Merry Christmas!

I learned I am illiterate in regard to California history today.

The creators of West Wing gave California's past a nod by naming the president in their show "Jed Bartlet." Puzzled? So would I be! I mean, I watched the show and I learned California history in elementary school, but I still didn't get it. It's kind of embarrassing.

Perhaps you didn't know that California's flag was supposed to have a pear on it?

Check this out!"

Historiography via Jack Chick:

There are only two ways in which world history can be explained:

1. The accidental theory. All events, such as those world depressions, revolutions, wars and political plots are the results of pure chance. Such a view is as ridiculous as belief in evolution!

2. The conspiratorial theory. World events such as mentioned above, take place because some influential people want them to happen and make them happen. People with power meet behind closed doors and work out plans to achieve their aims. The most precise way to describe such conduct is - conspiracy.

To us, the conspiratorial theory makes far more sense than the accidental theory. The conspiracy claims Rivera has made are by no means extreme and paranoid. Indeed, many respected and thorough researchers have, after many years of painstaking research, come to the conclusion that there is a conspiracy at work which desires to control the world by controlling the banks, commerce and the media.

And I need not mention to students of the Bible, the accidental theory contradicts the entire theme of the Bible, not to mention large portions of Bible prophecy.

Wow... See what you can do with exhaustive dilemmas? You can find truth!

Monday Birding Post:

So, there've been two bald eagles (it appears) sighted in Orange County in recent days. Since Libby and I love to look at cool/rare birds, and this is a very cool/rare bird, we took a track to where one's been seen the most: Yorba Park in Anaheim. Yorba Park is right along the Santa Ana River, where it runs along the 91. It's near where Imperial hits the 91.

Anyway, we dropped by Saturday morning, but we didn't see it. That's unfortunate, as it had been seen Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Monday mornings. Gee whiz, you would think it was wild!

We did see some cool birds, though. And then we went to the Newport Back Bay and saw more cool birds.

Highlights?

Yorba Park:

1. The river and lakes in the park are full of fun birds. Coots, Cinnamon Teal, Blue-winged Teals, Canada Geese, Wood Ducks (second most colorful duck in the world), American Wigeons, etc...

2. Among the ducks we saw Redheads, which were lifers. Redheads are ducks with red heads. They're diving ducks, and seemed to like sleeping or diving best. "Hey, is that a redhead?"
"I can't tell, it's got its head shoved under its wing!"
"Oh, is that a redhead?"
"Where?"
"I don't know, it was there a second ago."

3. A mountain chickadee was chilling with a flock of bushtits. That's a rarity!

4. Juncos and blue-birds also resided in the park, which is fun.

Newport:

Newport's a bit of a drive, but it was serene and beautiful as always. I really like the back bay. This trip brought us to the preserve at low tide, which is both good and bad. The mud flats smelled pretty bad, and it was impossible to identify the peeps that were feeding out on the fringes of the mud without a spotting scope.

Highlights of that trip:

1. Green-winged teals, which were new to us. For some reason we had never seen them before, although they were very common this trip. They're very pretty ducks, with the cinnamon and green contrasting interestingly. I suppose their face is almost Christmasy. The colors are much richer than this picture can show, when you see them in the wild.

2. There was a flock of black skimmers sitting on a mud flat, along with a couple of Caspian Terns. The terns black masks are shrinking, which is an interesting point of variety from normal.

3. Last, but certainly not least, we were peering into some wigeons near the parking lot on Back Bay Drive, when we noticed that among them was a bird with a red head. Was it a Redhead? No. Was it a Green-winged Teal? No. It was a wigeon. Which makes it either a Eurasian Wigeon or a Eurasian Wigeon/American Wigeon hybrid. And that was the bird of the day!


Here's a Eurasian Wigeon (front) with an American Wigeon (back). American wigeons are very common. Eurasian Wigeons not so much. We kept clear of him, since, as an Asian stray, he probably has bird flu.

This was our first trip birding since the honeymoon, and it was fun to see the diversity of God's creation so brilliantly displayed. Especially, since all of the new birds we saw were ducks. And ducks are really exciting!

After birding we saw The Chronicles of Narnia. It was a good movie.

