Small town life is kind of genial, friendly, in a way that the roaring metropolis of Colorado Springs was not, in lots of little ways.

Example:

This week, we got a notice in our newspaper from the city, not to park on certain streets or they’d tow us. They were resurfacing some roads (they called it “Fog sealing”, a term I’d never heard before. Any insight?). It seemed kind of friendly to get this notice via the paper, like there is an assumption that everyone gets the paper, and if you don’t, well, that’s like not showing up to church or to the High School football game- they cock their head, and say, well… give him time. And it’s not too far to walk to the impound lot to pick up your car.

In COS they’d just break out the window, release the brake and push your car down the hill. Here, it’s a nice notice in the paper.

And the paper itself… well… the editorial this last week was about Home, Lisa the editor waxing rhapsodic about Home, which for her was a lot of places other than Limon, it turned out. It meant this and that about all these different places- Jamaica, Montana, so forth- being handed a chicken on a bus or something. For me to understand home apparently involves knowing a lot more about our local editor than I’d intended. Oh well.

There was a front page article about three boys who had to come to the school board meeting to apologize for some vandalism. Lots of heartbreaking stuff about how these boys had grown up here, for crying out loud. We knew their parents. How could they do this? But the actual headline? The real scandal, the money line? One of the boys had not shown up. He’d just decided he didn’t need to be there. Several lines into the article, we learn he had a work scheduling conflict and had to postpone. Remember the inverted pyramid from your “Writing for the Media” class?* Shouldn’t that be a little farther up in the article? But, well, let’s just scan these two headlines:

TEEN SKIPS MEETING , LEAVES FRIENDS TO APOLOGIZE FOR VANDALISM ALONE

WORK CONFLICT FORCES TEEN TO RESCHEDULE APPEARANCE TO SCHOOL BOARD

I guess I know which paper I’d be more likely to pick up. You who is without sin…

*What do you mean, you never took “Writing for the Media”? It was like the easiest “A” there was! (Wait, I got a D+).

I got a call from a telemarketer the other night. First one I’ve taken in ages, except for the ones you get from credit cards you already have. I’ve been on the Do Not Call list for Colorado pretty much since they started it, but I hadn’t put the new number on there, after the move.

Isn’t it funny how the modern age has totally taken the joy out of someone telling you you’ve just won something? How we assume that we’ll never see whatever fabulous prize it is they’re talking about, or if we do, it won’t be worth the degrading Faustian tradeoff of answering their twenty minute’s worth of survey questions or whatever? Exactly how much of my time and personal info is worth a free camera, retail value $149.99 (in Moscow maybe after all the excise taxes and kickbacks to local crime lords / elected officials) not including seventy dollars shipping and handling?

Fortunately, Colorado has a Do Not Call list. I have followed some of the debate in different places and in the news regarding the Do Not Call list, and have decided I have to, in good conscience, be in favor of a national list, since I am on the Colorado list and a big believer in the Golden Rule. What’s good for the goose, is good for the gander. (That’s an odd expression, Bruce.)

The backlash against telemarketers seems to have lowered the pay grade for telemarketers a good deal. I’m basing this purely on the difference between my experience with telemarketers a few years ago and now. As I recall, they used to sound professional and polite, if annoying. Now, they kind of have the quality of those kids who come to your door to sell you magazines, that I should buy to keep them out of trouble and help them win a trip to Acapulco.

I was on Barnes and Noble’s web site earlier today (buying _Cracked_ by Dr. Pinsky, see below) and noticed they had _The Scarlet Letter_ as the featured book for Banned Book Week. So I took a quick peek at their list- _Huckleberry Finn_, _Lord of the Flies_, etc etc- all the usual suspects.

Can anyone guess which book, which most-frequently-banned book was not on their list? I’ll give you a hint- this book has been actually banned, not just removed from library shelves or taken off the high-school reading lists. Actually banned, as in, you get killed in nasty ways if you get caught with it. Yes, that’s right, the Bible has apparently not been banned enough to make Barnes and Noble’s list, although _Jude the Obscure_ made it. Does that seem stupid to anyone other than me?

On another topic, I’d just like to say that _Jude the Obscure_ is my favorite Thomas Hardy novel, although I’ve never read it. I’ve never read any Thomas Hardy novel. I just like the name.

I heard part of an interview with Dr. Drew Pinsky today on NPR. He’s the guy who used to do that show on MTV with Adam Carolla, The Love Show or something. Well, I guess he’s actually a serious doctor who works with drug addicts and the like.

He was talking about research he was doing into the sexual behaviors of college kids, especially the ‘hooking up’ type behavior, just finding some random person at a party to have sex with. He said that both men and women were invariably drunk when they did it, but for very different reasons. Men got drunk to get up the courage and nerve to do it. Women got drunk to tolerate what was to them a less-than-desirable situation, but one to which they saw little alternative. He said society in one generation has gone from a mindset where sex was the solution to everything, to one where sex is the problem. Interesting interview.

