Why do I think she lost by winning? Look into the details. First, look at her age. She is sixteen. Fine. But, she says she knew she was an atheist at age 10. Nowhere though is there any support for this claim. Really? I would think there would at least be a mention of what changed her mind. Age ten is VERY young to be making any concrete decisions about any part of your life. Maybe it is possible. I’ll even grant that it is true. But, I would expect that as such it would be clearly defined as to what brought it about. The statement is very definite as to the age, not given as “…around age ten…” or “…when I was about 10…” so by her own words a decision break is implied. What was it?

Then there is the banner itself. There is no indication it was ever read from as an active prayer in the school. It simply hung in the auditorium as a passive decoration, much like any other sports pennant, a gift from former students, not anybody connected with the school or government or any church. Outside of the first three words, and the Amen at the end, the text of the entire “prayer” is secular in context. Instead of removing the entire banner, it would have much more educational to cover the first three and last words. Then instead of being a slap at the class of 1963, and being lost on future students, it could have been a great teaching tool. Social Studies and Government classes alike could have used it as the starting point for discussions of why we have separation of church and state, and how it has evolved over time. I was not really surprised but rather disappointed when I read where the court “…had supported the Constitutions wall between church and state. …”. There is no such statement in the Constitution, just as there is no right to vote for president in the Constitution. The courts have interpreted the intent and that interpretation has evolved over time. This chance to extend teaching on these points has no been lost.

Then, I question her understanding of Atheism itself. If she were truly Atheist, I would expect her to raise the constitutional question in class, mentioning the banner, but not to be offended by it. It was existing in totally a passive state. A true Atheist would treat it as something from fifty years ago, and ignore it, much the same as the Valentine’s Day. Just because I don’t believe in Cupid, I don’t go around ripping down hearts in February. Her position by her own words is more anti-christian, and if you read far enough back into the story, you find she only brought it up after she found out that another unnamed parent had complained.

The only result, other than removing a fifty year old banner, has been negative social media directed at this girl, and an increase in the animosity on both sides between Atheists and Believers. So, although Jessica won her case, she damaged the position of Humanism in the area.

Peolpe you are trying to win to your position by persuasion and puppies are much the same. You don’t get them to follow you home by kicking them first.

2 cup macaroni

Tbsp of salt

2 * 2 Tbsp butter

Lg casserole pan

1 cup 1% milk

1 can Nacho Fiesta Cheese condensed soup

8 oz Velveeta

1 pkg of little Polska doggies

1 can peas

1 can carrots

Fill pan 3/4 full of water. Bring to a roiling boil. Add macaroni, 1st pat of butter, salt. Return to a boil for seven minutes. Drain. Add milk. Add second pat of butter. Simmer with stirring until melted. Add 1/2 of Velveeta. Continue stirring until melted. Add little doggies. Stir until uniformly distributed. Add condensed soup.  Add rest of Velveeta. Stir until melted. Add peas and carrots, both well-drained. Stir until evenly distributed. Turn off heat and serve.

Hope you enjoy it!

If you would like a brief description of the chaos caused by the implementation of “war-time” in 1918, read this link here, otherwise it may be time to “standardize” since recent congresses have cut EST smaller and smaller. Have fun, sleep right, and drive safe.

In this one experiment, a slice of a cortex from a human brain was vitrified in a petri dish. Then it was thawed after electrical probes were attached. A pulse was sent through the probes and the neuron firing in the slice was mapped successfully. The Doctors involved were surprised with the level of their success.

My question is as follows: How ‘dead’ was the donor? I would assume that as the brain starts breaking down quite rapidly after death, that the brain they used  may have been refrigerated but was still ‘fresh’. They vitrified this sample, reversed the process, and added a stimulus. While I don’t believe they were ‘sparking life’ like the good Dr. Frankenstein, I have to wonder, for that moment, what memories were triggered by their pulse? Should we be using human brain slices at all for this type of testing until the procedure reaches the point where an intact animal can be revived? There is a far cry from a mouse kidney to a human brain slice. Part of the episode claimed that we have humanity because we are mortal. Should we throw our humanity aside for the sake of the search of immortality?

Jump to the present. For some reason I didn’t catch, this trial of these three guys is being reconsidered, which brings up the death penalty question in the media again.

