書道: Acupuncture

link

Master Tung Ching Chang has been referred to as The Greatest Acupuncture Master who ever lived. He was a traditional Chinese physician from the Shandong Province in Northern China, famous for the miraculous and spontaneous results he would obtain using just a few needles. The points he used are unique in that they are located opposite the affected area. In most cases, the patient notices the effect immediately upon insertion of the needle.

Master Tung’s Points were a treasured family secret, handed down and refined over many generations. He moved to Taiwan on 1949. From 1953-1975, there were over 40,000 patient visits in his clinic in Taipei. Master Tung also began to teach his secret point system in Taipei. He chose all his students, 73, by himself and no any charge. Dr. Chuan-Min Wang is one of the 73 studen

This stuff works. More info here.

A bit of trivia: 五点手の平の起爆心臓方法

For no particular reason other than I was bored and waiting for the weather to warm up slightly before attacking my backyard, I googled "Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique," and came up with this link.

Although it's over-done as is traditional in martial arts films, apparently there are such fatal points (use babelfish translating from Chinese) that can be hit in martial arts.

As one commenter on that blog noted, it has a lot to do with cultivating and directing the flow of 気(ki), or, as I just found out (what a dummy I am), this energy in Zen is called "jouriki," (that part I knew) which is represented as "定力" (and is pronounced "じょうりき") -that is, the "jo" part is lengthened slightly.

定力 is composed of 2 kanji/hantsu: "定" means "fixed," or determined, and "力" means "power" (as oppsed to "気" which means "energy.")


"力" is also pronounced as "chikara," or "ryouku" in other words.

So 定力 is simply then the power of being grounded when zazen is practiced.

Projection

Link

DENVER -- A small sign in the Promise Keepers headquarters reads "70,000" -- the number of people the Christian men's organization needs to fill Razorback Stadium in Arkansas for one of its revivals this summer after years of dwindling attendance.

In the 1990s, tens of thousands of men crowded football stadiums across the United States to listen to the Promise Keepers' message, hoping to become better husbands, fathers and Christians. Yet by the end of the decade, the evangelical group had only a fraction of the following it once did...

At its peak in 1996, the organization drew about 1.1 million men to 22 stadium conferences nationwide. Its rally the following year in Washington drew hundreds of thousands of men for speeches, stadium-style "waves" and thundering chants of, "Dear God, I am a sinner. . . . Please forgive me and change me."...

Promise Keepers began to have financial problems when it decided to stop charging admission fees for its conventions, believing they were a deterrent. But voluntary contributions never covered the loss, and the group was forced to lay off hundreds of employees in 1998...

Rick Kingham, senior pastor of Overlake Christian Church in Redmond, Wash., said dropping attendance wasn't the Promise Keepers' problem alone.

"It's probably more of an indictment against our society, because men really are asleep, more now than I've ever seen before," Kingham said, noting Promise Keepers' 2005 theme is "The Awakening -- An Unpredictable Adventure."..

That's right: it's our fault that yet another politically right wing exclusivist religious movement as marketing stunt failed.

Reclaiming Christianity vs. Reclaiming America

Via this post on Atrios, I found this post leading to this site, which should send shivers down the likes of Hugh Hewitt, Joe Carter, and their minions.

About the Christian Alliance for Progress:

The Christian Alliance for Progress is a national movement that started in Jacksonville, Florida among ordinary Americans who want to reclaim Christianity and change this current political picture. Members in the movement want to restore core values of Christianity while honoring diverse views about religion and Christian life. Many Americans, especially people of faith, are ready to hear from Christians who are tolerant, and who understand the many ways that our faiths impact our views of public life. The Christian Alliance advances a renewed, progressive vision of Gospel values and seeks to help Americans express this moral vision in our lives and in our politics.

Hmmm...reclaiming and Florida...where have I seen that before?

The CENTER FOR RECLAIMING AMERICA was founded in 1996 by Dr. D. James Kennedy, as an outreach of Coral Ridge Ministries for the purpose of mobilizing America’s Christians at the grassroots level. In July 2004, the CENTER introduced Dr. Gary Cass, a former Salt & Light Award winner, as its new Executive Director. As an ordained minister and former elected school board member, Gary brings a wealth of ministerial experience and political knowledge to the CENTER.

Since its founding, the CENTER has established a nationwide e-mail network of more than 500,000 concerned Christians. The CENTER provides non-partisan, non-denominational information, training, and support; enabling those interested to positively affect the culture and renew the vision of our Founding Fathers.

As a means to accomplish this mission, the CENTER focuses on five key fronts of the modern-day culture war: (1) Religious Liberties, (2) the Sanctity of Life, (3) the Homosexual Agenda, (4) Pornography, and (5) Promoting Creationism.

Given that to them, "Religious Liberties" means trashing the bill of rights, "Sanctity of Life" means interference in people's personal life decisions, "Pornography" doesn't include violence, and "Creationism" is well, "Creationism," I like the progressives much more.

I welcome their entry into the culture war.

Update...

I also like this bit from Rising Hegemon, but when it comes to bad comb-overs Benny Hinn takes the cake hands down...




I'd also add that anybody who's pulled the plug on a family member, or who has decided whether or not to have the plug pulled on themselves is automatically disqualified from recommending that the state refrain from any plug-pulling or plug-keeping-in on somebody else's behalf.

And finally, I'd extend the "no divorce" rule to any "family expert" parents of divorced children...obviously they did something wrong in God's eyes, right?

Meanwhile, rapid temperature drop in China/Taiwan conflict

which equals nothing less than: Bush makes us even more irrelevant.

But this cannot be said to be anything other than good...

