I Know "The West Wing" Was Cancelled, But...

So I see that the face transplant woman in France came forward yesterday for her first press conference. Transplant recipient Isabelle Dinoire said, "I hope the successful operation will help other people like me to live again."



I'm glad things went well, of course, but my question is: Before the transplant, wasn't Stockard Channing still using her face?


(Photo courtesy of AP)

Related Tags: Isabelle Dinoire, face transplant

Cartoon Violence

It's hard not to be a little amused by the irony in the violent Islamic protests against political cartoons portraying the prophet Mohammed as a terrorist.

"How dare you portray our great prophet as a bomb-throwing terrorist! Now we must kill you and burn your buildings!"

John Piper says of the recent unrest:

Am I missing it, or is there an unusual silence in the blogosphere about the Muslim outrage over the cartoons of Mohammed. To me this cries out for the observation that when artists put the crucifix in a flask of urine, Christians were grieved and angered, but not one threatened to kill anyone. Our longing is to convert the blasphemers with the Good News of Christ's death and resurrection, not kill them. Our faith is based on One who was reviled not just in cartoons but in reality and received it patiently for the salvation of the cartoonists. These riots are filled with intimations about the glorious difference between Christ and Mohammed, and between the way of Christ and the way of Islam. And the cowing of the press around the world and the US government is ominous for the fear we are under of Islam--not just extremist Islam. I do not respect the teachings of Islam which when followed devoutly lead to destruction. So I have been pondering which will take me out first, Islam, Uncle Sam, or cancer. No matter, all authority belongs to Jesus. I just want to bear faithful witness to his glorious gospel of peace to the end.

(Hat tip to Justin Taylor)

Related Tags: Islam, Muslim violence, political cartoon, cartoons, Mohammed, John Piper, terrorist, terrorism, protests

Around The Horn

Pat Buchanan lambastes President Bush on the foreign policy parts of his State of the Union address:

Intending no disrespect, [Bush's stated intent to "seek the end of tyranny in our world"] is noble-sounding nonsense. Our security rests on U.S. power and will, and not on whether Zimbabwe, Sudan, Syria, Cuba or even China is ruled by tyrants. Our forefathers lived secure in a world of tyrannies by staying out of wars that were none of America's business. As for "the end of tyranny in our world," Mr. President, sorry, that doesn't come in "our world." That comes in the next.

Ann Coulter might be a sore winner, but she's hilarious as always:

There now ... nominating a conservative to the Supreme Court wasn't that scary, was it? Hey, who wants to go again?

...Only because of the grassroots revolt against [Harriet] Miers were Republicans in Washington finally forced to face their worst nightmare.

Terror, thy name is Samuel Alito. Or as he is now known: "Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito."

In the whirlwind surrounding Alito's confirmation, I almost lost sight of the fact that his confirmation marked the official end of Sandra Day O'Connor's confused, monarchial reign over America. Good riddance.


Desiring God has announced their 2006 National Conference, to take place September 29-October 1: Above All Earthly Powers: The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World. Among the guest speakers will be D.A. Carson, David Wells, and Timothy Keller. My wife and I vowed last year to make DG's annual conference a part of our annual plans. Also, Desiring God has an update on John Piper's prostate cancer surgery, scheduled for February 14.

Related Tags: Pat Buchanan, State of the Union, Ann Coulter, Samuel Alito, Sam Alito, Sandra Day O'Connor, Desiring God, John Piper

The Sky Is Falling!

The closet leftists in the media are desperately hoping that Justice Alito's first vote at the Supreme Court yesterday signals that he's actually a raving liberal.

In a 6-3 vote, the Court decided not to overrule a temporary stay of execution issued by a lower court in Missouri for an inmate who was supposed to die by lethal injection at midnight last night.

"Alito Breaks With Conservatives In First Vote!" "Alito Sides With Liberal Justices!" "Alito Blocks Execution!" The media is soiling themselves over the silver lining they think they've suddenly found in the cloud. Except it's not.

Alito didn't block anything, first of all. He decided to let stand the ruling of the court closer to the case. He simply sided with the status quo. It was not a "Supreme Court decision," nor was there any formal ruling. There is absolutely no indication that this vote has anything to do with death penalty ideology; all indications are that Alito believes the death penalty itself is perfectly constitutional.

Oh, and for his supposed "break" with conservatives? Buried several paragraphs down in the CNN story, after the orgasmic excitement over Alito's supposed defection, is this:

An initial vote in the Taylor case came Wednesday afternoon, when all the justices rejected Missouri's effort to immediately end a stay of execution for Taylor.

In other words, earlier in the very same day, the conservative justices had all voted exactly the same way Alito did. Justice Scalia agreed with Justice Alito on this case yesterday. Justice Thomas agreed with Justice Alito yesterday. Chief Justice Roberts agreed with Alito on this case yesterday. The fact that they later in the day changed their minds does nothing to change the basic fact of this case: it's not a "liberal/conservative" issue. All of the Supreme Court justices were able to see a good reason for upholding the stay at some point yesterday.

Much as liberals would love this to be a sign that Alito is actually John Paul Stevens without the stupid bow tie, they're grasping at straws. He's going to be a nightmare for them.

Related Tags: Supreme Court, Samuel Alito, Sam Alito, death penalty

The Alito Shuffle

Judge Samuel Alito is expected to be confirmed by the Senate today to the United States Supreme Court, despite the hilarious tirade launched on the Senate floor yesterday by an apparently-drunk Ted Kennedy.

The significance of this can hardly be overstated. For the first time in years, an openly conservative justice has been named to the Court. The Bush administration showed enough fortitude (despite the disasterous Harriet Miers misstep) to nominate a non-stealth candidate. The Democrats' attempts to smear him backfired, and a new era seems to have begun in which liberals will be unable to successfully oppose a conservative nominee based on the abortion issue alone. All of these things represent massive changes for the good.

Nonetheless, conservatives still need to be hoping for a John Paul Stevens or a Ruth Bader Ginsburg to disappear from the court before they can expect consistently constitutional rulings. Anthony Kennedy, who had been a "swing vote" on the Rehnquist Court, fancies himself a balancer, and I believe that he will begin to vote consistently liberal now that conservatives seem to have a reliable fourth vote.

As the wishy-washy swing vote with no discernable constitutional reasoning or philosophy of interpretation, Justice Kennedy now becomes the most powerful man in America, representing the 4-4 tie-breaker on each controversial case as the wind blows him. He will relish his role and give the constant public appearance of great angst and deliberation, since former Court clerks say he's obsessed with appearing "thoughtful" to the media. But rest assured that his desire to please the media will cause him to cast liberal, nothing-to-do-with-the-Constitution votes on all the truly important issues.

He'll be the reigning potentate of America--until conservatives pick up one more seat.

UPDATE-11:19 am: Alito has been confirmed by the Senate 58-42, and will be sworn in shortly. Alito will attend the State of the Union message tonight in the chamber of the House of Representatives as the newest Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. It's enough to make even me smile.

Related Tags: Samuel Alito, Sam Alito, Ted Kennedy, Anthony Kennedy, Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, John Paul Stevens

Hello? Is This Thing On?

Well, it looks like a few Democrats are going to try to mount an Alito filibuster after all.

It's been said before, but these goofs are truly the gift that keeps on giving. Evidently they somehow missed the wave of public scorn that was heaped upon them during the hearings, when even their friends in the mainstream media turned on them.

Talk about not being able to read a room. The entire Democratic Party is the Steve Carell character in "The Office." As the show's webpage describes Carell's character "Michael":

With unshaken enthusiasm, Michael believes he is the office funnyman and a fountain of business wisdom. Unaware of how he is perceived by his employees, Michael comes off alternately absurd and pathetic, but always hilarious.

The Dems so desperately want to be popular, but their tone-deaf attempts to appeal to their perceived audience only make them look more foolish and off-putting. Then they're stunned when nobody gets them, and ultimately they blame the crowd. "Hey, c'mon! What's the matter with you people? This is good stuff."

I actually hope they do try to filibuster. Only Democrats are capable of handing such huge victories to an unpopular president.

End Of The Spear

Four years ago next month, in one of the more memorable experiences my job has afforded me, I drove up to Dunnellon, Florida (near Ocala) and spent a day with Steve Saint and his friend Mincaye.

For those who don't know the story, Steve's father Nate Saint was a missionary to the violent Waodani Indians in Ecuador in the 1950's. Nate was a pilot who, along with four other missionaries (Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, and Roger Youderian), spent months making contact with the Waodani from the air before finally landing on a small beach along the river for a face to face meeting with the tribe.

