Mark Byron

The Unprofitable Prophet

Here's what I wrote about Rick Joyner and other self-styled prophets back in 2005.

At this point, there doesn't seem to be a coherent political agenda to this group of prophets. The Elijah List site has an ad up to "Pray for our president and ALL in authority." It tends to strongly lean towards your garden-variety conservative stance on things, but the prophecy crowd isn't overly politically active.

What folks like Bene might want to keep an eye on is if this prophecy crowd starts to get political. The fans/followers of Joyner and the other prophets are a minority within charismatic circles, but they tend to be well-placed within their churches. If that Morningstar/Elijah List circle starts to make pronouncements that move people in a particular direction, it could have a surprising influence in charismatic and Pentecostal circles and then out into general evangelical circles.

It's not a problem now. It could be in the future. I'm not seeing anything sinister beyond a strong theocon view of things, but the strong followership of "the prophets" could make that circle worth keeping an eye on.

Well, that day has arrived... in spades.

In a statement issued today, prophetic minister Rick Joyner—founder of MorningStar Ministries in Fort Mill, S.C., and a member of the newly formed Freedom Federation—called the health care plan "sinister." He said the bill is "obviously designed to put the authority to determine who lives and dies in America in the hands of government bureaucrats."

He said the House measure, H.R. 3200, has the potential for "totalitarian control to be imposed on America to a degree that Hitler and Stalin could not have even imagined," pointing to provisions in the bill that he says would require government access to personal information, including banks accounts.

"Call me an alarmist and I will agree with you—I am going to do my best to sound the alarm against evil in every way that I can," Joyner wrote.

He called on Christians to stop the legislation by lobbying against it and then voting out of office any Congressional leaders who support it. "We can expect persecution for standing against such a bold and obvious attack of the spirit of death, but no Christian should fear death, and no Christian will want to live in the world that is now taking shape," Joyner said.

I'm not thrilled with the legislation as it is presently taking shape, but I don't share Joyner's snarling opposition. It will be contractionary to the economy, as employers who either aren't providing health care or aren't quite meeting the specs of what will be required will see their costs increase. That will mean higher prices, lower take-home pay and some businesses that will either close altogether or cut hours, creating higher unemployment.

If you want an example of what this might look like, think of the stagflation of the late 70s; however, this supply shock will come from added health insurance rather than higher oil prices and have the positive externality of the working poor getting better health care. Growth in other sectors in the economy might have us do far better than the stagflation era (recall that we grew despite the Clinton tax increases thanks to added technology, added logistically savvy and a level-headed monetary policy) , but this should have a contractionary effect to the economy.

However, I don't see this as demonic nor on the level of Hitler or Stalin. FDR or LBJ, maybe, but not the heavy artillery of historical bad guys. To be honest, I see more of the demonic in Joyner's overreaction to this bill than in the bill itself.

Yes, that may get me some flamage from the prophetphiles on the web, but this effort isn't doing the cause of Christ any favors. Going to the mat on mandating abortion coverage might be justified, but the plan as a whole seems more theologically benign.

I don't see any scripture that says "Thou shall not the king pay for all the doctors and hospitals" nor anything mandating such treatment, thus I am inclined to pull my theological punches on economic issues.

Wildcats and Dogs, Living Together

Now that Brett Favre has decided to stay retired after teasing the Vikings for most of the summer, the next big item on the training-camp arrival watch is where Michael Vick will wind up. Washington's Jim Zorn says that they're not interested "at this juncture."

Vick is in an interesting situation, where his conditional reinstatement has him sitting out the first two games of the preseason and the first five games of the regular season. Thus, teams may not be interested in having him in as THE quarterback, since it will be week six until he would get to run the show. In addition, since he's been in Club Fed for the '07 and '08 seasons, he has two years worth of rust to shake off, so he might be more of a position of a rookie having to learn the ropes in the NFL.

However, where he might shine is as a specialty option, bringing him in off the bench to run a spread option attack. He'd be an interesting pickup for one of Miami's AFC East rivals, for he could run the Wildcat in practice and replicate what either Ronnie Brown or rookie Pat White (who's being marketed as a WR in the pros, but would be perfect for the Wildcat, having run a version of it at WV) would do for the Dolphins. Even before he takes the field, he'd be an asset for the Patriots, Jets or Bills on the scout team.

New England would be a good spot for Vick in 2009. There is no question that Tom Brady is the quarterback, so Vick would be reserved for either conversion to WR, running the occasional Wildcat look to get defensive coordinators one more thing to need Maalox for, or anything else that needs doing. Or, if Brady does get hurt again, they could do worse for a backup QB.

Does Vick deserve a second chance? As much as anybody does. He served prison time and turning him into a construction worker isn't the highest and best use of his skills.

Flat Birthers

I was hoping right of center folks would show some restraint in their critique of the president, unlike some of the cheap shots aimed at Bush from the left, like the one still gracing the back bumper of a local civil libertarian-"Joke's over, bring back the Constitution." Yes, we might be back to a Warren Court level of interpretation of fourth and sixth amendment rights, but the second, ninth and tenth seem to go out the window with the left in charge.

However, we now have the sighting of a conspiracy theorist in southern Lexington who's car's kiester was asking the question "Where is the birth certificate?" Last I checked, it's on file in Honolulu, if you're referring to the president's certificate of live birth.

I'm temped to pull up the old Satchel Paige joke; Paige was noted for his lack of definition of age. He was an old Negro League legend who made it to the majors in the late 1940s after the color-line was broken by Jackie Robinson when his age was somewhere in the late 40s as well.