BEIJING, May 12 -- Chinese President Hu Jintao proposed new diplomatic language Thursday aimed at ending the decades-old state of hostilities between China and Taiwan, in a rare but tentative concession by a Communist leader on one of the most sensitive issues in Chinese politics.

In a joint communique issued after a two-hour meeting in the cavernous Great Hall of the People, Hu and James Soong, a Taiwanese opposition leader, endorsed a new formulation of the mainland government's long-standing position that cross-strait talks can begin only after Taiwan acknowledges it is part of "one China." Under the new language, Hu effectively agreed to open talks if Taiwan accepted the principle of "two shores, one China" while acknowledging that the two sides might differ on precisely what that term meant...

Speaking in a televised interview in Taipei hours after the announcement in Beijing, Chen swiftly rejected the new wording, saying, "China did not make any concessions. It did not come up with anything new," local news media reported.

But Chen appeared open to further discussions, reiterating plans to establish a commission to pursue cross-strait talks. Chen is widely believed to be waiting until after Taiwan holds island-wide elections Saturday before deciding whether to make Hu a counteroffer...

Chen's response will not be clear until after Saturday, when the island elects a national assembly to consider constitutional reforms. Chen's party has been slipping in the polls, and he may be worried about losing more support. "He expressed disagreement with the communique today, but he still left the door open," Sheng said.

And Hugh (Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf) Hewitt wants to know "Who is the Religious Right?"

There are two articles I've come across recently, re: the filibuster, that shows pretty clearly the clear and present danger to American liberty represented by the religious right.

Hewitt, of course, is being disingenuous (I'm being unfathomably kind in that characterization), when he says things that imply the religious right is a thing of the left's imagination and nothning more, and geez, they're just mainstream "people of faith." Yeah, right...

First link up...this post which was guested from Atrios recorded what I'd wanted to yesterday, but didn't get around to it...from the Times link therein:

DENVER, May 12 -- An Air Force chaplain who complained that evangelical Christians were trying to "subvert the system" by winning converts among cadets at the Air Force Academy was removed from administrative duties last week, just as the Pentagon began an in-depth study of alleged religious intolerance among cadets and commanders at the school.

"They fired me," said Capt. MeLinda Morton, a Lutheran minister who was removed as executive officer of the chaplain unit on May 4. "They said I should be angry about these outside groups who reported on the strident evangelicalism at the academy. The problem is, I agreed with those reports."...

Surveys of present and former cadets have shown that some students said they felt a heavy and sometimes offensive emphasis on evangelical Christianity, with praise for cadets who pronounce their "born-again" status and insults aimed at Jews, Roman Catholics and non-evangelical cadets.

One staff chaplain reportedly told newly arrived freshmen last summer that anyone not born again "will burn in the fires of hell."

Such slurs have been heard for decades on the campus, according to Mikey Weinstein of Albuquerque, a 1977 academy graduate who said he has repeatedly complained to the Air Force brass about the "religious pressure" on cadets. "This is not Christian versus Jew," Weinstein said. "This is the evangelical Christians against everybody else."...

And yeah, last time I checked, "God damn you" was offensive...

Morton said the cadet wing at the Air Force Academy is about 90 percent Christian. She said that group is roughly one-third Catholic, one-third mainstream Protestant and one-third evangelical. But the evangelicals have a much bigger voice among the chaplains, she said.

"The predominance of evangelical Christians reflects the chaplain corps of the Air Force overall," Morton said. "The major mainstream Protestant divinity schools are no longer sending many graduates into the armed forces. And so the concentration of evangelicals among chaplains is strong through the whole service."

Morton, 48, said that, having criticized the religious atmosphere at the academy, "I may be toast" in terms of an Air Force career. She said her next duty station is said to be a pleasant spot. "But serving in Okinawa as the most hated chaplain in the Air Force might not be so great."

Good luck to Ms. Morton...

The other link, though, which I think shows the problem even better is this.


Yeah, it's the 2000 platform of which they speak, so let's check the most recent one - the 2004 document. And yes, they still want to eliminate judicial review of civil liberties. The fascists. (More here.)

"No" to killing the filibuster

As I've noted previously, the filibuster according to the Senate rules is constitutional.

Removing it now would simply give the Republicans too much power, and removing it without breaking the Senate rules (IOW, the debate on the filibuster could itself be filibustered) would seem difficult.

Most Americans want the Senate to be more than a rubber stamp for the president (which is after all what the constitution indicates); now I might think differently if a Democratic president was in office after a slew of fascist judges were appointed, but the reality is, if the Repubs do this, it will bite them big time. Most Americans, when informed, soundly repudiate the extremist Republicans.

So next week's Frist-fest should be interesting, if today's reports are true. Hopefully, democracy, the rights of the minority, and the rule of law will prevail.

More fun iPod facts and quirks....

• Apparently whatever error corrections software they ahve in iTunes, it's a charm: CD songs that were unplayable anywhere else, actually are playable. I've heard "It says here" by Billy Bragg for the first time in about 20 years:
  
  

  t says here that the Unions will never learn
  It says here that the economy is on the upturn
  And it says here we should be proud
  That we are free
  And our free press reflects our democracy
  
  Those braying voices on the right of the House
  Are echoed down the Street of Shame
  Where politics mix with bingo and tits
  In a strictly money and numbers game.

  
  
  
  I mean, that CD had a dent in it...it was unplayable on the 4 or 5 CD players' my wife and I have collectively owned since I bought this CD.
  
  
• One of the strangest things to me is the "most popular" songs that are downloaded from music sources appear to be exactly those that have been played on FM radio most recently. That says to me that younger people are buying this stuff; they simply have no idea what's out there. It also says, unfortunately, that people in my age group are not in the demographic for iPods, which is rather odd: who in our age group doesn't long for music that has disappeared from the airwaves?
  
