NPR : Christian Coalition's New Leader Steps Down

I can't begin to tell you how much I think this sucks. I really liked this guy's podcast and thought he had a very Christ-centered view of social ethics. I just hope that his stepping down sends a message to the radical right.

Christian Coalition's New Leader Steps Down: "Rev. Joel Hunter, president-elect of the Christian Coalition of America, is declining the job, saying the organization wouldn't let him expand its agenda beyond opposing abortion and gay marriage. A statement issued by the group said Hunter left because of 'differences in philosophy and vision.'

Hunter said he was not asked to leave. But, he says, he had wanted to focus on issues such as poverty and the environment.

But as the author of a book called Right Wing, Wrong Bird: Why the Tactics of the Religious Right Won't Fly With Most Conservative Christians, even Hunter admits he wasn't the natural choice to head the group.

Nevertheless, when Hunter accepted the job as president of the Christian Coalition last summer, he says he was reassured that the organization would support his efforts to expand the Coalition's agenda beyond the so-called moral issues of abortion and gay marriage.

"At first it seemed like they were open to that," Hunter says. "But when it came down to it, they just couldn't quite go there. The phrase that was used was, 'Those are fine issues, but it's just not us, that's not our base.'"

Protect Tithing?

This is pretty interesting. Not too sure what to make of it. Part of me says that allowing people to give even after bankruptcy is the right thing to do. But then another part of me wonders if the state should be giving tax exemptions for charitable giving at all. Once they say it's OK to donate to the Methodist church down the street, we have to allow bankrupt people to give to other crazy churches that may or may not be legit.

Will the Democratic Congress protect tithing?:
If the Democrats really want to reach out to religious voters, a New York Times article suggests one place to start: fixing the 2005 bankruptcy bill provision that makes it illegal for many debtors to tithe. Noam Cohen notes that a bill to allow tithing passed unanimously in the Senate, but didn't make it to the House by the recess. Cohen writes:

[Republican Sen. Orrin] Hatch's plan was to get the legislation done during a lame-duck session, but with the election and change in leadership, the Democrats may want to revisit bankruptcy legislation comprehensively. Mr. Hatch and other Republican senators late last month wrote to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to instruct trustees to allow tithing and other charitable giving. But a senior official at the Justice Department, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because litigation could continue, said last week that the department was not giving such instruction, noting that trustees had a fiduciary responsibility to 'look under every rock, even the church's rock.' But he added that the department wanted tithing protected, and that it had even helped Mr. Hatch draft the corrective legislation."

The Problem with the FDA

I've been writing technical documentation for GE Healthcare for a while now and a large part of my daily tasks involve making the FDA happy by filling out form after form.

As you can imagine, the FDA is very concerned about ensuring that people aren't pumped full of too much radiation or too many RF waves when they're put into GE's medical imaging machines. Consequently, they audit us and tell us exactly how to do many things.

The problem is, the FDA is not as good at determining what is the best way to protect patients as GE Healthcare is. As a corporation, GE is the target of many many lawsuits. If, during one of these lawsuits, it can be proven that GE could have done something to protect patients' safety, but chose not to, GE would loose millions and millions of dollars in settlement costs and lost business.

These lawsuits exist even though GE Healthcare already complies with FDA standards. GE Healthcare has found that the FDA's guidelines cannot be relied upon to protect the patient. Why would that be? Well, probably because the government regulators come up with regulations based on political pressure (e.g., OTC morning after pills), popular perception (e.g., child carseats), and pure science (e.g., trans fat). None of these, however, are grounded in the real issue: are people's lives actually improved by having these guidelines.

Companies, like GE, must be concerned about that reality, because telling a jury that "theoretically our precautions should have saved your son...the FDA told us so" just won't cut it. Companies, therefore, must make their own guidelines based on experience to ensure that consumers don't get hurt.

The assumption that corporate America doesn't care about its customers is, the most part, true. But in this post-tobacco settlement America we now live in, corporate America does actually care about its customers' safety and health, because the moment they stop caring, a lawyer will be on them like white on rice with a lawsuit that will devastate their financials and ultimately tick off their stockholders.