When he was on a barnstorming tour in Mexico, he was asked for his birth certificate while crossing the border. One of his teammates was supposed to have chimed in -"Why does he need a birth certificate? You can see that he's been born."

If Obama were born in January of 1974 and were on the bubble to be 35 years of age and eligable to be president, that might be an issue. He was born a day before I was in 1961, so that's not an issue. "Birthers" want to make the case that he might have been born in Kenya rather than the US and thus possibly not entititled to natural-born citizen status.

That doesn't work, since John McCain had real issues on that front, being born in the Canal Zone as a Navy brat whose dad was stationed in Panama. Both he and Obama passed muster on that front; their American citizen parents cinched that issue regardless of where he was born. Mitt Romney's dad George already went through that in 1968 as a presidential hopeful; he was born in Mexico as his heterodox Mormon parents had moved there to be a part of a splinter Mormon colony there.

Do right of center folks need to run "Birthers" out? No, laughing them out will suffice. It's the folks who are equating Obama to King George II that have me worried.

1984 and Other Ancient Times

Here's a cute bit from Mickey Kaus where his memory is on the Fritz-

P.S.:Have Democrats forgotten how to talk about the welfare state? It seemed to me even Walter Mondale** talked about medical security effectively, back when Charles Krauthammer was writing speeches for him. (Mondale had a proven staple anecdote about what it meant to his mother to get her Medicare card). ... Bring back Mondale! There's another thing I thought I'd never say. ... 

** DeLong: Explain to the juiceboxers who this person was. Thanks

That's interesting on two levels; Krauthammer, who has grown up to become a conservative curmudgeon, albeit one with a status-quoian moderate streak, once worked for Mondale.

However, it's the juiceboxers line that interested me. I'm proctoring a quiz for my MGT 304 class this morning, and I have a trio (only three, great student-teacher ratio) of said juiceboxers, students in their 20s who were on Big Wheels or worse when Mondale ran for president in 1984. Even a 30-year-old of today would have been in kindergarten when Mondale was invoking Clara Peller's "Where's the beef?" in critiquing Gary Hart.

That means that anything in the 80s is ancient history. In finance class, you have to explain the rise of the junk bond, the stagflation of the late 70s-early 80s, the S&L crisis of the late 80s along with the Reagan tax cuts of 1981 and the tax overhaul of 1986 (whose savaging of real estate tax breaks helped cause said S&L crisis when commercial real estate went in the tank and took folks who lent to them down with them).

In the tech realm, you have to explain the IBM compatible/clone to them, since they grew up in a tech world where Dell has always been a mainstream brand; they're all IT majors, but their history is a bit weak. The old joke was that "no one ever got fired for buying IBM." Now, your modern IT folks could say the same about Dell.

I remember taking the equivilent of this MGT 304 class in 1988; at the time, I was taken aback when the textbook had to take a paragraph to explain Watergate. I was 26 at the time and lived through the era as a news-savvy middle-schooler, son of a social-studies teacher. However, a 20-year-old junior in 1988 was only 6 when Nixon was waiving goodbye while stepping onto Marine One for the last time.

Now, the health care debate of 1993 is equivalent ancient history for a traditional college student of today. Tempus doth fugit.

 

Going to the Bullpen

Jim Bunning pitched a pair of no-hitters as a major-league pitcher, including a perfect game, which got him some ink last week, when Mark Beuhrle became only the fifth of the 18 perfect-game pitchers to have both a mundane no-no and a perfect game in their careers.

However, he's now slated to end his second career as a US Senator, as he's opted to not seek reelection next year. He's gotten some flak from less conservative Republicans about his staunch stands against last year's financial bailouts and has had a chilly relationship with fellow KY senator Mitch McConnell.

At 78, Bunning seems to have gone past his freshness date, appearing more than a bit curmudgeonly in his older years. That rhetorical style might win you kudos from the tea-party crowd, but doesn't help you to shape legislation in a center-left universe that is modern Washington. Current Democratic LG Daniel Mongiardo came out of nowhere as an obscure state senator in 2004 to give Bunning all he wanted (51%-49%) in his last reelection bid, and Mongiardo was poised to reverse the order next year if Bunning ran again.

We may have a proxy fight between different styles of conservative; the front-runner is Trey Grayson, the Secretary of State, who has a political-animal resume; government BA from Harvard, MBA and JD from UK and a stint as a corporate lawyer before getting his SoS gig in 2003. He's only 37, so he could be there for five or six terms if he keeps his nose clean and doesn't try to move up yet another level.

Grayson might be the rep of the Mitch McConnell-style conservative establishment, while Rand Paul might be Bunning 2.0. He's at least Ron Paul 2.0. as he's everyone's favorite libertarian's son; like his doctor dad, he is a doctor as well (opthamologist) and has a political style that is like Bunning and his father.

I'm not sure who I'll be voting for next year. Grayson seems a bit too slick and too much a man-on-the-make at first glance; AG Jack Conway could go mano-a-mano with Grayson on that front, as both have Most Likely to be Elected Governor or Senator Someday on their resumes. However, people can have politically-oriented resume (if I ran for office, my BS in PoliSci might be held against me) and be decent folks; Eileen did a stint in the AG office last week as a receptionist temp and seemed to like what she saw of Conway in passing.

Paul, on the otherhand, will have to live down the ... er... more radical... stances of his father. If Dubya had to live down his dad's RINOey side in 2000's primary, Rand Paul may have to place some distance from some of his father's less-advised positions. If he's running as Ron Paul 2.0, it's 74-26 Grayson in the primary. If he brings something a bit more nuanced to the party, it might be a lot closer.

Electric Avenue

Here's an interesting piece on an electric car some MIT folks are working on.

