This is worthy of comment: Holland has instituted policies that allow taking an infant's life, after birth, at the consent of the infant's parents or in cases of extreme pain or insolvable illness.

Two reports:

Here

AP News service

Some commentary:

Hewitt

Reynolds

Some strange things are on the internet. Here are two of them:

1. Hannukah is brought into the new millenium with this hip rendition of a new Hannukah song. It's to the tune of that song by OutKast.

2. Llamas finally receive their due laud with this ballad, a fascinating mixture of text, graphics, and joyful music in one fabulous shockwave file.

Enjoy, if you can. Personally, I'm enjoying the last stages of a paper due tomorrow.

I'm about to go to bed. I was just finishing up some formatting for a paper due tomorrow. *yawn* This is a good song by U2, from their new album. This is really their most Christian album, yet, I wonder if it will affect their popularity. Time will tell.

"Yahweh"

Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn

Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don't make a fist
Take this mouth
So quick to criticise
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn

Still waiting for the dawn, the sun is coming up
The sun is coming up on the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?

Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city
If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break

This is chock full of Biblical imagery. Good stuff.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

After finishing up my first paper of this weekend, I took a couple of hours and went to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow at the Dollar Theater. I'm glad I did. It passed two hours quickly and engagingly.

First thing that strikes a viewer of this movie is the novel lense effects. Everything is surrounded by a blur and ethyreal glow. This is done for two reasons, that I can tell. One, it adds a fantastic feel to the movie. This fits in well with its antique comic book style. Second, it helps to combine the live action characters and their computer generated settings. The thing is, the whole movie is filmed in front of green screens and then filled in with computer generated robots, people, and scenery. All the acting - there are only maybe thirty people acting in the entire movie - is filmed, which is good since computers cannot communicate in the same way that people do.

Along the lines of live actors, the director made an interesting choice: he had quite close shots on the faces of the people in the movie. This was nice, as it helps you connect with the character. This isn't as extreme as in the Good the Bad and the Ugly, but that wouldn't have fit in this movie.

The actors portrayed did a tolerable job. Jude Law was good, and Gwenyth Paltrow was, too, and their interaction got better as the movie went along. Actually, the whole movie seemed to get better as it moved along. The intentionally thrown-back style wasn't enough to sustain my interest, but the plot did, from probably about a quarter of the way into the movie. From the point when Jude Law and Gwenyth Paltrow are drawn together in the action, there was enough action to keep me entertained. Their relationship was pretty funny, too, as neither is trustworthy.

The premise is this: It's some time around the 1940s, and Gwenyth Paltrow is a reporter on the trail of a mysterious case in which scientists are disappearing slowly. As she makes a break, monstrous robots march into New York and wreak havoc. Enter Sky Captain, a pilot who runs a mercenary organization that benevolently aids the free countries of the world. Slowly they unravel the mystery of the missing scientists and robots, finding a sinister plot involving a doomsday device and the end of the world.

I liked it, and the romantic tension between Jude Law and Gwenyth Paltrow is quite humorous. I think it would be a pretty good date movie. I can't remember any cussing, and the violence wasn't at all gory. A clean, fun, movie... good for the whole family.

Amazon.com has a section for free mp3 downloads. If people so desire, they can upload their music onto the site. It's a pretty neat idea, especially since Christmas is coming! I'm going to get some free Christmas mp3s. Awesome cool legalness.

Marvin Olasky participates here in some inter-Christian ideological discussions on political "single mindedness." A difficult issue, but one worth considering. His article is here

The judicial theories of the more liberal leaning ideologues are frightening. It may well be that the single issue for voters ought to be a support for the Constitution, as properly understood. I really think a vote for Kerry was a vote against the Constitution, because his intellectual presuppositions destabilize the document as a basis for a country's law. And that pretty much sinks America's heart.

This is an interesting perspective on Iraq.

This is a picture of me. Behind me is the eminently lovely Libby Moothart. She's the best.

