Three Links (Vol. 14)

12/2/2008, 3:26 pm -- by | 1 Comment

— This firsthand account of the horrific attacks in India is spellbinding, as have been so many of the others I’ve read. A truly terrifying experience — one, I add, that we have been blessed to avoid on this soil for over seven years now. I pray that continues, here and elsewhere.

— Sen. Harry Reid is giving thanks for the new, $621 million Capitol Visitors’ Center because it means he and his fellow legislators won’t have to smell the tourists anymore. I’m not quite sure how air conditioning will solve the proletarian odor problem, but if it makes our Congressional overlords happy, I’m all for it. If there’s one thing Senators shouldn’t have to face, it’s common scents.

— Meanwhile, the long, desperate wait is over, and we have Cornell University to thank: for yam-flavored ice cream!

Three Links (Vol. 13)

11/22/2008, 1:30 pm -- by | 1 Comment

Halftime of the Villa/Man U game…

— The thing I’ve noticed about the weird Levi’s commercials, with people backflipping into jeans and filling their pants up with helium, is the lack of a disclaimer at the bottom advising us against “trying this at home.” Does this mean they think these things are perfectly safe, or that they think it’s obvious that the commercials are fake?

— This poor guy drove all the way from upstate New York to Montana, worked one 10-hour shift, then got fired. Meanwhile, down in North Carolina, a couple fishermen a mile out to sea used a lasso to land a golden retriever.

— Last story’s a sad one. Six weeks ago, a 22-year-old Army reservist and Jefferson CC student named Jesse Kilgore walked into the woods near his home and shot himself. Now, in an interview with the questionable WorldNetDaily site, his father links his suicide to Richard Dawkins’s atheist snoozer, The God Delusion.

His death is a terrible tragedy no matter what its cause, but if these claims are true — that a book and “science classes” turned this young man’s faith into despair — the real problem is not with literature or science. The problem is not even a college that allegedly “undermin[ed] every moral and spiritual value” he had (which has not been the experience of the many JCC students I know). God created the world that biology explores and studies. When our faith in Him cannot stand up to a full, impartial consideration of reality, when we feel “we must shut up one of God’s books to read the other” (Noll), then it is we who are to blame: not God, and not science.

We cannot simply demonize learning and rely on this sort of mushy, meaningless answer: “I told [Jesse] it was my relationship with God, not my knowledge of Him that brought me back to my faith. No one convinced me with facts . . . it was a matter of the heart.” Heart or no heart, facts exist whether we ignore them or accept them. Part of the reason the university culture is so dismissive of faith is that so many people of faith are reflexively distrustful of education. Where teaching is openly anti-Christian, that’s understandable. But rather than disengaging from society, we’d be a lot better off teaching young Christians how science and philosophy are blessings, not threats.

What I Just Read . . .

11/20/2008, 10:57 pm -- by | No Comments

(first in a series)

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Mark Noll

Its First Words — “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”

In Ten Words — Evangelical Christians must again think seriously — or risk cultural irrelevance.

In Fifty Words — Fourteen is usually an awkward age, for human beings and non-fiction books, so it’s a bad sign indeed that Noll’s indictment of the intellectual impotence of the evangelical church has aged so well. 10 years later, he largely stood by its conclusions, seeing any improvements as exceptions, not the rule.

In Its Own Words — “Fidelity to Jesus Christ demands from evangelicals a more responsible intellectual existence than we have practiced throughout much of our history.”

Fighting Words — Young-earth creationism and dispensationalism come in for some serious and well-leveled criticism. In one particularly blunt passage at the end, Noll compares evangelicalism to the deuce in the card deck of Christianity. Really? Not even the four or five, Prof?

Well-Chosen Words — A juxtaposition of the 19th-century Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart with the 20th-century Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus is cherry-picked but interesting. “Under the influence of fundamentalism, evangelicals turned their eyes to Jesus, and the world grew very dim indeed.”

As an Aside — Mike Huckabee is the new William Jennings Bryan: populist, activist, and Christian progressive. (I do not think this is a good thing.)

Closing Words — Christians must obey the mandate to love God with our minds, wherever that leads. Learning matters — our habits of thinking matter — because the world and its people matter. “The search for a Christian mind is not, in the end, a search for mind but a search for God.”

Further Election News

11/18/2008, 10:03 pm -- by | No Comments

The major media outlets appear to be calling the Stevens-Begich Senate race for Begich, the Democratic challenger. This puts the Democrats one seat closer (58 total) to a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority, pending the results of the December 2nd Chambliss-Martin runoff and the Coleman-Franken recount which begins tomorrow. We’ll keep you posted.

