: Yet Gideon said to them, "I would request of you, that each of you give me an earring from his spoil." (For they had gold earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.)

25: They said, "We will surely give them." So they spread out a garment, and every one of them threw an earring there from his spoil.

26: The weight of the gold earrings that he requested was 1,700 shekels of gold, besides the crescent ornaments and the pendants and the purple robes which were on the kings of Midian, and besides the neck bands that were on their camels' necks.

27: Gideon made it into an ephod, and placed it in his city, Ophrah, and all Israel played the harlot with it there, so that it became a snare to Gideon and his household.

The high priest wore an cloth ephod while doing his priestly duties; a gold ephod would have been designed to be showy. Even though Gideon might have had godly intents, recognizing God's ultimate leadership, the gold ephod wound up getting in the way.

Does your church have a gold ephod? Is there a material possession, or even a sacred cow of a program, that you're so proud of that your effectiveness is diminished because you're too focused on your ephod?

Evening Musings

Eileen's in bed early with a sinus infection, the Pistons-Bucks game's at halftime, so I'll check in on some stuff.

Tomorrow's primary day in Pennsylvania. Conservatives hope to bag a RINO in the Specter-Toomey race. Eric Seymour over at Josh's has a rundown.

Poor J-effing-K, he can't seem to get a break. Legend has it that when Kerry was throwing medals over the White House fence back in '71, they actually were someone elses. He's now heard on tape saying that they were his after all. Telling the truth from the get-go's always easier, since you don't have to remember what the fibs you made were.

Some interesting circular-firing-squad action as Atrios goes after the religious left for being asleep at the switch. Some return volleys over at The Village Gate (ne The Right Christians) and Melanie are worth a read. I've got something cooking in my mind in that realm that might come out in the next few days, but not now.

Pat Tillman and the Draft

Joe Carter has a good post on Pat Tillman and the costs of military service. Most of us don't have million-dollar jobs to give up, but many of us have jobs that are better-paying and less-risky than being a soldier. It doesn't take a $3m offer to get us to sit on our hands, just a better career opportunity.

You don't see too many sons and daughters of the elite going into the military; if they do, it's often as an officer. One of Eileen's classmates, an engineer's daughter, is a naval dentist; the Navy paid for dental school in return for a stint in the Navy. For members of the intelligencia not interested in post-graduate degrees with a military application like medicine or law (JAG will do free-schooling-for-service, too) or are hot on being a pilot, there's not a whole lot of career reasons to serve. ROTC will give free undergraduate schollarships, but being an officer may be too confining an option in a strong economy.

Thus, most of the members of the military are going to come from a more blue-collar background, where solid technical training and tuition aid look a lot better. There will be some officers from well-off backgrounds, especially in the South where a warrior ethic is more pronounced, but we largely send the sons and daughters of the "working-class" (as if white-collar folks don't work, but that's a fight for another day) off to war.

Your prototype NFL linebacker or strong safety would make a good Ranger, ready to scale a cliff to get at the enemy rather than bull-rushing an offensive tackle. That would make a draft appealing on paper, forcing the children of the intelligencia to share the burden.

However, not all of us are cut out to be soldiers; some of us may have our highest and best use to society in a non-military role. A draft picks people at random, while our current system allows people to choose whether they'd be a better fit elsewhere. The current system has a lot of people who'd be good soldiers ducking military service, but a draft will have a lot more people who'd be better used elsewhere put into the military.

A Bush Industrial Policy?

I don't like industrial policy. In a free-market system, government is an OK referee, a mediocre coach and a lousy player. This proposal to make broadband exempt from state and local taxation may sound good to us Internet geeks (if you're reading this, you're likely doing it via a broadband connection), but it creates a lousy precedent.

Why does the broadband industry deserve special protection? Well, it would help the development of cyberspace. Yes, but is that something that the federal government should be backing? Japan showed how industrial policy can work well in the 70s and 80s and also showed where it can fall flat on its face in the last decade-plus.

Why not exempt drugs or food or books or [insert favored product] from state taxation, too? That becomes a messy little gravy-train that has the K-streeters salivating.

