God's in Control

"God's in Control." That's the word from Joel and Victoria Olsteen, the smiling evangelicals, who have rented Yankee Stadium for "A Celebration of Faith" this week. If their premise about God's role is in fact true, then the Almighty either has a weird sense of humor or a perverse regard for mankind. Joel Olsteen, who advocates praying yourself to riches, has found his personal formula for riches: smiling, smiling and smiling to convey his message of personal prosperity to impoverished souls who'll attend his rally at Yankee Stadium, where his and his wife's books, DVDs and CDs will be on sale.

Tax Cuts - The Panacea for What Ails Us

Tuning in to Fox News this morning, after tiring of the Headline News bimbos, I found nothing but more bimbos showing more cleavage than their HLN counterparts. Instead of talking about the latest news like HLN, the Fox News talking heads, mostly female with a couple of angry or nerdy guys, were on politics, going on and on about tax cuts. I learned that tax cuts are the solution for anything. If you want economic growth, cut taxes. If you want more jobs, cut taxes. If you want more individual freedom, cut taxes. If you want to keep more of your earnings, cut taxes. If you want the country to recover from the recession, cut taxes. If you want to prevent slackers from surviving on the public dole, cut taxes. If you want smaller and intrusive government, cut taxes. Yes, cutting taxes is the one-size-fits-all solution to what ails us as a country. It's the universal panacea to fix everything.

More money in the accounts of the wealthy and high-earning is said to spur investment which creates economic growth, but who says it won't be made in a second or third home on a Caribbean island or in a foreign security. Investment is supposed to create more jobs, but this is true only when the investment is made in the means of production, i.e., factories and manufacturing equipment, but who says it won't be made in a foreign country rather than the USA. The point is that cutting taxes and achieving the desired result would require more government, not less, to insure that the additional money would produce the desired result. So, their goes smaller, less-intrusive government.

Would someone please explain to me the correlation between the extent of my freedom and my tax rate. If freedom and the tax rate are inversely proportional, that is, those with the lowest tax rate should have more freedom than those paying at a higher rate, why is it that the latter have more life style choices than the former. The answer is simple, they have more money, more than enough money to meet the necessities of life and still enjoy a better life with more options for education, recreation, wellness, travel, entertainment, etc. Why don't the right-wingers admit that their mantra of 'tax cuts' is nothing more than a slogan designed to garner donations from those who benefit most from tax cuts, the wealthy?

Personally, I want a strong national defense; modern, well-maintained public infrastructure; quality, accessible education; affordable, preventative health care and responsive emergency services; police and fire protection; national, state and local parks, libraries, and museums; and other government services like immigration law enforcement and a criminal justice system. I don't know how a constant diet of tax cuts can satisfy my desire for beneficial role government plays in modern society. Tax cuts and the reluctance of the right-wing politicians to increase taxes to pay for wars and heightened internal security is what caused the national debt to swell during Bush's presidency. Don't hype tax cuts to me. I ain't buying.

3.2 Beer Stays in Kansas Groceries

A Kansas Senate committee recently squelched a bill designed to permit grocery stores to sell full strength beer. For years, grocers have been limited to the sale of 3.2 beer, a story that has roots going back to Prohibition. When the grocers ask for the law to be changed, liquor store owners and their lobbyists go to work to defeat the proposal. I won't say that legislators have a personal relationship with the liquor providers, but one might wonder about that. The primary reason liquor store owners give for opposing sale of regular beer by grocers is that it would put some of them out of business. The "some" is estimated at varying percentages from 30% to 50%. The liquor store owners can be expected to protect their business interests, but the public should be aware that this is the same group who oppose opening their stores on Sunday and holidays, which would be a boon to tourism. The solution to the problem faced by the grocers is to buy out liquor stores as they come on the market. When the grocers own the same percentage of liquor stores that are claimed to be put put of business by allowing beer sales in groceries, the argument of loss of business will evaporate. Surely, like most things from the past, 3.2 beer will pass, only in Kansas it will take longer than in more progressive states.

