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December 22, 2005 Natural Selection is De-evolution.

Natural selection is a filtering process that always results in the loss of genetic information.

Last night, my son and I were watching the news together.  We heard that a judge in Pennsylvania ruled that "intelligent design" is creationism, and cannot be taught in public schools because it is a religion.  My response is that evolution is also a religion, and if creationism cannot be taught, then neither should evolution.  "Evolution," would obviously be a violation of the second law of thermodynamics, so only faith can explain why so many people cling to the theory.  Scientists realize evolution as Darwin described it, cannot have happened, but they are generally quiet about it, because they don't want the ridicule that would result from speaking the truth.

Jonathan (my son) and I were talking about how radical secularists are trying the push the idea that evolution is more than just a bad outdated theory, but now they say it is a "proven fact." 

Darwin observed how finches on the Galapagos Islands seem to adapt to their living conditions from season to season.  Some seasons a long bill suits survival better than a short bill, and short-billed finches die off.  Other seasons a short bill is better, and long-billed finches die.  Darwin observed this phenomenon and called it "natural selection," which became the basis for his famous theory, and it is the basis for radical secularists to call evolution "fact."

Then Jonathan made an amazing statement.  He said "what irony that the 'proof' of evolution is natural selection.  Natural selection is a filtering process that always results in the loss of genetic information.  Natural selection is the slow de-evolution of a species.  Species have definitely changed over the ages, but they have changed by becoming less than they were, not more."  Information does not get added by random sources.  Noise and data corruption is the only result of randomly "added information" in any context.  Genetic information is no different.  So the "proof" the evolutionists want to give us for evolution is actually proof of the opposite trend, of loss of genetic information.

Only a Mind can create new information.  Only a Mind could design creatures with enough diverse genetic information that the traits necessary for survival in changing environments could be filtered as needed from the existing gene pool.

The "scientific fact," is that natural selection is a form of decay.  It is the filtering (removal) of genetic information.  As species decay from their original complex state, old genetic information may find a life of its own, in the formation of "new" viruses, which in turn add noise to the genetic makeup of other species, spreading their decay as well.  Natural selection "naturally" agrees with the second law (scientific fact) of thermodynamics, that all processes run down over time, becoming less energetic, and more chaotic.  Chaos might look like information, but it is just the pattern of decay.

Natural selection is de-evolution.

November 6, 2005 Grace Rules (The title will make more sense after future essays.)

I am back to thinking about how the principle of Grace affects how Christians order our lives. It is hard to discuss issues like this with fellow believers when we get such different applications from the same scriptures.  This morning our family saw a television commercial which featured the phrase "ask, and you shall receive," (John 16:24) to which my wife said, "if only it were that simple."  One of the kids asked, "why isn't it that simple?"  I said, (I'm going to stop using quotation marks, because I'm sure I'm not getting any of these quotes exactly right anyway) Jesus made the promise, but you have to ask who did He make the promise to, why did He make the promise, and what conditions were attached to the promise, before you can begin to consider whether the promise is really a promise to you.  The bottom line is, that particular promise was not made to us.  It was for someone else, and it applied to a particular context.  The next question we ask ourselves then, is whether there is a general principle we can draw from the promise Jesus made to someone else. 

(I would have said more about this, but I'm out of time.)

October 21, 2005  The Earl-Krischer Law

I propose a federal law that would make it a felony to pursue politically motivated prosecutions.  I want prosecutors such as Ronnie Earle, Barry Krischer and Martha Stewart's prosecutor (I don't recall the name) to face a twenty-year prison sentence when they hold press conferences to announce they are fishing for evidence that a crime might have been committed by a public figure.  Any prosecutor who holds a press conference should be jailed on that basis alone.  Prosecutors have no business seeking public attention.  When prosecutors fail to successfully shun media attention, they should immediately be fired, and they should immediately face a criminal investigation.
 
Ideally, prosecutors should be appointed, not elected.  Unfortunately that oversight in many jurisdictions would be difficult to change.  At least prosecutors should be required to appoint others to handle prosecutions that might involve politically sensitive suspects.  They should be forbidden to "fish" for evidence of a crime involving a public figure unless they at least know what crime they are investigating.  With the exception of capital offenses, prosecutors should be required to privately notify the official of a pending investigation, and in the absence of an impeachment, they should be required to wait until the official's current term of office expires before pursuing the investigation.
 
