Mark Byron

Edifier du Jour:Habakkuk 2:18-19(NIV)

¹⁸ “Of what value is an idol carved by a craftsman?
    Or an image that teaches lies?
For the one who makes it trusts in his own creation;
    he makes idols that cannot speak.
¹⁹ Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’
    Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’
Can it give guidance?
    It is covered with gold and silver;
    there is no breath in it.”

We're at a point where our creations can give guidance of a limited sort. GPS systems linked to maps can create routes for us, although the shortcut the map found could have problems not seen on the map. The newest smart-phones come packing with a voice-recognition based researcher, but even she has her limitations, coming up with a pro-life persona (that's a feature, not a bug:-) and recommending smart-phones other than her home brand.

However, they have no soul or spirit. If I recall my Hebrew correrctly, the word for breath runs close to the word for spirit. They can only spit back what is in their database; even if their database is the whole Web, there is a lack of something that makes us human. Garbage in-garbage out; their inputs lack the Holy Spirit's guidence.

Greek for "Acting President Roberts"

Interesting turn of events in Greece, where their hung parliament and slated re-election has left them without a PM by normal means, since no one can command a majority. The constitutional fall-back in Greece is to make the head of their Council of State (loosely comparable to the Supreme Court and 6 appeals courts rolled into one if my quick read into Greek constitutional law is fair) the acting PM.

Thus, Panagiotis Pikrammenos, a veteran judge, is the acting prime minister until they can elect one normally. Please stop me from seeing his name and asking if it needs surgery to fix. It would be a loose analog to having Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts sit in as acting president if the Electoral College got hung up; our constitution would have either the new VP in charge (since he gets elected from the top two in the Senate) if the House deadlocked on a president or the Speaker of the House if both chambers gridlocked.

John Roberts would be an improvement over the alternatives here and PP might well be an improvement as well, but the Greek voters might not agree, especially if they want to give the middle-digit sal-oot to the bankers in Berlin and Brussels.

Meanwhile, the European Central Bank has stiffed some of the weaker banks from being able to get loans until they get their balance sheets in order.Also,  a mild run on banks has started as people are cashing out accounts and getting their money outta Dodge. Not pretty.

 

Edifier du Jour:Habakkuk 2:2-3(NIV)

² Then the Lord replied:

“Write down the revelation
    and make it plain on tablets
    so that a herald may run with it.
³ For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
    it speaks of the end
    and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
    it will certainly come
    and will not delay.

The first chapter of Habakkuk is a pair of "Don't just stand there, do something, LORD" complaints. Portnoy wasn't the first Jew with complaints.

After a chapter of kvetching, God replies. He acts on time, His time.

We're supposed to be patient here. Patience is a bit like cleanliness, it's both next to godliness and next to impossible. However, that's what's being asked, and God doesn't give us what we can't handle in some way.

Tuesday Musings

The NewsCorp phone-hacking scandal seems to have Our Ms. Brooks as its poster girl. You always see that red Kenny G mane of hair whenever Murdock's minions are on the hot seat.

Everyone outside of the Murdock empire seems to have a special level of glee at their troubles. So far, it doesn't seem to have made it over to the Fox side of things, as it is mostly the British papers in the chain, including the now-defunct News of the World, that were up to their eyeballs in naughty actions.

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Here's another one of those Britishisms; "takeaway" is British for take-out food. Thus, you had a Bengali-Brit busted renting out Spice Girls along with spicy Indian food at his takeaway.

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Snakes on a plain .... bag of mulch, man. Go easy on the ganga next time.

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That's one rich boy in the hoodie. I'm not sure what percentage Zuckerberg has in Facebook, but the whole thing is looking at a $100B market cap. When you're delivering the goods at that level, you can wear your PJs to a meet-and-greet on Wall Street. If you're a small-capper, you might need to dress up, but Zuckerberg is a 800 pound gorilla who dresses like he wants; you're going to tell him to put the tie back on?

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Interesting moves in BC, where the Liberals are the main party of the right in provincial politics. However, the Conservatives are gaining ground on the provincial Grits to a point where merger talks are being discussed. With Wildrose doing well, but not well enough, in Alberta next door, seeing BC go the other route and have a grand coalition of the center-right seems unlikely; there's just too much political ground to see a coalition that can cover 60%+ of the vote, especially when the current government is a bit squishy and on its heels.

A three-way Liberal-Conservative-NDP fight on the provincial level not unlike the voting on a federal level, might be what the next election sees.

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I gave up on the Tigers this afternoon when they fell behind 6-0 while I went to get Eileen from work; my mistake. The Tigers put up an 8-spot in the 6ths and hung on to a 10-8 win; even weak-hitting Ryan Rayburn got into the act, tripling his RBI total for the year with a homer and 4RBIs. Maybe Rayburn actually has game and didn't have a picture of Jim Leyland in flagrante delicto with a Pekinese.

Das Booted

Don't cross the baseball owners if you like your job as an arbitor. The owners were ticked with Shyam Das after he ruled for Ryan Braun in his steroid suspension appeal and opted to remove him as MLB's arbitrator.

