Monthly Archive for May, 2005

Render to Caesar

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 5/31/2005
in Religion
. 0 Comments

New nickel face

The pop machine at work gave me a new nickel last week. Wow! When did these become available? I like the new nickel. In keeping with the recent changes to our paper currency, the Jefferson’s image is much larger (and we get to see his right side).

This last week at church, we were studying parts of Mark 11 and 12. One of the stories is headed in my Bible, “The Pharisees: Is It Lawful to Pay Taxes to Caesar?”

13Then they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch Him in His words. 14When they had come, they said to Him, “Teacher, we know that You are true, and care about no one; for You do not regard the person of men, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? 15Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?”

But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why do you test Me? Bring Me a denarius that I may see it.” 16So they brought it.

And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.”

17And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Source: Mark 12:13-17 (New King James Version))

I, like the headline author of my Bible, have tended to focus on the first part of Jesus’ saying: “Render to Caesar.” It’s not a bad lesson. How many Christians spend time concerned about paying their taxes because of how they are used? Jesus, in his typical apolitical stance, doesn’t address the issue. Just pay them. Move on to more important issues.

I suspect Jesus was much more concerned about the second part of His statement: “and to God the things that are God’s.” It’s quite simple. The denarius was Caesar’s because it had Caesar’s image. We are God’s because we are created in His image.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Source: Genesis 1:27 (New International Version))

Don’t worry about how your government is using your taxes; consider how you are using your life.

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Sticks and stones are next

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 5/27/2005
in Politics
. 4 Comments

In the US, we debate gun control. In the UK, they debate pointed long knife control. Before you warn of slippery slope, please note:

Home Office spokesperson said there were already extensive restrictions in place to control the sale and possession of knives.

“The law already prohibits the possession of offensive weapons in a public place, and the possession of knives in public without good reason or lawful authority, with the exception of a folding pocket knife with a blade not exceeding three inches.

“Offensive weapons are defined as any weapon designed or adapted to cause injury, or intended by the person possessing them to do so.

“An individual has to demonstrate that he had good reason to possess a knife, for example for fishing, other sporting purposes or as part of his profession (e.g. a chef) in a public place.

Oops! I guess that already covers sticks and stones…

Hat tip: Xrlq at damnum absque injuria.

Counting blogs

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 5/26/2005
in Blogging
. 0 Comments

Carl “The Numbers Guy” Bialik at The Wall Street Journal asks how many blogs, how many blog posts, how many blog readers, and why this is even important.

First, let’s step back and consider why we’re counting blogs at all. You no longer see articles that attempt to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Web by stating how many Web pages there are. But blogs are still in the process of entering mainstream consciousness, so numerical credibility is important; bloggers themselves cite the statistics a lot.

I tend to believe the statistics generated by actual blogging activity, whether posting or visiting. Fortunately, posting is relatively easy to measure. Technorati and BlogPulse can count active blogs and ignore the rest. That’s certainly more useful than Blogger or MSN Spaces claiming that 3.7 gazillion bloggers sign up each picosecond and then never post again after “this is a test.”

Unfortunately, counting blog visits is much more difficult. As much as I like to watch my traffic meters, I recognize they are more useful for measuring trends, not absolute numbers. Earlier this year, Michael J. Totten wrote a great article on measuring blog traffic. Rather than attempt to summarize, I’ll refer you there. Do not miss the comments.

What’s it all mean? Probably not a lot. After all, you’re already a blog reader. You like blogs enough to spend the most limited resource you have: your time.

We don’t need someone else telling us whether blogs are mainstream. It doesn’t matter.

Hat tip: Brother Bob via e-mail.

Playing with the Treowth

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 5/25/2005
in Blogging and General
. 0 Comments

My blogging here has been slow as of late. Here are my pitiful excuses:

  • First, I watched Lord of the Rings, director’s cut, no catheter installed. Maybe one of these would have been nice, too. Why that movie isn’t at least an R for violence, I’ll never understand. Takeaway: you can depict any extent of graphic violence to a humanoid without hurting your movie’s rating, including beheadings, impalings, and severed body part catapultings, as long as they have non-European facial features and dark skin.
  • Second, I’ve been practicing my guitars a little more. I was losing my calluses (okay, I had lost my calluses and my limited talent, to boot). To inspire myself, I bought a Buddy Guy live album.
  • Finally, I’ve been helping my brother get his blog Treowth “prettified.” He wanted a new color template/color scheme, advertisements (I made them match the color scheme), and some counters on RMBS stock purchases and litigation costs ($1.2 per second!). They’re all up and working for both IE and Firefox, without or without JavaScript enabled. Go take a look.

