The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D

Incredible.

Authors@Google: Justin Fox (some discussion of high frequency trading)

Good follow up to Max’s latest video. Author and financial columnist Justin Fox discusses the High Frequency Trading around the 28 minute mark. I think the question one has to answer is liquidity worth 200 million a day.

Max Keiser interviews Tyler Durden

Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge. Alan Greenpsan lies through his teeth.

Great Interview with Catherine Austin Fitts

You will need to forward to get to her interview. I didn’t mark the start point but it is a ways in.

Blow Hard Chris Matthews vs. Joe Sixpack

Chris goes down hard.

Geithner Asks Congress to Increase Federal Debt Limit

Nuts.

“Washington — U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner asked Congress to increase the $12.1 trillion debt limit on Friday, saying it is “critically important” that they act in the next two months.”

Get ready for another big bank bailout. Will we see a bank holiday this fall? Max Keiser says 20-25% chance before the end of the year.

Somewhere in China and India they must be having a good laugh.

Hah!

“Cash for Clunkers has the following elements of spectacle:

• Americans destroying perfectly functional cars
• Americans whose skills are uncompetitive in the global marketplace driving around in fancy new cars

Somewhere in China and India they must be having a good laugh.” – Philip Greenspun

Link to Phil’s post.

Pictures show daylight ‘killing’ of suspect by Indian police

Link to Times UK Article

Max Keiser on the Financial Coup D’Etat

Uniquely Christian

Too good to not pass on.

“In a healthy Christian community there will always be differences between the people in them. But the differences were there before anyone talked about it. Talking about our differences, working through them, and not being afraid to say out loud what side of the line you land on is not uniquely Christian, but staying in fellowship while you do it is.”

Trouble Brewing?

Denninger reports on the Fed buying back treasuries sold just last week.

The Human Toll of the Mayflower Reformers

Amazing. You can see a larger image here.

The Fed Under Fire (8 Minutes)

There are a few Congressmen who are actually starting to get it.

Tim Bayly on Cotton Candy Grace

Tim Bayly cites Titus 2:11,12 here with a few remarks on grace.

“The prattle about grace that permeates the sermons, fellowship-hall conversations, and books within the mainstream reformed church today tastes like cotton candy and leaves your hands sticky.”

I spent a little time studying the verses in which the word grace appears. My thoughts.

• No surprise most of the references are found in the New Testament.
• One thing I noted is that there seem to be two uses of the word “grace”.
  • One is something we can get more of and even something we can give or show others.
  • The other is the saving grace/mercy we receive from Christ…”by grace you have been saved”.
• I don’t think the modern church does a very good job at distinguishing between these two uses. So if you are doing something that seems “ungraceful” according to the first meaning you are somehow seen as not understanding the second meaning.

Here are a few more passages for consideration, in line with Titus 2 I think, in which grace and obedience are tied together.

Romans 1:1-6 1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 3 concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4 and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, 5 through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, 6 including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,

Romans 6:1-2 1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Romans 6:14 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Creative Memories: Girls Bike, No Doubt About It

Tonight I went back through the chapter on Head Coverings in “Rediscovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood”. You can find the chapter here if you want to read it. I figure this is the best laymen’s defense from a complimentarian point of view that head coverings are a cultural artifact. I found it less convincing than ever. I will be writing more on this when I have time and commenting on the chapter. I have written about the topic before here. I am 99% convinced that Paul’s inspired commands are still relevant, perhaps more relevant than ever. I was really hoping that the chapter would give me reason to maintain greater doubt.

Creative Memories: Lincoln Indoctrination Camp

This is my sweetie (a most glorious woman). She use to work for a now bankrupt state.  Found this photo tonight and it is quite funny considering my views of Lincoln.

A series of triumphs disguised as disasters.

In that last post I noted that Jamie Soles has a blog. Well I read his latest entry and he has a few remarks worth repeating here because they really hit home.

If we go thru any particular day and ask ourselves at the end of it what we accomplished in terms of character development today, our usual answer may range from “Not much…” down to “Nothing”. But I read a saying a couple weeks ago that stuck in my mind, and it is worth thinking about… “People overestimate what they can accomplish in a day, and underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade.”

Someone once described the development of the kingdom of God as “A series of triumphs disguised as disasters.” It may appear that we are failing, but we keep on doing what we know God wants us to do, plugging away believing in His promises, and it seems to me that God will honor this kind of faith with children who are obedient to Jesus.

Here is a video of Jamie on youtube.

You can purchase mp3’s here, we own The Way My Story Goes, it is superb.

One more link, Jamie did an interview about some of his music at St. Annes Pub.

Kids love Nathan Clark George too.

Ditto on Kids Love Him, Too.

