12.28.2018

Portland's Antifa



Angry White People with Money

 Excerpt:

The thing about places like Portland and San Francisco is that they aren’t nice. They have a reputation for being wooly and hippieish and silly, but they are in fact very angry places, full of very angry people. They are also highly segregated places in ways that the South and Southwest really aren’t. Angry white people with money make the world go ’round, apparently.

... There isn’t anything unpeaceable about the exercise of First Amendment rights. I don’t care for mass protests myself — a large crowd of people all facing one direction and chanting seems to me more properly part of a religious exercise than a political one. But if that’s your thing, then by all means go and bark at the moon. But when people start blocking traffic, pounding on the hoods of cars, damaging property, committing assaults, that’s a different thing. And I don’t think there’s really much of a First Amendment issue presented by policing ordinary crime when that crime happens in the course of a political action. ...

They are the American Left’s answer to the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale, down to the penchant for black shirts. They perform the same function: using violence and intimidation to silence political opposition and to terrorize the political opposition. “Fascist” is a notoriously difficult word to define, but they are as close to a textbook case as you are going to find. ...

Utopian political movements — and all totalitarian movements are basically utopian — love the world, except for all the people in it. They all are antiliberal and they all seek to degrade the individual and individualism. Their liturgy requires an object of adoration, and it’s usually the same object: the People, or, as American populists like to put it, We the People. For traditional nationalists, it’s the Nation in abstract and idealized form; for socialists, it’s always been the proletariat, who apparently are the only people included in the People. If you’re acting in the name of the People, you can brutalize persons. The interests of the People require a gulag, the interests of the People require a death camp, and if the people have to suffer for the People, then so be it. ...

One of the lessons of Animal Farm is: You can’t reason a pig out of its pigness. T. S. Eliot once described the folly of “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.” And then he adds: “But the man that is will shadow the man that pretends to be.” Citizenship is hard work. Being a subject is a lot easier. That’s part of the allure of being a subject of a totalitarian state. Under totalitarianism, the state does all of the political work, and people are just livestock to be milked, shorn, and, occasionally, slaughtered. Some people are very comfortable being livestock and really embrace that bovine-ovine role with all they’ve got. People have the power to start being human whenever they want. But work, including the work of citizenship, is a means, and people have to decide for themselves that the end is worth the work. Right now, these blackshirts and their admirers and imitators are comfortable in their intellectual sties.
Antifa Mob Terrorize City, Portland Police Stand Down While Law Abiding Citizens Can Go To Hell
Excerpt:

Antifa stopped and rerouted traffic, terrorized and assaulted motorists, beat people up and trashed their vehicles while the Portland police made zero arrests. Nope nothing to see here folks, just move alone. Only a few liberal progressives exercising their First Amendment right to riot and law abiding citizens can go to hell.

Mayor Wheeler “publicly” supported the Portland police for their “uninvolved actions” which was why Patriot Prayer and other protesters called on him to be removed from office, as he is apart of the aiding and abetting of these domestic terrorists.

It’s another sad day in America when Americans have to patrol against the corrupt officials who swore an oath to serve and protect their people and their cities. They are apart of the deep state socialist agenda, once hidden, now blatantly in your face.
Comment: The Antifa are true fascists!

12.25.2018

Der Spiegel, Fergus Falls, the Resurrection, and Falsifiability







The Relotius Scandal Reaches a Small Town in America 

Excerpt:

Here are the "most absurd lies" cited by Anderson and Krohn:


  1. The Sleeping Dragon

    Relotius described the town in his piece as being located in a dark forest that looked as if dragons might live in it. At the entrance to the town, he wrote, there was a sign reading: "Welcome to Fergus Falls, home of damn good folks."

    "Fergus Falls is located on the prairie," write Anderson and Krohn. They note that there are hardly any trees. And the town sign simply reads: "Welcome to Fergus Falls."
  2. The gun-toting, virgin city administrator

    In Relotius' story, the 27 year-old city administrator, Andrew Bremseth, is said to have never had a girlfriend, to always carry a 9mm Beretta pistol, and to have a preference for 18th century French philosophers.