Suggested Norse Oaths

11/17/2008, 1:06 am -- by | No Comments

Why should the Christian Trinity get all the work in the curse department? Let’s put the Norse gods to work with some of these exclamations.

By Freyja’s cat-drawn chariot!
Holy Odin on a pogo stick! (Hat tip: Djere)
Oh, Frigg!
Sweet goats of Thor!
Mighty Mother Nerpus!
Hang a shaman!
Kvasir, gods’ spit!
Naughty Nanna’s consort!
Aw, Hel!
Sniveling Snotra!
Valknut petroglyphs!

How’d We Do?

11/11/2008, 1:20 pm -- by | No Comments

Let’s look at the Bweinh! election predictions. First, the haiku:

CORRECT: 3 — MC-B; Kaitlin; David
INCORRECT: 5 — Josh; Job; Steve; Djere; Tom
TOO VAGUE: 1 — Connie

Next, my predictions. I was right that the partisan breakdown wasn’t as disparate as many polls suggested: just 39-32 Democrat, but I still underestimated Obama’s popular vote by 0.5%, and overestimated McCain’s by 1.6% (the final result was 52.6-46.1).

Here’s the map. All the states I pegged as blowouts (10+) were in fact blowouts, with one exception: South Dakota. But of the five I thought would be sound Obama wins (5-10), four were blowouts. Only two of McCain’s five were blowouts, while I was right on the other three.

And the pattern continued: of the four states I predicted Obama would win semi-close (3-5), two were blowouts and two were sound wins. McCain had one sound win, one semi-close win, one state still too close to call (Missouri), and two tight LOSSES (0-3). This left only the five key states, and Obama won them all: Pennsylvania in a blowout, Nevada and Virginia soundly, Ohio semi-close, and Florida tight.

So I was wrong a lot on margins, and five times on states. But I did give an “absolute worst-case scenario,” and provided that McCain holds onto Missouri, that prediction (364-174) will be off by only one electoral vote. Seems Omaha outperformed even MY pessimism.

Three Links (Vol. 12)

11/7/2008, 4:28 pm -- by | 1 Comment

— This year’s election map by county doesn’t look all that different from 2004, but if you check out the voting shifts tab, you see that pretty much everywhere that wasn’t Tennessee, Arkansas, or Oklahoma got markedly bluer. Still an improvement over the Clinton years, though.

— I don’t feel comfortable sending you all to some of the things I most enjoy at McSweeney’s, but anyone who’s ever fired 10 times at a squirrel on the Oregon Trail should appreciate this. “The other day, I saw you quit the trail immediately after your wagon capsized in the Kansas River. You lost only an ox and a hundred pounds of food. I drank myself to sleep that night.”

— As I learned during college, people love lists. Whether they loved my lists is another question entirely, and rather than considering it, why don’t we check out this list of the ten most irritating phrases, from researchers at Oxford? Maybe, at the end of the day, I’m fairly unique, but I personally feel that it’s not rocket science; with all due respect, you absolutely shouldn’t of doubted that using these phrases 24/7 at this moment in time — it’s a nightmare.

The Morning After

11/5/2008, 10:13 am -- by | No Comments

I’ll go through my predictions once all the results are finalized, but it sure does look like my worst-case scenario came true. But what does it all mean, really?

For one thing, a lot of people are considerably happier than they were yesterday. Josh reported walking through the Staten Island projects yesterday and seeing people dancing, screaming, and celebrating in a way he hadn’t seen since the Giants won the Super Bowl. And I find myself legitimately glad for those people. Today the United States has elected a president of mixed race, and that is an achievement — an achievement of identification and participation. Good for them.

On a more substantive note, the Democrats will finally be forced to provide responsible political leadership, rather than endless delay and obstruction. They were never going to become serious about the War on Terror until they were responsible for it, and now we will see whether even that will make a difference. Republicans maintained enough seats in the Senate to at least occasionally threaten a filibuster, and after five years of endless Republican immolation, I for one look forward to watching the Democrats destroy themselves for a change. I feel more comfortable on the outside. It’s refreshing.

Today I woke up and walked to work and the sun was shining and the breeze was blowing and it was so warm and beautiful I thought it was May. Life is good and God is on His throne.

Today is a good day to be an American. They all are.

Why Hillary Clinton — no, Barack Obama — Will Be Our Next President

11/5/2008, 8:00 am -- by | No Comments

Originally published November 2007, and resubmitted October 31, 2008.