The team's goal is to build an all-electric car with similar performance capabilities of gasoline-only counterparts, which includes a top speed of about 161 kph, a family sedan capacity, a range of about 320 kilometers and the ability to recharge in about 10 minutes. They hope to complete the project, which they chronicle on their blog, by the third quarter of 2010.

The one drawback that I can see with the electric cars we have to date is that they take a long time to recharge. That's OK if you're going from home to work and back and can recharge overnight, but what if you want to take one of those on the road? You're out of luck unless you can swap out car batteries like you swap out propane tanks; if the car batteries had a user-friendly method of replacing them like a current battery, one could see gas stations have a battery-swap business to cater to long-distance travelers.

However, if you can charge a battery in 10 minutes, not only might truck stops offer recharging stations but restaurants might offer them as well. Gas stations might charge a set amount for a charge, but restaurants might use them as a loss-leader like WiFi is today; get your car recharged as you recharge.

The current technology requires 350KW of juice to recharge things that quick; they need to borrow the MIT power plant to get that kind of voltage. Not everyone has a power-plant at their disposal, but if they can get that down to more manageable levels, we might have the makings of a car that could put the gas station out of business by about 2030.

A Lack of History

Here's an interesting story on the Indian environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, basically giving the middle-digit-salute to the global-warming crowd. Climate-change mavens will point to melting glaciers that feed India's main rivers, but Ramesh has another view-

“We have to get out of the preconceived notion, which is based on western media, and invest our scientific research and other capacities to study Himalayan atmosphere,” he said.

“Science has its limitation. You cannot substitute the knowledge that has been gained by the people living in cold deserts through everyday experience.”

Mr Ramesh was also clear that India would not take on targets to cut its emissions, even though developed countries are asking only for curbs in the growth of emissions, rather than absolute cuts.

...

Mr Ramesh said the rate of retreat of glaciers in the Himalayas varied from a “couple of centimetres a year to a couple of metres”, but that this was a natural process that had taken place occurred over the centuries. Some were, in fact, growing, he said.

The glaciers – estimated by India’s space agency to number about 15,000 – had also been affected by debris and the large number of tourists, he said.

Climate change hawks point to warming tempertures and melting glaciers as evidence for the need to do something now. However, glaciers have a history of coming and going, something that Himalayan culture understands but modern scietific culture that has locked onto the global-warming meme doesn't.

A colder-than-normal summer in the northern US doesn't disprove global warming; the warming is rather small and if weather patterns can go plus-or-minus 10 degrees within normal times, if things warm up a degree, we than have +11 to -9 from our old normal as our range.

Likewise, if we have a +7 somewhere, it doesn't show global warming, or a -7 in glacier size.

Twobooks Cures Backpack Bloat

Via Instapundit , I saw this piece on the escalating load students have to carry... in their backpacks. When textbooks weigh 5-10 pounds each, lugging 4 or 5 books can be a large fraction of a kid's body weight.

Last year, my daughter’s school backpack got so heavy, she would sometimes just drag it behind her rather than hoist it onto her shoulders. Backpacks with wheels are too bulky for her locker, so next year I’m thinking about buying an extra set of textbooks to keep at home.

I remember learning that the schools in Polk County, FL were ahead of that curve back when I was interviewing for junior-high teaching jobs in 2006. They gave each student a copy of the textbook to take home and kept a copy at each desk. That sounds expensive at first, but if a teacher is teaching five sections of a class, it only means 20% more textbooks, since five classes are sharing the desk copies. If you have 5 classes of 20 students each, you need 120 books to do the job versus 100 in the standard framework.

Such a policy eliminates the backpack bloat mentioned above and also eliminates the "I left my book at home" or "I left my book at school" excuses for not doing homework.

Cutting off the Low Rungs

One thing to consider as we go about contemplating (or dreading, if you're a denizen of Teapartyburgh) a health care overhaul is that we have an increase in the minimum wage kicking in today, taking the floor for workers up to $7.25 an hour.

If we tack on a $400/month health insurance policy (at least that's what I had to pay to COBRA my Warner Southern coverage) on to that, as would likely happen if an employer-mandate is passed, we'd add an extra $2.50 an hour to the effective wage rate, since a 160-hour work month (40/week *4 weeks) would give us ($400/month)/(160 hours/month)=$2.50/hour; the basic mandated plan might not be that nice, but it's a ballpark number that we can use for discussion. That makes the entry-level wage $9.75 an hour.

What if the job isn't worth $9.75/hour to the employer? Might the grocery store add another self-check-out lane, where one supervisor-cashier can hold court over a half-dozen U-scan lanes? Might the neighborhood McDonalds add a ordering kiosk (they had one in Winter Haven circa 2004), where you can order your Big Mac value meal electronically without a teenager or AARP-eligible gal asking if you want an apple pie with it? Might some store that are barely making ends meet with the current wage structure be pushed out of business and other start-ups get stillborn as business plan numbers show negative NPVs with the higher wages?

This will make it harder for teens to get their first job and be somewhat inflationary for places who use low-wage work. Better-paying jobs will be lesser effected, although higher insurance costs on employers will result in lower wages.

One of the problems of the social "Safety Net" is that you often make it hard to get out of the net once you fall into it. By improving the net via employer-mandates, you also cut off the bottom rungs of the ladder getting you out of the net. One has to make a good jump to catch the newly-raised bottom rung, and not everyone is going to make that jump.

We'd be better off by raising taxes to pay for the insurance rather than make employers provide it. However, the Democrats know that's a non-starter and would prefer the unfunded-mandate approach to stick businesses with the cost.

