Mark Byron

Edifier du Jour- Daniel 5:29-30(NIV)

²⁹ Then at Belshazzar’s command, Daniel was clothed in purple, a gold chain was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the kingdom.

³⁰ That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, ³¹ and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two.

This part, just after Daniel gives the bad news from that ultimate divine grafitti, is one I don't recall focusing on before. Daniel is made something akin to deputy PM, but only for a few hours before Belshazzar assumes ambient temperature.

It almost seems like a joke, like the part in the Passion story where Jesus gets a royal robe put on him for a mocking photo-op (yes, they didn't have cameras then, but give me some poetic licence) before heading up Golgotha. The ship of state is heading for the rocks, and the messnager of the bad news gets named Lt. Commander.

Titles don't last. God does.

To the Shores of That Other Tripoli

Interesting spillover of the Syrian civil car into Lebanon, where Sunni and Alawite factions are shooting it out in Tripoli, north of Beirut. That translates to anti-Assad and pro-Assad, since the Assads are Alawite.

The ruling government in Lebanon doesn't have a dog in the fight on ethnic grounds, since they are Shia (Hezbollah is their main party) with some pro-Syrian Christians thrown in; the rival Sunnis and heterodox Alawites aren't liked by the Shia, thus it's a bit like Catholics looking on while Protestants and Mormons have at it. To the extent that Syria is pro-Shia in Lebanese politics, the Shia like Assad, but it's possible that they are keeping their distance from things in order to be on the good side of whoever emerges out of the Syrian mess.

The prime minister is a Sunni, but that's because he has to be per Lebanon's constitution; however, he's likely politically on board with the Shia-dominated government.

Lebanese troops have moved in along what might become Tripoli's Green Line between the factions. How much effort they do to keep them apart remains to be seen.

Edifier du Jour- Daniel 5:22-28(NIV)

²² “But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this. ²³ Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways. ²⁴ Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription.

²⁵ “This is the inscription that was written:

mene, mene, tekel, parsin

²⁶ “This is what these words mean:

Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

²⁷ Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

²⁸ Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

Just in case your biblical literacy isn't quite there, this is where "the writing on the wall" comes from. {Update 930PM-According to Beloit U's Mindset List, the typical college freshman of today fits that statement-#3 on the list is "The Biblical sources of terms such as “Forbidden Fruit,” “The writing on the wall,” “Good Samaritan,” and “The Promised Land” are unknown to most of them." I just saw that just now and my quip was a bit spooky.}

Note that we get a double-mene; full stop, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 minas.

Proverbs has a number of passages on honest weights, and Belshazzar is a bit of a light-weight in God's eyes, short-changing God (even giving Him the middle-digit salute with the party that preceded this passage) and short-changing His people.

God doesn't always step in to rid a country of a bad leader; don't expect to see "your kingdom is divided and given to the Mormons and Catholics" anytime soon. However, He can and will arrange for bad things to happen to bad people when called for.

Making Fun of Folks for Fun and Profit

I just got into a back-and-forth on Facebook with some nasty conservatives who wanted to make fun of the free-birth-control Georgetown gal following the form of Rush calling her a "slut;" the Rush wannabe had her down as a bike that everyone gets to ride.

Even if her request for free Pills was morally dubious, she still deserves better than that. The prohibition against bearing false witness would prohibit translating the idea of her having at least one out-of-wedlock partner (one would assume at least that, for you can get coverage even with the staunchest Catholics if you're using it medicinally to ease your period) out to making her having dozens or hundreds of partners. Unless she publishes a Wilt Chamberlain-style play-by-play of her love life (I had to edit that to remove a pair of double-entendres), translating "at least one" to "lots" just isn't called for.

Thursday Musings

Isaac looks like it is more interested in Pensacola than Tampa, as the revised projection has it steering clear of the peninsular Gulf Coast. At least the core will steer clear (if the projections hold); that leaves the oft-ugly right side of the storm to rake Tampa just as the GOP sets up shop there.

Before that, Haiti is slated to take it in the neck. Just what they need; Mother Nature has it in for those poor folks.

__________

Bad injuries make bad law, as I learned in Business Law class; a Little Leaguer whose heart stopped after a line drive got $14.5M from a package of Little League, the bat maker and the bat retailer. The premise is that the bats make the ball go too fast when hit. 

