The Academic Bubble.

CSUF English Professor Craig Bernthal documents why the academic bubble is about to burst.

An Inconvenient Truth - there has been no global warming for the last 15 years and...

...it may be getting colder.

According to the Daily Mail:

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Amazon Review -

"The End of Eternity" by Isaac Asimov.

Please go here and give me a "helpful" vote.

This is my first re-read of Asimov's "End of Eternity" in nearly forty years. It was interesting to see what I misremembered and how my perception of the book may have changed since my first reading in my mid-teens.

****Spoiler Warning****

Andrew Harlan is a "Technician" in "Eternity." "Eternity" is an organization/environment that stands apart and outside of "Time" during all the centuries running from the 27th Century up to the 70,000th Century. Eternity is given to making changes in history in order to cause "reality changes" in a given century. These reality changes are designed to improve the human condition by editing wars, disasters and dysfunctional social customs out of history. Under Asimov's rules, "reality changes" tend to wash out after a few centuries so that a change in one century doesn't really have much effect on a century more than a few centuries "upwhen," i.e., in the future.

Technicians are the personnel in Eternity who actually implement the changes in Time that are determined by "Computers" and "Sociologists" and other "Specialists." Because of their "grim reaper"-like occupation - reality changes cause people to disappear or for personality changes or the elimination of great works of art and scientific progress - Technicians are the scape-goats of Eternity, and are ostracized but feared.

Harlan is, to put it simply, something of a "dick." He's arrogant and prickly and not-likeable. And, yet, he's taken as a protege by the head Computer, Twissel, who is one of the most powerful men in Eternity. One of Harlan's queer interests is his study of the Primitive, i.e., the period before time-travel was invented by a rare genius named Vikkor Mallanson in the 24th Century. Along with other tasks given to him by Harlan is given to him by Twissel, Harlan is told to tutor an odd young man named Cooper in the history and customs of the Primitive eras.

Harlan also meets a woman named Noyes Lambert, who, frankly, seduces him. Harlan flips from being a total misogynist - Eternals are generally celibate, and very few Eternals are women because extracting women from Time is much more disruptive of Reality than extracting men. So, Harlan has all the social graces and emotional maturity of a twelve year old. He falls hard, and starts committing crimes because of his infatuation for Noyes.

There is also the overriding mystery of the "hidden centuries" - an 80,000 century period into which the Eternals can traverse but not enter, but at the end of which, when the Eternals can re-enter time, humanity has gone extinct. There is also the overriding them of the futility of space travel. In fact, the only reality change we observe is when Harlan moves a cup by four feet in 5284th Century and eliminates space travel from the Reality of that era.

Who is Cooper? Why are there the "hidden centuries"? Why the heck does the lovely and uninhibited Noyes seduce the cold-fish and unlikable Harlan?

***End Spoilers ***

Assessment:

Asimov works all of the questions he sets for himself with near mathematical precision. The story moves along, and we do get a resolution of the questions. The story is entertaining.

But...

It may be the pespective change after forty years, but I found that Harlan was a jerk. A point that Asimov was making, of course, was that Harlan was, in fact, a jerk, but I found it harder to engage with the story in my fifties when I didn't like the insufferable Harlan, than in my teens when I was all about the *gosh, wow* storyline. That is certainly not accidental, since, in many ways, Asimov and science fiction of the '50s was about appealing to teenage males.

Another issue that kept recurring to me was "how does Eternity work?" Why don't Eternals run into themselves when they return from their missions? There are apparently many "generations" of Eternals working in their various sections of Eternity - Eternals age and die like Timers - but apparently one generation from a later "time" in "Eternity" does not meet the members of prior generation. How does that work? Asimov simply assumes that this is not a question and moves from there. Fine. He's the author, and there probably is not answer, so he's entitled to his legerdemain. I don't recall being concerned with this forty years ago, but today it kept recurring in my mind.

Another thing is that Harlan's flip from misogynist to infatuated teenager seemed unreal and unappetizing. Again, though, this is classic Asimov and the fact that his strength was ideas and not characters.

On the other hand, I always remembered that "The End of Eternity" was the true prequel to Asimov's Galactic Empire stories. I have always made a note in my mental schema of Asimov's writings that the fundamental choice offered by Asimov was Eternity or Galactic Empire.

That choice is the thought-provoking idea that we expect from Asimov, and it is the idea that give the book its motive power and entertainment value, as well as the fact that this quick read has remained in my memory for four decades.

"The End of Eternity" is a must-read for anyone interested in Asimov or "classic" science fiction. It is worth reading for anyone looking for a plot-driven science fiction book that delivers a single big idea in a quick, entertaining read.

Post-Script:

Something occurred to me after I put this review to bed, and it seemed too interesting not to note somewhere.

On reflection it occurred to me how much Eternity resembles the milieu of Asimov's primary occupation - academia in a university from the 1930s through the 1950s.

Consider, for example, the absence of women from Eternity.  Certainly, that would approximate what Asimov saw when he attended department meetings. Likewise, Eternity is broken down into departments and specializations, such as "Sociologist" and "Computer" and "Life Plotter" and "Observer." The rigid limits of these specializations look like university departments.

Then there is Harlan's odd reflection on the role of "Maintenance."  Harlan reflects that no one notices Maintenance workers, but without Maintenance workers - who are really not Eternals in some sense - Eternity couldn't last more than a few days.  It sounds almost as if Asimov is reflecting on the nameless, forgotten university staff that changed the lighbulbs in his classroom.

And, then, there is the distinction between thinking and doing.  Eternity exists to critique what others have done.  Eternals review the reality produced by people really doing things in Time. When the Eternal's "criticism" of Reality find reality lacking with respect to the standards set by Eternity, then Eternity changes the reality of Timers without consulting the Timers for their desires.  Timers are like students in a classroom who will accept the curriculum provided by their intellectual "professors" in Eternity.

