I remember watching the first episode of SNL after the 9/11 attacks. It started out with Paul Simon performing this song, flanked on stage by Mayor Giuliani and several members of the FDNY. Very powerful stuff.
My one observation: From an internet commenter, “God is not about country. God is about love and everyone is equal in his eyes, including the rest of the world.” Meant to be profound, but extremely stupid. It’s like saying that because God cares about humanity, he doesn’t care about families. He created the nations, as he created families. He blesses nations, curses nations, calls nations to repentance, uses nations for his purposes. He made a nation his chosen people and through it he blessed all others. God blessed humanity with homelands as he blessed them with homes.
The other two commenters quoted are closer to the mark, but there is an example of what I talked about weeks ago, with the way some Christians respond to issues like politics and war. They think those subjects are are tainted by sin and to display concern for them is worldliness. Of course, such a view is fallacious and scarcely less worldly, mere cosmopolitanism dressed up as holiness. God’s wisdom is always more subtle, taking old things and making them new in his light. Is patriotism important? Yes, but as Christians our patriotism must take on a different quality, as we are first *subjects of the Kingdom.
Actually, Rufus’ disdain for royalty is well founded in Biblical history. God did not want a king for Israel, but relented eventually when the clamour became so loud as to most likely be annoying. God knew what the end results would be, and of course the whole history of the line of David did become the way of entry into the world, of our Lord Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God!
God has the ability to change the course of history, so whether He’d planned the course in advance or changed things as they were going, is a totally plausible scenario. God, of course, knows all things even before they happen so I find it difficult to ever question the way things go. I would not want to be guilty of questioning God’s plans for myself, or for anyone else. My take is kind of like, I’ll just shut-up and do what God tells me to do. Believe me, I’ve lived the other way, and it ain’t pretty!
That is very true. Human reasoning, unless one is totally surrendered to God’s will, is ofttimes the exact opposite of how one should proceed. That means in all situations from making a decision on which car to buy, to going to war!
@ -fritz- Actually, Rufus’ disdain for royalty is well founded in Biblical history. God did not want a king for Israel….. A mild correction God wanted to be the king of Israel… ‘Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.’
God loving Jacob and hating Esau has nothing to do with the human emotions of love and hate. It has everything to do with God choosing one man and his descendants and rejecting another man and his descendants. Source: http://www.gotquestions.org/Jacob-Esau-love-hate.html
God is not fair, but He is just. If America is blessed among the nations, and it is, God has blessed it. Not because we deserve it more than others, but because He chose to. And I will not question His profound wisdom in these matters.
I learned that in a very personal and hard way. I’ve had two children of similar gestation die, one at 16 weeks and one at 14 weeks. One was treated as “products of conception”, a ridiculous term invented by those who place the value of life in relation to size,time and how the mother feels about the product. My daughter was to be disposed and forgotten, everyone questioning our sanity in wanting proper and dignified care of her remains. Her brother was treated with dignity and love by a doctor who values all life.
It took me a long time to come to a place of peace with the fact that the same God, who does not change, had allowed (planned) for both. I know now that our fight for Rose’s humanity and dignity was important for me and those to come after me. By following what I knew to be true of all God’s creations, permission was granted to others to treat their children with love and dignity. But in the beginning, all I could do is grant that the same hands that had knit her together and knew and loved her far longer and far more than I had, had chosen this path for her for His reasons. God is good all the time.
I’m sorry to hear of this. The peace you have found will find us all. The life we have now is less than nothing in comparison to what awaits us, our true lives have yet to begin. I won’t hesitate to pull this out again, it speaks when our words have little power.
Petra – Graverobber
There’s a step that we all take alone
An appointment we have with the great unknown
Like a vapor this life is just waiting to pass
Like the flowers that fade, like the withering grass
But life seems so long and death so complete
And the grave an impossible portion to cheat
But there’s One who has been there and still lives to tell
There is One who has been through both heaven and hell
And the grave will come up empty-handed that day
Jesus will come and steal us away
(Chorus)
Where is the sting, tell me where is the bite
When the grave robber comes like a thief in the night
Where is the victory, where is the prize
When the grave robber comes
And death finally dies
Many still mourn and many still weep
For those that they love who have fallen asleep
But we have this hope though our hearts may still ache
Just one shout from above and they all will awake
And in the reunion of joy we will see
Death will be swallowed in sweet victory
When the last enemy is gone from the dust will come a song
Those asleep will be awakened – not a one will be forsaken
He shall wipe away our tears – He will steal away our fears
There will be no sad tomorrow – there will be no pain and sorrow
My problem with the survey quoted is that you really need to drill down and ask people why they think America is a great country. I find most ‘no religion’ people dislike America because of its religious leanings and perusing the comments you find a lot of people displaying that attitude.
What makes this country great has a lot of non-religious reasons to it. But you cannot remove religion in totality either as it served as the philosophical foundation on which the US was built. That makes certain people very uncomfortable. So they wrap their tiny brains around politically correct concerns to critique the US. I’d be very curious to see a list of reasons why people don’t think the US is #1 and see how closely the individual lists match each other.
And everyone complains about “big hair” in Texas in the 1980s! She’s got enough room in that coif for Taulouse Lautrec to hide!
At any rate, the coffee is in abundance, as well as an assortment of the usual fattening goodies, plus today, I have egg whites and whole wheat toast for Stephanie. Eat hearty my lads and lassies! And no, I’m not calling the ladies dogs, for you who wish to start an early argument!
So why can’t I vote on the Internet? I can read all about the issues there. I could vote directly on bills, presidents, wars, drugs, whatever I want. If I could vote directly on issues, instead of sending a “representative” in my place, the costs of lobbying would go from the millions to the billions, which would deter the corrupt lobbying industry and further give more power to the people. And then, maybe things would actually get done in this country. In the article below I explain why all the initial reasons for the legislative branch (as it stands now) are obsolete. And the beauty of the U.S. Constitution is that it can change.
Two things:
1. Legislatures act as buffers and counterbalances. The Founders feared pure democracy, for reasons that many of us here know (a tendency toward its own type of corruption). Perhaps the most brilliant part of our government’s construction is that it decentralizes power, maintaining a tension among several parts that maintains liberty and stability.
2. Civitas – “Citizenship, especially as imparting shared responsibility, a common purpose, and sense of community.” Part of the nature of voting is that it is tied to community and locality. It isn’t meant to be a totally detached or individual act. Internet voting would both socially unmoore and atomize the vote.
3. Internet voting lowers the threshold of civic engagement still further. It gives the lazy and the ignorant a wider avenue. Consider how many stupid and apathetic voters are weeded out by the simple act of having to get up and go to their polling place. It’s no coincidence that those hostile to measures like ID checks at polling places also look favorably on measures like this.