    None of that is true, Bremseth says according to Anderson and Krohn.
  3. The town is obsessed with 'American Sniper'

    Relotius wrote that the Fergus Falls movie theater was still showing the war film "American Sniper" two years after its release.

    "This anecdote that supported Relotius' exaggerated story of an immigrant-fearing, gun obsessed small town one was the easiest to fact check and yet the strangest, most random lie for him to craft," write Anderson and Krohn. The two writers note that they contacted the manager of the cinema, who told them that "American Sniper" played for about a month, from Jan. 16 to Feb. 19, 2015.
  4. Neil, the coal plant employee that doesn't exist

    Neil Becker, a blonde, 57-year-old who works in a coal-fired power plant, appears in the article and is even depicted in a photo.

    "We all know that guy," write Anderson and Krohn. "It's the one and only Doug Becker, who works for UPS and ran the Fergus Falls Fitness Center for years."
  5. The mixed-up case of Israel and Maria

    "Maria Rodriguez, a mother and local restaurant owner from Mexico, who came to the USA years ago, also saw Trump as a savior," wrote Relotius. In the story as written by Relotius, she suffered from kidney disease, the treatment for which was getting more expensive, and had a 15 year-old son named Israel who was being bullied at school.

    The illness was made up, according to Anderson and Krohn. Maria Rodriguez's son is named Pablo, not Israel, and Maria is not the owner, but a waitress at the restaurant. Relotius took a photo of Pablo, but never spoke with him.
  6. The view from the Viking Café

    Relotius wrote that a coal-fired power plant with its six smokestacks was visible from the Viking Café.

    The Viking Café, though, has almost no windows, as Anderson and Krohn point out, other than a pair of small windows in front that look out onto the street. Anderson and Krohn write that the power plant is located about 2 miles (3 kilometers) away, behind a neighborhood on a hill, and it has only one smokestack.
  7. Library lies

    In Relotius' article, City Administrator Andrew Bremseth is described as offering courses like "iPad for Beginners" along with monthly quiz nights. His favorite TV-series, Relotius writes, is "Game of Thrones."

    These descriptions were entirely made up, according to Anderson and Krohn.
  8. High school security

    Entry to the local high school is secured by three armored glass doors and a weapons-scanner, according to Relotius' reporting.

    In reality, the school has two sets of entry doors, not three. Anderson and Krohn say they are reasonable sure that the claim that the doors are made of bulletproof glass is an exaggeration.
  9. Secret Super Bowl viewing at the Brewery?

    Relotius relates how City Administrator Andrew Bremseth watched the Super Bowl at the Union Pizza restaurant.

    The Super Bowl takes place on a Sunday -- and Union Pizza is closed on Sundays. The owner of the restaurant was taken aback when Anderson and Krohn asked him if Union Pizza might have opened for a private Super Bowl party. Bremseth told the two authors that he did not watch the Super Bowl there.
  10. The awesome "Western Evening"… that no one was invited to.

    Relotius' story contains a description of a summer party where all the town residents dressed up in Western gear like cowboy boots and hats. Sand and straw were allegedly spread out on the veranda of a bar and sides of beef were grilled over a fire.

    "We find this hilarious, if not a little inspiring for a future event idea," write Anderson and Krohn. No such party has ever taken place in Fergus Falls.
  11. The High School New York trip

    Relotius claimed that the local high school took a trip to New York and visited Trump Tower, but not the Statue of Liberty.

    Anderson and Krohn couldn't find any evidence of a trip to New York by a school group in 2017, and the schoolchildren whom he quoted couldn't be found either.
German magazine takes another shot at accurately profiling Fergus Falls - Fergus Falls came together to help Der Spiegel set record straight about city. 

Excerpt:

Just days after Der Spiegel went public with the news that Claas Relotius, an award-winning journalist, had made up a story out of Fergus Falls in March 2017, it sent its Washington, D.C., bureau chief, Christoph Scheuermann, to the northwestern Minnesota city to put together an accurate portrayal of the Otter Tail County community.