Their first contact went well, with gifts being exchanged and Nate even taking one of the Waodani up in the airplane for a ride. But when they returned for a second visit a couple of days later, on January 8, 1956, the Waodani inexplicably attacked, spearing all five men to death. Though the missionaries were armed, they had refused to fire on their attackers. The murders caused an international sensation, appearing on the pages of Life magazine which showed photographs of the missionaries' bodies and told the world of these "Auca" ("savage") Indians.

But some of the widows and families of the murdered missionaries bravely persisted. Steve Saint's aunt Rachel went to live among the Waodani in the jungle for the rest of her life. Through the faithfulness of these brave people, many of the Waodani were converted to Christ. What had been decades of bloodshed (the tribe killed each other with far more frequency than they attacked outsiders) came to an end as the Waodani learned to "walk God's trail."

This story has been a precious to evangelical Christians for over 50 years. Many Christian kids grow up reading about it, in books like Through Gates of Splendor. Jim Elliot's diaries were published, helping to inspire perhaps thousands of Christians to give their lives to missions over the years ("He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose").

One of the Waodani men in the attacking party on the beach that day, the one who thrust a spear through Nate Saint, was Mincaye. Mincaye had been a brutal warrior, but was radically changed by being introduced to Christ.

The reason I bring all this up is because a new dramatic motion picture on this has been released, which my family and I went to see last night. The film is called "End of the Spear," and tells the story from the viewpoint of the young Steve Saint.

It's not without its flaws. The actor cast in the lead role of Nate Saint is evidently a homosexual activist, a casting decision wildly at odds with the perspective of those whom this movie is about. And the Christian blogosphere has been buzzing with deserved criticism for movie's failure to make clear that these missionaries were motivated by one thing and one thing only: the great commission of Jesus Christ to preach the good news of salvation by faith in Him through his life, atoning death on the cross, burial, and resurrection.

These are serious criticisms and they are legitimate. But I hope people will see the movie anyway. Because despite it's flaws, it depicts one of the great stories of the 20th century. Though it fails to properly acknowledge the source, it presents a powerful picture of real redemption. It misses an opportunity to tell the full truth, but even we only consider it as moralism--indeed, even if we only consider it as pure entertainment , wouldn't it still be nicer to see a few more movies at the cineplex with themes like this, and a few less "American Pie" flicks?

Mincaye killed Steve Saint's father. Today, because of the message of the gospel, Steve and Mincaye are close friends. Mincaye has been forgiven. He acts as a beloved and loving grandfather to children whose grandfather he murdered. It really happened. I've seen it. I've eaten with them, talked with them, watched them together. I've seen Mincaye and one of Nate Saint's grandchildren off in a corner wrestling around a playing hacky-sack when they thought nobody was looking. I've seen Mincaye and Steve Saint sharing jokes and praying together.

I've never in my life seen a greater illustration of true redemption and reconciliation than that. No, the movie doesn't capture it perfectly. But it captures some of it. Nobody is under some moral obligation to see it. But I hope you'll at least consider checking it out, because there really is a Mincaye, and he really has been reconciled to his victim's family and to his God.

Related Tags: End of the Spear, Steve Saint, Nate Saint, Mincaye, Jim Elliot, Waodani, Jesus Christ

The ACLU: Fighting For Your Rights

One of the longstanding illusions about the ACLU is that they are merely the dogged defenders of the crucial civil rights of everyone, regardless of political persuasion. A look through their cases, however, shows this to be far from true. In reality, the ACLU pushes a kook-left agenda, and it manages to find the wrong side of almost any issue, which it then imposes on all of America via the runaway courts.

So while you're under the impression that the ACLU is actually out fighting the Joseph McCarthys of the world and upholding the Bill of Rights as the founders intended it, they're actually doing stuff like this:

A male high school student can wear a skirt to school after the American Civil Liberties Union reached an agreement with school officials.

The ACLU announced the deal Tuesday. It will allow a Hasbrouck Heights [N.J.] School senior to wear a skirt to protest the school's no-shorts policy.

The district's dress code bans shorts between Oct. 1 and April 15, but allows skirts, a policy 17-year-old Michael Coviello believes is discriminatory.

"I'm happy to be able to wear skirts again to bring attention to the fact that the ban on shorts doesn't make sense," Coviello said in a statement.

We can all now sleep the secure sleep of the constitutionally protected, knowing that this school district's unconscionable human rights travesty has ended and justice and humanity have been restored by the brave souls at the ACLU.

The only solace I find is in the hope this little putz will likely be beaten senseless and left for dead by his schoolmates. Go football team!

Related Tags: ACLU, Michael Coviello, Hasbrouck Heights School

One Last Shot, 'Fore We Quit It

As Judge Samuel Alito appears headed to the Supreme Court after being approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gene Edward Veith draws our attention to an article outlining the disastrous strategy of the Democrats in the Alito hearings.

According to Newsday's James Pinkerton (who also cites a New York Times piece):

In 2001, 42 of the 50 Democrats then in the Senate - the number is down to 45 now - went on a retreat to "hear experts and discuss ways they could fight a Bush effort to remake the judiciary." The experts were three liberal legal eagles - Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School, Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School and Marcia Greenberger of the National Women's Center in Washington - who told the Democrats that they could "oppose even nominees with strong credentials on the grounds that the White House was trying to push the courts in a conservative direction."

And now that's the strategy that has failed, leaving Democrats "tilting at windmills," as a rueful Tribe told the Times.

Pinkerton notes that, for the first time in memory, even the media turned on the Democrats during their disgraceful performance, garnering ridicule across the spectrum, from Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" to Newsweek magazine. He then offers a word of advice to the Dems:

First, their long love affair with lefty law professors must come to an end. For decades, the party has let itself be led, at least perceptually, by the avant-garde ideology of such litigation-obsessed outfits as National Organization for Women and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Time will tell whether they take the advice, but it's been clear for years that the national Democratic Party is pushing an agenda shared by few regular Americans, as evidenced by the continual crushing defeats they've experienced at the ballot box.

Moderate law blogger Ann Althouse further illuminates the Dems' disastrous strategy at the Alito hearings, astutely pointing out:

[The Democrat senators] seemed to be making political speeches, which really was consistent with their own bad decision to portray judging as a political enterprise. If we'd believed that portrayal, their expressions of political preferences would have seemed quite relevant. But people aren't buying that portrayal, and they shouldn't. What judges do is different from what Senators do, and they need arguments that make sense as a criticism of judging...If it's political, the winners of the elections should prevail. If you want to say it's not political, then why did you portray it as political, throughout the hearings and as part of a strategy devised years ago at your retreat?

The fact is, liberal Democrats have been judicially imposing a political agenda on the country for years. Their greatest fear (and the reason they fight to the death over these nominations) is that conservatives might abuse the power of the courts in the same way they have.

It's fitting that they should be wetting their pants while their party once again implodes over this, as they've discovered yet a new way to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Related Tags: Sam Alito, Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrats, James Pinkerton, Cass Sunstein, Laurence Tribe, Marcia Greenberger, ACLU, National Organization of Women, Ann Althouse

In The Air Tonig....Er...About 20 Years Ago

Brian over at Terrible Swift Word has a photographic retrospective, along with some apt observations, on that 80's phenomena "Miami Vice."

I was a huge "Miami Vice" fan in the 80's. I knew a guy who had worked on the show as an extra in the fourth episode (he was about a decade older than me--I was just into high school at this point), and he told me all about it a few months before it ever premiered on NBC.

I still remember the conversation so vividly, because it makes me laugh.

"Who's in it? Anybody I'd know of?" I asked him.

His response, and I couldn't make this up, was:

"Well, it's got Gregory Sierra, the guy who played Chano on 'Barney Miller.' He's really nice."

Sierra, who if I recall correctly also appeared as Lamont's friend Julio on "Sanford and Son," played the lieutenant in the first few episodes of "Vice" (maybe the whole first season?) before Edward James Olmos came on the scene. That was their big star. Don Johnson and the other guy were total unknowns--a status to which the other guy has reverted. I honestly can't even come up with his name at the moment.

So I watched because I wanted to catch a glimpse of my friend (which I eventually did--he was a patron in a disco where they were playing "Jump" by the Pointer Sisters), and I got hooked on it from the start. It was so moody and hip and unlike anything else I'd seen on TV to that point.

