Not for Mom

If you have nothing going the first few days in May, why not enter to win a spot on the WeatherBug 2005 Storm Chase Team?

Poynter Online: "Reading Terri Schiavo"

Terri Schiavo's long struggle is, for better or for worse, finally over this morning. God grant her peaceful sleep as she awaits the Resurrection Day when she and all her loved ones will be reunited. God grant also that those who have loved Terri and have fought so bitterly in their love for her finally find peace within themselves and among each other. Terri's great hope never was in a feeding tube or a doctor's hands, but in the Easter promise of a new and better life with all those who love her the far side of the grave.

Terri's passing is perhaps both a time of anguish and a moment of relief. Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute offers this thoughtful commentary on the many meanings of Terri Schiavo's life and death. It seems a fitting coda to this difficult chapter of her life.

He is risen!

He is risen indeed!

Have a blessed Easter... =)

"Culture of Life" Hypocrisy: The Saga Continues

The latest twist:

Exposing a previously unknown episode, the Los Angeles Times reported late Saturday that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who this week championed political intervention in the Terry Schaivo case, agreed to his own family’s decision in 1988 to take his own father off life support and allow him to die.

The Times noted similarities between the DeLay and Schiavo cases: 'Both stricken patients were severely brain damaged. Both were incapable of surviving without continuing medical assistance. Both were said to have expressed a desire to be spared life sustained by machine. And neither left a living will.'

Blog outage

My apologies to anyone who's tried to access my blog in the last 24 hours or so. There were issues with my web host that took multiple contacts with tech support to resolve. Things are functioning just fine now, and I'll be back to my regular (or irregular) blogging schedule again. There are a few posts from yesterday that never made it to the server... check them out.

Commando art

A UK artist known only as Banksy infiltrated three of New York's top art museums last week. He did not, however, steal anything off the walls... instead, he left the galleries richer than they were before his visit. With the help of a few accomplices to create distractions and document the operation, Banksy superglued his own satiric pieces of art into the galleries' collections. Some of the artist's pieces seem to have remained "on display" for two or three days before being discovered and removed. Pictures of Banksy's "installation" are available at the Wooster Collective. Way to go!

NYT: "Me and My Hybrid"

A recent Times column by Oliver Sacks suggests an important aspect of our energy policy be to use the technology available today to reduce our dependency on oil:

There are some 200 million cars and light trucks on the road in the United States, and if even half of them saved as much fuel as I do now, the total savings would be huge: 50 billion or more gallons of gas a year. This is equivalent to 1.2 billion barrels of oil, about half the entire annual production of oil in the United States and a fifth of what the most reasonable estimates hold can be recovered in total from the Alaska refuge.

In addition, I would suggest that the government could easily mandate that the vast majority of its fleet vehicles use hybrid technology. Obviously certain applications might have performance requirements that would require an exception (police cruisers come to mind), but how many city, state and federal government vehicles spend their lives doing short trips around the city, serve as passenger vehicles for road trips, deliver goods and people from one place to another? All of these needs could just as easily be met by hybrids as conventional combustion engine vehicles, and at a huge savings in gas consumption.

Consider just one source of govenment vehicles - the 190,000 strong fleet of the GSA. The GSA Fleet is required to maintain a certain percentage of specific vehicle types as alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs). These are not necessarily hybrids, but can be from a wide variety of more- or less-green technologies.

The current GSA Fleet includes 30,000 AFVs, or about 16% of the total fleet. Assuming these vehicles have feul efficiencies similar to Mr. Sacks' hybrid, these AFVs produce a savings of 180,000-360,000 barrels of oil each year - in the neighborhood of 1-2 million gallons of gas. Good, but it could be much better.

Say the percentage were to creep up to just 25% of the fleet. Then we'd be looking at 285,000-570,000 barrels of oil - 2-3 million gallons of gas saved each year with no trade-off in vehicle performance or capability.

You can do the math. At 50% of its fleet, the GSA's AFVs would save .57-1.2 million barrels of oil. At 75%, it becomes .85-1.7 million barrels.

And that's just for one source of govenment automobiles, through a single agency.

According to the Federal Highway Administration, the total number of government fleet vehicles (listed as "publicly owned" in the table) at any level - city, county, state, or federal - was in the neighborhood of 1.3 million in 2003. If government on all levels were to start demanding hybrid technology, we could see savings of up to 6-12 million barrels of oil per year.

(An in-depth analysis of AFV technology in the government fleet can be found here.)

Granted, that's a good amount of oil saved, with little to no sacrifice made. But the best is yet to be considered.

