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Month: October 2006

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Perspective

I like WordPress because…

Lorelle VanFossen writes on Blogging Gear: Start With a Good Blogging Program. He points to several articles and reviews on blogging programs (well worth a read if you’re serious about what you do). In the post he asks:

So where is your list of things you love about WordPress, huh?

Here’s mine:

  1. WordPress is self contained. I don’t need a separate text editor, uploading software, FrontPage, ColdFusion, Dreamweaver, nothin’ else.
  2. WordPress is community software 1. It has a rock solid foundation based on what people need to get the job done.
  3. WordPress is community software 2. Members of the WordPress community extend and amplify its functionality with plugins and themes that make a great tool spectacular.
  4. The WordPress ‘motto’ Code is Poetry. As a religion blogger I tend to look at the deeper metaphysical meaning of things. When you connect with your Creator you connect with His theme —“ which is the beauty of that which He created. WordPress connects.
  5. WordPress does widgets. As a person with an accounting degree I’ve heard about widgets in all my coursework and I use the word regularly to define concepts. Widgets represent something —“ ‘Hey look, I’ve produced 1,000 widgets today.’ Well, WordPress (via Automattic) brought widgets to life. Widgets let you add all that neat stuff to your sidebars without a Herculean coding effort. A nice touch —“ making software useful and easy.
  6. WordPress means dressed-for-success. Words, and their use in expressing thoughts, feelings, and concepts, are part of the picture. To get you message across you need a medium. WordPress is the cathedral that gives some gravitas to the words the preacher preaches. The medium might not be the message, but it helps to have a medium that acknowledges the fact that people’s thoughts carry a part of their innate human dignity.
  7. WordPress plus Akismet. Stopping evil —“ hey, gotta like that.
  8. WordPress lets you play. You can hack, play, modify, break, and rebuild to your hearts content. Change this, modify that. It is software that allows you to be in charge of your art, to the extent you wish.

There’s more of course, but that’s the highlights for me.

Current Events, Media, Political

Well now that I know I’ll shut-up

From Yahoo News: Top US general says Rumsfeld is inspired by God

MIAMI (AFP) – The top US general defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God.

“He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country,” said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff…

The ‘good’ Lord: Get Saddam.
Rumsfeld: Why?
The ‘good’ Lord: He dissed your boss’ dad. Remember, Honor Thy father…
Rumsfeld: What will we tell the people?
The ‘good’ Lord: Lie.
Rumsfeld: What?
The ‘good’ Lord: Lie! Make up a story, Saddam is evil.
Rumsfeld: You mean do an evil to achieve a good?
The ‘good’ Lord: Sure.
Rumsfeld: OK

The REAL Word of God tells us:

Therefore, God is sending them a deceiving power so that they may believe the lie,
that all who have not believed the truth but have approved wrongdoing may be condemned.
(2 Thessalonians 2:11-12)

Current Events, Media, Political

You’ll never see him again

Do you get the feeling that one day Keith Olbermann will suddenly disappear from MSNBC? Of course, with the President’s signing of the Military Commissions Act and with the commensurate loss of our Habeas Corpus rights there would be little if any chance of ever seeing or hearing from him again if he did disappear.

Maybe the President’s evangelical friends would assume he was taken up in the rapture?

A transcript from Crooks and Liars of Keith Olbermann’s commentary on the Death of Habeas Corpus: —Your words are lies, Sir.—

…

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done, to anything the terrorists have ever done.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that “the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values” and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens “Unlawful Enemy Combatants” and ship them somewhere —” anywhere —” but may now, if he so decides, declare you an “Unlawful Enemy Combatant” and ship you somewhere – anywhere.

And if you think this, hyperbole or hysteria… ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was President, or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was President, or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was President.

And if you somehow think Habeas Corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant” —” exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this Attorney General is going to help you?

…

Habeas Corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The Moral Force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush… they would be “the beginning of the end of America.”

And did it even occur to you once sir —” somewhere in amidst those eight separate, gruesome, intentional, terroristic invocations of the horrors of 9/11 —” that with only a little further shift in this world we now know —” just a touch more repudiation of all of that for which our patriots died —”

Did it ever occur to you once, that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future President and a “competent tribunal” of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of “Unlawful Enemy Combatant” for… and convene a Military Commission to try… not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?

…

Christian Witness, Current Events, Political

State trumps Church

The New York State Court of Appeals rules that State interests trump religious faith. The beginning of a very slippery slope (just imagine Quakers and the Amish marching off to war).

This follows along with rulings from the IRS as to what ministers may or may not preach, and other New York State rulings that could require Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.

The ball is now in the Church’s court.