After nearly four days of interviews, Scheuermann’s story was published online Sunday, and it provided a much different — and far more positive — account than Relotius’ fictitious version.

“Scheuermann was able to do a much better job in the three days he was in town than Relotius did in five weeks,” said Michele Anderson, who spent the past 18 months fact-checking the original story.

The trouble started in early 2017 when Relotius arrived to profile a rural Midwestern community in a county that had voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential race. The idea, Der Spiegel later said, was to give readers better insight into Americans.

Relotius’ story ultimately included many falsehoods, among them — that he was greeted at the city limits by a sign that read: “Mexicans Keep Out.” Schierer said Monday that he found that whopper, stated in the opening paragraphs, the most offensive.

The article then went from bizarre to just laughable, he said.

Relotius fabricated names and descriptions of the city and in some cases, made up quotes. He inaccurately reported what movie was playing in town when he visited, described a Super Bowl party at a brewery that never occurred, and wrote that high school students skipped a trip to the Statue of Liberty in New York to see Trump Tower, when they didn’t.

Schierer said he also took great exception to Relotius’ portrayal of City Administrator Andrew Bremseth, who the writer said wore a pistol holstered to his belt while at work. He also wrote that Bremseth had a stuffed wild boar in his office.

“I don’t know anybody with more character and integrity than Andrew,” said Schierer. “He took the attack very personally, but I knew the truth would ultimately come out.”

Bremseth and others in the story contacted Der Spiegel shortly after the article was published to make the magazine aware of the mistakes. For the next year and a half, Fergus Falls residents Anderson and Jake Krohn fact-checked the 12-page article and notified the magazine’s editorial office in Hamburg of all the errors, but never received a response.

After one of Relotius’ colleagues raised questions in November about his work, however, Der Spiegel said it investigated. The writer later confessed that he had invented entire passages and made up some quotes. After Der Spiegel announced last week that Relotius had produced a series of false stories, Anderson and Krohn pointed out on a website the inaccuracies they had found.

“Scheuermann apologized for what happened at the magazine and said he was here to set the record straight,” said Anderson, rural program director for Springboard for the Arts. “He was very sincere.”

Anderson introduced Scheuermann to several people who had been misportrayed in the first story, including a fictitious man named Neil Becker. Relotius said “Neil” Becker was a hardworking coal shoveler at the local power plant. Scheuermann wrote about Doug Becker, who “ran a gym … for 34 years and is familiar with almost every airport in the United States”.

“I first thought the article was a piece of satire,” Becker is quoted as saying in Scheuermann’s article. “I don’t feel offended at all.”

Scheuermann also spoke with Maria Rodriguez, who initially was described as a Trump voter and restaurant worker suffering from kidney disease who was running out of money. He learned that Rodriquez actually is quite healthy, and operates a restaurant in Alexandria with her husband. She didn’t vote, she told Scheuermann, because she doesn’t have a U.S. passport and is ineligible to do so.

Scheuermann said in a phone interview Monday that having to follow up on his former colleague’s mess was the worst assignment he has had in years. His article ran online Sunday. He said a longer piece will be published later this week.

“I didn’t imagine axes being thrown at me when I came to town, but I did expect resentment and anger,” he said. “People invited me to have a seat at their dinner table and were happy to share what Fergus Falls is about.”

He emphasized that he wasn’t on a “diplomatic mission,” but still needed to find out what went wrong during the initial story. He said it was weird to walk around town and see a completely different picture of Fergus Falls.

“People didn’t gloss over the fact that they have some issues with closed shops, a train station and a shopping mall,” he said. “It’s the sort of issue many rural towns are facing right now. But it’s a working town and they pride themselves living there.”

Scheuermann also didn’t see any hint of the prejudices that Relotius described. He called the fictitious story “a journalistic disaster,” and said he understood why Bremseth is still upset.


Comment: Why I found this interesting this week and today in particular: Relotius' story was falsifiable! It could be tested and verified or invalidated. More on here.