So a couple of years ago, I tuned in with excitement when I saw that the Spike network was running "Miami Vice" reruns. I figured I'd relive the thrills. And mere words cannot capture how awful it was. Bad acting, ridiculous hair, silly outfits, lame dialogue....I mean, it was putrid. Unwatchable as anything other than camp. I'm willing to bet that there's never been a successful TV show that aged more poorly. The thought that kept running through my head as they chased around Bruce Willis (or whoever happened to be that week's villian) was "What were we thinking?"

Fortunately creator Michael Mann is currently working on a new movie version of it.

Related Tags: Miami Vice, Don Johnson, Gregory Sierra, Barney Miller, Sanford and Son, Michael Mann

The Love Comes Tumbling Down

Soul great Wilson Pickett, who died yesterday at 64, wasn't on my "suprised they're still alive" lists. But we did have some fun (at the expense of the then-soon-to-be-room-temperature Tookie Williams) only last month with Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour," including in the comments section.

Weird. Well, okay, it's really not that weird. It was a pretty well-known song I guess.

Why Does Daddy Smell Like Scotch?

If this turns out to be true, would it be the end of Ted Kennedy's political career?

Nah. If your constituency is willing to allow you to murder a woman, it's not likely to care if you adulterously father an illegitimate child with one. Particularly in the liberal community. Why, when Jesse Jackson (who is an ordained minister) was found to have fathered an illegitimate child, the furor was so great that he had to had to go into seclusion for part of a weekend.

At least now we know why Ted Kennedy is such an ardent abortion advocate. It's called "disposing of evidence."

Related Tags: Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, illegitimate child, Mary Jo Kopechne

Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall

The Golden Globe awards, considered by many to be a precursor to the Oscars, were held last night in Beverly Hills.

"Brokeback Mountain" won four awards (including best drama, best director, and best screenplay). In the acting categories, Philip Seymour Hoffman won best actor in a drama for "Capote," while Felicity Huffman won best actress in a drama for her role in "TransAmerica."

For years, of course, Hollywood has been telling us, "Hey, we aren't leading the culture. We merely hold a mirror up to society and reflect where the culture is already at."

I didn't used to believe them, but now after last night's awards I do. Because who doesn't know at least a few married gay cowboys, flamboyantly homosexual helium-voiced authors, or pre-op transsexual males who find out on their way to becoming women that they unknowingly fathered children in their past?

I mean, aren't those themes pretty much universal?

Related Tags: Golden Globes, Hollywood, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, TransAmerica, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Felicity Huffman, Oscars

Take Away My Shoelaces

Dear Fellow Bloggers,

Finally, after a long search, I've found something in the blogosphere that's even more riveting than blogging about blogging. What is this newfound, incomparable treasure, you may ask? Why, it's blogging about the technical side of blogging. Blogging about the way your blog works.

Sure, it was interesting when you told us about the 14-part series you were planning to post about the role of blogging in the postmodern, deconstructionist world--planning just as soon as you could get a good break from your hectic schedule and really give it the scrupulous attention we've become unable to live without from you.

But wouldn't it be even more interesting to tell us, at length, about how your blog works best on Mozilla Firefox browsers and how you're switching over to Moveabletype 3.2 because you were finding the previous system to be time-consuming and unworkable?

Are you thinking about switching commenting services? I mean, seriously--what could be more fascinating? Wait, I know: A poll! Don't just change the look of your blog willy-nilly. Take a days-long poll on whether you should use 10 or 11 point fonts! Can't decide on whether the shadow behind your blog title should be mauve or coral? Run a survey! Don't let even the tiniest alteration to your template go un-publicly angsted over. Experimenting with a new server or hosting company? Tell us about it! But please--don't be stingy with the details. This stuff is fascinating.

Whatever you do to your blog, never lose sight of the fact that America is interested in every tiny detail. They can't sleep unless they know that your new RSS feed shouldn't cause them any trouble. You are the center of the universe, and you need to start acting like it.

Sincerely,
John Rabe
(Comments by Haloscan, hosting provided by Blogger, syndication by Feedburner, browser: Internet Explorer 6.0, color of blog: olive green, gray, and white.)

Related Tags: Blogging, narcissism, technology

Biden His Time

I've noticed that vast majority of analysis of the Alito hearings has taken the form of ridicule. And really that's the only proper response when you watch this nonesense.

From the incomparable Peggy Noonan in today's Wall Street Journal:

This is the authentic sound, though not the authentic words, of Joe Biden, and this is what Judge Alito has to discipline himself not to respond to:

What if a fella--I'm just hypothesizing here, Judge Alito--what if a fella said, "Well I don't want to hire you because I don't like the kind of eyeglasses you wear," or something like that. Follow my thinking here. Or what if he says "I won't hire you because I don't like it that you wear black silk stockings and a garter belt. And your name is Fred." Strike that--just joking, trying to lighten this thing up, we can all be too serious. Every 10 years when you see me at one of these hearings I am different from every other member of Judiciary in that I have more hair than the last time. You know why? It's all the activity in my brain! It breaks through my skull and nourishes my follicles with exciting nutrients! Try to follow me.

But Peggy hastens to point out that she actually likes Senator Biden:

The great thing about Joe Biden during the Alito hearings, the reason he is, to me, actually endearing, is that as he speaks, as he goes on and on and spins his long statements, hypotheticals, and free associations--as he demonstrates yet again, as he did in the Roberts hearings and even the Thomas hearings, that he is incapable of staying on the river of a thought, and is constantly lured down tributaries from which he can never quite work his way back--you can see him batting the little paddles of his mind against the weeds, trying desperately to return to the river but not remembering where it is, or where it was going. I love him. He's human, like a garrulous uncle after a drink.

These hearings are Biden's Howard Dean scream moment. He's ended whatever remaining hopes he had for his party's nomination in one 72-hour period. Even reliably liberal idiot savants like Richard Cohen and Katie Couric are making fun of him.

Related Tags: Peggy Noonan, Joe Biden, Sam Alito, Richard Cohen, Katie Couric, Howard Dean

Whither Hughes?

I've lately been pondering the career of John Hughes. (And yes, I'm aware of how sad that is.)

My recollections were occasioned by a CNN.com/Entertainment Weekly review of a new DVD version of "Ferris Bueller" that's coming out.

I don't know that there's ever been a bigger seven or eight year streak in the history of movies. From 1983 to 1990, he either wrote or directed (and in some cases both) the following films:

Mr. Mom (1983)
Vacation (1983)
Sixteen Candles (1984)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Weird Science (1985)
Pretty in Pink (1986)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987)
She's Having a Baby (1988)
Uncle Buck (1989)
Christmas Vacation (1989)
Home Alone (1990)

I haven't even included some others during that period that stunk, like "European Vacation" and "The Great Outdoors."

Isolate only at the ones he directed. In one six year period as a writer/director, he cranked out:

Sixteen Candles
The Breakfast Club
Weird Science
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
She's Having a Baby
Uncle Buck

I think that's virtually unprecedented. These films might not be to everyone's taste (and with the exception of “Ferris” and “Uncle Buck,” none of them pushed the $80 million box office mark), but for people of my generation, these are seminal pictures. There's not a clunker in the bunch (though I know some might quibble with one here or there). There's not one on there I don't stop to watch when I pass by it flipping through channels.

Who has ever put a list together like that in that amount of time? Granted, he wasn't doing gritty, edgy stuff like Scorsese or something, but this guy was the Frank Capra of his time. "Home Alone" is the highest-grossing live-action comedy of all time, for goodness sakes.

And yet the guy hasn't directed a movie since "Curly Sue" in 1991--15 years ago. It's Jim Brown. It's Barry Sanders. It's Jordan, if he had stayed retired the first time. How do you put together that career in six years and then disappear? Where is he? At IMDB (which is where I got all this info), he appears to only be cranking out lousy, straight-to-video sequels of "Home Alone" and "Beethoven" as a writer anymore. Under a pseudonym, no less.

Related Tags: John Hughes, movies, Brat Pack, Ferris Bueller, directors, 80's

You Should Read It Sometime, Senator

This exchange between Judge Alito and Sen. Chuck Shumer at Alito's confirmation hearing has made the whole thing worth it:

Shumer: Does the Constitution protect free speech?

Alito: Yes, Senator, the First Amendment protects free speech.

Shumer: Well, why can you give me a straight answer on that issue but not give me a straight answer on abortion?

Alito: Because the text of the Constitution explicitly includes the term "free speech".

(Hat tip: the evangelical outpost)

Oh, The Humanity

British Prime Minister Tony Blair admits that he spanked some of his kids a few times.

Fortunately, however, the children's right's advocates are on the case:

After his admission, British campaigners against smacking renewed calls Wednesday for children to be protected against all forms of physical discipline.