  
• Penetrating glance into the obvious: Nobody is selling any 11 minute songs for 99 cents.
  
  You still have to have or by the music to hear The Doors' longer songs.
  
  

Negotiate with terrorists?

I've always been interested in the subject of negotiations, both from a theoretical perspective (it includes elements of game theory, decision theory, information theory and control theory) as well as a practical perspective (like when my wife and I went shopping for an engagement ring, I was "good cop" and she was hard...)

So, in line with recent events in my workplace, I've had to do some serious negotiating. There's all kinds of resources on the web, but this one caught my eye.

Negotiating with terrorists is possible, within limits, as the articles in this issue show and explore.
Limits come initially in the distinction between absolute and contingent terrorists, and then between revolutionary and conditional absolutes and between barricaders, kidnappers and hijackers in the contingent category. Revolutionary absolutes are nonnegotiable adversaries, but even conditional absolutes are potentially negotiable and contingent terrorists actually seek negotiation. The official negotiator is faced with the task of giving a little in order to get the terrorist to give a lot, a particularly difficult imbalance to obtain given the highly committed and desperate nature of terrorists as they follow rational but highly unconventional tactics. Such
are the challenges of negotiating with terrorists that this issue of the journal explores and elucidates.

Now I don't thankfully have to do hijack negotiations; my world is much smaller and happier, even if stressed from time to time.

But adversarial negotiation is a skill that comes in quite handy: what to do when there is a trust issue is extremely important.

In that case, openness and verifiability are paramount. A maximum amount of information is also necessary.

It may seem burdensome, but it is rewarding in the end.

But I won't disagree with anyone who says that when you've got somebody threatening to kill large numbers of people, and the threat is immediate, that taking them out is not only a good tactic, but compassionate.

Tail Events WILL happen

Those folks who continually lambast evolutionary biology should take a good look at this article from the NY Times:

Powerball lottery officials suspected fraud: how could 110 players in the March 30 drawing get five of the six numbers right? That made them all second-prize winners, and considering the number of tickets sold in the 29 states where the game is played, there should have been only four or five.

But from state after state they kept coming in, the one-in-three-million combination of 22, 28, 32, 33, 39.

It took some time before they had their answer: the players got their numbers inside fortune cookies, and all the cookies came from the same factory in Long Island City, Queens.

Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball, said on Monday that the panic began at 11:30 p.m. March 30 when he got a call from a worried staff member.

The second-place winners were due $100,000 to $500,000 each, depending on how much they had bet, so paying all 110 meant almost $19 million in unexpected payouts, Mr. Strutt said. (The lottery keeps a $25 million reserve for odd situations.) ...


"We didn't sleep a lot that night," Mr. Strutt said. "Is there someone trying to cheat the system?"

He added: "We had to look at everything to do with humans: television shows, pattern plays, lottery columns."

Earlier that month, an ABC television show, "Lost," included a sequence of winning lottery numbers. The combination didn't match the Powerball numbers, though hundreds of people had played it: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42. Numbers on a Powerball ticket in a recent episode of a soap opera, "The Young and the Restless," didn't match, either. Nor did the winning numbers form a pattern on the lottery grid, like a cross or a diagonal. Then the winners started arriving at lottery offices.

"Our first winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie," said Rebecca Paul, chief executive of the Tennessee Lottery. "The second winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie. The third winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie."

Investigators visited dozens of Chinese restaurants, takeouts and buffets. Then they called fortune cookie distributors and learned that many different brands of fortune cookies come from the same Long Island City factory, which is owned by Wonton Food and churns out four million a day.

"That's ours," said Derrick Wong, of Wonton Food, when shown a picture of a winner's cookie slip. "That's very nice, 110 people won the lottery from the numbers."

The same number combinations go out in thousands of cookies a day. The workers put numbers in a bowl and pick them. "We are not going to do the bowl anymore; we are going to have a computer," Mr. Wong said. "It's more efficient."

Now the probability of that happening is roughly 10^-11. That's a pretty rare event. But given enough tries, it will happen with with "almost certain" probability.


This basically is an example of Kolmogorov's Zero-One Law in action, which is stated succintly in Theorem 8.2 of this reference. Proofs of that rely on the Borel-Cantelli lemma.

These by the way, are not the most general statements of these theorems- in fact, independence of events is not strictly required (as a colleague of mine showed in his doctoral thesis). Only "asymptotic" independence is required (according to certain conditions).

What were folks saying about the "impossibility" of evolution?

The Dysfunctional Religious Leader...

link

WAYNESVILLE, North Carolina (AP) -- A Baptist preacher accused of running out nine congregants who disagreed with his Republican politics resigned Tuesday, two days after calling the issue "a great misunderstanding."...

"I am resigning with gratitude in my heart for all of you, particularly those of you who love me and my family," Chandler said, adding that the dispute was rooted in his strong feelings about abortion.

Chandler's attorney, John Pavey Jr., said the pastor has not apologized for anything he said and would continue to speak out against abortion. He said the dispute inside the church had nothing to do with politics, a contention echoed Tuesday by Chandler's supporters...

But some congregants of the 100-member church in western North Carolina have said Chandler endorsed President Bush from the pulpit during last year's presidential campaign and said that anyone who planned to vote for Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry needed to "repent or resign."

The church members said he continued to preach about politics after Bush won re-election, culminating with a church gathering last week in which the nine members said they were voted out.

At Sunday's service, the 33-year-old Chandler said the flap over the church members' dismissal was "a great misunderstanding" and he tried to welcome them back.