That being said, how fast is too fast? Would the Louisville Slugger folks be on the hook for the next killer line drive from a wood bat? Is a sports supplies store on the hook when the definition of safety shifts without a clear ruling? This one is sure to get appealed; it could spell the end of youth baseball if this became precident for baseball law.

____________

How hairy is Harry? He does have a wild side; I recall him getting caught smoking ganja, which prompted a slew of Harry Pothead or Harry Potted jokes.

__________

Anarchy in the US? Tampa would be vunerable to protest, since they could easily cut off St. Pete by blockading a few bridges.

Edifier du Jour- Daniel 5:1-6(NIV)

5 King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. ² While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. ³ So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. ⁴ As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone.

⁵ Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. ⁶ His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way.

God seemed to look away at mere looting of His temple, but when you started praising non-existing deities while using His table service, He gets POed. Not only had Nebby's son been weighed in the balance, he hopped on the scales with this dinner party.

This gives me some pause for...ahem... certain irreverent folks in the news and in recent history. I haven't heard of any liberal critics physically trashing a Catholic church over the current reproductive health care flap, but the queer mafia did do a number of church property over the years over sexual morality issues. The news out of Russia remind us of folks who care little for God other than as a prop to she-dog about the powers that be.

Mocking God is safer today than it was in biblical times, but it's rarely a good career move in the long haul. Belshazzar found that out the hard way.

Indecent and Out of Order

I'm not sure how many folks in the Blogosphere will talk about Todd Bentley, Geert Wilders and the now-infamous Russian punk band Pussy Riot in one sentence. All of the have found the edge of discourse on religious issues, going from an in-your face charismatic to a anti-Islam secularist to a Madonna-on-acid anti-establishment group crapping figuratively on both Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church.

The first two made this list for being barred from the UK; a teenaged sex-abuse case of Bentley's was seemingly used against him, but they could have also used his less-than-honest record over the years. The Netherlands can't ban their own people (although Wilders had to fight off hate-crimes charges for some of the more pointed statements about Islam), but the UK can bar people from entering and does. There isn't a First Amendment in the UK; the government isn't honor-bound to let rabble-rousers in the country, whether they be maverick MPs of a neighboring country or crazy preachers from elsewhere in the Commonwealth.

Lastly, lets give PR a once-over. Here's a good overview from Get Religion's Terry Mattingly, a Orthodox convert. The ladies (if we can use the term very loosely) filmed a rather profane video in an Orthodox cathedral in Moscow and have gotten two-year sentences for their efforts. tmatt points out that the PR crew was using the priests-only part of the cathedral that ordinary folks aren't allowed up onto; that desecration doesn't register either with secular reporters or even church-going reporters of a lower-church background.

I'm thinking of the dais/podium area of your stereotypical evangelical church; green carpet, two or three steps off the floor, where the pastor and music team work from during the service, assuming the pastor doesn't go mobile with his wireless mike and start walking around the front of the church as he preaches. That podium area isn't seen as a special area in any liturgical sense; having a five-year-old play hide-and-seek under Hannibal Lectern isn't a sacrilege, even though that last pun might be.

That's not the case in a high-church setting, which the Orthodox would fit into. Filming in the altar area that's reserved for the priests and the other people helping with the service is a deliberate tweak at the Church. Retaliating for such acts is hard to do, since there is very little sacred to a sex-crazed punk-rock band; burning Johnny Rotten in effigy doesn't quite have the same effect.

The gals were asking for trouble, and they got it. Maybe not two years in the gulag trouble, but trouble nonetheless. In many cases, getting arrested is exactly the PR they were looking for; since they picked a fight with Russia's baddest dude, all the usual suspects in the west have to rally to PR's defense.

Fifteen days work at a soup kitchen might be more fitting punishment that what they got, but they knew the wanted to get a reaction from the powers that be and will play this bust for all it is worth. Were they in the US, they'd be trashing one of the East Coast cathedrals and dissing Rick Santorum in their video; they'd shift to Paul Ryan today if the were starting from scratch.

The UK Exports Bentleys, it Doesn't Import Them

Todd Bentley has made it to the big time; the BBC is on the story of his being barred from the UK by their immigration folks.

"The government makes no apologies for refusing people access to the UK if we believe they are not conducive to the public good.

"Coming here is a privilege that we refuse to extend to those who might seek to undermine our society."