There is also the disdain of the other professional classes for the "men of action" - the Technicians.  The Technicians do things - they don't merely critique.  They are the professors involved in applying science; they aren't engaged in pure abstract research. I wonder if Asimov exprienced a kind of similar ostracism at the hands of other professors on account of his involvement in writing science fiction.

Finally, Eternity is the antithesis of the Galactic Empire. One thing that a Galactic Empire is essentially is that it is a thing made by "doers" not "critiques."  The ascendent elite of a Galactic Empire will be people who do things - make things - conquer - invent - rather than set back and critique others who do those things.  Again, I wonder if Asimov's view of Eternity ruling out the Galactic Empire, and vice versa, does't in some way arise from the uneasy sense of academia that there was a world "out there" that viewed academic values with disdain.

I'm not saying that this interpretation is essential to an understanding of "The End of Eternity," but, on reflection, I'm now wondering how much of Asimov's personal experience went into shaping his view of Eternity.

Uber-cool!

Scale of the universe - from Quantum Foam to the Cosmos.

Via the King of Cool.

"The Economic Chart that may Doom the Obama Presidency."

According to James Pethoukis and the Wall Street Journal the "Obama 'recovery'" doesn't feature any economic growth.

In his State of the Union response the other night, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels neatly summed up Mitt Romney’s (who has a roughly 90 percent chance of being the GOP nominee according to Intrade) economic case against President Barack Obama: “The president did not cause the economic and fiscal crises that continue in America tonight, but he was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse.”

In other words, the Obama Recovery stinks. Even if today’s GDP report—for the fourth quarter of 2011—shows 3 percent growth or better, it would be just the fourth time that has happened since the economy began turning up in June 2009: 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, 3.9 percent in the first quarter of 2010, and 3.8 percent in the second quarter of 2010. But no 3 percent-plus quarters since then.

The first nine quarters of the Reagan Recovery, by contrast, looked like this: 5.1 percent, 9.3 percent, 8.1 percent, 8.5 percent, 8.0 percent, 7.1 percent, 3.9 percent, 3.3 percent, 3.8, percent, 3.4 percent. In fact, the Reagan Boom went from the first quarter of 1983 until the second quarter of 1986 without notching a sub-3 percent GDP quarter.

So, while the Reagan Recovery quickly made up for lost years of growth, not so much for the Obama Recovery, as this chart in today’s Wall Street Journal makes clear:

China may be heading for economic trouble.

The Telegraph observes:

A quick observation.

I could not help noticing that China’s imports from Japan fell 16.2pc in December. Imports from Taiwan fell 6.2pc.

The Shanghai Container Freight Index fell 1.4pc to a record low of 919.44 in November, after sliding relentlessly for several months. It has picked up slightly since.

The Baltic Dry Index measuring freight rates for ores, grains, and bulk goods, has fallen 44pc over the last year. Kasper Moller from Maersk in Beijing said weak Chinese demand for iron ore was the key culprit.

Cautionary warning. The BDI index also reflects the shipping glut, so it is not a pure indicator.

However, rail, road, river and air freight volume for the whole of China fell to 31780m tons in November (latest data), from 32340m tons in October. Not a big fall, but still negative. (National Bureau of Statistics of China.)

Chinese electricity use was flat in over the Autumn, with a sharp fall in the (year-on-year) growth rates from 8.9pc in September, to 8pc in October, and 7.7pc in December.

Residential investment has been contracting on a monthly basis, and of course property prices are now falling in all but two of China’s 70 largest cities.
So how did China pull off an economic growth rate of 8.9pc in the fourth quarter?

Beats me.

I strongly suspect that the trade and power data reveal the true state of China’s economy.

There clearly was a pick up in early January but I stick to my view that China has inflated its credit bubble beyond the limits of safety – an increase of 100pc of GDP in five years, or twice US credit growth from 2002-2007 – and that Beijing cannot continue to gain much traction with this sort of artificial stimulus.

Indeed, the extra boost to GDP from each extra yuan of credit has collapsed, according to Fitch Ratings.

A final point. There is a widespread misunderstanding that China’s households can easily come to the rescue by cranking up spending because they have the world’s highest savings rate, and consumption is just 36pc of GDP.

Prof Michael Pettis from Beijing University puts that one to rest. The Chinese do not have a much higher personal savings rate than other East Asians. The reason why consumption is so low is that wages are low, the worker share of GDP is low, and the whole economy is massively deformed and tilted towards excess investment.

This is deeply structural. It cannot be changed with a flick of the fingers, and contains the seeds of its own destruction.

It's either an injustice that cries out to Heaven or the Daily Mail...

... was just looking for another reason to run some "skin pics."

"Mother-of-four, 28, banned from every nightclub in town for being 'too old to wear skimpy outfits'

"With a size six figure and 36DD chest, this petite blonde thought she would have no trouble getting into a nightclub.

But 28-year-old Lisa Woodman has been banned from every hotspot in her home town - after being told she is too old to wear skimpy outfits.

The furious mother-of-four was barred from three venues in Worcester, West Midlands, because of her low-cut tops, short skirts and knee-length boots."

And the ironic thing is that one of the clubs she was banned from is called "Tramps."

Are you part of the elite or part of the masses?

The Volokh Conspiracy explains the thesis of Charles Murray's new book:

In his new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, Charles Murray argues that a new elite class has emerged that is much more ignorant about the lives of ordinary Americans than were the elites of earlier generations:

As the new upper class increasingly consists of people who were born into upper-middle-class families and have never lived outside the upper-middle-class bubble, the danger increases that the people who have so much influence on the course of the nation have little direct experience with the lives of ordinary Americans, and make their judgments about what’s good for other people based on their own highly atypical lives...