Sebelius Sanctioned

Catholic bishops have told Governor Sebelius that as a Catholic she errs in her stance on abortion. They have conspired to deny her the sacrament of communion. Ultimately, the actions of the bishops will backfire on them. There are plenty of Catholics who do not accept the teachings of the church about abortion. That some church members have joined to support Sebelius shows us the tip of the iceberg. As the bishops exhibit an increasingly reactionary stance to modernity, i.e., embryonic stem cell research and abortion, one should expect a greater number of Catholic church members to be alienated from the teachings of the church. Thus weakened in their faith, support for the bishops will wane. Greater numbers will depart from the church, increasing the outflow of the once faithful to other religions or to a faithless life. The bishops can help themselves by silencing their pronouncements and fulfilling their duty of administering sacraments rather than denying them.

God's Will

No man knows the will of God. That's the conventional wisdom. It's a trait of God, being omniscient and unfathomable in knowledge and wisdom. At least, that's the way I understand it, according to what I've heard in church. That no man knows the will of God is also behind the idea of a prophet, one who speaks for God. The significant prophets have generally recorded most of their pronouncements of the will of God. Rather than attempt prophecy, some religious persons spend a goodly amount of their time trying to determine the will of God through study and interpretation of scripture. After all, if the Bible is the word of God, shouldn't his will be expressed therein? However. since "To err is human...", biblical scholarship and interpretation may not correctly produce the will of God.

The prophetic and biblical record on embryonic stem cell research and abortion are non-existent or less than meager. Being virtually without a source of information as to the will of God which remains indiscernable, wouldn't it be something if embryonic stem cell research and abortion were both sanctioned by the will of God. God is merciful. Would God not permit the discovery of life-saving cures? God is loving. Would God not love a woman who decided not to continue a pregnancy, an act that would be a matter between her and her God, to be decided on a case by case basis, according to the circumstances? Sometimes, an abortion would be good for the woman and sometimes for the nascent child. If God is merciful and loving would he not give a soulthat is said to enter the body upon conception and interrupted by abortion, a second chance at life.

The problem with the Religious Right's opposition to embryonic stem cell research and abortion rights is that it is entirely subjective, based on their religious beliefs, which have no more validity than the religious beliefs of others who have a different interpretation of God's will. Who's right? We will never know. This is the over-riding reason why the government has no business in prohibiting or regulating stem cell research or abortion.

Kansas Trivia - Continued

"Dodge City is the windiest city in the United States." El Dorado Times, January 29, 2009, Page 1B.

This bit of trivia, like the other 49 facts printed in the El Dorado Times, can be found on several Web sites. One of them is called 50States.Com, which gives the windiest city "honor"(?) to Dodge City at an average wind speed of 13.9 mph. Another web site, WikiAnswers.Com, sticks to the popular designation of Chicago, the Windy City, as the windiest, but doesn't give a speed value. ChaChaAnswers claims Blue Hill Observatory, Massachusetts with an average annual wind speed of 15.4 mph is the windiest.

In order to settle the question as to which city is the windiest and to stimulate the manufacture, distribution and installation of wind speed measurement equipment, a federal program is needed to pay for a wind speed indicator to be erected in each city in the United States. The ultimate pay off would be identifying the best lcoation for wind generators. Oops, perhaps this equipment already exists in weather reporting stations in cities. Never mind. The real question is, who researches and publishes these lists of state trivia, which appear in half a dozen Web sites and are used in numerous other commercial sites. Looks like the subject for a future post.

In the Stem Cell Debate

RSam Brownback, Kansas Republican Senator, commenting on President Obama's decision to rescind the Bush ban on federal funding of expanded research on new lines of embryonic stem cell research, as reported in the KC Star (3/10/09) said, "If an embryo is a life-- and I believe strongly that it is life-- then no government has the right to sanction their destruction for research purposes."

First, what does Brownback mean when he says, "If an embryo is a life...", and then in the same sentence changes his reference to the degree of animation of an embryo by saying, "... I believe ... it is life."?

The presence or absence of an article gives the word 'life' two different meanings. 'Life' preceded by an article suggests a defined existence. 'Life' without the preceding article suggests a general condition. So, which is it? Is the embryo, possessing 'a life', a human being in the fullest sense or is the embryo with 'life' a group of undifferentiated human cells, which, being capable of cell division, is considered as living. Life is the subject of biological studies. Study of 'a life' is the subject of psychology, sociology, anthropology, psychiatry, and other similar disciplines, none of which deal with the behavior of human embryos, if such even exists.