If a million or so government fleet vehicles were to be replaced with hybrids, and the governments were to purchase exclusively or almost exclusively hybrid vehicles each year, the technology would go mainstream in a hurry. Last year (a good year for hybrids), hybrid sales totaled only 84,199 units in the United States. These sales are held back in part by ignorance about the technology ("Don't you need to plug it in at night?") and part by the premium a limited-demand item carries. A government investment in hybrid vehicles would (a) help convince consumers that this technology is reliable and ready for prime time; (b) cause manufacturers to ramp up production of hybrids and expand the available options in hybrid vehicles, creating lower prices and greater consumer demand; and (c) result in a much greater number of shops with expertise in maintaining and repairing a hybrid engine system.

In order for Sacks' dream of half of all American vehicles getting hybrid-style mileage to come true, the technology is going to need to hit the mainstream. Hybrids are definitely the next thing in automotives, and they will eventually become common. Why not give auto makers an incentive to hurry the hybrid future along, while cutting our dependency on oil and saving the planet in the process?

Simply using its massive purchasing power to encourage greener behavior from the automotive industry is much less coercive than the present tax incentives offered to purchasers of hybrid vehicles. Rather than yet another tax break, why not let the government simply blaze the trail, making it that much easier for individuals to follow?

It's a win-win situation.

Forgiven

Ellie's decided to forgive me for putting medicine in her ears. ;) All it seemed to take was me leaving for an hour or so yesterday to go to the office. She must have decided that it's better to have me around, even if I sometimes give her medicine, than to not have me here!

Doggie blues

Wow... never seen this before. Ellie doesn't trust me.

Ever since last night, when I gave her ears a shot of the Epiotic cleanser that cockers need periodically for healthy ears, she's been cautious almost to the point of paranoia. She'll play and take treats, but she doesn't seem ready to forget that I put that stuff in her ears... she keeps her distance, and gets pretty rigid when I pick her up and try to reassure her. She's always on guard, eyes wide open, legs stiff, and ready to run off to the study as soon as I let her go.

I'm sure she'll get over it in a day or so, but it's a strange, discouraging thing, just the same. My dogs have always been very forgiving... I've never had a dog hold a grudge overnight before. =(

Ping Pong in the Matrix

Very, very clever the way they staged this. =) See what a game of ping pong might look like when played within the world of The Matrix. (Requires Flash)

"Culture of Life" Hypocrisy, Part III

This from Slate:

As Republicans plotted congressional intervention last week to extend the life of Terri Schiavo, a Texas woman named Wanda Hudson watched her 6-month-old baby die in her arms after doctors removed the breathing tube that kept him alive. Hudson didn't want the tube removed, but the baby's doctors decided for her. A judge signed off on the decision under the Texas futile care law -- a provision first signed into law in 1999 by then-Gov. George W. Bush.

Under the 1999 law, doctors in Texas, with the support of a hospital ethics committee, can overrule the wishes of family members and terminate life-support measures if they believe further care would be futile. Bush signed the bill after interested parties, including antiabortion activists, agreed on compromise language that required hospitals to give families 10 days' notice before terminating care and to help families find an alternative treatment facility that would continue care instead.

Frank Cammuso: "Name That Steroid"

Too funny not to quote here: From today's NYT, Frank Cammuso offers this homage to a classic bit of comedy...

At the Congressional hearings last week on steroid use in baseball, the star witnesses refused to name names. It's just as well - if they had, it could have been very confusing.

SENATOR Mr. Chairman, I'd like to thank the witness for agreeing to testify today. Though I don't follow baseball closely, I consider the issue of illicit substances to be of critical importance in American sports. I have one question for the witness: Sir, will you tell us names of players that use these substances?

PLAYER Yes, sir. I can tell you Who is on steroids.

SENATOR Good. Then who is on steroids?

PLAYER That's correct.

SENATOR I want the player's name.

PLAYER Who.

SENATOR The player on steroids.

PLAYER Who.

SENATOR I'm asking you who's on steroids?

PLAYER Who.

SENATOR The guy on steroids is who?

PLAYER Correct.

SENATOR I warn you, sir, not to make a mockery of this hearing. You are under oath. What is the name of the player on steroids?

PLAYER No, sir. What is on androgen.

SENATOR I'm not asking who's on androgen!

PLAYER Who's on steroids.

SENATOR I don't know!

PLAYER He's on Oxandrin.

SENATOR Who?

PLAYER I Don't Know.

SENATOR Who is on Oxandrin?

PLAYER No, sir. Who is on steroids.