From the "You're Growing Old" File

I was thumbing through this Detroit Free Press story on Central Michigan football recruits, and found the name of a defensive back the Chips have been courting named Shaquille Jefferson.

Shaq is now old enough to have college recruits named after him. He started his NBA career in 1992, seventeen years ago, long enough to have a sport-savvy family name a kid after him and grow to be a high school senior.

Time does fly.

Saving the Day

Here's an interesting story from the sports pages; The White Sox's Mark Buehrle pitched a perfect game this afternoon with help from CF DeWayne Wise here in the ninth inning.

Wise took over in center field from Scott Podsednik, who shifted to left. With the count 2-2, [Tampa Bay's Gabe] Kapler hit a drive to deep left-center. Wise sprinted, jumped and got his glove about a foot above the 8-foot fence to rob Kapler of a home run.

The ball almost came out when Wise caromed off the fence, stumbled, fell to the ground and rolled. But he steadied it with his chest and bare left hand and bounced right up, proudly displaying the ball for the crowd.

You could say that Ozzie Guillen made a Wise move in making that defensive substitution.

That reminds me of a game a quarter century ago when the Tigers' Jack Morris pitched a no-hitter against the White Sox. Sparky Anderson had put good-fielding Dave Bergmanin at first late in the game, replacing a slower-footed Darrell Evans. Bergman proceeded to rob Jerry Hairston of a double down the first base line with a diving stop, saving the no-no.

Doing what would headline the ESPN Web Gem reel is great; doing it to save a perfect game is priceless.

Goodwill Hunting

Here's an interesting story from my investments class this evening. One of the companies we were looking at was Griffin Corp. (GFF); their balance sheet had goodwill listed for 2004 to 2006, but had zero goodwill in 2007 and 2008. Goodwill is the difference between what you acquire the firm for and the book value of the company; if you buy a company for $3 billion and their net worth on the books is only $2.1 billion, the $900m difference will show up as goodwill.

Often times, companies will overpay for companies that they acquire. A certain amount of goodwill is understandable, as firms are often worth more (and should be worth more) than their physical assets less their liabilities. However, a large dose of goodwill can mean people may have overpaid for their acquisitions and may be dicey buys.

Griffin had a mysterious "other long term assets" entry on the MS Money version of the balance sheet show up in 2007 and 2008. Was that goodwill under a different name?

Yes, indeed. When you look at the balance sheet on their 10-K annual report for 2008, you get an entry for "COSTS IN EXCESS OF FAIR VALUE OF NET ASSETS OF BUSINESSES ACQUIRED." That's spelled g-o-o-d-w-i-l-l, folks. Somehow, the folks (or computer) at MSN Money missed that euphemism.

Griffon's accountants seem to be covering your assets so that the fact that you overpaid for something isn't as easy to see.

With Friends Like This....

Here was an interesting passage from a piece on David Beckham's return to the LA Galaxy; he was on loan this spring with Italian soccer powerhouse AC Milan and grudgingly came back to LA after failing to buy out his contract.

The fans weren't happy and Beckham got into a trash talking match at halftime with a drunk fan from the "Riot Squad" rowdy section.

Riot Squad member Bob Ramsey, a theology professor and minister from Glendora, said he talked to fans who were closest to where the fan jumped the wall. "I haven't talked to everybody, but no one remembers hearing anything beyond 'scum,' 'traitor,' those kinds of things. Nothing about his family," Ramsey said.

Ramsey said he thought what triggered Beckham's reaction was a fan abusing a Beckham jersey, according to the report.

"We were giving him the business as soon as he came out for warmups," Ramsey said, according to the Times. "His first reaction was to give us a thumbs-up and I thought, 'OK, he's going to play along with it and just realize that we're going to kind of give him a hard time here and he's going to have to play through it.'

That's not a great Christian witness, going out of your way to "give him a hard time." I know that we can get that way in a sports context, where we'll act jerkier when were in a stadium than we're in a grocery story. However, that doesn't make it right.

I googled Mr. Ramsey, and he has a stale blog not updated since last August. He's a pastor at Garden Grove Friends Church. Friends are what the rest of us oft call Quakers; the branch of Friends that GGFC is affiliated with is one of the more evangelical branches of the Friends. They're conservative on theology but lean left on other issues, as they are pacifists and poverty-fighters, so they don't fit the Southern-Baptist style evangelical paradigm.

What's a nice pacifist Friend doing in the Riot Squad?

Em-PHA-sys on different Sy-LA-buls

This piece on Sec. of State Clinton's (that still sounds like something out of a sci-fi near future piece circa 2000) India sojourn shows the folly of tackling climate change alone.

India won’t bend to demands from the Obama administration or threats from the U.S. Congress to adopt legally binding caps on its carbon emissions, the country’s environment minister told visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday.

“There is simply no case for the pressure” the U.S. is exerting, considering India produces among the lowest per capita emissions in the world, Minister Jairam Ramesh told Clinton during an unexpected discussion of climate negotiations during an event intended to showcase U.S.-Indian cooperation on clean energy at a “green” office building outside New Delhi.

The buzz word among the properly-caring folks in the global North is "Sustainable Development." However, when you're in the North, the emphasis is on Sustainable, that you not endanger either the micro-environments of the South or the world environment with excessive use of carbon-based fuels.

In the South, the empahsis is on Development, getting better off. How they do that is of secondary concern; they may say the right things to visiting ecodiplomats, but they'll do enough of the green stuff to make sure they bring in that other kind of green, the kind that comes off printing presses in ones, fives and twenties.