Therefore, the claim that "Consumers have no way of knowing without the government," is mistaken exactly because of this reality. Product labeling lists things like ingredients and gives us good advice like -Don't perform arc welding while bathing- exactly because companies want to tell us so we know so we can't say "Hey, I never knew" and sue them.

Obviously, this issue is larger and more complex than I've stated here, and we need government to act as a check to market capitalism otherwise materialist values will always win the day. But, that said, we must acknowledge that the self interests of the companies, i.e., making money, is innately tied up with the well being of their customers. So as long as the government keeps the legal system open to people so they can bring their grievances against negligent companies to court, companies' fear of lawsuits is actually the best protection we have.

In terms of trans fat and cheap food, I totally sympathize with people who want to get that crap out of our food, but I think legislating a change is merely changing the law without changing people's hearts and that's not really good for society. Companies want a system where people take responsibility for their actions.
Companies want a world where

* they make Funyuns,
* they put a label on Funyuns that says "100% transfat", and
* people who want die earlier buy Funyuns.

If the person does die at the age of 57--which, of course they will--that's sad, but, hey, they got to experience the joy of Funyun's yummy goodness in a way that most octogenarians who avoided them never did. That may sound harsh, but it at least in that world scenario people are taking responsibility for their actions and aren't living a life dictated by politicians. That's a world where people are free to choose between good and evil and in so doing, continually shape their will towards God's--or as is more often the case, see that their will is so bent on their own destruction, they need to turn to Christ and cling to the cross. Either way, God's will is done.

How commercials work

Thought this was a very interesting quote. It was written by Neil Postman in the early 80s.

"There is nothing in the form of TV commercials that requires that a distinction be made between adults and children. TV commercials do not use propositions to persuade; they use visual images, as for every other purpose. Such language as is employed is highly emotive and only rarely risks verifiable assertions. Therefore, commercials are not susceptible to logical analysis, are not refutable, and, of course, do not require sophisticated adult judgment to assess. Ever since the graphic revolution, Commercial Man has been taken to be essentially irrational, not to be approached with argument or reasoned discourse. But on television this supposition is carried to such extremes that we may charge the television commercial with having rejected capitalist ideology altogether. That is to say, the television commercial has abandoned one of the key assumptions of mercantilism, which is that both buyer and seller are capable of making a trade based on a rational consideration of self-interests. This assumption is so deeply ingrained in capitalism that our laws severely restrict the commercial transactions children are allowed to make. In capitalist ideology, itself heavily influenced by the rise of literacy, it is held that children do not have the analytical skills to evaluate the buyer's product, that children are not yet fully capable of rational transactions. But the TV commercial does not present products in a form that calls upon analytic skills or what we customarily think of as rational and mature judgment. It is not facts that are offered to the consumer but idols, to which both adults and children can attach themselves with equal devotion and without the burden of logic or verification. It is, therefore, misleading even to call this form of communication "commercials," since they distain the rhetoric of business and do their work largely with the symbols and rhetoric of religion. Indeed, I believe it is entirely fair to conclude that television commercials are a form of religious literature.

"I do not claim that every television commercial has religious content. Just as in church the pastor will sometimes call the congregation's attention to nonecclesiastical matters, so there are TV commercials that are entirely secular in nature. Someone has something to sell; you are told what it is, where it can be obtained, and what it costs. Though these may be shrill and offensive, no doctrine is advanced and no theology invoked.

"But the majority of important TV commercials take the form of religious parables organized around a coherent theology. Like all religious parables they put forward a concept of sin, intimations of the way to redemption, and a vision of Heaven. They also suggest what are the roots of evil and what are the obligations of the holy."

Oh Big Box Mart!

This pretty much captures my feelings about all big box retailers, not just Wal-Mart. For a clearer version click here.

The Inherent Problem with Big Box-style American Consumerism

God forgives his family for each $15 pair of new pants they buy. As Solomon says in Proverbs, paying workers for the hard work they do is important since hard work is supposed to lead to prosperity (Prov 14:23).

