Shalom

On May 22, my father spoke at Bethel University's commencement. Along with being hilarious he made some good points:

1. You are going to die. Remember that and live your life understanding that death awaits.
2. You are never unemployed (particularly relevant to college grads) because your job--your primary job--is to build shalom in this world. You are called to bring justice and mercy and love and peace to those around you. 

It's some good stuff to think about when your job or life ain't going to well. Or you are wondering what the heck to do with your life.

Quote of the Day

I never expected to quote the heir to the throne of the United Kingdom in this blog or anywhere, but he has said some really interesting things:

When we hear talk of an “environmental crisis” or even of a “financial crisis,” I would suggest that this is actually describing the outward consequences of a deep, inner crisis of the soul. It is a crisis in our relationship with – and our perception of – Nature, and it is born of Western culture being dominated for at least two hundred years by a mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us.

So I would like you to consider very seriously today whether a big part of the solution to all of our worldwide “crises” does not lie simply in more and better technology, but in the recovery of the soul to the mainstream of our thinking. Our science and technology cannot do this. Only sacred traditions have the capacity to help this happen.

In general, we live within a culture that does not believe very much in the soul anymore – or if it does, won’t admit to it publicly for fear of being thought old fashioned, out of step with “modern imperatives” or “anti-scientific.” The empirical view of the world, which measures it and tests it, has become the only view to believe. A purely mechanistic approach to problems has somehow assumed a position of great authority and this has encouraged the widespread secularisation of society that we see today. This is despite the fact that those men of science who founded institutions like the Royal Society were also men of deep faith. It is also despite the fact that a great many of our scientists today profess a faith in God. I am aware of one recent survey that suggests over seventy per cent of scientists do so ...

As the English writer G.K. Chesterton put it, “real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them as a root.” I would also remind you of the words of Oxford’s very own C.S. Lewis, who pointed out that “sometimes you do have to turn the clock back if it is telling the wrong time” – that there is nothing “progressive” about being stubborn and refusing to acknowledge that we have taken the wrong road. If we realize that we are travelling in the wrong direction, the only sensible thing to do is to admit it and retrace our steps back to where we first went wrong. As Lewis put it, “going back can sometimes be the quickest way forward.” It is the most progressive thing we could do.

HT: Burke's Corner

Israel, Gaza, the Sea, and the Pic of the Day

A lot of smarter people than me are saying smarter things about the incident in the Med. Needless to say, Israel has made both a tactical and strategic blunder with their handling of these ships trying to break the blockade. From a tactical point see pic:

HT: Info Dissemination

You'd think they would be able to do much better than this. Do they not train? As Fred Kaplan from Slate asks:

The questions here are fairly obvious: Why shouldn't the Israeli commandos have expected resistance, at least as an operational premise? Why weren't they equipped with nonlethal weapons? Why didn't they fire a few canisters of tear gas as they boarded or once the first brickbats flew?

Strategically, it gets even worse. At the end of day, Israel leaders have created sympathy for Hamas (who vows to destroy Israel...not good) and antipathy to the blockade and any reasonable manner to contain Hamas in Gaza. This is going to get worst before it gets better.

Fact of the Day

85% of upstate New York residents live within 25 miles of the Erie Canal.

Quote of the Day

Plantiga's definition of a fundamentalist:

A stupid ass whose theological beliefs are to the right of me and my enlightened friends.

The Indictment of President George W. Bush

I'm not, nor ever have been a Bush hater. I didn't vote for him, but I don't think he was some loon running amok. The Iraq War wasn't a net positive, but I understand the impetus and the seemingly necessity of taking care of rogue nations. Nevertheless, from a more fundamental point of view President Bush was a disaster. At a time when our nation needed (and could afford) fiscal/domestic leadership, he flushed it down the toilet.

As the Mr. Douthat points out in a response to Mr. Mead's excellent post:

In hindsight, I suspect, the most damning judgment on the politics of the 2000s will be that our leaders (well, many of them, at least) misjudged how long they had before the fiscal crunch arrived. It was understood, throughout the decade, that once the baby boomers retired there would have to be an era of belt-tightening and fiscal retrenchment — but that moment still seemed a long (or at least a medium) way off, and the problem of the entitlement system’s sustainability seemed like it could wait for the late 2010s or early 2020s.

He goes on to say:

Looking backward, though, it’s very bad news for the legacy of George W. Bush, whose fiscal record looks much more irresponsible in the cold light of hindsight than it did while he was in the White House. For a time, Bush’s hope for rehabilitation seemed to rest on the possibility of a decent outcome in Iraq, but now I suspect that even that won’t be enough to rescue his reputation: Both right and left bear responsibility for letting the 2000s slip away, but Bush was the decider, and his budgetary decisions look worse and worse with every passing day.

Alas.

Funding Your State

The Great Recession may be officially over, but states throughout the land are still facing difficult budget decisions. They need to decide what to fund and how to raise the money. Too often in discussions of taxation we focus on income tax or just federal taxes when in fact we have a whole slew of taxes. Instead we need to talk about the tax burden citizens face rather than particular tax rates (e.g., the rich may face the highest income tax rate, however, if their income is from dividends their tax burden is significantly less).

You particularity see this tax reality with separate states. For example, in my lovely state of South Dakota we have no income tax, yet one of the higher property tax rates. As far as sales tax we are on the lower end, however, many more items are tax (e.g., groceries and clothes, while high tax MN exempts those items). Needless to say, tax policy is super fun.  Check out these state graphics:

OR

A 5 year old Girl's Prayer OR Semper Fi, Moon

From the Sandbox, via Best Defense:

          God bless all our friends and daycare,
          and all our teachers at daycare ...

          God bless soldiers and sailors,
          polar bears and penguins ...

God bless astronauts and Space Shuttles.
God bless marines and ballerinas.

Amen

A Picture

From: APOD

Copyright: Credit & Copyright: Bret Webster

Screwed...again

The NBA draft lottery was held today. The Timberwolves, once again, were in position to receive a great pick with odds on to receive the second pick. But, of course, it didn't happen. Take it away Star Trib:

Minnesota was awarded the fourth pick in next month’s NBA draft during Tuesday’s lottery, extending its history of never moving up via the league’s talent raffle. The Wolves’ 15-67 record was the second-worst in the NBA, but for the seventh time in 12 lottery appearances, they were moved down in the draft-selection order when two other teams, this time Washington and Philadelphia, were randomly drawn ahead of them.

Sweet... sure this is a deep draft, but sheesh...