You Can't Get There From Here

Luke 17:20-21

King James Version

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Richie Rich-the Richest Kid in the World

Hearing Voices

Penn Jillette says "God no!" to religion on NPR. He begins by challenging religious people with the question "If God told you to kill your child, would you do it? If your answer is no, you are an atheist."

I doubt that most people of faith or otherwise, hearing a voice in their head telling them to kill any child, would assume that God is directing them. Of course, people are conditioned to kill in response to an authority less than an all powerful supreme being. An execution order from a Texas judge may be sufficient, or an order from the head of a gang in other situations.

I thought of all the fathers who, like Abraham and Isaac, grappled with the reality of their son possibly being sent to slaughter at the direction of a higher authority during the draft for the undeclared war in Viet Nam. I thought of the jingoistic "Chicken Hawks" who evaded the draft in the 60s and 70s, but years later encouraged young people to go off and fight in Iraq to rid Sadaam Hussein of his WMDs and in Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden.

Finally, I wondered if the U.S. government drafts my son a few years from now to fight in Absurdistan, will I potentially sacrifice him or encourage him to move to Canada or Europe?

Marshall Efron's Illustrated, Simplified and Painless Sunday School

I'll beat the love of god into you...

Cowboys and Englishmen

A transplanted Texan in England wondered why the police aren't using guns to stop the UK riots:

...As everyone in the newsroom debated the use of force – whether to use rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannons, Tasers, even bean-bag guns – I wondered why they were wasting their breath.

“If your cops had guns, day number 2, 3, 4 and 5 of this, it would NOT have happened!” I said at a recent meeting.

Texas has around 25 million people. There were over 1,300 murders committed in the state in 2009.

England has around 52 million people. There were over 650 murders committed in the country in 2009. Maybe if guns were more prevalent in England, the UK could one day be as safe as Texas.

Meanwhile, Texas Governor Rick Perry thinks using predator drones on the Mexican border is a good idea.

It was an Outer Limits Episode...

Who can be bothered to read these things...

Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US was the President's daily brief prepared by the CIA and given to U.S. President George W. Bush on August 6, 2001.

Hot Air

Headline #1:

New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism

By James Taylor | Forbes – Wed, Jul 27, 2011
Headline #2 from New Scientist:

Antarctica rising as ice caps melt

• 31 July 2011
• Magazine issue 2823.

As usual, you can find articles supporting either position on global warming almost every week. So what is the story behind this latest debunking of the socialist global warming hoax? Here's the abstract from the article the libertarian blogger says refutes the global warming alarmists:

Abstract: The sensitivity of the climate system to an imposed radiative imbalance remains

the largest source of uncertainty in projections of future anthropogenic climate change.

Here we present further evidence that this uncertainty from an observational perspective is

largely due to the masking of the radiative feedback signal by internal radiative forcing,

probably due to natural cloud variations. That these internal radiative forcings exist and

likely corrupt feedback diagnosis is demonstrated with lag regression analysis of satellite

and coupled climate model data, interpreted with a simple forcing-feedback model. While

the satellite-based metrics for the period 2000–2010 depart substantially in the direction of

lower climate sensitivity from those similarly computed from coupled climate models, we

find that, with traditional methods, it is not possible to accurately quantify this discrepancy

in terms of the feedbacks which determine climate sensitivity. It is concluded that

atmospheric feedback diagnosis of the climate system remains an unsolved problem, due

primarily to the inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in

satellite radiative budget observations.

A Majority, But Not Fillibuster Proof

Only 52% of Americans Approve of God's Job Performance

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/07/only-half-americans-approve-gods-job-performance/40268/