4. Practical concerns. Internet voting would vulnerable to widespread fraud. It would also be vulnerable to digital warfare. Want to cause a constitutional crisis? Launch a DDoS attack.
Anyway, there’s a lot of conspiracy talk underneath as well. He’s likely a Ron Paul supporter.
Provocative for his own sake. Buy my book, about not buying peoples’ books, damn capitalists! Yes sir, send me your money and I’ll tell you about the lies of people who want your money. Such self-contradictory idiocy, you, rightly, call braying. If he supports Ron paul, I would call that a step up from the anarchy he espouses so glibbly.
More ignorant braying than good points, although I do agree with some of his concepts most are achieved purely by accident. People like the Freakanomics guys believe numbers represent the real world. This is false. Theoretical physicists have this problem as well. You cannot just dismiss observable phenomena simply because your T-test tells you so.
As far as his political leanings he says this:
“I’m not political. I’m not in any party, nor do I believe in any particular political philosophy. For me, I believe in the impossible. That change, even at a mass level, only comes from the inside of each individual. That if each person tries to remain physically healthy, emotionally healthy, mentally healthy, and spiritually healthy, then the country itself will rise to new heights never seen before in the civilization of man.
A height without mythology, without the dream of immortality, without fantasy notions of a “better life” that turn out to be just lies. Without deeper and more complicated mechanisms to control the masses. Where mediocrity is not rewarded with power over the creators. I know, I’m asking for too much.”
He is obviously lying about not being political as this is obviously both a political statement and one of a very particular branch.
Our nihlist author would point out their resistance still resulted in their deaths, so it was not worth it. All they did was make sure 300 german 18 year olds died too. How can you argue with that line of reasoning? It’s better to die meekly than to take as many of the bastards killing you with you.
I would argue that when a free person will not comply with tyranny, though he dies in that resistance, tyrany is weakened, freedom advanced.
So: *IS* the world getting warmer? I tend to doubt it myself, and I completely reject the claims of human-caused global warming. But somebody asked me the other day if it was possible the world was getting hotter naturally, and it’s just got nothing to do with us.
Opinions on global warming are many and varied, but it must be at least 99% smoke screen or the famous award winning scientist that resigned a couple of weeks ago would not have called the whole thing a non entity as he was resigning his post. Please don’t ask me his name, since I don’t have the time to go back through the posts to find it. If there is any global warming, it is so miniscule that the affects on the earth are barely discerable. I have read some papers put out by NASA that say there are actually more signs now that the earth is more than likely heading for a mini-ice age, than any heat related catastrophes. The whole thing is a money maker for the loons(Al Gore, et al) in America and the rest of the world. Frankly there are more benefits to a warmer planet than a colder one. Better crop growth not being the least of them!
Oh, I know that, Fritz. We all know the lies and secret reasons for ‘em. I’m not interested in the 99% that is smoke screen as you said. I’m interested in the 1% that may or may not be true. I’m sure we’re not responsible for it, but *is* the world getting hotter?
We know the world *can* get hotter, since we know for a fact that it has been considerably warmer in the past. Through most of the last billion years, the world was quite a bit warmer than it is now, like 10-15% warmer, or more. About 3 million years back, that changed, and the hot/cold/hot/cold cycle started. Both of these obviously gots’ nuthin’ to do with us. We didn’t cause ‘em. Likewise, the world appears to have been warmer in the Roman Imperial Period by a few degrees. Scandinavia evidently had an almost-Mediterranean climate in those days. Then the world got cooler. The exact mechanism of these shifts is not really understood. Lots of theories (I’ve got mine, too), but no solid fact apart from it having happened about 35 times.
It follows, then, that the hot/cold/hot/cold cycle is probably continuing, and, as ever, it’s probably got nothing to do with us, or at least no moreso than, say, gravity, has anything to do with us. If the world is getting warmer, then it’s simply the natural time for it to happen, and if it’s getting cooler, that’s natural as well, and if it’s not changing, well, then everyone should just shut up.
So the question, then, is: Is it possible that the world is getting warmer?
It has been my understanding that the earth has cycles of warmer and cooler temperatures that follow regular patterns, particularly when you look at long periods of time.
Looking at the information provided here: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
it looks like we are currently in the middle of a warm period, which should last about another 100 – 200 years.
Whew! That’s a lot of info to digest. I’ll have to check back with it later. Briefly, if the glaciers are advancing, we’re in an ice age; if they’re receding, we’re in a temperate age. Am I understanding it?
I’m still hanging onto the hope we’ll plunge into that ice age the scientists warned about in the 70s. Says the guy who left the Midwest because the winter of ’95/’96 was one “too-damn-cold” season too many for me.
I hear ya! I used to enjoy cold weather. No more. I’m kind of not into rain, anymore either. Maybe Texas wouldn’t be such a bad place to live. Of course, they do have bugs.
First night of the so-called fall last night where I actually needed to use a blanket. Still miss PA Septembers something fierce, but, yeah, the weather here works more often than not.
It wasn ‘t bad last night…windows open..shivered…nice. But miss La Crosse right now like crazy….yesterday..first day of glorious golden Autumn….high 64 low 38….and from what it looks like Indian Summer is upon us…. love it…love it..
Tink is right about the cycles being natural, but the cycles are fairly irregular. They can last 35,000 years, they can last 5000 years, there doesn’t appear to be much rhyme or reason. In general, the ice ages seem centered over North America, and in general, they appear to be getting generally more severe, one to the next. The last one was the worst one in 3 million years, and created Long Island, the Great Lakes, and the Mississsippi and Missouri and Ohio rivers.
Basically, in the last ice age you had an unbroken sheet of ice running from Louisville, Kentucky, across the pole, and down to Moscow on the other side. In places it was 2 miles thick! (Oddly, thickest point was over the Great Lakes). Ocean levels would have been about 600 feet lower then.
Conversely, in the last hot age, the sea level would have been considerably higher, and all of the gulf states, and about half of Texas would have been underwater. The north end of the Gulf of Mexico would have been around Nashville, though obviously the Appalachians would have formed a peninsula jutting down to the south.
This guy believes we’re in the beginning of an oncomeing ice age. He posts articles from around the world about record cold temps and growing glaciers that taken empirically does show that there isn’t a warming trend. Don’t know if the guy is a lunatic or normal, and doesn’t mean an ice age is afoot, but the bulk of articles do show a cooling trend and counters the spate of pro-global warming biased information in the MSM. Interesting reading.
Also, note that most pro-warming articles and opinions are mainly egocentric as if a glacier melts in Greenland or Antarctica, it’s America’s fault. People never blame Uraguay.