Will they shut down services and allow the state to pick-up the slack, hold their nose and provide coverage, privatize their outreach services spinning off hundreds of not-for-profits that will have to fend for themselves? There’s a hundred other iterations as to what could happen (imagine making people sign an election stating that they do not want the coverage – people would win any lawsuit filed based on such a measure) None of it clean, none of it good.

The Bishops of the Roman Church need to get on the same page and strategize. Otherwise you will see scandal caused by Bishops going in a hundred different directions in opposition to Church teaching.

Let the teachers teach.

From the Albany Times-Union: Court of Appeals defends health care law: Mandatory group insurance coverage of prescription contraceptives ruled constitutional:

ALBANY — The 2003 law requiring employers that provide group insurance coverage for prescription drugs to include coverage for prescription contraceptives is constitutional, the state’s highest court ruled today.

The Court of Appeals rejected a request by Catholic Charities of Albany and others for an injunction that would have forced the state Insurance Department to allow them an exemption from the Women’s Health and Wellness Act, like other religious institutions whose employees all share the same faith.

“Plaintiffs believe contraception to be sinful, and assert that the challenged provisions of the WHWA compel them to violate their religious tenets by financing conduct that they condemn,” Associate Judge Robert S. Smith stated in an 18-page decision. “The sincerity of their beliefs, and the centrality of those beliefs to their faiths, are not in dispute.”

What is at issue, Smith said, is the balance between an interest in adhering to the tenets of the organizations’ faith and the state’s interest in “fostering equality between the sexes, and in providing women with better health care.”

In the debate before the law was enacted, legislators found that granting a broad religious exemption like that which Catholics Charities sought would leave too many women outside the statute, Smith said, “a decision entitled to deference from the courts.”

“Of course, the Legislature might well have made another choice, but we cannot say the choice the Legislature made has been shown to be an unreasonable interference with plaintiffs’ exercise of their religion,” Smith wrote. “The Legislature’s choice is therefore not unconstitutional.”

Current Events, Political

Irrefutable logic slaps him in the face

From the Irish Examiner: Bush compares Iraq to Vietnam:

US president George Bush has compared the intensifying violence in Iraq to the Tet offensive in Vietnam 38 years ago.

The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese armies undertook a series of attacks that shook America’s confidence about winning the war and eroded political support for then president Lyndon Johnson…

While elsewhere scientists work diligently on Mr. Bush’s post presidential business suit

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Scientists create cloak of invisibility:

WASHINGTON — A team of American and British researchers has made a Cloak of Invisibility. Well, OK, it’s not perfect. Yet. But it’s a start, and it did a pretty good job of hiding a copper cylinder…

If you can hide an inanimate object you can hide Mr. Bush.

Current Events, Perspective, Political

Not a Knight of Malta

Excerpts from the NY Times article Catholic Priest Claims Relationship With Foley:

A Catholic priest told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune on Wednesday that he had an intimate two-year relationship with former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley when the congressman was a teenage altar boy.

Mr. Foley resigned from Congress last month after his suggestive electronic messages to young male pages surfaced. Soon after, he said he was an alcoholic and said he had been molested as a boy by a clergyman.

From his home on the island of Gozo, a part of Malta off the Italian coast, the priest, Anthony Mercieca, described a series of encounters that he said Mr. Foley might perceive as sexually inappropriate. Among them: massaging Mr. Foley while the boy was naked, skinny-dipping with him at a secluded lake and being naked in the same room on overnight trips.

Father Mercieca said he was in a drug-induced stupor one night and cannot clearly remember what happened but that it may also have been inappropriate.

—I have to confess, I was going through a nervous breakdown,— he said. —I was taking pills —” tranquilizers. I used to take them all the time. They affected my mind a little bit.—

He’s still in denial about the fact he’s an abuser. ‘Hey, look, I drink because people are mean to be, not because I’m an alcoholic’ doesn’t work.

…

Father Mercieca said he taught Mr. Foley —some wrong things— related to sex, though he wouldn’t specify what he meant. He also said they were naked together in a sauna twice.

Father Mercieca said that, at the time, he considered his relationship with Mr. Foley innocent. But he now says he sees that his actions may have been inappropriate.

I think more like ‘were inappropriate.’ And what type of sexual behaviors were you to teach as a priest?

Father Mercieca said his encounter with Mr. Foley was an aberration, and that the Catholic Church never had to send him for counseling during his 38 years in the priesthood in Florida.

—I have been in many parishes, and I have never been— accused, he said.

So what! Perhaps your position, people’s fear of disgrace, etc. etc. resulted in your not being accused. Still, you are an abuser. To Mr. Dreher’s oft talked about position – you just don’t get it.