People are struggling in poverty even though they work very hard at their jobs. Why? Because as Americans we want to spend less on products (like pants) so we can have more money left over to spend on other things. This materialism leads us to take advantage of those anonymous manufacturers who work very hard but get paid very little. That is certainly not the way it's going to be in the Kingdom of God.

My Prayer:
"I thank the Lord that God is gracious enough to forgive me for my continuing sin, and I continue to pray that God will give me the fortitude to overcome my materialism in all its forms. May my actions help workers receive the wages that they have earned, and when they don't may God grant mercy on those who are continually hurt because of my selfish desires to consume more and more cheap crap."

11/16/06 19:37
ed- I originally composed this post after a conversation with my wife. At the time I was feeling pretty passionate and confident about my beliefs on this matter and unfortunately, my passion spilled over into a very arrogant tone. I'm deeply sorry if my original post offended anyone. It was very inconsiderate of me to write so forcefully.

Wal-Mart: Setting the Expectations

Just for fun, let's look at the world of box-box retailers from the vantage point of the knitted hats. I have a friend who sells knitted baby hats for about $12. These hats are made out of some of the best yarn money can buy, even so the material cost for each hat is only $3. That means my friend, who spends about three hours knitting together a hat, gets paid $3/hr for her hats. That’s crap!

She’s providing a service that most people don’t have the time or the knowledge to do for themselves and therefore she should get paid at least, say, $20/hr. So, in a world where she got a fair American wage, she should sell her hats for $63. But she can’t? Why? Because no one is willing to pay $60 for a knit hat anymore when they can find a comparable one at Wal-Mart for $5. Sure they’re willing to spend $12 because they’re willing to pay extra for the quality yarn. But people are not willing to pay extra for the high-quality craftsmanship of an American knitter.

Without even knowing it, my knitter friend has to compete with Asians because Americans aren't willing to pay American wages anymore for garment construction. Wal-Mart and Asian manufacturers have set American expectations for prices and consequently, quality craftmanship gets the short end of the stick. Americans craftsmen like my knitting friend have to make a decision. Either they have to make their garment quicker and therefore of poorer quality or they have to pay themselves less for the good work they go.

The big problem here is that the potential buyer doesn't see any problem at all. In fact, since they’re buying a hat for $12 they think they're being generous because they're paying $7 more than they would if they bought the comparable hat from Wal-Mart. In their mind it's like giving $7 to a worthy cause (i.e., a hardworking American craftsman) when in reality, the price the buyer is paying the craftsman is an insult.

Now here's another odd situation caused by this retail dynamic that might further shed some light on this. My wife always finds herself in a bind when people ask her to do sewing alterations. My wife, a former professional seamstress, struggles to figure out how to respond to their "I'll pay you for it" comments when friends ask.

Here's the problem. Her sewing is skilled labor of a professional...not just an amateur...as such, they should expect a decent hourly wage, say $20/hr. But, she doesn't want to charge friends full price for her work...but she doesn't like hemming pants, so she doesn't want to do it for free either, so she's inclined to charge half price...sounds reasonable, right?

But, here's the problem. People hear her request for $10 for a 60-minute hem job and they think that she's being greedy or not cutting them a deal. Why is that? Well, it's because her friend bought the pair of pants from Wal-Mart for $15, so obviously to them, the cost of hemming a pair of $15 pants must certainly be significantly less than $10.

But why are the pants only $15? Well, no pants manufactured in America are selling for $15. They’re $15 pants because they’re made in a place were Wal-Mart can pay someone pennies for hemming, heck, constructing the entire pair of pants. Consequently, by having garments made in China, Wal-Mart has convinced people that the cost of sewing together an entire pair of pants is less than $15.

The manufacturers in Asia are setting American's perception for what something should cost. Neither my wife nor our knitter friend, can get a decent wage for their quality work because big box retailers have convinced Americans that their craftsmanship isn't worth a living wage...no matter how much better it is than the craftsmanship coming out of Asia.