Many of the members of the new upper class are balkanized. Furthermore, their ignorance about other Americans is more problematic than the ignorance of other Americans about them. It is not a problem if truck drivers cannot empathize with the priorities of Yale professors. It is a problem if Yale professors, or producers of network news programs, or CEOs of great corporations, or presidential advisers cannot empathize with the priorities of truck drivers. It is inevitable that people have large areas of ignorance about how others live, but that makes it all the more important that the members of the new upper class be aware of the breadth and depth of their ignorance.

If Murray is right, this kind of elite ignorance is the flip side of the general public’s political ignorance. Public ignorance is dangerous because it reduces the quality of voting decisions; elite ignorance because it reduces the quality of the decisions made by elites once they get into positions of power.

To illustrate his point, Murray includes in the book a 25 question quiz that is intended to test readers’ knowledge and exposure to mainstream non-upper middle class culture (he assumes that most of the readers are members of the upper middle class elite). I managed a middling 37 on his 0–99 point scale.

As Murray recognizes, one can easily quibble about the details of many of the questions. For example, I not only have “attended” a Rotary Club meeting, but actually gave a speech at one when I was 17. Maybe I should get extra credit for the latter. I would also have achieved a higher score if there were more sports-related questions. Other readers will have different complaints. Even so, there is no reasonable version of this test on which I would have come out looking like a Man of the People. More generally, Murray is surely right that there is a culture gap between the new upper middle class and the rest of the public, and that the former is often ignorant about the lives of the latter.

Here is the test.

I scored a 51, which puts me somewhere between first generation middle-class with working class parents and first generation upper-middle-class with middle class parents.

Which is just about right.

Interesting.

Grace notes on the Titanic.

I missed this story about the Hungarian violinist named Sandor Feher, who showed a rare sense of chivalry during the Costa Concordia fiasco/debacle/disaster:

Like much of the world, I have been riveted by the horrid fate of the Costa Concordia, which ran aground last Friday. It should never have happened, of course, and the investigation into the how and why is likely to be long and painful.

News reports about the first victim identified from the wreckage only adds to the darkness of this event. He was a 38-year-old Hungarian violinist named
Sandor Feher, who worked aboard the ship as a member of the the Bianco Trio.

Witnesses say that Mr. Feher first helped children with their life jackets before returning to his cabin for his violin. It is hard not to think of the Titanic and stories of its musicians.

Here's a nice post on the state of chivalry today.

John Stewart on the State of the Union Address.

Hmmm...what does it mean when the biggest sycophant ever starts taking shots at Obama?

Advice after losing a job.

Susannah Breslin reflects:

TIP #3: Do something or die

If you asked me what my biggest mistake was before I lost my job, I’d say it was not doing something when I saw what was coming. After the axe fell, I didn’t do enough quickly enough. This is the type of person I am. Never enough, never enough, never enough, is the refrain in my head.

If you asked me what my smartest decision was after I lost my job, I’d say it was moving. Moving in any way, shape or form. To a new city. Into new roles. Changing my life so what happened before wouldn’t happen again, not in the same way, anyway.

After you lose your job, these are your enemies: pity and paralysis, depression and anxiety, indecision and fear.

After you lose your job, these are your friends: perseverance and resilience, humility and self-examination, defiance and reinvention.

Here’s what I have to say after being downsized one year ago: Thank god.

It allowed me recreate myself, to free myself, to become something way more interesting than what I was.

Soylent Green is People...

...from the "sins that cry out to Heaven" file.


Pepsi is using aborted fetuses in soda flavoring research:

Senomyx, a California-based biotechnology company that specializes in developing food flavorings, is one such company that uses aborted embryonic cells to create "isolated human taste receptors," which are used in the production of food chemicals. And this company has partnered with several major food manufacturers, including Kraft, PepsiCo, and Nestle

"There is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors," Sen. Shortey is quoted as saying by KRMG News Talk Radio. "What I am saying is that if it does happen then we are not going to allow it to manufacture here."

According to Children of God for Life (CGL), a pro-life watchdog group, Senomyx uses HEK 293 to produce its artificial flavor enhancing chemicals. HEK 293 is code for human embryonic kidney cells that are manipulated to produce taste receptors that express a specific protein known as the G protein. But CGL says the company could also use animal, insect, or other more acceptably-derived cells instead, and still procure the same results.

While aborted fetal cells are not necessarily in the final products made by PepsiCo, Kraft, or Nestle, such cells appear to needlessly play a part in the production of artificial flavor chemicals used by these companies. And since there are viable alternatives to this questionable practice, Sen. Shortey, CGL, and many others are calling for its end.

We are in the best of hands.

 This is strange. As in, how does this kind of thing happen?

According to this article, a study that was done for the Department of Education into whether "for profit" universities provided a route to "gainful employment" for minority students "forgot" to include the employment rates of black students:

"The Department of Education has acknowledged using flawed data in a study on the impact of race on student loan repayment rates, having omitted black students from its calculation. The analysis was conducted during the debate over gainful employment regulations, in response to complaints that the rules would hurt colleges that enroll relatively high percentages of minority students.

Department officials disclosed the error in a December court filing, which is part of the ongoing legal challenge to gainful employment by the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, the primary for-profit trade group. That lawsuit appears to have led to the mistake’s discovery.

The Obama administration designed the federal rules in an attempt to ensure that most programs at for-profit colleges and certificate and vocational programs at nonprofit institutions prepare students for "gainful employment." For programs to be eligible for federal financial aid, they must adhere to benchmarks related to student loan repayment and debt-to-income ratios.