I’m speaking only from anecdotal knowledge here, but it certainly seems to me that the sexual revolution worked more in favor of the baser desires of men than of women. I don’t know all that many women who are in favor of random sexual encounters, and the ones who have engaged in that kind of behavior mostly regret it a great deal later, and often say they only did it because of very poor self-esteem. Men don’t seem to suffer near so many consequences from that kind of behavior as women do. Women were supposed to be liberated by the sexual revolution, but I don’t think they got what they thought they were getting. Pinsky said what most college women wanted, rather than the sexually charged atmosphere on most college campuses, was a man who would just talk to them. This, too, is borne out by my rather limited experience with women.

Anyway, I bought his book, _Cracked_. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Today, my cousin Susanna told me she had described Ted Turner as a communist to a cow orker. There was some skepticism to this claim, and so I have done a little research to support Susanna’s assertion.

Here’s what I came up with:

Here’s his bio, from ABC News.

“His promised gift of $1 billion to a new foundation to support the United Nations, announced in September, 1997, may be the largest single donation by a private individual in history. (In comparison, all charitable giving by Americans in 1996 was approximately $120 billion.)”

The UN is the single biggest supporter of statist solutions to all problems, other than actual governments, and certainly agrees with Turner’s evaluations of the problems the world faces.

Then there’s the Ten Voluntary Initiatives, proposed as an alternative to the Ten Commandments. Doesn’t that just warm your heart? Here’s some info on their origin.

Here’s the original version from 1992.

Ted supports statist solutions to most problems. He assumes that the world is overpopulated, that resources are in jeopardy, that the environment is badly degraded. All of these are myths used to justify the need for government control over most or all aspects of life. Statist solutions are proposed in addition to voluntary reduction of resources. No free market solutions are proposed for any problem.

And here’s a modified version in 2003:

The Ten Voluntary initiatives from 2003

Note the compromised language on WMD. Could this be that point 9 could have been seen to support Bush’s war on Iraq? Check out the language on family size- same as from the 1992 list, except that they removed the language implying a little bit of support for national sovereignty.

Here’s Ted and his son Beau on reintroducing wolves in the west.

Here’s more about Ted’s billion-dollar gift to the UN.

Look at this from Ted’s site about his philanthropic activity through the Turner Foundation:

“Since 1991, the Turner Foundation has given more than $152 million to hundreds of organizations, including Advocates for Youth, American Bird Conservancy, Global Green USA, Montana Land Reliance, National Audubon Society, National Public Radio, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Sierra Club Foundation, and the World Watch Institute.”

Check out those organizations- every one of them actively promotes collectivist government solutions to whatever problem they are addressing.

The Trust for Public Land

A non-profit organization dedicated to setting land aside from private use for environmental reasons. Has partnerships with the Sierra Club, among others. Says it is for “Conserving Land for People”, but typically that means “All the people except the ones who actually own the land”. Listed on Ted Turner’s site as a recipient of funds.

Here’s an op-ed written by Ted about the new FCC rules changes that are coming. He’s disguising his statist approach by claiming these rules will be bad for small businesses. But note- only through government regulations will these businesses be able to exist, according to Ted. Another statist solution to the failure of the free market.

I especially like the line in there about how media monopoly could encourage the big corporations to slant news coverage to fit their biases- this from the owner of CNN.

I could go on for quite a while. But this should give a good starting place. All of the info has been taken from Ted’s own words, or articles promoted by Turner’s own web sites. Surf through those web sites for tons more info. What it comes down to is this- Ted’s not an actual Communist, probably, in the technical sense of subscribing to Karl Marx’s political philosophy. But he is a communist, in the more popular use of the term to mean a socialist, one who advocates state solutions to most problems.

Actually, he’s probably more like a fascist, one who, while not advocating direct state ownership of all industry, does believe that the state should direct the activity of industry and private individuals through regulation and education. Hitler once said, to paraphrase, “Why should we socialize the factories? We are socializing people.” Here’s a great example of Ted trying to do just that.

Now of course, the need to socialize people to believe the right thing doesn’t apply to the elites like Ted- they already know the right thing. But the rest of us need it. It’s wise for an enlightened man such as Ted to use his own money to support causes he agrees with, but the rest of us benighted buggers need to be directed to use our time and resources properly, for approved causes. Read those Ten “Initiatives” if you’ve forgotten what those causes are.

Wendy McElroy has an article on foxnews.com about so-called “deadbeat dads” that got the ol’ synapses firing this morning.