"No one has ever been voted from the membership of this church due to an individual's support or lack of support for a political party or candidate," he said in a statement.

It's good to see that those people recognize Chandler for what he is: a pathological liar and demagogue.

So that brings closure to this part.

Now, I wonder about those Ohio Catholic clergy who want to, er...um... protect pedophiles.

Economics summary

Lots of economic news today, somewhat mixed:

• The Washington Post admits - about 4 weeks after I mentioned it- that revauluing the yuan is a mixed blessing at best:
  
  
  

  
  Some economists caution that a change in China's currency regime could boomerang on Washington. That is because under its fixed-rate system, China's central bank constantly buys billions of dollars on currency markets, which are invested in U.S. Treasury bonds and provide a major source of financing for the federal budget deficit. If the flow of money from China into the dollar and Treasury bonds were to dry up, financial turbulence might well ensue, including a sharp upward spike in interest rates.
  
  Questioning whether U.S. officials may ultimately regret prodding Beijing for a rising yuan, Nouriel Roubini, a professor at New York University, wrote on his Web log last month, "The first rule of good manners -- and finance as well -- is that you should not bite the hand that feeds you."
  
  Administration officials have studied the likely financial impact of a Chinese currency adjustment and view the problem as easily manageable. Many independent analysts agree, saying that unless Beijing lets its currency float completely freely -- an almost inconceivable step -- it would have to continue buying large amounts of dollars...
  
  Typically, Chinese exports -- such as DVD players, clothing and auto parts -- contain many components and raw materials that come from other countries; the value added in China often involves low-cost assembly and other labor-intensive work. In testimony at a congressional hearing last month, Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Offices, cited research indicating that China contributes only about 20 to 30 percent of the value of the average product that it ships abroad.
  
  Thus, Holtz-Eakin said, even though a rise in the yuan would increase the price of Chinese imports, "those increases would probably be much less than the appreciation of the yuan itself." For example, if the yuan rose 20 percent -- a significant appreciation -- the increase in the price of Chinese imports would probably average only about 4 to 6 percent, Holtz-Eakin said...
  
  Even if Chinese imports do rise in price and the United States buys fewer of them, that will not necessarily help shrink the U.S. trade deficit or save U.S. jobs, because imports from other countries may simply fill the gap left by China.
  
  Consider the computer and electronics industry: Imports of computers and other electronics from China have soared in the past several years, with the Chinese share of the market rising from 4.3 percent in 2000 to 11.1 percent in 2004. But as Holtz-Eakin noted in his testimony, imports' overall share of the market stayed roughly the same. The obvious implication, he said: "Imports from China were largely replacing imports from other sources."
  

  
  
  
  Nice of them to admit that bloggers know stuff before readers of the Washington Post.
  
  
• The Financial Times points out that real wages are falling in the US, quite rapidly:
  
  

  Real wages in the US are falling at their fastest rate in 14 years, according to data surveyed by the Financial Times by the Economic Policy Institute.
  
  Inflation rose 3.1 per cent in the year to March but salaries climbed just 2.4 per cent, according to the Employment Cost Index. In the final three months of 2004, real wages fell by 0.9 per cent.
  
  The last time salaries fell this steeply was at the start of 1991, when real wages declined by 1.1 per cent.

  
  
  Again, not surprising this is what you get when Republicans are in office. Except in election years, when the Fed games the system. (Somebody tell that to Kevin Drum.)
  
  
• United Airlines gets a green-light to default on its pension plan.
  
  

  The ruling releases United, a unit of the UAL Corporation, from $3.2 billion in pension obligations over the next five years. The federal agency that guarantees pensions, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, will assume responsibility for the plans, which cover about 134,000 people.
  
  Some retirees could see sharply lower pension payments as a result; others will see little change in benefits, depending on a variety of factors. Some retirees at US Airways, which has terminated its plans, have seen benefits drop by as much as 50 percent.
  
  The airline, which has been in bankruptcy protection since December 2002, has been pushing to end its pensions since losing its bid for a federal loan package last year. But unions representing United's employees fought the action, threatening to strike if the pensions were set aside.
  
  Along with raising that prospect, the action has significant implications for the airline industry, which has lost more than $30 billion since 2000, and perhaps for other industries like automobiles, with similarly heavy legacy costs.
  
  Analysts have predicted that if United won its case, there could be a domino effect as other airlines are forced to seek bankruptcy protection to bring their pension costs down to United's levels.
  
  That move would probably swamp the pension agency, which was created in 1974.

  
  
  Part of me is really scared about my own pensions, part of me is really intrigued about when to plunk some cash into United. Looks a bit early today.
  
  Finally,
  
  
• The trade deficit fell sharply in March.
  
  

  The March improvement reflected a 1.5 percent increase in exports of U.S. goods and services, which rose to an all-time high of $102.2 billion, the fourth straight monthly record. The March improvement reflected gains in a wide range of products from commercial aircraft and telecommunications equipment to farm products and art work.
  
  Imports, which had hit a record high in February, fell by 2.5 percent to $157.19 billion, reflecting a big drop in imports of foreign cars and in textile and clothing imports from China. This helped to offset a 4.1 percent increase in America's foreign oil bill, which rose 4.1 percent to $18.9 billion, the second highest level on record.
  
  The deficit with China, which has become a growing target of attack in Congress because of its position as the country with the largest trade gap with the United States, declined by 7 percent to $7.83 billion in March. The narrowing trade gap reflected in part a 21.2 percent drop in imports of clothing and textiles in March.
  