…

Father Mercieca said during his two years in Lake Worth, he ate dinners with Mr. Foley’s family and that Mr. Foley’s grandmother —was delighted to see me all the time.—

Perhaps one of the reasons you were not ‘accused.’

Father Mercieca said he is confused about why Mr. Foley has decided to come forward after almost 40 years.

—Why does he want to destroy me in my old age?— Father Mercieca said.

Because you destroyed his innocence? Perhaps? What do you think Father?

And as a former boss once told me, “There is no perfect justice in the world, but sometimes we hit 85%.”

…

—He took us to the movies and would tell us to call him ‘Tony.’ He taught us to drive in his ’57 Chevy,— Mr. Ombres said. —He taught us to drive a stick-shift in a light-blue Volkswagen, driving around the church parking lot.—

Ending in ironic tragedy…

Current Events, Perspective,

Your breasts are like twin fawns

Your breasts are like twin fawns,
the young of a gazelle
that browse among the lilies.

I offer this verse from the Song of Songs (Song of Songs 4:5) in honor of all women, and in recognition of October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Many bloggers have turned their sites a lovely shade of pink in blogdom’s Go Pink for October effort.

Part of the Go Pink effort is the sharing of personal stories. Here’s mine:

I had a cousin, Mary Grace, who was affected by breast cancer. She ended up having a double mastectomy followed by high-dose chemo and radiation therapy.

I remember very clearly how our whole family came together in prayer before, during, and after her treatments. It was an intense and exceptional lesson in faith. I remember the sense of confidence I had in our common prayer. I don’t remember questioning whether the prayer, along with the medical treatment, would work, I just had no doubt.

The treatment worked and Mary Grace was able to carry on for several years. Eventually, the cancer did return, and took her life, the life of an outstanding person, a mom, wife, and educator.

Mary Grace was in the lead among technology educators in this country, long before technology was part of school curricula. Something that I as a blogger and amateur tech guy appreciate and admire.

The Kentucky Association of Technology Coordinators named a Student Technology Leadership Program scholarship in her honor. They had this to say in their minutes (Google archive):

Dr. Mary Grace Jaeger was the director of the Computer Support Unit for Jefferson County Public Schools and in the beginning stages of KERA, she was the Associate Commissioner of Education Technology. Her tireless efforts to improve the integration of technology in instruction benefited students in her county and in all districts across our great Commonwealth. Dr. Jaeger was a wonderful president of KATC and an enthusiastic supporter of STLP. KATC wishes to honor two STLP high achievers who are also effective leaders in their club and community. It is our desire to honor them with a scholarship appropriately named after one who epitomized those same outstanding qualities.

In a special way I honor my cousin Mary Grace who would have turned 50 this year. I also honor all the women of my family.

If you took a look at the family I grew up in, you would see that the majority of family members around me were women, strong, independent, and faithful women.

I personally experienced the parochial attitudes doctors exhibited toward them and the lower level of medical care that these women received. Many would be alive today if not for the poor state of women’s health care.

My mom, my aunt, all of them under treated. All met with the attitude of ‘Oh, honey, you’re just complaining because you’re a woman.’ All with treatable conditions left undetected while doctors raked in revenue. The very same conditions in a man would have been met by extraordinary efforts on the part of the medical community.

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So this October, Go Pink, make a donation to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and help ensure that our sisters and daughters receive the care they deserve.

Christian Witness, Current Events

Stem cell research – the truth

From Catholic On-line: Catholic bioethics priest ‘cuts through spin’ on stem-cell debate

COQUITLAM, Canada (CCN/The B.C. Catholic) —“ Society needs to cut through hype surrounding the stem-cell debate, a debate that has incorrectly identified the Catholic Church as standing against stem-cell research aimed at medical breakthroughs, said the director of U.S. Catholic bioethics center.

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, Pa., spoke to some 200 at Our Lady of Fatima Parish here Sept. 27 on stem-cell research and accompanying moral issues in a talk, —Cutting Through the Spin of Stem Cells and Cloning.”

Although Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk is only 40 years old, he has accomplished more academically than most do in a lifetime. He has a doctorate in neuroscience from Yale University, four undergraduate degrees in molecular and cellular biology, chemistry, biochemistry and philosophy, as well as two degrees in advanced theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He has addressed state legislatures, and regularly travels around Canada and the United States to speak on stem-cell research.

“It is incorrect to say that the Roman Catholic Church is against stem-cell research,” he said to begin his talk. “It is only correct to say the Roman Catholic Church is against embryonic stem-cell research. The ethical concerns differ with the source of the stem cells, because you do have to destroy an early and vulnerable human to get embryonic cells…”

Which coinsides with the view of the PNCC.

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