The original analysis was included in the introduction section of the final rules, which were issued last June. It asserted that the “percentage of the students that are members of a minority group explains 1 percent of the total variance in repayment rates” at for-profit institutions. The low figure, the department concluded at the time, meant the racial composition of students was not a statistically significant contributor to how an institution stacks up on loan repayments. The percentage of lower-income students an institution enrolled was a better measure."

I can understand math errors and leaving out categories that were considered to be insignificant, but when the purpose is to measure the correlation of for profit universities and minority hiring rates, how could anyone leave out the thing that the study was supposed to measure?

At least, it probably didn't cost as much as Solyndra.

Book Review ...

...The Story of a Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard's 'Sentences' (Rethinking the Middle Ages) by Philipp W. Rosemann

Please go here and give me a helpful vote.

This is a wonderful book of history. The author Philipp W. Rosemann offers a fascinating examination of Peter Lombard's Book of Sentences and its treatment over four centuries. Rosemann provides a look at a rare slice of medieval life, specifically the role that the Book of Sentences played in the developing universities. Finally, he shares an insight into a feature of human thought, namely its tendency to unfold a text into insights, theories and speculations until it fractures, at which point there is a refolding of the diverse skeins of insights, theories and speculation back into the original text.

Rosemann organizes his book in a century by century form, devoting a chapter to each of the Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, with the final chapter on the "Long Fifteenth Century" culminating in Martin Luther's involvement with the Book of Sentences.

The Book of Sentences was written by Peter Lombard, aka "The Master of Sentences" or "The Lombard," in the mid-12th Century as a "study aid" for his students. In the 12th Century, education was moving from the monasteries to the universities. Paris hosted a number of private theology teachers such as Peter Lombard. The Master based his book on the lectures he had been giving to his students for the previous thirty years. The book organized the opinions of religious authorities, such as Augustine and Gregory, on various subjects in a format that covered topics ranging from the Trinity to the sacraments. As the centuries went by this organizational format would persist as the way that systematic theology was structured during the ensuing centuries, even after theologians stopped interacting with the Lombard's actual text.

Lombard's book was an instant hit. Lombard became Bishop of Paris in 1159. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 consecrated the Sentences as supremely orthodox by approving Lombard's understanding of the Trinity. (p. 61.)

The Sentences were used by teachers of theology throughout Catholic Europe. Some universities had regulations requiring that the Sentences be taught. After Lombard, every theologian of note, including Aquinas, Ockham, Scotus and Luther, wrote a commentary on the Sentences.

Although it was a study aid, the early history of the Sentences involved developing study aids to assist in the use of the study aid. This resulted in the production of glosses and abbreviations. The glosses were the lecture notes that were added to the sides of the student's texts. Eventually, these glosses became books in their own right, although they required the text of the Sentences in order to follow the explanations in the glosses. Interestingly, one can see this format in Aquinas' commentaries on Aristotle and the various books of the Bible. Eventually, the gloss commentaries developed into stand-alone texts, beginning the tradition of writing commentaries.

Abbreviations were summaries of the texts. One interesting point made by Roseman is that at the time of the earliest abbreviations, in the 13th Century, the alphabetical order was still new, which resulted in a certain incompetence in creating alphabetical indexes. (p. 89.) Previously, and continuing throughout the 13th Century, the practice had been to arrange references in a "logical or indeed cosmological order," such as starting with God and working down through creation, as the Master had done in his book. (p. 89.) Rosemann makes the priceless observation that the move from the "cosmological" to the alphabetical order constituted a Copernican turn whereby men moved from being readers of signs, whose principle task was to understand the cosmos, to writers of signifiers, whose task was to impose an order on the universe. (p. 90.) Rosemann doesn't explore the issue, but one has to wonder how much of that "Copernican turn" eventually resulted in Nominalism and modernity. It's a topic worth contemplating.

Rosemann does a brilliant job of explaining the "crisis" provoked by the condemnation of various scholastic teachings by Bishop Etienne Tempier, the Bishop of Paris, in 1277. Tempier's condemnation was based less on the fact that anyone was actually teaching heresy, but on his concern that such a heresy might develop. The errors condemned in 1277 seem to be those teachings that sought to put philosophy on a higher plane than theology. The condemnation led directly to Nominalism, according to Rosemann, in that one of the earliest figures in the development of Nominalism - Duns Scotus - was deeply influenced by Henry of Ghent, who had been one of the members of the commission that drew up the list of errors that were condemned in 1277 by the Bishop of Paris. (p. 103.)

Rosemann's follows the development of Nominalism into its ever more abstract mode of thought. Nominalism was inspired by an effort to carve out an area of autonomy for theology by distinguishing between God's inscrutable absolute power - potentia absoluta - and God's power as exercised in a covenantal relationship with creation - potentia ordinate. (p. 137.) In contradistinction to Thomism, Nominalism taught that because all of creation was absolutely contingent on God's exercise of his absolute freedom, there was no "metaphysical structure" that could be traced back to the Creator and thus the created order was "best analyzed at the level of the existing individual." ( p. 138.) Over time, it appears that once God's freedom had been secured, theologians felt "authorized to unleash the tools of liberal arts without restraint." (p. 187.)

A theme that runs through Rosemann's book is the movement from "signs" to signifiers." Rosemann writes, "If there obtains no necessary, metaphysical connection between the Creator and the creation - if the connection is historical, covenantal, and hence contingent - then creation needs to be analyzed in itself, without recourse to a foundation in the meta-realities such as God or universal, abstract natures that sustain it. For this reasons the nominalist project is no longer aimed at understanding the cosmos through the analysis of signs, but rather at understanding the signifiers that we employ in speaking about the world." (p. 188.)