This relates to Christianity. See Christianity, the World’s Most Falsifiable Religion
If I decided to start a religion, deceptively or not, I would not make false claims to recent historic events that did not happen. Why? Because I know those claims could be tested. Also, I would not give details about the time, place, and people involved. More than that, I would not invite contemporaries to investigate these claims. For example, if I were to say today that in 1965 there was a man named Titus who was born in Guthrie, OK and traveled about Oklahoma City doing many miracles and gaining a significant following, this could easily be falsified. I would not say that Mary Fallin, the governor of Oklahoma, along with Tom Coburn, US Senator from Oklahoma, had Titus electrocuted. I would not detail that the electrocution was in Bricktown on January 13, 1968 at 9am. I wouldn’t claim that Titus rose from the dead and gained a significant following throughout Oklahoma City which has spread across America. Why wouldn’t I make these claims as the foundation of my new religion? Because they can be easily tested and falsified. This religion could not possibly get off the ground. If I were to make up a religion, all the events which support the religion (if any) would be private and beyond testing.

This is why you don’t have religions based on historic events. They are all, with the exception of Christianity, based on private encounters which cannot be falsified or subjective ideas which are beyond inquiry. The amazing thing about Christianity is that there is so much historic data to be tested. Christianity is, by far, the most falsifiable worldview there is. Yet, despite this, Christianity flourished in the first century among the very people who could test its claims. And even today, it calls on us to “come and see” if the claims are true.

The only reason why I can say Christianity survived in the midst of such historic volatility is because it is true. And this is exactly what I would expect if there were an all-powerful God who created and loves this world. When he intervenes, he makes a significant enough footprint that historic inquiry is demanded. Think about that next time you are critiquing the Christian faith. The only reason you can is because it is the only religion that has opened itself up to such critique. Simply put, Christianity is the most falsifiable religion there is and yet it has survived. Why?

Related: I received for Christmas and am reading it today: Peter J. Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels?.


Williams' book is about the Gospels and not the epistles! But consider this from 1 Corinthians 15:6, "he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive," The witnesses to the resurrection, at the date of the writing (53-57 AD), were available to be interviewed! 

12.12.2018

Nice morning win


  • This win unfolded in an unusual way for me
  • It was a defensive game where I was not proactive
  • Black exchanged pieces with me, Rook for Rook, Bishop for Knight, Knight for Bishop, Queen for Queen and finally Black Bishop captured White Knight to itself being captured by White King
  • So then ... what remained?
  • Two Kings each with a consort of 7 Pawns
  • White had a good defense of the 3 Pawns to the left and
  • The White King gained the advantage by capturing the Black Pawn in column H
  • This permitted the White Pawn to advance and be promoted to Queen in column H
  • While I did not need a second Queen, I succumbed to overkill mode and gained a second
  • And then the win


12.09.2018

Lost my Queen but still prevailed


  • The intent of my last move, B1 to B7 was to move the Black King away from protecting Black Rook
  • But he had no where to go because of Pawn at E5

12.08.2018

Fell behind but rallied to win


  • I won by advancing a Pawn to promotion
  • Black Rook captured promoted Pawn-Queen and
  • White Queen captured the Black Rook to mate



A Fast Checkmate


The key:

  • Probably the White Pawn ladder at B1, C3, D4
  • The White King nicely tucked away at A1
  • There was tit for tat exchange of pieces and then
  • A White Pawn, protected by Rook, advanced and was promoted
  • It was a race to promote a Pawn and White won 
  • And then the game!


11.29.2018

Fell behind but managed a win!


  • The key was luring the Black King down to his end!
  • White King at E3 prevented Black Kings escape to F4
  • I lost a Knight early to a stupid mistake!
  • Note how all White Pawns are on white spaces (invalidating the Black Bishop)
  • Also note how the Black Bishop is locked in behind the scrimmage line


11.18.2018

Sunday night checkmate


  • Nice win tonight
  • Advanced White Pawn at F8 is probably the key ... preventing Black King's move out of check

11.13.2018

The True Cause of the California Fires






California's Devastating Fires Are Man-Caused -- But Not In The Way They Tell Us

Excerpt:

The Sacramento Bee editorial board blamed the Carr Fire foursquare on a man-caused buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In an editorial headlined, “The Carr Fire is a terrifying glimpse into California’s future,” they write, “This is climate change, for real and in real time. We were warned that the atmospheric buildup of man-made greenhouse gas would eventually be an existential threat.”

