Mark Byron

Art Imitates Life

Here's a fitting Non Sequitur strip from today's paper especially after my post from yesterday. The young daughter (probably a precocious 6 or 7 year old) is watching the political talk-show Crosshairs-"I wanna pick up debate pointers from the pros." 

What are the pointers? "It's more important to demean the opponent's integrity that to be right about anything, and never, ever, admit that you're wrong... I just hope some stupid 'age of reason' doesn't come along before I grow up."

Her side kick deadpans "I don't see much chance of that."

Sadly, neither do I.

Centerfield-Catcher Double-Doubles

I wondered yesterday whether anyone had had played double digit games at center field and catcher in the same year. Brandon Inge has done that for the Tigers this year, playing 23 games at catcher and 11 in center.

Well, I spent some time massaging this database. The list isn't all that big in the modern era; ten times total. Craig Biggio was the last person to do it, playing 34 games in center field and donning the tools of ignorance 113 times for the Astros in 1990. Prior to that, utility man Ed Kirkpatrick turned the trick for the Royals in both 1971 (59 catcher, 16 center) and 1973 (CF=11, C=14).

Prior to that, Wally Schang did it twice, once for the Philadelphia A's in 1915 and once for the Red Sox in 1920. Hall of Famer Roger Bresnahan did it three times in 1902, '03 and '06. Other than that, Tiger Fred Payne in 1906 and the Cardinals' Art Nichols in 1901 are the lone remaining center-field catcher double-doubles in the modern era.

Such C-CF double-doubles were more common in the 1800s; another 36 seasons show up in the database prior to 1900.

Interesting. Seriously geeky, but interesting.

The Tiger Diet

This is slightly stunning- the Tigers trimmed some fat off of their payroll and got ridge of their Pudge. Ivan Rodriguez just got traded to the Yankees, getting reunited with that other Rodriguez after both coming up with the Rangers.

The waiver-free trade deadline is tomorrow and Pudge is on the last year of his contract. The Tigers are a tantilizing 5.5 back of the White Sox but don't quite seem to have enough healthy bodies to make a run. The rental price for Pudge is Kyle Farnsworth. Detroit needs bullpen help and the Yankees need a catcher with Jorge Posada out with an injury.

In the recent past, Detroit made rent-a-player deals, picking up folks for the stretch run. This year, they're on the giving end of the deals.

Brandon Inge will wind up heading behind the plate full-time after being a super-utility man this year once the musical positions game found first Miguel Cabrera and then Carlos Guillen at Inge's old third base spot.

Here's an interesting stat. Inge played 11 games at center field and 24 games at catcher to date. When Curtis Granderson was out with an injury early this year, Inge got a lot of starts in center. Center field and catcher are almost oxymoronic, the ultimate speed merchant position and the position that gave us one of the great left-handed complements of all time, "runs well for a catcher." How many players have played double-digit games at both in the same year? Probably not too many

Moving Forward

One key bit of news should help Israel along; PM Olmert is stepping aside. He'll stay around until his Kadima party elects a replacement, who will then have to either patch together a majority government or head to new elections.

Olmert had very little personal power, as Kadima was essentially Ariel Sharon's creation and Olmert was more of a caretaker once Sharon's stroke put him out of commission. I had to check if Sharon was still living; he is, but barely, in a near-coma.

A bribery scandal has crippled Olmert, and with little personal popularity and with Labor poised to bolt the cabinet if Olmert wasn't replaced, something had to give. If Kadima was to live up to it's name, it needed to move forward.

One of the folks the BBC mentions as the frontrunner for the party boss position is Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni; her name looks like a pair of bad Scrabble racks (you could get Ziti or Zip out of her first name, but would you have free space to use it in an end-game with five tiles left?) but she would give Argentina's Christina Fernandez a run for her money as best-looking head-of-government.

Talk Radio: Church of the Poisoned Minds?

I'm not quite sure where to go with this factoid, but quite a bit is being made of Knoxville church shooter Jim Adkisson's having books from a trio of combative conservative talkers, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and the very aptly named Michael Savage.

I don't spend much time listening to any of those three. I'm usually teaching when O'Reilly's show is on at 8PM and am more likely to watch Good Eats or Sportscenter during its 11PM rerun if I'm winding down from a night of teaching. I'm usually in my office when Hannity is on the radio, and I can live without his recitation of conservative talking points. I just miss the end of Hannity and Colmes by getting home about 10.

Savage raises my blood pressure more than any talker with the possible exception of Neal Boortz; his bile at anything that disagrees with him wears out its welcome in very short order. Liberalism is a Mental Disorder? I'm heading into pot-calling-the-kettle-black territory, but I'd venture that Savage would be more in need of therapy than Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi. I have people that are in my clan who like him, and that worries me.

Not everyone in the right-wing talk brigade is as caustic as Savage, but most will be quick to dismiss foes on the left as either corrupt, crazy or stupid. I wound up pulling the plug on Michael Reagan, usually one of the classier right-wing talkers, when he dissed one of the main lefties (either Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi, if memory serves) as either "stupid" or "an idiot;" they may be misguided frequently, but they aren't dumb.

Such dismissal and dehumanizing of one's political foes makes the prospect of killing them less problematic. That doesn't mean all those folks are supporting such actions, but it makes it easier for troubled folks to go over the edge when you're demonizing and dehumanizing your foes.