There was an interesting article linked on Arts and Letters Daily I thought I'd bring attention to. How Christianity and Capitalism Led to Science.

Rodney Stark, a professor of history at Baylor in Texas, argues that it is Christianity's embracement of reason that led to the rise of capitalism. And, Stark argues, it is Capitalism that led to the primacy of the West. So, it is Christianity's scholastic attitudes that are actually responsible for the West's successes. This thesis opposes the famous thesis by Weber (thoroughly debunked here and elsewhere, even by the likes of Henri Pirenne [a very famous historian]) that Protestantism, specifically, gave rise to Captalism. It also opposes the common lies that Christianity and its faith suppressed reason and science, leading to a long Dark Age.

Unfortunately, this is not a scholarly article, and so it is not well sourced. Nevertheless, it's a lot of fun to read, and I think that everyone can enjoy it.

And here's a little twist of irony: Stark quotes Tertullian in arguing for Christianity's embracement of religion, without comment or footnote!

As Quintus Tertullian instructed in the second century, "Reason is a thing of God, inasmuch as there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided, disposed, ordained by reason — nothing which He has not willed should be handled and understood by reason."

Strange, huh?

Ta ta for now!

December 7, 1941



"A date which will live in infamy"

Libby and I did what we could to decorate for Christmas this year. Here's our first Christmas tree. You can also see that we put Christmas lights on our hutch.

I got the tree while she was at a bridal shower on Saturday, so she got to come home to see it in its sparkling splendor (we did the decorating together, though, since that's part of the fun). It's nice to start our own Christmas traditions together and forge our own unique form of family Christmas spirit! It helps that we are both very fond of Christmas.

Although, as I think about it, it's not as if we are going about attempting to begin holiday traditions, we just do what we want. If it happens again: that's a tradition, right? Decorating was a fairly big deal at our house growing up. It was always fun to look at all the different ornaments as we put them on the tree. But that sort of thing won't be very remarkable until we've got a bit more time under our belt!

Our tree is alive, and is a stone pine. It is less fragrant than I would have hoped, and quite a bit more expensive than I would have hoped, as well. Nevertheless, it is Christmas. And we must have a tree. And it must be a live tree. After all, fake trees aren't really trees. They just look like them. Libby and I will have the real article.

Other Christmas spirit beginnings of the weekend: planning gifts for everybody and going to Torrey Music's Christmas concert. The concert was fun, but I do wish that some of the singers would have smiled more. Some of them just looked plain sad!

This is what our tree looks like when it's dark.



Now I see through a camera darkly... but later we'll turn on the flash.

Hey Folks!

Some news:

1. I added 50 more pictures to the link above after I posted. there are now more than 130 pictures of the wedding on-line. If I receive more I will post those also.

2. Libby and I are madly in love, contributing to a happy married environment.

3. Libby is now Libby Rowley! She went to the social security office yesterday.

4. It has not yet rained today, and they said on Weather.com that there was a 90% chance. After nailing this summer's weather spot-on, they are about to lose they had collected from me.

5. Last night Libby and I went to this cool restaurant (it's quite near our house). It's quite a bit more expensive than we're used to, but we figure it's ok every once in awhile. It has a beautiful interior, as well as exterior with friendly hosts and a pleasant atmosphere, aided by several fireplaces and a live pianist!

6. This article is fun. Michael Nielson writes a spirited defense of C.S. Lewis against a famous English children's book author: Philip Pullman. I've never heard of Philip Pullman, but he's written very popular children's books in England. His books are called His Dark Materials and won a bunch of awards. Here's what Nielson is responding to:

Pullman has described The Chronicles not just as "propaganda in the cause of the religion [Lewis] believed in," but also as guilty of advancing views such as, "Death is better than life; boys are better than girls; light-colored people are better than dark-colored people; and so on." And those are just Pullman's G-rated charges. He also has blasted The Chronicles in public forums as "one of the most ugly and poisonous things I've ever read," "propaganda in the service of a life-hating ideology," "blatantly racist," "monumentally disparaging of girls and women," and marked by a "sadomasochistic relish for violence."

Holy Moly! Anyway, I thought the article was fun, I hope you do, too.

7. The End.