SENATOR That does it. I have had enough. You, sir, are stonewalling!

PLAYER No, sir. He's up next.

*ROTFL* If you've never heard Abbott and Costello perform their original "Who's on first?" routine, be sure to click on the audio link on the left-hand side of the page mentioned above. You can read along word-for-word with the transcript - it moves pretty fast, and it's an older recording. Still one of the funniest comedy bits ever performed!

Logitech Harmony 880 LCD Remote

*DROOOOOOOOOOOOL*

More "culture of life" hypocrisy

We should investigate every avenue before we take the life of a living human being. That's the very least we can do for her.

- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex), regarding congressional attempts to legislatively overrule the Florida court system in order to keep Terri Schiavo on a feeding tube indefinitely

TOM DELAY on CRIME:

• Voted NO on maintaining right of habeus corpus in Death Penalty Appeals. (Mar 1996)
• Voted YES on making federal death penalty appeals harder. (Feb 1995)
• Voted NO on replacing death penalty with life imprisonment. (Apr 1994)
• More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty. (Sep 1994)

- according to ActiVote, a non-partisan, non-profit organization getting Americans to vote and become involved in their government

Chocolate bunnies

I had a good, long laugh this morning - this tidbit in my e-mail, courtesy of Jason:

A look into the Wayback Machine...

While going through my files this evening, I came across a real find - a sermon dating back to the summer after I graduated from Concordia.

This piece, preached on June 18, 1998 in Hutchinson, is the oldest sermon I've been able to uncover, and there probably aren't more than one or two that I would have ever preached before it, anyhow.

I've keyed in the text, and you can read it in my sermon archives.

New Scientist: "Genes contribute to religious inclination"

Tip o' the hat to David for the link!

Genes may help determine how religious a person is, suggests a new study of US twins. And the effects of a religious upbringing may fade with time.

Bush's "culture of life"

White House spokesman Scott McClellan is quoted as saying: "The president believes we ought to be building a culture of life in America. ... The president believes that our society, our laws and our courts ought to have a presumption in favor of life, particularly in cases like this where serious questions and doubts are raised."

Try telling these 442 men and women on Texas' death row about George W. Bush's culture of life. Tell them about the "presumption in favor of life" that Texas laws and courts supposedly maintain.

The "case" McClellan was speaking about is that of Terri Schiavo, the comatose woman whose doctors confirm she is in a persistant vegetative state - a completely unresponsive state that has not changed in years. There is no hope for improvement, her doctors agree. Mrs. Schiavo indicated to her husband (who is legally obligated to pay her medical bills) that she would not want to be artificially kept alive in such a state. Mrs. Schiavo's parents have contested this, and have fought (and lost) repeated battles in court to keep Terry on a feeding tube. The Florida legislature and governor have attempted to create laws specifically to keep this one woman on life support indefinitely. Now the US Congress is using its scarce time to get its politcal hands into the mud.

A president who governed the most bloodthirsty state in the union and who presided over the executions of more than 150 men and women has no moral authority to speak of "presumptions in favor of life" in the legal system. A Republican party that is led by Texans and outspokenly in favor of capital punishment has no business legislating the fate of one woman against her own and her husband's mutual wishes.

Apparently the presumptions of life and Republican culture of life only involve fetuses and invalids. What hypocrisy!

Addendum: I should also point out that many Democrats who participated in this bipartisan meddling are by no means free of hypocrisy - though Hillary Clinton has gone on the record describing abortion as a terrible tragedy, one that our nation should strive to make as rare as possible while not resorting to criminalization, many Democrats still come across as nearly celebrating abortion. The suggestion that abortion is ever anything less than tragic, while at the same time legislatively tinkering in the lives of the Schiavos is every bit as ghoulish and hypocritical as the posturing of the pro-death penalty Republicans.

NYT: "A Few Tips to Cope With Life's Annoyances"

Absolutely freakin' brilliant!

Wesley A. Williams spent more than a year exacting his revenge against junk mailers. When signing up for a no-junk-mail list failed to stem the flow, he resorted to writing at the top of each unwanted item: 'Not at this address. Return to sender.' But the mail kept coming because the envelopes had 'or current resident' on them, obligating mail carriers to deliver it, he said.

Next, he began stuffing the mail back into the 'business reply' envelope and sending it back so that the mailer would have to pay the postage. 'That wasn't exacting a heavy enough cost from them for bothering me,' said Mr. Williams, 35, a middle school science teacher who lives in Melrose, N.Y., near Albany.