I look disturbed in this picture, but I assure you that any such disturbance only enhances my quality of living, rather than in any way interfereing with my functionality.

Rolling Stone magazine's top 500 is readable at their website. Imagine, number three, is a rediculous, self-referentially incohrent song. That it is so popular boggles my mind. I really can't understand the appeal, besides a pleasant tune.

There are other songs, by the Beatle's (a more level headed group than Lennon alone, from what I can tell), that deserve greater recognition. Bah!

Big news over on Dustin's blog (and no, it's not just that he actually posted). So... congratulations to the happy couple!

It's raining outside... really really hard.

I had always interpreted "sheets of rain" as describing vertical patterns of rainfall, but tonight it's giant drops coming down in horizontal sheets, that make the ground dance with deflected rain a foot in the air. Freak shower, but one that I appreciated very much.

Thanks, God.

Marsupials.

Wonderful animals.

Truly. They're one person on the outside, but in a little pouch, there's another life! Growing there, waiting to come out. I see some cool metaphorical tints to the animal. But the thing is, if you're the average google user trying to find something out about something like a marsupial, you're going to end up on my blog.

While there are many strange things that lead people to searching my site, marsupials are probably one of the most common hit gatherers.

Other things include:
1. Zwingli
2. pictures of Rachel robinson (who apparently works for mtv?)
3. bill and becca (that one came from texas)

But just today I got a hit from someone searching for "small marsupials." Another time I got "marsupials with big eyes." That one is creative.

So, here's some info on marsupials.


http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/marsupial/marsupial.html

http://www.americazoo.com/goto/index/mammals/8.htm


Dunart's are so cute. Have fun!

Keats' poem, "Sleep and Poetry" is excellent, as well. It's much longer than the Elgin Marbles, but his vision of poetry is fascinating. I find his view of a mature poet fascinating.

The poem is very pleasurable.

This marine was a true soldier-gentleman.

It's still Wednesday, but my time stamp will say it's Thursday. It's an hour off.

Today we talked about sin in class. St. Thomas' view of sin was, as normal, very reasonable. We're getting into soteriology now with which I disagree, but that's ok.

It's interesting to talk about sin. When in a Torrey session, one of the most important things is to strike on something that you don't know, something that you don't understand. If the unknown thing is good, it will inspire love in you as you strive to draw nearer it. This echoes the great pursuit of the soul for its creator, and is indeed part of the same pursuit, on smaller scales. But sin is just not the sort of thing you can love. It actually doesn't really exist, as a thing, but only as a perversion of other things, as imperfections of perfection.

What I found myself loving was humanity, instead. The leader of our session wisely led us in that direction. The goal was to understand the soul, and we ended up spending a lot of time talking about the will, and basically Thomistic anthropology. And, as interseting as it was, this is the first session we've really spent talking about anthropology. Last session was creation, which could have served as a kind of bridge from theology, but it didn't really work. Instead, this session seemed... dirty. Not dirty in the sense that it was sinful, but dirty in the sense that man is a low being, and not worthy of worship. God's glory, in our sessions too often obscured by obfuscation in language, and our own incapacity for comprehension, still shone threw in the nature of the thoughts we considered. And now it's just not as good.

All the same, I hope that in understanding man, and how we fall into sin, I can myself avoid it more often in the future. It is also helpful in appreciating the cross. Sin is truly wicked, and it is all our own fault.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.

On Seeing The Elgin Marbles For The First Time
John Keats

My spirit is too weak; mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep,
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an indescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time—with a billowy main,
A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.


I don't think this is anywhere near the best poem ever written, but as it's Keats, and thus by the pen of a man with a remarkable poetic talent, I'm posting it here. It's a puzzling work, I find. the metaphor of the eagle is evocative but a bit confusing. And the middle section, about not having the cloudy winds to keep fresh puzzles me more than the rest of it.