Larry Niven has written several stories and one novel about the idea that we’re actually in an ice age, and the only thing that’s kept us from noticing is that our industrial emissions are keeping the planet unnaturally warm. In the novel, the Green Party wins power, and the world starts icing up almost immediately. Good stuff. Good stuff.
This whole global warming vs. ice age theory (and the plot of the Niven book you mentioned) reminds me of The Twilight Zone episode, The Midnight Sun. The Earth is drifting closer to the sun and is going to burn up, but then at the end the main character wakes up and it was just a dream … in reality the Earth was moving away from the sun and people were going to freeze to death.
See my response below but what Tink pointed out is what I meant by “the Sun is known to heat the Earth in other various ways and affect its temperature.” The tidal forces of the Sun, Earth, Jupiter and many other objects in the galaxy, even the Kuiper belt itself. Apparently there is some concern that the temperature assumptions dating past 65 million years should not be trusted due to the realization of how complex these interactions are.
Looking at the historical data, you definately have been getting cooler and warmer in cycles and piecing together historical information it appears we are on a natural upswing. So absolutely we can be getting warmer naturally.
>>The tidal forces of the Sun, Earth, Jupiter and many other objects in the galaxy, even the Kuiper belt itself. Apparently there is some concern that the temperature assumptions dating past 65 million years should not be trusted due to the realization of how complex these interactions are.<<
Well, we're only really concerned w/ the last 3 million years, as far as this question goes.
Jupiter and the Kuiper Belt, insofar as I am aware, have no effect on earth. Gravitational interaction is infinitesimal, and the inverse square law applies. Jupiter has about as much gravitational effect on earth as a postage stamp has when dropped from three feet above the ground: more than none, but not meaningfully so. The moon? Definitely. The Sun? Less, but yes. Other planets and whatnot? No. Gravity is a pretty weak force.
That was what they thought, but it is not true. There was even a paper saying even if the Moon didn’t form the gravity of Jupiter and the rest of the planets could stablize the earth tilt.
“While Earth’s moon does provide some stability, the new data reveals that the pull of other planets orbiting the sun particularly Jupiter, would keep Earth from swinging too wildly.”
Ok, checking around it seems broadly possible, but we’re talking on the order of billions of years. Evidently it’s got to do with angular momentum. However: the moon does it better and faster and more reliably.
Actually when it comes to global warming, ice ages, and billions of years, I’m more of a Biblical purist. I believe the whole earth, animal presence and humans et al, are between 8 thousand years and 10 thousand years old tops. I believe God created a fully functioning universe, including the earth, mankind and everything in 6 literal days as set forth in Genesis. It looks old because God made it that way. Which came first, the chicken or the egg..? The chicken which was a fully functioning adult chicken capable of laying an egg which was able to hatch into another chicken. I believe the dinosaurs did exist, but became extinct during the great flood. there is a lot more to explain in regard to all this, but I am cooking dinner right now and don’t have the time to elaborate further.
In my own case – and this is just me, personally, I’m not advocating it for anyone else – I found I was having to invest so much effort in believing in stuff that had no proof, and in disbelieving things that had plenty of evidence, that it was kind of distracting me from actually believing in God. So I gave up on it.
Which is a coy way of saying I completely lost my faith for a while, and when it came back, it re-grew without most of the apologietics. Again, that’s must me: It’s a hard secret handshake to learn, nearly killed me, and I’m certainly not looking down on anyone who doesn’t wanna’ do it.
When one looks at the Grand Canyon in person, and realizes that the water in the flood was above all the earth, and that the mountains were pushed up, and the ocean floors were dropped down, then picture the unimaginable volume of water wearing away the soft soil and rock over a rather quick period of time, I can see it taking anywhere from a few months to a year to grind away what is now called the Grand Canyon.
As for the question of where the water came from, for 40 days and nights of a solid downpour, that’s an easy one. For one thing, all the ground water welled up from the earth to help with the flood. Second at that time the earth was enveloped in a mist, which would go to explaining why there are remains of petrified trees on Antarctica, and also to the fact that the Sahara desert wasn’t always a desert.
Now finally for the dispersion of Noah’s afterbears when they began to multiply and disperse. I feel that the story about all the earth being a single landmass, such as is described as Gondwanaland, and the continental drift, would explain how the peoples were dispersed to areas like Australia and the Pacific Islands, and North and South America. If they were all together at one time as a single land mass, that would take care of how the dispersion happened. They simply walked to these various locations before the drift of the continents began.
I cannot prove all that I’ve said here, but I fully believe that the God Who made the human eye, and the brain, is fully able to perform all the things I’ve described here.
Sorry if I appeared to have rushed this all, but I have some things I need to do, and would have been a lot more eloquent in my descriptions with more time. My apologies,
GOd created the universe on His time, not ours..hence 24 hour days is our construct..not God’s. As high as the sky is above the earth so high above our ways the ways of the Lord…just a little thing I remember from being 8 and listening to now Cardinal Burke talking about creation.
We’ve had a week of cool weather and RAIN, RAIN, RAIN! That said, if the earth is warming, mankind had precious little (if any) to do with it. When the sun becomes hotter, the earth becomes hotter; when the sun becomes cooler, the earth becomes cooler.
That broad question is way to open ended to answer. As Nobel Prize winning physicist Dr. Ivar Giaever said in his resignation letter to the APS for its support of manmade climate change: “How can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?”
Good luck on answering that. However, the Earth is and will be getting hotter naturally because of the Sun. As it ages it gets hotter, now many many pea brains like to argue (due to their devotion to global climate change) that the Sun has no effect on Earth temperature due to it being in the Main Sequence phase and such. While that is correct, the temperature of the Sun isn’t changing, it is moving closer, expanding, to the Earth.
Edward Guinan, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Villanova University said in his conclusion at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2009: “The Earth’s period of habitability is nearly over ? on a cosmological timescale. In a half to one billion years the Sun will start to be too luminous and warm for water to exist in liquid form on Earth, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect in less than 2 billion years.”
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to search on the internet along this subject as you become quickly mired in global warming debates. Because the Sun is known to heat the Earth in other various ways and affect its temperature, the global warming believers (many simply regular folks how have gone mad) have gone out of their way to disseminate as much anti-Sun warming information as possible. But if you dig deep you can find it.
>>>the Earth is and will be getting hotter naturally because of the Sun. As it ages it gets hotter, the temperature of the Sun isn’t changing, it is moving closer, expanding, to the Earth.<<<
Whatchutalkin' 'bout, Willis?
Stellar temperature obviously chagnes over the life span of a star, and it expands and contracts as a result, but what you're talking about doesn't match anything I've heard or read about. At least not in those terms. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Could you maybe explain it a little differently?