If an embryo is a human being, why doesn't it appear on the family tree? Why wouldn't any compensation for reproductive purposes received on its behalf be considered as taxable personal income? Why wouldn't disposing of an embryo be considered as an unlawful taking of a life? The answer to the preceding questions is evident: a human embryo, while alive, does not have a life. An embryo is not a human person.

Second, since embryos are not people, when the stem cells that constitute the early embryo, technically referred to as a blastocyst, are used in research, destruction of 'a life' does not occur.

The use of inflammatory language is a characteristic of religious zealots. Violent themes are the stock in trade of religious zealots in the self-styled 'right-to-life' movement, because they intend to appeal to the emotions of persons who are uninformed about embryonic stem-cell research.

Again, Kansas Trivia

"Kansas won the award for the most beautiful license plate for the wheat plate design issued in 1981." The El Dorado Times, January 29, 2009, Page 1B.

First, let's do something about this awkwardly worded sentence. How about changing it to: Kansas won the most beautiful license plate award for its 1981 wheat design. There, that's better: 12 words versus 18 words. Now, let's learn more about this feat, thanks to the Internet.

A Web page containing the History of Kansas License Plates is provided by the Kansas Department of Revenue which issues our car tags. There is no mention of a 1981 award for the Kansas license plate design. If such an award was made, you would think the Department of Revenue would know about it. There are several possible reasons for this ommission: (1)they refer to the 1981 plate as displaying wheat "stocks" and the 1995 plate as displaying wheat "stalks", which indicates fallibility, (2) they don't respect the party giving the award as a legitimate judge of license plate quality, or (3) they aren't up on Kansas trivia for Web page purposes. Regarding reason (1) above, a Wichita State University student or alumnus would probably prefer wheat "shock", but technically a shock of grain refers to sheaves stacked upright in the field. My guess is that the 1981 plate reference to a "stock" is a misplaced homonym. But, I digress.

I found that Kansas won first place in a license plate design contest in the United States and Canada with its depiction of the buffalo -- the iconic symbol of the Great Plains -- in 1995, by virtue of the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association Inc. voting the state's "Home on the Range" personalized vehicle license plate the best in those countries, according to Michael Naughton, president of ALPCA. Naughton presented the award to Carmen Alldritt, director of vehicles at the Kansas Department of Revenue. ALPCA has about 3,000 members from the U.S. and 19 other countries. The Automobile License Plate Collectors Association, founded 1954, is an organization dedicated to the promotion of license plate collecting and research, the exchange of information and plates, as well as all fraternal benefits of sharing a common hobby interest with others throughout the world. It has issued awards for the best plates in North America since 1970.

In Wikipedia's ALPCA site there is a table showing Plate of the Year Award winners since it was first made in 1970. Kansas is shown as winning the award in 1980, the first year of a plate design showing gold wheat stalks on a blue background, and again in 1994 when the wheat design was used again. So, the trivia statement at the top of this post is not untrue. It is merely in error. Let's change that sentence to read, "Kansas won the most beautiful license plate award for its 1980 wheat design." Somebody tell DOR.

The Comma, A Misunderstood Punctuaton Mark

The Perrin-Smith Handbook of Current English, Copyright 1955, Page 388, states: "Commas mark a slight separation between ideas and grammatical units, similar to very brief pauses in speech." The handbook uses 15 pages to explain the proper use of the comma; when a comma should be used, when commas are usually optional, and when commas are not used. The handbook's best line is that, "A comma should always be used whenever necessary to prevent misreading or confusion of meaning."

The relevance of this advice about commas for today's writers might be questioned, because a handbook published over 50 years ago has the word, current, in its title. Of course, language changes slowly. 'Current' is obviously a relative term, and therefore appropo. One example of language change occurring at this time in regard to the use of commas is the tendency for writers and copy editors to diminish the use of commas, omitting them whenever they feel that meaning will not be lost for the lack of a comma. My personal preference is: when in doubt put in a comma, rather than leave it out. Others are seemingly pained to have to add a comma. Instead of putting in the punctuation, they say, "Let the reader do the work."