The poet is responding to looking at the Elgin Marbles, which are the Athenian Parthenon's frieze, brought to England by Lord Elgin (hence the name of the marbles). I wanted to know what they were representing but, as is often the case, the meaning or story of the marbles is obscured by the story of what is happening with the marbles. Such contemporary concerns are far from interesting, but I suppose relevant to some.

This link needs a little context. In the summer before we moved into our former apartment, in Tropicana by Biola, my roommate, Phil, needed a place to stay. He ended up staying in the apartment of a friend who got married partway through that summer. While on his honeymoon, this fellow found some video games at a garage sale and sent them down for Phil to keep safe. Among these video games were a number of comic books.

These comic books were not just any comic books, though. No, they were Masters of the Universe Mini-comics, complete with overblown product placement. Phil immediately recognized their value as troves of golden humor, and acquired them from our friend. They are now, and have been for more than a year now, permanent residents of our bathroom.

So, here is a very comprehensive listing of these comics, including, I think, the ones we have.

He-man comics at He-man.org

Move to Canada!

Canada's Immigration Website

If you're a leftward leaning American, then you're probably dissatisfied with the movement of our country. That's fine. You can move to Canada!

Here's a picture taken after the heavy October snows that swept over the Sierras. It's incredibly white. Not only that, but the snow has outlined the long valley caldera, right around Crowley Lake. I think you can see Lake Mary, but I'm not sure exactly, it's a fairly distant satellite image in real color. You can see Edison and Mono, though. Mono is a peculiar shade of green, and stands out from the rest of the visible lakes because of its color.

It is quite high resolution.
Sierra Snowfall

Since yesterday I've had one Libby Moothart as my girlfriend for more than a year! Woo hoo!

Man, Half-Life 2 is coming out in a few days, and Halo 2 JUST came out. If I had an infinite supply of money and time, I would have some fun. As it is, I won't probably play either of these games, as I have no X-Box, and my computer's about half the necessary requirements (actually, maybe less than half...) for Half-Life 2. This is probably a good thing.

This is an interesting idea. A blog called Belmont Club is compiling up to date commentary specifically (at the moment anyway) on the battle going on in Falluja. From the title, it appears their plan is to produce instantaneous contemporary history, and make it available outside of the main-stream media. While intriguing, I don't think it's a very good way to do contemporary history. All the same, the social function of another route around CNN, CBS, etc. is fascinating.

Blogspot, in hosting free blogs that allow freedom of use in a way Xanga doesn't, or any other place, really, is playing a big role in the blogging movement. I wonder if they're proud of it. I think perhaps they should be, although blogs I think are somewhat limited in their reliability.

This blog has gotten more and more political of late. For this perhaps I owe some regret, for it is somewhat time consuming and more than a bit out of my area of expertise.

That said, here, have some more politics:

Jonah Goldberg writes an article that I think does a good job of exposing some funny tendencies of the Left.

I liked these bits the best:

"There's no time here to dismantle fully the edifice of condescension and ignorance constructed by Maher and Smiley (I put Dowd in a different category). But what offends them so much about religion is that it is a source of authority outside — and prior to — politics. What has offended the Left since Marx, and American liberalism since Dewey, is the notion that moral authority should be derived from anyplace other than the state or "the people" (conveniently defined as citizens who vote liberal). Voting on values not sanctified by secular priests is how they define "ignorance." This was the real goal of Hillary Clinton's "politics of meaning" — to replace traditional religion with a secular one that derived its authority not from ancient texts and "superstitions" but from the good intentions of an activist state and its anointed priests. Shortly before the election, Howell Raines fretted that the worst outcome of a Bush victory would be the resurgence of "theologically based cultural norms" — without even acknowledging the fact that "theologically based cultural norms" gave us everything from the printing press and the newspaper to the First Amendment he claims to be such a defender of.

"What Maher, Raines, and Smiley fail to grasp is that all morality is based upon transcendence — or it is merely based on utilitarianism of one kind or another, and therefore it is not morality so much as, at best, an enlightened expediency or will-to-power. It is no more rational to vote based on a desire to do "good" than it is to vote based on a desire to do God's will. Indeed, for millions of people this is a distinction without a difference — as it was for so many of the abolitionists progressives and civil-rights leaders today's liberals love to invoke but never actually learn about."