This morning my five year old grabbed one of our Nathan Clark George CD’s and took it into her room to listen to. Tonight one of our pastors lamented that his wife was very sad that it was time to return a Nathan Clark George CD he had borrowed.

Another favorite for us and the kids is Jamie Soles (looks like Jamie has a blog)

Good stuff. Buy some.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard Address

Here are my notes on Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s well known 1978 Harvard Address. My shortened summaries of each point are highlighted below in blue text. Many of the problems below in my mind can only be redressed through proper discipleship and an important step in that direction is to reject the state’s educational system. Please see this recent post quoting Eugen Rosenstock-Heuessy regarding the modern notion of polytheistic eduction.

1. Contemporary Worlds (There are cultures which are not understood by Western thinking.)
   1. “Any ancient deeply rooted autonomous culture, especially if it is spread on a wide part of the earth’s surface, constitutes an autonomous world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking.”
2. Convergence (Our arrogance leads us on the path of imperialism and empire.)
   
   1. “But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which developed out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet’s development is quite different.”
3. A Decline in Courage (We are in large part a nation of cowards.)
   
   1. Particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and intellectual elite.
   2. Policies are created based on weakness and cowardice.
   3. Courageous individuals have no determining influence on public life.
   4. Is a decline in courage the beginning of the end?
4. Well Being (Our emphasis on well being weakens us.)
   
   1. Our concern for well being has lead us to empty materialism and the welfare state.
   2. Guarantees of safety and well being are not always advantageous.
5. Legalistic Life (Our concepts of justice and law are in fact very low.)
   
   1. Western society worships the letter of the law. Law makes right.
   2. “a society without objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but a legal one is not quite worthy of man either.”
6. The Direction of Freedom (We are failing at the task of reconciling law and liberty.)
   
   1. Humanistic thinking has lead to a type of “freedom” which rewards mediocrity and promotes evil.
   2. “The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.”
7. The Direction of the Press (The press can not be trusted to reliably report the truth and inform us.)
   
   1. “Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20′th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.”
   2. The press bears no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion.
8. A Fashion in Thinking (Our thoughts and ideas are censored by passive means.)
   1. “Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day.”
9. Socialism (We are Socialistic, whether we like to admit it or not.)
   1. Western society is leaning towards socialism, a false an dangerous current.
   2. Socialism leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.
10. Not a Model (There are ample reason to think we are not the model for the rest of the world that we think we are.)
    1. The Western way of life is not a good model for the rest of the world.
    1. “But it is also demeaning for it to elect such mechanical legalistic smoothness as you have. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.”
    1. “There are meaningful warnings that history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen. There are open and evident warnings, too. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.”
11. Shortsightedness (We have been shortsighted in dealing with foreign threats.)
    1. “On the contrary, only moral criteria can help the West against communism’s well planned world strategy. There are no other criteria.”
12. Loss of Willpower (We are a nation without will power.)
    1. “And yet — no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being.”
13. Humanism and Its Consequences (Man is at the center of everything.)
    1. “This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which in our days there is a free and constant flow. Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones.”
14. An Unexpected Kinship (Materialism, socialism, and communism all have roots in humanism.)
    1. “Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition. We watch this process in the past centuries and especially in the past decades, on a world scale as the situation becomes increasingly dramatic. Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism and socialism could never resist communism.”
15. Before the Turn (We must reject humanism, materialism, show restraint and recognize the impact of the enlightenment and modernism.)
    
    1. “There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.”
    2. “We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.”
    3. “Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.”
    4. “If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.”

“A man’s end reveals his purpose.” – Otto Scott

“A man’s end reveals his purpose.” – Otto Scott

Source

2008 San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival

Will we see you at the SAICFF? The Growing Pains guy is going to be there. If your wife is in her early 30’s, like mine, this might be the cause of great excitement (not saying it is or isn’t around here). We went last year, it was fun. I get free room and board at Mom and Dad’s so it is also affordable.

401K losses, mildy amusing.

Herrick is putting together some important posts over at The Deliberate Agrarian regarding our economic woes. I must admit I spend a lot of time ruminating about these things.

• Please take time to read Slouching Away from Prosperity – Part I, Part II

I am quoting Herrick’s article here.

I’ve read that the average stock market investor has lost half the value of his portfolio in the recent stock market plunge. A man I work with, who has faithfully saved for years, and invested in stocks, admits to losing $250,000 this year, thus far.

These sort of losses are typical. The remarkable thing to me has been the rather casual reaction people have had towards the loss of such large sums of money. You can easily confirm this by performing a “Twitter” search for the term 401K. Twitter is sort of a mini-blog which people use to quickly publish very short remarks to a network of friends.  Click the link and you will see what I mean. Most folks seem to laugh off losing 50% of the value of their retirement savings. How can this be? How can they remain so calm?