Some of the talkers are church-goers (Hannity is a practicing Catholic; yes, he does need a lot of practice) and others like Savage and Boortz are essentially secular, but most come at things with an essentially godless take; it might be the nature of the talk-radio beast, but you hear very little love on talk radio and a lot of bile. Calmer, saner, and more caring talkers don't get the ratings.

There were angry conservative guys before talk radio came of age in the 90s. They just hear people echoing what's in their gut these days.

If doesn't seem that conservative Christian thought was driving Adkisson; Adkission had stated his hostility to Christianity to his neighbors. It was secular conservative thought that seemed to be a driving force. Some of that thought may have come from Irish Catholics like O'Reilly and Hannity, some from backslidden Protestants like Rush and others from Jews like Savage, but it was a largely secular hatred of the other that seemed to drive Adkisson.

He took out his frustration on a church that protected minorities, including gays.

Did those conservative talkers cause him to go over the edge? Probably not. We've had similar attacks prior to talk radio.

However, these guys don't help the cultural climate; angry folks might decide to take the concept of a "culture war" literally.

Unrighteous Indignation

The thought that is crossing my mind this afternoon on the Unitarian church shooting yesterday is that it isn't religious conservatives that are the big danger to a liberal social order, but secular ones. The sketchy portrait of the shooter was of someone who hated Christianity and hated liberal social policy. So, he took out his frustration on the most iconic of socially-liberal Christian groups.

Secular doesn't always mean liberal; many folks who don't go to church have old-school thoughts on mores. Those mores may be influenced by centuries of Christian thought, but culturally conservative thoughts on sexual issues are not uncommon in pagan non-Christian cultures. Such thoughts are all the more dangerous, since they frequently don't have the Golden Rule, love-thy-neighbor overlay of Christian thought to go with them.

Get a old-school pagan unchurched person angry, and you have a skinhead. We see a lot of that in Europe and we may have seen it yesterday in Knoxville.

[Update 7/29- Sorry, Yvonne. Loose choice of words. "Pagan" wasn't quite the word that I was shooting for, but it often gets used as a loose synonym for non-Christian. Sometimes the thesaurus doesn't get fully checked.]

Greater Love Has No Man...

It's easy to rag on the Unitarians for their lack of theological soundness, but today isn't the day for that; someone shot up a Unitarian service in Knoxville this morning, killing two people, including an usher named Greg McKendry, who stepped into the shooter's shotgun fire, probably saving quite a few lives.

John 15:13 comes to mind-"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." One can only hope that God forgives Mr. McKendry any theological shortcomings he may have had and give him a pass into eternal life, for he lived up to that verse to a T.

Interestingly, the church was doing a performance of Annie in their service; Daddy Warbucks wound up tackling the shooter.

Quick question to the Peanut Gallery-isn't the Annie signature song Tomorrow a great Unitarian hymn? Since they have a Savior who saved everyone, their biggest hope is in the future and the progress of man; tomorrow is better than yesterday and it's always a day away.

Three Questions

What's the difference between Smokey Robinson, the housing bill and Todd Bentley? Smokey was a performing Miracle, the housing bill "won't perform miracles" per Chris Dodd and .... Bentley .... well, .... is at least more entertaining than the housing bill.

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Why do Brett Farve's cars always wind up getting flats? They never quite get re-tired. However, it could prove to be a blessing in disguise for the Packers if they can weasel a draft pick or two out of Tampa Bay or the Jets.

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What's the difference between selling your opponent Park Place when he owns Boardwalk and the FCC actions today allowing the Sirius-XM merger? One is a dumb move that will be regretted later and the other just creates a monopoly, although I can't quite tell which is which.

Mortgage Musings

It looks like we're going to get a mortgage reform bill through Congress that the president will sign. It passed the Senate 72-13, so it seems rather bipartisan.

Most of the stuff in the bill isn't a budget-buster. One of the more common-sense approaches is to allow the FHA to issue new mortgages to defaulting home-owners if the mortgage holders would agree to write the loan down to 90% of the value of the house.

In many cases, people got into houses either with teaser rates or low ARM rates that went up back when short term interest rates spiked last year. This will allow some of those folks to get a long-term fixed-rate loan that makes since; the FHA insurance will largely be self-financed.

Many of the changes seem solid, like giving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac better oversight, upping the down-payment needed on a FHA loan from 3% to 3.5% and raising the size of mortgages that Fannie and Freddie can insure.

The one that seems a bit problematic is the $7500 rebate to first-time home buyers that will get paid back at a $500 year clip over 15 years. That's tempting to me: I buy a house and Uncle Sam zeroes out one of my credit cards. As a renter who would likely qualify as a first-time home-owner, that might get me house hunting.

However, the logistics of getting that $500/year back from folks is likely to be problematic and be the source of much liberal weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth in the years to come. There will be pressures to waive that payback in the future.

There are some nanny-state flourishes that the right side of the Peanut Gallery won't like, but this seems to be a reasonable package to shore up the mortgage system.

Burning Bushes

That might be what some quarters of the left might be doing at the GOP convention, but it's the one that Moses talked to that got me thinking this weekend.

Our church is in the middle of VBS, and Eileen's teaching the second graders this week; since it's a night-time thing and I teach Monday through Thursday nights, I'm out of the loop other than to help set up her room with the cheesy Polynesian decor for the Outrigger Island (the Southern Baptist's official 2008 VBS) theme.

Anyways, she was working on the Monday lesson from Exodus 3, Moses and the burning bush. Let's review; here's the NIV take-

¹ Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ² There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. ³ So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up."