Finally, the law should put an end to convictions based on "perjury" when the circumstances involve a publicized accusation.  Every person has a right to claim their own innocence until they are actually convicted of the crime for which they are being investigated.  Perjury is not a back-door to a conviction.  Prove the crime, then prove the perjury.  Anything else is a violation of constitutional rights.
 

September 28, 2005 Seven Rules to Organize Email

I just reorganized my email, and I am thrilled with the result, so I'm going to share what I did. 

First I started with two new folders named "keep" and "toss."  (I did not keep this first try.)

Then I looked at Mozilla's junk mail system that learns from user behavior what defines junk mail for the individual user.  I created a "junk" folder that auto-deletes contents after a few days.  Mozilla automatically moves mail it identifies as junk to the junk folder as it downloads new mail.  I can also mark mail as junk, which also moves junk mail to the junk folder.  After a week or so of "training" Mozilla to recognize junk, it stops making mistakes, for the most part.  (This part I kept. I love Mozilla's intelligent junk mail filter.)

As I was training Mozilla's junk filter, I would create folders under "keep" to categorize the things I wanted to keep.  Very quickly my "new" system was becoming as convoluted as my old system, so I moved all of my mail back to my inbox, deleted all of my rules, and I started over.

In my second attempt, I started with folders named 0- Keep, 4-September, 5-August, and Junk.  The numbers ahead of the folder names keep them sorted.  The values are 13 minus month value, with zero assigned to the "keep" folder.  Under "keep," I have folders for Family, Friends, Church, Home-School, and Business. 

I now manage all of my email with just seven rules, one for each folder under "Keep," a rule for mail after August 31st, that dumps all recent remaining mail into my "September" folder, and a rule for mail after July 31st, for my "August" folder.  Mozilla's junk mail filter manages the junk folder.  After I executed my rules, a few advertisements I had explicitly marked "not junk" that were older than two months remained. I deleted those messages. 

Today, a couple of days before October first, I will delete my August folder and create a folder named "3-October," with an associated rule that will execute after my "keeper" rules that will move remaining mail dated after September 30th to my October folder.  I intend to follow this pattern each month, which will keep my mail organized in a simple way that I can manage.  My daily incoming mail will be sorted, and I doubt I will ever need more than my existing seven rules.

Finally, near the end of December, I will archive my 2005 mail, probably by burning a CD that includes MyDocuments\2005.  I will copy the structure of MyDocuments\2005 to create MyDocuments\2006, I will make my annual backup CD, and I will make a copy of that CD, so I can have an off-site backup to store in my office at work, with the original to file at home. I will also create a separate CD for MyPictures\2005 with copies sent to grandparents. That way our parents have our pictures that they can enjoy as a video slide show to play on their DVD player, or to order prints at Wal-Mart, and Betty and I have multiple off-site backups of all of our family photos.

September 25, 2005 More About Miracles

Since anything God does re-defines natural law, every miracle has a natural explanation.  Consider Joshua's prayer for more time to finish off his enemies.  The scripture says the sun stood still in the sky.  (Joshua 10: 12-14)  Obviously a stationary sun and moon requires a change in how the Earth spins on its axis.

Did the Earth suddenly stand still for a while and then just as suddenly resume its previous cycle? 

Some have suggested an asteroid impacted the Earth to momentarily stop its rotation.  Then momentum from the rotation of the core quickly brought the rotation of the crust back up to speed.

This popular theory would require a cataclysmic impact that would have had "earth-shattering" consequences, such as a tsunami big enough to flood the entire Earth. I have always suspected an impact with a comet might explain the Genesis flood with its associated change in world climate recorded in the scriptures, but Joshua's miracle had no associated global side-effects--or did it?