I would love to believe that they are all trusting in the Lord and his promises to care for even the sparrows but I know that is not the case. No, I am sure they are trusting that within a year or two everything will return to normal. As I said I spend a lot of time ruminating about this so here are a few random thoughts regarding 401K’s and retirement.

• Most folks calculate at a minimum 6% growth rate compounded for a number of years in order to retire with a sufficient income to maintain a modest living standard. Even if the market somehow manages to get back to 10,000 this year or next it is going to take years for you to recover the lost value and there is no reason for you to think there won’t be another crash.
• While I believe the U.S. will remain very competitive in comparison to the rest of the world, it is going to become much harder. The only analogy I can think to make here is to say we are entering the “playoffs” and teams which previously seemed easy to beat are going to get a lot tougher. This is going to make it harder to maintain the consistent year to year growth you need to retire.
• The world is not happy with us, and they are not happy with the dollar. It is going to take time but they will not bow to the American Empire forever, they are going to bring us down a notch and it is going to hurt. Sources I read say this could take another 10+ years to happen. Another reason to doubt the market stability required for you to save adequately for retirement.
• There is talk that the govt. will allow people to voluntarily hand their retirement accounts over the govt. in trade for a guaranteed return. There is no reason to think the words voluntarily and guaranteed actually mean anything like…voluntarily and guaranteed.
• Increased centralization and socialization of our economy is only going to make things worse. The only thing the govt. can do efficiently is spread misery.
• It is likely that wages will fall as the number of available workers increase and the number of jobs decrease. Any growth going forward will have to be “real” growth and as such labor rates should be lower. This means less money to save.
• While we may see lower prices in the short term as a result of deflation in the long run the govt. will resort to inflating the monetary supply in order to maintain it’s existence. Prices will rise again eventually, so you won’t be able to make up for less savings with lower prices.
• As G.K. Chesterton says about democracy, one should not ask what you will do with the poor, you should ask what the poor are going to do with you.

If even some of the factors I mentioned here are true you are going to have to seriously rethink how much money you will have when you retire. I didn’t even mention all of the other looming disasters such as Social Security and Medicare.

Now let me ask you one question, and really think about this. If you knew for a fact that in twenty years all of your retirement savings was going to be wiped out,(zero, zilch, nada) what would you be doing now to prepare for that day? Is it fearful or prudent to make such preparations? Are these preparations evidence that you are not trusting in the Lord to care for you and your family?

What say you?

So that your prayers may not be hindered.

Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.  1 Peter 3:7

This one is easy to forget at times. Hindered prayers cause frustration, frustration causes us to step on the flowers, stepping on the flowers hinders our prayers, and round we go again. My advice to you little buddy…make sure you show them a little weakness now and then, hindered prayers are like trying to fly with a pocket full of kryptonite.

Constitutional Idolatry

Through New Eyes – Developing a Biblical Worldview by James Jordan

The Constitution no longer has the same power in the minds of men as it did when it was written, and it can never again have such power. It can, of course, continue to function as the foundation of our laws, provided we understand that it inevitably will be reinterpreted from generation to generation, though hopefully within Christian parameters.

The second problem with trying to revivify old symbols is that such an attempt can become idolatrous, if it says that the mainspring of human society lies  in man-made symbols, instead of in God’s symbols, It is idolatrous to say that restoring the U.S. Constitution is more necessary to social renewal than restoring the sacraments. The key to social renewal, to cultural reformation, to Christian reclamation, then, is this: We must restore the primary special symbols: Word, Sacrament, Persons. That is because only the primary special symbols transcend history, and thus only they can form the wellspring of historical progress.

I agree with Jordan and Whitehead on this one. It is a good fight but not one that will be one easily, and one which required discernment on the part of the church.

On the weakness of catechism.

Through New Eyes – Developing a Biblical Worldview by James Jordan

In the Western world for several centuries, men have assumed that the proper way to express truth is by means of abstract, philosophical language. Wherever we find imagery, parable, symbolism, or typology, we ought to translate such language into proper abstractions. This, however, is not how God chose to reveal Himself to us. To be sure, some parts of the Bible are written in abstract language, especially the epistles of St. Paul. Most of the Bible, however, is written in stories, histories, poems, symbols, parables, and the like. As far as God is concerned, this way of revealing truth is equally as important as abstract philosophizing. Notice, for instance, the way in which our confessions of faith and catechisms are written. They are virtually devoid of imagery. Solomon wrote Proverbs to instruct youth, but for centuries Christians have used catechisms that consist basically of definitions of terms: What is justification; what is prayer; what is meant by the fourth petition; etc. The contrast of approaches is quite startling. It illustrates for us the problem we have in recovering the Biblical worldview.