Just checking in for a minute to let you know that I'm thinking of you. Hope all is well.
Also wanted to say that I've got a handful of mediocre posts coming up, so don't bail on me just yet: Ron Paul (my brief conversation with and a video of), Hirsi Ali's scandalous (but true?) comments on Islam, Chick-Fil-A's response, my $25 to iTunes, etc..
Thanks.
Tuesday
Monday
Intemperate Thoughts on Global Warming
-- I keep seeing "green" issues of this and that outdoor magazine. But if they really wanted to save the environment, they should do a "green nonissue" and go a month without printing millions of magazine pages (which are mostly ads anyway).
-- People creep me out by how emotional they get about Priuses. Promise you bro, those extra couple MPGs really aren't the meaning of life.
-- Forgive me if I don't trust a single word Newsweek has to say on the subject considering their not-too-distant cool-mongering. And anyway, if they really were so hot and bothered about global cooling thirty years ago, wouldn't the advent of warming be an answer to prayer? In other words, shouldn't the effects of this warming trend be welcomed with grateful relief as being the noncatastrophic solution to our parents' worst fears?
-- Read the Copenhagen Consensus 2004, do the cost/benefit, and then try and tell me with a straight face that spending trillions (with a "t") to gain a couple degrees over the next 100 years is not absurd.
-- The hypocrisy of the mansion-owning, motorcade-driving, private-jet-flying Reverends of Climatology really pisses me off. I'll listen to their breathless warnings when they start to live like they really believe it. (And anyway, there's not much more I could personally be doing as it is- I recycle, use those fancy light bulbs, share 800 square feet and a 40mpg car with my wife and baby, and walk to work. And funnily enough, I somehow do all of that without taxing you to death or regulating the hell out of your business.)
-- Carbon offsetting is a joke. But Tetzel would be proud.
-- Read Scrappleface.
-- And Steyn:
"A COUPLE of days before Al Gore was awarded his Nobel Peace prize, Michael Burton, an English High Court judge and apparently a fine film critic, ruled that Al's Oscar-winner An Inconvenient Truth was prone to "alarmism and exaggeration" and identified nine major factual errors.
For example, the former vice-president predicts a rise in sea levels of 6m "in the near future". "The Armageddon scenario he predicts," declared Burton, "is not in line with the scientific consensus."
I'll say. The so-called scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests rising sea levels across the next century of somewhere between 15cm and 60cm, with about 30cm being most likely. An Inconvenient Truth insouciantly adds a zero to the worst-case scenario.
And nobody minds. His Honour was examining the vice-president's acclaimed crockumentary because the British Government, in its wisdom, has decided to force-feed it to hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren. It would be nice to think it would have to be preceded by a warning that any resemblance between this film and any actual planet living or dead is entirely coincidental, but it seems more likely that the Nobel Peace imprimatur will completely insulate the picture from even the most modest quibbles.
[...] That's where Gore comes in. No matter how you raise the stakes ("It might take another 30 Kyotos", says Jerry Mahlman of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research), Saint Al of the Ecopalypse can raise them higher. Climate change, he says, is the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced. Ever. And not just humankind, but alienkind, too. "We are," warns Gore, "altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe".
Wow. It's not just the Maldive Islands, but the balance of energy between Earth and the rest of the universe. You wouldn't happen to have the stats on that, would you? Universal "balance of energy" graphs for 1940 and 1873? Gore is the logical reductio of what the popular Australian blogger Tim Blair calls global warm-mongering: Worst-case scenario, with all the zeroes you want on the end, and then a few more for holes in the ozone layer as yet undreamt of. Anyone can, as the environmentalists advise, think globally and act locally, but only Gore thinks cosmically and acts not at all.
[...] Well, the average US household consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours of electricity. In 2006, the Gores wolfed down nearly 221,000kWh.
221,000kWh? What's he doing in there? As his spokesperson explained it, his high energy usage derives from his brave calls for low energy usage. He's burning up all that electricity by sending out faxes every couple of minutes urging you wastrels to use less electricity. Insofar as he's made any contribution to global peace, it's in persuading large swaths of a narcissistic Western world to busy itself with non-solutions to pseudo-crises to such a distracting degree that al-Qa'ida may wind up imposing the global caliphate without having to fire a shot."
-- People creep me out by how emotional they get about Priuses. Promise you bro, those extra couple MPGs really aren't the meaning of life.
-- Forgive me if I don't trust a single word Newsweek has to say on the subject considering their not-too-distant cool-mongering. And anyway, if they really were so hot and bothered about global cooling thirty years ago, wouldn't the advent of warming be an answer to prayer? In other words, shouldn't the effects of this warming trend be welcomed with grateful relief as being the noncatastrophic solution to our parents' worst fears?
-- Read the Copenhagen Consensus 2004, do the cost/benefit, and then try and tell me with a straight face that spending trillions (with a "t") to gain a couple degrees over the next 100 years is not absurd.
-- The hypocrisy of the mansion-owning, motorcade-driving, private-jet-flying Reverends of Climatology really pisses me off. I'll listen to their breathless warnings when they start to live like they really believe it. (And anyway, there's not much more I could personally be doing as it is- I recycle, use those fancy light bulbs, share 800 square feet and a 40mpg car with my wife and baby, and walk to work. And funnily enough, I somehow do all of that without taxing you to death or regulating the hell out of your business.)
-- Carbon offsetting is a joke. But Tetzel would be proud.
-- Read Scrappleface.
-- And Steyn:
"A COUPLE of days before Al Gore was awarded his Nobel Peace prize, Michael Burton, an English High Court judge and apparently a fine film critic, ruled that Al's Oscar-winner An Inconvenient Truth was prone to "alarmism and exaggeration" and identified nine major factual errors.
