Pac-Mondrian

Whether you're an art afficionado, a fan of video games, or a devotee of the 80s, you'll enjoy a quick stop at Pac-Mondrian. =)

Merry Christmas!

Warmest Christmas blessings to all my readers! May Christ's light shine in your hearts and in your lives this coming year.

Sojourners: "Putting Herod Back Into Christmas"

Wow! If you read only one commentary about the real meaning of Christmas this year, this is the one. Potent stuff.

Nick Coleman: "The gospel truth about some readers"

Ouch! Sadly, Nick Coleman's column is pretty much right on the money about a shamefully large number of people who claim Jesus Christ as their Lord:

I guess the point these compassionate Christians are trying to make is that Jesus wouldn't give the homeless a second glance if he came back. And you know what? They might be right. Jesus might walk right past the homeless, the poor and the sick, and march straight into our churches.

Because he'd have a lot of tables to overturn.

We have much to repent of.

Congratulations, Kristin and Jeff!

I just spent the last two hours talking on the phone with my old friend Kristin Broderius. She and I go back to our Bible camp and Cobber days, and it's been forever since we talked. She had some wonderful news - she's a mom! Kristin and her husband Jeff are the proud parents of Michael Jeffrey, whose web page you can visit for some really cute pictures and the latest news. Michael was three and a half months early, so he's still at the hospital in Minneapolis, but he's doing very well and his mom seems about as happy and excited as you'd expect. =) They see him several times each week, and hope he'll be able to come home soon.

I couldn't be happier for Kristin and Jeff. It was so good to hear their news! With any luck, we'll be able to visit face to face when I'm back home for Christmas next week.

Check out the baby's site, and be sure to sign Michael's guestbook while you're there.

Forbes: "Extreme Blogging"

I've mentioned Wikipedia before in this blog. For those who are curious, here's a detailed look at Wikipedia and the collaborative technology behind it - the wikiwiki. Interesting, in a geeky sort of way. ;)

Remembering Nikki

Today marks the passing of one full year since I lost Nikki, my first dog. As I was going through the stats for my web site last night, I noticed that someone had arrived here via a Google web search: pastor sad. Hard to believe it, but if you click on that search you'll see that the entry in my blog the day Nikki was diagnosed with cancer is the number one listing on Google for "pastor sad". It seemed like an appropriate thing to discover as I thought about her last night.

A lot of things have happened in the year since losing Nikki, and there are still days when I find myself missing her. But I think she'd be happy to know how well Ellie and I getting along. =) Life is just so much better when it's shared with a dog, and that's a fact. I'm grateful for both Nikki and Ellie - they've blessed my life in ways I can hardly begin to enumerate.

NYT: "Farewell, Africa: Beggar, Serf, Soldier, Child"

An absolutely heartbreaking article.

ABC News: "Famous Atheist Now Believes in God"

I love it when this happens. =)

A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.

Get under their skin - literally!

Michael Paulus has done some really wonderful skeletal studies of... favorite cartoon characters. Yes, this artist has used his talents to figure out just how a Charlie Brown or a Fred Flintstone would be put together if such a creature existed in the real world. It's actually quite revealing (pun intended) to see how your favorite character might be constructed and what that might say about his or her biology. Here's just a small taste... behold, Charlie Brown!

Ahhhh... the joys of winter!

From Grace, a slice of life on the frozen tundra - 528k Windows Media video (source unknown)

The implications of a war of choice

This time from the Times:

A few minutes later, a soldier from the Idaho National Guard's 116th Armor Cavalry Brigade asked Mr. Rumsfeld what he and the Army were doing 'to address shortages and antiquated equipment' National Guard soldiers heading to Iraq were struggling with.

Mr. Rumsfeld seemed taken aback by the question and a murmur began spreading through the ranks before he silenced them. 'Now settle down, settle down,' he said. 'Hell, I'm an old man, it's early in the morning and I'm gathering my thoughts here.'

He said all organizations had equipment, materials and spare parts of different vintages, but he expressed confidence that Army leaders were assigning the newest and best equipment to the troops headed for combat who needed it most.

Nonetheless, he warned that equipment shortages would probably continue to bedevil some American forces entering combat zones like Iraq. 'You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time,' Mr. Rumsfeld said.

That is true - in a war of defense. When circumstances thrust a nation into war, there is no chance to make preparations. The army you have is the one you fight with.

Completely different is a war of choice - which the war in Iraq is. For all the deceptive talk of "grave and gathering threats," Saddam and his regime were never a threat to the United States in the way that Japan was on December 7, 1941. The United States was not thrust into war in Iraq - our leaders chose to send our troops into battle, knowing full well what the state of their readiness was.