Have you ever spun a toy gyroscope and then let it spin down like a top on a slick surface?  As the center of the gyroscope grinds to a halt, the outer area of the gyroscope spins and wobbles.  Through most of the wind-down, the gyroscope's outer motion is rather stable, but there are chaotic periods during which the outer area which normally spins sympathetically with the inner area, slows down, and even reverses direction momentarily before it resumes its "normal" motion in sympathy with the inner motion.  Many chaotic systems exhibit this kind of occasional erratic behavior. Hurricanes (an example fresh in my mind today) will form brief sympathetic "eyes" both inside and outside of the main eye.  Some of these sympathetic eyes will briefly form with a reverse spin to the main eye.

The Earth's magnetic field is created by the rotation of its fluid magnetic core.  This core, which is largely made of liquid iron, spins faster than the crust of the Earth.  It is like the inner area of our gyroscope illustration. (The decay of the rotation of the core of the Earth as measured by the decay of the magnetic field around the Earth is one of the best evidences that the Earth is only a few thousand years old.) The crust of the Earth floats over the spinning inner core. Even though the axis of rotation of the inner and outer spin is similar, it is not the same.  The magnetic north pole is not aligned with the axis of rotation of the crust of the Earth, but since it is caused by the rotation of the core, it is a good indicator of the current position of the core's axis.  Many people are not aware that the magnetic North pole migrates from year to year.  Most years the changes are small, but most geologists believe there have been times when the poles have reversed polarity, and that the magnetic axis has even pointed through the equator toward the sun.

The Van Allen belts that protect the Earth from hard radiation from the Sun are aligned with the Earth's magnetic poles.  At the magnetic poles, the Van Allen belts pass through the Earth to the rotating core.  There is an exposed area of the Earth at each of the poles, that is protected only because the magnetic axis is relatively perpendicular to the sun.  Imagine the effect of a solar storm during one of these major shifts in the position of the Earth's magnetic poles. If a solar storm erupted while the Earth's magnetic field was aligned closer to the equator, we might see some very "miraculous" events.  A fiery super-charged aurora might appear like flames that do not burn. Swarms of creatures might be drawn to follow a roving magnetic pole. Meteor showers that are normally deflected from the Earth could be pulled down to the Earth in the vicinity of the magnetic poles.

We might see spectacular aurorae unlike anything ever seen in the North or South, visible as a bright haze even during the day, or as brilliant rippling columns of fire in the sky at night.  Ocean water might evaporate faster with the help of microwave radiation over the roving magnetic poles.  Radiation might ionize sea water. Roving magnetic poles might attract highly ionized sea water into its Van Allen belts like a magnet moves iron filings into fanning patterns at its poles.  The effect could cause a relatively shallow body of ionized salt water to be drawn toward the Van Allen belts.  Dry land could appear between the churning walls of water held by the magnetic lines of force. 

How did the sun and moon stand still in the sky?  Maybe the motion of the crust of the Earth, in its naturally chaotic sympathetic motion with the ever-slowing motion of the core, reached a "node."  Like the motion of our gyroscope, maybe the crust of the earth slowed its rotation and possibly even reversed direction imperceptibly, before it continued into another several-thousand-year cycle of relatively stable motion.  Perhaps this long day involved the axis of rotation of the Earth aligning  with the Sun for a few hours, with Israel at the center of the temporary axis.

Spin a gyroscope a number times, with the outside also free to spin. With each spin, observe the sequence of patterns of motion that the outer top follows as the inner top spins down, and it will no longer be a mystery how the rotation of the crust of the Earth can pause and even reverse its direction. You will observe that the behavior of the top is predictable. It even begins to appear that stopping the Earth's rotation was no miracle at all, but just an aspect of the natural pattern of the Earth's rotation. 

The miracle of Joshua's long day was not so much that the Earth's rotation changed to allow a long day.  The miracle is that God answered Joshua's prayer at creation.  Before Eve first desired the forbidden fruit, God designed His creation to answer Joshua's prayer ages later, so Joshua could defeat his enemies in one very long day.  The balancing of forces that brought our universe into existence, that the naturalists call the "big bang," was expertly managed to cause Joshua's long day on the day Joshua requested it. 

Because of Joshua's prayer, other planets in other galaxies (maybe even in answer to the prayers of other Joshuas with greener skin) probably have experienced their version of Joshua's long day also. 