Time Traps

From, of all places, marthastewart.com

Time Traps: "When it comes right down to it, that luscious abundance of time we crave reflects a basic desire: to savor life. We want to drink in the rich connections we've created with our family, our community, our friends. We want to sit on the dock and throw stones in the water. Linger at the table. Hold the baby for hours, just to watch him nap. We innately understand that, when engaged in life this way, we'll find a measure of peace.

Unfortunately, this kind of time—expansive and utterly unscheduled—is at odds with our calendars, which have come to dominate our lives. And what fills them up? For most of us, the answer is simple: work. Americans spend more time earning a living than people in most other industrialized countries...

'The basic things we once took for granted—a decent house in a safe neighborhood with a good school—have become increasingly expensive,' says John de Graaf, national coordinator of Take Back Your Time and author of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic...

Time gurus point to consumer choice as yet another modern time bandit. Go to the supermarket in search of breakfast and you'll find 48 different types of cereal and 15 incarnations of milk. Sign up for cell-phone service and you'll wade through dozens of calling plans, phone styles, and accessory packages. Whether you revel in shopping or loathe it, "the massive amount of choice in the marketplace is incredibly time-consuming," says de Graaf. "These are all decisions we used to not have to make." The answer, he says, isn't to stay home and take a vow of no shopping. It's to wake up to the realities we face, and then acknowledge how our own actions help or hurt our chances of reclaiming our time."

This whole article is pretty good, and you should probably read the whole thing. My impression, however, is that the article leaves the reader with the assumption that the problem is time management and not our consumer desires. Sure making decisions to decide whether or not to buy Frosted Flakes or Frosted Mini-wheats takes time...but the very fact that we crave such things is the real problem. If we weren't so consumed with keeping up with the Jones middle class Americans wouldn't be driven to become two income families.

Why pro-lifers and pro-choices have a communication problem

I thought this essay was excellent, one of the best I've seen at identifying and analyzing the current lack of dialog between the two sides of the abortion debate. Clearly, the author is pro-life, but regardless of your position, I think you'll find his article worth reading.

FIRST THINGS: On the Square: "I submit that pro-life arguments seem absurd to any listener who has in the back of the mind a sense that the embryo or fetus is being constructed in the womb. Here’s an analogy: At what point in the automobile assembly-line process can a “car” be said to exist? I suppose most of us would point to some measure of minimum functionality (viability), like having wheels and/or a motor, but some might insist on the need for windshield wipers or say it’s not fully a car until it rolls out onto the street (is born). We would all understand, however, that there’s no clearly “right” answer as to when a car is there. And we would also agree that someone who claimed the car to be present from the insertion of the first screw at the very beginning of the assembly line would be taking an utterly absurd position. To someone who conceives of gestation as intrauterine construction, pro-life people sound just this ridiculous. For a thing being constructed is truly not there until it is nearly complete. (Moving from ordinary language to metaphysics, we would say that a constructed thing does not have its essential form until it is complete or nearly complete. And it can’t be that thing without having the form of that thing.)" ...

The difference between making and developing is not just an accident of language. Suppose we’re back in the pre-digital days and you’ve just taken a fabulous photo, one you know you will prize, with your Polaroid camera. (Say it’s a picture of a jaguar that has now darted back into the jungle, so that the photo is unrepeatable.) You are just starting to let the photo hang out to develop when I grab it and rip its cover off, thus destroying it. What would you think if I responded to your dismay with the assertion: “Hey man, it was still in the brown-smudge stage. Why should you care about brown smudges?” You would find my defense utterly absurd. Just so for pro-lifers, who find dignity in every human individual: To say that killing such a prized being doesn’t count if he or she is still developing in the womb strikes them as outrageously absurd.

By contrast, if I had simply destroyed a blank, unexposed piece of your film, you would have been much less upset. You really would have lost little more than a smudge. Passive potential does not count for much. Only developing potential already contains its own form (essence, identity), is already the what that it is in the process of manifesting.

I conclude that pro-choice folks think pro-life claims regarding embryos to be not only wrong but also absurd whenever they think (even unconsciously) that embryos are under construction in the womb. And pro-life folks find pro-choice denials of prized human dignity in embryos to be equally absurd whenever they think that the unborn child develops (indeed, develops itself, unlike the Polaroid photo) from the moment of fertilization.