OK. Let's take this out of children's story and apply some lay physics (I'm not a physicist, so take my science with a grain of salt). Normally, if something is burning, it is shrinking, as the hydrocarbons of the wood are turning into carbon dioxide and water vapor and energy and some charcoal. If the old Einstein equation is to hold, additional energy will require converting some mass. However, the mass wasn't getting converted; the bush wasn't shriveling up like it should in a wildfire.

The reason it wasn't burning was that God was supplying His own energy. Our normal laws of thermodynamics assume a closed system; God has the option of opening up the system and adding or subtracting energy, since He is outside the system.

That applies in our lives as well. God does supply energy even today. Recall Isaiah; "they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." God can get us through the tough times with a supernatural push of energy, a second wind. Billy Joel may not the best example to be pulling Edifiers from, but Second Wind's bridge comes to mind as valid advice.

But I survived all those long lonely days
When it seemed I did not have a friend
Cause all I needed was a little faith
So I could catch my breath and face the world again

Don't forget your second wind

A little faith in God and a little pray can give you the energy you need to tackle the things God has for you to do. You might not have the energy, but God does.

Veepstakes

Bobby Jindal has written himself out of the VP race. That's probably for the best, since he's at least a cycle too early to be on the ticket. He'll be a favorite for the 2016 presidential nomination if he puts in two solid terms as governor and might be a decent choice in 2012 if we have to oust President Obama. One year as governor isn't quite enough to put him on the ticket, although I'll be surprised if we avoid seeing him on a ticket in the next dozen years.

Tim Pawlenty is getting some good press, but I'm not sure if he's the best pick for McCain. Obama fits Minnesota a bit too well and Pawlenty might not be enough to turn on the red light behind MN on the map board.

An interesting possible pick is Rob Portman, former Ohio congressman and OMB director. Ohio is a must-win state for McCain and Portman adds some economic gravitas to the ticket to offset McCain's foreign-policy centric style.

I don't see Mitt Romney adding much to the ticket, but he could do far worse.

The rumor mill is working OT, since the next week or so would be a great time to make a VP pick. Doing so before the Olympics would make since, but he might wait until after everyone in the Washington media gets back from The Grand Obama Tour. Thus, sometime next week, we'll possibly get to see the blank in the McCain-_________ ticket filed in.

Blog No Evil

A few days ago, our paper had a comic strip with the hear-no-evil, see-no-evil and speak-no-evil monkeys flanked by a fourth simian typing away on a laptop-"No one said anything about blogging."

One of the interesting things about blogging is that you'll write things about people that you wouldn't say to their face if they were in the room. In many cases, that's a safe assumption, especially for a small-fry blogger; if I were eviscerating a Paul Krugman essay, what's the chance that big-shot NYT writer will have my missives show up on his radar.

Conversely, I haven't done any punning that I know of on my pastor, David Head, and his last name. For one, he's a fellow blogger and will link through when I link to his blog; at least I see someone using the Ponder Anew admin page to link to my page. If I write about him, he's likely to read it, so I write as if he will read it, and write with the proper respect and tact, at least for me.

However, the targets of your derision occasionally stop by.

 Back when I was living in Florida, I recall lighting into a piece from the Lakeland Ledger's religion writer, Cary McMullen, declaring a certain piece "a steaming pile", back when such rhetoric was common currency among "fisking" bloggers. Well, a few months later, McMullen calls up and is interviewing me on a piece on religious blogs, and I quickly have to backtrack on what I said; using nasty rhetoric makes more since when you're critiquing a unknown person rather than a reasonably decent guy on the other end of the line.

I had a similar moment yesterday. I had written on a piece on gentrification, making fun of the name of one Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, a Methodist minister. Not only that, but I made the assumption that "a lady Methodist pastor with a hyphenated last name is going to be a big Bible-thumper." Avoiding a cheap Gilligan's Island quip was hard, especially when I forgot that she might be reading what I wrote.

Which she was. I've not seen Todd Bentley or Joel Osteen stop by and call me on questionable writing, but Rev. Gaines-Cirelli did, in a civil but slightly peeved way. I had such a rebuke coming, for I was out of line and need to ask for forgiveness.

I've gotten out of that combative "fisking" mode a while ago, but sometimes sarcasm gets the better of me, and that cutting humor gets misplaced more often that I like. Pray that I do a better job of being a good witness in what I write.

Gentrification and Reverend Ginger

Here's an interesting WSJ piece on gentrification of some bigger cities, especially San Francisco and Washington; DC may actually become majority white if trends continue. This passage had me chuckling; a black Methodist church in DC is losing members as parishioners head to the suburbs.

While his church flounders, the predominantly white Capitol Hill United Methodist Church just down the street is flourishing. There the average attendance on Sundays has doubled to about 120 people the past five years. "Demographics are in our favor. We're attracting the folks that are moving in," says the Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, 38, who headed the church for five years before recently leaving for a position elsewhere.

It tends to be white, childless and more spiritually liberal folks that move into a big city; I don't think a lady Methodist pastor with a hyphenated last name is going to be a big Bible-thumper, while a black male pastor might be a bit more old-school.

Wait a minute... Rev-run Ginger?!? That's a straight line begging to be use, but it's the humor version of a Eephus pitch, so slow it's unhittable.