Bentley is in somewhat good company; Dutch anti-Islamist pol Geert Wilders got barred as well. However, in Wilders' case, his anti-Islam shtick could easily get a violent reaction from British Muslims; the only violent reaction likely in Bentley's case is his occasional use of MMA moves as the delivery vehicle for healings.

Bene and tag-team partner Rick has been on this story for weeks, Sadly, this is going to give Bentley a lot of PR, even if it is bad PR. He'll become "the preacher too hot for England to handle" and might get a second look from charismatics and others who tend to assume that opposition from governments is demonic rather than godly.

For those late to the story; Bentley was a cause celeb in 2008 when he was the focal point of a large revival at Lakeland, FL. The revival was filling Lakeland's basketball area and/or the Detroit Tigers' spring-training stadium on a nightly basis until an affair that Bentley was having with a staffer came to light. His over-the-top style and edgy theology (he claims to hear from a messenger angel named Emma) earned him enemies among less-charismatic evangelical folks and friends in prophet-centric charismatic circles, only to crash and burn when the affair was revealed.

Bentley divorced his wife and married the staffer and has been trying to get back in the limelight for the last few years. Well, he's in the limelight, but not in a good way.

Edifier du Jour- Daniel 4:29-32(NIV)

²⁹ Twelve months later, as the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, ³⁰ he said, “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?”

³¹ The words were still on his lips when a voice came from heaven, “This is what is decreed for you, King Nebuchadnezzar: Your royal authority has been taken from you.

³² You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like cattle. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.”

It's temping to have God saying "You didn't build that", but that would be forcing the hermeneutic a bit much.

Nebby liked God, but not as the one and only God; he was just a very potent small-g god in his eyes. God had to remind him that he wasn't the one ultimately in charge and that He can take away what He gave in the first place; that begs for a quick cite from Job on bended knee-"The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Job got it even as he was tossed under the bus by God in order to show off Job's devotion.

Here, it's a lack of devotion that is getting treated with a heavy dose of enforced humility.

Politics Through an Isaac Haze

The Republican convention is slated for Tampa next week. So is Hurricane Isaac. I recall Hurricane Gustav messing with the 2008 convention even though it was in St. Paul; at the other end of the Mississippi, Gov. Jindal was dealing with what looked to be Katrina 2.0 and had to pass on his slated speech. Thankfully, Gustav wasn't quite as nasty and the lessons learned from Katrina had them over-protected rather than under-protected.

The early forecast have Isaac scrapping the Gulf Coast of Florida Monday; that's where Midwesterners tend to settle as opposed to the sixth borrough of New York that is SE Florida.

P.S.- When I Googled for my title quip, I found that there was a variant of wacky-tobaccy called Isaac Haze; if you came looking for that, I can't help you, but a rehab center might.

Marvin Orders Tandoori Chicken With a Side of Naan Bread

It looks like Curiosity might be getting some company on the Red Planet-

The Indian government has approved a mission to Mars in what would be the country's first visit to the red planet. The news comes just four years after India launched its maiden mission to the Moon – Chandrayaan-1 – and days after NASA landed the Curiosity car-sized rover on Mars.

The £70m mission will be launched in November 2013 from India's spaceport at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the island of Sriharikota using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The mission, which will orbit Mars and study the planet's geology and climate, has already been allocated £26m in the country's science budget.

...

"I think they look at this in a similar way [to how] the US looked at Apollo – in that they are trying to demonstrate that they are a technologically advanced country and a leader in Asia," adds [John Hopkins' scientist David] Plescia. "Space programmes are not really about science, they are about national prestige and national security. The mission would also be a source of pride and excitement to the country, much like the Curiosity mission is in the US."

With China going forward with an aggresive space program, playing 40 years of catchup with the US and Russia, India doesn't want to be left behind. It's got a heck of a tech presence and can use this as a tool to show that India can do big-power things and possibly create a space industry of their own.

Oh My, Akin

Just two weeks after winning the MO GOP Senate primary, Todd Akin torched himself with an ill-phrased statement-

"It seems to me first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," Akin said. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

It doesn't help matters that Akin is a social conservative, so much so that incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill was running ads against his foes in a well-split Republican primary in order to get him in the general. This feeds the meme that pro-lifers are heartless toward women's dilemmas with an unwanted pregnancy.

Should he step aside, as Scott Brown and others have suggested? If so, we have a new level of inexcusable that will have folks spinning their foes words and getting offended, then asking the foe to step aside.