We're most likely to be better off to not go off on a climate-change kick and just slowly and naturally wean ourselves off of fossil fuels and spend the money we'd be spending on cutting CO2 emissions on fighting poverty and disease and/or mitigating any problems caused by climate change. For the largest part of the problem (if it is a problem at all, but let's concede the problem for the moment) of CO2 will be areas like India and China growing and starting to have more American-style lifestyles. That will mean more cars, more air conditioning, more electricity and most likely more than a bit more carbon going up in smoke.

Sustainable Development in a stricter northern form means slower growth both for northerners and southerners. When you're fairly well off, slow growth isn't all that bad, but if you're living in a shantytown on the edge of a developing country's capital, slow growth means staying in that shack rather than advancing and having a house or an apartment. Thus, "Third World" (as we used to call it) leaders will err on the side of development and growth rather than greenness, thus kicking extra stuff into the air for the whole world to deal with.

That means that we're either going to really clamp down in the North or just go with the flow and accept that we'll have a bit more CO2 in the air and may have a bit extra warmth in the system. Emphasis on may; we only saw about a 1-degree increase as the story goes in the 1900s, and should be able to handle any minor changes that may occur as things increase.

Extra CO2 may be like the Epscopalians going further left; there may not be much we can do with it. The problem with the latter is that it is far more corrosive and may well effect more people's lives than some extra plant growth agent in the air.

 

Monday Piston Moanin'

I'm at my instructor's desk proctoring a FIN 324 exam this evening. Once again, the powers that be at Sullivan opted not to give the exam at the Keeneland racetack so I could proctor and gamble at the same time.

One of the interesting things about the Web is that you're never far away from news in your old home turf; the Pistons wound up filling the void in the middle with the well-traveled Chris Wilcox, who has spent time with the Clippers, Sonics, Thunder and Knicks. He managed to average 13 points and 7-8 reboundswhile part of the Sonic's rotation, so while he isn't the second coming of Wilt Chamberlain, he can fill in a front line depleted by the departures of Sheed and McDyess.

The interesting part of the news is that Ben Wallace may be coming back. He's aged quite a bit since leaving the Pistons and the Pistons may have been wise in letting him go when offered the bongo bucks with Chicago.

One adage is that you're better to trade a player a year too soon than a year too late; the same may well apply for free agent signings. That was true with Wallace, who's skills had declined to a point where he was cap fodder in Cleveland trading for Shaq; the Suns just bought him out rather than use him. However, he might be a bargain if he wants to come back for the league minimum.

Oh, if we all were in jobs where the minimum wage was $1.3m a year. Well, if we were, Big Macs would be about $100 apiece ;-0.

I'm not sure how their new rookies will fare. Austin Daye looks like the understudy for Tayshawn Prince, but may be stuck on the bench unless they let him play some skinny 4, for the Pistons will probably slide Rip Hamilton to the 3 for a good part of Ben Gordon's minutes. DaJaun Summers, their second round pick was doing well in the summer league, showing a blend of 3 and 4 skills that sound a bit like a taller Corless "Big Nasty" Williamson, a good kind of tweener who can provide some spark off the bench.

Well, football is around the corner to break up the doldrums of the post-basketball, pre-football stretch in late June and July; just baseball and the odd individual sports, like Tom Watson being a par putt on 18 away from winning the British Open at 59and Lance Armstrong's return to the Tour de France, a bit melancholy one as teammate Alberto Contador has taken the lead and become the leader of the team, putting Armstrong into a supporting "domestique" role.

Weeps and Wales

Some odd bells from my past are going off today. This story takes me back to our Florida days, where a youth from Lake Wales, Maikon Bonani, who is USF's placekicker, fell from a ride at Busch Gardens in Tampa (walking distance from USF, IIRC) where he was working; he moved to secure a gondola door and wound up going for a ride along-side, sounding like a bad scene from a movie. He dropped 35 feet into a grassy area, and is OK save a injured vertebrae.

Lake Wales was where my old teaching digs, Warner Southern College, was located. I found out a few days ago that it has now morphed into Warner University; the change happened last October. I guess I'll have to update my resume; not that I plan on using it any time soon. I taught at Great Lakes College in Saginaw which got rolled into Davenport University, so I now have two footnoted teaching gigs.

Multipurpose No More

Notre Dame is slating a game with Navy in the new Yankee Stadium in 2010; that used to be a traditional site for their yearly matchup, just as Philly always hosts Army-Navy and Jacksonville always hosts Florida-Georgia.

The interesting thing about the piece is that modern baseball players think it's a big deal. It is now, but it didn't used to be.

In my childhood, it was very common for teams to play in baseball stadiums; in fact, it was more the norm that NFL and MLB teams shared stadiums. Here's my off-the-top-of-head list; both New York teams, Philly, Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincy, Detroit, Milwaukee when the Packers played half their home games there, San Francisco, Atlanta, St. Louis, Minnesota, LA Rams/California Angels, Oakland, Seattle.

In fact, it was rare to see a free-standing football stadium in the NFL. We had the Cotton and Orange Bowls, Soldier Field and the LA Colosseum, but that was about it until the 70s saw a growth in football-specific stadia at the pro level, as Dallas, Detroit, New England. the Giants and Buffalo built suburban stadia. Now, I think Oakland, Miami and Minnesota are the three teams who share a stadium with an MLB club.

The Phantom Federation?

Bene clued folks in on an interesting development on the right, where a number of major critters on the religious right, including more apolitical groups like Charisma publisher Strang Communications and Rick Joyner's prophecy-centric Morningstar Ministries and plenty of theocon politically-charged groups like Eagle Forum, the Family Research Council, the Traditional Values Coalition and the American Family Association.

