Filed under: Uncategorized
A couple of days ago, I posted on the possibility of the first Muslim representative in the House being sworn in on the Koran rather than the Bible. Instapundit has some thought on this as well:
I’M WATCHING EUGENE VOLOKH AND DENNIS PRAGER on this topic — of which I was only vaguely aware — of whether newly-elected Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison should take his oath of office on a Bible or on the Koran. Volokh seems to have the better of this argument by a huge margin. In fact, I think that Prager’s argument that oaths must be on the Bible is absolutely nonsensical. But weirdly Paula Zahn keeps cutting Eugene off. I’m sorry, but Prager’s reference to “the American Bible” as the root of the Constitution is ridiculous. What’s “the American Bible?” And whatever happened to that bit from the Constitution about “no religious test”?
I think he makes a good point. Again, I’d like to have incoming officials be sworn in on the Bible, but if they’re non-believers, then they should be given the option to be sworn in using the Constitution. Maybe that’s just me?
Filed under: Uncategorized
For crying out loud! Amidst all the immigration reform talks of the past few months, there was much discussion of the impracticality of trying every illegal alien that was caught through our court system. There seemed to be general agreement that there was time nor money sufficient enough for such an approach. Yet our courts have enough time to hear this case brought to our attention via the Drudge Report:
Guacamole lawsuit: Where’s the avocado?
The Associated Press
Posted November 30 2006, 8:24 AM ESTLOS ANGELES — Wholly guacamole?
That’s the issue in a fraud lawsuit filed Wednesday against Kraft Foods, Inc., by a Los Angeles woman who claims the company’s avocado dip doesn’t qualify as guacamole.
“It just didn’t taste avocadoey,” said Brenda Lifsey, who used Kraft Dips Guacamole in a three-layer dip last year. “I looked at the ingredients and found there was almost no avocado in it.”
She is seeking unspecified damages and a Superior Court order barring Kraft from calling its dip guacamole. Her suit seeks class-action status.
The Kraft product contains modified food starch, coconut and soybean oils, corn syrup and food coloring. It is less than 2 percent avocado, which in traditional recipes is the main ingredient of the Mexican dish.
The government doesn’t have any requirements on how much avocado a product must contain to be labeled guacamole, said Michael Herndon, a spokesman for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Northfield, Ill.-based Kraft said it had not seen the lawsuit but believed it was not deceiving anyone.“We think customers understand that it isn’t made from avocado,” Claire Regan, Kraft Foods’ vice president of corporate affairs, told the Los Angeles Times. “All of the ingredients are listed on the label for consumers to reference.”
However, the company will relabel the product to make it clearer that the dip is guacamole-flavored, Regan said.
We can only hope this vicious guacamole-like product will be removed from shelves immediately.
I had intended to post on this report from Wizbang that a woman was allegedly raped by a man who she met via an online dating site, but this was just too good to not post. What is wrong with people. Idiots.
Filed under: Uncategorized
*Updated
I just downloaded the Windows Live Writer blogging software, so I figured I’d give it a quick try.
Exams and essays will be hindering my ability to post for the remainder of the day, but I will try to be back at some point this evening or tomorrow morning with an update.
*so it appears that this beast works quite well, including a fully functional Technorati tag component. Nice. Very nice. For anybody who has used Windows Live Writer and has some tips, feel free to leave a comment!
The real trick I’ve had with programs in the past has been block quoting, so let us see how block quoting works, using a portion of an essay I recently wrote:
The significant role of emotions in literature extended also to Romantic music through the works of such musical giants as Ludwig van Beethoven and Joseph Haydn. Even today, music allows composer, performer and audience alike to allow individual emotions and insights to find meaning in each note, chord and movement, enabling us to, “pierce the innermost mystery of the universe.”[1] It should be of no surprise that Romantics would be drawn to the power of music which has the ability to, “convey an infinite range of impressions, feelings and thoughts [making it] the ideal art of Romanticism.”[2]
Wow, it even includes a footnote editor!! So far so good…
[1] J.L. Talmon, Romanticism and Revolt: Europe 1815-1848 (Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1967), 147.
[2] Talmon, 146.
