Guns and Bullets

I have been looking at rifles in the last few moments of spare time I will have before I head back to the Corps, and I just watched a video of a guy bad mouthing the AR-15 something fierce. Very Annoying. The AR and the AK are built on two different mindsets for two different purposes. In their own niche, each weapons performs very well, especially when you tweak them a little.

The AR is built on the American military philosophy that superior training and equipment will always beat superior numbers. Thus, the weapon constructed by a number of tight fitting parts that enhance accuracy, but are less tolerant of foreign matter or bad maintenance. Thus, the IRA used the Armalite AR-15 in Ireland (ever wonder about the name Ire-land, a land full of ire, but I digress) for accurate, sharp combat, then ran home, cleaned the thing, took care of it, and used it again.

The AK, on the other hand, is built on the Russian philosophy that if you throw enough people at the enemy, you'll win sooner or later, probably later. Put another way, quantity over quality (that's why Russia does not make semi-auto AK-47s, they are all fully automatic). The AK can spew out a lot of hard hitting lead in a short time, even if you just pulled the thing out of a bed of quicksand. The reason for this is that the gun is made of fewer, looser fitting pieces, so there is more wiggle room for dirt, mud, and general junk to get in without jamming the gun. The problem is that this wiggle room destabilizes the firing chamber, so after about a hundred yards, accuracy goes out the window. The AK is an excellent gun if you are fighting (or hunting, I tell my dad) in thick brush or if you will be using it for long periods without being able to clean it.

Both guns are great, but neither can do the other's job. If you try to make them, don't get mad that they don't measure up.

Wishful Logic

Last night the Bastrop GOP put on a forum dealing with the issue of the proposed ACC campus being built in Bastrop. In return for getting a campus on the wrong side of town that over three years will grow to serve 1,100 annually, Bastrop will become co-signers for ACC's $444,000,000 debt, a debt that will grow after ACC buys land and builds a $38,000,000 campus. The reasoning behind this bad investment goes something like this.

1. Bastrop has a low household income level,

This is caused by Bastropian's low education,

Therefore, more education will raise income level.

2.If we bring in an ACC campus, then more people will get a better education.

3. Therefore if we bring in an ACC campus, then Bastrop will get a higher income level.

All three arguments are seriously flawed, however, as the propositions and conclusions are either false, do not follow, or both.

The most solid argument of the three is (1). Education and income level are fairly complementary. If you have one you are likely to have the other. The problem is that young people in Bastrop are not staying in Bastrop if they can help it, at least as far as I can tell. This is me speaking without any studies or polls, but from what I have seen, if young people can leave Bastrop, for the most part they do. Hence, giving Bastropians a better education would not necessarily raise the income level since the recipients of that education would simply leave the Bastrop area.

Argument (2) is where the real problems are. First, it assumes that Bastropians would get a better education if they could, which is not true for the majority of Bastrop youth. It is an unarguable fact that Bastrop High School is rife with problems ranging from drugs to pregnancies to violence. Less than 40% of BHS graduates go on to take any form of higher learning. That means that over 60% of Bastrop Youth do not take advantage of distance learning or any of the easily accessible college campuses around Bastrop. Former Mayor Scott suggests that if we put an ACC campus right next door then the young people will attend. Some of them will, it would be foolish for them to turn down free education. The second reason that this argument falls flat is because it assumes that the people a new campus would attract will make good use of the education. Those that want a good education in Bastrop can get it today with distance learning or at one of the many ACC campuses nearby. The people who enroll in a new campus will be the ones who are, for the most part, free loaders who will not put their education to good use (I am speaking generally here and from my own experience, which is, I admit, limited).

Thus, when we arrive at Argument (3), every proposition that it is built on is false, and thus it is left without a leg to stand on. This was former Mayor Scott's only reason for pushing the project, and I was suprised to not see any kind of statistics from him on average income in any of the cities ACC has annexed in the past. Instead, all I got were figures from Mr. Parmalee showing that the cities themselves annually lost around $2,100,000 dollars to the program.

Also, we are being told that the campus will add nine cents to property taxes for ever hundred dollars of property value. We are promised that the rate will not rise, but Austin was told the same thing when ACC first began, and the rate has since almost doubled.