The Bee editorial board goes on to attack President Trump for proposing to end California’s exceptional waiver from federal law regarding auto emissions—in this case, California’s push to curtail tailpipe carbon dioxide, something never envisioned when the Clean Air Act was debated in 1970. At the time, the concern was pollution that directly harmed health rather than carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring gas exhaled by every living animal.

The problem with the Bee’s editorial is that making a passionate argument is no substitute for the truth.

In 2005 while a freshman California Assemblyman, I had the chance to visit Northern California and meet with the forest product industry professionals who grew, managed, and harvested trees on private and public lands. They told me of a worrisome trend started years earlier where both federal and state regulators were making it more and more difficult for them to do their jobs. As a result, timber industry employment gradually collapsed, falling in 2017 to half of what it was 20 years earlier, with imports from Canada, China, and other nations filling domestic need.

As timber harvesting permit fees went up and environmental challenges multiplied, the people who earned a living felling and planting trees looked for other lines of work. The combustible fuel load in the forest predictably soared. No longer were forest management professionals clearing brush and thinning trees.

But, fire suppression efforts continued. The result was accurately forecast by my forest management industry hosts in Siskiyou County in 2005: larger, more devastating fires—fires so hot that they sterilized the soil, making regrowth difficult and altering the landscape. More importantly, fires that increasingly threatened lives and homes as they became hotter and more difficult to bring under control.

In 2001, George E. Gruell, a wildlife biologist with five decades of experience in California and other Western states, authored the book, “Fire in Sierra Nevada Forests: A Photographic Interpretation of Ecological Change Since 1849.” Gruell’s remarkable effort compared hundreds of landscape photographs from the dawn of photography with photos taken from the same location 100 years later or more. The difference was striking. In the 1850s and 1860s, the typical Sierra landscape was of open fields of grass punctuated by isolated pine stands and a few scattered oak trees. The first branches on the pine trees started about 20 feet up—lower branches having been burned off by low-intensity grassfires. California’s Native American population had for years shaped this landscape with fire to encourage the grasslands and boost the game animal population.

As the Gold Rush remade modern California, timber was harvested and replanted. Fires were suppressed because they threatened homes as well as burned up a valuable resource. The landscape filled in with trees, but the trees were harvested every 30 to 50 years. In the 1990s, however, that cycle began to be disrupted with increasingly burdensome regulations. The timber harvest cycle slowed, and, in some areas, stopped completely, especially on the almost 60% of California forest land owned by the federal government. Federal lands have not been managed for decades, threatening adjacent private forests, while federal funds designated for forest maintenance have been "borrowed" for fire suppression expenses. The policies frequently reduce the economic value of the forest to zero. And, with no intrinsic worth remaining, interest in maintaining the forest declined, and with it, resources to reduce the fuel load.

Some two decades ago, California produced so much wood waste from its timber operations, including brush and small trees from thinning efforts, that the resulting renewable biomass powered electric generating plants across the length of the state. But cheap, subsidized solar power, combined with air quality concerns (wood doesn’t burn as cleanly as natural gas) and a lack of fuel due to cutbacks in logging, led to the closure of many biomass generators. What used to be burned safely in power generators is now burned in catastrophic fires. Including the growing capture and use of landfill methane as a fuel, California’s biomass energy generation last year was 22% lower than it was 25 years before.


... Whether global climate change is a problem that can be solved by California is a dubious proposition—one year’s worth of emission growth in China is greater than California’s total emissions. But the action needed to reduce the state’s growing forest fire threat would be the same regardless of one’s belief in any problems posed by climate change: start managing our forests again.