I have a few topics rattling around in my head. Civil unions is one; it’s a hot topic in Oregon. Another is Nepal. My oldest daughter almost decided to go on a mission there this summer. Interesting place… I’m also looking for additional information on class mobility after reading either a post or a comment on the topic by Jasper Emmering and then reading a disappointing chapter on it in James W. Loewen’s, Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.

Update: Treowth’s sidebar ads flicker when viewed using Firefox. There appears to be a solution, but it looks painful. Advantage, IE?

Coalition for Darfur: Complexity as an excuse for inaction

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 5/25/2005
in Darfur
. 0 Comments

Donate to Save the Children

A few weeks ago, PBS aired a made-for-HBO film about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda called “Sometimes in April.” Following the presentation, journalist Jeff Greenfield held a panel discussion about world’s last of response to Rwanda and the similarities to the current genocide in Darfur.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz was among the panelists and during the discussion, made the following points:

Wolfowitz: One of the things that bears thinking about from the Rwanda experience, and everyone of these cases is different, and I think one ought to recognize that. But it seems to me that the thing that stuck me as unique about the Rwanda experience, on the one hand the sheer horror of it, with the exception of the Holocaust and even then at a sort of per day rate, this was probably the worst genocide ever. But secondly, and we’ll never know this for sure because you never know the course that wasn’t taken, but it was seem as though a relatively modest military action aimed at eliminating that regime could have ended the genocide and ended it rather quickly.

What strikes me and seems to me is true in Rwanda, is true in Bosnia, is true in World War II, is true in Cambodia, this kind of systematic, one-sided elimination of a population is not done spontaneously by another ethnic group, it’s organized by a criminal gang and if that criminal gang had been eliminated in Rwanda the genocide would have ended.

But that comes to my last point which is, then it depends on how do you conceive of the peacekeeping operation and nobody proposed, that I know of, going in and taking out the government.

Greenfield: Should they have?

Wolfowitz: I think so, yes.

[edit]

Wolfowitz: This is not a simple problem. The Rwanda case, I think, is striking because it at least it looks in hindsight to have been so simple to prevent something that was so horrible. But most of these cases are complicated … In a way the Rwanda case is helpful for thinking about things but in some ways it’s misleading because most cases are a little more difficult.

Wolfowitz openly argued that the world should have intervened in Rwanda, but them makes the strikingly disingenuous argument that Rwanda was somehow “simpler” than the current situation in Darfur.

Rwanda is only “simpler” because it is now over and hindsight allows us to see just how, where and why the world failed. But in 1994, with bodies filling the streets, Rwanda did not appear to be simple at all

U.S. Opposes Plan for U.N. Force in Rwanda
By PAUL LEWIS
12 May 1994
The New York Times

UNITED NATIONS, May 11 — As rebel forces of the Rwanda Patriotic Front pressed their attack today against the capital, Kigali, the United States criticized a new United Nations plan to send some 5,500 soldiers into the heart of the Rwandan civil war to protect refugees and assist relief workers, saying it is more than the organization can handle.

[edit]

While not excluding any course of action, Ms. Albright said it remains unclear whether African countries are ready or able to send forces for such a dangerous and complicated mission at the epicenter of a raging civil war.

Ten years later, it now appears as if a few relatively simple measures backed by the necessary political will could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. But in 1994, the genocide appeared massively complex and that complexity was routinely cited as a justification for not intervening.

And Wolfowitz is making exactly the same justification for not intervening in Darfur today.

Were there feasible solutions to Rwanda? In hindsight, the answer is obviously “yes.” Are there feasible solutions to Darfur? It is hard to say because right now it seems so complex, but there certainly are if the world powers can muster the will to address them.

But unfortunately, it is far more likely that ten years from now, when perhaps another one million Africans have needlessly died, we’ll wonder why we did not act when “it looks in hindsight to have been so simple to prevent something that was so horrible.”