Assignment for the Peanut Gallery- Make me a solid case for this Bush policy other than the idea that it'll lower your cable/DSL rates.

The Nerd's Best Friend

I'm getting old-D&D is having it's 30th anniversary. This BBC piece doesn't quite do it justice. What D&D and other RPGs did was to allow people to essentially write their own screenplays of the mind and live in them. Just like Space Invaders was superseded by hundreds of third-person (and later, with better graphics, first person) shooters, the fantasy medieval-themed D&D helped spawn SciFi themed RGPs (Traveler, Space Opera) Wild-West (Boot Hill) comic super-heroes (Supers) espionage (Top Secret) and even a generic multi-genre platform called GURPS. Sad to say, I played all of the above in my younger days and owned a majority of them.

Quite a few bright, imaginative folks took to these games. It was a geeky thing to do, but it was both a way to release one's imagination and to socialize in ways other than bar-hopping. I'm not 100% sure of the gamer demographic, but there was a high percentage of smart misfits, many of which went into computers and engineering. It does have its downside; people can get lost in fantasy worlds when their real worlds suck and the wizardry and polytheism of D&D can draw people into pagan practices. If you think that's just Harry Potter-style rantings from a fundi, I'd offer my late friend Dave's life as support. No, I can't say that he wouldn't have gone occultic without D&D, but it did expose him to various polytheistic theologies.

There are a lot of fond memories of gaming, like the dungeon crawl with a brother and sister team of magician Alda N. Weiser and dumb fighter Bud, where a wine barrel got rolled down a flight of stairs onto Helmut the ogre to my serenade of "Roll out the barrel;" the DM was not pleased. Helmut had dispatched Bud earlier in the crawl; after seeing a dissected cat in a lab, Bud was told that Helmut did it (it was likely his boss, the wizard who owned the dungeon). Bud died valiantly, screaming "Helmut killed Kitty" as he went into battle.

Or the time when Dave and I were playing brothers. His character was getting this close to a fight in a pub when I stepped in, saying "I'd call him an SOB, but I don't want to insult my mother."

So, I do have a lot of fond memories. I also have some not-so-fond memories of getting lost in solo-gaming universes that I would retreat to when my grad school real life wasn't going so well. For me, it became a crutch to avoid the world when drawing closer to God would have been the better action. Some people retreat to booze or drugs or sex; I retreated to ongoing fantasy worlds.

I'd advise young people to steer clear of the RGP milieu; while there is some good creativity and camaraderie to be had, it can steer you away from better things. I have heard of saved gamers using it as a witnessing tool, but for me, it would have dragged me down more that it would have lifted others up.

Edifier du Jour-Judges 2:8-14 (NASB)

8: Then Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of one hundred and ten.

9: And they buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.

10: All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.

11: Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals,

12: and they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the LORD to anger.

13: So they forsook the LORD and served Baal and the Ashtaroth.

14: The anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and He gave them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies around them, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies.

Remember that God has no grandchildren. Each generation, each person, needs to come into a personal relationship with God, or else.

What we face today is less overt than Baal-worship. Often, the falling-away comes from a watering-down of the Gospel or a lack of interest in Christian activities (although a lot of "spiritual" activity may be taking place), while in other, more overt forms, it may take an interest in other religions.

You can see that in modern-day Europe, a nominally-Christian territory that has essentially become post-Christians; in many continental societies, more people will go to mosques than go to churches on any given weekend. That is due to both an increase in immigration from Muslim countries and a decrease in spiritual fervor among the natives. The US isn't as far down that slouch to Gomorrah, but we have a large percentage of the population that is post-Christian.

When people turn their backs on God, the results aren't pretty. This is the kind of passage that reminds me to get (at least figuratively) on my knees in prayer for a turn-around in this country and other nominally-Christian areas.

Freedom

Eileen and I were over at the innagural Central Florida Vineyard Rally, where the Vineyard churches from the Orlando and Tampa Bay areas converged on our Lakeland church's site. About 500 people showed up for a full afternoon some good praise music, dance routines from our At His Feet team, fun for the kiddies (bouncy air-walk, sports, face-painting, sandboxes, balloon-animals, an appearance by Rovercomer the Dog, etc.) good preaching from the Inverness Vineyard's Dave Shirkey and good BBQ.