So, the situation - whatever Mr. Rumsfeld believes - is pretty simple: (1) The United States did not need to go to war against Iraq. (2) For various reasons, the Bush administration believed that it would be in America's best interest to go to war anyway. (3) Our troops did not have the armor that would be needed should they be sent to war.

With these three facts in mind, there are only two morally conscionable courses of action: Either delay the start of any war of choice until proper preparations can be made, or find other ways besides military action of achieving the administrations aims. The one course of action that is completely inexcusable is to KNOWINGLY start an unnecessary war when our troops do not have the provisions they need to wage such a war as safely as possible.

This is, sickeningly, the precise course of action Rumsfeld and his bosses chose.

Three cheers for the soldiers who are holding the secretary and the administration responsible for their actions. This administration has treated with reckless indifference the lives of the men and women who serve in uniform, abusing their loyalty to their nation and to their commander in chief in the worst way possible. The blood of those who have been killed in unarmored or poorly-armored equipment is on the hands of Bush, Rumsfeld, and every other administration official who chose to send our troops into this fiasco.

Start asking the hard questions about George Bush's war. Our troops in Iraq aren't afraid to challenge the Secretary of Defense... why on earth should we be? Or perhaps it's a matter of laziness - we're content to slap little yellow ribbon magnets on our SUVs, but God forbid we actually think for a moment or two, or hold our leaders accountable for their actions.

Support our troops, indeed! Support them when they ask these hard questions! Their lives are on the line.

Yahoo! News: "U.S. Troops Fire Complaints at Rumsfeld"

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld came under friendly fire Wednesday from troops who took up his invitation to ask tough questions about Iraq.

Hundreds of soldiers applauded a comrade who complained to Rumsfeld that U.S. troops were being forced to dig up scrap metal to protect their vehicles in Iraq because of a shortage of armored transport.

'Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to armor our vehicles ... (scrap) that has already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat?, the soldier said.

'We do not have proper armorment for our vehicles to carry us north (into Iraq).'

Good question! All the bazillions of dollars we're spending on Rummy's half-baked excursion into Iraq, and our soldiers are dying by the hundreds just the same, because somehow they don't even have appropriate armor on their equipment?

Rummy, there's a reason your boss avoids real Q&A sessions, and only does them when the audience is a room full of hand-picked GOP partisans. It's because when you open to the floor to honest questions, you're going to be exposed to the real world outside of the Bush-Bubble you've been living in, and that's bound to be unpleasant, now, isn't it?

The FBI is watching...

Courtesy the LangaList, a "preview" of the FBI's latest method of tracking terrorists on the web... you'll hardly even notice! ;)

Yahoo! News: "'Beckham Nativity' Tableau Outrages Churches"

Maybe I'm just perverse, but I don't really see anything horribly offensive about this, and actually find it both fascinating and kind of funny. =)

Reality check: This isn't going to affect anyone's faith in any way at all. OK, so there's a wax tableau of the nativity with Posh and Becks starring as Mary and Joseph. So what? Is anyone going to stumble over this and lose faith? Hardly. Is anyone going to come to faith on account of this? Doubtful. Is it in good taste? That's up to each individual to decide, but to hear the reactions of church people on the other side of the pond, you'd think that Madame Tussaud's had committed an unthinkable moral transgression.

The best thing for religious folk to do is either learn to laugh or at least not to stress over such minor issues. Especially since none of the modern personalities in the tableau is portraying the only character who matters - Jesus, as far as I can tell, is still a tiny newborn baby in a manger.

The wonders of the styptic pencil

I sliced myself but good this morning while shaving. Haven't had a nick like that in years. It actually stung just to run water over the cuts (two parallel ones on my lower lip, about a quarter inch long).

After doing my best to finish up the shave, it was time to see to the battle wounds.

All I can say is, thank God for styptic pencils! Not only would I have needed a ridiculously massive wad of toilet paper stuck to my face to staunch this cut, it probably would have only irritated things worse when I pulled the TP off... and who knows how long I would have needed to leave the wad there?

No, with the styptic pencil, a minute of rubbing it on the accident site and the bleeding had stopped. Serious. I wouldn't have believed it had I not been the benefactor of the styptic miracle. Instead of an ugly, painful, slow-healing wound on my face, I've got a a nick that was clean (albeit noticeable), healing, and tolerable within a minute or two.

I can't sing the praises of the styptic pencil highly enough this morning. If you shave, you need one, because sooner or later we're all boneheads and slice ourselves up.