Another theme of Rosemann's book is that the move from signs to signifiers as the basis for thinking about the world was accompanied by a decoupling of theology from piety. As theology moved from sacra pagina - the study of scripture - to scienta divina - the divine science - theology became less and less concerned with lived spirituality, such as moral theology (p. 47; Cf. Servais Pinckaer, Morality: The Catholic View), scripture (p. 76), spirituality (p. 108), and salvation and the nourishing of faith. (p. 128.) By the "long Fifteenth Century," the project of theology was looking for a return to its roots as some theologicans, including the "Ecstatic Doctor" - Denys the Carthusian - sought to restore a concern for the nourishing of faith to theology. Eventually, the separation of theology from spirituality had reached the point where Martin Luther could condemn "Aristotle, the stinking philosopher" (p. 182) and, eventually, after Rosemann's book closes, advocate a wholesale return to sources in a return to the Bible alone.

Rosemann's book is an excellent read. He manages to move the story along by a narrow focus on the Book of Sentences, and, yet, offer a panoramic view of the major shifts in thought and ideology that were associated with the treatment of the Sentences. Rosemann also provides a nice glossary of the scholastic terms of art used in the book.

Can the Secularists in the Democrat Party tolerate the Religious?

Catholic liberal Democrat Michael Sean Winters announces that the Obama administrations position on tolerating dissent on its health regulations has caused him to stop supporting Obama:

President Barack Obama lost my vote yesterday when he declined to expand the exceedingly narrow conscience exemptions proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The issue of conscience protections is so foundational, I do not see how I ever could, in good conscience, vote for this man again.

I do not come at this issue as a Catholic special pleader, who wants only to protect my own, although it was a little bracing to realize that the president’s decision yesterday essentially told us, as Catholics, that there is no room in this great country of ours for the institutions our Church has built over the years to be Catholic in ways that are important to us. Nor, frankly, do I come at the issue as an anti-contraception zealot: I understand that many people, and good Catholics too, reach different conclusions on the matter although I must say that Humanae Vitae in its entirety reads better, and more presciently, every year.

That last part is interesting. I suspect that there is an humbling moment that comes in the life of every thinking Catholic when he or she realizes "Oh, my word, the Catholic Church knows what it is talking about."

Carl Olson points out that Obama's position could easily have been predicted by anyone who objectively looked at his record.

At the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn notes:

Less predictable—and far more interesting—has been the heat from the Catholic left, including many who have in the past given the president vital cover. In a post for the left-leaning National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters minces few words. Under the headline "J'ACCUSE," he rightly takes the president to the woodshed for the politics of the decision, for the substance, and for how "shamefully" it treats "those Catholics who went out on a limb" for him.

The message Mr. Obama is sending, says Mr. Winters, is "that there is no room in this great country of ours for the institutions our Church has built over the years to be Catholic in ways that are important to us."

Mr. Winters is not alone. The liberal Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles, blogged that he "cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience"—and he urged people to fight it. Another liberal favorite, Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., has raised the specter of "civil disobedience" and vowed that he will drop coverage for diocesan workers rather than comply. They are joined in their expressions of discontent by the leaders of Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities, which alone employs 70,000 people.

In the run-up to the ruling, the president of Notre Dame, the Rev. John Jenkins, suggested a modest compromise by which the president could have avoided most of this strife. That would have been by allowing the traditional exemption for religious organizations. That's the same understanding two of the president's own appointees to the Supreme Court just reaffirmed in a 9-0 ruling that recognized a faith-based school's First Amendment right to choose its own ministers without government interference, regardless of antidiscrimination law.

A few years ago Father Jenkins took enormous grief when he invited President Obama to speak at a Notre Dame commencement; now Father Jenkins finds himself publicly disapproving of an "unnecessary government intervention" that puts many organizations such as his in an "untenable position."

Here's just part of what he means by "untenable": Were Notre Dame to drop coverage for its 5,229 employees, the HHS penalty alone would amount to $10 million each year.

The irony, of course, is that the ruling is being imposed by a Catholic Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, working in an administration with a Catholic vice president, Joe Biden. A few years back the voluble Mr. Biden famously threatened to "shove my rosary beads" down the throat of those who dared suggest that his party's positions on social issues put it at odds with people of faith. Does he now mean to include Mr. Winters, Cardinal Mahony and Father Jenkins?

Catholic liberals appreciate that this HHS decision is more than a return to the hostility that sent so many Catholic Democrats fleeing to the Republican Party these past few decades. They understand that if left to stand, this ruling threatens the religious institutions closest to their hearts—those serving Americans in need, such as hospitals, soup kitchens and immigrant services.

Conservatives may enjoy the problems this creates for Mr. Obama this election year. Still, for those who care about issues such as life and marriage and religious liberty that so roil our body politic, we ought to wish Catholic progressives well in their intra-liberal fight. For we shall never arrive at the consensus we hope for if we allow our politics to be divided between a party of faith and a party of animosity to faith.

Really Cool - Animation showing Capt. Sully's ditching in the Hudson.

What's amazing is how cool Sullenberg was.

The man has the "right stuff."

Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus - Muslim Version.

The "religion" is Christianity.

This is a very serious presentation of the Muslim view of Christianity and Christ.

It's worth watching, not the least reason for which is that it reminds us why theology and philosophy still matter.

The Dysfunction of the Academic Class.

This is an interesting reflection on how the narrowing ideological focus of academic specialization in the subject of History, and the concomitant narrowing of the ideological diversity of professional historians, has enervated the ability of history to inform public debate. Here are a some excerpts:

In a ruling likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Montana Supreme Court last month upheld the state constitution's prohibition on corporations directly spending on state campaigns. For those concerned with academic matters, the case is important for reasons quite unrelated to political debates about Citizens United. In a significant case involving history (the Montana court relied heavily upon the scholarship and words of historians to reach its conclusions), all the books cited were more than 35 years old. And that wasn't a coincidence: the kind of U.S. history relevant to influencing legal and public policy debates increasingly has been banished from an academy obsessed with scholarship organized around the race/class/gender trinity.

