iPandora

Speecy Spiicy, Hotsy Totsy

American parents tend to feed their children bland foods to avoid potential allergies or just because that’s what Dr Spock or the latest parenting magazine told them. Easy on the stomach, and the poop ain’t so bad.

Parents in other countries tend to feed their infants whatever they are having, and their children experience the full gamut of cultural flavors from very early ages.

And yes, I’m advocating for American parents to be more like foreign parents. Look out the windows, there be pigs in the air!

First, bland doesn’t necessary mean easier for the stomach. Take ginger, for instance. A very sharp and strong flavor, nobody would call it bland. But is the natural and effective remedy for upset stomachs? Ginger. No citations here, just try this: Purchase a bottle of Reed’s Ginger Brew. If you can handle the Extra Strength, get that. Then fast, and when your stomach is most uncomfortable, usually just after the normal time for the next meal, drink the Reed’s. Instant stomach relief.

Second, you’re limiting your child’s future ability to eat and enjoy wide varieties of food, including many foods you and I take for granted.

This article chronicles the embarrassment, the worries, the challenges of being an adult picky eater. One telling comment?

Amber Scott, of Enon, Ohio, has eaten only about 10 different foods since she was 3 years old.

Not that exposing your children, when young, to significant varieties of food will totally preclude such problems, but they would take a significant bite out of them.

The Office

Empty office space keeps rising. This is not a good sign for the economy that is on the mend, according to certain people whose grand plans are fully in swing here. Corporations are using less and less office space, which means they aren’t hiring.

The really scary part?

Job growth and office-space use are closely intertwined. While some major users of offices, such as federal regulatory agencies, have been expanding, big banks and corporations have lagged behind in increasing their real-estate footprint, according to some analysts. That is a sign that these larger companies have been slow to return to their pre-recession staffing levels, a contributing factor to the persistently high U.S. unemployment rate.

Yea, that’s a sure sign of a growing and recovering economy. Regulators are gearing up for more business. Only one problem, regulators business is to keep real businesses out of business.

My Buddy Hugo

The ones really benefiting from the drilling moratorium? National oil companies. That means President Obama’s marxist buddy Hugo Chavez is loving us right now. Was this a quid pro quo? Or was it yet another unintended consequence of a short sighted and dishonestly supported policy? I’d say the latter, but wouldn’t be too surprised at the former.

Oh, and this would be the same Venezuela that just stole oil rigs from US corporations and we heard nary a peep in protest for this thuggish thievery from the government that is supposed to be supporting US interests abroad.

Muhammed In Space

Perhaps a new round of “Let’s Draw Muhammed” is in order. It would probably improve our chances of NASA actually being less irrelevant than it already is going forward.

NASA has apparently been ordered to reach out to Muslim nations in an effort to improve goodwill. And NASA is the right agency for this why?

Former NASA director Michael Griffin says sympathetic nations will be drawn to us when NASA succeeds at great things, not when they’re given an inflatable space shuttle and commemorative plaque.

Griffin said Tuesday that collaboration with other countries, including Muslim nations, is welcome and should be encouraged — but that it would be a mistake to prioritize that over NASA’s “fundamental mission” of space exploration.

“If by doing great things, people are inspired, well then that’s wonderful,” Griffin said. “If you get it in the wrong order … it becomes an empty shell.”

Griffin added: “That is exactly what is in danger of happening.”

And the coup de’ etat?

He also said that while welcome, Muslim-nation cooperation is not vital for U.S. advancements in space exploration.

“There is no technology they have that we need,” Griffin said.

Once again, why is it NASA’s job to reach out to any nation?

I’d draw Muhammed in space alongside the Muppets.

Just A Reminder

Some people still claim that Liberals are the bigger and better givers, both of time and money. They’re wrong. Badly wrong.

People who said they were “very conservative” gave 4.5% of their income to charity, on average; “conservatives” gave 3.6%; “moderates” gave 3%; “liberals” gave 1.5%; and “very liberal” folks gave 1.2%.

And this cannot be explained by religious versus secular giving:

The 2008 data tell us that secular conservatives are now outperforming their secular liberal counterparts. Compare two people who attend religious services less than once per year (or never) and who are also identical in terms of income, education, sex, age and family status — but one is on the political right while the other is on the left. The secular liberal will give, on average, $1,100 less to charity per year than the secular conservative. The conservative charity edge cannot be explained away by gifts to churches.

Or by giving of time versus giving of money:

Q. Monetary giving doesn’t tell us much about total charity, does it? People who don’t give money probably tend to give in other ways instead, right?
A. Wrong. First of all, there is a bright line between people who give and people who don’t give. People who do give time and money tend to give a lot of it. According to the Center on Philanthropy, the percentage of givers donating less than $50 to charity in 2000 was the same as the percentage giving more than $5,000. Similarly, the same percentage of people who only volunteered once volunteered on 36 or more occasions in 2000.