Yes, Bastrop needs to do something to fix it's education, but this is like saying the best way to fix a house is to make it taller, never minding the fact that the foundation is shifting. Throwing money at something and building newer, bigger, emptier buildings (think BHS Performing Arts Center) will not fix the problem. There are numerous other options that Bastrop can look at, the ACC proposal is far from the best.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

The dominant issue over the last few days has been the attempt to build a mosque only a few blocks away from Ground Zero. The propriety of such a building at such a sight is questionable at best, but can we please, focus on the issue and not throw up smoke screens all over the place? No one is suggesting that mosques should be restricted across the U.S., there is no persecution of Muslims across our nation, we are not throwing them in jail or forcing them to meet secretly in homes and woods as many Muslim nations continue to do to Christians and Jews. No, all we ask is that they not build a Mosque only a few blocks away from the most horrific massacre of Civilians this nation has ever suffered, an act committed by men who claimed to be dedicated Muslims.

To claim that this is religious persecution is nothing other than silly, when one looks at a map and sees that there is a Muslim place of prayer less than half a mile from Ground Zero, and a mosque less than two miles from the site. Why exactly do we need another, bigger mosque, right next door to the place the twin towers stood? Also, bear in mind that the property was bought for a very low price, on account of the fact that the building that stands there now was damaged by landing gear from one of the planes that crashed into the twin towers.

I mean, what is it about the site that Muslims have to build a mosque there? Why? I'm not saying that all muslims are complicit in the acts of 9/11, but the Imam who is trying to build the mosque has not exactly gone out of his way to show his horror at the acts, claiming that America was complicit in the attacks, having created Osama Bin Laden. I'm not trying to heap abuse upon anyone, but building this mosque seems just a tad bit unncessesary.

A Difference of Opinion

I was reading an article on the movie Salt the other day, and it mentioned that while young teenage males are watching Angelina Jolie beat up men bigger and stronger than herself, acting as a female Jason Bourne, young girls are watching Edward and Jacob rescue Bella Swan from one sticky situation after another. Bella is no passive puppy getting carried everywhere by Edward and waiting helplessly for Jacob to come save her, but the burden of protecting the girl falls on Edward and Jacob, and even her dad does his best. In Salt on the other hand, it is the woman who is doing the saving. So girls are looking for strong men, and boys are looking for strong women. Just a note to the feminist crowd, you might want to start by informing the girls what they want before telling society what the girls want. And guys, man up, and I don't mean go to the gym (though that's good too). Open doors for girls whether they are six, sixteen, or sixty, give up your seat when there are not enough to go around and let the ladies get in line first. There is a reason the Middle Ages were known for true love, the men were chivalrous.

There are many people who find it difficult to wrap their heads around the hatred that displayed toward theists by atheists such as Christopher Hitchens, P.Z. Meyers, and Richard Dawkins. Many write it off as simply hatred against those in disagreement, others claim the hatred is simply doubt about atheism being manifested as anger toward Theism. While there is a bit of truth in these explanations, they do not explain the anger for one basic reason. They dramatically under estimates the effects of believing something is really true, especially when that something concerns the existence of God and moral standards.

Most, if not all, atheists have bought into the theory of evolution, which makes very clear statements about good and evil, the nature of man, and what the world should be like, or what utopia should look light. In general, good is strong, pleasant, and natural, evil is weakness, pain, and self denial. Man is only one step on the evolutionary ladder and is not intrinsically more valluable than any other organism, and the world only progresses as fast as evolution. These statemnts are in direct contradiction to the tenents held by many theistic belief systems: God determines right and wrong (our enjoyment has little or nothing to do with it in the short run), man is unique and above all animals, and history will end with mankind going to heaven and hell.

Now, if everyone were to stay at home and hold these beliefs to themselves, there would not be as many arguments. The problems arise when we try to make laws, run nations, and set policies. If you oppose abbortion, stem cell research, or euthanasia, then you are obstructing the atheistic march to utopia by slowing evolutionary development in the human race. If yuo oppose gay marriage, incest, bestiality, or polygamy, then you are opposing good (pleasure, that which is 'natural') and advancing evil (denial of one's urges). When you support prayer in school, the mention of God in the pledge of allegiance, or the mention of Intelligent Design in schools, you are filling children's heads with nonsense from humanities dark and barbaric past, ideas scientific atheism hates as much as most people hate Fascism (which is, by the way, good atheism).