 Comment:  The canard of "Climate Change" is always the 'political' villain

11.11.2018

The 2020 Democratic Candidates

Hillary 4.0?

11.09.2018

On the persistence of "radical evil"



What World War I Taught the Clergy - ‘A terrified and angry pacifism,’ C.S. Lewis wrote, ‘is one of the roads that lead to war.’

Excerpt:


The catastrophe of World War I, which ended 100 years ago Sunday, reshaped more than geopolitics. It also transformed a generation of Western Christians from holy crusaders into antiwar activists. This shift in thinking, coinciding with the rise of European fascism, contributed to the outbreak of World War II.

Religious leaders on both sides of the conflict demonized one another and conferred divine legitimacy on their war aims. In October 1914, German theologians endorsed a letter by prominent intellectuals that declared Kaiser Wilhelm II’s war policy a defensive necessity. In turn the Allies, backed by their national churches, characterized the German leader as “the Beast of Berlin.” London’s Bishop Arthur Winnington-Ingram said churches had a duty “to mobilize the nation for a holy war.” Germany, he argued, had abandoned Christianity for paganism. “The god the German leaders worship is an idol of the earth,” intoned G.A. Studdert Kennedy, one of Britain’s best-known chaplains: “a crude and cruel monster who lives on human blood.”

Although officially secular, the French government welcomed the crusading rhetoric of the Catholic clergy and helped lead the nation into a union sacrée. American Baptist leader Samuel Batten captured the apocalyptic mood when he called the war “a continuation of Christ’s sacrificial service for the redemption of the world.”

Four years of mechanized slaughter left the righteous crusade looking like an unholy debacle. With European democracy in tatters, a profound sense of disillusionment descended. The clergy were particularly affected.
By the early 1920s, churches on both sides of the Atlantic passed hundreds of resolutions renouncing war. Membership in peace societies exploded. In 1924 the Chicago Federation of Churches, representing 15 denominations, declared itself “unalterably opposed to war.” A nationwide poll found 60% of clergymen opposed any future war and nearly half vowed not to serve as wartime military chaplains.

The pacifist outlook culminated in the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact. Signatories, including the U.S., Germany, Japan and France, agreed to abandon war as a tool of national policy. Church leaders mobilized for passage. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty in 1929. The Christian Century, liberal Protestantism’s leading journal, opined: “Today international war was banished from civilization.”

Yet within a decade, a series of political crises rendered the document moot. Japan invaded Manchuria, Mussolini marched into Ethiopia, and Hitler occupied the Rhineland and annexed Austria. Meanwhile in 1933, the University of Oxford’s debating society had decided overwhelmingly “that this House will under no circumstances fight for King and country.” Neither Britain nor France was in any mood to confront international aggression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt—with enthusiastic Christian support—signed the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936, banning military aid to any nation in wartime.

When Hitler orchestrated the Munich Agreement in 1938—a desperate act of democratic appeasement that dismembered Czechoslovakia for a promise of peace—church leaders rejoiced. “The peace of Munich was possible,” Jesuit priest John LaFarge Jr. wrote in the Catholic journal America, “because of the habits and methods of peacemaking learned through two decades of international intercourse in the halls of the League of Nations.” Within a year Germany invaded Poland.

Throughout the 1930s Christian leaders played down the differences between Western democracies and the fascist regimes in Italy and Germany. When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, Charles Clayton Morrison, editor of the Christian Century, denounced a potential Anglo-American alliance as “a war for imperialism.” Harry Emerson Fosdick, the popular social-gospel minister at New York’s Riverside Church, warned that American involvement in the war against Nazism would be “a colossal and futile disaster.”
Comment:Very good read

11.08.2018

The "unlucky tree" - the offense of the cross






Doug McLachlan's "unlucky tree" quote: "to the Romans the word 'crux' was so offensive that they referred to it euphemistically as 'suspended from the unlucky tree'"

The "unlucky tree"



