Maggie's Farm

Sally Morgenthaler, author of the book Worship Evangelism, has given up on the notion.  In this article she despairs that her thoughtful book became an excuse for churches to develop an "if you build it they will come approach" to evangelism that has both failed in developing proper worship and truly effective authentic evangelism. Today, instead, she challenges leaders to separate worship from evangelism so that we can honor God in the first and live with and love our neighbors as the means to the second.

Read the whole thing at It Takes a Church.

Paul at Powerline presents a heck of a min-opus from Douglas Kmiec of the Romney campaign on habeas as it applies to foreigners and terrorists.

From the Free Online Dictionary:

1. Specious or excessively subtle reasoning intended to rationalize or mislead.

2. The determination of right and wrong in questions of conduct or conscience by analyzing cases that illustrate general ethical rules.

Hey, Michael Moore - check out these photos taken with a cell phone camera in three Havana hospitals. h/t, Jawa

Wesley Clark proposes regulating free speech. How often do we have to point out the totalitarian impulse at the core of the Left? If it weren't for that, we wouldn't care so much...although we do like Capitalism too: wealth is a darn good motivator for effort and achievement, but it's about freedom, too, to pursue whatever your dreams might be. Gen. Clark seems to have forgotten why he was in the military.

In the UK, Moslem youth advised to use violence against the Infidel. h/t, Insty. That, my Brit cousins, is called an "insurgency."

All the love and sensitivity in the world will not fix it any more than they can cure cancer - because people want to erase you not for what you do, but for what you are.

And just a brief question off-topic: Does Glenn Reynolds really have a day job? If he does, even if it's teaching at the law school, how does he find time to find - and to post - so much interesting stuff, day after day?

Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon died in the blow-up of the Columbia. Among his gear was a drawing of the earth, from beyond the moon, by Petr Ginz, a Czech author, pamphleteer (he would be a blogger today), and drawer of pictures who was killed in Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of 16.

Petr never ceased believing that he and his young friends would be rescued. His sister survived the Holocaust. The story of Petr is in The Diary of Petr Ginz.

RWNH. I think this sort of thing just makes life more interesting for Rush. He is beyond intimidation by the Hillary-Soros Media Matters. Nobody who ever listened to him for ten minutes would imagine that he would insult a soldier. This pure BS "story" will be gone in two days.

What the story is really about is about Media Matters and MoveOn flexing their muscles at the beach.

Crittendon on Obama. He is an easy target, though.

We are troubled by overfishing in the Atlantic. It's a "tragedy of the commons."

Don Boudreaux quotes a letter which asks whether an infusion of property rights might solve the problem:

Fisheries are the classic tragedies of the commons and fishermen are behaving rationally when they overfish, for all of the benefits of each fish caught accrue to them while the costs are borne by the population as a whole. Fishermen are also behaving rationally when they “fish” for politicians in Brussels or national capitals, for if French fishermen do not, they will suffer when Italian fishermen do and vice versa.

Read the whole thing.

We all expect hardball and ugly politics when large amounts of power are in play, but there are tactics and methods which go beyond hardball. But the Dem attack machine, funded by Soros organizations, appears to have no conscience whatsoever - which is why I am so offended by it all. You can't really blame it all on Soros - they are working hand-in-hand. It's a war for them.

If everyone is going to get a bit ad hominem here, let's be reminded that Soros was a Nazi collaborator, despite being Jewish. OK, he was young, but it might say something about how he operates: he admits "that's when my character was formed."

When someone at MoveOn claimed to "own the Democratic Party," they weren't kidding. The Dems jump when Soros says jump. Tammy:

The purely fascist tactic of ritual defamation, condemning dissent, and attempts to silence voices that do not pledge allegiance to the Left, has now consumed local and federal Democrat lawmakers.

In one of the most remarkable and shameless displays of Thought Police tactics, Democrats now carry the water for the Soros Gestapos which exist to squelch public discussion of which they do not approve or does not confirm to their nihilistic leftist agenda.

Make no mistake--this is one of many volleys launched in an effort to revive the necessary and ultimate leftist grab for power--a return of the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which would kill the freedom of market and listener driven talk radio.

I don't know whether it's about the Fairness Doctrine or about shutting up opinion preparatory to the election, but I do think it is all about intimidation. After all, they already have Imus' head as a prize - and as a warning.  Read Tammy's whole rant.

The Taliban did not permit photos, or any images, and they sure did not permit homosexuality. However, these rules did not apply to them. Watch the video slideshow. h/t, Taliban Glam piece at Attack Machine.

Some of our readers might like to bookmark Classical Virtuoso, a blog which seeks out the best classical performances on YouTube. I wish I had a way to route through my good speakers.

Back in the days when I was involved with some research, I saw some iffy work done. The pressure to come up with some result was powerful, and people kinda sorta convinced themselves that it meant something.

Here's how it worked: You spent six or twelve months accumulating data to test an hypothesis. You ran some basic statistical tests on the data, and it turned out that there was no statistical correlation to support your hypothesis. (Negative results are wrongly and rarely published.) THEN, so as not to waste your pile of data and all of the time spent (and with computers this is easy to do), you would ask the computer to find some pattern in your pile of data. Often it would find one - and that would be your published paper. Data-mining. You just re-write your hypothesis after the fact, and nobody ever knows. It's a form of lying, really.

That ain't science - that's the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. Attack Machine has a nice example:

Sagittarians are 38% more likely to break a leg than people of other star signs.

You can read his entertaining piece on the subject at What's Good for you Is Now Bad.

In fact, clustering does occur on a random basis, to confound scientifically- and statistically-illiterate reporters and readers. Not to mention juries.

Dr. Ioannidis of Tufts Medical School says in the WSJ:

There is an increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims," Dr. Ioannidis said. "A new claim about a research finding is more likely to be false than true."