I'm the case in point!

NYT: "Eight Soldiers Plan to Sue Over Army's Stop-Loss Policy"

In recent months, at any given moment, the stop-loss policy has affected about 7,000 soldiers who had been planning to retire, leave the military or move to a different military job. The rule affects soldiers whose enlistments are scheduled to end within 90 days before their unit is deployed, those already deployed, and those whose term would end up to 90 days after their unit returns. On Friday, Army officials said they did not know the total number who had been affected so far. No date has been announced to end the policy.

Jules Lobel, a lawyer for one of the eight soldiers, described the central complaint this way: They were fraudulently induced to sign up, Mr. Lobel said, because nothing in their enlistment contract mentioned that they might be involuntarily kept on.

The "stop-loss" policy is little more than a small-scale, camouflaged draft. Soldiers are being forced to serve involuntarily in combat zones, not because that was part of the contract the signed upon enlisting, but simply because it suits the Pentagon's needs to compell them to do so.

Men and women whose contractual obligations to the military have been served up to THREE MONTHS before their units ever even deploy for the Middle East are forced into conscription for the entire term of their unit's deployment abroad. Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army spokeswoman, sums it up: "The units deploy together, train together, fight together and come home together."

America is proud of its all-volunteer army, and rightly points out the tremendous benefits in having willing, professional military men and women serving. Although the Pentagon waves the flag of "unit cohesion" to justify the stop-loss order, is there any reason to think that a willing, enthusiastic rookie who is serving of her own volition will be any less solid than an veteran whose morale is in the toilet because his government has coerced him into service against the terms of the contract he signed with it?

The right solution is to offer incentives to soldiers willing to stay on beyond their terms of service. Rewarding them for their faithfulness in a dangerous time is an honorable thing. But those who have completed all the requirements of their enlistment should be allowed to retire according to their contracts if they do not desire to re-enlist. That is the way a contract works, and that is the way a volunteer military works, too. Every day these thousands of soldiers are forced to risk life and limb in violation of the contract THE GOVERNMENT WROTE and they signed is another black mark on the honor of our nation.

How to reform education

An insightful, well-argued op-ed piece in the Times on the legalistic overregulation of of the schools, and that gets in the way of truly reforming our educational system to educate better.

Perhaps it's time to rethink basic assumptions. Is legal micromanagement the right way to run schools? Maybe teachers and principals should be allowed to think for themselves. That's how successful schools have always worked.

The sticking point is distrust. It's human nature to fear the worst, especially when things aren't going well. No one in education seems to trust anyone else. But breaking free from this legal nightmare doesn't require blind trust or some authoritarian structure.

Guarding against incompetence or unfairness can be accomplished far more effectively with human oversight than with legal central planning.

Yahoo! News: "Sad Sign of the Times..."

A Father Christmas will have a webcam in his grotto to overcome parents' concerns after a number of high-profile pedophile cases in Britain in the past few years.

All the world's problems can be solved with a little more paranoia, a little less trust, and a whole bunch of surveillance cameras... *rolls eyes*

NYT: "IBM Said to Put Its PC Business on the Market"

Although I understand how this came about, it makes me sad, nonetheless. IBM has always made superior computers, and it's a shame to see an industry pioneer call it quits.

International Business Machines, whose first I.B.M. PC in 1981 moved personal computing out of the hobby shop and into the corporate and consumer mainstream, has put the business up for sale, people close to the negotiations said yesterday.

While I.B.M. long ago ceded the lead in the personal computer market to Dell and Hewlett-Packard so it could focus instead on the more lucrative corporate server and computer services business, a sale would nonetheless bring the end of an era in an industry that it helped invent. The sale, likely to be in the $1 billion to $2 billion range, is expected to include the entire range of desktop, laptop and notebook computers made by I.B.M.

The retreat from the business may be the ultimate acknowledgement that the personal computer has become a staple of everyday life, a commodity product, yielding very slim profits. The companies that make the most money from PC's these days are Microsoft and Intel - whose software and chips are the standard for most of the personal computers sold, regardless of the maker.

Thomas Friedman: "The 9/11 Bubble"

This is a time when we really need a strong Treasury secretary capable of speaking up for fiscal sanity. We are about to embark on a 10-year period in which recent tax cuts and runaway spending are expected to add $5 trillion to the cumulative deficit. In my lifetime we will have gone from the Greatest Generation to the Profligate Generation to the Bankrupt Generation. Yes, I'm talking to you 20-year-olds. President Bush has called for sacrifice - but not by his generation. He's passing the bill onto your generation.