That's not the first time we've had an arb get the left foot of disfellowship-

Many of baseball's grievance arbitrators have had brief tenures, with the list including Lewis Gill (1970-72), Gabriel Alexander (1972-74), Peter Seitz (1974-75), Alexander Porter (1977-79), Raymond Goetz (1979-83), Richard Bloch (1983-85), Thomas Roberts (1985-86), George Nicolau (1986-95), Nicholas Zumas (1995-97) and Eischen (1997-98).

Joseph Sickles heard one case in 1976, and temporary arbitrators were used between Eischen and Das.

Seitz was fired after he ruled against owners in the Andy Messersmith-Dave McNally reserve clause case that led to free agency. Roberts was fired after deciding management colluded against free agents between the 1985 and 1986 seasons.

Note that the players haven't been the ones to ditch the arbitrator. Interestingly, Das is also the NFL's lead arbitrator, who will have his hands full with Bountygate cases.

Too Generous?

Usually, when a pastor has a sermon on giving, they have their hand out for some church fundraiser. That wasn't the case on Sunday, when our pastor was doing a sermon on giving to ones fellow man in need.

An interesting case study came across the screen yesterday in the form of a Ben Stein column; he was being hit up for a loan from a friend to help repair a damaged pool.

"I just need thirty thousand," she said. "That's all."

That seemed like a lot to me but I told her I would think about it. I hate the way everyone wants money from me. I just hate it.

I do not want to wind up broke because I gave away my money to people who asked me for it. I have done way too much of that already. I never get repaid and the people who were supposedly broke and homeless show up in Mercedes at luxury restaurants.

I am scared about myself. I am way too gullible for this world.

Last I checked, Stein's Jewish, but God's plugging for generosity didn't start with the incarnate Jesus.

Stein may well be "too gullible for this world" but it is not this world that we're being primed for. It's that kind of giving without expecting a return, albeit a bit grudgingly here, that we're being called to do.

I'm not in position to cough up 30K, but doing something like paying $3 for someones tab at the dollar store might work; on Mother's day after church, the guy in front of us had a credit card the reader didn't like and no other cash or plastic on hand. By the time I remembered the sermon I just sat through and thought to have the clerk put it on my tab, the guy had moved on.

Such "random acts of kindness" shouldn't be random, but hard-wired into our system with the help of the Holy Spirit. I wouldn't be surprised if He is working on Stein's conscience as well as ours, since I don't see a rule where He can't tweak non-believers from time to time.

 

Monday Night Meanders

Here's an interesting piece on Heathrow Airport's future; the premise is that a two-runway airport isn't going to be sustainable as a hub and that they need to expand. I don't know the logistics there, but many airports have sufficient NIMBY issues where expansion is problematic, especially when the city grows up around the airport.

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One interesting aspect of reading the Telegraph piece was that I had banner ads plugging a local Michigan college. Read globally, get ads locally.

Or at least localized. Some of the cheesy ads are in [insert city here] format. The ad that was running for the Lexington mom earning beaucoup bucks only looks like a dead ringer for the Midland mom doing the same thing.

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One interesting way around visa rules; have the office space in international waters. Thus, workers can get a visitor visa and commute out to the office ship moored 12 miles off SanFran. They're not working in the US, just living there, and a tourist visa is easier to get than a green card or H1 tech-worker visa.

Getting broadband out to the ship is the big trick; a long extention cord might be an option in the form of an underwater cable out to the ship's locale.

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A canine worship service? Everybody sing- "I am a friend of Dog, I am a friend of Dog, I am a friend of Dog, he calls me friend." Great is thy faithfullness, indeed.

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 6:7-8 (NIV)

⁷ Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. ⁸ Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

While there are good ministries that don't make it and churches that succeed despite being spiritually clueless, usually form will tell. Even the ones that seem to be mocking God and thriving despite that will come back down to earth in time.

Pirates Left the Left in the Dust

Yet another interesting showing for the Pirate Party, getting 8% of the vote in North Rhine-Westphalia. The neo-Communist Left party got nudged below the 5% seat threshold.

The headline news was the Christian Democrats of Chancellor Merkel getting a 9% drop in their vote from the last election, but that's often to be expected when the economy is lousy and they take out their frustration on the ruling party. It's the turmoil at the bottom, where this new Pirate faction is showing up on radar. They've yet to be part of any coalition, but in a close race, they might be needed to put either a left-wing or right-wing coalition over the top.

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Is it too late to have Greek Pirates? Greek Pilates might be more like it, since getting a government is a big stretch.

My prediction about Syriza leading a re-vote seems to be bearing fruit-

Polls suggest that Syriza, which came second in voting last week, would come first if another round of elections is held.

It could be Jubilee time in southern Europe, as we get de-facto wipe-outs of foreign debt. Bankers won't like it, but it might be Greece's best move. It might make countries like Greece persona-non-grata in capital markets, but they can move to a more barter-based system if the drachma is not respected.