Whether it be the Lexus liberals heading out to the Red-tinged blue-collar country-side, like we saw with the Edwards' locking horns with a Rudy-loving old-school neighbor in exurban North Carolina, or yuppies tangling with traditional minorities at PTA meetings, we have an interesting culture clash. Seeing a more diverse big city is good in the long term, but it will make things more culturally liberal in the process.

It will be interesting what the Get Religion folks think about this piece

Library Musings

We're off running Saturday errands, getting massive husband points, especially when I swung into Jo Ann's for brads for VBS; you know you're married when you (a) go into a craft store alone or (b) swing by the feminine products section whi

Eileen will be running herd over the second graders while I run herd over my mix of undergrad and grad students. I'd be avaible to teach a day VBS, but they have it in the evenings at our church.

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We may see the ghost of Payne Stewart at the British Open; plus-fours haven't looked this good since he passed on. Right now, defending champ Padriag Harrington is the leader in the clubhouse with a +4, one back of the silver Shark, Greg Norman. Second round leader KC Choi has dropped back to +4 as I go to press.

From what I saw of things this moring, the winds was going at a 30MPH+ clip, making normal golf probleatic and even making it hard to keep balls stationary on the green; they were noting that there is no hard-and-fast rule for how much wind is too much, but if you can't have a ball stay put on the green, it's too windy to play and they'd shut things down.

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The Barack Obama "Am I Experienced?" World Tour is on its South Asia swing, hitting Afghanistan today. He likes this area, wanting to send more troops; we could probably use a mini-surge there, but it's funny where he's hot to send more here yet wants a full pullout of Iraq.

Friday Musings

Things are going well; we're four weeks into the summer quarter, and things are moving along fairly smoothly, save for a flu-like set of symptoms that laid me low last night and today. We had a campus-wide picnic yesterday, so I had hot dogs for both lunch and dinner (they had a 11-2 shift for the day students and a 5-7 shift for the night students). I'm not sure if it wasn't a bad hot dog not cooperating or a rotavirus, which is the technical term for the stomach/intestinal flu.

For years, we jokingly called such a critter the Roto-Rooter flu, for it cleaned you out on both ends. Well, it may better be pronounced Rota-Rooter.

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The British Open might be interesting viewing this weekend. The leader board is shark-infested, with Greg Norman only a shot off of KC Choi's lead. Last year's champ Padraig Harrington is three back, as is US Open runner up Rocco Mediate.

That's a 53-year-old Greg Norman, set to bust the oldest-major winner record wide open, if Rocco doesn't do it. Hey, marrying Chris Everett must suit him well.

The other name a bit back on the leader board is a blast from the past; Jean Van de Velde. It was nine years ago at the British Open that he had probably the worse choke in golf history, coming into the 18th on Sunday up three, then making triple bogey to fall into a playoff that he lost. He's at +4, five back, but is a hot round from getting up into the short-version of the leader board. If Mediate or Norman can't bag a title, getting VdV to shake that image would be nice.

____________

Some interesting politics down in Argentina, where a tax on food exports (not imports, mind you, exports; they wanted to keep the food at home) was narrowly voted down in their Senate, with the Vice President voting against the government to break the tie. Picture Dick Chaney voting down a Republican must-pass bill, and you get a bit of the drama. That's going to be an interesting cabinet meeting, especially if president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner cusses like Hillary can when mad.

That's good for food prices, good for free markets and bad for left-populism. Between the FARC getting put on the run in Columbia and the Peronistas getting shot down in Argentina, it's not been a good summer for South American leftists.

"Whens a kittah ax u, 'Is u a ceiling cat?', u say 'Yes.'"

Or, alternatively, "I am the Bucket Master; you must be the Gatekeeper."

The Runaway Host Post

The Eucharist has been in the news as of late, after a UCF student pocketed a consecrated wafer last month and getting some death threats for his stunt; he's in the process of getting kicked out of the student Senate. Evolution maven PZ Meyers stirred the pot a bit more, blogging about looking to score a wafer in order to desecrate it.

It's always a bit amusing to see secular folks trashing Catholic stuff, like militant gay-rights activists sabotaging services. If you wanted to fight fire with fire, what would you do? There isn't anything a secular person treats as sacred. You can't hang a condom in effigy in retaliation or soak a copy of The Origin of Species in holy water as payback to Meyers; it would be a waste of good water, anyway.

The question that comes to mind for me as a non-Catholic is this; when does the wafer become the Body of Christ? Since you need a priest to properly do a Eucharist (if I understand Catholic doctrine correctly), would it become transubstantiated (if I can verb that) sometime during the service, possibly when he holds it up and declares "The body of Christ"?

For instance, you can buy communion wafers in bulk; if you bought a case of 1000 wafers, do you have a thousand Bodies of Christ? Probably not. For $14.95 plus shipping, Meyers can have a field day and build a mural of the Ascent of Man out of painted wafers, except they haven't been consecrated.

To question the point further, what is the status of the wafers that weren't used in that service? There are most likely going to be some spares; one would think that they're ordinary wafers until getting called into action during the Eucharist.

If a consecrated wafer gets pocketed, like in the UCF case, it is still the Body of Christ in his pocket, or does the host get untransubstanciated once it gets out of its proper role?

Consider this a shout-out to the Catholics in the Peanut Gallery; I don't want to be too flip, for I understand that the Eucharist is the centerpiece of Catholic worship, where the Church interacts with Jesus in a real way that reaches across time and space. If I understood the majesty and mystery of that a bit better, I might think about crossing the Tiber, for it's something that Protestants (especially Evangelicals; some liturgical churches have a high view of Communion) lack.