No, I don’t like her him. No, I would never support her him. Yes, I really believe she will be our next president.

Why do I think this?

First, it’s the Democrats’ turn. One of the best practical jokes I was ever a part of involved a camper trailer, me, a massive former football star, a small musician/ladies’ man, and several children. I put the kids in the trailer and worked out signals, so that when Henry (the small guy) lifted the tongue of the camper while I moved the stump to level it, the kids scurried to the back, making it easy for him to lift. But when Tim (the big guy) tried, I had them scurry to the front, making it impossible to lift. With the wheels as a fulcrum, 5 or 6 small kids made the job either easy or impossible — tricking Tim was great fun.

The weight, I believe, is shifting back to the Democrats. The strongest candidate we can muster won’t be able to overcome even the feeble challenge of a liberal female inexperienced candidate.

People in this nation seem to love the underdog, and they get tired of the same people being in power — especially when those people promised they would “remember you” when they got there, but quickly forgot, amid their newfound life of luxury. Remember the right-wing revolution? The Contract with America? People gave conservatives the presidency and both houses of Congress for the first time in a bazillion years, and we were going to reform lobbying and campaign finance, set term limits, and fix every other advantage held by the inside-the-Beltway boys? Yeah, they slacked off on those promises and never did get around to reforming all that’s wrong with our national government.

*loud whistle* “TIME! DEMOCRATS! YOU’RE UP NEXT!”

But it’s not just that, it’s also the economy again. It’s kind of like having only two grocery stores in town — when you get sick of the one you shop at now, you go back to the one you left eight years ago. It’s bound to happen. Prices go up everywhere, but you still go back to the old store.

I know no one is saying we’re in a recession, but the man on the street can sense these things long before the big shots admit it’s happening. Gasoline affects every other sector of the economy. Everybody needs transportation to get back and forth to work; everyone has to get their product from point A to point B. Everyone I know is struggling paycheck to paycheck. Every business owner I know is looking at a bad year. Our business did $1.2 million last year, but we won’t come close to a million this year. Like it or not, people are ready for change.

Then there’s the war. It was the right thing to do; it’s still the right thing to do, but it’s draining away revenue we don’t have, and creating a huge deficit again. Right or wrong, people vote with their wallets, and right now, those wallets are leaning to the left. There’s no one out there I can see who will turn them back.

And that’s the last reason. There is no conservative Republican candidate generating the type of interest needed to energize the Christian vote. You may think I’m crazy, but I know Christians who voted for Bill Clinton when he ran for re-election. Four years of his shenanigans, and still they voted for him.

When I hear people here in Alabama, a solidly conservative Republican stronghold, entertaining the possibility of another Clinton Obama administration — and hinting that it might not be so bad, I think the tide has turned.

From the Phone 6

11/5/2008, 1:02 am -- by | No Comments

Overheard at work today:

“If this election goes the wrong way, we should move to Canada.”

“If this election goes the wrong way, we’ll BECOME Canada!”

Election Day Live Blog!

11/4/2008, 5:05 pm -- by | 6 Comments

We live-blogged Election Night for almost EIGHT SOLID HOURS, including input from Steve, Djere, MCB, Job, Kaitlin, Josh, and Tom! So check it out, and don’t forget to scroll down and look at all our other content from Election Day too!

The Final 538 Prediction

11/4/2008, 2:00 pm -- by | 1 Comment

On one hand, these guys are admitted Democrats whose analysis frequently seems to consist of telling liberals “not to worry” about polls that look bad for Obama. On the other, they do seem to use thorough models and have an impressive pedigree in statistical analysis, especially in the stat-heavy world of baseball.

So for what it’s worth, 538 projects a landslide Obama victory — either 353-185 or 349-189, depending on which way you want to look at it. That’s only one state (Indiana) short of my worst-case scenario.

They give McCain only a 1.1% chance of victory, which is comically low. I suppose we’ll see how all their numbers look after tonight.

Battleground Poll Results

11/4/2008, 11:55 am -- by | No Comments

May the rest of my Election Day be as pleasant as this morning, where I got two rounds of applause and some free cookies for being voter #100 in the precinct.

If you’re looking for good news, the reports of high turnout have not been limited to Democratic areas, and the early vote in Colorado is almost equally split between Democrat and Republican.