The two sides are not quite parallel in this, however: Human beings do develop. To think they are constructed is flatly erroneous.

On Baptism

Found these baptism quotes that I thought were pretty cool...obviously, I'm prone to most things written by Tom (NT) Wright, but even so, I thought these were worth noting. Click the link to see more quotes.

On Baptism | Christianity Today:
"WHETHER BAPTIZED as children or adults, our baptism signifies primarily what God has graciously done for us, and it is upon this that faith rests. It can be argued that the two forms of baptism—infant and adult—together express the full meaning of baptism better than each would alone. In other words, their meanings are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding

WHEN PEOPLE submit to Christian baptism, they die with the Messiah and are raised with him into a new life. This means, first and foremost, a change of status. … Once you are baptized, of course, you can try to shirk or shrug off your new responsibilities. You can pretend you don't after all have a new status. … But what you can't do is get unbaptized again.
Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone, Romans: Part One"

What is an Artist Doing?

Over at the Lemming Apocalypse, Tim noted his love of Mitch Hedburg and how Hedburg quotes come to him all the time throughout his days. These experiences with the comedian are actually shaping the way you see and experience the world. Because of Mitch's ability to connect with people through his stand-up, he's helping people like my brother process the world around them, even when he's not listening to him.

I think that's the goal of every artist, whether they're an author, filmmaker, comedian, or painter.

Artists want to connect with you, that is obvious. But they do that by getting you to think about reality in a slightly different way. Story tellers like authors and filmmakers put their characters in situations to get you to connect and think about those themes. Painter and photographers portray images that when we connect these images with others from our experience, hope to encourage us to think differently about our world or see it from a new angle or with emphasis on different colors (i.e., emotions). Comedians, re-craft our experiences in a manner that helps us to see the inherent humor in stuff we do.

All artists want you to continue to think about their art...that's why saying "I was so moved by such-and-such" is a high complement. (the equivalent for a comedian is saying, "I laughed so hard...")

I heard this yesterday: in general, emotional responses will only last about three seconds unless we start consciously thinking about the event that summoned the response.

This means, when we talk about "being moved" we mean that not only was an emotional experience, but that it was an experience that got us to continue to think beyond our initial reaction.

When we think about an artist's work, we are really thinking about their take on reality and either accepting or rejecting it. In either case, you're case, your sense of reality is being changed. You are now either accepting that person's view or pointedly rejecting it.

In the case of Christians who believe that the Bible's portrayal of reality is a more accurate reflection of what the world is actually like than the way we see it, reading the Bible regularly will shape the way you experience reality.

(btw, when I talk about the accuracy of the Bible's portrayal of reality, I am not necessarily talking about its portrayal of history or science. I'm specifically thinking about how the Bible portrays people's relationships with each other and with their creator God.)

Power of a Good Story

You know a movie is good when you can identify with a character in it. That is, while watching it, you find yourself saying, "Hey, I know what that's like."

You know a movie is great when a week later you find yourself thinking, "Man, driving through this Interstate construction zone with high barricades is just like when Luke was on his final approach to destroy the Death Star."

In the first example, you are drawn into the narrative. In the second example, the narrative was so powerful that you use it help you define and process the world you live in.

As people of the Bible, we need to learn the Bible stories so well that we find ourselves bringing the biblical narrative into our own lives. In so doing, it not only adds meaning to our lives since we'll start seeing ourselves as part of the story of the People of God, but it will also help us naturally shape our behavior. For just as when you pretended to be Luke on the Death Star run you, without thinking, started driving a little faster, when you bring the biblical narratives into your daily life, you'll find yourself being the person God wants you to be.

What Should We Teach?

There's this great quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “Not everything can be named. Some things draw us beyond words. Art can warm even a chilled and sunless soul to an exalted spiritual experience.”

If Solzhenitsyn is correct, one might be inclined to believe that since somethings cannot be named, that we shouldn't try to name things at all, and simply use art as a means of communicating what we think is real. For, they'd say, who are we to talk about truths, if we can't name that truth with certainty.