After checking with a postal clerk about the legality of stepping up his efforts, he began cutting up magazines, heavy bond paper, and small strips of sheet metal and stuffing them into the business reply envelopes that came with the junk packages.

'You wouldn't believe how heavy I got some of these envelopes to weigh,' said Mr. Williams, who added that he saw an immediate drop in the amount of arriving junk mail. A spokesman for the United States Postal Service, Gerald McKiernan, said that Mr. Williams's actions sounded legal, as long as the envelope was properly sealed.

NYT: "Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged Television News"

It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.

'Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.,' a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of 'another success' in the Bush administration's 'drive to strengthen aviation security'; the reporter called it 'one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history.' A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The 'reporter' covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.

Let me get this straight - the Bush administration is producing "news spots" promoting its programs, advancing its agendas, and hyping its "successes," and television news programs are simply airing the spots as "news" items? I don't know which player in this little farce is more despicable - the politicians who are butchering the First Amendment through deceptive PR spots masquerading as news, or the television stations that are craven enough (or lazy enough) to air these infomercials.

Here's a tip: Any time your government is paying pitchmen to pose as journalists and passing off propaganda as legit news, that's a good time to start being afraid. Such a government is only a few tenuous steps away from the media control of those baddies we all love to hate: North Korea, Iran, China, Cuba, and so on.

95% of Americans get their news (what little they get) by watching TV. How unnerving to think that even the little information about the world at large our neighbors consume might in reality be nothing more than shilling for the President and his cronies?

Another one from Greg

Greg Albrecht is on a roll today - here's another excellent thought from his PTM newsletter:

I believe that it is our duty, indeed our pleasure, as Christians, to share the good news with others. I do not believe that if we fail to do so that others will burn in hell. I believe that God uses us as his tools because he wants to, not because he has to. We are like the little boy who "helps" his father mow the lawn -- so he grasps the handles of the mower, but his feet don't touch the ground, so his father carries him around the yard as the young child "helps" mow the yard -- and when the task is finished the child has a sense that he/she helped. God does not need us -- he uses us because he wants to involve us in his kingdom. We are not the only hope for the world. God has his own ways of saving others. This does not mean that we should be content to spectate, and watch -- but it does mean that our involvement is not the only means of salvation for the lost. That's great news! After all, just take a look at the work that needs to be done, and for that matter, take a look at the work that wasn't done in history -- by Christians, by the church. There is hope beyond our efforts. Isn't that the message of the gospel? We are saved by grace, not by works? Exactly!!

In fact, it should be pointed out that the little boy who "helps" his dad mow is actually making the job more strenuous. Like many things in life, it's a lot easier to do the job yourself than to have others on board "helping" like this... but God invites us to help him share the good news about Jesus, knowing he's going to have to carry us in addition to pushing the mower. And all because he loves us and loves to honor our desire to work with Dad.

Very nice illustration, Greg!

Albrecht - "Living in the 'good ol' days'?"

Another very insightful look at the myth of the "good ol' days" of America's "Christian" past, this time from Plain Truth's Greg Albrecht. (I'm quoting Greg's article in its entirety - it's from the latest PTM newsletter, and I can't find it posted on the Plain Truth web site. I'll be glad to replace it with a link if one becomes available.)

Do you know anyone who can't seem to get over the past and move on? Maybe things seemed simpler, less threatening, less confusing and less hectic back then. Some Christians favor a 19th century retro style. The novels they read are set in the antebellum South, replete with hoop-skirted ladies and aristocratic gentlemen. The paintings on their walls show small-town scenes with cozy cottages whose windows glow with candlelight and gas lamps. The furniture and appointments in their homes are early American, with frilly draperies and knick-knacks. There’s nothing wrong with that charming décor, yet those who immerse themselves in such surroundings may be expressing a wish to live in an earlier era. Indeed, some are calling for America to turn back the clock to yesteryear -- to a time, some say, when people had sound moral values and were more Christian.

Yet the grim historical truth does not support that romantic vision. The19th century was a time of unspeakable violence, of ignorance and prejudice, of exploitation and slavery. Modern medicine and science was in its infancy. Our responsibility to the environment was a radical notion shared by only a few. And this was just in America -- the rest of the world suffered in the throes of abject poverty, dominated by warring empires, monarchies, duchies and other non-democratic institutions that would seem tyrannical by today’s standards.

It is unclear what people mean when they advocate a return to America’s “Christian heritage.” A close examination of the lives of the American founding fathers shows that, although some of them may have been nominally Christian, most could not be described as devout. The Constitution is a wonderful document that gives us freedoms unprecidented in history. But although it contains some themes consistent with historical Christian thought, it is not a particularly Christian document. At the time our government was formed, there is no clear evidence that the general public was any more devoutly Christian. Rather, historical documents show that church attendance has neither increased or decreased much from that time until now.