The children's rights advocates will be redirecting us to the much more effective method you can find on display at any given moment in your local Wal-Mart: "Jeffrey! You'd better stop it! Jeffrey! I'm going to count to three. One....two....Jeffrey! Knock it off! I mean it!"

Morally Neutral

Doug Wilson scripts the Alito hearings:

"Judge Alito, I am afraid that I must come right to the point. If confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, would you allow your personal beliefs and morals to dictate anything with regard to your behavior in office?"

"Senator, thank you for this opportunity to address this important question right away. I have had a lot of time to work through the ramifications of this question as I was preparing for this hearing. And after much meditation and prayer, I am prepared to say that I will not allow my personal beliefs to interfere in any way with my official behavior."

"I have to say that I am gratified to hear that, judge. Would it be too much to extend your remarks to the much debated question of Roe v. Wade?"

"I suppose you could do that, although that was not what I had in mind. I was thinking more of the possibility of taking bribes. There are some cases coming up where the appellant is dripping in money. That, and the fact that I was thinking about a little sexual harassment of some of the law clerks -- I have seen more than a few hotties up there, I can tell you that."

"Um . . . Judge Alito, I think you may have gotten a little, um, off message."

"Not at all, senator."

"So your testimony is that you plan on taking bribes and doing a little groping?"

"Yes, senator."

"You can't be serious."

"Deadly serious, Senator Kennedy. But please make no mistake. Taking bribes and being unfaithful to my wife remain deeply inconsistent with my core values. Nothing about that has changed."

Read the rest at BLOG and MABLOG.

Quote Of The Year

I don't often repeat something here, but one recent quote was so good that I want to make sure it doesn't get lost in the excessive length of last weeks posts on Intelligent Design.

To hear the popular press (and evolutionists) tell it, the battle between Intelligent Design and Darwinian evolution is a battle between obscurantist flat-earthers and paragons of empirical research. Supposedly, the naturalistic worldview (which says that the physical is all that is real and true) is so obvious that only the worst sort of dunderhead could ignore it. Indeed, the judge in the Dover case ruled that this philosophy of naturalism is part of the very definition of science.

Which is what makes this quote from world-renowned physicist (who is a committed naturalist and strenuous opponent of Intelligent Design) Leonard Susskind of Stanford University so stunning. A reporter from New Scientist magazine is asking him about the fact that the universe is so ridiculously fine-tuned to support life, and about the idea that this can perhaps can explained by resorting to theorizing a "landscape" of millions of other unseen, undetected universes, one of which is bound to be tuned just right for life:

Q. If we do not accept the landscape idea are we stuck with intelligent design?

Susskind: I doubt that physicists will see it that way. If, for some unforeseen reason, the landscape turns out to be inconsistent - maybe for mathematical reasons, or because it disagrees with observation - I am pretty sure that physicists will go on searching for natural explanations of the world. But I have to say that if that happens, as things stand now we will be in a very awkward position. Without any explanation of nature's fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer the ID critics. One might argue that the hope that a mathematically unique solution will emerge is as faith-based as ID.

This is a simply amazing quote, which is why I don't want it to be lost. This world-renowned physicist admits that, as it stands now, naturalism is "in a very awkward position" and "hard pressed to answer the ID critics."

A response to this quote needs to be demanded from every joker who tells you that Intelligent Design is "clearly not science" and that the naturalistic scientists are simply "committed to following the evidence wherever it leads."

Still Stayin' Alive

One year ago today, I listed nine celebrities I was amazed were still alive at the time.

Perhaps even more amazing is the fact that a full year later, only two of them (Arthur Miller and Eddie Albert) have dropped off, leaving behind such stalwarts as James Arness, Glenn Ford, and Harry Morgan.

Subsequent lists fared even more poor...er...better, with only Don Adams shedding the mortal coil among the additional 13 entries.

We'll see how many of these geezers can suprise us for yet another year! Good luck to all.

Sock It To Me

Since this is the first post of 2006 and will kind of set the tone for the new year, I want to kick things off with something weighty and substantial:

Why do I need my socks to come in a resealable ziplock bag? On the packaging of most athletic socks this now seems to be an actual selling point: "Now in resealable bag!" Will the socks somehow go stale if I take them out and put them in a drawer? Am I supposed to store them back inside the baggie after I've worn them?

Atheistic Religious Fervor

The popular belief today, fostered by many in the scientific community who have a vested interest in bolstering their prestige, is that scientists are purely rational, following the empirical facts wherever they might lead, while religious people are irrational fanatics who persist in believing in a creator God despite the evidence.

But is that really the case? Even a cursory look at the actual practice of the scientific community shows us that the answer is emphatically "no." Scientists show every bit the tendency toward faith commitments as anyone else, and nobody more than the atheistic, naturalistic ones.

A prime example of this was brought up by an atheistic commenter in the discussion section of a recent post.

After trying to escape the obvious non-naturalistic implications of a universe that has clearly had a beginning in time by positing that it was self-caused (thus committing rational suicide), he then tries to escape by offering up what is known as the multiple universe (or "multiverse") theory. This is fortunate, because there may be no better example of "empirical scientists" coming up with something that is completely unempirical in order to explain away implications they find uncomfortable and which they have ruled out on philosophical grounds.

Leonard Susskind, the widely revered Stanford physicist who has had a major role in formulating string theory, essentially admits in an interview in this month's New Scientist that the "multiverse" theory (which says there are theoretically millions--or more--of other unobserved universes in existence) is necessary to explain why our universe seems so finely tuned for life.

The introduction to the piece, written by Amanda Gefter, is shockingly telling:

But the inventor of string theory, physicist Leonard Susskind, sees this "landscape" of universes as a solution rather than a problem. He says it could answer the most perplexing question in physics: why the value of the cosmological constant, which describes the expansion rate of the universe, appears improbably fine-tuned for life. A little bigger or smaller and life could not exist. With an infinite number of universes, says Susskind, there is bound to be one with a cosmological constant like ours.

So we see the problem we're dealing with (which is described as "the most perplexing question in physics"): the universe is very fine-tuned for intelligent life, and it's very, very difficult to explain that naturalistically. So a theory has to be devised, no matter how non-empirical, to explain the evidence in naturalistic terms. What we come out with is the "multiverse," which is essentially nothing more than a variation on the old idea that if you put an infinite number of monkeys in a room typing on an infinite number of typewriters, every possibility will eventually be realized and one of them will type the complete works of Shakespeare. Because our universe is clearly showing us design far beyond the complete works of Shakespeare, multiversalists simply theorize an infinite number of universes to explain it. None of this is observable, of course, but that really isn't what this is about anyway.

And here's an even more telling section from the Q&A. Keep in mind, this is from the man who is one of the most respected naturalistic scientists in the world and is hostile enough to ID to have written a book called Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design:

If we do not accept the landscape idea are we stuck with intelligent design?

I doubt that physicists will see it that way. If, for some unforeseen reason, the landscape turns out to be inconsistent - maybe for mathematical reasons, or because it disagrees with observation - I am pretty sure that physicists will go on searching for natural explanations of the world. But I have to say that if that happens, as things stand now we will be in a very awkward position. Without any explanation of nature's fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer the ID critics. One might argue that the hope that a mathematically unique solution will emerge is as faith-based as ID.

In one fell swoop, one of the most eminent physicists in the world confirms everything we've been saying: the universe strongly hints at having been designed; that ID presents an argument that is weighty and has strong evidence on its side; that this conclusion is philosophically unacceptable to the naturalist, necessitating that he dispose of the vast weight of the evidence; and that the naturalistic scientist currently stands in a "very awkward position" in relationship to the criticisms leveled by Intelligent Design.

Not exactly the picture you'd get from all the triumphalistic blather from evolutionists surrounding the Dover case, is it? Which do you find to be more faith-based: the notion that a universe which shows extremely strong evidence of having been designed actually was designed? Or the notion that it must be one of an infinite number of other universes which popped into being out of nothing, none of which we can see, measure, or even detect? Purely rational scientists indeed.

The Circle of Life

Attacks on Intelligent Design often charge that the theory is "unfalsifiable" and thus unscientific. Aside from the fact that this is simply incorrect--ID does put forth a falsifiable hypothesis (see William Dembski's explanatory filter, for example)--it is yet another area in which Darwinian theory actually fails the very test it would impose on everyone else.

If ever a "scientific" theory was unfalsifiable, Darwinian evolution is it. Think about it. Using the most popular current definition of "science," Darwinian macroevolution cannot be proved false.