Narrow your gaze to tonight, Friday the 19th of August. Michael Savage on his radio show was discussing his views on the death penalty, and why he is for it. A caller called in and was arguing for the fact that all life has a fundamental right to keep living, and of course was anti death penalty. Dr. Savage brought up abortion as a test of the caller’s argument and correctly stated that you can be anti abortion and pro death penalty. This is where the caller lost his point, and Dr.Savage wasn’t very clear in return to show him why. So, I will try to run through this clearly, and hopefully quickly.

Pro- abortion, Anti- Death Penalty.

Whether you look at this at either the personal or societal level, you can not really justify making an argument for taking the life of an innocent with great potential while also arguing that you must keep an adjudicated criminal alive even after it has been shown the criminal can do great harm to both persons and society. Even if you argue that an embryo is not a person or even alive, the potential for great good in the future is there along with total innocence. This position does not logically stand.

Pro- Abortion, Pro- Death Penalty

Regardless of which position you start your argument at, or if you look first at the individual or society, it is the same. Kill them all, I don’t care. Cruel and coarse, but logically consistent.

Anti- Abortion, Anti- Death Penalty

Here there is plenty of room for discussion, and it is in this realm that I think most of the discussions occur. If you really believe in a fundamental right to life, regardless of actions on the part of the criminal, then this is the place for you. In fact you MUST be here. If you can NOT kill a criminal for ANY reason, even when the damage the criminal does to people and society has been proven, then you MUST be also Anti Abortion in order to keep your logical consistency, for even if it only has a single cell, it is alive. In fact, you should probably be Vegan or at least vegetarian as well…..

Anti- Abortion, Pro- Death Penalty

Here is the sticky one. This can be logically fulfilled as follows. On a personal level, you can not take a life except in self-defense. Obviously, an embryo is not going to harm you, so you would never kill it. A convicted criminal is not going to harm you while in prison, so you would not kill it. On the societal level, an embryo is not going to harm society, in fact it has great promise, so you would not kill it. A convicted criminal has shown and been proven to do great harm to society and its individual members. So the criminal has to be removed from society. Keeping this criminal alive will continue to harm society through expense. The society has decided that there are certain crimes which are so heinous, that the criminal has actually forfeited the right to life. This is where the death penalty is invoked.

This is where the caller to the radio show failed a logic check. This position does work because it is society making the decision of what is heinous enough that life is forfeited, not a single person, and all person’s are aware of this before the acts are committed. The mentally impaired are not killed, and those committing an act of passion are not put on death row either.

So, although I am not going to solve either fo these discussions finally for everyone, I do think I have shown that they are both part of the same cloth. Personally, I have a few other ideas that I think would solve the discussion, but I also know that currently they aren’t practical, maybe I will put them forward later….

Today, they have a post about the new NY Marriage law making it legal for gay couples in NY to get married. I wrote and tried to post a response, only to be told my response was too long. (?!?) So, I am posting my response here, and hope everybody doesn’t get dizzy following the crosslink……

T4AT’s original posting is HERE.