It’s good to see some cultural awareness building that the “deadbeat dad” problem is a problem of our own creating. I remember reading somewhere, don’t remember where, that one of the reasons young men are hesitant to get married these days is the ease with which a woman can divorce a man and then stick him with huge child support obligations. She gets her trophy kid and a “get out of jail” card from the biggest consequence of behaving that way, which is poverty. She probably won’t be rich, but she’ll be OK, because the father will be footing the bill. And in the studies that have been done, the main reason the “deadbeat dad” doesn’t pay is some combination of the fact that he’s unemployed, sick, or otherwise unable to earn much of a living, and the fact that the mother is denying him visitation (a huge problem these days).

Now I know plenty of bum guys who cheated on their wives, etc. I’m not downplaying the male end of responsibility for this. But it should be blindingly obvious by now that the courts are heavily skewed to the mother in all custody issues regardless of her responsibility for the breakup in the first place. Women have almost no incentive today to patch up a troubled marriage. A real cynic might even suspect that the main reason for this skew is that single mothers are far more likely to end up wards of the state in some aspect or another, whether it’s funded by the dad but mandated by the state, or directly funded by the state, or both. This is a simple matter of statistics, in case anyone thinks I’m being sexist or anything. I’m a big believer in Public Choice Theory, and I really wish more choice were, because it would teach us to look at the motivations of public officials, both elected and unelected, with a much more critical eye when examining public policy issues like this one.

So now the Bush administration is going to address the problem by throwing “deadbeat dads” in jail. What this is meant to accomplish, I’ve no idea, unless it’s just safe publicity for Bush. Who’s going to say a father shouldn’t take care of his kids? But when you look into it a little bit more, you see it’s a much more complicated problem than it appears at first blush. And Public Choice theory would teach us that officials are pursuing this policy because it serves their own personal interests, not primarily “for the kids” as they claim, a perspective that allows us to examine whether this approach actually does help the children at all. Here’s another article about the issue.

Perhaps the most relevant question one could ask of the current system is, “does it encourage families to stay together, or to split up?” Because there’s now a mountain of evidence that single parenthood, whether mother or father, is one of the main drivers of social dysfunction in America today.

I was in Colorado Springs with my cousins last night to see a show- Maktub at 32 Bleu. It was a great show, like all of Maktub’s shows have been, that I’ve seen. I highly recommend them, if they come to your neck of the woods. Kind of a Lenny Kravitz / Led Zeppelin / late ’70’s R&B kind of thing. It’s not really like that at all, but I don’t think I’m very good at that “they’re like this other band” kind of thing unless the bands really suck. Usually I like a band because they’re _not_ like every other band I’ve heard. Anyway, Maktub’s cool.

They had an opener called HeirUspecs. I think I’ve got that spelling right. [You must- that spelling links to their site]. They pronounced it the same as the word “haruspex” which means something pretty strange for any fairly straightforward hip-hop act to be using as their name. It was a fun act too though. Watch out if you go- there was some vulgarity, although not nearly what you might expect if MTV is the basis for your understanding of what hip-hop is. I don’t own a single hip-hop album, but it’s fun live, if it’s not all about ho’s and popping caps and stuff.

Speaking of popping caps, there was this guy in front of us on the dance floor, thin white suburban kid in cargos and a blue polo. He reminded me of Dignan in Bottle Rocket. He was jumping up and down, right in front of the stage, making devil signs or something, when Maktub was playing. Even during their slower songs, he’d grab the edge of the stage and swing down, almost to the floor, and then jump up again and yell and yell, and grab his embarassed friends and drag them up too. He seemed so anxious that the band recognize his enthusiasm. Is it that somehow, if the band sees you and appreciates your abject worship of them, then somehow you share in some small piece of what it is to be “with the band”? Maybe they’ll invite you backstage to party, or tour with them playing backup tambourine? I don’t know.

32 Bleu does a weird thing these days though- they play the openers as loud as the main act some times. Matt G said they did it at another show he was at, and it seemed like they did it last time too. That deprives you of the extra sense of excitement that you get when the main act comes out and they turn it up to 11.

Katie, with all her 13 month old energy and poor self-discipline, accompanied me to Limon’s public library story hour. It seemed like a good idea at the time–perhaps a tool to help her get used to extended periods of stillness.

She put the wooden shapes in all the wrong areas on the puzzle board in front of us as I and the other children and moms watched the librarian, Lucy, perch on her stool. Lucy, reading Arthur’s Computer Disaster ,tried to convince us with great animation that this was a riveting and amazing story. I have to admit, in spite of the obvious over dramatization, I found myself laughing loudly at Arthur’s little sister several times. I realized I was the only one laughing so, scanning the table and finding the children and other mothers were looking on with blank stares, I sat up in my chair and tried to compose a look of sophistication and boredom.