Jaroslav Pelikan, a historian from Yale University, shows the problem with a world without laying out what you believe.

Dr. Pelikan: Emerson was a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and was a Unitarian minister, so he was quite prepared to believe that everyone should compose a creed different from the tradition. He said to the Divinity School students at Harvard in 1838, "You must be yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Spirit and sing it out." The trouble with that is, you do it and then you do it a little bit more, and pretty soon you have to teach your children something, and so the best you can do is to teach them what you have, and you do that a generation or two, and all of a sudden, there you have…

Ms. Tippett: …a new creed.

Dr. Pelikan: …a new creed. And the only alternative to tradition is bad tradition.

Endorsement of my New Love

Steven King is one of my favorite authors...and shamefully, I've never read a single one of his novels (I did read his On Writing, though). I love his column in Entertainment Weekly...it's really the only thing that keeps me from being embarrassed to be a EW subscriber.

Anyway, this week's column is on audiobooks, a media that I've devoured since commuting 10 hours/week fifteen months ago. I've always kinda felt guilty that I'm "reading" audiobooks instead of reading "real" books, but thanks to the stamp of approval from Steven King, I no longer feel any shame!!

"Some critics — the always tiresome Harold Bloom among them — claim that listening to audiobooks isn't reading. I couldn't disagree more. In some ways, audio perfects reading. One friend of mine likes to tell the story of how she got so involved in Blair Brown's reading of Sue Miller's Lost in the Forest that she missed her turnpike exit and ended up in Boston. Another swears he never really ''got'' Elmore Leonard until he listened to Arliss Howard reading The Hot Kid and heard the mixed rhythm of the dialogue and narration.

The book purists argue for the sanctity of the page and the perfect communion of reader and writer, with no intermediary. They say that if there's something you don't understand in a book, you can always go back and read it again (these seem to be people so technologically challenged they've never heard of rewind, or can't find the back button on their CD players). Bloom has said that ''Deep reading really demands the inner ear...that part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you.'' Here is a man who has clearly never listened to a campfire story."

You the man, Steven!

Cultivation of the Self vs. Cultivation of Community

Below is a transcript of an interview that I love. In it, a New Testament scholar whose work I really appreciate, clarifies a distinction between the books that are in the Christian Bible and those that were not accepted into the cannon.

According to Johnson's reading of the New Testament texts (and I think he's right about this) the Bible focuses more on building up a community than it does on building up individuals. The emphasis on self-less love that Jesus and his followers teach, inherently builds community and, if practiced purely, would prevent any type of spiritual narcissism.

Other non-biblical texts, such as the one popularized by Dan Brown and Elaine Pagels, teach that a person can learn about God by looking inside oneself. This belief is self-centered and ultimately sees humans as spiritually autonomous, since, according to them, we can know God fully through our own God-given capacity without the help from the divine. This notion should raise the eyebrows of anyone who thinks that God is a mystery and cannot be fully understood by our limited human minds.

In the dialog below, Johnson shows how the "cultivation of the self" which masks itself as "spiritual" actually leads to (or stems from) our modern consumer mentality. Great stuff!!

Speaking of Faith: Luke Timothy Johnson: "The Council of Carthage in 397, which is one of our early canonical, or rather conciliar statements concerning the canon, says that only these writings should be read en ecclesia, that is, in the church. And then it lists all of the various texts that now form our Bible. The point of this public reading is that classical Christianity defines itself as a public institution. It is, if you will, a people. It has a sense of communal identity, which can be expressed in creeds, in certain scriptures, in — let's face it — institutions, such as leadership and teachers and so forth.

The critical dividing line there then, in terms of which texts should be read in the assembly, are which ones build the church as a community, as opposed to which ones simply serve as edification for the individual. Many of the Gnostic writings, for example, are highly individualistic in character. They don't even recognize the legitimacy of institution but rather are what we might call today spirituality. That is, they talk about, you know, how to free oneself from the body's trammels and this sort of thing.

Ms. Tippett: Which is possibly why they appeal so much to modern people who are so interested in spirituality.