I'm not quite sure what to think of this; it almost seems like it is a near-fictional grouping. For instance, if you hop over to the Traditional Values Coalition site, wade past some pretty hard core anti-gay stuff, and search for Freedom Federation, you get nada. Check to see what the Family Research Council has to say on the issue, and you also get bupkis. Eagle Forum draws a bagel as well. Rick Joyner's Morningstar Ministries has nothing on the Freedom Federation.

Same with Concerned Women for America; Wendy Wright, the president of CWA is quoted as being on board, but their website has nothing to show for it. Ron Luce of Teen Mania (home of the Acquire the Fire/Battle Cry youth rallies) is also quoted in the coverage, but there is zero on either TM's website or Luce's home page

The one group listed that seems to acknowledge that they are a part of things is Liberty Council, who seems to be the front-person for this new grouping; they link to this "Declaration of American Values" hosted on the LC website.

Is this new group a figment of Liberty Council's imagination? They do have Rick Scarborough of Vision America on board, as is Matthew Staver, the head honcho of Liberty Council. Here's a piece from the press conference the FF did on 6/30.

"We are not wed to a particular partisan candidate or party," said Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and an organizer of the Freedom Federation. "We are wed to core shared values."

Those values include opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and pornography and support for religious freedom, limited government and the right to own firearms.

The announcement followed a meeting of some 30 leaders who began a dialogue but did not draw up concrete action plans. Several leaders said work could include addressing health care reform and immigration reform and opposing gay marriage.

I have a feeling that a small group within this block, the ones represented at the press conference, went ahead with their manifesto without the explicit support of most of the listed organizations; hence, the FF being ignored on the web sights of most of the supposed partners in the group two weeks after the launch.

What we see here is what folks like Staver and Scarborough can agree upon, but may not represent everyone on that list. Ms. Wright hasn't gotten CWA to post anything about the group on their site, which may mean that she's acting as an individual in this case and not in an ex-officio capacity.

If all the groups listed signed off on that Declaration of American Values, I'd be worried, for the document is far more about secular conservative politics than anything Christian; much if not most of the document is hard to exegete from Biblical principles. However, the FF seems "all hat and no cattle" at this point, and the folks who want to keep tabs on the American theocons can train their sights at more fruitful targets.

A Mile North of 8 Mile

Here's an interesting passage on a AP story on a gas tanker catching fire on I-75 in Hazel Park north of Detroit.

The tanker was on Interstate 75 about 10 miles north of downtown Detroit when it exploded beneath the 9 Mile Road overpass about 8 p.m., [State Police Lt. Shannon] Sims said.

Given that 9 Mile is nine miles from downtown by definition, they would be exactly nine miles from downtown Detroit. That is "about 10 miles" but when the name of the street you're mentioning provides a more detailed description, go with it.

By the way, for Enimem fans, that's a mile north of 8 Mile. 

 

1 Samuel 16 Does not Compute

Here's an interesting passage that I had to deal with in our Sunday School lesson. It's a passage from 1 Samuel 16 that I've read before but I must have excused the cognitive dissonance that the stuff that I will put in italics is giving me now (I'll use NIV)-

¹⁴ Now the Spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him.

¹⁵ Saul's attendants said to him, "See, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. ¹⁶ Let our lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the harp. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes upon you, and you will feel better."

¹⁷ So Saul said to his attendants, "Find someone who plays well and bring him to me."

¹⁸ One of the servants answered, "I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the harp. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the LORD is with him."

¹⁹ Then Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, "Send me your son David, who is with the sheep." ²⁰ So Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine and a young goat and sent them with his son David to Saul. ²¹ David came to Saul and entered his service. Saul liked him very much, and David became one of his armor-bearers.

²² Then Saul sent word to Jesse, saying, "Allow David to remain in my service, for I am pleased with him." ²³ Whenever the spirit from God came upon Saul, David would take his harp and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.

Yes, that is an evil spirit from God. Some translations go with harmful rather than evil, but it is coming from God per the passage. That sort of shoots down the "God is good all the time" meme that we've come to know. A quick search on God's goodness comes up with Joshua 23:14-16(NIV)

¹⁴ "Now I am about to go the way of all the earth. You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the LORD your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed. ¹⁵ But just as every good promise of the LORD your God has come true, so the LORD will bring on you all the evil he has threatened, until he has destroyed you from this good land he has given you. ¹⁶ If you violate the covenant of the LORD your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, the LORD's anger will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land he has given you."

Square that with 3 John 11(NIV)-

"Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God."

If we take John and the two OT passages at face value, God's never looked Himself in the mirror.

We either have a much more malevolent God that we normally teach in evangelical circles or the OT passages are of another era. However, it may work well in a hell-fire-and-brimstone milieu; Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God would likely fit into the meme of a vengeful, lightning-bolt-slinging deity.

One could go with some sort of dispensationalist approach and say that the OT passages were from another era, accurate for an old-school God but not for a new covenant God. However, that throws out the "God never changes" meme out the window, since we have a God who actively delivers evil in the OT and one who can't stand the stuff in the NT.

Another route, anathema to most evangelicals, is to chuck Sola Scriptura out the window; just say that those two verses really don't mean what they're saying. However, that kicks the backstop out from under evangelical thought, once you've allowed selective editing of the Bible, all bets are off and you're quickly off into the Church of What's Happinin' Now.

I managed to fudge the issue with our three-year-old class, just focusing on Daniel being helpful as a shepherd and a harpist and casting Saul as being depressed and sad because he had second-guessed God one time too many; that got the message down to a rug-rats level without butchering the story. However, the adult message is still giving me a lot of theological indigestion.

How do you square this circle, denizens of the Peanut Gallery?

