Mark Byron

Road Trips

Here's a possibly overblown story of GSA telecommuters getting travel expenses. That might not be as much of an OMG thing as it looks.

It's entirely possible for a home-based worker to have travel expenses if they are travelling to and from remote sites. An auditor might be based out of his house, but might need to spend time at the places he is auditing. I might be in at home in Midland while I do mundane things like pouring over data, but if I'm checking in on the Social Security office in Sault Sainte Marie in person, I'm going to run up miliage and probably a hotel bill, since it's about a four-hour one way trip.

If that's all the home-based workers are racking up, there is no scandal.

Edifier du Jour:Zephaniah 3:1-5(NIV)

Woe to the city of oppressors,
    rebellious and defiled!
² She obeys no one,
    she accepts no correction.
She does not trust in the Lord,
    she does not draw near to her God.
³ Her officials within her
    are roaring lions;
her rulers are evening wolves,
    who leave nothing for the morning.
⁴ Her prophets are unprincipled;
    they are treacherous people.
Her priests profane the sanctuary
    and do violence to the law.
⁵ The Lord within her is righteous;
    he does no wrong.
Morning by morning he dispenses his justice,
    and every new day he does not fail,
    yet the unrighteous know no shame.

Syria's coming to mind as I read this, both due to its proximity to the Holy Land and its current bloody supression of its people. However, many folks before the Assads have fit this passage.

The "accepting no correction" part comes to mind; folks often don't want to be corrected. On that front, the current flap between liberal-leaning nuns and the Vatican comes to mind, where the heterodox nuns assume that they're right and the bosses are wrong. No, the nuns aren't tyrants, unless you're an unruly eight-year old, but they seem to be wanting things their way.

When folks are in that no-correction mode, talking won't help much. However, God knows these critters and works around them in many cases.

Friday Musings

St Pete's gets to announce a new arrival, but he has to do it like the Notre Dame PA guy-"Or-land-oh-WOOOOOOOOOOOL-ridge." Dying of heart trouble at 52; time flies, it doesn't seem like it was three decades ago he and Bill Laimbeer were taking the Irish deep into the top 20 with Digger Phelps at the helm.

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Some white-hat hackers are on the job, following up the Stuxnet worm that messed with Iranian nuke processors with a Flame malware that does a lot of spying on its host. At least it seems white-hat from here, since Iranian computers are the most affected; thus, fingers are pointing at the US and Israel as possible writers. One can only hope the Iranians or other enemies of the US (like the Anonymous folks who trash US policy) are doing the same thing back at us, since the really good hacks go undetected.

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This is a bit old, but this story on Google buying Motorola's phone business seems troubling. What's odd is that it was the Chinese government giving the last crutial blessing with the proviso that the Android system stay available to other phone makers rather than become a propriatry Motorola thing.

Vertical intergration need not be bad for the market, but when Google's energy will be focused somewhat onto the Motorola brand, it weakens the rest of the market, letting Microsoft have an easier time of dominating the remainder of the non-Apple universe.

Edifier du Jour: Hebrews 9:23-28(NIV)

²³ It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. ²⁴ For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. ²⁵ Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. ²⁶ Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. ²⁷ Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, ²⁸ so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

The Arminian (or Traditional in their view) wing of the Southern Baptists have released a statement on Calvinism within the SBC. The Gospel Coalition folks and others of that ilk have a lot of SBC folks out of joint.

I'm mugwump in that fight, but as a former Southern Baptist (I might still officially be on the roles at Victory Baptist in Lexington, since I haven't taken out membership in a church in Midland since returning) who might well rejoin the ranks if I find a SBC church I fit into, this is of interest. It's also of intrest as I struggle with that Reformed-Arminian battle; hearing the arguments of both sides helps me synthsise my own view on the issue.

The manifesto of yesterday had verses 27 and 28 listed in their second section on sin. However, I'm not sure if it backs up their free-will vantage point, except that lass passage that has salvation coming "to those who are waiting for him." That waiting might be read to assume that the people who have positively responded to God's call and are awaiting His return are saved, but it can also be read to include those called to repentence by God who are thus waiting for Him to show up.

Nor does it back up the idea of unlimited atonement, noting that Jesus died for the sins of "many." Many can be everyone, but it can also be a bounded set.

When we back away from the theological food fights, we can see a Good News that both camps can agree upon; Jesus was the sacrifice to end them all and He'll be coming back.