Lynne Truss, in her acclaimed book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, sums up the purpose of punctuation, "On the page, punctuation performs its grammatical function, but in the mind of the reader it does more than that. It tells the reader how to hum the tune." So, when you are reading along and your grasp of the writer's meaning stumbles a bit, look for a place to insert a comma, if only mentally, and see if that doesn't help you better understand what you are reading. If it does, you can mentally bonk the writer on the forehead, much like the V-8 juice commercials, and say, "You could've used a comma."

Kansas State University Trivia

"At Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine waterbeds for horses are used in surgery." The El Dorado Times, January 29, 2009, Page 1B.

While a waterbed for a horse may sound extravagant, what better way to secure the animal during surgery? The suspension of a sedated animal on a fluid table that flexes and molds to the horse's body is quite ingenuous. Actually, a surgical foundation, involving both water and a bed-like appearance, for working on an animal under anaesthesia is not the same waterbed that humans use for sleeping. The base for horse surgery can be seen on the K-State Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital equine surgery Web page. It is ironic that the cost of using the proper equipment for equine surgery: lifts, platforms, lighting, environmental controls, etc. can cause the cost of the procedure to exceed the monetary value of the animal being treated. Of course, I suppose the same could be said of some hospital equipment for treating humans. The horse is treated regardless of value for reasons both sentimental and scientific, and I guess the same could be said for humans.

Worst Drivers in the World

Keith Obermann has his nightly segment of the "Worst Person in the World". I thought I would take off from his idea to describe the worst drivers in the world. Today, on the way back home from the golf course, I was shocked by a woman driver who blew through a 4-way stop. Within a mile, an SUV approached my vehicle, lapping over the double yellow stripe. As I proceeded, I became trapped behind another SUV doing 25 in a 40 mph speed zone. A little further along my route home, while traveling in the left lane of a busy 4-lane arterial, the driver of a small sedan crossed in front of me to reach the left-turn lane at a signalized intersection, causing me to brake to avoid a collision. Almost home, on the same 4-lane street, I attempted to move into the center left-turn only lane to turn left into the entrance street of the subdivision where my home is located only to be surprised by a dark sedan that pulled into the same center left-turn only lane from a side street on the left, wrongly using this dedicated strip and causing me to brake quickly to avoid a collision. All of these driver's had one thing in common: they were talking on a cell phone, making them the Worst Drivers in the World. Someone please deliver us from these mobile menaces.

Still More Kansas Trivia

"South of Ashland, the Rock Island Bridge is the longest of its kind. It measures 1,200 feet long and is 100 feet above the Cimarron River."

What this trivia tidbit doesn't tell you is (1) what kind of bridge it is, (2) what type of traffic it carries, (3) where it really is, and the name of the bridge. The answers are (1) steel deck truss, (2) rail traffic (For those who have never heard of the Rock Island Railroad, it's a pretty good road.), (3) Seward County along side US Highway 54 about 11 miles northeast of Liberal in Southwest Kansas, and (4) Samson of the Cimarron. It is nowhere near Ashland. Some cub reporter or intern must have done the research for the trivia sheet the El Dorado Times paid money for. They should get part of their money back.

Now, do you have the full picture? Probably not, because to see the bridge immediately tells you that it is something special. It's a beast of a bridge on concrete pylons and seems to go on forever. It's the type of bridge that, if you're a photographer, you pull over and take a picture of it. For a look at the bridge and some more facts, click here.

Confidence Crisis

The current economic recession is being referred to by the news media as a "Confidence Crisis", a term used of ABC's Good Morning America. If such a condition exists, do you suppose the news media has had a hand in creating it. I notice that every news broadcast, pundit interview, talk show host and comedy routine is all about the economy's downside. A lot of these talking heads maintain that things are so bad with people loosing their jobs, homes and fortunes that despair and fear is all that people have left. The 6 o'clock news program has tips on how to be a savvy shoppper, where to find bargains, where to get freebies, how to find a job, and what educational opportunities exist to improve job skills. With all this unsolicited advice flying around, you'd think that, before the economy slowed and then retracted, no one knew how to do any of these things. Personnally, I wish the TV and radio hosts would move on. Sure, report the facts about the latest economic news and government initiatives to correct the problem or not, but give up the analyses. Chances are the media will still be talking about what people can do to cope long after the economy has rebounded, but no one will notice because they're all at work, out shopping or on vacation.