“Sun is growing brighter at a rate of ten percent every 1.1 billion years.[92] In one billion years’ time, as the Sun’s radiation output increases, its circumstellar habitable zone will move outwards, making the Earth’s surface hot enough that liquid water can no longer exist there naturally.”
The Milankovitch Cycles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles) are what I think Tink was talking about. There is all sorts of evidence of a warming Earth. Or at least evidence the Earth’s “average” temperature is in flux. Of course the caveat is that all this science is in flux as well. As information comes in, who can predict what the new consensus will be?
It is well established scientific fact the Sun is expanding, or more accurately its outer layers are, which happen to be the hottest part of the Sun. It expands even in its current stable phase. As it does, its getting closer to the Earth and warming it, just a very miniscule amount each year. But those will add up and, again this is well documented, boil the Earth well before it hits the red giant phase. As the Sun is predicted to last a good 4-5 billion years but Earth will be uninhabitable in a billion or less.
Ok, I think here’s where we’re running into trouble: G-class stars like our own (G2V) fuse hydrogen into helium to produce light and heat. When they heat up, the star expands, when they cool down, the star contracts. Some stars to this a lot, and very quickly (Cepheid variables) When that’s all used up, they start fusing all the helium that they’ve generated. This is hot enough for the star to expand, however when it expands the outer atmosphere *cools* because it’s further from the core, thus older stars are *cooler* than younger ones. Surface temperature of an average Red Giant is about 5000 degrees. our sun is close to 6000 degrees.
So a larger star over time means a cooler star over time, so I don’t think the expansion of the sun has anything to do with temperature change on earth.
I’m not a scientist, this is just stuff I remember from my laat science class a quarter century wrong. I may well have misremembered. If so, sorry.
In any event, *YES* you are absolutely right about earth being habitable. Planets have a comparatively narrow window of habitability (Based on our one known example) and are pretty unstable in the long run. I get into endless arguments with my friends about this. Their Star Trekified vision is to find new worlds to settle, and while that’s fine and all, I think it’s setting their sights pretty low. It’s like divorcing a bad woman, and immediately marrying another one. It doesn’t make sense to me. Much better to be done with planets entirely and find some other way to live that doesn’t involve earthquakes and famines and poison monkey attacks.
See my link above. I guess I misspoke a little earlier, the sun’s expansion is not the direct result of the heating of the earth but the fact that it is getting brighter and hence generating more heat and warming our cozy little planet up. This will happen billions of years before the Sun grows into the red giant phase. Again, a lot of this is new based on more sophisticated technologies revealing data previously hidden. Much like how the interactions of small objects gravitation fields seems to create a more (or less) harmonious solar system then thought. So today’s theory might end up in tomorrow’s trash bin.
As I sit here typing whilst wearing my Gibson shirt, it seems the MO for this admin is to double-down on their stubborn refusal to admit when they’re wrong and/or don’t have the evidence they need to justify their thugocractic tactic.
Really entertaining article about the author’s experience of moving from New Jersey to the South, and how much he likes living there. He also makes some excellent points about the economic policies that have caused millions of people to make the same move recently.
ED… would you please completely remove the above post? The link didn’t come up right and it goes directly to my FB page if I’m logged in there. Thank you, in advance!
Like the blogger over there said… it depends on whether Cain is a “Constitutional conservative” i.e. whether the Federal bill of rights should apply to the states. SCOTUS has said they do through a series of cases, but there is a strain that says the 2nd Amendment limits what Congress may do and not what states may do. The Sup. Ct. said the 2nd Amendment applies to states, but that’s a reading that really flies in the face of “original intent” and the one area where the Constitution, interpreted as originally intended, disfavors a traditionally conservative issue.
I don’t Cain’s legal views or sophistication of his constitutional views so it might be a misspeak. If he’s done a lot of reading and thinking on the Constitution (which is completely possible of course) then he may be a very strict constructionist.
It might be for some. It doesn’t mean he’s for gun control just that he’s in favor of local control. It’s a logically consistent position. Either states and cities can run their own business or they can’t. The larger principle of federalism…. I’d like to hear him flesh it out though to be sure.
Open your eyes,sleepyheads:
http://www.etoday.ru/uploads/2008/01/13/miss_reef_bikini05.jpg
Forbidden link. You bastard.
Must’ve been really juicy to garner a 403!
I think this is what he was going for:
http://www.frumpzilla.com/frumpzilla_site/articles/frump-day-links-ms-reef-bikini-contest-edition/
“404 Not Found”
You guys are just screwing with the rest of us, aren’t you?
No…this one comes up when I click on it…No puns either!
Let’s Polka!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmSC52Npuq0
“Just a come on from the whores on Seventh Avenue”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdKjEHfHINQ&feature=related
I remember watching the first episode of SNL after the 9/11 attacks. It started out with Paul Simon performing this song, flanked on stage by Mayor Giuliani and several members of the FDNY. Very powerful stuff.
My favorite sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDLgmBeqtz0
Dino!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS6-b7CONDI
Scott, it appears you are suffering from a form of Linking Tourette’s and/or Youtube addiction. The first step is admitting you have a problem.
If we all did that, these Open Threads would be pretty empty.
True, true – but I was just giving him some jazz because it was FIVE in a row.
No, no. We call those threads “Hall of Fame, Corrected,” “Radio Free Threedonia” and/or “This Afternoon’s Broadcast…”
Patriotism and the ‘God gap’. Thoughts?
My one observation: From an internet commenter, “God is not about country. God is about love and everyone is equal in his eyes, including the rest of the world.” Meant to be profound, but extremely stupid. It’s like saying that because God cares about humanity, he doesn’t care about families. He created the nations, as he created families. He blesses nations, curses nations, calls nations to repentance, uses nations for his purposes. He made a nation his chosen people and through it he blessed all others. God blessed humanity with homelands as he blessed them with homes.
The other two commenters quoted are closer to the mark, but there is an example of what I talked about weeks ago, with the way some Christians respond to issues like politics and war. They think those subjects are are tainted by sin and to display concern for them is worldliness. Of course, such a view is fallacious and scarcely less worldly, mere cosmopolitanism dressed up as holiness. God’s wisdom is always more subtle, taking old things and making them new in his light. Is patriotism important? Yes, but as Christians our patriotism must take on a different quality, as we are first *subjects of the Kingdom.
*We must exclude Rufus, who hates kings. Heathen.
Correction: this is an example
Actually, Rufus’ disdain for royalty is well founded in Biblical history. God did not want a king for Israel, but relented eventually when the clamour became so loud as to most likely be annoying. God knew what the end results would be, and of course the whole history of the line of David did become the way of entry into the world, of our Lord Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God!