As you’ll recall, the judge in the Dover ID case ruled (and it has been argued here by some commenters) that science by definition must be naturalistic. Naturalism assumes (note that it doesn't, nor can it, prove; rather, it assumes) that the physical world is all that is real, and thus all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws.

Once this is assumed, there is no evidence that can disprove Darwinian macroevolution. Something like Darwinian evolution has to be true, because we are at that point dealing with two "facts":

1). There is a great deal of diversity and complexity among living things
2). That diversity and complexity has to have arisen by blind, purposeless, naturalistic chance

Any evidence which would seem contrary to the notion that all the diversity and complexity of life arose naturally and purposelessly must be reinterpreted, discounted, or completely put aside because we’ve already decided that "science" demands that it arose and diversified naturally and purposelessly.

This is how we end up with statements like the one I previously cited from the atheistic Darwinist Richard Dawkins (who is a passionate opponent of ID, I might add): "Biology is the study of complicated things which give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose."

Dawkins concludes, of course, that this is merely an illusion, because it has been decided at the outset that these complicated things have to have arisen by blind, purposeless, naturalistic chance. Evidence which would seem to falsify this cannot be what it seems to be, because we’ve decided a priori that all life must be explained naturalistically.

This is, of course, perfectly circular. It goes something like this: we know that all life arose and diversified through blind natural processes, so Darwinian evolution is true. And we know that Darwinian evolution is true because life arose and diversified through blind, natural processes. Since it reasons in a circle, it cannot be falsified. Yet the evolutionist attacks ID because it's supposedly unfalsifiable. So why does the evolutionist have the right to violate his own standard while ruling everyone else out of court on the grounds they violate it?

Oh Yeah...

...and Merry Christmas!

Unintelligent Designs

A lot is being made about the recent intelligent design (ID) case in Dover, PA, where a federal judge ruled that including intelligent design in the curriculum would be tantamount to the state sponsoring a religion.

At issue is what constitutes science itself, with the court deciding that:

...[R]igorous attachment to "natural" explanations is an essential attribute to science by definition and by convention. We are in agreement with Plaintiffs’ lead expert Dr. Miller, that from a practical perspective, attributing unsolved problems about nature to causes and forces that lie outside the natural world is a "science stopper."

Of course, what the ruling doesn't mention (nor do atheistic scientists often mention) is that this "rigorous attachment to natural explanations"--otherwise known as methodological naturalism--is itself a presupposition based on a particular kind of faith, and is neither empirical nor testable. Thus, as an arbitrary rule placed on science, it actually violates itself, though we are all expected to pay it unquestioning fealty or else be labeled flat-earthers (or worse).

Incidentally, this view of science would have been completely alien to all scientists before the 20th century, most of whom believed the science was only possible because a creator God had made an orderly world. Absolute naturalism is not the sine qua non of science, but is rather an untestable philosophy smuggled relatively recently into science by those with a particular metaphysical agenda.

In reality, a reasonable mind can see the silliness of this without the benefit of years of training designed to drum out common sense. Say you put a deck of cards on the coffee table and walk out of the room. Later you return to the room and the cards are scattered haphazardly all over the floor. What do you conclude? The anti-ID zealots would caracature ID by claming ID-ists would look at a scenario and say "Well, angels must have done it." This kind of portrait earns big points with their fellow atheists who find it quite clever (and with more than a few dim judges, too), but it utterly fails to address what ID actually says. Just as anyone else, the ID theorist would conclude that something knocked the cards off the table (not necessarily intelligent; it could have been the cat) and then gravity caused the cards to fall and land randomly.

Now let's suppose an alternate scenario. You put the cards on the coffee table, walk out of the room, and when you return, they are lying on the floor in a pattern that spells out "We fell down." In order to remain "scientific," would you apply your "methodological naturalism" and conclude that no intelligent force had acted on the cards? Or, without having to give it more than a nanosecond of thought, would you conclude that your spouse (or someone else with intelligence) was having some fun with you?

We know the answer intuitively, and the fact is that "science" makes these kinds of obvious conclusions every day. Perhaps the most popular science there is (if television ratings are any indication)--forensic science--deals with only discerning intelligent design in the natural realm. It's an entire science based on the clear fact that if two metal bullet-shaped objects with a spiral pattern are found in someone's head, they are not natural deposits produced by the brain, nor are they things that the wind put there.

What ID is trying to explain, and what naturalistic science is utterly at a loss to explain, is that the scattered deck of cards from the analogy is most emphatically not what we find in nature. What we find is the cards arranged into a message--only it's a message far more complex than "we fell down."

The atheist has gotten around this by jiggering the definition of science so that anything "scientific" (by which he means, and means us to mean, "true") has to have a natural, purposeless, undirected cause as an explanation. So when he finds the message spelled out by the cards, he concludes with absolute certainty--scientifically--that they got that way on accident. As the eminent atheistic Darwinist Richard Dawkins once wrote, "Biology is the study of complicated things which give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." They appear to have been designed, but ultimately they cannot have, because we've already decided that any recourse to an intelligent cause cannot be true because it violates our definition of science. Any other explanation wouldn't be scientific, you see.

And so the methodological naturalist stands inside a wonderfully comfortable little circle he's drawn for himself, where he knows the answers to all of life's questions because he's decided beforehand what he's willing to allow those answers to be. None of this, of course, has anything to do with pursuing actual truth, but he's not too concerned with that anymore because he's published a lot of papers and has a lifetime of hypotheses to defend and social respectability to protect and tenure to gain.

Late Show Lunatics

I've written here in the past about my belief in the obvious superiority of David Letterman over Jay Leno. To my mind, there's just no contest.

However, I realize that reasonable people can disagree on this. There's a time when Letterman has led the ratings, and more recently Leno has. Leno was essentially discovered on Letterman's show. Letterman made his original mark on the "Tonight Show" which Leno now occupies. So there are plenty of similarities between the two, and presumably some overlapping audience.

So my question today is: Why do you think Letterman proves to be so overpoweringly appealing to the criminally insane? He's like catnip to them.

In the past, Letterman had a demented woman who claimed to be his wife steal his car and repeatedly break into his homes until one day committing suicide.

More recently, he had a house painter who conspired to kidnap his toddler son.

And just today, I see that another insane woman in New Mexico has filed for a restraining order against Letterman. According to CNN.com:

[Colleen] Nestler's application for a restraining order was accompanied by a six-page typed letter in which she said Letterman used code words, gestures and "eye expressions" to convey his desires for her.

She wrote that she began sending Letterman "thoughts of love" after his "Late Show" began in 1993, and that he responded in code words and gestures, asking her to come East.

She said he asked her to be his wife during a televised "teaser" for his show by saying, "Marry me, Oprah." Her letter said Oprah was the first of many code names for her and that the coded vocabulary increased and changed with time.

So why doesn't this ever happen to Leno? Why does Letterman draw so many obvious psychos? And does my clear preference for Letterman over Leno place me among them?

Taking Stock

I've been sick for much of the week with a fever and sore throat, which is why I've been scarce around here the last few days.

While recuperating, I've been watching a bit more television than I normally do (since I find it hard to read while I can actually hear blood throbbing through my head), and I happened upon one of the oddest things I've ever seen. Has anybody else seen this thing?

I flip on CNBC, and there's this guy (it turns out his name is Jim Cramer) who is in a studio going absolutely bonkers, screaming his head off and throwing chairs, biting the heads off dolls, and sweating like a mental patient...about stocks. The guy is giving stock advice on a financial network, and he's like a mix between an over-caffeinated sports talk host and Bobcat Goldthwait. He makes Howard Beale from "Network" look like Ben Stein.

Not being a big stock market guy, I have almost no idea what he's talking about at any given moment. But as I watch, I realize that it's quite feasible that this guy could keel over dead of a heart attack right here on national television. So I've been tuning in for a few days now, because I have to admit that I find that prospect quite compelling.

Kwanzaa Sham-aa

As faithful reader Plumtree points out to me by email, this is about the time each year when I like to take the opportunity to observe that Kwanzaa is an utterly fake sham of a "holiday."

Kwanzaa is all over the place nowadays, and you may perhaps be under the impression that it's some sort of authentic African celebration. It's not. Kwanzaa was only invented in America in the 1960's--by a thug named Ron Karenga, who aside from Kwanzaa may be best remembered for his conviction on charges of torturing two women in the early 1970's.

Front Page magazine quotes a Los Angeles Times article from May 14, 1971 that describes one woman's testimony of what Karenga (who was convicted) did to her:

Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis' mouth and placed against Miss Davis' face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.