The Joys of Summer

We had a church choir (I'm not in, but Eileen is) picnic partly washed out by a thunderstorm last night, and a front's coming through later today. I took a look at the regional radar, and see a big frontal fiesta (as my mother-in-law christened the Mexicanesque orange and red colors of a storm's core on radar) coming down through southern Indiana with Lexington's name on it.

As Little Enos said at the end of Smokey and the Bandit, "Daddy, you're about to get your afternoon ruined."

Riding Bareback

Here's a hyperlink from Drudge-of-the-North Bourque; for my readers in Wachula, PC stands for Progressive Conservative (the Ontario party still uses the Progressive modifier) and a riding is a Parliament district:

SHOCKER: BARRIE ONT PC RIDING ASS.
DISSOLVED AFTER GANG SEX ASSAULT CHARGES

Well, that's one way to describe what they were doing.

Rehab, Nothing Worse

I got some Googlage when I blogged on the no-reason-given departure of Jon and Sherry Rivers from national Christian radio network K-Love's morning drive show. We now know the reason; Jon was in rehab for prescription painkiller addiction.

The rumors of infidelity, or that K-LOVE had quickly let us go and other terrible things are simply not true. My Lovely Bride Sherry has been faithful to me and I to her. Lexi is fine and as happy as ever. And our K-LOVE family has stood by us, prayed for us and helped us continue on this journey of healing.

That should shoot down a lot of bad rumors.

Such problems can happen to the best of us, especially if we're trying to keep on a smiley face and say "Fine" when people ask "Howya doing?"

American Rouge

Here's a piece on actor-activist Kal Penn starting his new gig with the White House Office of Public Liaison; he's a savvy and smart Obama backer and will probabaly do well as a public servant. However, this closing line of the article gave me some pause-

When pressed about preparing for his first day on the job Monday morning, he said, "I brushed my teeth; I did floss, used mouthwash ... took the bus to work, same thing that everybody does."

Not quite, Kal. Personally, I tend to ignore my teeth in the morning and brush mosly at night ;-).

No, it's the taking-the-bus part that I take exception to. Like a lot of small-towners or suburbanites, I drive to work. I don't have the option of taking the bus to work for my night classes, since the bus lines servicing my part of Lexington close down before my classes end at 9:40.

I could take the bus in for my 8AM class if I wanted to take one bus up Tates Creek in SE Lexington to downtown, then take another out Broadway/Harrodsburg to the SW to get to the Sullivan campus. Of course, it would take me about an hour to do that bus routine as opposed to the 10-15 minute commute that a straight run along the New Circle Road beltway. It would also mean starting my commute about 6:30AM rather than 7:30, thus getting up at an oh-dark-30 hour after teaching the night before. No thanks.

Big cities are more condusive to mass transit, since parking is a major hassle in big cities. Also, if your job is in the city center, the hub-and-spoke nature of many transit systems that are geared around getting people in and out of downtown will work for you.

However, if you don't do business with the city center, a lot of transit systems are poorly designed to get you from 4-o'clock to 8-o'clock on the suburban dial. You can go into the center of the dial on the minute hand and back out on the hour hand, but you can move well along the perimiter of the dial unless outer loop routes cover the areas in question.

Modern liberalism doesn't like suburbs. It is too car-dependent, uses too much energy and gets people into a cocoon of domesticy that can get in the way of community. However, our non-elite culture isn't lived in subways and busses; it's lived in minivans and mall quadrants. Not everyone's life fits into the mass transit network;their work, churches, schools and shopping are often cumberson to do via mass transit and sometimes flat out impossible.

I'll plead guilty to a reductio ad absurdum here (and also using one the nastiest dictatorships of the 20th century; when you use the Nazis to label your foes, you're reaching) , but I'm reminded of the Khmer Rouge's empting out of the cities and making everyone peasent farmers; the fact that a lot of city folks had no agricultural background didn't matter, everyone was ordered out of the corrupting urban pool.

Liberal policy seems to envision folks settling along mass transit corridors and away from a suburban framework; suburbs are seen to usestoo much land, too much gas and sets up too individualistic a lifestyle that doesn't care for the community.

That's not going to work well in a lot of areas, for mass transit doesn't fit many cities and many lifestyles. You have to work near a mass transit line that hooks up with your home or else have a nasty-long commute and may have to pick your church, your shopping and your health professionals along that commuter line.

I don't think so, Tim. That's not as rash as the Khmer Rouge, but it would take a drastic change in American culture to get us to be mass-transit centric outside of high-density corridors like the Bos-Wash megaplex.

Monday Moanin'

• I'm still getting used to a new schedule where I teach a 8-9AM Management class and three evening Finance classes and learning the art of the midday nap since it's hard to get home at 10PM and get back up at 6 to teach the next morning at 8 without naps. Hopefully, I'll be getting back to more blogging, but the news seems rather depressing as a rule.
• This is my seventh wedding anniversary. Time does fly. No seven year itch; no one else on the planet can encourage me like Eileen can and visa versa.
• I've let a lot of major news go unblogged, like Michael Jackson's passing. Not that I wish him ill, but he is seemingly better off dead, as people scoot past his ... er... oddball ... behavior of the 90s and 00s and focus on the talented singer of the 70s and 80s.
• What's Sarah Palin going to do next? I haven't a clue and she well might not have a clue either. That's not a bad thing; not everyone has their life plan scripted out. Few politicians have generated such ire in my lifetime. She may need some time to chill out before getting back into the public eye on her terms.

The CTRL-ALT-DEL Economy?

Here's an interesting statement from Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer that has had my mind reeling a bit since I heard it Tuesday from, of all places, ESPN talker Collin Cowherd.