True, but it interfered with the covenant he had with Israel. It was a unique situation. Right or wrong, I’m not sure that works as a basis.
God has the ability to change the course of history, so whether He’d planned the course in advance or changed things as they were going, is a totally plausible scenario. God, of course, knows all things even before they happen so I find it difficult to ever question the way things go. I would not want to be guilty of questioning God’s plans for myself, or for anyone else. My take is kind of like, I’ll just shut-up and do what God tells me to do. Believe me, I’ve lived the other way, and it ain’t pretty!
No disagreement. I’m just saying, from the standpoint of human reasoning, that using to attack or defend a position might not work.
That is very true. Human reasoning, unless one is totally surrendered to God’s will, is ofttimes the exact opposite of how one should proceed. That means in all situations from making a decision on which car to buy, to going to war!
Or perhaps…he let us choose….remember…choose wisely oh sons and daughters blessed with Free Will.
@ -fritz- Actually, Rufus’ disdain for royalty is well founded in Biblical history. God did not want a king for Israel….. A mild correction God wanted to be the king of Israel… ‘Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.’
God loving Jacob and hating Esau has nothing to do with the human emotions of love and hate. It has everything to do with God choosing one man and his descendants and rejecting another man and his descendants. Source: http://www.gotquestions.org/Jacob-Esau-love-hate.html
God is not fair, but He is just. If America is blessed among the nations, and it is, God has blessed it. Not because we deserve it more than others, but because He chose to. And I will not question His profound wisdom in these matters.
“God is not fair, but He is just”
I learned that in a very personal and hard way. I’ve had two children of similar gestation die, one at 16 weeks and one at 14 weeks. One was treated as “products of conception”, a ridiculous term invented by those who place the value of life in relation to size,time and how the mother feels about the product. My daughter was to be disposed and forgotten, everyone questioning our sanity in wanting proper and dignified care of her remains. Her brother was treated with dignity and love by a doctor who values all life.
It took me a long time to come to a place of peace with the fact that the same God, who does not change, had allowed (planned) for both. I know now that our fight for Rose’s humanity and dignity was important for me and those to come after me. By following what I knew to be true of all God’s creations, permission was granted to others to treat their children with love and dignity. But in the beginning, all I could do is grant that the same hands that had knit her together and knew and loved her far longer and far more than I had, had chosen this path for her for His reasons. God is good all the time.
I’m sorry to hear of this. The peace you have found will find us all. The life we have now is less than nothing in comparison to what awaits us, our true lives have yet to begin. I won’t hesitate to pull this out again, it speaks when our words have little power.
Petra – Graverobber
There’s a step that we all take alone
An appointment we have with the great unknown
Like a vapor this life is just waiting to pass
Like the flowers that fade, like the withering grass
But life seems so long and death so complete
And the grave an impossible portion to cheat
But there’s One who has been there and still lives to tell
There is One who has been through both heaven and hell
And the grave will come up empty-handed that day
Jesus will come and steal us away
(Chorus)
Where is the sting, tell me where is the bite
When the grave robber comes like a thief in the night
Where is the victory, where is the prize
When the grave robber comes
And death finally dies
Many still mourn and many still weep
For those that they love who have fallen asleep
But we have this hope though our hearts may still ache
Just one shout from above and they all will awake
And in the reunion of joy we will see
Death will be swallowed in sweet victory
When the last enemy is gone from the dust will come a song
Those asleep will be awakened – not a one will be forsaken
He shall wipe away our tears – He will steal away our fears
There will be no sad tomorrow – there will be no pain and sorrow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAgzdIJj4Kc
Not a problem on the correction. It was more of an omission. I assumed that everyone would know that God wanted to govern them Himself.
My problem with the survey quoted is that you really need to drill down and ask people why they think America is a great country. I find most ‘no religion’ people dislike America because of its religious leanings and perusing the comments you find a lot of people displaying that attitude.
What makes this country great has a lot of non-religious reasons to it. But you cannot remove religion in totality either as it served as the philosophical foundation on which the US was built. That makes certain people very uncomfortable. So they wrap their tiny brains around politically correct concerns to critique the US. I’d be very curious to see a list of reasons why people don’t think the US is #1 and see how closely the individual lists match each other.
And everyone complains about “big hair” in Texas in the 1980s! She’s got enough room in that coif for Taulouse Lautrec to hide!
At any rate, the coffee is in abundance, as well as an assortment of the usual fattening goodies, plus today, I have egg whites and whole wheat toast for Stephanie. Eat hearty my lads and lassies! And no, I’m not calling the ladies dogs, for you who wish to start an early argument!
Morning, Fritzie. Happy Friday to you!
And to you as well! Today is actually hump day because of Mrs.-fritz-’ work schedule.
Whatever you guys do when the Mrs. isn’t working is your business.
I was just getting ready to ask Tink if she had big hair!
Whaddya mean?
Very simple…do you have big hair…Texas 1980s style?
Nope, but if I did it would look like this:
http://www.beautystat.com/site/hair/beautystat-community-shares-reviews-hair-root-lifters/
Kidding! But I might consider this:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PKflRKw7tZY/Tkle4spL5_I/AAAAAAAAAHg/vMsMB1RLYok/s1600/Hairstyles+-+Big+Hair.jpg
That first pic kind of puts a new spin on “men who like women with long hair.”
I think that would suit you better!
HEY – what exactly are you trying to say? That I have an electrifying personality?
Sorry…I meant to specify the second link, not the first. But, yes, you have a static charged personality, or something!
I wanted to make sure you didn’t get confused and think I meant this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oMY6sC7wQ
HA! Cookie!
THANK YOU FRITZIE!
You are very welcome!
I wondered how long the discussion was going to last before breakfast was served.
Breakfast was served at 4:56 a.m. PDT! Where were you whiteboy?
Taking the Mrs. to work. I’ll be back.
Interesting: The Ten Commandments of The American Religion. Some good points with a lot of ignorant braying. Like this:
Two things:
1. Legislatures act as buffers and counterbalances. The Founders feared pure democracy, for reasons that many of us here know (a tendency toward its own type of corruption). Perhaps the most brilliant part of our government’s construction is that it decentralizes power, maintaining a tension among several parts that maintains liberty and stability.
2. Civitas – “Citizenship, especially as imparting shared responsibility, a common purpose, and sense of community.” Part of the nature of voting is that it is tied to community and locality. It isn’t meant to be a totally detached or individual act. Internet voting would both socially unmoore and atomize the vote.
3. Internet voting lowers the threshold of civic engagement still further. It gives the lazy and the ignorant a wider avenue. Consider how many stupid and apathetic voters are weeded out by the simple act of having to get up and go to their polling place. It’s no coincidence that those hostile to measures like ID checks at polling places also look favorably on measures like this.