Some time back, LaShawn Barber wrote an excellent piece on this whole sham-holiday issue that everyone ought to read. You should also check out the links she provides at the end of it.

If someone--anyone--dares to wish you a "Happy Kwanzaa" during this Christmas season, you should whip him with an electrical cord and shove a red-hot soldering iron into his mouth the way Ron Karenga does with his victims. In doing so, you'll be sharing with the the true meaning of Kwanzaa at this holiday time of year.

I'm Gonna Wait 'Til The Midnight Hour

The events of the other day have raised a question in my mind that I'm surprised I haven't had before: Why do we execute people in this country at 12:01 am?

I'm sure there's a good reason, but I've never heard it. Are they trying to make it extra creepy by only doing it in the midnight hour, hoping maybe some wolves will be baying outside? Are they trying to catch the prisoner when he's extra tired so they can save money on tranquilizers? Are they giving the last dinner time to digest?

I'd really like to know.

Helping Widows In Need

After several false starts with skittish scammers who got scared and ran, Brian at Terrible Swift Word finally has some African email scammers on the hook bigtime.

The saga begins here (though you'll want to go to his December archive to catch all the subsequent action).

Among the highlights: when the scammers repeatedly demand a phone number from "Avery Lunch" (Brian's alter-ego), he sends them John Kerry's Washington office number and says:

I'll have to apologize in advance for my secretary. She has a heart of gold, but she comes off as a little gruff at times. Don't take it personally, that's just her way. She's a little hard of hearing so talk loud and if she gives you a hard time just tell her you need to talk to me about "Swiftboat." That's my code for our project. She doesn't know what it is just that it's important to me. If Herve answers the phone, he doesnt know much English so talk slow and loud. Same deal, though. Just tell him, "Swiftboat" and hell put you right through.

The scammers called the number. Repeatedly. They write:

The people were very furious with me when i started calling persistently and i had to tender my apology

Nobody on the web jerks these guys around more amusingly than does Brian. It's pure entertainment.

A Load Of Crip

My television was out for over a month after Hurricane Wilma (because of a blown-over dish), so I hadn't seen much of the news until vacation last week. The big cause célèbre (literally) seems to be that of one Stanley "Tookie" Williams, quadruple (at least) murderer and co-founder of the deadly Crips street gang, who is due to be executed by lethal injection tomorrow in California.

When I first saw the veritable who's who of leftist talent lined up in support of "Tookie," including usual suspects Mike Farrell, Martin Sheen, Ed Asner, Tom Hayden, and Bianca Jagger, I thought "Wow, with a lineup like that behind him, he must've killed a cop or something."

Imagine my surprise to find out that they're supporting him even though he didn't kill a cop--only four regular people, including one motel-owning couple and their daughter. Other than the fact that he failed to kill a cop, he's just the kind of felon the Left loves (see Jack Henry Abbott, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Huey Newton, etc., etc., ad nauseum), wildly violent but dangerous and attractive for a crowd that sees common street thuggery as "authentic" compared to their own lives of plastic hypocrisy.

The celebrities who are supporting "Tookie" say he has been rehabilitated (despite the fact that he still denies the crimes to begin with), as evidenced by the fact that....he writes children's books against violence. That's nice and all, and I'm sure Tookie is a real wordsmith. But this view overlooks the simple fact that it's not about rehabilitation. The Left loves its romantic notions of rehabilitating and redeeming hardened criminals, but it ignores the harsh reality, which is that the vast majority of these guys don't change. And even if they did, it doesn't alter the legal situation, because the death penalty serves a valuable punitive function and is perfectly legitimate regardless of supposed deterrent value, subjective change in the accused, or any other ancillary benefit.

Karla Faye Tucker was put to death in Texas in 1998 for a grisly pickax double murder--despite a jailhouse conversion that led her to deep remorse and repentance for her crimes. Her internal change was heartwarming and (to my eyes, at least) authentic. But it didn't spare her from the just penalty for her crime, nor should it have (misguided appeals from the likes of Pat Robertson aside). Then-governor George W. Bush rightly allowed Tucker's justly-imposed sentence to be carried out, because her subsequent remorse (something Williams lacks, incidentally) did not change the fact of what she had done, nor did it bring her victims back.

If Arnold Schwarzenegger does the right thing and does not allow himself to be cowed by the veiled threats of rioting that leaders of the black community are putting out there (a fact that ought to infuriate black people against their supposed leaders--I mean, think about that--it's assumed that they'll riot in the streets if the governor doesn't grant clemency to a convicted murderer, and rather than being horrified, many actually seem to embrace that implication!) justice will be served sometime tomorrow when the poison begins to flow into the veins of Stanley Williams--though his death will be much more peacful and pain-free than that of his known victims.

(UPDATE: Gov. Schwarzenegger [that's still the oddest thing I ever find myself writing] has denied clemency, and Williams will likely be executed in a few hours. We'll see what happens after that. The fact that rioting can even be reasonably anticipated ought to be an intense embarassment for all involved--though it's not, oddly enough.)

Happy Holidays. So There.

I love Christmas as much as anyone. And I've always made it a point to specifically wish people "Merry Christmas." I think the Christian bent of our culture is exceedingly important (since, fading though it is, it's actually responsible for whatever success this nation has enjoyed). I think the tie between Christ and Christmas needs to always be made more explicit, not less. Furthermore, I think attempts to banish any and all Christian references from Christmas are ridiculous, misguided, and harmful to religious freedom.

That having been said, I have to admit I'm starting to get a little creeped out by the ferocity of the Christmas-mongers this holiday season. Somewhere along the line, it seems to have gone from "putting Christ back into Christmas" to an absolute shibboleth by which every individual and corporation will be judged. "You will acknowledge Christmas" seems to be the cry. Boycotts, pickets, and recriminations are now as Christmas as candy canes and holly.

The White House is the most recent target for failing to mention Christmas specifically in its "holiday" cards. George Bush professes to be a Christian, and yes, he ought to have the guts that all previous presidents (save Clinton) showed in wishing their constituents merry Christmas. But is it really our goal to force people to express what we want them too? Have we crossed a line from making it safe to wish people a Merry Christmas again to requiring them to do it?

Of course it is stupid for corporations to suddenly stop mentioning Christmas out of some misguided sense of political correctness (especially considering that it ain't Hanukkah gifts that are raking in all that money for them). And it's ridiculous for schools to change the words of "Silent Night" to "Cold in the Night." But as I recall, even back in the "good old days" 25 years ago, people still occasionally used the phrase "Happy Holidays." I mean, it wasn't just invented this year as part of the drive to destroy Christmas, and everyone who uses it oughtn't automatically become a heresy suspect.

Why, I'd venture to confess (though I may have my Religious Right membership card revoked) that even I on occasion have wished someone "happy holidays." I didn't do it to snuff Christ out of Christmas so much as to include Thanksgiving and New Year's in what I was saying, and fortunately nobody stoned me for it.

So yes, we should recognize that this nation is culturally Christian and that there's nothing wrong with that. We should be free to acknowledge Christmas in the public square however we like. But we also ought to lighten up a little where appropriate. I mean, after all, it's Christmas.

The Silence of the Blogger

I should've mentioned that we're on vacation this week, which means things will continue to be pretty quiet here until next Monday. I'm always kind of reluctant to announce something like that, since I'm pretty firmly on record as being disgusted at narcissistic bloggers who imagine that millions are hanging on their every post.

But just so you don't think I'm trapped under something, there it is. And if you do happen to hang on my every word, well God bless you. Please tell my family about it. There'd be a huge "I-told-you-so" factor involved there.

When Talent Gets Left Behind

Slate magazine takes a withering, hilarious look at the putrid "Left Behind" straight-to-video films. The sad thing is, the article pretty much nails it on the head:

The new "Left Behind" movie disturbs me—not because thousands of people are watching a movie that proclaims non-Christians will burn in hell for all eternity—but rather because thousands of people are watching a movie where Toronto stands in for New York, Chicago, and Israel. Also, Washington, D.C. And Egypt. London, too.

The "apocalypse on a shoestring" aesthetic has become the hallmark of the "Left Behind" series.

Though unfortunately many don't know it, the premillenial "rapture" version of end times history represented by the "Left Behind" series is a relatively recent innovation in church history (not making it's appearance until the mid-1800's) and was not the view of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and the giants of the Bible-believing church. It's seen now as one of the baseline beliefs of "fundamentalist Christianity," but historically that's just not the case.