From: Roman public life, A. H. J Greenidge

Cited in his message here

11.05.2018

Win before dinner


  • Similar to previous but as far as I recollect unique
  • Note how Black Bishop was boxed in and
  • How all White Pawns (save one) are on white squares

11.03.2018

A little different win


  • I made at least one mistake - losing a Pawn to the Black Bishop
  • Note at the end how defanged the Black Bishop is by nature of the fact that all (except one) White Pawns are on white spaces
  • I've used the White Knight post-position (F5) strategy before: protected by a Pawn
  • I boxed the King into moving to E8 ... then moved the Rock to checkmate position
  • I'm kind of proud of myself! (note at end how Black has 1 more Pawn than White)
  • Below: 2 mates in one evening




10.30.2018

The Ordination of Uncle Zeke



Down in the deep south lived a colored man known in his county as “Uncle Zeke.” He became a Christian and began to give his testimony and fill the pulpits of some of the churches in that area. He decided that if he was going to be a preacher, he should be ordained. Accordingly the preachers were called together in a council and ordination proceeded to get under way.

One of the preachers asked the question, “Uncle Zeke, does you know de Bible?”

“Does I know de Bible! Man, I knows de Bible from lid to lid and I knows de lid too, cause it says ‘Holy Bible.’”

Another preacher asked, “What’s yo’ favorite book of de Bible?”

“Well, I likes de book of Luke de best cause it contains de parable of de good Samaritan.”

“One of the preachers said, “Suppose you tells us the story of de good Samaritan.”

“Oh, yeah, there was a man going down de road from Jerusalem to Jericho. As he went down de road, he fell amon thieves and immediately de thorns rose up and choke him a hundred fold: but the angel of the Lawd strove with him and sit him free. Now about that time the Queen Aseba, she come by and give that man 30 pieces of silver. With that 30 pieces of silver he went out and bought hisself a schariot. He got in de schariot and drove furiously until he come to Jupurant tree which he caught his hair in de branches der of and der he hung many days and many nights, and the ravens brought him food ta eat and water ta drink. Till finally, one night Delilah come cut his hair off; and when he fell, he fell on stony ground- some 30 fold, some 60 fold, and some a hundred fold. “When he looked up, he saw a cloud what wudn’t no beggah than a mustard seed. And it commenst to rainin’ forty days and forty nights. But de Lawd prepared za great fish what swallowed him up for de duration of de great tribulation. Now when de seven years was complete that fish spit him out. When de Lawd had done fed him on manna and quail, he came up out of de cave and when he looked down he saw a great big giant- yeah, it was Golia, but he passed by on de other side. “As he went down the road further there was a man what told him to come get his supper. He said, ‘Man, I can’t come git my supper. I married a wife and I can’t come.’ That man went into de highways and byways and compel him git his supper. After he had eaten sumptiously, he said, ‘Did not my heart burn within me?’ “And he perceeded down the road and came to Jercho. He seen Jezebel up in de winder. He looked around and said, ‘Who is on de Lawd’s side?’ They said, ‘We is!’ He said, ‘Fling her down boys,’ and they flang her down. He said, ‘Flang her down again, boys,’ and they flang her down again. He said, ‘Flang her down again.’ and they flang he down again. He said, ‘Flang her down again!’ They took that gal to the top of the pinnacle of the Temple, and they flang that gal down 70 times 7, and of the fragments that remained, they picked up twelve baskets full.

“Now, they’s just one question I’d like to ask this council.”

“Uh, what that, Uncle Zeke?”

“Who’s wife she gonna be in the last days of judgment?”
Comment: I heard this for the first time this morning. Source . Image source

10.26.2018

Same winning players but a bit different


  • Obviously I opened up columns G and H
  • White Knight posted at F5 provided cover
  • Note nice protection by the White Pawns
  • Black King was forced from his corner and into checkmate

10.24.2018

Are Science and Faith Compatible?