  However, Chinese imports of these products are still running 54 percent higher in the first three months of this year when compared with the same period a year ago. This reflects the surge that has occurred after global import quotas were lifted on Jan. 1...
  
  While the deficit with China was lower last month, the deficit with Japan shot up by 14.1 percent to $7.83 billion. The deficit with Canada declined by 12.5 percent to $5.05 billion but the deficit with Mexico, the other partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement, surged by 16.1 percent to $4.26 billion. The deficit with the 25-nation European Union was up 9.9 percent to $9.31 billion.
  
  The administration argues that the trade deficit primarily reflects the fact that the United States has been growing at a faster rate than much of the world, boosting our demand for imports while the demand for U.S. products has lagged.
  
  Administration officials contend that the way to compete in a global economy is to push to eliminate barriers to sales of American manufactured goods, farm products and services such as banking around the world.
  
  But critics charge that these free trade deals primarily benefit U.S. corporations who are able to shut their U.S. manufacturing plants and move production to low wage countries with free trade deals and then shipment the finished goods back to the United States duty free.
  

  
  
  
  
  

I would postulate that the fall in the trade deficit might have something to do with the fact that lower wage earners are getting squeezed.

Looniness a few clicks away...

I don't get around to Sadly, No! very much; a simple click here brings me to another portal into the lunacy of the religious right.

A click there reminds me to respond to some lunacy over at Carter's place on evolution.

On the first click, going "home" there's "Renew America," not to be confused with "http://www.reclaimamerica.org."
One of the er, uh, saving graces of the religious right is that they're running out of distinguishing brand names; like drugs and automobiles their advocacy groups are going to have to start using made up words, like the "Levitramerica" or something like that.



Anyway, on "Renew America," I'm greeted by Joseph Farah's visage, and an article that takes me to Wing Nut Daily. The reason there's no witch hunt for "which judges killed Terri" was because they're all in on it!. Maybe she was already basically, uh, dead, and it wasn't judges who killed her it was her eating disorder???

But wait, there's more at that first click!

On one hand, we have moderate Christians denying that Christians kill and torture innocent people. When they are forced to admit the truth, the argument switches to, "They are not following true Christianity." The problem is this: The terrorists are following true Christianity because Christianity is founded on fear and violence.

OK. I took a few mad-liberties with the text, but if this ain't projection on the part of ...



Barbara J. Stock...(?) then I don't know what is.

The rest of her column is so out in the ozone it's breathtaking.

There's more!



Now on to Carter's abortion...uh, post.

Stealth Naturalism -- Macht from Prosthesis notes that the proposed changes to the Kansas science teaching standards includes as part of the understanding of "major concepts of biological evolution":

"Biological evolution postulates an unpredictable and unguided natural process that has no discernable direction or goal. It also assumes that life arose from an unguided natural process." [emphasis added]

As Alvin Plantinga and Huston Smith already pointed out to the National Association of Biology Teachers,

Science presumably doesn't address such theological questions, and isn't equipped to deal with them. How could an empirical inquiry possibly show that God was not guiding and directing evolution?

The short answer is that the folks who wrote this were either fundamentalists in disguise or incompetent. Evolution does not necessarily imply abiogenesis, although that is increasingly looking likely. In addition, the prhase "no discernable direction or goal," is misleading nonsense. There is a direction or goal locally, that is, within one or a few generations: the preservation of a maximum amount of nucleic acid components for reproduction. That, combined with mutations and ecosystem give rise to evolution.

I suspect it's a fundamentalists in disguise thing; this doesn't look like text you'd find from the folks over at Panda's Thumb.

"Personalized" Stamps, eh?

link

CONSUMERS will be able to print customized stamps again starting next week, but this time they won't be able to peel and paste Monica Lewinsky's image onto a letter.

On May 17, the U.S. Postal Service will begin the second stage of a test that started last fall in which customers can print personalized postage from their computers, using their own photos.

In the earlier test, the Postal Service's vendor for the project, Stamps.com, failed to reject a handful of postage images sent to it, including photos of Theodore J. Kaczynski, the man called the Unabomber; and Nicolae Ceausescu, the former Romanian dictator.

Now that Stamps.com has tightened its screening process, investors appear to be again warming to the idea of personalized stamps, perhaps giving the online postage industry an entry into a market that has proved much more elusive than executives had once hoped.

Seems cool, doesn't it? Of course, the devil's in the details...

You agree not to use the PhotoStamps website or service:

A. To upload, order for print, or otherwise transmit or communicate any material for any unlawful purpose or that is obscene, offensive, blasphemous, pornographic, sexually suggestive, deceptive, threatening, menacing, abusive, harmful, an invasion of privacy, supportive of unlawful action, defamatory, libelous, vulgar, violent, or otherwise objectionable;
B. To upload, order for print, or otherwise transmit or communicate any material that depicts celebrities or celebrity likenesses, regional, national or international leaders or politicians, current or former world leaders, convicted criminals, or newsworthy, notorious or infamous images and individuals;...

That's too bad...I can think of lots of ideas, but they'd be rejected by these guys.
But I can think of lots of grey areas, too... e.g...



is this offensive or part of a good meal?

Freedom of Music, a fundamental right

MP3 player heaven broadband internet FM radio 1970 lives again...Richie Havens High Flyin Bird' ...you pay for this but you steal that: not all of the repetoires of all musicians is even in print on MP3, but you know of it...it's not quite completely down the memory hole... we content ourselves with the three snippets of Blind Faith from iTunes and Napster, knowing, full well that there's not even a tip of the iceberg breached...I have never heard of Conor Oberst...the good stuff from Neil Young, Rust Never Sleeps, Welfare Mothers...is missing...it's gotta be here somewhere, I'm sure, just not on MP3, like Malaguena Salerosa as found in Kill Bill Vol. 2, but it is respite from the pure garbage that remains on FM radio today.