And that's important to point out, because when one sees movies of this caliber, one can unfortunately feel the need to distance oneself from them. Continues Slate's Grady Hendrix:

While each installment's budget is estimated to be around $17.4 million, I think that number might be off by $16 million or so. In Left Behind 2: Tribulation Force, for example, Kirk Cameron has to take Ben Judah, a respected rabbi, to the Wailing Wall so that he can tell Jews everywhere that Jesus Christ is Lord. Israel is represented by a few stone walls obviously made of plywood, some Christmas-tree lights, and 500 volunteer extras wearing leftover costumes from a Nativity pageant. The Wailing Wall is patrolled by soldiers dressed in World War II army uniforms. The producers have also dubbed in the sound of goats during scenes set in downtown Jerusalem, which leads to the unusual notion that modern-day Israel is populated by WWII re-enactors, nervous-looking people in bathrobes, and goats.

The shame of it is, the church used to produce all the great art. Now it produces movies like "Left Behind." Something got lost along the way, as a sense of form and beauty was replaced by a utilitarian didacticism. Which is a twenty dollar way of saying we once had Michelangelo, and now we have Kirk Cameron movies.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Right-Wing Star

The fever-Left Mother Jones magazine has carefully charted the constellations of the ominous and dark-hearted universe of the "religious right" in America.

Their map seems to have two centers: James Dobson's Focus on the Family empire and...the Chalcedon Foundation. Or something. It's all pretty confusing even for me, and I'm part of this religious right cabal.

You may want to print out the map, frame it, and hang it in your room. It also makes a lovely place mat. I'll be keeping it nearby so I can try to plot my own place in the conspiracy.

Overrater, That's Not The Way It Feels

Joe Carter over at the evangelical outpost has been discussing the most overrated films of all time. While I'm not equipped to make the sort of judgements Joe has (such as the "most overrated and underrated German films"--I think I saw "Das Boot" once, and that was about it), I've seen more than my share of American movies in my lifetime.

And for my money, the most overrated film of all time, nonpareil, is "Chinatown."

About every five years I think "My goodness, everyone keeps writing about what a masterpiece 'Chinatown' is. I must have missed something. Surely I'm older and more mature now than the last time I saw it. I'll rent it and finally understand what I was missing."

But the same thing pours out of my TV set each time: a turgid, talky, incomprehensible, plotless period piece about irrigation.

Critics can't stop slobbering all over themselves about this film even thirty years later. Entertainment Weekly ranks it as the fourth greatest film of all time. And I'm here to tell you that it stinks. On ice.

Here are a few of my other personal, annotated selections for Most Overrated:

Actor: Marlon Brando. I understand that in the early 50's, his approach was new and different. But in "The Godfather," his whole schtick was to stuff cotton wads in his mouth. He wasn't bad, but c'mon, a few balls of cotton and a lot of mumbling make him great?

Runner-Up Actor: Michael Caine. Has this guy ever turned down a script? He was recently knighted "Sir Michael" by the Queen of England. Hmmm. I can't figure out what he got it for. Was it "Jaws: The Revenge" or was it "Blame it on Rio"? What it's all about, Alfie, is doing anything that shows up in the mailbox.

Actress: Meryl Streep. She does accents. Great. So did every girl in the drama department at my high school. Quick! Name two Meryl Streep movies you own on DVD. . . . I didn't think so.

Runner-Up Actress: Audrey Hepburn. You're delicate and foreign. We get it. Eat something.

Director: Robert Altman. Give me a plot. Any plot. Ten people talking at once while the camera meanders around aimlessly might impress the film students at NYU, but for the rest of us it's just boring. Which is why each of Altman's critically-lavished films grosses about $22.50.

Sex Symbol: Jean Harlow. Granted, tastes change over a hundred years (or however long ago she was popular), but I still just can't see this. She always looks vaguely like a guy to me. And were people really into dark circles around the eyes back then, or was that just a quirk? She died when she was ten years younger than I am, yet she always looks so old to me. I think back in the 1930's, everybody looked like they were 47 no matter how old they actually were.

Died-Too-Young-Star: James Dean. Did you realize that James Dean made three films? A lot of people think it was a tragedy Dean went out so young. I think it was great for his career. If he'd stayed alive, he'd have been doing "Love Boat" by the 70's. Just because nobody had ever seen a guy act like a hysterical girl on film before didn't make him great.

Deck The Halls

Doug Wilson has a pungent, counterintuitive take on celebrating Christmas:

...[D]o not fall for the lie that the spirit of Christmas is an ethereal kind of thing. This is the celebration of the Incarnation, when the eternal Logos of God took on a material body, which He still has. Do not, therefore, join in the general lamentations about "materialism." This is a celebration of God taking on a material body. It is therefore a holiday that should focus on stuff.

By stuff, I mean ribbons, decorations, fudge, wreaths, cider, presents, feasting, toasts, shopping with joy, putting up a tree, sending cards, learning a Christmas piece on the piano, and more fudge.

Of course, we all know how to sin with stuff--we were living in a pretty earthy state of sin before Christ came. But He did not come to whisk us out of this world in order that we might go celebrate some kind of Gnostic holiday in heaven. We are to honor the Lord Jesus with our stuff...

Of course materialism is a bad thing. But material is good. In its proper place, it's a gift from God.

Every new Christian (and many an old one) goes through a stage of reflective anguish where he reevaluates timeworn traditions. "Should I put a tree up? Is it pagan? Should I still give gifts?" Such reflection isn't bad--we ought to always evaluate our traditions. But don't throw away perfectly good traditions based on some hyperspiritual (and unbiblical) notion that disembodied spirituality brings us nearer to God. It doesn't. God called his creation good, and we honor him when we properly enjoy it.

This Land Is Your Land

It has recently occured to me that the notion of "owning property" in America is now largely an illusion.

I have to replace a fence in my backyard that was blown down by Hurricane Wilma last month. But in order to put a new fence up in my own backyard, I have to first submit a building plan to the city, aquire a set of instructions and codes to which my fence must conform, possibly get another survey done on my property, have the fence inspected, and if the inspector doesn't like it, he can make me tear the whole thing out and start over. This applies to anything I want to build on my "own" property--a shed, a doghouse, whatever.

Also, if the government decides that my trees are a threat (or are near trees that are a threat) to the local citrus business, they can come on my property over my objections and cut them down.

And, if the government decides that it would be better to have a Wal-Mart, or a gas station, or a Sears, or a parking lot on my property, it can force me to sell it to them even if I don't want to.

Somewhere along the line, Americans ceded control of their property over to the government (whether local, state, or federal). It happened easily enough that most people didn't even notice. The result was that you no longer own your own property. You simply posess it at the government's pleasure (though you still have to buy it and pay taxes on it, of course), and when the government's pleasure changes, your title won't be worth the paper it's written on.

It seems to me that the founders of this country really cared about two things: religious freedom and property rights. But it's 2005, so make sure you have your government permit before you display your Diversity Tree in the front window this Celebration Season.

Uh, Yeah...That Is What I Was Doing. Right.

Only a college professor could write something this pretentiously ridiculous: Star Wars Episodes I-VI--the greatest postmodern art film ever.

Quoth the scholar:

Everything about the films, from the opening text crawls to the out-of-order production of the two trilogies, foregrounds the question of plot. As an audience, we grapple with not just the intricate clockwork of a complex and interwoven narrative, but, in postmodern fashion, with the fundamental mechanics of storytelling itself.

As Star Wars works to make us aware of its own narrative structure, other odd things about the films start to come into focus. Most significantly, we start to notice that the films are an elaborate meditation on the dialectic between chance and order. They all depend upon absurd coincidence to propel the story forward. Just what are the odds, in just one of near-infinite examples, that of all the planets in that galaxy far, far away, the droids should end up back on Tatooine, in the home of the son of the sweet (if annoying) boy who had built C-3PO decades before? Throughout all six films there are scenes of crucial serendipity.

Yeah, I suppose all this could be a massively layered, intricate work of planned postmodern genius. Or it could be a guy trying to retroactively fit five other movies around the only one he originally got a chance to make. You be the judge. Just how subtle and crafty an intellect is it who gives his evil characters names like "General Grievous" and "Darth Sidious"?

And millions of tuition-paying parents are shelling out beaucoup greenbacks for this kind of crapola.

This Is Why It's Called "Ramblings"...

• Fortunately, the tropical storm took a turn away from South Florida late Saturday night, leaving us in the clear. After last month, people were taking it very seriously. A friend of mine even saw a gas station with lines.

• I looked in today on the progress of the demolition of Busch Stadium in St. Louis. They've made substantial strides in the last week and a half, but it's still no less depressing:
  
  
  (Photo courtesy of KMOV-TV)
  
  Some would say the stadium's only half demolished, but I'm an optimist. I like to think of it as half standing.

