F-22 Raptor Airshow -- Astonishing

Simply amazing ...

Why I Was Never Late For School

Buddy sent me this and I just had to post it.

Criticisms of the Seventh Day Adventist Church

... or any other Church and/or religion.

Back in 2007 an anonymous Seventh-day Adventist wrote a letter to the Zola Levitt Ministries which was published on page 23 of The Levitt Letter as Adventists Are Now God's Chosen People!?

Dr. Jeffrey Seif rightly responded to the objectionable contents.

Embarassed and offended by what this anonymous Adventist wrote, I called Zola Levitt Ministries (25 Nov. '07) apologizing for what this guy wrote. Not satisfied with only a phone message, I decided to write Dr. Seif an apology via email and published the apology on my blog as a post titled The Levitt Letter. You can read my response here.

Just yesteday a reader, J. Trade, responded to my post with the following comment:

I believe it was a little naive to believe that the letter to Jeffrey Seif was actually from a Seventh-day Adventist. First clue is that it was ANONYMOUS! Secondly, the remarks appear to be intentionally inflamatory (intended to get a negative reaction towards Adventists). Thirdly, the content of the remarks do not reflect what the Seventh-day Adventist Church teaches. Put it all together, I would be probably more correct in accessing that it was written by a bitter person who may had some association with Adventists in the past or an enemy of the Adventist church whose intent is malicious.

I agree with you J. Trade and want to add some further comments.

While it is perfectly acceptable, IMO, to critique the views and doctrines of any church or religion, it is NOT acceptable to use deception or mis-characterizations in doing so.

From a Christian point of view, the Holy Spirit does not use lies, deception, innuendo, misrepresentation, or any under-handed means. It is not a mark of being under the influence of Christ to intentionally lie about, or misrepresent anyone.

If someone is a Christian and they are worried a friend is going down the "wrong path" or in the "wrong religion", the Christian (myself included) is not allowed to use anything but fair and honest discourse if they want to dissuade their friend from the "wrong path."

I saw this happen on more than one occasion. For example, I remember back in 1999 (or was it 1998?) when I was teaching at La Sierra University. There were several students on campus who were members of a different (locally popular) Christian denomination. Adventist colleges typically admit students from other faith traditions so long as they abid by the student code of conduct, e.g., no smoking, drinking, etc. However, these "undercover agents" would consistently approach relatively new adventist converts, misrepresenting themselves and their intentions, and use innuendo and deception to try to lead the new converts from the Adventist church.

Mind you, I have no problem with someone being straightforward and honestly representing themselves and telling any Adventist that the SDA church was wrong, and then to honestly argue why one should leave the Adventist church. That is called intellectual discourse and is perfectly fine in my book.

However, that is not what these individuals were doing. They were deliberately using dishonest and/or misleading methods. It even reached the point that these "undercover agents" vandalized campus property as well as papered trhe cars in the parking lot with false and inflammatory material about the SDA church.

To make matters worse, I contacted the pastor of the church the agents attended and informed him of what was going on and what had happened. He said he knew who they were and refused to identify the individuals involved. Basically, he covered their tracks for them. (I eventually figured out who these individuals are, but it was not until about 8 months later, after they had already graduated.)

I am sorry, but if any one tells lies about Mormons, Jehovah's Witnessess, Buddhists, etc. or uses any other form of deception, then your master is not Jesus Christ.

You are using the methods of a different master.

Hilarious

Hilarious!

I am a Liberal!

Yup, that's right, I am an unabashed, unashamed Classical Liberal.

Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism[1] and laissez-faire liberalism,[2] or, in much of the world, simply called liberalism) is a doctrine stressing individual freedom and limited government. This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, constitutional limitations of government, free markets, and individual freedom from restraint as exemplified in the writings of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill,[3] Montesquieu, Voltaire,[4] Thomas Paine and others. As such, it is seen as the fusion of economic liberalism with political liberalism.[2] The "normative core" of classical liberalism is the idea that laissez-faire economics will bring about a spontaneous order or invisible hand that benefits the society,[5] though it does not necessarily oppose the state's provision of a few basic public goods.[6]

Unfortunately, the term liberal has been highjacked by those who are not (Classical) liberals at all. I refuse to give up the term.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. President John F. Kennedy, Inagural Address.

Personal Preparedness, part 3 -- Getting a Trunk Monkey

I have found an excellent all around piece of personal preparedness equipment for my car. I think everyone should have one. It is called The Trunk Monkey and you can see a demo of it in the video below:




I think we all need to have one of these.

Personal Preparedness, part 2

For those of you are interested in personal preparedness, you will be interested in Survival Blog. The author is Mr. Jim Rawles who describes himself as:

... a survivalist author and lecturer. I'm a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and technical writer. I now work as a full-time blogger and freelance writer. SurvivalBlog is my creation ...