4. Practical concerns. Internet voting would vulnerable to widespread fraud. It would also be vulnerable to digital warfare. Want to cause a constitutional crisis? Launch a DDoS attack.
Anyway, there’s a lot of conspiracy talk underneath as well. He’s likely a Ron Paul supporter.
Provocative for his own sake. Buy my book, about not buying peoples’ books, damn capitalists! Yes sir, send me your money and I’ll tell you about the lies of people who want your money. Such self-contradictory idiocy, you, rightly, call braying. If he supports Ron paul, I would call that a step up from the anarchy he espouses so glibbly.
More ignorant braying than good points, although I do agree with some of his concepts most are achieved purely by accident. People like the Freakanomics guys believe numbers represent the real world. This is false. Theoretical physicists have this problem as well. You cannot just dismiss observable phenomena simply because your T-test tells you so.
As far as his political leanings he says this:
“I’m not political. I’m not in any party, nor do I believe in any particular political philosophy. For me, I believe in the impossible. That change, even at a mass level, only comes from the inside of each individual. That if each person tries to remain physically healthy, emotionally healthy, mentally healthy, and spiritually healthy, then the country itself will rise to new heights never seen before in the civilization of man.
A height without mythology, without the dream of immortality, without fantasy notions of a “better life” that turn out to be just lies. Without deeper and more complicated mechanisms to control the masses. Where mediocrity is not rewarded with power over the creators. I know, I’m asking for too much.”
He is obviously lying about not being political as this is obviously both a political statement and one of a very particular branch.
Oh, try this gem on for size, Name Me A Single War That Was Worth It.
Idiot.
Outlaw, I would really like to get your response to this.
That guy is pretty damn stupid. He needed to pay attention in history class.
Pearls before swine, David, This guy will never be reached. As an example I would offer the ghetto uprising in Warsaw. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/uprising1.html
Our nihlist author would point out their resistance still resulted in their deaths, so it was not worth it. All they did was make sure 300 german 18 year olds died too. How can you argue with that line of reasoning? It’s better to die meekly than to take as many of the bastards killing you with you.
I would argue that when a free person will not comply with tyranny, though he dies in that resistance, tyrany is weakened, freedom advanced.
Or in the simpler form, via 1776 better to die on your feet than live on your knees…or die on your knees.
I feel dumber now.
Seriously, I feel like I should be drooling on my shirt now.
Happy birthday to the gorgeous Monica Belucci, who looks better at 47 than most surgically-enhanced actresses look at 25.
http://www.go4celebrity.com/monica-bellucci-026-1152×864.htm
So: *IS* the world getting warmer? I tend to doubt it myself, and I completely reject the claims of human-caused global warming. But somebody asked me the other day if it was possible the world was getting hotter naturally, and it’s just got nothing to do with us.
Anyone got any opinions?
Opinions on global warming are many and varied, but it must be at least 99% smoke screen or the famous award winning scientist that resigned a couple of weeks ago would not have called the whole thing a non entity as he was resigning his post. Please don’t ask me his name, since I don’t have the time to go back through the posts to find it. If there is any global warming, it is so miniscule that the affects on the earth are barely discerable. I have read some papers put out by NASA that say there are actually more signs now that the earth is more than likely heading for a mini-ice age, than any heat related catastrophes. The whole thing is a money maker for the loons(Al Gore, et al) in America and the rest of the world. Frankly there are more benefits to a warmer planet than a colder one. Better crop growth not being the least of them!
Oh, I know that, Fritz. We all know the lies and secret reasons for ‘em. I’m not interested in the 99% that is smoke screen as you said. I’m interested in the 1% that may or may not be true. I’m sure we’re not responsible for it, but *is* the world getting hotter?
We know the world *can* get hotter, since we know for a fact that it has been considerably warmer in the past. Through most of the last billion years, the world was quite a bit warmer than it is now, like 10-15% warmer, or more. About 3 million years back, that changed, and the hot/cold/hot/cold cycle started. Both of these obviously gots’ nuthin’ to do with us. We didn’t cause ‘em. Likewise, the world appears to have been warmer in the Roman Imperial Period by a few degrees. Scandinavia evidently had an almost-Mediterranean climate in those days. Then the world got cooler. The exact mechanism of these shifts is not really understood. Lots of theories (I’ve got mine, too), but no solid fact apart from it having happened about 35 times.
It follows, then, that the hot/cold/hot/cold cycle is probably continuing, and, as ever, it’s probably got nothing to do with us, or at least no moreso than, say, gravity, has anything to do with us. If the world is getting warmer, then it’s simply the natural time for it to happen, and if it’s getting cooler, that’s natural as well, and if it’s not changing, well, then everyone should just shut up.
So the question, then, is: Is it possible that the world is getting warmer?
It has been my understanding that the earth has cycles of warmer and cooler temperatures that follow regular patterns, particularly when you look at long periods of time.
Looking at the information provided here: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
it looks like we are currently in the middle of a warm period, which should last about another 100 – 200 years.
Whew! That’s a lot of info to digest. I’ll have to check back with it later. Briefly, if the glaciers are advancing, we’re in an ice age; if they’re receding, we’re in a temperate age. Am I understanding it?
I have to look at it a lot more closely as well, I was basing my assessment on the centuries listed for the warming and cooling periods.
I’m still hanging onto the hope we’ll plunge into that ice age the scientists warned about in the 70s. Says the guy who left the Midwest because the winter of ’95/’96 was one “too-damn-cold” season too many for me.
I hear ya! I used to enjoy cold weather. No more. I’m kind of not into rain, anymore either. Maybe Texas wouldn’t be such a bad place to live. Of course, they do have bugs.
California deserves most of the bad rap it gets for many things, but you can’t really knock the weather, at least in a large percentage of the state.
First night of the so-called fall last night where I actually needed to use a blanket. Still miss PA Septembers something fierce, but, yeah, the weather here works more often than not.
It wasn ‘t bad last night…windows open..shivered…nice. But miss La Crosse right now like crazy….yesterday..first day of glorious golden Autumn….high 64 low 38….and from what it looks like Indian Summer is upon us…. love it…love it..
Tink is right about the cycles being natural, but the cycles are fairly irregular. They can last 35,000 years, they can last 5000 years, there doesn’t appear to be much rhyme or reason. In general, the ice ages seem centered over North America, and in general, they appear to be getting generally more severe, one to the next. The last one was the worst one in 3 million years, and created Long Island, the Great Lakes, and the Mississsippi and Missouri and Ohio rivers.