I’m going to take your premises in order. 2)Morality flows from belief. I’m going to have to claim FALSE. In my lifetime I have met several ‘moral’ people who were of religious beliefs other than Christian. Of these, some have been of religions that do not have a Moral outlook at all, but rather their morality comes from their philosophical outlook. Some of these people are actual Atheists, and have their own moral code, imposed only upon themselves by themselves. SO, while many people including Christians base their morality from their belief system, this isn’t universally true.
Your point three is also FALSE. While a great deal of legislation does come from our collective moral stand as a society. You should not fall into the trap of legislating what is moral. If you avoid that trap, and in fact for our country to work properly you MUST, then you can have a free society. The moment you fall into that trap your republic is dead and you have begun the slide into a theocracy. This process of letting dogma determine law was exactly what led to the creation of this country. Read in the colonial era, over and over again, of how many minority groups came to this country because they were being somehow persecuted and or legislated against at home because they were at the time considered immoral or not of the right religious belief. When we are crafting legislation, rather than a test of legislation from authority, we need this law because God said this is the way it should be, it would better serve society to use the test of does this act we are considering on outlawing if allowed to continue harm society? Let’s look at the specific issue, Gay Marriage. We will pick Tom and Joe (a virtual fictitious example, but this is where you should be thinking when crafting law), who although it may be repugnant to you morally and spiritually, love each other deeply in every way and want to live together as one for the rest of their days. They are already married in every sense of the word except on paper. Is there any reason to not let them formalize their relationship, other than your personal beliefs, and a religious belief, which is logically false as it falls under an argument from authority, God, which also can not be logically proved without reverting to authority? Whooppsss. That’s circular. On the other hand there are several reasons for allowing it to occur, which are actually beneficial to society in various circumstances. Second test, will allowing this act to occur harm or bring to harm any others? Generally no. There may be unusual cases where such an argument could be made, but I would think those would all be in relation to outside or previous relationships, hence why we have JDR courts.
For your point four. Common sense isn’t. Well, unless you want to live in a theocracy. Here also let me make clear another distinction. Passive and Active acts. I have heard the argument “why not let people go dancing naked down the street?”. Actually, why not? BUT, for that example you can make a valid argument for legislation. Dancing naked in public although it doesn’t appear to harm anybody, is an active act. Everybody can see who is naked in the street dancing. Just the sight of such may influence a child into believing that dancing naked is moral, which the parent may not believe. So, as the majority believes dancing naked may be harmful to some people’s morals, and we are not going to deprive the majority of the use of the public spaces to avoid seeing this active act, you can argue that legislation against dancing naked in the street is correct and just.
Gay marriage though is a passive act. You have four guys in a room. Your job is to find which of them, if any, are married. You may be able to determine if any of them are in a relationship with each other or outside persons unknown from their body language over time. But you will never know if any of them are married, gay or straight, unless you ask them personally, or they make some type of public announcement.
Point five. Although you believe it completely. This is entirely FALSE. When in the future the republic becomes majority muslim, will we then base our laws from the Quran? Left long enough, this will happen just based on birth rates. The age of the WASP has passed unless there are major changes in our society in the next generation. Yes, we should continue in our personal religious convictions whatever they should be. Yes, we should want to protect society. At the same time we must guard against sliding into theocracy or it will surely kill us in the end.
Logically test what we are legislating and guarantee the greatest freedom for all, regardless of their morals. Lastly, more than
once you have stated that Christianity is the right religion. No, it is your religion. You can not legislate what a person or group
believes or thinks. This is why we have freedom of religion in this country. Freedom to believe what you may consider immoral. As a Christian, it is your job to on a one by one basis, convince others who believe differently, to believe as you do. Do this enough, and
the morals of the greater society will negate the need for laws on passive acts, as everybody will be policing themselves anyway. After all at that point it will be only moral, who needs laws.
I may ask my friend Troy to drop by and give you a comment or two also.
Have a Good Weekend!
Carl

The Warrior isn’t delivered to a subscription base, it is delivered “free” to ALL family households on base, whether they want it or not, including empty ones. Some of the military members actually read their copy, but many of them are simply left in the yards, gutters, and sidewalks as litter, until it is picked up the next morning by the various trash details. Sometimes, at some homes close to the street, the paper actually gets tossed in the direction of the porch, if not on it. The easiest way to spot the home of somebody on vacation or deployed is to see the pile of 3 or 4 weeks worth of often soggy Warriors on the porch or worse, becoming mache and mosquito breeding grounds under a downspout. In March, the news can literally fly by a page at a time, where the kids throw an unwanted paper out into the middle of the street.

With this picture in mind please consider the following. A tree was grown and cut. The wood was turned to mulch. The mulch was cooked to pulp. The pulp was made into paper. The paper rolls were shipped to the printer by train and/or truck. Ink was manufactured. The paper was printed. Then the papers were trucked to Ft. Eustis. They were delivered to homes. Three or four days pass for the weekend allowing the papers to be scattered that weren’t read. The trash was picked up by crews on base. The collected trash is hauled to the dump. The trash is spread, buried, and allowed to rot.

What do each of the above thirteen steps have in common? In all of them, energy is needed to be manufactured and used, resources are used, man hours are used, and a carbon footprint is generated.