• The Springsteen show Saturday night was quite an experience. I was one of the younger people there, so I felt a little less foolish about being at a rock concert. And it's always a treat to see old guys with headbands on their gray, thinning pates, sporting tank tops under the impression that it's still 1978, escorting their wives who are now old ladies wearing outfits that you just know they changed into in the car on the way over because if they had put them on at home their college-aged kids would've said "Ewww, gross! Mom, put something on, that's disgusting! Look at yourself!"
  
  But I digress.
  
  It was hard to enjoy the show at first because there were a lot of rules, which you don't generally expect at these kinds of things. Nobody could be seated during songs and no whistling or applause or noise of any kind was allowed during the songs. At one point, Bruce actually scolded the crowd for being too noisy, which put me out a little bit, seeing as though tickets cost like $75. I felt like I was getting in trouble with dad, and that he might blow any minute. He seemed moody and peevish, which ain't exactly what I'm looking for at those rates.
  
  However, all of that melted away about halfway through. For those who are not Boss fans (which is probably most of you), this won't mean anything, but this is an acoustic, completely solo tour. Nobody is on stage except Springsteen himself. But halfway through the program, he calls two special guests to come out on stage: Steve Van Zandt and Clarence Clemons. It was a Big Deal, and this is the only show of the eight month tour it's happened on. They did two songs together, and another during the encore.
  
  At 55 (which is hard to believe), The Boss looked and sounded great. If he takes the band out again next year, I'm there.

Now I Think They're Just Goofing On Us

In the latest forecast track for the newly-(re) minted Tropical Storm Gamma, it appears that the dead center of the projection cone runs roughly across my backyard fence (which I don't have anymore because of the last one of these).

They've got to be kidding.

(UPDATE Saturday, 2pm--The latest forecast now shows the center of the storm probably passing to the south of Florida, which is good news. We are, however, expected to receive tropical storm force winds and a ton of rain--both of which are bad news for the thousands of folks with blue tarps on their roofs right now.)

Growin' Up

One of the things that happens when you finally become a real adult is that you stop going to rock concerts. There's no ceremony, and you never realize when you've finally attended your last one, but at some point in life, it just becomes obvious that you're not going to paint a radio station slogan on a sheet and hoist it down at the local arena because Sammy Hagar or Foghat is in town.

Occasionally, though, something will still bring you back into that world, such as when The Boss rolls into town, as he will here tommorrow night.

Pedantic politics aside, nobody in history has ever put on a better live show than The Boss, which is why I can still be pursuaded to go to a concert. No sheet, though, and I won't be buying one of those black concert t-shirts either. I'm told that on this particular tour, Mr. Springsteen won't even let anyone applaud, so it should be the perfect concert for someone my age--I can sit there and watch it as if it were on TV.

Arising From The Ashes

The inscrutable Discoshaman, now stateside, makes an ambitious return to the blogosphere. Not only has he revived the late, lamented Le Sabot Post-Moderne, but he has launched a second blog, Religion of Peace, dealing with the hilarious antics of the adherents of fundamentalist Islam as they (literally) explode across the globe.

It's good to have him back (hopefully) for good this time. So good, in fact, that Phil Johnson practically proposes to him today.

Oh, I See

Madonna, in an AP story, explains a recent career slump:

Her last effort, 2003's "American Life," trumpeted the star's opposition to the Iraq war, complete with a violent video that included a spoof of President Bush. It drew the usual cries of outrage from her detractors, but for the first time in her two-decade career, sales were lackluster.

"Of course I was disappointed," she says, the bitterness still present in her voice and her eyes. "I sort of knew it already, but if you're an entertainer, you're not allowed to have an opinion. ... if you go against the grain, you will be punished. I thought there would be a lot of people who agreed with me."

Right, that was the problem. Madonna was being punished for going "against the grain." The formerly uncontroversial pop star got pummelled for daring to step out of line.

It's the same anti-war stance that crushed the careers of Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow, Michael Moore (whose anti-war film was the hightest-grossing documentary of all time), Jennifer Aniston (on the cover of every magazine in Christendom), Al Franken (#4 on the New York Times Bestseller list this week), Jimmy Carter (#1 on the NYT list), and dozens of others.

Could it be that Madonna's album simply...er....um....bit? Nah, couldn't be that. If there's one thing the people have always demanded from Madonna, it's that she stay in line.

Most Valuable Pujols

The National League's Most Valuable Player award will be handed out today, and if the sportswriters weren't too drunk when they voted (a 50-50 proposition at best), Albert Pujols ought to be the winner.

But for some reason, the Cardinals, despite being the most successful NL franchise in history, often fall short of the big awards. Chris Carpenter's Cy Young award was the first of the major awards for the Redbirds since Willie McGee in 1985. If Albert Pujols played in New York, they'd have given him DiMaggio's old number and a plaque in the outfield already.

Regardless of the vote, however, there's little doubt that Pujols was the MVP of the league this year. He led his team to its second straight 100 win regular season, despite the fact that, including injuries and personnel moves, they only carried over two regular starters from the previous year. What was the one constant between both of those excellent teams? Albert Pujols.

He's the best player in baseball to never have won the award. His statistics after the first five years of his career exceed the first five years of almost any player in history--including DiMaggio, Williams, and Mays. He's the first player in history to hit over 30 homers in each of his first five seasons. And he's done that without ever hitting below .314. He's driven in over 115 runs every year of his career. He's the only player ever to hit .300 with 30 homers, 100 runs and 100 RBI in each of his first five seasons. Granted, career stats do not apply to the MVP award, but they do at least give us a look at the type of player we're talking about.

His closest competition for the award this year comes from Andruw Jones and Derek Lee. Jones ought not to get serious consideration for first place. He had big homer and RBI totals (51 and 128 respectively). But his batting average was putrid (.263, not even in the league's top 50), his on-base percentage a mediocre .347 (41st in the league), and he won a division title on a team that's won it for the last 15 straight seasons.

Lee presents a more formidable obstacle. His numbers are comparable to Pujols'. He led Pujols by a hit or two in batting average (.335 to .330), and bested him in HR's, 46 to 41. But baseball is about runs, and Pujols drove in 10 more runs, scored 9 more, and had 12 more points of on-base percentage than Jones, all statistics that are at least equally important in run production.

The stats between Lee and Pujols are essentially a wash, taken individually. But Pujols was the only player in the NL (as far as I can tell) to be among the top five in batting average, HR's, RBI, runs scored, and on-base percentage. And he's been the one big constant on two 100 win teams. Without Pujols, the Cardinals may well be a .500 team. Without Lee, the Cubs still probably could have found their way to finishing more than 20 games out of first place and below .500.

If that's not the ultimate measure of value (and it is the Most Valuable Player award), I don't know what is. We'll see what the writers have to say later today.

UPDATE-2:11PM: Pujols wins it, as well he should have. Glad the writers sobered up for a few hours. Suprisingly (to me, at least), Jones actually finished second, and Lee is said to have finished a distant third, according to those who've seen the balloting (to be released shortly).

Smokey And The Speed Limit

Do you suppose cops ever get annoyed that everyone on the road slows down when they're around?

You've seen it happen (or done it yourself) a thousand times: everyone's cruising along comfortably on a major throughfare doing 10-15 miles per hour over the posted speed limit when suddenly they see a police cruiser on the road either in front or behind. Immediately, everyone hits the brakes and slows down to exactly the speed limit, which, let's face it, is probably a lot slower than it ought to be anyway.

I'm wondering if cops ever think to themselves "Oh, c'mon people, I'm on my way home just like you! I'm off duty. This is a big road, and we don't really need to do 40. Can't we pick it up to 50 or so? I've got things I need to do!" The officers know it goes on, because they themselves witness the sudden "oops, there's a cop" slowdown when they're out driving as civilians.

They'd never be able to admit it, which is probably why they don't honk and yell when you actually slow down to the speed limit. If you asked them, I'm sure they'd have to stick to the just-the-speed-limit-ma'am story. But I'll bet at times they secretly hate it.

Better To Burn Out Than Fade Away

After three days of swinging the wrecking ball against my beloved Busch Stadium, here's what they've got so far:


(Photo courtesy of KMOV-TV)

It's just so pitiful. As I said to a friend the other day, the difference between this and what they should have done is like the difference between going out in a blazing, full-gasoline-tanker-involved, 15-car pile-up and dying of Alzheimer's, where there's just a little less there today than yesterday until everything's gone.