Basically, in the last ice age you had an unbroken sheet of ice running from Louisville, Kentucky, across the pole, and down to Moscow on the other side. In places it was 2 miles thick! (Oddly, thickest point was over the Great Lakes). Ocean levels would have been about 600 feet lower then.
Conversely, in the last hot age, the sea level would have been considerably higher, and all of the gulf states, and about half of Texas would have been underwater. The north end of the Gulf of Mexico would have been around Nashville, though obviously the Appalachians would have formed a peninsula jutting down to the south.
I came across this site a while back when researching “global warming.”
http://www.iceagenow.com/Archived_Articles-2011.htm
This guy believes we’re in the beginning of an oncomeing ice age. He posts articles from around the world about record cold temps and growing glaciers that taken empirically does show that there isn’t a warming trend. Don’t know if the guy is a lunatic or normal, and doesn’t mean an ice age is afoot, but the bulk of articles do show a cooling trend and counters the spate of pro-global warming biased information in the MSM. Interesting reading.
Also, note that most pro-warming articles and opinions are mainly egocentric as if a glacier melts in Greenland or Antarctica, it’s America’s fault. People never blame Uraguay.
Larry Niven has written several stories and one novel about the idea that we’re actually in an ice age, and the only thing that’s kept us from noticing is that our industrial emissions are keeping the planet unnaturally warm. In the novel, the Green Party wins power, and the world starts icing up almost immediately. Good stuff. Good stuff.
This whole global warming vs. ice age theory (and the plot of the Niven book you mentioned) reminds me of The Twilight Zone episode, The Midnight Sun. The Earth is drifting closer to the sun and is going to burn up, but then at the end the main character wakes up and it was just a dream … in reality the Earth was moving away from the sun and people were going to freeze to death.
Yeah! That’s a good one!
See my response below but what Tink pointed out is what I meant by “the Sun is known to heat the Earth in other various ways and affect its temperature.” The tidal forces of the Sun, Earth, Jupiter and many other objects in the galaxy, even the Kuiper belt itself. Apparently there is some concern that the temperature assumptions dating past 65 million years should not be trusted due to the realization of how complex these interactions are.
Looking at the historical data, you definately have been getting cooler and warmer in cycles and piecing together historical information it appears we are on a natural upswing. So absolutely we can be getting warmer naturally.
>>The tidal forces of the Sun, Earth, Jupiter and many other objects in the galaxy, even the Kuiper belt itself. Apparently there is some concern that the temperature assumptions dating past 65 million years should not be trusted due to the realization of how complex these interactions are.<<
Well, we're only really concerned w/ the last 3 million years, as far as this question goes.
Jupiter and the Kuiper Belt, insofar as I am aware, have no effect on earth. Gravitational interaction is infinitesimal, and the inverse square law applies. Jupiter has about as much gravitational effect on earth as a postage stamp has when dropped from three feet above the ground: more than none, but not meaningfully so. The moon? Definitely. The Sun? Less, but yes. Other planets and whatnot? No. Gravity is a pretty weak force.
That was what they thought, but it is not true. There was even a paper saying even if the Moon didn’t form the gravity of Jupiter and the rest of the planets could stablize the earth tilt.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2024593/Why-Earth-needed-moon-life-exist.html
“While Earth’s moon does provide some stability, the new data reveals that the pull of other planets orbiting the sun particularly Jupiter, would keep Earth from swinging too wildly.”
I’ll check into it. That sounds really suspicious to me. No offence.
Ok, checking around it seems broadly possible, but we’re talking on the order of billions of years. Evidently it’s got to do with angular momentum. However: the moon does it better and faster and more reliably.
So: I learned something here. Cool!
Actually when it comes to global warming, ice ages, and billions of years, I’m more of a Biblical purist. I believe the whole earth, animal presence and humans et al, are between 8 thousand years and 10 thousand years old tops. I believe God created a fully functioning universe, including the earth, mankind and everything in 6 literal days as set forth in Genesis. It looks old because God made it that way. Which came first, the chicken or the egg..? The chicken which was a fully functioning adult chicken capable of laying an egg which was able to hatch into another chicken. I believe the dinosaurs did exist, but became extinct during the great flood. there is a lot more to explain in regard to all this, but I am cooking dinner right now and don’t have the time to elaborate further.
Fair enough. I used to believe that, too.
In my own case – and this is just me, personally, I’m not advocating it for anyone else – I found I was having to invest so much effort in believing in stuff that had no proof, and in disbelieving things that had plenty of evidence, that it was kind of distracting me from actually believing in God. So I gave up on it.
Which is a coy way of saying I completely lost my faith for a while, and when it came back, it re-grew without most of the apologietics. Again, that’s must me: It’s a hard secret handshake to learn, nearly killed me, and I’m certainly not looking down on anyone who doesn’t wanna’ do it.
When one looks at the Grand Canyon in person, and realizes that the water in the flood was above all the earth, and that the mountains were pushed up, and the ocean floors were dropped down, then picture the unimaginable volume of water wearing away the soft soil and rock over a rather quick period of time, I can see it taking anywhere from a few months to a year to grind away what is now called the Grand Canyon.
As for the question of where the water came from, for 40 days and nights of a solid downpour, that’s an easy one. For one thing, all the ground water welled up from the earth to help with the flood. Second at that time the earth was enveloped in a mist, which would go to explaining why there are remains of petrified trees on Antarctica, and also to the fact that the Sahara desert wasn’t always a desert.
Now finally for the dispersion of Noah’s afterbears when they began to multiply and disperse. I feel that the story about all the earth being a single landmass, such as is described as Gondwanaland, and the continental drift, would explain how the peoples were dispersed to areas like Australia and the Pacific Islands, and North and South America. If they were all together at one time as a single land mass, that would take care of how the dispersion happened. They simply walked to these various locations before the drift of the continents began.
I cannot prove all that I’ve said here, but I fully believe that the God Who made the human eye, and the brain, is fully able to perform all the things I’ve described here.
Sorry if I appeared to have rushed this all, but I have some things I need to do, and would have been a lot more eloquent in my descriptions with more time. My apologies,
GOd created the universe on His time, not ours..hence 24 hour days is our construct..not God’s. As high as the sky is above the earth so high above our ways the ways of the Lord…just a little thing I remember from being 8 and listening to now Cardinal Burke talking about creation.
We’ve had a week of cool weather and RAIN, RAIN, RAIN! That said, if the earth is warming, mankind had precious little (if any) to do with it. When the sun becomes hotter, the earth becomes hotter; when the sun becomes cooler, the earth becomes cooler.
That broad question is way to open ended to answer. As Nobel Prize winning physicist Dr. Ivar Giaever said in his resignation letter to the APS for its support of manmade climate change: “How can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?”