It would seem to me that in the 21st Century, the Army would strongly suggest if not outright require papers like The Warrior to convert to electronic delivery, be it by web delivery or even email, in order to support the directives of living Army Green, reducing resources used, and reducing waste generated. At the very least, switch to Static Box delivery so they would know how many papers are actually being read, and stop cluttering up the landscape on base with trash and the landfill with unused copies. I really think the residents would like the nicer looking neighborhoods too.

While this segment actually borrows a group of the supporting charactors from his own narrative, it is needed to set the stage for the next segment I have thought of already.

It is amazing what a good shower will do after a VERY hot day at work…..

AFTER THE BANG….

The Strangers,
the Ones Who Came Before, the Travelers. Their species has many names
among the myriad species that followed them. The Strangers considered
themselves simply, The Race.

     The Race
was old when the universe as we know it was still hot. The Members,
in all of their designated functions, did not know exactly how old,
as that wasn’t their function. That information would be known by the
Archivists, for they were the ones deemed to be in charge of the
History of The Race. Among the Archivists though, it was a known
secret that was not revealed to the Members that the Archivists
didn’t know how old the Race was. There are deliberate ‘voids’ in the
History.

     These ‘voids’ must be a ‘good thing’ however, and surely the Most Esteemed
know exactly how old the Race is, and have hidden this knowledge for
‘good reasons’. The Most Esteemed are the all knowing benevolent
leadership of the Race.

     The Most Esteemed though have a dark secret. They have no real idea how old
the Race is. Nor do they know if the Race is even native to this
universe. There are indications that they are from some place other
than Here. The voids in the History are the result of an ancient
treason, the nature of which is not known, for it was erased too. It
is only known and taught that Science must go in logical measured
steps, led by the Most Esteemed, always and only.

     Of the Members, some of the House of Theory have proposed that Here is
actually the result of some error in the past on the part of the Most
Esteemed. The house of Theory has been informed that this is not so
by the Archivists as it is not in the History. This theory is not
being pursued. Any Member who derives this theory or any variant of
it, is in error.

…

     The House of Propagation was informed of the quota needed for the current time
interval. Sufficient numbers were propagated in order to allow for
the occasional imperfect propagation. Even with all of the advanced
technology and science of the Strangers, occasionally still “things”
happen. It was very rare. Such as it was, Propagation was one of the
functions that did not require the best of the Members, and was often
used as the assigned function of Members who were only good enough.

    On this cycle, the Member in charge of Propagation succumbed to Vice and did
not immediately terminate a propagated Member who was the victim of a
chance alteration in a series of helper genes. Only one, but at a
stage having a cascading effect in the later cycle of development.

…

     The understudy was determined to show the mentor that it was worthy of
further training. There was so much to know! The only way to have
access to all of the knowledge of the Race was to be assigned as an
Archivist. The understudy KNEW from its private experiments that it
could create more Here. The understudy simply needed some more
information. Archivists had unlimited access to that information,
they have all of the History available to them.

     Final Analysis was approaching at the end of the current cycle. The
understudy had been assigned the analysis of a star system, which
when completed would probably result in assignment to the House of
Theory. This was NOT GOOD ENOUGH! The understudy came up with a plan
and implemented it. Analysis of the target system complete, the
understudy bent the needed energies just so as theory showed and
added another planet, complete with ecosystems and a benign species
of intelligent life. While primitive, the species the understudy
deigned to be the top of the ladder on this planet was in itself an
experiment. One designed to show that the understudy knew the nature
of Here.

     As a flight reflex, this species had the ability to on mental impulse,
fold space in such a way that its members were no longer in any of
the normal 11 dimensions, but were rather “someplace else”. A
mini-test as it was of creating another Here.

     Final Analysis arrived. The mentor did not even wait for the understudy to
tell it of the intelligent species. Rather the mentor seeing the extra planet immediately
contacted the Most Esteemed who recognized the Flaw of Ambition in
the understudy. This although unfortunate, was easily corrected, and
the adjusted understudy was assigned to the House of Recycling for
the rest of its cycle. Every Civilization needs members to handle the
trash and do the tasks of labor. Such a shame.