Oc-tober Project.

Music. I can at last drive to work without insipid vapid stupid banter or pseudo-serious agitation. Even Air America gets under my skin.

Goddamit, I was listening to WNEW in 1970. I friggin' know what radio can be.

I remember Paul Gorman and Mike Feder on BAI.

I remember "The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" played on FM.

These guys who've done the MP3's have started to create the subversion of the media.

Don't believe squat about Rush Limabaugh, or Air America.

The world can get the hooch of real music. Not the crapola that's OK to play in Baptist churches, but the real thing, the threat, the metaphor for your loss of virginity, goddamit your alive music.

Amen.

Fisking Geisler and McDowell...

I discussed yesterday in general terms my general distate for the fundamentalist Norman Geisler, who is praised by Joe Carter.

Let's get into a couple of specifics today. Hopefully some of the folks reading this will understand a scintilla of what they've been missing.

There's more...



I'm quoting from "Josh" McDowell's New Evidence that Demands a Verdict, in which itself quotes David K. Clark and Norman Geisler's Apologetics in the New Age: A Christian Critique of Pantheism.

If the Zen masters really were completely illlogical, there would be no difficulty in stating explicitly that language always distorts reality and then turning around to use language to describe reality. Of course, this would be a blatant inconsistency. Naturally it would horrify other philosophers. But if logic really does not matter and inconsistencies really are acceptable, then expressing such contradictions should pose no problem. The masters believe mutism [or a non-sensical answer, or a slap in the face] shows their conviction that rationality has been avoided. But resorting to mutism only shows that logic really does operate in the minds, if not the words of Zen masters.

Let's go through this and take it apart:

If the Zen masters really were completely illlogical, there would be no difficulty in stating explicitly that language always distorts reality and then turning around to use language to describe reality. Of course, this would be a blatant inconsistency.

We can show that we can use mathematics to show that all mathematical systems include either undecidable propositions or inconsistencies. There is, in fact, no blatant inconsistency in principle.

Language - like other systems- can be used for many things, including describing itself and its limitations, and chief among them is that it suffers from the fact that it uses a finite set of symbols, and that among different languages there is always a lack of an isomorphism between them. This is pretty elementary stuff, and Clark and Geisler can't seem to bring themselves to this simple point that even among mortal, fallible human beings, communication is not always possible.

Logic and the ability to work within it depends on the choice of axioms; if these cannot be agreed upon, a priori, all subsequent logical endeavors will be suspect.

...Naturally it would horrify other philosophers. But if logic really does not matter and inconsistencies really are acceptable, then expressing such contradictions should pose no problem.

Well, first off, philosophers have made a great deal of work out of using Buddhism to inform Western philosphy in the last few decades. I heard of no horrified philosophers. Further, "logic really does not matter" is a non sequitur: while all things cannot obviously be expressed using logic, it does not follow necessarily that "logic really does not matter."

To put it another way, if I'm playing tennis, I won't be using a frying pan, but if I'm making pan-fried steak, I won't need a tennis racket at that moment.

These are elementary fallacies, and Geisler's quotes in McDowell are riddled with them.

The masters believe mutism [or a non-sensical answer, or a slap in the face] shows their conviction that rationality has been avoided. But resorting to mutism only shows that logic really does operate in the minds, if not the words of Zen masters.

Suzuki tried explaining this somewhat poorly from his time and place, and I suspect that there's a bit easier way to describe the seemingly irrational behavior recorded in Zen texts: much of what is described is in fact a demonstration of the existence of the possibility and realization of a context change. What we think is not what is there, it is what we think. To substitute one for the other is, in fact, to be quite deluded.

Of course, the identification of Buddhism - and Zen in particular- with pantheism, which is what McDowell trots out from Geisler as well, is utterly false. Even before there were adequate Western ways of expressing Zen Buddhism to Western philosophers (and there are quite a few approximations to that today, thanks to folks such as William Barrett), this was clearly refuted. For example, see Suzuki's translation of Soyen-roshi's take on the God concept in Buddhism. Now this was written at a particular time and a particular place to a particular audience; today no Zen master, Asian or American or European uses language like this, but it is instructive nonetheless. A section that is particularly relevant and shows the meat of what Buddhists understand is the following:

Buddhism recognizes the coexistence and identity of the two principles, sameness and difference. Things are many and yet one; they are one and yet many. I am not thou, and thou art not I; and yet we are all one in essence. When one slays another, there is an actor, an act, and a sufferer, all distinct and separate; and yet

"If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again."

[paragraph continues] Buddhism, therefore, says that while we have to acknowledge the world of particulars in which individuality predominates, we must not forget that looking through the gate of sameness all



distinctions and contradictions vanish in a higher principle of unity. A Japanese poet thus sings:

"Rain and hail and ice and snow,
Neither like the other. So!
When they melt, however, lo,
See one stream of water flow!

Intellectually, the coexistence of the two mutually excluding thoughts is impossible, for the proposition, "Mine are not thine," cannot be made at the same time the proposition, "Mine are thine." But here Buddhism is speaking of our inmost religious experience, which deals directly with facts and not with their more or less distorted intellectual reflections. It is, therefore, really idle to say that Buddhism is pantheistic or atheistic or nihilistic. Buddhism is not a philosophical system, though it is the most rational and intellectual religion in the world. What it proposes is to make clear facts of the deepest spiritual life and to formulate a doctrine which leads its followers to the path of inward experience.

Or as Thomas Merton put it, Zen is to theology as tennis is to mathematics.