... I am a Christian, and hold to Reformed doctrine. My view of history is of the geographical determinist school. My view of economics is of the Austrian school. Politically, I am a conservative/Constitutionalist libertarian.

I am including Survival Blog as one of my links.

BTW, I note that you served in the Army. Thank you for your service Mr. Rawles.

Distinctions Between Terrorism, War and Crimes of War

A few years ago I read Dore Gold's book Hatred's Kingdom while reading up on terrorism and Al Qaida.

The book eventually lead me to the paper by Auther H. Garrison entitled Terrorism: The Nature of Its History (Criminal Justice Studies, 2003, Vol. 16(1), pp. 39-52).

It is a summary of the nature of terrorism, as well as the history of its causes, and its rise and spread until today. I am often confused by those who make a moral equivalence between terrorists and the soldiers fighting them. I am sorry, but it is just not true that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

Here is a (lengthy) quote from Garrison's paper that I found enlightening and thought I would share it:

Distinctions Between Terrorism, War and Crimes of War

Terrorism should not be confused with traditional warfare. In war, a target is selected because it has military value and will achieve a specific military objective. In modern warfare, a specific target is attacked or destreyed because the action serves a specific military necessity, achieves a specific result (utility) and leads to a specific goal (objective) while limiting colateral damage (proportional use of force) to the civilian population. In terrorism, the target is of little interest, per se. What is important is that the target will realize a certain reaction on the part of the greater society. The terrorist group that plants an altitude bomb on the plane does not target the 270 passengers on the flight. The intended effect on the world when that plane is destroyed over a populated area is what makes the act terrorism. Conversely, an Israeli jet dropping a bomb on an apartment building to assassinate a specific person, for example, a senior officer of Hamas, is not an act of terrorism. The specific goal of the attack was to assassinate the Hamas leader, not to cause fear in order to change behavior in Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organization or the Palestinians. The other people killed were collateral casualties. Terrorism is not defined by the fact that life is lost in an act of violence or the amount of life that is lost. Terrorism is defined by the intended effect of the use ofviolence and the purpose of the terrorist act. There is a difference between the use of violence on a target because the target has an intrinsic and specific value, and the use of violence on a target that has no intrinsic or specific value, but is attacked in order to effect the larger audience watching the attack. The former is an act of war; the latter is terrorism.

Some researchers do not agree that there is a distinction between terrorism and war, and assert that terrorism is warfare against civilians, a tactic that has a long history (Carr, 2002). Carr, for example, asserts that terrorism is part of the development of war: Terrorism, in other words, is simply the contemporary name given to, and the modern permutation of, warfare deliberately waged against civilians with the purpose of destroying their will to support either leaders or policies that the agents of such violence find objectionable” (Carr,2002, p. 6).

This formulation makes no distinction between acts committed in war to cause an enemy to surrender and acts committed to intimidate and cause policy change. For example, there is a difference between General Sherman’s march through South Carolina (to cause the surrender of the Confederacy and divide the south in two, thus separating Lee’s army from supplies and aid) and Osama bin Laden sending 19 men to hijack four planes to crash them into the World Trade Center. The former was committed to bring an end to a war and prevent a city from aiding an enemy force; the latter was to cause death and destruction. The 266 passengers and crew on the four hijacked planes were not the targets of the attack, nor were the estimated 2500 people inside World Trade Center building. The goal was to cause massive loss of life and property, and to send a message to the United States and the world, to force policy change in the United States.

There is also a difference between terrorism and war crimes. An example of a war crime is an army invading a town to purge it of enemy forces, and while doing so intentionally killing unarmed civilians and non-combatants. Although this action is both immoral and criminal, it is not terrorism. In this example, people were killed because members of the army lost control of themselves, not to intimidate other towns or the society as a whole to achieve a political objective.

Personal Preparedness

I didn't used to think of myself as a survivalist of any sort, but with the California wildfires that came so close to my home last year, as well as the dramatic increase in food and energy prices, I have decided to do a bit of preparing in case something bad happens.

In case there is another wildfire and I have to evacuate my family, or the economy really takes a downturn and I lose my job, I want to have just enough supplies on hand that my family can be self sufficient without relying on government aid. (Anyone remember the hurricane Katrina fiasco?)

I won't go into the details of everything I am working on, but for those of you who are interested, I found an nice resource on preparedness and want to make you aware of it. It is the LDS Preparedness Manual and can be downloaded for free by linking here.


While I am not Mormon, this is an excellent resource. It includes everything from monthly shopping lists to develop a year supply of food, to practical discussions on how to be self-reliant in case of a natural disaster.