"I don't think we are in a recession, I think we have reset," he said. "A recession implies recovery [to pre-recession levels] and for planning purposes I don't think we will. We have reset and won't rebound and re-grow."

Ballmer may well be right; I was kicking this idea around with my Portfolio Analysis class last night, and it seems to make sense. Our financial system has got the jitters if not the DTs, used to using easy credit and free-wheeling derivatives and is now having to function without those financial greenies. The auto industry is undergoing an overhaul, as both Chrysler and GM go through government-shepherded Chapter 11s.

If we look to Washington, we shouldn't see too much help on the fiscal policy front. The massive stimulus package didn't do the trick and the Obama team is likely to move towards higher taxes in order to pay down the budget deficit; that might be good for long-term financial stability, but it won't be overly good for GDP growth

That's doubly true when you couple that with reforms that are likely to come out of Washington. Financial reform will likely lead to more expensive capital and more expensive credit for small businesses, as increased capital requirements for banks will likely lead to higher interest rates on bank loans; if banks need to have more equity on hand, they'll need to have a higher return on assets to offset the reduced leverage. Also, any unfunded mandates for health insurance put on businesses will lower profitability and economic growth.

So, Wall Street is looking for the Betty Ford Clinic (as one student put it last night) and Washington is doing stuff that, while helpful for the little guy, will slow the economy to a crawl.

That is, unless innovation paves the way for growth despite those downsides. Computers seem to have maxed out on their productivity-producing, but every time we think we've seen everything, we get a new ap that changes the game some more; Facebook and Twitter are two areas that have changed things as of late.

Nanotech seems to be just around the corner, but I'm not sure if the pure research we've seen to date is going to turn into real products anytime soon; if it does, it could offset the contractionary nature of our current situation much as improved logistics, the birth of the Web and other computer-generated productivity in the 1990 helped offset the Clinton tax increases and saw a growing economy despite higher taxes.

We may be in for a rather stagnant economy, where the 3% growth that we're used to might not be there until either the next big tech item comes along to boost the economy or our system digests all the financial and regulatory changes coming down the pike.

That's not all that encouraging, but that what we seem to be looking at for the near term.

The Great Adventure

Here's an interesting piece of sports news; top Cuban pitcher Aroldis Chapman defected during a tournament in Holland. He only pitched so-so for Cuba during the World Baseball Classic, but's he only 21 (although ages in Latin players can be fudged either up or down) and has a 100MPH fastball, which has pro scouts drooling.

My question; how did a Cuban guy get the surname Chapman? This baseball reference piece notes his mom's name is de la Cruz, so at least madre has a Hispanic sounding name, but padre is a puzzle.

Fractured Sports Tales

"Thumb Injury Forces Creamer out of Jamie Farr." That has to be messy, hacking up stuff all over the table. My questions is how the coffee stayed down and the creamer came up. Maybe Klinger likes to drink creamer straight.

"Sources: Mavs, Knicks ready offers for Kidd." I'm having Blues Brothers flashbacks-"How much for ze women? How much for just ze kid?"

Higher American Decadence

One old bon mot that I've repeated for decades is "the height of American decadence is diet dog food"; not only are we fat, we wind up getting our pets fat too. Other pet-pampering products can wind up on that list, as entrepreneurs have discovered novel ways to pamper pooches and coddle cats.

However, I think I found the near zenith of luxury treatment; a "canine calling card" removal joint here in Lexington called What's the Scoop whose van I was stopped behind while commuting the other day? Their FAQ page steals most of the good one-liners from you, including "It's a CRAPPY job BUT someone has to do it" (caps in original) and "we're #1 in the #2 business". I have someone from my circle of friends in Midland who does dog walking for a living, but this is the first time I've seen this waste-removal service done.

Would you pay $10/week to have someone clear your yard of "steaming piles" (as we used to call bad essays in the fisking era)? Their van had a cute dog with a literal steaming pile (with the curly lines rising from the piles to indicate steam) of you-know-what behind him. That seems to be a bit of a decadent expenditure, but affordable enough where you'd at least think about taking them up on it.

Whoever owned the van had a servant's heart on multiple levels; the rear license-plate bracket had an evangelical message, something like "Heaven is free; Jesus paid for you." Washing feet and cleaning crap out of people's back yards isn't a bad matched set.

American free markets at work. Would a planned economy plan for such a service? Probably not.

¿Nuevo Sheed?

Interesting news out of Pistonland. First, they've fired Michael Curry earlier in the week, and have now come to terms with both Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva. Villanueva is essentially a young Rasheed Wallace without the temper, a mobile 6'10" power forward that can knock down three pointers at a 34% clip; he's had a total of nine technicals in his four year career, which is about a half-year's quota for Sheed. He's not quite the shot blocker Sheed is, but he can fit into Sheed's slot in the rotation.

Interestingly, Villanueva's a UConn grad, so he can talk Storrs talk with Rip Hamilton... if Rip is still around by the time training camp starts. Villanueva takes up Sheed's part of both the roster and salary cap, while Gordon takes up Allan Iverson's part of the roster and cap, which means you have a log jam at the 2. You don't spend bongo bucks on a backup, so Rip either becomes a super-sub or gets traded.

Unlike Iverson, who can play either guard position, albeit with a size disadvantage as a 2, Gordon is more of a pure 2 who won't coexist with Hamilton on the court unless it is a smallball set where Rip is playing the 3. Curry tried that for a time after the Iverson trade, but playing Rip at the 3 and Tayshaun Prince at the 4 made the Pistons too small.

Look for Detroit to trade Rip for a center or center-capable power forward.

It's opening week of Summer term and I have a screwy schedule, so expect me to get back to blogging more regularly in the days and weeks to come.