I know that the folks who are issuing death threats are overreacting; that's a given. However, the hue and cry over a pocketed wafer seems overblown. My first thought is that Jesus is a big boy and can fend for Himself, ask Ananias and Sapphira.

Feel free to give me a second thought.

Not Disabled

This sounds like a script for a corny sci-fi movie, but it's actually playing out. A South African "disabled" guy, Oscar Pistorius, is running on prosthetic legs at a pace that just missed making the able-bodied Olympics in the 400 meters. He needed to get under 45.55 to qualify, but came a bit short in his last meet with 46.25. He all but owns the Paralympics running events, but wanted to be in the regular Olympics; he still might get named to the South African 4X400 relay team.

It's a testament to both Pistorius and the status of artificial limbs that he's able to hang with the best runners in the world on artificial legs. The ruling bodies of track tried to keep him from running with the regular track folks, thinking that his artificial legs are springier and easier to run on than normal legs, giving him an unfair advantage, but follow-up tests proved otherwise.

Pistorius is only 21, so the 2012 Olympics are still very feasible. If he can make it then, he may wind up being a $6 million man; he doesn't have Steve Austin's speed, but he might have "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's bank account if he can get a notch faster and make an Olympic final. He'll be very marketable if he can pull this off, and is probably already getting some ad feelers.

Interesting thought; what happens when we get better-than-human prosthetics, so that we get real-life Steve Austins? We're not there yet, but Pistorius shows that we're not that far away from that.

If I Had $10,000...

...I'd bail you out of jail.

The lead singer of the Canadian band Barenaked Ladies has been charged with drug possession in upstate New York.

Steven Page, along with two women, were arrested after police allegedly found cocaine and marijuana in a Fayetteville, N.Y., apartment, according to a Syracuse-area radio station's website, 9WSYR.com.

Page and one of the women were apparently arrested Friday at about 2 a.m. after police discovered a car with an open door in the driveway of a home. While they were investigating the vehicle, officers observed a man and a woman sitting at a kitchen table with a white capsule inside an apartment.

Police said the man and woman had a substance that tested positive for cocaine. Page, 38, was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance in the fourth degree. He was reportedly arraigned in Manlius, N.Y., Town Court and released after posting $10,000 US bail.

...

Page's manager, Terry McBride, refused to comment on the case Tuesday while it is before the courts, but said he is confident Page will be cleared.

Until the case is settled, McBride said it will be business as usual for the Barenaked Ladies, who recently released a collection of original children's songs entitled Snacktime.

I guess the follow-up album will be Munchietime

Eats Shoots, Leaves and Grills

I recall a scene from National Lampoon's Vacation, where the family dog is tied to the back of the car for a picnic stop, then they forget to untie him as the go back on the highway. A state trooper tracks them down to let them know what they did, "Poor little guy. Must have kept up with you for a mile or so." I'll use that line during March Madness when a high seed manages to hang with the national power for five or ten minutes before things revert to form and the blowout ensues.

We have a more interesting story from Down Under, where a koala got caught in the front grill of a car. The little feller is OK.

Well, the front part of a locomotive is called the cow-catcher; shall we rechristen the front car grill as the koala-catcher?

Financial Overload-Part I

Tons of stuff is happening in the financial arena, and it's starting to blow a gasket as I try to process everything. On the good side, oil dropped $6/barrel today, which might get gas prices back under $4/gallon.

This Bud's for Fern'ers-Anheuser-Busch has agreed to be bought out by Belgium-based InBev; Becks and Stella Artois are the most prominent InBev products. I'm not a beer drinker, so I don't have a dog in the fight. However, it will give more jingoistic beer drinkers pause to know that their Bud is now owned by some financial muscles in Brussels.

I think it was a Miller ad campaign where they had faux football refs flagging foes for freshness violations. In one ad, they threw the hankie at a shipment of Bud, where the AB rep retorted "You can't flag the King!" A few folks are hollering "You can't buy the king!"

I'm not going to agree with Clair McCaskill on too much, but the weak dollar did make this deal feasible. American investments are cheap with the week dollar; we saw a Lexington horse auctioneer sold to a Dubai firm recently.

IndyMac, when are you comin' back?-Yesterday, as it turns out; the California-based bank was the second largest to be closed by the FDIC on Friday, but was quickly returned to operations under FDIC ownership Monday.

If you had five figures or less in the bank, things are normal; the FDIC covers deposits up to $100K. If you had more than that in IndyMac, you may get a bit of a "haircut" if the assets aren't worth the liabilities.

Personal finance 101- you shouldn't have more than $100,000 in a bank for a number of reasons. The lack of FDIC insurance is one, and the fact that you should have the money where you can get a better return if you have that much money is another. Ten or twenty thousand in CDs and money market funds might be a OK place for rainy-day funds, but any more than that should be in some form of stock or bond or mutual fund investment.

You can't sue a member of congress for doing something stupid, but if you could, the IndyMac shareholders and depositors could roast Chuck Schumer slowly over a mesquite flame. Yes, the bank had its problem, but Schumer basically yelled "fire" in a crowded building over some crepes Suzette.

I'll get to Fannie and Freddie later;  FIN 510 beckons.

The Stochastic Wok

I don't know what the future for this will be, but I've started a new blog to play off my Dr. Byron side; it's called The Stochastic Wok and will have a daily feature of a quick analysis of a randomly-selected stock. Today's inaugural stock stir-fry is of Frontline, the #1 oil tanker company. That's something that will stay in business for a while.