For instance, Joe Biden's put-y'all-in-chains line. Does that disqualify him for running for reelection as VP? It's more uninformed and hurtful than misunderstanding the biology of rape victims.

The horse has left the barn on Akin's line; your pro-choicers will cram that down the GOP's throat in MO regardless of whether a replacement candidate is named. A gracious backpedal on that statement will be better damage control than a withdrawal from the race. Properly played, Akin could take the flak to his advantage, pointing out that his foes are more heartless toward the unborn than he is portrayed to be to pregnant women.

[Update 4:10PM- If folks hit him in the pocketbook, it might force a withdrawal. National Review has joined the chorus; if the fat cats pull their money, Akin might opt to bow out rather than be severly outgunned in a race where liberal money will be in ready supply, both to hang on to the Senate and to take a whack at the Neanderthal of the week.]

Edifier du Jour- Daniel 3:28-29(NIV)

²⁸ Then Nebuchadnezzar said, “Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants! They trusted in him and defied the king’s command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God. ²⁹ Therefore I decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego be cut into pieces and their houses be turned into piles of rubble, for no other god can save in this way.”

A firm rebuke will do, Nebby, but thanks for the support. The Islamic urge to parking lot the infidel goes back a bit, for roughly a millennia before Mohammed, we have Nebby looking to lay waste to the foes of God.

Good works done under pressure can bring non-believers around. You see secular folks like Nick Kristof seeing the good works of missionaries and suppressing the liberal urge to dis them as they note the positive work that hospitals and schools do in bringing folks, especially women and girls who get the short end of the stick in a lot of developing cultures, a better life. The folks that are seen as anti-women in reproductive health scuffles stateside are very pro women when real repression and misogyny is the norm, save when those scuffles are transplanted into foreign aid debates.

Miracles can bring them around as well, as we see here, but that can lead to a "what have you done lately" motif as the impression wears off with time; Jesus could feed the 5000 and heal the blind, but that didn't stop the crowd from turning on a drachma on Him. The power trio here had a track-record of service to Nebby, so that combined with that trip to the furnace made God that much clearer.

 

Jonesboro's Homicide Jones

Milwaukee had a pair of house-of-worship shootings in a decade; Jonesboro, Arkansas has had a pair of odd homicide cases in 14 years. Last month, a young black guy, Chavis Carter, reportedly shot himself in the head with a gun... while handcuffed...in the back of a police car... after he had been searched...twice. Folks of color are more than a bit skeptical of that low-probability package.

Sadly, Jonesboro was in the news 14 years ago, when a pair of middle-schoolers shot up their school, setting off a fire alarm then ambushing folks as the fled the building; five people died that day.

For some reason, the phrase "Jonesboro Seven" is stuck in my head, with a case of some black teens getting railroaded in the Jim Crow south being attached to that phrase; Google doesn't help. Maybe the Peanut Gallery could point to something that would almost fit that. There was a Greensboro Seven of anti-Bush protesters, but that isn't it.

Snopes Hunt

I wasn't aware until that they now have fast food sign generators like the church sign generators that have been around for better part of a decade. A bogus pro-Chick-fil-A McDonalds sign created that way was making the rounds during Chatty-Catheygate.

"What do you believe, me or your eyes" the guy caught red-handed says. In this case, the eyes can be tricked, although some Wendy's in the Carolinas did show solidarity.

You Can Always Be.... a Bad Example

Here's an interesting footnote to last night's Giants-Jets game. I noted the name of Ryan Perrilloux as the New York Football Giants' (as Cosell used to say) third stringer; it didn't quite ring a bell until I saw on his card that he is a Jacksonville State alum.

Jacksonville State... wasn't he the guy who did what the Honey Badger was thinking of doing before going into rehab, getting kicked out of LSU and playing I-AA ball to avoid sitting out a year?

Yep. Cue Wikipedia. He spent two years at JSU and went undrafted; he was on the practice squad of the Giants last year after being cut by the Vikings before the 2010 season.

Perrilloux wasn't quite the talent that Mattieu is, but that decision may have cost him quite a chunk of change; spending time to get your house in order emotionally and with any substance-abuse issues might have been the better decision for Perrilloux.

Conversely, Mattieu can get some good mentoring from John Lucas (who almost lost an NBA career to drugs but turned it around and now mentors others in that boat) and show up at the Indy combine clean and sober next winter; he'll be further ahead than running back punts for McNeese State this fall.