Thus, Atheists have no problem with theists who leave their beliefs at home, but their wrath is hurled up at those theists who point out the harm in atheistic ideals and attempt to prevent them from implementation. Another way of looking at it is a comparison of war. In wars such as the American Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, there was a measure of respect between soldiers. Religious war is different, combatants in a religious war are fighting because the other side is evil. Thus, there is no respect between sides. Theism vs. Atheism is by definition a religious war. Atheists see Theists as full of ideas harmful to the human race, and thus see them as unworthy of common rules of decency and argumentative etiquette.

A brief disclaimer: Much of the above is generalization and I realize that. If I wanted to speak specifically to every case I would have to write a book. Someday I might, but please realize that there are exceptions to just about everything I said, but the general rules still holds.

Ulric

Ulfric

In time long lost not in lore recorded

Ulfric, unforgiving of wrongs oft unsheathed his sword

To right wrongs past. He remembered them all.

Long his wrath was known both wide and far.

At long last he ceased, and his long ships beached,

his sword he sheathed in peace. His spear put away.

He meant to make peace, and more to stay

at hearth and home in rest no helm to don again.

His war raiding behind no remaining bitterness

Did he hold, nor dream that harm from others

Should to him travel through toilsome seas.

Yet wrong he reckoned strength of ruinous hate

the wild wraiths, his rage had wrought him.

A high hall Ulfric soon had built

So to honor honest warriors, those who mightily

had fought for him, and friends also

in fields from home.

Red gold he gave them, A generous king he was.

Yet his generous gold swiftly given away,

was taken and torn away from tender hands

In distant wars long won. Now withered cold

he deemed those deadened hands. Wrong he deemed them.

None who came in kindness whether kin or

Stranger, worn and weary, Ulric would turn away

Far and wide his winsome manner swiftly was spread

Many heard and harkened to hear that name

To know, near enough, where nested their gold

The gold now given was great in records

both great and grim its ghastly trail

was cut and carved all across the North

from hand to hand it had harmfully passed

with boiling blood swiftly and brashly shed

it was horded and harrowed by hateful men,

till Ulfric unmade its owner and unlooked for

brought it, healthy homeward. And handed it

into the keeping and cups of kings and beggars

who came and cared to stay in that kingly hall.

The words of wise bards never was missed

in that great thralldom, as they nobly

told their tales and showed their talents.

His wife he winsomely bedecked in white diamonds

and green gold bracelets and gilded rings.

His sons were sung of in ships and lands

far off for their strength and fine mettle.

He taught them tender peace and in terrible war

he showed them strength. Even so kings

must rule their realms.

One late night, long ago as laughter filled

the mighty hall more than ever, and mirth was overflowing

A runner sought Ulric's ear to render a message

from shore.

Ulric was weak and old, soon weary of life.

He sought to spend his final days in the sun's warmth.

He forgot his fated end.

Warriors with torches swiftly wound their way

toward the teeming hall, greed tore their minds

and forced them forward with fire and steel

to take the gold and torch the hall.

Little time he had, Ulric had not lost

courage or cunning, and carefully directed

where the women should leave, with children and young

Yet his wife would not go, and waited with Ulric

for the fire and blood to fill the golden hall.

The raiders arrived with ravings of hate.

They rushed the iron door, how wrong they were.

They were cut and wasted, by willing blades,

None could match Colwch, Ulric's coldest son.

Of peace he learned the least, now lithe and quick

He swung his sword as death's scythe.

None came through his door.

Ulric's oldest son, Olmar was almost as strong,

but more keen and cunning, his claim was a bow,

he skewered them striving up, to scale the stairs.

None came through that door.

The last, so lore recounts, was soon lost.

By Dallion, who deemed war and deadly things

as hateful and worthless horrors, so he despised them,

And would learn little of war, but luxury he knew well.