If that takes off, it could be an interesting site. We'll see if people like it.

Border State Report

It looks like Nightline did a piece on Todd Bentley earlier this week; the article on their website was rather deferential, having a couple of women-on-the-street Lakeland skeptics and a local pastor skeptic but no false-prophet diatribes in the coverage. An AP piece that was out yesterday (USA Today carried it here) is a bit less friendly. Bentley has yet to authenticate any of his healings.

A note on the Nightline article noted that Bentley will be taking a break from the revival; he's been at it since early April and may well deserve a vacation.

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On the subject of Bentley, Charisma's J. Lee Grady was discussing the flamage that has resulted from Lakeland and hearkening back to a Rick Joyner vision

Other charismatic leaders have echoed this theme since Joyner’s book was published in 1996. They have predicted that our movement will be divided between “Blues” (those who constantly live in the supernatural realm of dreams, visions and miracles) and “Grays” (those who rely more on their intellect), and that the Blues will win and usher in true revival as champions of the Holy Spirit’s power.

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I’ll admit I was not paying too much attention to these Civil War predictions 10 years ago. But I was jolted into reality in May after I wrote an online column in which I raised honest questions about some of Bentley’s teachings and techniques. Even though I celebrated his passion and zeal, and praised God for the healings that were reported in Lakeland, I was immediately branded a revival critic and banished to the Gray camp.

 

I became the bad guy because, by asking questions, I was “relying on my intellect.” To those in the Blue camp, my skepticism made me an enemy of the Holy Spirit and all things supernatural—even though I believe that all the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit are for today!

In my current location in Kentucky, I'm sitting in a border state in the Civil War, one that was nominally with the Union but was a slave-holding state. In this spiritual divide, I've got some spiritual brothers and sisters on both sides of the trenches.

Having headed back to a Baptist church after a short stint in one of the local Vineyard churches, I'm in the spiritual equivalent of Canada in this fight. However, they can take a Bapticostal out of the Vineyard, but they can't quite get the Vineyard out of the Bapticostal. Thus, there is a warm spot to see the Spirit move, but not to see Bentley pull out some MMA moves while performing a healing.

Dan Edelin seems ready to be Stonewall Jackson-

If you’re a charismatic who believes that we need to test the marching orders and practices of the Blue army and are grieved by the blatant doctrinal fallacies and outright myths erupting like sores on some sectors of the charismatic movement, understand this: You are the new enemy. You are the Gray.

I doubt that it will come to actual violence, save the occasional fist-fight among hot-heads from the various factions. However, I've seen some damage in some of the churches I've been in. I recall that shortly after Eileen and I left one charismatic church, a Blue five-fold-ministry maven was run off by the pastor who was not that enamored of that viewpoint. Another charismatic church I attended had a Blue-tinged group of prayer warrior ladies who locked horns with a Baptist-trained Gray pastor.

Part of the problem with the Blues is that they take a number of forms. Some people are impressed with Toronto, others with Rick Joyner, others with John Paul Jackson. Many of the churches were somewhat like Tennessee in the Civil War, Grey but with a lot of Blue sympathizers. I'd guess that New Life Vineyard in Midland was about 10% Blue (Pastor Milton liked the Harp and Bowl service style from IHOP), Lakeland Vineyard was about 20% Blue (a few Rick Joyner and John Paul Jackson books were in the library and some Morningstar music was in the bookstore) and Father's Heart Ministries was about 30% Blue. In those cases, there was a blend of interested in seeing God move but also in being well grounded in the Word.

That grounding in the Word is what seems to be lacking in many charismatic circles; there often too willing to leave their intellect on hold and not check to see if the new things they are seeing are of God.

I'm not sure what the Bentley's Imagination-to-Holy-Spirit ratio is in Lakeland; my guess is well above zero approaching one. Some good things are coming out of Lakeland, but some kooky things are as well; sucker-punch healings isn't quite my idea of the Spirit moving. It's too out there for me to feel comfortable signing off on.

There will be heated debates over this. The debates might split a few charismatic churches into Blue and Gray camps. However, this "civil war" has been going on for as long as I've been a Christian, for in many cases, it is often a degree of Blueness that is the issue, or if I can use my Bapticostal rubric, how much Baptist and how much Pentecostal do you put into the Bapticostal.

So, let not quite write off the Yankee scum quite yet and have a civil disagreement rather than a civil war.

Jackson and Bobbit Men's Health Services

Here's one alternative to back-alley abortions: back-alley vasectomies. Jesse Jackson wanted to provide Sen. Obama with one this weekend.

One of the things that might be eating at the Rev-run Jackson is that he's no longer the President of Black America, since Obama has taken over that space in the political ecology.

Salt of the Earth

The boys at the "Pink Palace" on Abbott Road in Midland have been busy; Dow Chemical just bought Rohm and Haas; despite the very Germanic name, it's an Philly-based firm founded by a couple of German immigrants a century ago.

The $78 per-share deal includes money from a Kuwaiti sovereign wealth fund and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. The price represents a 74 percent premium to Philadelphia-based Rohm and Haas' closing share price of $44.83 on Wednesday. The Haas family, descendants of one of the company's founders, holds about 65 million shares, a 33 percent stake worth nearly $5.1 billion based on the purchase price.