The hotter the field of research the more likely its published findings should be viewed skeptically, he determined.

That whole article is here.

A great example of a compelling linear relationship below, from Conspiracy proving, beyond doubt, that the gradual loss of pirates is the cause of globalistical warmening.

 

Kim du Toit. His ideal is a 16 ga., with details pretty much close to what I prefer, but I'd have a problem with his choices of choke. 

The VA State Climatologist, at Reference Frame

Shrinkwrapped takes on the NYT Editorial The Socialists are Coming! He is a physician with a daughter in medical school. He discusses the politics and realities of government medical care from the physician's perspective in an essay Health Care Conundrums. Key quote:

...I agree with the formulation that health care can be:

• Universal

• Affordable

• High Quality

Pick 2 out of 3

This YouTube sometimes seems to get stuck. Just push the button forward through the stuck place. That is Marcia Ball with her New Orleans band and her hot boogie-woogie pianny. I heard her live 2 years ago. She is not a shrinking violet.

iTNews claims Americans are giving up friends and sex for internet surfing.

I suspect that that is an exaggeration and that (except for p*rn junkies of whom there are millions) most regular internet users, such as the good sorts of folks who read Maggie's and the people we link to, have, over time, moved some of their TV, newspaper, and magazine time over to internet time.

So I hardly consider reading, getting information in a way that the reader can control and chose - plus the wonder of links and comments - to be a bad thing. It sure beats the boob tube.

In my experience, it's the internet writers and bloggers who need to watch their clocks, assuming they are not trying to make a living doing it. Writing and the gratification of instant publishing can eat up a lot of time that might be better spent weeding the garden, at the pub, watching Desperate Housewives - or nude surfing.

Photo: Nude surfing in Australia.

Daisys are the friendliest of garden flowers.

Our Montauk daisies (aka nipponicum) have come into bloom this week, which seems very late, but their blooms are welcome.

They have woody stems, succulent leaves which bugs leave alone, and perfect flowers.

I bought these at Home Depot on a whim, a few years ago. As a beachy plant, this type needs full sun, and seems to enjoy poor soil.

 

 

To be 16 again... A quote today from the 16 year-old pup this morning: "Tell Mom when she gets home from church that I'm meeting friends at Grand Central. We're going to SoHo to hit some galleries and have lunch. I'll be back on the 6:30 train. Can I borrow the credit card? Thanks, Dad - Love ya. Wait, do you have any spare cash?"

When I was 16, NYC had the same gravitational pull on me that it does on her. It still does, I guess. When Aristotle said "Man is a political animal," he meant an animal of the "polis." I like 'em all: polis, suburban, and rural, but have always aspired to "rus in urba" (or is it "urb"?) as a half-baked and unsatisfying, but necessary, compromise. As long as we can hop a train, or hop in the car, we can have it all. Farm, city, and friendly suburban neighborhood. What a great country!

So pleased with her vitality and investment in life that I forgot to ask whether she meant the 6:30 departure or the 6:30 arrival.

At IBD (which is becoming a great news and opinion source) via LGF. A quote:

“I swear by Allah that war is deception,” said Shukri Abu-Baker, now on trial in the federal terror-funding case. “We are fighting our enemy with a kind heart. . . . Deceive, camouflage, pretend that you’re leaving while you’re walking that way. Deceive your enemy.”

The wishfully naive West still doesn't get it. Doesn't want to get it, because it would be trouble to deal with it.

1 Timothy 6:6-19 (ESV)

6 Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, 7 for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. 8 But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

11 But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, 14 to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

17 As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.

The recorder of East Coast blue-blooded life talks about his life and times at 90. From a piece by Butterworth at Financial Times:

Louis Stanton Auchincloss was born in Lawrence, New York on September 27, 1917 and grew up in Manhattan. He owes his lineage, and the good fortune to be born into America’s upper class, to Hugh Auchincloss, a Scottish merchant who left Paisley in 1803 to set up a branch of his family’s dry goods business in New York. Through adroit marriages and hard work, Hugh and his progeny multiplied and prospered into a new old world of brownstone houses, summers in Bar Harbor, Maine and Southampton, Long Island, New England prep schools, the bluer-blooded Ivies, secret societies, gentlemen’s clubs, Park Avenue and Wall Street – all the contours and peaks and exclusive domains of American Waspdom.

Arguably, the most significant event in Auchincloss’s life was attending Groton, a preparatory school in Massachusetts founded in 1884 by the Reverend Endicott Peabody and endowed with the help of JP Morgan and Theodore Roosevelt. As with many who find themselves in the cloistered and intense schools of the elite, Auchincloss never fully left; and the inspirational and feared figure of Peabody and the stern Episcopalian values and hyper-athleticism permeate Auchincloss’s most lauded work, The Rector of Justin (1964), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

A piece on Auchincloss in New York Magazine noted:

Two things defined the Auchincloss family,” declares Louis Auchincloss—retired lawyer, ancient patrician, prolific novelist of manners—in a perfect mid-Atlantic accent. “One is that they ran to a very high degree in the male line. Most families disappear through the distaff side.”

The other signature Auchincloss trait is the family’s self-sufficiency. While the Scots are routinely credited these days with inventing America, this particular clan—descended from Paisley native Hugh Auchincloss, who emigrated in 1803—was carefully preoccupied with burnishing its own wealth and reputation. “There was no Auchincloss fortune,” says the writer dryly as we sit together on overstuffed sofas. “Each generation either made or married its own money. There isn’t a bum in the lot. They’ve always got an eye for the main chance. They’re not romantics; they don’t take chances.”

The recording on Blonde on Blonde is the best version, but these snippets of an acoustic performance (from 1966, I think) are fine.