This is bound to get the ACLU all upset. Sister Toldjah covers the new Dennis Prager column discussing the possibility of using the Koran to swear in freshman representative Keith Ellison (D-MN). Here’s his column as posted on Sister Toldjah:
Devotees of multiculturalism and political correctness who do not see how damaging to the fabric of American civilization it is to allow Ellison to choose his own book need only imagine a racist elected to Congress. Would they allow him to choose Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” the Nazis’ bible, for his oath? And if not, why not? On what grounds will those defending Ellison’s right to choose his favorite book deny that same right to a racist who is elected to public office?
Of course, Ellison’s defenders argue that Ellison is merely being honest; since he believes in the Koran and not in the Bible, he should be allowed, even encouraged, to put his hand on the book he believes in. But for all of American history, Jews elected to public office have taken their oath on the Bible, even though they do not believe in the New Testament, and the many secular elected officials have not believed in the Old Testament either. Yet those secular officials did not demand to take their oaths of office on, say, the collected works of Voltaire or on a volume of New York Times editorials, writings far more significant to some liberal members of Congress than the Bible. Nor has one Mormon official demanded to put his hand on the Book of Mormon. And it is hard to imagine a scientologist being allowed to take his oath of office on a copy of “Dianetics” by L. Ron Hubbard.
So why are we allowing Keith Ellison to do what no other member of Congress has ever done — choose his own most revered book for his oath?
The answer is obvious — Ellison is a Muslim. And whoever decides these matters, not to mention virtually every editorial page in America, is not going to offend a Muslim. In fact, many of these people argue it will be a good thing because Muslims around the world will see what an open society America is and how much Americans honor Muslims and the Koran.
This argument appeals to all those who believe that one of the greatest goals of America is to be loved by the world, and especially by Muslims because then fewer Muslims will hate us (and therefore fewer will bomb us).
But these naive people do not appreciate that America will not change the attitude of a single American-hating Muslim by allowing Ellison to substitute the Koran for the Bible. In fact, the opposite is more likely:
Ellison’s doing so will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones, as Islamists, rightly or wrongly, see the first sign of the realization of their greatest goal — the Islamicization of America.
This is a complicated issue, no? On the one hand, why would we feel more comfortable about any person–Muslim, Jew, Satanist or atheist–taking an oath with his/her hand on the Bible if this individual does not believe in the words that are held within it? They might as well take the oath with a hand on the garbage can.
On the other hand, I feel even less comfortable if a person takes the oath on a book whose contents I do not A) know B) agree with or C) fully understand. Mr. Prager posed the idea of a racist wanting to swear himself in on Mein Kampf. This is problematic because, though few of us have read it, most of us understand that this is not something we want our representatives swearing to uphold. A complicated issue indeed.
But have no fear, for I have a solution. If folks do not want to take their oath with a hand on the Bible, why not have use the Constitution? Just an idea…other thoughts?
Without political overtones? Apparently not. From Stones Cry Out:
Mocking Religion, Happy Feet is Not a Friendly Little Film
I can’t remember coming out of movie theater more furious than I did this Thanksgiving holiday after watching the animated and PG-rated Happy Feet. With relatives visiting from around the country, how could we go wrong taking both kids and adults to a cute little penguin story with lots of singing and dancing, with warm and fuzzy animal themes?
I’m not a movie prude; we check out many kinds of movies. And I expect lost anything coming out of Hollywood, with any rating, to include something contrary to my values. I let most of it roll off my back. But with Happy Feet, I didn’t expect my conservative Christian family to be assaulted with what we all recognized as a anti-Christian screed, with open mockery of traditional Christian preaching against values and lifestyles contrary to church teachings. It was abundantly clear that Happy Feet substituted homosexuality with dancing as the “different” lifestyle that was the unfair target of an Inquisition on ice. It was Dirty Dancing and Footloose all over again, but with the rhetoric and situation developed to make religious criticism of homosexuality counter to everything good and pleasing.
Did they think Christians wouldn’t notice? I suppose the creators just didn’t care. We had four families attending Happy Feet, with children of all ages. Independently, parents concluded during the film that they would walk out if it wouldn’t be a disruption to others in the large group of family members who had come to the movies together.
Clearly, we should have all left together.
The creators of Happy Feet should have taken less time mocking Christians and more time making sense out of the wild leaps at the end of the film, when the dancing penguin so impresses crowds in the aquarium that they release him back into the wild. And when the community of penguins gets happy feet, the commentators of the world decide its time to stop disrupting their food supply. (Of course the humans are to blame for all the animal woes; a long movie-making tradition that goes back to Bambi).