For example, the former vice-president predicts a rise in sea levels of 6m "in the near future". "The Armageddon scenario he predicts," declared Burton, "is not in line with the scientific consensus."
I'll say. The so-called scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests rising sea levels across the next century of somewhere between 15cm and 60cm, with about 30cm being most likely. An Inconvenient Truth insouciantly adds a zero to the worst-case scenario.
And nobody minds. His Honour was examining the vice-president's acclaimed crockumentary because the British Government, in its wisdom, has decided to force-feed it to hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren. It would be nice to think it would have to be preceded by a warning that any resemblance between this film and any actual planet living or dead is entirely coincidental, but it seems more likely that the Nobel Peace imprimatur will completely insulate the picture from even the most modest quibbles.
[...] That's where Gore comes in. No matter how you raise the stakes ("It might take another 30 Kyotos", says Jerry Mahlman of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research), Saint Al of the Ecopalypse can raise them higher. Climate change, he says, is the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced. Ever. And not just humankind, but alienkind, too. "We are," warns Gore, "altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe".
Wow. It's not just the Maldive Islands, but the balance of energy between Earth and the rest of the universe. You wouldn't happen to have the stats on that, would you? Universal "balance of energy" graphs for 1940 and 1873? Gore is the logical reductio of what the popular Australian blogger Tim Blair calls global warm-mongering: Worst-case scenario, with all the zeroes you want on the end, and then a few more for holes in the ozone layer as yet undreamt of. Anyone can, as the environmentalists advise, think globally and act locally, but only Gore thinks cosmically and acts not at all.
[...] Well, the average US household consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours of electricity. In 2006, the Gores wolfed down nearly 221,000kWh.
221,000kWh? What's he doing in there? As his spokesperson explained it, his high energy usage derives from his brave calls for low energy usage. He's burning up all that electricity by sending out faxes every couple of minutes urging you wastrels to use less electricity. Insofar as he's made any contribution to global peace, it's in persuading large swaths of a narcissistic Western world to busy itself with non-solutions to pseudo-crises to such a distracting degree that al-Qa'ida may wind up imposing the global caliphate without having to fire a shot."
Thursday
Clint Hurdle, Then and Now
That's Clint Hurdle, circa 1992, giving yours burly the "Best All-Around Player" award at a week-long baseball camp. I was amped for years after that, no lie. Still am, kinda. Now he's coaching the NLCS champ contender Colorado Rockies, and there's a special place in my heart that's rooting for him and his team.
Wednesday
Our Father Francis
Today is the 781st anniversary of the death of St. Francis. (The Saint you may remember from such films as, Brother Sun, Sister Moon.)"Born in 1182 the son of a wealthy cloth merchant in Assisi, Francis was a restless and searching young adult in the year 1205. He had tried his father's business but found the shop too confining and the profits too closed to the poor. He was the leader of Assisi's youth and their most attractive suitor, but he yearned for a different love. He sought the glories of war, but a dream in the night told him to return home and await what God would reveal to him.
For several years Francis searched the Scriptures, talked with friends and spiritual advisors, and prayed long hours in churches, woods and caves listening to God's call and purpose for his life. Then one day in the church of San Damiano, a chapel right outside of Assisi, he heard the invitation of Jesus: "Francis, go rebuild my Church, which you see is falling into ruins." "Yes!" said Francis. "This is what I want, this is what I long for with all my heart."
With that he gathered a group of brothers, gave them a few Gospel texts for their rule of life, and sent them out like the disciples of Jesus to live and announce the Good News of God's love.
In the year 1209, after several years of preaching, Francis and eleven companions went to Rome to obtain permission for their new way of life in the Church. While Pope Innocent III worried that their poverty was too radical, the brothers prevailed upon the Holy Father simply to allow them to live the Gospel, taking "nothing for their journey" and trusting in God's love and care for them. Thus Francis and the new community began to "poor follow the poor Christ."
Francis named the new community the Order of Friars Minor, because he wanted them to be "lesser brothers" in their relationship to God, to one another, to the Church. They were not to be as the "majores," the wealthy and influential ones in society, but "minores," the servants of the rest. Thus brotherhood and minority became unique and key elements of Franciscan religious life throughout history.
From the beginning, the membership of the Order included both brothers and priests, and the works of the community were multiple and varied. Friars preached and taught, begged and did manual labor, cared for the sick brothers as well as lepers. Francis said that the brothers should do whatever work God gave them the grace to do, as long as they maintained a spirit of prayer and humility in all their activities.
During his life Francis also assisted St. Clare of Assisi in establishing the Order of Poor Ladies of San Damiano, or Poor Clares. These followers of St. Clare are cloistered sisters who live in community, poverty and contemplative prayer, fulfilling their mission of seeking prayerful union with God and interceding for the needs of the church and world. In addition, Francis began in the year 1213 a community of Secular Franciscans, formerly called the "Third Order of St. Francis." The Secular Franciscan Order is an order of lay people, married and single, who follow the Gospel spirituality of St. Francis and support one another in faith and prayer for their everyday work and family lives in the world.
Between 1223 and his death on October 3, 1226, Francis' body was sick and frail but his spirit soared to the heights of mystical love and union with Christ. At Christmas 1223 he celebrated the birth of Jesus in an outdoor pageant and Mass in the village of Greccio, thus giving to the Christian world ever since the Christmas crib or crêche. The following year, in September 1224, Francis while absorbed in contemplation on Mt. LaVerna received the Stigmata, the wounds of Christ in his hands and feet and side. It is from these years of deep union with God and the Crucified Christ that come Francis' most beautiful prayers, including the Praises of God and the Canticle of Brother Sun and his testament."
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