Chief Financial Officer Geoffery Merszei said the quality and reputation of Rohm and Haas' businesses, brands, products and technologies _ as well as its work force _ make the premium worth paying.

One of the interesting footnotes in the deal is that Rohm and Haas own Morton Salt. That rung some bells for this Midland kid, for it was brine wells in Midland that brought Herbert Dow up from Cleveland to set up his first chemical plants a century ago.

I'm not sure if it's good for Dow stockholders; a 74% premium is rather stiff, but when I see Berkshire Hathaway in on the deal, it makes me breathe a bit easier. Buffett may have his head up his keister on macroeconomics, but he knows his finance and is loathe to overpay for a takeover. The $78 takeover price divided by it's current earnings per share of $3.14 give R&H a P/E ratio of 24.8; that's a bit steep compared with other chemical companies, which are averaging 13.2.

At minimum, it will make sure that Dow continues as a major independent player in the chemical market. Part of the unique nature of Midland is that we have a major corporate headquarters in a town of 40,000, which brings a lot of money and a lot of culture that wouldn't flow to towns of similar size. If it just became a factory town and the corporate part was shifted somewhere else, Midland wouldn't be Midland.

This takeover makes it harder for anyone else to take Dow over, and that's good for Midland.

The Dreaded Woman's Ordination Post

The Church of England has been in the news this week with their decision to open up the position of bishop to women; previously, they had been limited to just being priests. Also, the decision didn't provide for an opt-out clause allowing folks uncomfortable with a woman bishop to get an alternative guy to oversee them; Get Religion has a good rundown on the coverage.

I have ducked the issue of woman ministers in my blog to this point, for I'm not fully in the pro or con camp. One of Eileen's good friends is a female PC-USA minister in Missouri; she played the piano at our wedding six years ago.

However, it's a bit hard to justify women pastors from the New Testament. Not impossible, but hard.

Jesus treated women with respect, more so than most men of His era, but he had an all-male inner circle; that lack of female disciples has been used as the basis for an all-male priesthood, but He's silent on the issue.

Paul has a couple of writings that lean towards a male pastorate. Here's 1 Timothy 2-"¹¹A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. ¹²I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. ¹³For Adam was formed first, then Eve. ¹⁴And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner."

Paul didn't like having a woman teach men. However, he phrased it in such a way that opened the door for others to ignore his advice, as he said "I do not permit a woman ...." If he wanted a blanket prohibition, he might have said "It is wrong to permit a woman to teach..." rather than just state his practice.

The other Pauline line that sometimes gets used in this area is 1 Corinthians 14:"³⁴women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. ³⁵If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."

Is that just about holding questions for their husbands until they get home rather than have back-chatter going on during a service, or is that a blanket prohibition on speech? Earlier on in 1 Corinthians, Paul mentions that women should give prophesies with a covered head; that would require them to speak if it to be heard.

It's an easier exegesis to say that Paul thinks women ministers would be a bad idea than to try to loophole your way to a co-ed ministry. It also doesn't help that the churches that do allow women pastors tend to be the churches that are the least orthodox on their theology. When Paul's position on women is ignored, a lot of his other positions on salvation and discipleship also get thrown under the bus as inconvenient stuff from another era.

The egalitarian side of me would like to see a co-ed pastorate. However, the Bible-reader seems to come to the conclusion that it isn't quite right. That's not to say that women can't minister effectively, but that they'll often be doing so in a church that typically doesn't respect the Gospel in its entirity.

Far From Half Empty

There are a number of things to be thankful for in our modern world, even as we work through the ramifications of $4/gallon gas; I saw that barrier breeched here in Lexington today, as the station I stop at to buy some two-liters of pop at had gas at $4.15 per.

This laptop I'm blogging on is one of those neat things. It's WiFi enabled in such a way that I'm automatically logged into Sullivan U's wireless system when I'm on campus and on an internal network at home. We're starting to take WiFi for granted, and that's a bit sad. The next step might be city-wide wireless at affordable rates; the cell-phone companies are moving in that direction and may wind up competing with DSL and cable for home-based customers in the not too distant future.

Also, the one-gig flash drive that I carry around in my left pocket (or slide into a USB slot at various computers at work and home) is a little marvel. Back in 1996, when I started my computer store, a 850MB hard drive was a viable bargain hard drive for a PC, with 1.2 Gig being normal and 1.6 gig being a bit souped up.

Speaking of cell-phones, what did we do without them? Miss a lot of calls and use pay phones a lot more. I recall speaking from I-10 in the bayous of Louisianan to one of my grad students who was checking on a grade while on vacation last month, and it didn't feel odd. What brought the cell phone to mind was my fielding an appointment-reminder-call from my doctors office as I was leaving for campus just now; in the old days, I'd have had to of hustled back into the apartment to field the call rather than coolly grabbing the phone out of my left pocket.

People often complain about the US losing ground; in many areas, it's more the world catching up, which isn't bad for the US. Those richer and more competitive countries can afford more stuff, some of which will be American stuff.

So, if the rest of the world is giving the US a game in basketball, it's a credit to the world, not a debit to us. If we have a Swiss guy and a Spanish guy going mano-a-mano for five hours in the Wimbledon final, it means that tennis is no longer a purely Anglospherian thing, or that the Anglosphere has expanded out to cover a lot of the world.

We're also getting older better. We're seeing a 41-year-old mom breaking records in the freestyle sprints in swimming and a 35-year old guy still competitive in the 50 free; normally, you'd see the long-hairs hanging in there in the distance events and leaving the sprints to the young'ens.