Edifier du Jour:Zephaniah 2:4-7(NIV)

⁴ Gaza will be abandoned
    and Ashkelon left in ruins.
At midday Ashdod will be emptied
    and Ekron uprooted.
⁵ Woe to you who live by the sea,
    you Kerethite people;
the word of the Lord is against you,
    Canaan, land of the Philistines.
He says, “I will destroy you,
    and none will be left.”
⁶ The land by the sea will become pastures
    having wells for shepherds
    and pens for flocks.
⁷ That land will belong
    to the remnant of the people of Judah;
    there they will find pasture.
In the evening they will lie down
    in the houses of Ashkelon.
The Lord their God will care for them;
    he will restore their fortunes.

Zephaniah has a different kind of Gaza strip in mind, where you can roll an elephant through the main cities after God's ethnic cleansing is done. These were the Philistines that Goliath came out of, neither circumcised or circumspect.

The hermeneutic might be rough for modern Palestinians; this is one that doesn't translate into the 21st century well, since it would mean no mas for Hamas. Given the geopolitics in play, that would be a feature rather than a bug, but it would be something that their Muslim Brotherhood brethren in Egypt would not take kindly to. Thus, this prophecy will likely be on the shelf for a while.

However, verse 6 and 7 are comforting to Judah; God will have their back in the long haul. Making the modern believer stand in the place of Israel is an iffy prospect, but it gives us some hope as well.

Internal Protectionism

There's an interesting discussion in Canadian politics on whether the oil, natural gas and lumber resources flowing out of Western Canada are bad for Canadian industry. "Dutch disease" is the buzz word; the idea is that increased exports of commodities drives up the Loonie, thus making it harder to export other Canadian goods.

Since the manufacturing sector is more unionized than the timber and energy industry and the commodities tend to flow out of the conservative parts of Canada, the labor-centric NDP is not happy. New NDP boss Thomas Mulcair has gotten into a tweet-war with Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall, who heads up a right-of-center Saskatchewan Party that goes toe-to-toe with the NDP in provincial politics.

There is some interesting economics here; the NDP is essentially trying to put up trade barriers for their own citizens to sell abroad. We're used to seeing trade barriers used to protect domestic industry, but using export barriers to protect favored industries from less-favored ones is somewhat novel.

It wouldn't be the first time; Argentina has seen their Peronist leader slap export quotas on agriculture in order to keep domestic food prices down.

Giving the Liberals a Hand

That story out of Canada that started sounding like a Bones episode got quickly morphed into a rather dark Law and Order SVU episode. Not only did a second box with a hand in it get intercepted before arriving at Liberal HQ, but things were traced to a Montreal "adult film" actor who seemed to have made his own snuff film.

The suspected perp is at large and the corpse was found in a dumpster in a state only Hodgins could love.

Edifier du Jour:Zephaniah 2:3(NIV)

³ Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land,
    you who do what he commands.
Seek righteousness, seek humility;
    perhaps you will be sheltered
    on the day of the Lord’s anger.

Humility is the kicker here; lots of people are seeking God, but many of those will do so from a prideful base. A run at righteousness without humility puts in the shoes of the Pharisee who's glad he's not a low-life sinner. With the wrong focus, you can be so focused on doing all the right things that you looks sight of whom you're doing it for.

Note that God doesn't give a get-out-of-jail-free card to the faithful here; you might get some help when it hits the fan, but it's not guaranteed.

Midweek Musings

An odd news day. Here's one from Ottawa, where someone sent Tory HQ a foot. It sounds like a plotline tailor-made for Bones, who has a recurring character of a Canadian forensic pediatrist. This is one the specialist could sink his teeth into.

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Another mystery comes out of Texas, where a serial candidate came out of nowhere to get 26% of the vote in the Democratic senate primary and a spot in a runoff-

It was retired educator Grady Yarbrough of San Antonio, described by the AP as “a perennial candidate who has run as a Democrat and a Republican in previous elections.”

Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson chalked it up to the place that the late former U.S. Sen. Ralph Yarborough still holds in Democrats’ very fiber although his time in the Senate was decades ago and his name is spelled slightly differently.

That's what came to mind when I saw his name; the late senator was a liberal Democrat who happened to have held the seat up this year until Lloyd Benson primaried him in 1970. As a non-Texas, it just hit a distant cord as "wasn't there a senator by that name?" but quite a few folks seem to have taken the bait.

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The bigger story was that LG Dewhurst got held under 50%, forcing a runoff with conservative favorite Ted Cruz on the GOP side. Cruz has his work cut out for him, making up a 46-32 gap without being able to self-fund and with the Rick Perry machine out for his LG. However, runoffs will tend to lean conservative, so Cruz has a shot.

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Dennis the Menace isn't the only multi-state congressional candidate possibility; Artur Davis is switching both state and party, becoming a Republican and looking at a congressional run in Virginia; he went native and is working in DC since losing his Alabama congressional seat.

There's little chance Kucinich would change party, unless it's to become a Green.