Also, the most accurate poll in three of the last four elections has predicted a final result of Obama 50.9%, McCain 47.4%. Combine that projection with the huge margins Obama is expected to run up in New York and California, and maybe McCain does have a shot to eke out that narrow Electoral College win.

I think the odds are around 8 to 1.

From the Phone 5

11/4/2008, 10:59 am -- by | No Comments

“And so we enter the great unknown”

“And, tomorrow, the re-education camps”

Steve’s Predictions

11/4/2008, 12:51 am -- by | No Comments

Why should you listen to me? I went 13-1 this week in my football picks, that’s why!

First, I don’t really believe in the Bradley Effect — but I do think many of the polls that have given Obama massive leads are making faulty assumptions about the partisan breakdown of this year’s electorate. Not even after Watergate did Democrats outnumber Republicans the way some of them seem to expect, and when you hear bad news tomorrow in the exit polls, just remember how wrong they were in 2004 and 2006.

That said, Obama’s still going to win the popular vote, something like 52.1 to 47.7. As for the states:

Obama by 10 or more: Illinois (21); New York (31); Connecticut (7); Massachusetts (12); California (55); Maine (4); New Jersey (15); Hawaii (4); Vermont (3); DC (3); Rhode Island (4); Delaware (3); Maryland (10)
McCain by 10 or more: Alabama (9); Tennessee (11); Alaska (3); Kentucky (8); Texas (34); Mississippi (6); West Virginia (5); Idaho (4); Utah (5); Wyoming (3); Louisiana (9); Oklahoma (7); Kansas (6); South Dakota (3)
TOTAL: Obama 172, McCain 113

No real surprises here. The continuing coal gaffes push WV over the 10-point barrier, but the rest of these are simply the two parties’ bases: mostly coastal Democrats and rural Republicans.

Obama by 5-10: Michigan (17); Washington (11); Iowa (7); Oregon (7); Minnesota (10)
McCain by 5-10: South Carolina (8); Arkansas (6); North Dakota (3); Georgia (15); Nebraska (5)
TOTAL: Obama 224, McCain 150

Not a good sign for McCain that rock-ribbed Republican SC and GA are in this section rather than the last — or that MI and MN are this far out of reach. But I also have a feeling the Pacific Northwest won’t be as Democratic as the polls indicate.

Obama by 3-5: Wisconsin (10); New Hampshire (4); New Mexico (5); Colorado (9)
McCain by 3-5: Arizona (10); Montana (3); Indiana (11); Missouri (11); North Carolina (15)
TOTAL: Obama 252, McCain 200

IN, NC, and MO have been close for a while, but I expect they will stay Republican tomorrow as the undecideds break for McCain. It’s the losses of NM and CO that have really put McCain on the hot seat — there’s really only one place he can make up those electoral votes.

Only five states are left; I’ll take them from smallest to largest.

Nevada (5): Reports from early voting have Obama ahead, but not as much as you’d expect, given the partisan breakdown of the voters. I think McCain takes the state by less than 1%, although I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see Obama pull it out by a similar margin. In the end, it won’t matter. 252-205.

Virginia (13): For a long time, I simply didn’t believe this state would go blue, not with McCain in the race and such a large contingent of veterans. But every poll since the beginning of October has shown Obama with the lead. I don’t think they’re all wrong. Obama by 2. 265-205.

Ohio (20): Another state where the Democrats’ mouths are getting them in trouble, and where McCain has been closing the gap as of late. Ohio has enough of the areas where Obama has underperformed to keep McCain alive, although not by much. McCain by 1.5. 265-225.

Pennsylvania (21): The end of the road for John McCain, even after Obama called its voters gun-clinging ignoramuses and vowed to bankrupt the coal industry. McCain started in a big hole here, and I just don’t think he can overcome it. I sure hope I’m wrong, but… Obama by 2.5. 286-225.

Florida (27): Close enough to slide to the Republican side when the undecideds break, especially given the state’s demographics. Not nearly as close as 2000, either; I see it going to McCain by 2 percent, giving us a final total of 286-252, Obama.

Basically, McCain can’t win without Pennsylvania — not unless he holds Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Nevada, and ekes out a victory in Colorado or something. And there’s not much reason to think either of those scenarios will happen. Barack Obama is very likely to be our next president.

But McCain sure has come back before, and Obama sure has underperformed before, and the USA did beat the Russians in hockey that one time, and, and . . .

My prediction: 286-252 (Obama)
Absolute worst-case scenario: 364-174 (Obama adds Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Indiana, and North Carolina)
Absolute best-case scenario: 300-238 (McCain adds Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Virginia)

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