Yet many continue to believe the myth that if we turn back the cultural clock, the United States will experience a great “revival” and return to being the great Christian nation it once was. But how far should the clock be turned back? How far back do we have to go to find a truly Christian culture? The Reformation? The Middle Ages? The Ancient world? Would we want to go back to New Testament days? Some Christians would love that opportunity -- but they would suddenly find themselves living as an oppressed minority in the midst of a brutal, pagan culture.

The truth is that every age of human civilization has its overwhelming problems. Every age has its tyrants, rebels, hedonists, opportunists, charlatans, apathetics, religious fanatics, political zealots, evildoers -- and its followers of God. There is no “best time” to live except the time in which God has placed us. The question is not when but who? Instead of turning to an earlier time and living in the good ol’ days, we ought to be turning to the Lord of all time. We ought to be fully experiencing life now, in the present world -- but living in Jesus.

But Were They Really the ''Good Old Days?''

Dean Merrill offers this fine reality check for those who pine for the "good old days" when America was a decent, "Christian" nation rather than the godless whore it's supposed to have become since. Religion and faith have always played an important role in American history, and continue to do so. However, America has never been, and cannot be a "Christian" nation, somehow chosen by God's own finger. Living in the fantasy world of an idealized past keeps Christians from seeing and addressing the very real mission needs of the present.

Merrill wraps up:

Living today in this land of the free and home of the brave, we may openly say that, despite our shortcomings, we are a blessed people. God has given us everything from a temperate climate to rich soil to bountiful mineral resources to usable harbors to stunning scenery.

But that is not the same as saying we are his chosen people. If we were officially chosen for his special favors, where would that leave the Canadians, the Koreans, the Brazilians and all the other societies with sizable Christian populations? Would they be second-class by comparison?

We would do well to use the opportunities before us and not waste time pining for 'the good old days' of 40 years ago -- or 80 or 220 or 370. Church attendance has not fallen off a cliff; the best available statistics show a more-or-less level line in the 30-to-45 percent zone ever since the early 1800s. Some liberties to preach the gospel have been curtailed (access to public school students, for example), while at the same time technology has invented new ones (radio, television, videocassette, the Internet) that revivalists Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney never had the opportunity to use.

Regardless of contemporary problems, hostile attitudes and trendy relativism, we are not that much worse off than our forebears, and the power of Christ is more than enough to meet the challenge.

IF YOU HAVE BEEN SPAMMED...

Beginning yesterday morning, some spammers have been sending messages that use forged information to make it appear that I or someone at my domain is sending the garbage. If you have been spammed by "male enhancement" messages that appear to come from someone@bobschaefer.com, please know that I have nothing to do with those spammers or their junk. I am very sorry that you're receiving it, and am quite peeved that bobschaefer.com is being used as a cover this way.

Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing that I can do to stop it. The spam isn't coming from my domain, nor is it ever passing through it. Due to the way e-mail protocols are setup, anyone can make an e-mail appear to come from any domain they choose, just by changing a few quick settings in their e-mail client. That's what's happening here.

The scum in question has simply told his e-mail program to use gobbledygook addresses at bobschaefer.com (doesn't matter that they don't exist) as the FROM: and REPLY TO: addresses for their spam. A person looking closely at the e-mail headers can see right through this little trick, because the IP address of the sending computer (203.232.72.139, to use one example) doesn't match with my domain. But anyone who just scans the message might come to the conclusion that I'm behind the junk, which is part of how spammers do their slimy business.

Even better (from the scum's point of view), the angry replies, the "please remove me" notes, and all of the server messages reporting unknown e-mail addresses will come to me, rather than to the spammer.

Because these spammers use multiple domains, and are based outside of the US, the odds of actually nailing them are more or less zilch. And because the only computers I have any control over aren't involved in these messages at all, there's no way to stop spammers (or anyone else, for that matter) from spoofing bobschaefer.com this way. That's just the way the Internet works today - if you want to send an e-mail that appears to come from Dub@whitehouse.gov, it's painfully easy to do so. Just be advised that Dub has a much better team of spam hunters at his disposal than I do.

So if you've received a junk e-mail that looks like it might come from me, please know that I had nothing to do with it, that I'm as angry about it as you are, and if there were any way I could do anything about it, I promise you I'd zap the sleaze right off the Internet in a nanosecond.