I often ask myself why someone like Geisler, who is reputed to be such an intellect, misrepresents other-than-fundamentalist systems. But then I realize it's not important, what is important is my own sincerity and authenticity. But that's not always going to be comfortable to others.

More war on terror BS

While the folks on the lunatic fringe talk about bringing "morals" back in government, it turns out the government was not telling us the truth about the recent al Qaeda "number 3" arrrested.

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THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.

Al-Libbi’s arrest in Pakistan, announced last Wednesday, was described in the United States as “a major breakthrough” in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Bush called him a “top general” and “a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al- Qaeda network”. Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said he was “a very important figure”. Yet the backslapping in Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts, who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI’s most wanted list, nor on that of the State Department “rewards for justice” programme.

Another Libyan is on the FBI list — Anas al-Liby, who is wanted over the 1998 East African embassy bombings — and some believe the Americans may have initially confused the two. When The Sunday Times contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby, the wrong man.

“Al-Libbi is just a ‘middle-level’ leader,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French intelligence investigator and leading expert on terrorism finance. “Pakistan and US authorities have completely overestimated his role and importance. He was never more than a regional facilitator between Al-Qaeda and local Pakistani Islamic groups.”

According to Brisard, the arrested man lacks the global reach of Al-Qaeda leaders such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s number two, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, or Anas al-Liby.

Although British intelligence has evidence of telephone calls between al-Libbi and operatives in the UK, he is not believed to be Al-Qaeda’s commander of operations in Europe, as reported.

The only operations in which he is known to have been involved are two attempts to assassinate Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, in 2003. Last year he was named Pakistan’s most wanted man with a $350,000 (£185,000) price on his head.

No European or American intelligence expert contacted last week had heard of al-Libbi until a Pakistani intelligence report last year claimed he had taken over as head of operations after Khalid Shaikh Mohammad’s arrest. A former close associate of Bin Laden now living in London laughed: “What I remember of him is he used to make the coffee and do the photocopying.”

Of course this is not surprising; we're talking about people who wouldn't know what honest work is if they saw people actually working.

Geisler, Aquinas, Dogen, and I

I have nothing profound to blog this weekend, but this post from Carter gave me a smidgen of fodder, a paen to Norman Geisler.

First of all, I'm a bit suspicious of any religious figure who owns his own domain name. Does Benedict XVI own his own domain? Nope, as Richard Bennet points out, somebody beat him to it. The Dalai Lama? Surely you jest. On the other hand, Jerry Falwell does, and http://www.joshmcdowell.com redirects you here, a McDowell site.

These guys with their own domain names, I think, already have their rewards, as somebody once said.

Of course, one could say that I have my own domain name, sort of. But that shows you exactly where I'm coming from. ;-) Sometimes you gotta put up a big neon sign, I think.

When Geisler's name comes up on the net, the first thing I'm drawn to is this bit on the Internet Infidels:

On January 27, 1987, I was led as a lamb to the slaughter, having been set up to debate the Rev. Dr. Norman Geisler of Dallas Theological Seminary on the subject, "Humanism vs. Christianity." Dubbed by its promoters as "The Main Event," the debate was held in the ballroom at Auburn University, a room overflowing with perhaps 2,000 people, some of whom had been bused in, courtesy of local churches.

Geisler had trouble staying on the general topic, focusing rather on abortion, in the most grisly terms. Humanists, he tells, are right in there with the Nazis in disregard of human life. Their despicable deeds are made likely, if not inevitable, by their moral relativism. How much firmer is the ground under Christians, who stand on moral absolutes!

During rebuttal, I said that my favorite moral absolute in scripture was in Luke 6:30 where Jesus is reported to have said, "Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again." I then turned to the Rev. Dr. Geisler and asked him for his money. Since it was not forthcoming, I knelt on one knee and begged for it, trying to cover all spiritual bases.

With a pale look about his gills, he finally pulled out a dollar bill and waved it wanly at me to which I said, "No, not a dollar; I want all of your money. But I'm not mean; I won't keep your wallet or credit cards." Geisler did not, in fact, comply with the moral absolute in Luke 6:30 (also see Matthew 5:42 and Luke 6:35). If he had given me his money, I would have taken it and kept it. Thus, we would both have been blessed, I with extra cash and he with a clear conscience for having met the challenge of obeying a moral absolute of his lord. I fear his conscience still troubles him over this episode, something I would gladly have spared him by keeping his money.

Bibliolaters are so fond of moral absolutes that I believe the rest of us should oblige them by giving them every opportunity to act thereupon. When you next hear a Christian extolling the rock of moral absolutes upon which he or she stands, go for the cash. It has a sobering effect that may in the long run be beneficial.

I keep hoping Geisler will come back to Auburn.

But let me go a bit deeper than that, so I can write about the purported title of this post.
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I've heard a lot of Geisler on the radio, and of course on the 'net. I've read McDowell's book on "evidence demanding a veridict" or what-not which quotes Geisler as an argument from authority extensively, and McDowell's book is the sloppiest, most intellectually dishonest book I have ever read on any religious topic, with the possible exception of various passages of scripture (I'll leave you to infer which. I'm not an expert on Hinduism.) Geisler is a key ingredient in McDowell's tome, which helps achieve the summum bonum of le bad theology in much the same way as Bela Lugosi helped Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space" make it the standard for le bad cinema.

Geisler is a useful read because - and soley because- he helps hone one's skills on critical thinking, in much the same way as Thomas Aquinas, to whom Geisler is credited with mushing into evangelicaldom. From one of Carter's commenters:

I have studied with Dr. Geisler and it is correct to say that he writes many popular level works yet is an erudite thinker...especially in Thomistic philosophy.