A quick summary of the decision: the Montana court ruled that "unlike Citizens United, this case concerns Montana law, Montana elections and it arises from Montana history," requiring the justices to examine "the context of the time and place it was enacted, during the early twentieth century." To provide this necessary historical background, the Court repeatedly cited books by historians Helen Fisk Sanders, K. Ross Toole, C. B. Glasscock, Michael Malone, and Richard Roeder. The Court also accepted an affidavit from Harry Fritz, a professor emeritus at the University of Montana and a specialist in Montana history, who affirmed, "What was true a century ago is as true today: distant corporate interests mean that corporate dominated campaigns will only work 'in the essential interest of outsiders with local interests a very secondary consideration.'"

An attorney analyzing the decision, however, probably would have been surprised to see that the works of history upon which the Montana court relied were all published before 1977. She might even have wondered whether the court's reliance on older works suggested that it had ignored newer, perhaps contradictory, publications. But for anyone familiar with how the contemporary academy approaches U.S. history, the court's inability to find recent relevant works could have come as no surprise at all.

And:

One-sided scholarly approaches tend to produce one-sided views on contemporary political and public policy issues. In recent years, controversies in the history departments at Duke and the University of Iowa revealed that neither department had even one registered Republican. Political registration figures are the crudest possible measurement of a faculty's pedagogical breadth, but a partisan ratio of dozens-to-zero raises some troubling questions about the open-mindedness of a department's hiring process. So too did the justifications offered for the imbalance. Iowa's Sarah Hanley rationalized, "I don't think there is a downside [to having a department that, according to a survey done by the local newspaper, had 22 registered Democrats and zero registered Republicans]. If it is a downside, then it would be a downside to have states to be so-called blue or so-called red. It would be casting a pall on the democratic system where people are free to choose." The then-chairman of Duke's history department, John Thompson, dismissed findings that his department had 32 registered Democrats and zero registered Republicans, on grounds that "the interesting thing about the United States is that the political spectrum is very narrow."

This type of comment is exactly what would be expected in an environment characterized by faculty groupthink--the common assumption that all thinking people chose to be Democrats (full disclosure: I'm a registered and partisan Democrat), the law of group polarization producing extreme arguments on the merits of affiliating with the Democrats.

The increasingly one-sided conception of the profession has appeared most distinctly when national historical organizations have placed their members' partisan interests ahead of a commitment to historical ideals. During the second Bush term, for instance, historians were pressing for increased access to government documents from an administration notoriously indifferent to open government. Any claim that the chief purpose of the request was academic rather than political, however, was undermined in 2007, when the American Historical Association approved a "Resolution on United States Government Practices Inimical to the Values of the Historical Profession." The resolution called on all AHA members "to do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion." That was a perfectly appropriate goal for partisan Democrats. But for historians? And why would any administration want to increase access to government documents for a profession whose major national organization demanded that its members seek to undermine a key foreign policy goal of the President?

Similarly, last year during the William Cronon controversy in Wisconsin, the American Historical Association issued an official statement demanding that the GOP withdraw its open-records request, offering the following reasoning. "The purpose of the state's Open Records Law is to promote informed public conversation. Historians vigorously support the freedom of information act traditions of the United States of which this law is a part. In this case, however, the law has been invoked to do the opposite: to find a pretext for discrediting a scholar who has taken a public position. This inquiry will damage, rather than promote, public conversation." Shutting down any inquiry into Cronon, even if it meant advocating a narrowing of the state's Open Records Law, was a perfectly appropriate goal for partisan Democrats opposed to the Walker administration. But for historians?

There are few areas in which the groupthink academy has had a more disastrous impact than the study of U.S. history. One-sidedness has its costs, however, in terms of influence outside the Ivory Tower. Courts or politicians who rely on the opinions of professors who now qualify as "mainstream" U.S. historians do so at their own peril.

Paradigm Shifts and Big Bang Deniers.

This is a statement from various scientists seeking to have a re-allocation of resources into an investigation of the validity of the presuppositions of the Big Bang theory, rather than spending all money on research that assumes that theory. According the statement sponsors, all is not serene in science-land:

The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.

But the big bang theory can't survive without these fudge factors. Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.

Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe. Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang nucleosynthesis, the theory's explanation of the origin of the light elements. And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8 billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many stars in our galaxy.

What is more, the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory's supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.

Yet the big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesize an evolving universe without beginning or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang has failed to do.

Interesting.

Priest Rap.

I thought the production value and the rhyme scheme on this response to the "Love Jesus/Hate Religion" video.



The reason apparently is that the priest is, in fact, a rapper. Here's the backstory.

From the article:

Evansville's "Fr. Pontifex" Replies to YouTube Video

Before the Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus video went viral last week, an Evansville pastor saw it and knew he had to respond.

Known as "Fr. Pontifex" to his music fans, Fr. Claude "Dusty" Burns has a passion for hip-hop music and street poetry that are only matched by his passion for Christ and the Church. When the video, which soon racked up more than 15 million views, came out last Monday, Fr. Burns saw at once that its professional production quality and heart-felt emotions would make a strong impression.

"It only had about 70,000 views then," he says, "but right away I wanted to do a poetic response and I started writing. The next day I got the call from Rob."

"Rob" is Rob Kaczmark of Spirit Juice Studios (say it fast -- it sounds like "spiritus"), a Chicago design studio devoted to creating contemporary design for Catholic musicians, companies, and organizations.

Rob's response was slower. He saw the video mentioned on several web sites but didn't watch it until it became the number one video on GodTube, a website for Christian videos. "I knew GodTube has a pretty strong Catholic following, and it seemed to be promoting the video," he says. So during a break from a recording session with blogger Sr. Helen Burns, FSP, he turned it on.