A blade cut of his head and carried it away.

In his stead Ulric came, old and stately he stood.

His mighty sword mangled foes again,

his most lovely wife, with spear and sheild

stood at his side. .

In fury the flames were thrown, and fast burned

into the hall, heavy smoke sifted and hung

in the hall, the home of great Housecarls.

The raiders retreated, let the fire wreak its havoc.

Those in the hall took stock,

and deemed it best to dash out

and attempt to flee lest all should die.

Cutting, cleaving from the door was Colwch's blade,

Olmar the oldest was behind, hard on his heels.

They led, none lagged behind with little courage.

The raiders fell and ran before that rush.

Blood and bravery always broke the foe.

But only barely, for Colwch badly

Was wounded to death. They waited

on a high hill, trying to help Colwch,

but cruel steel cut away Colwch's life.

On that hill were they by thanes surrounded.

About brother's body they stood and baited the foe.

Thrice the greed driven thanes surged

up to Ulric's blade and Ulric smote

them down as in days of old but death

would not wait, biding with patience

the time to claim tender lives.

Ulric fell, his final strength forever gone,

Cut and hewn again, his adversaries

dearly paid to deprive him of dearest breath.

Upon Ulric's body died Ulric's wife.

As they lived and loved so were they lost.

All about the aged body his able men defended

Yet one by one they fell wasted and dead.

And dearly were they deprived of dearest life.

Yet the wall was weakened and warriors slain

So long at last was Olwen left

Standing strong and alone sword in hand

brother and father both were sheltered beneath his shield

the raiders withdrew to regroup the wreckage of their force,

none could match the might of Ulric's men.

Once more they marshaled and mustered the few

death had not harvested and harrowed swiftly

the son of strong Ulric. Screaming they rushed

up the hill now heaped with Housecarls

and thickly with thanes and raiders thronged in death

Olwen's bow sang sweet and clear, dealing swift death.

As they clambered over the dead, closing the distance.

Done now, his bow was broken, he beat them back,

Swiftly drew sword and dagger. His shield was broken.

With wounds beset and by warriors defeated,

defeated and doomed, to death he fell,

beside his brother.

Why does Creation matter?

A certain friend of mine, who I respect deeply and look up to, recently told me that as he didn't see why the creation debate was so important. This is something that I believe most people don't think about much, but the literal validity of Genesis one through three is just as important as the literal validity of the Gospels and the rest of the bible. If any part of the bible is not accepted as absolutly true then the entire structure of biblical theology collapses.

If one approaches Genesis one without any preconceived notions about what we should find and reads the text, it could not be said more clearly that God created the earth in six literal days and rested on the seventh. The typical aversion that 'days' in the passage really means ages simply does not hold water because it is impossible to say 'literal day' in Hebrew more clearly than to add 'morning and evening' and a number to the word for 'day'. The examples that are brought up for the word meaning 'age' are interesting on two levels. First and least importantly, they are usually explained in English phraseology. "We say dawn of a new day for mankind, when we mean the begining of a new age", "night had fallen on the era of Rome" etc. What we say and how we say it has no bearing on what and how the Hebrews said things a few thousand years ago. Secondly and far more importantly, of the few examples that are brought from scripture, none contain a number combined with either 'morning' or 'evening'. One must either accept that the Genesis account is true and God created the world in six literal day, or Moses got his facts from the wrong source or used an unfortunate set of words, thus throwing out the whole idea of biblical infallibility all together. You must make your choice.

There are four problems with trying to shove ages into the days of creation.

1. The sequence does not fit. You have morning and evening, light and darkness before the sun is created. The world does not start off as a sphere of rock and dirt, but is covered by water. You have birds flying before there are any creatures walking on the earth, all direct contradictions to the way many naturalists believe that life originated on earth.

2. You have imposed on the biblical text something that is clearing contrary to what is presented, thus destroying the infallibility of the scripture, which leaves you open to a world of problems. A common defense is to say that the days referred to are not necessarily earth days. This might be possible, but with the creation of light and its separation from darkness on day one, and the creation of the 'sun, moon, and stars' commonly taken to mean the planets and galaxies other than earth, you are ripping the text apart to make that claim. Additionally, as one wise man once told me, it's a theory, but where is your evidence?