Eileen had a busman's holiday helping run herd over the sandbox and air-walk. We had four (at least) different praise teams performing. One of the Clearwater Vineyard's vocalists was a vocal dead ringer for Bill Medley; I guess he's a really righteous brother-in-Christ. Their singing might even give God creedance to start a Clearwater revival.

It's interesting that both the founder of the Lakeland Vineyard, Phil Lykes and Rev. Shirkey were both Southern Baptists who got blasted by the Holy Spirit; I remember hering some of Shirkey's story when he was attending our Word, Spirit and Power conference last year. He asked for a show of hand of how many ex-SBs we had in the crowd; they were at least a plurality if not a majority.

Those ex-pat Southern Baptists, and a lot of other people, want something more than a dry spiritual life where the Holy Spirit is merely a bit player. One of the At His Feet routines was to Jason Upton's Freedom; he's got quite a bit of Keith Green in-your-face-prophet vibe in him. The second verse hit home

Well, we live in a country supposedly Pharaohless
But all over town and in churches abide
Powerful weeklings who practice they're politics
Stealing from Jesus his beutiful bride
Whether you're Pharisees, Sadducees, heresies
You best get outta God's way!
(God is sayin')

Freedom to dance
Freedom to sing
Freedom to grow
I'm telling you Pharaoh let Gods people go!

I think if you distilled what the Vineyard's about, it is that freedom to be what God wants his people to be, steering clear of the Pharisees, Sadducees and heresies that get in the way of a fruitful life in Christ. That spirit's in abundance around the capital-C Church, but often gets channeled into old programs and old paradigms.

I was hanging out with our home group people (you should mingle more at these multi-church things and meet people from the other churches, but you don't) and Deb was recounting her youth in the Church of God. The hymns in the CoG hymnal were contemporary ditty written by on-fire church founders. However, they were contemporary circa 1900. When she was a youth in the early 70s, her church youth crowd in California were listening to the proto-CCM of Keith Green, Second Chapter of Acts and Larry Norman; the stuff that DS Warner and other were writing nearly a century ago wasn't reaching them.

One thing that struck me this morning as I was writing this up is that translating the Gospel isn't just a language issue but a cultural issue as well. We spend a lot of time and effort in translating stuff into new languages but seem to have a tin ear about translating it into other cultures. Music is part of that translation; if people have songs in their style that they're accustomed to, they take it to heart better. If they have preaching in a form that they're comfortable with, they'll take the message to heart better.

Traditionalists will often look down their nose at making the Gospel relevant; that's often seen as letting secular culture seep into the church. However, that can lead to a defensive mentality that has us circling the wagons and not reaching the world; as I looked at last week, that defeatism will drive a lot of folks away from the Church.

Instead of defending the church against culture, the church might out to sactify and reclaim culture, taking the cultural forms that people are used to and give them Christian content rather than unholy content.

Edifier du Jour:Matthew 26:6-13 (NASB)

6: Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper,

7: a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume, and she poured it on His head as He reclined at the table.

8: But the disciples were indignant when they saw this, and said, "Why this waste?

9: "For this perfume might have been sold for a high price and the money given to the poor."

10: But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, "Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to Me.

11: "For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me.

12: "For when she poured this perfume on My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial.

13: "Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her."

Today, we often have a fight in the Church between spending money on poverty-fighting or on missions/evangelism. There's been a lot of bad political rhetoric on the right that twists verse 11, wanting to call a ceasefire on the War on Poverty. No, it's not that Jesus isn't saying to help the poor, but that worship of Him is also important, especially when people are in His presence.

It isn't an either/or question. Helping the poor in the right ways is a witnessing tool, for people can see the love of Christ in action. However, alms without the Good News produces well-fed hellbounders.

Part of the split in focus may stem from the relative lack of importance that those on the spiritual left place of Jesus. If a relationship with him is nice but not a prereq for salvation, then charitable works seem more important. For those on the right, that relationship with Jesus is primary, so evangelism takes center stage and charity becomes a supporting player.

I'm more on the second group, although we should remember not to make charity a bit part in the script.