Mr. Johnson: You got it in one, that spirituality today tends to be defined as sort of a cultivation of the self. And why this — why we are revisiting the second century, which is really what we're doing right now. We're revisiting that…

Ms. Tippett: You mean as a culture?

Mr. Johnson: That's right.

Ms. Tippett: Yes.

Mr. Johnson: …is because, certainly in the United States, the attitudes of individualism and of consumerism has generated a sense of Christianity as a club that we can belong to on our own terms. It is a consumer mentality, you know, the Jesus who fits me, the Jesus who speaks to me. And there's this desire to locate somehow in history a precedent, a legitimation, an antecedent for that particular Jesus. We have lost in America, in particular, the sense of being church. That is, of being a public institutional body that has a creed, that stands for something, that has a specific identity, which requires something of its members, which holds its members to certain kinds of commitments. That's precisely the issue."

A civil case against civil unions

I read this response to the New Jersey Supreme Court's ruling. What struck me was how well argued it was from a secular democratic point of view. Although the writer certainly has strong misgivings about the inherent problems with homosexual marriage, he argues that the long-lasting implication of this ruling will be that a democracy shaped by the people it governs is being thrown out the window.

These excerpts are merely highlights. His full article does a great job at highlighting potential counterpoints and identifying precedents that support his case.

FIRST THINGS: "That New Jersey marriage law should be left to democratic deliberation isn’t an ad hoc decision or a partisan proposal: The very nature of man—human dignity and equality—requires it. The people rightly claim the prerogative to deliberate about how to order their common life not only because sound decisions are thus more likely but because there are no natural superiors or inferiors. There isn’t a ruling class and a ruled class. All citizens stand on equal footing with regards to participation in the shaping of the state’s laws, laws that are binding on all citizens.

But the court in Lewis v. Harris has flouted these principles in a clear instance of judicial aristocracy. Seven unelected and electorally unaccountable justices have not only ignored but flatly rejected the judgments of the people. For the constitution itself leaves questions regarding marriage to the legislature, not the courts. In the absence of any basis that gives it to the court, the judiciary should not override the decisions made by the people through their elected representatives. If same-sex “marriage” is to be legally sanctioned in New Jersey, the people affected by such a decision should make it—by debate and deliberation, research and reasoning, honest engagement with fellow citizens, and then a vote. This is how a democratic polity that respects the freedom...

Same-sex “marriage” advocates should likewise proceed by attempting to persuade the majority of their fellow citizens of the soundness of their view. To ignore their fellow citizens’ judgments and exclude them from the deliberative process by seeking the judicial imposition of same-sex “marriage” is a travesty. But the damage extends well beyond principles of democratic rule. For the substantive issue of whether legally to enshrine marriage as the exclusive and permanent union of sexually complementary spouses (what marriage truly is) or as something else (in this case doing away with sexual complementarity) has profound ramifications. "

Good Cancer News?

A co-worker said he heard about this on the news last night and I had to look it up. Apparently, this San Francisco-based biotech firm has inked an agreement with a South Korean company to develop and

The company's website (see excerpt and link below) details the logic of their treatment, and it sounds facinating. Check out their Products and FAQ pages as well.

I Googled some key words and very little comes up other than new agencies just reposting Jennerex's company-produced press release. Why isn't this bigger news? Are commercialized cancer cures a dime a dozen and the public just doesn't know it? This would seem like big and hopeful news.

Excerpt from their press release:
JX-594 is an oncolytic virus, a new class of cancer therapeutics that utilizes a novel mechanism of action which is expected to be effective against cancers resistant to conventional surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. JX-594 is a vaccinia virus that has been engineered to infect, multiply in and kill cancer cells while leaving neighboring healthy cells unharmed. In addition to direct killing of cancer cells by viral replication, JX-594 expresses a transgene GM-CSF which stimulates the immune system to recognize and destroy the cancer cells, thereby, attacking tumors through multiple mechanisms of action. The results of a Phase I study for treatment of metastatic melanoma showed good tolerability and evidence of anti-tumor effects. A further Phase I study is currently underway in South Korea for treatment of liver cancer and a Phase II study is planned for the treatment of melanoma.