"We watched it together, and we were so upset," he says. "There are a lot of anti-Catholic videos out there, but I felt more attacked in this one than I have in ages."

That's an interesting observation, since the original video doesn't mention Catholicism at all. And, yet, I saw more than a few comments - some by Evangelicals - that it was attacking the Catholic Church.

It is better to be feared than loved.

Glen Reynolds points out:

BECAUSE IT’S ONLY SAFE TO PICK ON CHRISTIANS: University atheist society president forced to resign after cartoon of Muhammad having a drink with Jesus is posted on Facebook.

And the lesson to Christians (and other religions) is that if you want respect, make people physically afraid. But if that’s the incentive system you create — and it is absolutely the one that’s been created — don’t be surprised if people pick up on it. Because the lesson of this decade is that people respond to incentives, even perverse ones.

Prejudice in America...

...can a Mormon be elected President?

In this day and age, I would like to think that religious prejudice is a long-dead issue, but there has been a lurking concern in my mind about the depth of anti-Mormon prejudice in America. Put aside the Evangelicals, there is a deep animosity against Mormons among secularists and liberals, and, perhaps, moderates. As evidence of that, keep in mind the infamous commercial during the Proposition 8 of a pair of Mormon missionaries busting into a lesbian household to rummage through their things. It was a reprehensible bit of prejudice.

Now, Roger Simon writes this about Romney's loss in South Carolina:

Believe it or not (and I didn’t think it possible), Mormonism was one reason Romney lost South Carolina. Exit polls show that most South Carolina voters wanted a candidate that shared similar religious views. Romney lost big among those voters. Note, I am not describing what ought to be, but rather what the data show is happening.

This does not bode well for Romney’s electability in the fall. Evangelicals are the base of the GOP. If they stay home, Republicans lose, like they did when they nominated the moderate John McCain. But more importantly, Catholics may decide this election in places like Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And the Catholic Church makes no secret of its view of Mormonism. An unexcited evangelical base combined with skeptical moderate Catholic voters undermines Romney’s chief campaign message of the last month — “most likely to beat Obama.” It could be a prescription for a November defeat.

Romney will spin that Florida is his firewall because he has an organization there. But he also had one in South Carolina. Tonight was a game changer.

One other thing. Romney annoyed people in South Carolina. His robo calls, from the vaunted “organization,” annoyed voters to no end. I watched someone get 5 calls in one night, many from Chris Christie. Another person is getting them in Germany in the middle of the night on her cell phone. Sometimes organization and money backfires.

Exit polls are exist polls, and if that's what they show, that's what they show.

As for Simon's point about "And the Catholic Church makes no secret of its view of Mormonism," I have to say "huh?"

Is he insinuating that there is some deep well-spring of prejudice against Mormons among Catholics. That seems to be an incredible statement. Among Catholics, there is the sense that Mormons are a kind of Protestant sect, more extreme than most, but no more extreme than many Protestant sects, including the Quakers, Christian Scientists, or any of the other strange little sects that make up Protestantism.

Certainly, the Catholic Church makes no secret of its totally accurate view that Mormon baptism doesn't qualify as baptism in the biblical sense in light of the different meaning that Mormonism attaches to the idea of the Trinity, but that level of theological nuance is sadly lost on most Catholics and other Christians.

Also, where does Simon get the data to extract this insight? Only 10% of South Carolinians are Catholic. Do we have any idea of how this scant minority of Catholics among South Carolina's Republican voters felt about Romney?

Perhaps the accurate point that we can take from Simon is that it may not take much to "poison the well" against
Romney.

And the argument against Gingrich...

...by John Mark Reynolds:

Gingrich admits that for decades he was a roué and a hypocrite and demands the White House as his penance. That seems a bit much. He calls himself a man of “grandiose ideas” and such men are apt to stumble again near power. Those who love him should keep him from it, the way an alcoholic is kept from the bottle.

Let us judge Newt Gingrich by his own professed beliefs.

If he is telling the truth, Newt Gingrich is unfit for public office.

Gingrich might, of course, be lying. His performance last night was not comforting. After answering questions about his marriage calmly all day, he raged against them in the debate. Immediately after the debate, he was backslapping with the “disgusting” questioners at CNN.

Advocates of open marriage should be comforted, however. If his second wife is telling the truth, Gingrich was asking for polygamy, not open marriage. He was asking for consent to be a roué, not engaging in social experimentation.

In any case, Gingrich himself rightly said that lying to the public, even about sex, is disqualifying.

If he is lying, Newt Gingrich is unfit for public office.

Newt Gingrich was disciplined and removed from his high office by conservatives for his grandiose personality. He was a political roué, unable to control his political urges or ideas. He was sent packing to the political morgue, but now the roué returns from the morgue to murder marriage.

Only a grandiose man who believes words are more important than deeds could think he would get away with that in the long term. His party is left defending him when it should be examining better people: the political roué does not care.

Perhaps marriage should be redefined or perhaps, as Pope Benedict claims, this will end civilization. In any case, the grandiose man is the last man we need leading the discussion.

Newt Gingrich is unfit for public office.

Paranoid, yes, certainly...

...but maybe paranoia is the only sane policy to adopt.

Powerline points out the following:

A few years ago, as part of its strategy of facilitating voter fraud as a means of winning close elections, the Democratic Party undertook a campaign to secure as many Secretary of State offices in swing states as possible. From those perches, the Democrats would be in a position to oversee elections and enforce (or decline to enforce) election laws. That strategy has been quite successful, but the Democrats suffered a setback in Iowa in 2010 when conservative Republican Matt Schultz won an upset victory in the Secretary of State race. Since then, Iowa Democrats have targeted Schultz.