We're sending all those folks off to Beijing; a still nominally-Communist Beijing, but one that has far more freedoms that we would have expected three decades ago when Mao passed on. One of the reasons we have such high oil prices is that the Chinese economy has grown rather nicely under Deng and his successors, who still keep politics and religion under a short-to-microscopic leash but allow for a lot of economic and cultural freedom; that freedom has had many folks trade in their Mao suit and bicycle for a car and designer clothes, and they're competing for that worldwide oil supply.

We're still the world's melting pot. Watching the US gymnastics trials a couple of weekends ago was interesting. One gal was the daughter of a Soviet gymnast, another was the daughter of a German gymnast, while a third was the daughter of Chinese-Vietnamese immigrants; to top it off, a Chinese immigrant was coaching a couple of the top gymnasts and a Romanian immigrant was overseeing the whole US team. The guys weren't as diverse, but the son of Indian immigrants just missed making the men's team.,

The glass isn't full, but it's far from empty.

Sunday Musings

I'm probably dating myself severely, but Tropical Storm Bertha has a bad Troglodyte Saga earwig going; "Her name was Bertha... Bertha Butt... she's one of the Butt sisters." Right now, only Bermuda is saying "sock it to me, sock it to me", but depending on the spin, New England or the Maritimes could get a taste of the Bertha Butt Boogie next week.

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I was too busy with church an an anniversary lunch (our sixth) to catch the Wimbledon final; the old Breakfast at Wimbledon became Dinner at Wimbledon, as a pair of rain delays and a five-set war had Rafael Nadal fending off Roger Federer. It wasn't quite the McEnroe-Borg Battle of 18-16, but they did make it to 10-8 in the fourth-set tie-break and went OT in the fifth set before Nadal prevailed 6-4, 6-4, 6-7, 6-7, 9-7.

That score makes you tired just looking at it. They might of needed the rain delays, for one or both of the players would have been exhausted by the end; I caught part of the trophy ceremony on TV, and Nadal looked like he had just run a marathon.

It kept Borg's modern record of five straight Wimbledon wins on the books alongside Federer and may set up a good rivalry with Nadal to revitalize men's tennis.

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The Weather Channel just got bought by a consortium of NBC, Blackstone and Bain Capital; so, we have Mitt Romney and NBC possibly tugging on TWC from opposite directions. There could be some interesting synergies and some rather sloppy ones; they're best to leave the thing alone.

Five Over

One of the classic verses a good hunk of the Peanut Gallery can probably quote is from Romans 12:2 "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." However, there are times where we conform to the world's standards.

One example that comes to mind comes from driving. We're legally supposed to follow the speed limits, but traffic flows generally at five miles over the limit, at least. On most urban expressways with a 55MPH speed limit, you're a traffic hazard if you're going 55 (have fun trying to go back, Senator Warner); likewise, the poor sole going the 45 speed limit on Man O' War (our southern main drag in Lexington) will be passed with extreme prejudice.

So, the norm is to click things in at five miles over the speed limit. The local gendarmes will ignore you and you fit in just fine. Even though it's technically illegal, it's the norm. The legalist screams that you're breaking the law, but the realist hollers back that the cop car just buzzed past you on New Circle going 63 or so as you went 60 in the 55 zone; if you were in the wrong, you'd see his bubble-gum-machine go off behind you.

There are times where a middle-class lifestyle seems the materialism version of five-over-the-speed limit morally. We can get buy with less that what we spend, but we start to hear the cries of "legalism" in our heads if we start to scale back to a poorer-person's level of spending. We could live nicely without cable TV, but would be out of the loop if we did, even if we would free up about $500/year or so for some other good work.

I often struggle to figure out what creature comforts and nice things are things that God wants me to have; they may not be the minimalist life of a monk or a commune-dweller, but they are valid adjustments to being a part of American culture and being able to witness to fellow Americans. They may be mild luxuries on a worldly scale, but they are the moral equivalent of the five-over rule on the highway.

It's not easy figuring out what's valid and what's decadent. Or, as we ponder Independence Day and it's patriotism, of what's honest love of our freedom and democracy and what's a unhealthy love of our country at the expense of the rest of the world.

I'm blessed that I can gripe about $4 gas and not having to worry about paying for it, or the car it's going into; most people couldn't afford either. I'm blessed to gripe about a less-than-lightning-quick broadband provided by the apartment complex's captive cable company; most people don't have that. I'm blessed to be in a church were some people grumble about the pastor who got ousted a year before I got there; in many places, they wouldn't either have a church or even be allowed to go to one if one existed.

It's those blessings of freedom and economic security (even in a someone insecure economy, the big picture needs are taken care of) that we can dwell upon today. We're blessed to have those "five-over" debates over what becomes decadent and what's just enjoying the blessings that God has given us.

The A Tee and Pee National?

"Finchem kicks off PGA tour's new drug testing program" is the hypertext headline. I don't think "kick off" is the right verb, for commish Finchem he and all his players will be, shall we say, POed.

Anyone tested at the AT&T National will have an escort on the elevator to the third floor, where the testing takes place in a two-room suite behind a locked door. One side of the room has a large cooler with non-carbonated drinks.

Gotta prime the pump.

The other side is where a player registers, washes his hands and goes into the bathroom with an inspector to provide a urine sample.

As my wife would say, WTMI, waaaaay too much information.