Second, people who give away their time and money to established charities are far more likely than non-givers to act generously in informal ways as well. For example, one nationwide survey from 2002 tells us that monetary donors are nearly three times as likely as non-donors to give money informally to friends and strangers. People who give to charity at least once per year are twice as likely to donate blood as people who don’t give money. They are also significantly more likely to give food or money to a homeless person, or to give up their seat to someone on a bus.

And it is not offset by political giving either:

Perhaps you suspect that the vast political contributions given to the Obama campaign — $742 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, versus $367 million for the McCain campaign — were crowding out charitable giving by the left. But political donations, impressive as they were this year by historical standards, were still miniscule compared to the approximately $300 billion Americans gave charitably in 2008. Adding political and charitable gifts together would not change the overall giving patterns.

Conservatives continue giving more in economically difficult times, decreasing their giving by less than their liberal counterparts:

Economists measure the “income elasticity of giving” to predict how much people change their giving in response to a particular percentage change in their income. It turns out the response in 2008 was dramatically different for left and right. For instance, a 10% decrease in family income for a conservative was associated with a 10% decrease in giving. The same income decrease for a liberal family led to a 16% giving drop. In other words, if this relationship continues to hold, the recession will almost certainly exacerbate the giving differences between left and right.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding: Modern liberal ideas are selfish ideas.

Survival of the fittest- a predominant thought and prevailing theme in our modern society (especially in the scientific world) – or at least it seems to be.

Do we really live this way, though?

No. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have homeless shelters, orphanages, food kitchens, etc.

However, if survival of the fittest is true, we should just dismiss all the programs, right? Leave the people to fend for themselves.

They either make it or they do not. That’s the teaching of evolution, right?

One species adapts and survives, and those that don’t are weak and die off.

However, in America, individuals, celebrities, etc. are praised for their humanitarian work.

If we did not have these programs, we would come across as cruel and uncaring.

And that’s the fallacy of evolutionary thinking in America.

As this years begins winding to a close, we have one of those news days which just makes me happy.

Hugo Chavez, the communist thug who wanted to run things forever in Venezuela, has been told he can’t hang around any longer than 2012, his original term limit. Students formed a coalition and grassroots campaign to fight his power grabs, and because he’s still constrained by a constitution he must abide by the law. The Communist News Networks print mouthpiece, Time Magazine, had the temerity to call Chavez’ power grabs “reforms“.

They cannot stand the thought of not using murdered babies to try to improve lives. And they aren’t afraid to lie about it. There has not been a single case of successful treatment of any condition using human embryonic stem cells. The only reason the government is being petitioned to fund this research is because private industry will not.

And what of the propriety of the government funding research anyway? Is it the responsibility of the government to do such things? Consider another expensive project: space travel. Now consider such programs as the Ansari X Prize which encouraged the production of vehicles which can enter space and return with a usable payload twice in two weeks. Using private money and initiative. Can the space shuttle do that? Can the government do that?

The State of Texas School Board fired their science curriculum coordinator for sending around an article critical of Intelligent Design. And the ruckus begins. With baited headlines such as “Hey Science, Don’t Mess With Texas” from the Huffington Post (which is apparently a major Yahoo Op/Ed outlet now) and “Evolution: Don’t even talk about it in Texas” the frenzied crowds cry foul. However, where is the issue? I’m not going to make a judgment on whether the coordinator ought to have been fired, there may have been other issues which led up to this. It would be unwise to fire someone just for sending around a document such as this. But a common thread through this hue and cry is that Intelligent Design and Creationism are some super heavy-weights in the world stage which have dominated Evolutionary theory in education and elsewhere.

Now tell me this: which theory has had the greater part of the last 50 years to indoctrinate our youth, guide our scientific inquiry, and silence any and all public debate? It’s not Creationism or Intelligent Design. No, evolution, a theory without proof or even a preponderance of evidence beyond that offered by the need for man to be able to define himself apart from an omniscient God, has enjoyed all formal and official public support. Evolution is no spunky underdog in this fight, it is instead the 800 pound gorilla which has dominated all arguments and quashed all dissent. Evolution is a flighty, sensitive thing too, which does not allow argument or dissent.

Further joy from the religion of Peace. Thank God she has been pardoned and is back in the UK now. Though with the ‘peaceful’ nature of British Muslims, her safety may not be guaranteed at this point.

The hurricane season is over. It was average, low average. And less than was predicted.

If they can’t predict a single season, why do they think they can predict the end of the world?

Ben Stein is Expelled.

With a shout to Mom loves being at home, this is a simple but powerful telling of the watchmaker argument for intelligent design and creationism.

The Masterful Watchmaker

For all those doubters and phobics out there, we have Stein.

I’m not sure if he’s doing this tongue in cheek to get attention or if he’s really serious, but comic Ben Stein is producing a movie on the close-mindedness of the scientific community who without reason or resort forbid even the consideration of alternatives to their own closely held ideologies.