     Upon direction, the mentor contacted several of its recent graduates and
made a game of cleaning the new world. They took glee in creating
many vicious creatures to remove the understudy’s created species
from the new world. They soon got bored however. When they checked on
the world, there was always a population of the intelligent species
left. Such a minor diversion though, they never asked “Why?”.

]]> http://virginianopinions.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/after-the-bang/feed/ 0 virginianopinions http://virginianopinions.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/coastal-environmental-rights-group-gets-ruling-banning-fireworks-in-california/ http://virginianopinions.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/coastal-environmental-rights-group-gets-ruling-banning-fireworks-in-california/#comments Wed, 01 Jun 2011 22:42:40 +0000 Carl http://virginianopinions.wordpress.com/?p=268 ]]> Now that the Encino based Coastal Environmental Rights group has gotten their ruling requiring all gatherings of more than 75 people or who are planning on using fireworks to have to have a California Environmental Impact Study done before they can party, they want to take their crusade nationwide. Many California locales are rapidly seeking an injunction against the ruling until after the 4th of July, claiming that it would be impossible for them to comply with California rules and regulations before the holiday. They are correct, and I believe that was the point. Mr. Gonzales, the lawyer for the group who doesn’t even have a findable web presence, says it is un-American to be scaring the marine animals, not to mention all of those metals and debris being thrown into the environment.

Ok, I will take him at his word. I will believe all of his motives are truly altruistic. So, Mr. Gonzales, when are you going to bring a suit against birthday parties with pinattas? All of that tissue paper goes onto the ground. That and the candy wrappers can be found as building materials in bird nests. While we are at it, I don’t want to see any more ticker / confetti parades either, just because a sports team won a championship or something….all of that gets away and goes down the drains and winds up in the same water you are protecting from drifting fireworks fallout. Oh, and while we are on it, hurry up and get the state to ban all single use water bottles. We all know now it really doesn’t come from springs, can possibly poison babies with ethylene if left in the heat, and those 6 pack plastic holders are choking the albatrosses and turtles. So, please let me know when you are going to take up these bigger problems.

Oh, wait, I didn’t see any mention of those plans in your statements. I guess you must just be jealous that you can’t use your boogie board where other people have fun one day a year. You did specifically mention that.

Factually, do you really think fireworks scare wildlife worse than an electrical storm? I would look to the chemicals on gasoline for more chemicals getting into the ocean than from fireworks.

Readers interested in more information can find it here…

Yes, looking at the situation, there is quite a bit of irony there, and also quite a bit of the very problem that led to this entire Global Warming mess to begin with. The Wegman Report contains information found and put together in order to demonstrate where the writers of the report found problems with the then collaborative system that they said was tending to emphasise findings which the main persons involved with believed in and de-emphasise those which may have been good science but ran counter to their agenda. It also found that they had an agenda, whether it was conscious or not. At the time the report was cited as being well done.

Now, suddenly, because some portions of the report were not properly attributed, it needs to be retracted. Does this mean that the findings are any less valid just because some of the materials used came from Wikipedia? Would the reported findings have been ridiculed then if the portions from Wikipedia had been properly attributed? Does information found from a wiki source suddenly all become false?

What I find most amusing about this is that it is a demonstration of exactly what the report was investigating. Al Gore and the purveyors of the infamous hockey stick continued with their dis-information, even after it was shown that a majority of their data used was demonstrably false, simply because the questions about their data came from “outside of the climatologist community”. Data gathered from stations originally in the middle of green fields which are now located beside BBQ pits, adjacent to HVAC discharge ducts, located at the end of LAX taxiways, and mounted on black top roofs, are accepted and used because the procedure was good….. Ummm…. BS! So, now we have come 180. Before, Global Warming was proven by bad data but it was a good procedure, and we can’t question it because we aren’t climatologists and we don’t understand…. Now, the Wegman Report which has been agreed upon by many previously as being good, and all of its data is still there, is suddenly bad because of a procedural error, used writings of another which weren’t properly attributed.

It is reaching the point where in “Science”, the facts don’t matter as long as you follow procedure.

One final point. I am not claiming that procedure has no place in science. Good science is based on using good procedures, and there are certain procedures that should be followed if you want to be taken seriously by other scientists. What I am saying is that when you start having procedure validate or invalidate facts and data, you have gone to far. I think to much of our science in this country has crossed that line.