  • Concept 1: Atheism is Self-Denying
    ... when an atheist reaches the conclusion that scientific naturalism is true, his conclusion has only the illusion of truth. Chemicals in the brain are responsible for the conclusion. Free will choice is an illusion according to scientific naturalism, there is no way to know what is true. According to atheism, a Christian has no choice but to believe in Christianity. It is just the specific mechanical unfolding of chemicals that created his Christian belief—a biochemical illusion. Same for any other worldview, including atheism. In any biochemical illusion of a thought conclusion, there may be programming influences from family, culture, and so forth, but they are also a part of this predetermined mechanical unfolding of chemicals ultimately resulting in the neurochemicals masquerading as the free will choice to decide upon a worldview. When we receive information that influences how we see the world, there is still no choice of how we will respond to that influence because everything, including thought and choice, is a result of a mechanical unfolding of chemicals. The influence is just another player in the illusion of volition. In the atheist’s philosophy of scientific naturalism, the processes of the physical world are chemically rigged from the beginning without any room for free will conclusions about what is or is not true. The problem for the atheist then becomes obvious: Any claim to truth must make an appeal beyond the deterministic unfolding of chemicals, posited by scientific naturalism. Otherwise, without transcendent validation, that truth conclusion is an illusion with no objective reliability, a simple result of ages of undirected chemical reactions. Scientific naturalism is logically self-denying. Atheism cannot rely upon its own conclusions because those conclusions would necessarily be only illusions of thought according to the limitations of scientific naturalism. Illusions are not reliable for suppositions of truth.
  • Concept 2: The Cosmological Conundrum
    If the universe has not always existed, then something had to bring it into existence. It is illogical to say that the universe could create itself because it was not around in the beginning. Nothing cannot make something.
  • Concept 3: The Programming Paradox
    We cannot expect such a designed program code to write itself by accident through random chemical events in nature any more than we could expect intelligent functional software to happen by accident without the intelligence of software programmers. There must be a Programmer for these biological software codes just as there must be a programmer for computer software codes. Furthermore, a designed code by definition indicates a personal designer, as does any deliberate design. Deliberation necessitates personal mind as well. Blind neo-Darwinian mechanisms cannot explain information that is necessary in every living cell from the very beginning of life, created fully operational!


10.23.2018

Twice in one day



  • The effectiveness of the Black Bishop was neutralized by White Pawn at E3
  • Corridor column G was opened up 
  • Permitting White Rooks to trap the Black King into mate
  • Black never threatened 
  • Had Black Pawn advanced from H6 to H5, Black King could have escaped



I've seen this one before

A bit like

Keys:

  • Note: I looked back at my victories and this one is unique to me.
  • Nice White Pawn defense
  • Black Bishop immobilized by having 7 Pawns on White spaces
  • Nice positioning of the Knight at F6: On a White space (immune from Bishop attack) and protected by Pawns

10.20.2018

John Walvoord on "Sin"

  1. Thirty-Three Words for Sin in the New Testament Part 1
  2. Thirty-Three Words for Sin in the New Testament Part 2
  3. Thirty-Three Words for Sin in the New Testament Part 3

Victory before Dawn


  • I lost one Rook to Black Bishop
  • Nice Pawn defense and ...
  • Knight advance (well-protected)
  • Black Queen was rendered infective and never captured a piece
  • This game is unique for me as I almost always trade Queens early in a game

10.13.2018

Saturday Win


  • Not my first win today - this just before dinner
  • My final move - didn't realize it would be a Checkmate move 
  • Thought I would pick up the Black Pawn at G7

10.10.2018

Managed a Draw


  • I would have lost had I not kept Black King in Check
  • I fell behind in Pawns and then
  • Wasn't able to keep Black from Pawn promotion
  • How Draw was forced: White Rook G8-G7 and back

9.30.2018

Kathee's Grandparents - Hoersch



John (d 1958) and Marie (d 1963)


I am pointing with my crutches



The graves are easy to find. The above statue is in a green "island" in an "eye of a needle" (see the map!). If you are in a car facing this statue ... look about 30-50' to the East. Key off the large monolith marker with the cross (3rd photo). The latitude and longitude is from the Hoersch marker. The flat stone needs some attention ... bring a whisk broom (we wish we had!)