Wild leaps, even with happy feet.
For Christians who have not seen Happy Feet and are considering it as a friendly, family film—make another choice. This film is not good for children or families, and it is another Hollywood example of open mockery of Christian traditions.
Now I have not seen this film, and I have no plans to see it, nor did I have plans to see it before this scathing review. Still, I can’t help but wonder if Mr. Jim is reading too much into the film? I somehow doubt it, though.
Apparently we Americans are about to see a change in our change. The new one dollar coin, set to be released in February ‘07, will relegate the phrase “In God We Trust” to the thin edge. From WND:
The new gold-colored dollar pieces, featuring images of U.S. presidents, will move the inscription from the face of the coin to the thin edge, along with the year and the previous national motto, “E Pluribus Unum,” Latin for “Out of Many, One.”The official reason for the design change? To allow space for larger portraits of the presidents on the face and the Statue of Liberty on the reverse, according to the Mint.
The new coins will be the same size as the 1979 Susan B. Anthony and the 2000-2002 Sacajawea.
For the first time the coin will also say “$1″ instead of “One Dollar.”
Images of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
are scheduled to appear on the coins in 2007, with a different president appearing every three months.The series will honor four different presidents per year, in the order they served in office.
I don’t like this one bit. I don’t understand the need to change things like this. The relegation of “In God We Trust” at least makes sense–I mean, perhaps the nutso anti-God folks have taken over the treasury and are pushing to correct all the political uncorrectness that comes with trusting the Lord? But what about E Pluribus Unum? Who could that possibly be bothering, ‘cuz I surely don’t buy into the idea that the designers were simply trying to make more room for the Presidents’ heads.
I’m not even sure why every few years we have this attempted return to the one dollar coin. Who cares? Ole George looks just fine on a wrinkly, tattered bill, doesn’t he?
Filed under: Shepherd University
The Shepherd Rams Football team has advanced to the Quarter finals. I was here Saturday for the game, and what a game it was. The Quarter finals will be hosted by Shepherd at Ram Stadium this Saturday. For anybody who cares, tickets are available at the Shepherd Bookstore.
Filed under: Uncategorized
A little something fun to get the week started. Via the Anchoress:
| What Kind of Reader Are You?
Your Result: Dedicated Reader
You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more. |
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| Literate Good Citizen |
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| Book Snob |
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| Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm |
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| Fad Reader |
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| Non-Reader |
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| What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz |
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I don’t know how accurate this thing really is dedicated reader? yes, I think so…literate good citizen? Yea, I’d like to think so. Book snob? For the most part, I don’t really get into those so called “fad books,” I don’t read much fiction and I’m pretty picky about my non-fiction. But OCD bookworm? No. I don’t think so. I like to read, but sometimes I just don’t feel like it! And most of what I read is in the form of periodicals and online blogs.
Here’s another one:
| What American accent do you have?
Your Result: The Midland
“You have a Midland accent” is just another way of saying “you don’t have an accent.” You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. |
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| The West |
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| Boston |
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| North Central |
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| The South |
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| The Northeast |
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| Philadelphia |
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| The Inland North |
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| What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes |
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I have a good accent for radio or TV! I’m not surprised about this one. I think it’s a product of living in this particular area of WV. I’m too far north to get the Southern accent, but too far south to get the Northern accent and so I have some combination thereof.
Anyway, I’ll try to post regularly over the next two weeks, but as the semester winds down, the intensity winds up and so I’ll be very busy with tests, last minute assignments and a few end of the year essays.
Back with more later this morning…
Filed under: Uncategorized
Well here it is…Thanksgiving 2006. It still doesn’t seem like it could possibly be Thanksgiving Day, although I know it is because it’s 9:58, the house smells like deviled eggs and I’ve already made a pot of green beans.
At any rate, there is a lot to be thankful for this year. So here’s to my family, friends, and my girlfriend. I’m also thankful for American soldiers who are protecting our freedom and this country, for God, for the Constitution and for the turkey and pumpkin pie I’m going to devour in just a couple of hours.
For a special Thanksgiving treat, here’s the Swedish Chef preparing some delicious squirrel stew. Yum.
Be safe and have a happy Thanksgiving Day.