Ben Stein is Expelled.

It would seem, after decades of required teaching of Evolution in America without any balance or criticism, that the majority of people in America today would believe that Evolution is enough to explain the origin of man. But a series of Gallup polls show this not to be true, indeed a full 2/3rds of Americans believe to some extent that God created the world in it’s present form in the last 10,000 years.

The article is quick to point out how Republicans tend to believe a literal Creation more readily than Democrats, implying a mental deficit. But the ability to question ones own belief is a sign of mental maturity, and I would submit that it is the close-minded Democrats who are at a deficit here, if any exists. And I would further submit it is no mental deficit to disbelieve, but a spiritual one, and that is all the more dangerous.

Reading this article I was struck by how different the views of medicine are now that so much of scientific theory is based on the evolutionary hypothesis. For any who don’t believe that how you understand the origins of life determines how you view the nature of life, let this be fact enough to convince you.

The entire concept of useless organs is based on the idea that we are the result of random evolutionary processes bereft of design or purpose. Besides the statistical and factual errors which are never addressed by the hypothesis of evolution, the ideological errors are just as glaring. The difference in perspective between one who believes that God designed man at once in a whole, complete unit versus one who believes that man is the result of natural selection regardless of whether or not it was divinely directer (theistic evolution) is nothing short of colossal in its effect on how we live.  If random chance defined our beginnings and our mortal lives, there is no right besides might (tyranny of the majority), and there is no purpose beyond personal pleasure (why deny when this is your only chance to satisfy?). Conversely, if we were designed and created on purpose by an intelligent being we live for Him and His purpose, or we live without reason in a world where reason is available.

It’s as though we choose to be apes when sentience has been offered to us.

It is true that there are times when organs are damaged or infected or in other ways causing more harm than good, but to the extent that we label organs useless we only underline our own ignorance of the body and its functions. In the same way a phone has a distinct and designed purpose, whether or not we know what it is or understand its purpose, an Appendix may be inflamed and must be removed but it does have a purpose, regardless of whether or not we know or understand it.

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”

Einstein, in a brief essay on his philosophy of life, claims the mysterious is the most beautiful thing we finite beings can experience. And there is plenty mysterious around us to observe. It has been said that man fears what he does not understand, but this cannot be completely true. The sense of the mysterious is not a sense of fear but of smallness, of incompletion. It is a longing for that which is larger, fairer, truer.

Many people study to diminish the impact of the mysterious because they do not appreciate the feeling of being small, utterly insignificant. They become scientists and they observe the mysterious until to them it no longer seems mysterious. It is the hopeless dream of those who hate dreams that they can understand the infinite, or even the colossally finite. I believe that many of the crack-pot claims by egotistical scientists setting dates on the doom of the world, whether the destruction is to be by heat or cold, or wind or rain, or shaking, or melting, are based on their dismissal of the mysterious, their idea that by stint of study and expansion of knowledge they can predict the unpredictable.

The largest computer cannot compute even simple predictions of weather over just one local area with any accuracy at any distance of time or space, yet there are those who believe we can predict such monstrous disasters as planet-wide fatal warming trends at the distance of hundreds of years. We cannot observe a single case of documented cross species evolution, but there are those who know that all organic life has come from single-celled bacteria in some ancient primordial soup. We cannot understand the complexities of life at the bottom of the oceans of the planet some say we’ve inhabited for millions and billions of years, but there are those who claim to have grasped the intricacies of the planetary system and the entire universe.

Every scientist must keep rein on his own ego with a healthy dose of the mysterious. There are things we already understand, thanks to the toil and work of our predecessors. There are things we can understand, by the sweat of our own brows. There are things our children will understand, by standing on our shoulders. And there are things that will never be understood, because we are limited finite creatures.

Instead of chafing over our inability to understand the amazing or plumb the depths of the esoteric, let us be grateful to simply bask in the glow of the mysterious. Look up to the stars and think how small you still are and revel in the fact that you will never run out of things to learn.

I know this news is a week old, but better late than never. Besides, considering the ratings network news shows receive and their plunging viewer numbers, maybe most of you didn’t see the debates either. I haven’t yet.

Kirk Cameron, the actor, and Ray Comfort, the preacher, debated two atheists from the Rational Response Squad on national television on NBCs Nightline TV show. NBC has posted videos of the debate online as well.

I’ve heard some of the information put out by Cameron and Comfort, it’s top class. Well explained and yet very deep, full of truth and information which Christians can use to defend their faith and show others the validity of the Christian worldview and it’s superiority compared with philosophies today. I find it humorous that the duo not only claim they can prove God exists without using arguments based on faith or the Bible, but that they can prove atheists do not exist.

I get a mental picture of a plucky underdog battling a massive and lethargic yet vicious conglomerate of evil.