The Sound of One Crucifixion Report Clapping

Drudge has had a link to a World Net Daily piece claiming the mobs of Muslim Brotherhood backers have been crucifying foes, including one in front of the presidential palace; this seemed to be the core piece backing up the claims. It was supposed to have been aired on Sky News, but the article on the piece has been wiped off the site according to the article.

There's one problem with the piece; no one outside of a circle of anti-Islamist or conservative web sites seems to be running the story. For a story of that magnitude to be a non-starter elsewhere is a bit odd. Glenn Beck's Blaze site has the story, but I'm not seeing any serious confirmation other than a lot of people regurgitating a single report in English.

If a political lynching happened in front of the White House, one would assume that it would be bigger news than just one piece floating around conservative web sites. Egypt might not have the most vibrant and free press on the planet, but one would expect that someone other than Drudge and WND would have picked this one up. Fox News, the Washington Times, someone with some gravitas beyond Drudge (who has gravitas, but has his share of false alarms).

It smells like the story might be not what it seems to be. Some form of English-language confirmation beyond what has showed up in "Islamophobic" circles (I don't like that term as a conversation-slamming analogue to homophobic, but I don't know of a good term to describe the folks who are overly nervous about things Islamic) would be helpful.

{Update 9/7-The National Post's Johnathan Kay takes up the story three days after I wrote this and chalks it up to an urban legend. That's a conservative-leaning paper (Canada's Washington Times without the Moonie connection) and one that would be one of the first places a conservative-leaning story would get traction in the traditional media.]

Dr Strangeglove-Part II- Not so Fail-Safe

I had a Free Press reader take exception to the first post of this series, or at least an excerpt that I posted in the comment section.  Eric Sunderland answered as follows-

Several MLB organizations listen to him and ask him questions on what he has seen about players. and i dont know where you get your info from but Miggy is the worst defensive 3rd basemen in the league. he has 0 defensive runs saved and has an ultimate zone rating of -5.1

I was getting my information from ESPN and MLB.com's stat section, but was sticking with stuff that can be done via conventional box score material. Mr Sunderland takes us deep into sabermetric territory, deeper than I've ventured, and I've been following Bill James (the grandfather of sabermetrics) for a couple of decades, going back to The Hidden Game of Baseball.

However, our Bob Jones alum goes past that other BJ (don't say that fundamentalist can't keep up with things) and into a new critter, Ultimate Zone Rating; relatively new, at least, it seems to date to 2003, shortly after I got married and had less time to geek out on sports. It does a detailed look at how infielders handle grounders hit their way, breaking it down into three metrics, double-play runs, range runs and error runs.

Cabrera shines in the first metric, leading the Al among third-baseman with 600 innings under their belt with a score of 1.6. He's second in error runs at 4.0, so the third column looks good.

Range runs... Cabrera sucks bilge water. He comes in at a -10.6, looking way up at the competition; former teammate Wilson Betemit is next to last at -3.2 and wishing I made the cutoff at 700 innings.

Add the three together, and Cabrera just misses the boobie prize with a -5.1, with Betemit saving him from ignominy with a -5.5.

Now, lets step back a bit and apply some old-school thought to this new metric. From the naked eye, Cabrera is fairly good with line drives, which UZR ignores; UZR thinks catching line-drives is mostly luck

I don't like using line drives to or thru the IF because even though there is some level of skill (positioning and reaction time) involved in catching a line drive, it is mostly luck.)

but Cabrera seems better than most third basemen at making those line-drive plays.

What UZR seems to catch are the grounders that Cabrera is a step slow on that scoot under his glove and into left field for a single. Those don't show up in the conventional fielding statistics but cost your team runs. He makes up for it with quick hands on the line drives, but plays that require leg work aren't his strong suit.

Last year's teammate Brad Penny was dating a Dancing with the Stars pro dancer (she dumped him shortly after the Tigers did), but don't expect Miggy there anytime soon with those feet. He's probably a somewhat better 3B than UZR says since they ignore one of his strong suits, but there is more than a germ of truth to that sucky range number on grounders.

P.S. Fail-Safe was the WW3 drama that Dr. Strangelove seemed to be spoofing; a B-58 (I thought B-52, but not quite) gets a false green light and nukes Moscow, so the JFK-analogue, to placate the Soviets, nukes New York while the Jackie-analogue was in town; at least that was how the book version went, I didn't see the movie version.