   1. With the infallibility of the bible destroyed, and the days grown into ages, you have several problems. How do you determine when day means day? Context, most people would reply, but the context in Genesis makes it clear that God is speaking of literal days.

   2. The largest problem of all is that the creation account is God's first appearance to man, and it is wrapped up in his identity as ruler of the universe. You cannot change days into ages of evolutionary progression without loosing some part of god, his omnipotence (death and evil became part of creation and he doesn't like it but he can't stop it) or his holiness (evil is there and he put it there). No longer did God create a perfect, deathless, sinless world teeming with life and joy, with work not as a curse, but as a natural and enjoyable part of life and declare it all good. God created a world full of death, the great engine of evolutionary progression, millions of organisms are rotting and fossilizing before your first fish wriggles his way onto land and gets zapped by the finger of God and provided with a breathing system. At the end of the sixth age of your creation story, God looks down upon a planet already full of death and disease, and declares it very good.

There are three ways that you can progress from this and deal with death and suffering in the world. The first is to accept that God did the best he could, but was simply unable to prevent death and suffering from getting into this world. The problem with this approach is that now you have an impotent God who can't really save us. Besides, once you deny God's omnipotence we are no longer talking about the God of the Bible or any kind of biblical principles or theology.

The second way is to deny God's holiness. Nobody wants to do that.

The third way is to me the most infuriating. It attempts to keep both God's holiness and his omnipotence by saying that God fed the evil into the world on purpose and it's all part of a grand plan. That's fine except for two basic, fundamental problems. First, that's in direct contradiction to the bible (Romans 4:12, 8:18-22, Ecclesiastes 2:23). Second, its in direction contradiction to how the world works. The only thing it fits is a theory.

“It is one thing to say that the God of the bible is horrible, causes death and genocide, and use that as your explanation for not believing. That view is wrong simply on the basis of facts and has its own set of problems, but it is far preferable to a view that God is holy and created death and suffering, for while one mistakes the nature of God for evil and calls it evil, the other mistakes the nature of God for evil and calls it good. When you see the young boy struggling not to cry because his puppy died in the middle of the night, tell him that your God sees it as good. When you see the boy weeping because the girl he just married died in childbirth, tell him that her death is not a result of a broken and abnormal world, but a result of your God's perfect universe. When he watches his strong son who just got a scholarship to play football for a top university contract cancer, and slowly die, killed by organisms invisible to the eye, tell him that God delights in those creatures, and created them to kill.

“But” you protest “death is good, it releases us from this world, suffering makes us better people!” Does it indeed. Show me where! It was suffering that drove Adolf Hitler to his madness, it was suffering that drove the German people to accept him, it was suffering that drove the Russian people into Communism. It may be that for some people, some suffering creates better character qualities, but that does not make a rule. Also, it is a mistake to glorify a thing for that which it creates. You stand like the woman who stood on the bus and mentioned here hope that World War II continued for a long time, because it provided a good job for her husband. Hardly had the words left her mouth when another woman stood up and slapped her across the face. “Don't you ever say that again.” She said, “my husband is fighting over there.”

Now your whole world has changed because you based your faith not on the Word of the One who made the universe, but on the world of a man who has been studying a small piece of said universe for a few decades and has declared in his ultimate wisdom that god was wrong and he is right, the world must be billions of years old, far older than the bible claims. Deriding a faith based on things heard and seen he praises his scientific knowledge, based on faith of things unheard and unseen. His dating techniques assume that he knows the starting point is clean of all decayed atoms which he is counting to determine the age of his sample, and he assumes that the decay rate has been the same since the dawn of time. He ignores the fact that the layers in the rock that he counts as an age apiece have fossil trees growing right up through thirty or forty layers, and if he counts the dark and light rings in the arctic ice that he claims represents a year each, he'll find that the P-38 fighter plane we found a few years ago slipped back in time a century or so and crashed in the arctic around the Revolutionary War.

If we cannot trust God about how the world began, how can we trust him about how it will end. And if we cannot trust him at all, the end of the world is the least of our problems.