One of God's awesome characteristics is His ability to take interest in each individual while managing the workings of the universes.  (Plural intended)  The miracle of the long day was not so much the unusual behavior of the Earth, as it was God's answer to the prayer of one man.

September 24, 2005 What Are Miracles?

My son and I had a discussion recently about miracles, and I've been thinking about my views about miracles ever since. I want to be very clear that I believe God can do anything He chooses to do, and He is never limited by the rules He has established in order to do whatever He chooses to do.  On the other hand, He has been establishing the rules now, in the past, and in the future. 

I don't know how to express a timeless tense in English--please understand that you won't get my point unless you try to see time the way God sees time.  I tried to explain this concept to my daughter this way, that we see time the way we see a limited-access highway.  We can speed up, we can slow down, we can stop, and we can get off, but we can never see what's ahead very far. The best we can do is to pay attention to the signs along the way, and make the best decisions we can make, based on experience.  God's perspective of time is like our perspective of the highway when we look at a map.  With a map, we see a much bigger perspective.  We see alternate routes.  If we use software, we can even see traffic patterns and the best timing to use alternate routes.

God's perspective of time is even bigger than the highway analogy illustrates, because He interacts with His "map."  He makes changes at one point in time, and then sees the entire "map" respond and adjust to His changes, and then He makes more changes to respond and adjust to those changes, until the map is shaped to His liking.  Isaiah describes this process of God responding to the actions of men, who respond to the actions of God, like a potter shaping his creation, ever changing and responding to the ever-changing clay, until the potter's intentions are realized in the clay.

If we read prophecy with this "potter's" perspective, we might come up with a very different understanding of prophecy than the popular views that are shaped by our linear Western-culture view of fatalistic time. We need to give more attention to phrases in scripture such as "what is, what was, and what is to come," and "Who is, Who was, and Who is to come," and the Alpha and the Omega."  The prophets don't report news from the future. They describe a process of shaping and responding that covers all of time from a perspective that is very difficult for a Western mind polluted by Greek philosophy to comprehend. 

If we considered the paradox of predestination versus free will from this perspective, we would understand that there is no paradox. God predestines us, but that has no connection to our responsibility for our actions. He judges us from a perspective that we cannot imagine. That is why we are accountable to God for our attitudes as much if not more than we are accountable for our actions.

Please get this concept, that time is not linear, and time is not static.  Time is not a simple line that runs from the past to the future.  Then you will understand what I will say about miracles.

How do we define a "miracle?"  If we define a miracle in terms of violation of natural law, then there can be no miracles, because as soon as God acts, His action re-defines natural law, which makes the action "natural."

The universe has no strict inherent order. The natural laws we depend upon for our existence are the result of a complex balance of chaotic forces. These forces do not balance themselves.  The order of the universe that makes our existence possible is strictly maintained moment by moment.  The real paradox of our existence is that we exist. It is much easier for the dimensions of space to collapse and roll up like a scroll, than it is for a concept like "empty" to have meaning.  "Existence" is the universal miracle, and not that unusual things might happen from time to time.

Do I believe in miracles?  Absolutely. 

September 5, 2005  Did Global Warming Cause Hurricane Katrina?

August 31st, CNSNews.com reported that Germany's environment minister has linked hurricane Katrina with global warming. I will admit I have never paid much attention to the "Global Warming" propaganda. When I first heard about environmental fears that mankind was hurting the environment, the concern was global cooling. The theory was that particulate matter in the atmosphere caused by incomplete combustion of gasoline was reflecting sunlight back into space. Unless we all stopped driving big automobiles, the artificial cooling of our climate would soon cause an irreversible slide into the next ice age. Then Mt. Saint Helen erupted, and in one natural event, global cooling proponents were silenced because that one eruption had distributed many times more particulate matter into the atmosphere than all of the campfires, smokestacks, and automobiles from all of human history combined.