Oncolytic Viruses: Revolutionary New Cancer Treatment: "JENNEREX designs, creates and develops targeted, armed oncolytic virotherapy products. During the product design process, we initially select the optimal virus and strain based on the biology we want for specific large market tumor targets. We subsequently engineer the virus products to target genetic pathways that are critical in the vast majority of human cancers. This results in enhanced safety and a large 'therapeutic index' (differential cell killing) between cancer tissue and normal tissues in the body. We refer to this method as targeting cancer's Achilles' Heel since these same genetic changes in cancer that support growth of our viruses are also critical to cancer progression itself. The primary mechanism-of-action for our products is virus replication-dependent oncolysis ('onco' cancer, 'lysis' cell destruction). This is a novel and unique cancer-destruction mechanism that does not, in contrast to the majority of cancer treatments, rely on cancer cell 'suicide' (apoptosis); cancer cell destruction is therefore not passive but active."

The Life of Faith

Work, long commute, time with kids, chores, time with spouse, time for self (wait, scratch that, they kids are running all over the place!). You have to manage finances so to pay tons of people for everything for mortgage to ISP to phone. You have been empowered to make tons of moral choices not only in your daily/family life, but also ones that are based on what's going on globally (Walmart, environment, human trafficing, etc.). There are lots of education choices for your kids (more than anyone could have imagined 10 years ago) and you've been empowered to review them and get to decide...Maybe "fast paced" isn't the right word...maybe its that we've been so empowered that now we get to/have to make more choices and stay on top of more things than ever before. How can this type of life be maintained?

If you're looking to get depressed

This morning I started listening to Bill Moyers's latest PBS special: Moyers on America. It's first episode is on corruption in Washington. Man is it bad.

Emails between Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff are terrible. Reed is proven to be a bigoted jerk...and what's worse, these messages were sent shortly after he stepped down as Christian Coalition head. Reed was promising Abramoff that he send get financial support from his base to help push through this bill that would prevent raising taxes...but what Reed didn't tell the Christians he was soliciting, was that the bill was to prevent Indian gaming casinos from paying increased federal taxes! That is so horrible!

Crushed, a half hour into Moyers' two-hour report and I had to stop listening...listening to the emails sent between Christian and conservative leaders was literally crushing my spirit. The fact that I know that Abramoff's actions were probably typical of many lobbyists, conservative or liberal, did little to make me feel any better.

So, I gave up on Moyers only to get caught up on Frank Deford's podcast (he's the senior writer for Sports Illustrated). He's an incredible writer, insightful and witty, who always offers a unique perspective on the sports world...a real joy to listen to. Well, of course the first podcast I listen to of his is on the rise of college practices among high school when it comes to preferential treatment of sports. Lost innocence...if that doesn't give you warm fuzzies, I don't know what will.

But don't worry, things are bound to look up by day's end. I'm going to see a Scorsese gangster movie this afternoon...and there's no better formula for a feel-good flick than one that's been dubbed a master worthy of comparison to Goodfellas. My guess is that The Departed's closing shot will be of Jack Nicholson give Leonardo DiCaprio a big hug during a Dr. Phil-like therapy session.

Man, I feel better already!

Popularity of American Idol

Hey, I realized the other day that a big reason for American Idol's popularity probably has to do because it is a hip show...not just style and marketing-wize, but it's on the cutting edge of postmodern philosophy.

Postmoderns like information overload...an American Idol has tons of fastpaced cuts, edits, and segments.

Postmoderns like narratives...and Idol gives us personal profiles give you narratives for each contestant. Plus, the audience gets to play an important role in the developing narrative, "if your favorite was in the bottom three, you need to remember that you have to vote!"

Postmoderns claim to like objectivity, but are comfortable with subjectivity...and Idols is supposedly a talent contest, but style, story, and talent are all major factors. Judges' differing opinions prove how subjective everything is.

Finally, in today's world it's all about being true to yourself...and Taylor Hicks won because he was most clearly always true to himself.