Ah, so. So Geisler's brainy 'cause he explains Aquinas to these guys?
Uh, I never understood why Aquinas was so revered, either, frankly. Bertrand Russell wrote about him in A History of Western Philosophy:

In all Catholic educational institutions that teach philosophy his system has to be taught as the only right one; this has been the rule since a rescript of 1879 by Leo XIII...

In most respects, he follows Aristotle so closely that the Stagyrite has, among Catholics, almost the authority of one of the Fathers; to criticize him in matters of pure philosophy has come to be thought almost impious. This was not always the case.

I am also, I'd note, inherently suspicious of any philosopher who's taught as the "only philosophically correct" philosopher. As I note below, when one tries to use techniques that aren't involved in debating one on their points, (and putting Aquinas as "the theologically correct philospher" is one of them) clearly that is an indication of weakness.

So is, I might add, voting Democrats out of a church, which has jumped into the MSM today.

Anyway, back to Aquinas: you can read him on-line here. But Russell demolished Aquinas, as have many others over the years.

I always find it interesting that Aquinas was a contemporary (born 1225 or 1227; died 1274) of Dogen (born 1200, died 1253), with a gap of about 27 years, and both lived around 50 years or so.

So the greatest philosopher of Catholicism, and of many evangelicals was a contemporary of one of the greatest philosphers of Japan and Zen Buddhism.

Dogen's thinking, though while sometimes focused on the practical and instructional, very often is highly non-linear and abundnant in metaphors, especially when compared to Aquinas. In fact, you could say that all of Dogen is metaphorical, but he'd hit you and say, no every last bit of it is logical and literally true. From the last link:

Now in Great Song China there are careless fellows who form groups; they cannot be set straight by the few true masters. They say that the statement, "The eastern mountains travel on water," or Nanquan's story of a sickle,* is illogical; what they mean is that any words having to do with logical thought are not Buddha ancestors' Zen stories, and that only illogical stories are Buddha ancestors' expressions. In this way they consider Huangbo's staff and Linji's shout as being beyond logic and unconcerned with thought; they regard these as great enlightenments that precede the arising of form. "Ancient masters used expedient phrases, which are beyond understanding, to slash entangled vines."*: People who say this have never seen a true master and they have no eye of understanding. They are immature, foolish fellows not even worth discussing. In China these last two or three hundred years, there have been many groups of bald-headed rascals. What a pity! The great road of Buddha ancestors is crumbling. People who hold this view are not even as good as listeners of the Small Vehicles* and are more foolish than those outside the way. They are neither lay people nor monks, neither human nor heavenly beings. They are more stupid than animals who learn the Buddha way. The illogical stories mentioned by you bald-headed fellows are only illogical for you, not for Buddha ancestors. Even though you do not understand, you should not neglect studying the Buddha ancestors' path of understanding. Even if it is beyond understanding in the end, your present understanding is off the mark. I have personally seen and heard many people like this in Song China. How sad that they do not know about the phrases of logical thought, or penetrating logical thought in the phrases and stories! When I laughed at the them in China, thy had no response and remained silent. Their idea about illogical words is only a distorted view. Even if there is no teacher to show you the original truth, your belief in spontaneous enlightenment is heretical.

This is from a man, understand, whose own spontaneous enlightenment story- "spontaneous" of course after years of practice- is well known. At each word, Dogen challenges us to examine our preconceived notions about everything. Aquinas tells you like he sees it, and pronounces himself as saying only this way.

So, in my estimation, Dogen is the greater philospher, since Dogen is more concerned about the real inquiry than Aquinas, who just wants to tell you his answer.

Aquinas's brand of philosphy is not worth an hour's trouble, as Pascal would have said, but Dogen's brand of philosophy is something to help you live and to be an active participant in your life.

On the other hand, I'm Rinzai and not Soto but those are differences without much distinction.

What some folks do when they can't win an argument and cannot admit defeat, either.

Link

An American Jesuit who is a frequent television commentator on Roman Catholic issues resigned yesterday under orders from the Vatican as editor of the Catholic magazine America because he had published articles critical of church positions, several Catholic officials in the United States said.

The order to dismiss the editor, the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, was issued by the Vatican's office of doctrinal enforcement - the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - in mid-March when that office was still headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter, said. Soon after, Pope John Paul II died and Cardinal Ratzinger was elected pope, taking the name Benedict XVI...

America magazine, a weekly based in New York City, is a moderate-to-liberal journal published by the Jesuits, a religious order known for producing the scholars who run many of the church's universities and schools. The Jesuits prize their independence, but like everyone in the church, even their top official, the Jesuit superior general in Rome, ultimately answers to the pope.

In recent years America has featured articles representing more than one side on sensitive issues like same-sex marriage, relations with Islam and whether Catholic politicians who support abortion rights should be given communion. Church officials said it was the publication of some of these articles that prompted Vatican scrutiny.

And that's why we have freedom of speech in this country- and almost entirely unlimited, too.

Because dogma bites.

I should also add that I was told by a Jesuit once that there is a great deal of dissatisfaction with JPII, that he had way overstepped his bound.

I think Ratzinger's going to attempt to do to Benedict XV what John Paull II did for John XXIII & Paul VI.

This seems to be a popular gambit in the religion/politics world today. Seems a bunch of folks are hell-bent on telling others what to do, what to say, how to exercise their liberties, and they'll use coercion if they don't like how you behave, though it be legal.

They're cheap extortionists, nothing more, nothing less.

Interesting sites on Shaolin temple and gung fu

Here and here.

It is amazing what you can run into in the Pacific Northwest.