Copied with permission from The Coalition for Darfur.

Airport blogging, part II

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 5/20/2005
in Blogging and General
. 3 Comments

Once again, I sit in an airport terminal, blogging. However, unlike last time, the experience is not “too cool.” My flight from Sacramento to Portland is delayed about two hours, meaning I won’t take off until after I was supposed to land. And the wireless, though it exists, is not free. I’m too cheap to pay, so my wireless experience is limited to glancing at the green wireless network status indicator. Mousing over the green yields the useless tip, “Excellent Link Quality 80%.” For fun (woo-hoo!), I point again. “Good Link Quality 73%.” Now, thanks to the Windows SP2 issue I mentioned earlier, the indicator is red, and the pop-up box is truthfully declaring, “Wireless network unavailable.” It’s time to plug in my headphones and listen to Robben Ford. Somehow, “Don’t Deny Your Love” seems strangely appropriate.

What’s next? Coin-operated meters on electrical outlets?

I hope one of these days airports and other public facilities treat wireless access like mains power: they install it because they need it for their operations and don’t prevent others from using it as well. What’s next? Coin-operated meters on electrical outlets so airports could make a few extra bucks off travelers charging their cell phones or running their laptops during extended delays? That would be real customer service!

Coalition for Darfur: Delays and complications

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 5/18/2005
in Darfur
. 0 Comments

Donate to Save the Children

The genocide in Darfur began more than two years ago. Since then, more than 400,000 people have died and the international community has yet to take any concrete action toward stopping the violence or helping the nearly 2 million displaced return to their destroyed villages and resume semi-normal lives.

And the longer the world delays, the more complicated the situation seems to become.

Just last week, the UNHCR was forced to pull its staff out of four refugee camps in Chad after five of its workers were wounded in protests over food distribution. The same day, two refugees and two Chadian police officers were killed during a clash in another camp.

Also last week, two drivers for the World Food Program were killed and rebels abducted but later released 17 members of the African Union ceasefire monitoring force.

“militia attacks have intensified in the last month”

The UN reported that militia attacks have intensified in the last month and there are now reports that rebels in the East have amassed along the border with Eritrea, potentially creating a Darfur-like conflict there as well.

All the while, the world makes symbolic gestures of concern and assistance. The AU has decided to expand its force in Darfur but lacks the troops, money and logistical resources necessary to fully do so. Help from NATO has been requested but has not yet materialized. For domestic political reasons of its own, Canada recently pledged to send 100 troops to Darfur but has since backed off because of objections from Sudan. Meanwhile, leaders from Egypt, Libya, Chad, Nigeria, Sudan, Gabon and Eritrea jointly announced their rejection of “any foreign intervention in the Darfur problem.”

The crisis in Darfur is by no means simple and solutions are going to require serious thought and real political will. Unfortunately, Darfur has not yet been able to garner either. But the longer the world refuses to deal with this, the more complicated the situation is going to become.

Copied with permission from The Coalition for Darfur.

Airport blogging

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 5/18/2005
in Blogging
. 0 Comments

I’m at the PDX airport, waiting for my flight. Yet, I’m online, using my laptop, completely unwired. Too cool.

(Yes, I hate it when the big name bloggers talk about their travel plans and brag about blogging from the back seat of a taxi using a bluetooth cellular phone networked with a PDA using a WiMAX connection. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t resist. Wink)

Comments on blogs dangerous?

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 5/17/2005
in Blogging and Law
. 0 Comments

Hugh Hewitt, in the same sentence, explains (maybe) why he he doesn’t have comments on his blog and at the same time destroys his ability to win a defamation suit against derogatory comments in a blog.

So let’s get a little bit more conspiratorial. Let’s say you want to take down a blog or at least bleed it a little. So you hire someone to post a series of defamatory comments about you or a close associate, and then you bring or finance the payback lawsuit.

No dice

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 5/16/2005
in General
. 3 Comments

Last Thursday, I wrote I bought a Powerball ticket because the jackpot was “a lot of money.” You probably thought I didn’t blog over the weekend because I won the $111 million jackpot and was in Tahiti celebrating. Although I appreciate your positive thoughts, alas, it was not to be. Not this time.

Wednesday’s drawing will be for $129 million. I wonder if I can spare a buck.