I actually bought into the global cooling propaganda for a while. Annual measurements of global temperatures were definitely declining, and who can argue with scientific evidence? I just never thought the issue through. So when I first heard about global warming, my first reaction was "here we go again." My second reaction was laughter. I could not believe serious scientists were concerned about carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

Every second-grade student knows that green plants use carbon dioxide and water to make food.  More carbon dioxide means more plants will grow to maintain the balance.

It is not as if we are adding carbon to the atmosphere that did not already come from the atmosphere. Every fossil fuel used to exist as a plant or an animal living on the Earth. Every living thing that became fossil fuel either breathed that carbon in the form of carbon dioxide from the air, or ate one of the plants that did. When we burn fossil fuels, we are just returning to the air the same carbon dioxide that those ancient plants removed from it. 

Water vapor is the most prevalent greenhouse gas. The amount of water vapor in the air varies significantly from year to year, and its affect on the environment is profoundly greater than the effect of carbon dioxide. If one could release all of the carbon dioxide in all of the fossil fuels on the Earth all at once, the total increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would not be significant in comparison to the natural changes in water vapor that happen from day to day. 

Has there been a recent increase in Hurricanes?  Yes, there have definitely been more Hurricanes in the United States in the last ten years than in the previous ten years, but no, there have not been more tropical storms globally in the last ten years than in the previous ten years. There also has not been an increase in the last twenty years, because the infrequency of hurricanes in the prior ten years balances the increase in the last ten years.

The Earth contains a vast array of living species. Each was designed with the ability to adapt to changes in its environment, and many were designed with the ability to change their environment. Many species, such as bacteria and alga, impose profoundly greater impacts on the environment every day than human beings have collectively managed over the ages.

If we purposely tried to damage our environment, I'm sure we could have an impressive impact for as long as we kept at it, but as Katrina so devastatingly pointed out to us last week, the works of man are not so profound that a single natural disaster cannot put them all in perspective.

The Earth is not so fragile that the works of man put it in peril. The natural resources we have been given will always be here in some form or another. Our actions may imperil ourselves, and our children for several generations, but future generations will never be in want of oil or fuel no matter how self-destructively we might behave today. 

That does not mean we should be careless with our environment. The Earth's ability to heal itself will not save us and our children from hardship if we bring it upon ourselves. Did the actions of men cause the tragedy in New Orleans?  Only in that we underestimated the power of nature.

August 24, 2005 Aesthetic Philosophy

I am on day 13 of a struggle with bronchitis. I called in sick (fourth day, and third day in a row) this morning because the negative value of my coughing and spitting would be more of a distraction and even danger to others than the value I could contribute by being at work. I've been alternately napping and reviewing my children's educational plan. I get bogged down when the State's values and goals contradict my values and goals.

Many Christians struggle with evolution versus creation. One cannot properly educate children without teaching evolution, but evolution can be taught as the theory that forms the basis for our system of classification of species, without endorsing the fantasy that one day long ago, a flash of lighting hit a convenient brew of inorganic chemicals and produced an RNA strand that was capable of replicating itself. (I would not put up with a sentence that long from my kids!)

Only the history of evolutionary thought with its convenient lack of knowledge of DNA can explain the development of such a convoluted theory. The extreme amount of time required to allow such an improbable event is several orders of magnitude greater than the oldest estimates of the age of the universe. I don't believe anyone who is educated in cosmology and genetics believes life is not the product of intelligent design. Only professional educators, the ignorant, and the very young still believe in "pure" evolution.

I resolved that issue with my family a long time ago. When each of my children were younger, and they asked about evolution, I suggested they try putting all of their legos in a bag, and tell me how long they would have to shake the bag to produce a model of Cinderella's Castle (at DisneyWorld).  The answer I tried to get from them was that no amount of shaking could create the castle in one shake, and one shake is all they would get, because the next shake would tear apart any progress they had made. That's the problem with evolution. The evolutionists want us to believe a long gradual process built the incredible complexity that is required for life. But every catastrophic event necessary to generate the simplest modification is much more likely to kill than it is to cause mutation. Some things just can't happen, no matter how much time and no matter how many opportunities are supplied.