Good luck on answering that. However, the Earth is and will be getting hotter naturally because of the Sun. As it ages it gets hotter, now many many pea brains like to argue (due to their devotion to global climate change) that the Sun has no effect on Earth temperature due to it being in the Main Sequence phase and such. While that is correct, the temperature of the Sun isn’t changing, it is moving closer, expanding, to the Earth.
Edward Guinan, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Villanova University said in his conclusion at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2009: “The Earth’s period of habitability is nearly over ? on a cosmological timescale. In a half to one billion years the Sun will start to be too luminous and warm for water to exist in liquid form on Earth, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect in less than 2 billion years.”
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to search on the internet along this subject as you become quickly mired in global warming debates. Because the Sun is known to heat the Earth in other various ways and affect its temperature, the global warming believers (many simply regular folks how have gone mad) have gone out of their way to disseminate as much anti-Sun warming information as possible. But if you dig deep you can find it.
>>>the Earth is and will be getting hotter naturally because of the Sun. As it ages it gets hotter, the temperature of the Sun isn’t changing, it is moving closer, expanding, to the Earth.<<<
Whatchutalkin' 'bout, Willis?
Stellar temperature obviously chagnes over the life span of a star, and it expands and contracts as a result, but what you're talking about doesn't match anything I've heard or read about. At least not in those terms. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Could you maybe explain it a little differently?
In any event, are we agreed that the world *could* be getting hotter, strictly as a natural phenomenon?
Absolutely. There is the appearance of methane still unexplained (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/methane-tt1029.html) and all natural phenomena mentioned. This wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System) mentions that:
“Sun is growing brighter at a rate of ten percent every 1.1 billion years.[92] In one billion years’ time, as the Sun’s radiation output increases, its circumstellar habitable zone will move outwards, making the Earth’s surface hot enough that liquid water can no longer exist there naturally.”
The Milankovitch Cycles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles) are what I think Tink was talking about. There is all sorts of evidence of a warming Earth. Or at least evidence the Earth’s “average” temperature is in flux. Of course the caveat is that all this science is in flux as well. As information comes in, who can predict what the new consensus will be?
Sorry about the moderation. 3 links triggers the filter.
My response is moderated *sad face* Probably because I put one too many links in it again.
It is well established scientific fact the Sun is expanding, or more accurately its outer layers are, which happen to be the hottest part of the Sun. It expands even in its current stable phase. As it does, its getting closer to the Earth and warming it, just a very miniscule amount each year. But those will add up and, again this is well documented, boil the Earth well before it hits the red giant phase. As the Sun is predicted to last a good 4-5 billion years but Earth will be uninhabitable in a billion or less.
Hm.
Ok, I think here’s where we’re running into trouble: G-class stars like our own (G2V) fuse hydrogen into helium to produce light and heat. When they heat up, the star expands, when they cool down, the star contracts. Some stars to this a lot, and very quickly (Cepheid variables) When that’s all used up, they start fusing all the helium that they’ve generated. This is hot enough for the star to expand, however when it expands the outer atmosphere *cools* because it’s further from the core, thus older stars are *cooler* than younger ones. Surface temperature of an average Red Giant is about 5000 degrees. our sun is close to 6000 degrees.
So a larger star over time means a cooler star over time, so I don’t think the expansion of the sun has anything to do with temperature change on earth.
I’m not a scientist, this is just stuff I remember from my laat science class a quarter century wrong. I may well have misremembered. If so, sorry.
In any event, *YES* you are absolutely right about earth being habitable. Planets have a comparatively narrow window of habitability (Based on our one known example) and are pretty unstable in the long run. I get into endless arguments with my friends about this. Their Star Trekified vision is to find new worlds to settle, and while that’s fine and all, I think it’s setting their sights pretty low. It’s like divorcing a bad woman, and immediately marrying another one. It doesn’t make sense to me. Much better to be done with planets entirely and find some other way to live that doesn’t involve earthquakes and famines and poison monkey attacks.
I reccomend LaGrange-styled habitats.
See my link above. I guess I misspoke a little earlier, the sun’s expansion is not the direct result of the heating of the earth but the fact that it is getting brighter and hence generating more heat and warming our cozy little planet up. This will happen billions of years before the Sun grows into the red giant phase. Again, a lot of this is new based on more sophisticated technologies revealing data previously hidden. Much like how the interactions of small objects gravitation fields seems to create a more (or less) harmonious solar system then thought. So today’s theory might end up in tomorrow’s trash bin.
Works for me,Tink…what happened?
What happened to what? Or whom?
Amen to that,Jimmy…that woman makes my heart stop.
I remember seeing some articles regarding Gibson guitars and the Feds. Here’s an update: http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2011/09/28/feds-to-gibson-give-us-more-wood.html?ana=e_pft
Looks as if things are getting worse, not better.
As I sit here typing whilst wearing my Gibson shirt, it seems the MO for this admin is to double-down on their stubborn refusal to admit when they’re wrong and/or don’t have the evidence they need to justify their thugocractic tactic.
Born on this day in 1924,Truman Capote.We southerners love our own,even gay boys from south Alabama!
http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=8455
Really entertaining article about the author’s experience of moving from New Jersey to the South, and how much he likes living there. He also makes some excellent points about the economic policies that have caused millions of people to make the same move recently.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/278596/southern-me-lee-habeeb?page=1
For Eric:
http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/list/201109/greatest-mlb-collapses
ED… would you please completely remove the above post? The link didn’t come up right and it goes directly to my FB page if I’m logged in there. Thank you, in advance!
Thanks E.D.!
Guys I need a show of hands…is this a mispeak or do the Cain people have something to wonder about..
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/herman-cain-gun-control-a-states-issue-huh/
Like the blogger over there said… it depends on whether Cain is a “Constitutional conservative” i.e. whether the Federal bill of rights should apply to the states. SCOTUS has said they do through a series of cases, but there is a strain that says the 2nd Amendment limits what Congress may do and not what states may do. The Sup. Ct. said the 2nd Amendment applies to states, but that’s a reading that really flies in the face of “original intent” and the one area where the Constitution, interpreted as originally intended, disfavors a traditionally conservative issue.
I don’t Cain’s legal views or sophistication of his constitutional views so it might be a misspeak. If he’s done a lot of reading and thinking on the Constitution (which is completely possible of course) then he may be a very strict constructionist.
Well then if he is a constructionist then thats a problem is it not?
It might be for some. It doesn’t mean he’s for gun control just that he’s in favor of local control. It’s a logically consistent position. Either states and cities can run their own business or they can’t. The larger principle of federalism…. I’d like to hear him flesh it out though to be sure.