That targeting has taken a sinister turn–a criminal one, in fact–as the Des Moines Register reports:

A Des Moines man has been arrested after police say he used, or tried to use, the identity of Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz in a scheme to falsely implicate Schultz in perceived unethical behavior in office.

Zachary Edwards was arrested Friday and charged with identity theft.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety issued a news release saying Schultz’s office discovered the scheme on June 24, 2011 and notified authorities.

And:

Edwards is a former Obama staffer who directed “new media operations” for Obama in five states during the 2008 primaries. Thereafter, he was Obama’s Director of New Media for the State of Iowa. In the Democratic Party’s lexicon, “new media” apparently includes identity theft.

Edwards now works for LINK Strategies, a Democratic consulting firm with extraordinarily close ties to Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin. Its principal, Jeff Link, has served as Harkin’s campaign manager and chief of staff. Link, too, is a former Obama staffer. The LINK Strategies web site says that Jeff Link “served as a media consultant to the Obama for President Campaign, coordinating branding, all paid media and polling in 25 states, including seven battleground states (VA, NC, FL, CO, NM, NV, MT)….”

That Edwards allegedly tried to steal the Secretary of State’s identity in order to frame Schultz for “unethical behavior in office” is no coincidence. Iowa Democrats, as Kevin Hall of the Iowa Republican points out, have mounted a campaign of false accusations against Schultz:

Since his surprise victory over incumbent Michael Mauro in November 2010, Secretary of State Schultz has been a target of the Iowa Democratic Party. Interestingly, on June 24, the same day as Zach Edwards alleged crime, Under the Golden Dome, a blog connected to Iowa Democrats, launched a three-part series of articles critical of Matt Schultz. They were based on documents obtained through an open records request from “a tipster.” The blog alleged that a batch of emails from Schultz’s office “raise some serious questions about his ability to remain independent and ensure election integrity”.

Just 15 days earlier, on June 9, the Iowa Democratic Party filed an ethics complaint against Schultz, claiming the Secretary of State of used public resources to campaign against presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman. The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board dismissed the complaint on July 19.

So on its face, Edwards’s identity theft appears to be part of a coordinated effort by the Iowa Democratic Party to bring down the Republican Secretary of State so he can be replaced with a Democrat. We hope that Edwards will get the long jail term that he deserves, but the more important question is, from whom was he taking instructions? Circumstantially, one would guess from his boss, Jeff Link. But if so, who was instructing (and paying?) Link’s firm? The White House? Tom Harkin? Iowa’s Democratic Party?

Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to be plausible.

The case for Gingrich...

...articulated by Dan Riehl:

For conservatives, I'm a might tired of the weenies who prance around on the Internet as if they're spoiling for a fight, then when someone with a little fight in them comes along, they start sounding like pussified Republicans. Oh, God, no, we can't have that go on!!

One of the Left's big advantages is, they aren't afraid of a little passion in their politics. They're also more willing to take risks. Well, there's a rule of thumb that applies, higher risk is required for higher reward. Look it up in your capitalist manifesto, when you climb down off your high horse and stop defending it, when it wasn't under attack in the first place.

I didn't start out backing Newt Gingrich. Perry was my guy. He's gone and you go to war with the army you've got, or you can sit in your tent and pick your ass, while government continues to grow and we continue the long, slow slide into statism that's been going on for almost a century, now.

It is inconceivable that we will see any serious Right-leaning reform from a guy like Mitt Romney. He may work hard at some things when it suits him, but he has no history of fighting for anything other than perhaps parochial interests when the current is seriously against him. And the current in Washington and the media is most definitely against conservatism.

Romney will make Bush's Compassionate Conservatism look like the real thing. At this point in our nation's history, what in the hell is there worth fighting for in that? We may as well turn out the government approved light bulbs and hand over the keys to an establishment GOP every bit as invested in big government, as are the Democrats. They just like to tinker around the ever expanding edges of it on their own behalf.

Well, I'm not down for that. And most certainly not now. We do not have four or eight years to fritter away on Obama-lite, which is precisely what Romney is. So much so, in fact, he may not be able to win the general as his record indicates there isn't really enough difference to warrant throwing Obama out in the eyes of many voters.

Say what you want about Gingrich, one can look at his record and see someone who actually was once involved in some serious reform of the right kind in Washington. I watched the debate last night and all the others, sorry, but Santorum does not impress in this regard. I'm sure he's a fine man and I have resisted criticizing him, but that dog won't hunt, most especially in any general election. So, get over it.

Conservatives now have but one horse to ride; otherwise, you may as well saddle up with Mitt and head off into the sunset with whatever you think is a genuine form of conservatism. Romney is not going to expend one iota of political capital selling it, or fighting for it, because he doesn't believe in it. He is as elitist and out of touch with the working class that empowers Reagan conservatism as is Obama. And he's damn near as progressive in terms of government being the answer to everything, as long as he's the one who gets to make the decisions. That's not conservativism. It's bullshit.

We're in a fight to save what remains of the vision we have of America as conservatives. Whatever he's done, or not done, we can tell that Gingrich appreciates that particular vision. He is also showing himself to be an effective fighter. However he got there - the people that have voted decided it, not me - that's where he is. And he's demonstrating a willingness to fight for conservatism, but some of you bad-asses are afraid to fight for and with him?

The hell with you, punch your ticket and scurry to the back of the GOP's big government line like the losers that you actually are. I went into 2012 looking for a fight for the right reasons and the right cause - and as it stands today, there's only one guy left standing who looks anything like close to suitable to mix it up on our and conservativism's behalf. And, dammit, I'm going to fight with him, not run away like a coward because I want to look politically correct, or smart.

Yeah! Screw the Statists and their government approved light bulbs!

I'm still (probably) supporting Romney based on my principle that we need an executive with experience, but Riehl makes me wonder whether that isn't just choosing the slower road to serfdom.