I tried to visit with the other mothers after the story, but found every question I posed could never be answered. Just as another mother would open her mouth to answer me, I would excuse myself to chase Katie into the adult section of the library. This exercise was great for the cardiovascular, but frustrating for the mind. I gave up and excused myself. The librarian kindly invited us back next week, but after seeing Lucy’s performance with the story, I wasn’t fooled by her enthusiasm.

Andrea

Starlight and Time

If you’re interested in Creationism at all, check out this site. It’s a great summary of the book by Dr. Russell Humphreys, written by the author of the book himself. It also has some information on the debate about the book and a link to archives of the debate. I have read the book, and it is very interesting, addressing one of the toughest areas for young-earth believers to address in a rational way.

From an email exchange on the RCUS chat list- you might find this interesting.

Rev. MacLeod,

> 1. The US does indeed act as an imperialist power in that it acts more

or less unilaterally in defiance of world opinion

There were some 40 other nations that joined us in the war on Iraq. We had security council resolutions condemning Saddam, NATO support (except for France and Germany), etc etc. How is this unilateral?

Besides, the president of the United States and our congress and everyone else, is tasked to serve and protect America, not France or Scotland or anyone else. I would not vote for any of them if they served your interest instead of ours. They spent a lot of time building a coalition and getting people on board, but in the end they did what was right for America. I’m glad they did.

And if it’s the UN you’re worried about, they gave us the authorization to attack Hussein in 1991, in order to expel him from Kuwait, destroy his WMD, and stop the human rights violations. The ceasefire that Hussein signed after the war was on condition that he end his WMD program and stop the human rights violations. He never did either, by anyone’s account. Therefore, we still had authorization under the 1991 resolution to attack Hussein. All the other stuff we did was just diplomatic cover, and the world still whined.

> 2. It is irrational to attempt to claim the moral high ground when the

action is clearly for political and/or economic reasons

This statement is specious. Something can be in our interest, and yet morally right. In fact, if you believe Scripture, this will always be the case. Acting in morally wrong ways will be destructive to our own interest. So, it can be morally right for us to rescue people from a man who would rape your wife if you spoke against him and torture children if their parents kept them from joining his political party, and at the same time good for America to do so. Did you miss all that?

Is it your argument then that I should not help my neighbor if he is being attacked, if it is possible I might benefit by doing so?

> 3. The criteria which it’s vital to employ in analysing whether or not

the actions of the US (or for that matter Saddam Hussein ) are right are

BIBLICAL criteria. It matters not a whit whether your opinion or mine is

more popular — what matters is what is right in terms of God’s revealed will.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

If I were Iraqi, I’d want to be liberated. And we have seen that the great majority of Iraqis, except those directly profiting from Hussein’s bloody rule, and the various extremists which have been imported into Iraq for the purpose of destabilizing our liberation of them, are delighted to have us there. The western media, anxious to have us fail in a war they opposed, anxious to have another Vietnam when they can crow about their influence, don’t show a lot of that, but it’s true. Do a little research and you’ll see. We had the ability and the opportunity to do something and we did.

So why was Europe so unwilling to help people who were being butchered and raped and tortured? Why did the French and the Germans actively lobby against us to prevent us from doing it? Why were so many of your countrymen against it? Just because it was big bad America doing it? You didn’t have a problem with it when it was Kosovo, and Clinton doing it, and the Security Council was on board.

“Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”

That’s right, we’re Caesar. We’re the biggest kid on the block, by a long shot. Now that doesn’t justify whatever we do. We still are held accountable. But there’s no point whining and acting like we should behave like a poor excuse for a second-rate power like France. They would act unilaterally if they could, but they can’t, because they’re weak. Compared to us, everyone’s weak. We spend more on our military than the next 20 countries combined. And if we didn’t, the world would be a worse place, not better.

God gave you the Caesar you have. Be thankful we’re not like the other Caesars that have ruled the earth. Think you’d be better off if the Soviets won the Cold War? The reason they lost is because we spent all that money to become Caesar. Your main complaint seems to be that we’re not angels. Criticism accepted. But we could be ruling your country and all of Europe right now if we wanted to. What we did instead, after 1945, was rebuild all your countries at great expense to ourselves, after we had saved your countries from a murderous dictator at great expense to ourselves, and never asked anything in return (except in the words of Colin Powell, a little land to bury our dead). Would France have done that? Would England? Would Rome? So now we do it for someone else, and you’re complaining that we didn’t spend enough time asking your opinion? You piped and we didn’t dance, you wept and we didn’t mourn. Pardon us if we don’t care much. We’ll just carry on protecting all of you, and I expect you’ll carry on kicking us in the shins for it.

Matt Powell