I think this is a really critical point to make between liberals and conservatives. Although liberals would have you believe that they are the voice of progress and we the voice of stubborn foolishness, both groups acutally exist within the same categories, the liberals are positing ideas that have true or false values, and living by them, just like conservatives. The argument has to be about whether or not these ideas are true. "Voting on values not sanctified by secular priests is how they define "ignorance." This was the real goal of Hillary Clinton's "politics of meaning" — to replace traditional religion with a secular one that derived its authority not from ancient texts and "superstitions" but from the good intentions of an activist state and its anointed priests." The ideas Goldberg presents here are what I spoke of earlier in this blog when I said a vote for Kerry would be a vote for French Revolution style democracy. Their revolution scraped vainly at the Godhead, endeavouring to pull even Him down from his throne. They placed the god of reason in Notre Dame. To them, rights were given by the state, and thus the Terror was not unthinkable. People died because of beliefs like this. Beware of them.

Oh yeah, and I wrote a post earlier today that made this same point, but deleted it, because I felt it might not have shown sufficeint charity to those with whom I disagree. But here's the same idea from someone else: "I think the great irony of this election is that for all the talk of how the bigoted Right won, the Left's loss has sparked far more bigotry. Their clever trick is to defend their hatred of the religious by calling it a hatred of bigotry itself — a rationalization no liberal would tolerate from any other kind of bigot." It's true. There is more hate in Michael Moore for George Bush than for Osama Bin Laden. As Christians, our transcendent moral code dictates we must love even our enemies, and as hard as that is, I hope we can live by it.

Wisconsin school's allow the teaching of creation

Strong responses by evolutionists as indicated in this manner is a sign of fear of new ideas (or old ideas re-appearing). How funny that groups so keen on "intellectual freedom" really have no interest in intellectual freedom at all.

They are afraid of losing their hold on our culture.

I think this is the authentic teaser for the last of the prequels. Anyway, it's worth a peep, anyway. Looks gritty and dark, and they've gotten James Earl Jones again for Vader. Maybe. Obviously, a lot of the quotes are from the other movies.

The Trailer

Some neat pictures of a volcano erupting in Ireland courtesty Bubbs and my sister-in-law. They may be viewed here.

You can also get real color satellite imagery here. The earth observatory website is one of my favorites, it has some really beautiful images of earth, in very high resolutions.

From msnbc: In the end, Ohio was the fulcrum, and exit polling data suggested that it was older voters and white evangelical Christians who clinched the deal for Bush. The president won 56 percent of the vote among voters ages 60 and older, and he took three-quarters of white evangelical voters, who made up 25 percent of the state’s electorate.

Evangelicals won the election for Bush, as Dr. Reynolds has been saying, the conservatives of America are the majority of this country. It just took some muscle flex, and Bush has been re-elected.

A comment by Dr. Rood, a very bright professor of mine here at Biola, got me thinking about the mission of America. Often, people like John Kerry, dilute the traditional goal of the United States by removing from it a universal grounding. In other words, my country can't be the best country in the world, because there are so many countries, and there's no absolute basis upon which to base a claim for supremacy.

Here's the deal though, America IS the best country in the world: and to be an American entails a belief in this, at some level or another. This is because, America's a creed of sorts, as G.K. Chesterton points out. To be an American means to think that this grand experiment of democracy has the ability to be successful. And the reason it will be successful seems to stem from its basis in the nature of man and the universe.

To base something as an accurate representation of the natural order of things is only possible when the order is knowable, obviously. So, Kerry is a bad choice, and I hope that he's not elected today, because Mr. Global Test doesn't seem to believe in the efficacy of Reason.

I voted today, doing what little I could in this gigantic republic. It is in God's hands whatever the result will be.

American Pie is here expounded with helpful annotation.

Curious.