Now I was going to talk about art and aesthetics, not evolution. I don't have time now, but I'll give my overview. The Indiana Standards for Art (fifth grade) state the student will "5.6.2 Understand that personal preference is one of many criteria used in making judgments about art." Now I have the same kind of dilemma as I had with evolution. I have to teach a viewpoint that is wrong, so my children will be "educated." I will teach their concept. Then I will show them the truth, that beauty and meaning in art is absolute, just as right and wrong are absolute. Life and Art achieve meaning in the struggle between order and chaos. Absolute order is sterile and unattainable. Absolute chaos is death. Beauty and artistic value is found when order balances chaos. Creation is the conquering of chaos. Creativity is the source of beauty.

My better judgment says I should refrain from trying to explain how my aesthetic philosophy derives from scripture, but I'm going to try. In Genesis we are told "the Spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters." This passage may be talking about literal water, but I see the water as a symbolic reference to chaos. The first command of creation was "let there be light." Next we see the separation of light from darkness, the separation of waters from waters, and the separation of land from the sea. Compare Genesis with Job 26. Other references to the link between creation and the conquering of chaos are Job 9:13, Psalm 74:12-17, Psalm 89:10, and Isaiah 51:9.

August 4, 2005 Six Days

This morning I heard a democratic party apologist on Fox news criticize President Bush for believing the world was created in six days. I was offended. I also believe the world was created in six days, because the Bible says so. I was also disappointed that the bigoted comment against our president's religion was left unchallenged. That bigotry against Christianity we saw displayed is the real reason the Democratic party is consistently loosing members with each election.

This will be an interesting essay to write. As I begin to write, I have fifteen minutes until time to leave for work. I don't have time to rethink and rework my ideas. I just have to quickly write down the first ideas that come to mind. I wonder how much I can accomplish in fifteen minutes.

God doesn't have that problem. Time is a dimension of the physical universe He created, so strictly speaking, He has all the time in the ... everything to do whatever He wishes to do, and yet He chose to record that our universe was created in six days.

Now I hope I don't offend my fellow Christians who believe a strict interpretation of Scripture demands that six literal 24-hour days were meant in the passage in Genesis. I actually agree with the premise that all Scripture must be interpreted literally unless the Scripture says something obviously symbolic, like how Pharaoh was the tallest tree in the garden of God. (That's not a quote because I don't have time to look up references, but something like that is in the book of Ezekiel.)

I just want to say, that a day without a context (generally speaking--as in general relativity) is a big container that can hold a lot of activity. I'm out of time. I'll probably say more about this in the future. I'll just close by saying "Science" doesn't have anything reliable to say about Creation. It can only begin with known physical laws and make conjectures. My conjecture, and my belief, is that there is a common-sense perspective from which the world really was created in six literal days.

July 18, 2005 Why Terrorism Cannot Work in English-Speaking Countries

Americans would like to believe it is our superior National character that makes us impervious to terrorism. The truth is we are just as vulnerable as the next country--we're just a lot bigger. An attack on New York City terrorizes and traumatizes the people in New York City, but to rural New York state, and to the rest of us, it seems like a tragedy that happened far, far away. It doesn't make us cringe in the least, but it does make us fighting mad. The same is true in every other part of the U.S. The population of our country is scattered throughout the country. Sure, half of our population lives in cities, but we have a lot of cities, and several of them are over a thousand miles from the next city of similar magnitude. The result is, no matter where one might strike, the majority of us see that a tragedy happened far, far, away. To a lesser extent, all English-speaking people have the same attitude. There is a kinship between the U.S. and the U.K., and a heartfelt attitude that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. So an attack on London is not just a poke in the British eye, it's a poke in my eye, it's a poke in the New Zealander's eye...(you get the idea). English-speaking people are strengthened and encouraged by this unofficial brotherhood, and we are spread so thoroughly across the globe that even the most unimaginable tragedy could only steel the resolve of the rest of us.