More Kansas Trivia

"A grain elevator in Hutchinson is 1/2 mile long and holds 46 million bushels in its 1,000 bins."

What's more, this largest grain elevator is only one of several huge granaries in that City. The east side of 'Hutch', as it is familiarly known among the locals, is a monument to the Wheat State. Obviously, these grain elevators serve as an inter modal collection point for the wheat harvest as both roadways and railways both serve them. Straight trucks haul the grain from the field to a local elevator where the grains are moisture tested, checked for foreign matter, and weighed, and then dried and stored for future shipment. Next, semi-trailer trucks haul the grain to larger elevators from which it is transferred to a food processor or to a port for shipment to an overseas market. The elevators also serve to store wheat for future delivery. I am sure that the functions of these mammoth grain storage facilities are a lot more complicated than I have portrayed, and I'd be interested in hearing more about them and there smaller local counterparts. If you haven't seen them, check them out on Google Earth.

Kansas Facts and Trivia

The El Dorado Times published a special section of its paper to celebrate Kansas Day. Besides "Kansas Facts and Trivia", the special profiled the other 49 states with such interesting facts as the state's capital, governor, name origin, bird, flower, motto, nickname, songm population, famous residents and what or who the state is the home of. Well. I guess it might be interesting, if you are bored with everything else that demands your attention. For example, did you know that the state motto of New York is "Excelsior", which is kind of Latin for higher or the best and not the packing material as we frequently think. The first Kansas fact is: A ball of twine in Cawker City measures over 38' in circumference and weighs more than 16,750 pounds and is still growing.

I have actually seen it. It's housed in a structure located on the highway through town. All I have to say is that's a lot of string. According to a web site called Round America:

"There isn't anything much in Cawker City except the World's Largest Ball of Twine, so I had no problem driving right up to it on the main street through town. This sucker is BIG. It's housed in a very nice open-sided building where you can walk right up to it and smell it and touch it. Frank Stoeber started the ball of twine on his farm in 1953. By 1957, it weighed 5,000 pounds, stood 8 feet high, and had 1,175,180 feet of twine on it. Stoeber gave the ball to Cawker City in 1961 before his death in 1974. When I visited in 2003, it weighed 17,578 pounds (that's almost 9 TONS). It has a 40-foot circumference, and it consists of over 7,019,145 feet of sisal twine. If stretched out, it would extend 1,325 MILES. Like I said, this baby is BIG."

It's interesting that whoever supplied the El Dorado Times with the trivia list needs to update the facts as to weight and circumference. Well, I guess they covered themselves when they said, "...it was still growing." The above report is now over 5 years old, so I guess I better make another trip to Cawker City to measure its circumference and make a new estimate of its weight. I'll bet the folks in Cawker feel like they're a prisoner to this monster ball of sisal twine that isn't as round as it used to be. Pretty soon it will look more like a haystack than a ball and they'll have to start calling it a stack of twine to advertise truthfully. The big question is how long this foolishness can go on and how will it end.

Journalistic Excess

In a story about the federal budget proposed by the Obama administration, the KC Star on Friday, February 27, 2009, used a lot of adjectives. The budget and related financial matters were referred to as: bloated, eye-popping, aggressive, unspecified, gargantuan, huge, large, significant, breathtaking, and expanding, to cite a several of the adjectives used. I guess the press thinks that the only way to interpret the President's budget proposal is to adopt the opposition's spin. Well, get over it. The country has about 300,000,000 people and who knows how many businesses and other organizations. I'd guess somewhere between 25,000,000 and 50,000,000 million. That's a lot of people and players. Is the budget supposed to get smaller. Nowhere in the paper's analytical piece, pawned off as news, was there any per capita comparative analysis or adjustments for inflation. Raw numbers, that sound big to people locked in a 60s mentality, were the order of the day. After splattering the front page of the paper with red ink stains and spots, I think they did enough to show that they can't cope with modern day amounts.