Another reason terrorism does not intimidate many of us is our trust in God. Unlike some of the Europeans that have cowed in mass at the threat of terror, we are not the hedonistic materialists our enemies think they are fighting. Ironically most of us hate the same filth spewed by parts of the entertainment industry that the terrorists think they are fighting when they attack us. We are largely people of faith. We believe in God. Our trust in God is stamped on our money for all to see. When we are attacked, those of us who might have been straying a bit from our roots, return very quickly to the Source of our strength, and we are certain our God will fight on our behalf because we fight on His behalf, exercising our responsibility as a Nation to bring justice to baby killers--people so lacking in understanding that they think God will thank them for their abominations. The One God, the Almighty Creator, takes a very dim view of baby killers. The innocent Muslims, Christians, Jews, and all of the other seekers of righteousness from various religions who have been killed in the name of God, will be comforted some day by God's revenge on these terrorists.

Ironically, New York is not the source of wealth the terrorists think it is. In fact, New York has for years, been a bottle-neck and a major leak in the flow of our economy. As the terrorists attempt to strangle our economy, they are actually helping it. Like a heart surgeon bypassing clogged arteries, the terrorists have unwittingly redirected the flow of money in a healthier direction. In a half century, we will be wealthier because of the rebuilding that happened as a result of their attacks.

Here is the greatest irony of all. When God does finally take revenge on the decadent materialists, it will be murderous Babylonian decadent materialists, who do not yet exist, who will some day be destroyed.

Rev 18:10  ...standing at a distance because of the fear of her torment, saying, 'Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the strong city! For in one hour your judgment has come.' 11  "And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, because no one buys their cargoes any more;

Our fight to establish democracy in Iraq was predestined to succeed. Only that success will ultimately bring about judgment, because the wealth that will be created will only be material wealth. As the founders of our Nation warned, democracy without Spiritual accountability, becomes the worst kind of tyranny. How tragic there will be no spiritual wealth accompanying the economic wealth in the new Babylon that is to come. Jesus said that by blessing our enemies we will heap burning coals on their heads. In other words, our blessings on our enemies will become the means of God's judgment on them if they do not repent. I challenge the wise in Iran and Iraq to invest in Spiritual wealth, not just physical wealth. A great economic boom is coming. Benefit from Babylon's prophesied economic boom, but don't get too comfortable there, because she will face devastating judgment some day.

A subway bombing victim in London was interviewed the other day.  As he ascended from the subway, blood-spattered and dazed, a reporter stuck a microphone in his face and asked him what he felt concerning the terrorists who had attempted to kill him.  He answered in one word, "Pity."

July 14, 2005 Today I caught myself making an excuse for forgetting a commitment before I forgot!  
 
Now I don't want to sound like the name-it-and-claim-it crowd whose religion centers around "confessing truth" to make it so, but to some extent there is power in what we believe.  We shape our actions with our attitudes.  At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, I choose from now on to count myself as the person who always remembers, and while I'm at it, I'll count myself as the person who is always early--but just a little early!
 
As of July 11, 2005, I'm rebuilding this page from an old backup. A lot of material got lost in one quick oversight that in one step erased both my website and my most current backups. I won't loose my  backups (this way) again.

Last weekend was a pain. I had a sinus thing going, and I was dragged out like I was drugged, but without the drugs. Apparently I had some sort of virus.

I probably should have taken some pseudoephedrine, but our State legislators have recently decided that punishing all people with chronic sinus conditions (by banning pseudoephedrine) will stop the manufacture of meth. I would like to illustrate how foolish that idea is, but I don't want to give the meth manufacturers any ideas.

This weekend I was too tired to go to the store to buy pseudoephedrine, although during my waking moments I managed to go buy groceries and supplies for my daughters' 4H projects. I also begin mapping out repaying the money we borrowed on vacation last month.

I also did a lot of thinking about overcoming procrastination. The key is to stop thinking and do something. When you procrastinate, it is because you have believed a lie. Examine your thoughts, find the lie, tell yourself the truth that replaces the lie, and then get moving immediately. If you don't like what's ahead, you'll continue not liking what's ahead until you move past it. Chances are there are also good things ahead. It's hard to steer when you aren't moving, and bad things are more likely to happen if you can't steer to avoid them. Once you are moving, inertia makes it easy to keep moving.

(Forgive the bad grammar. I know better than to use incomplete sentences and the impersonal "you," but I like the informal tone.)

As of August 28, 2004, I'm just getting started.