Minor Thoughts from me to you

I ran across this review of a 1970's JC Penney catalog. Yikes! Not only am I convinced that my generation is richer than my parent's generation, I'm also convinced that we dress better.

Count your many blessings, name then one by one. Start with your closet and dresser.

I cheer globalization, even when American workers lose their jobs to non-Americans. Why? Because the world's poor are always made better off. To be blunt, I feel far, far more sympthathy for the poor of the world than I do for America's newly unemployed. One group of people gets to enjoy fresh food year round, air conditioning, heating, clean drinking water. The other group -- doesn't. So when the have-nots get an opportunity to become the haves, I cheer.

Why do I bring it up? Well, I read a story in the New York Times that demonstrates, again, how things are improving in India: In India, Poverty Inspires Technology Workers to Altruism:

"Babajob seeks to bring the social-networking revolution popularized by Facebook and MySpace to people who do not even have computers -- the world's poor. And the start-up is just one example of an unanticipated byproduct of the outsourcing boom: many of the hundreds of multinationals and hundreds of thousands of technology workers who are working here are turning their talents to fighting the grinding poverty that surrounds them.

"In Redmond, you don't see 7-year-olds begging on the street," said Sean Blagsvedt, Babajob's founder, referring to Microsoft's headquarters in Washington State, where he once worked. "In India, you can't escape the feeling that you're really lucky. So you ask, What are you going to do about all the stuff around you? How are you going to use all these skills?"

The best-known networking sites in the industry connect computer-savvy elites to one another. Babajob, by contrast, connects India's elites to the poor at their doorsteps, people who need jobs but lack the connections to find them. Job seekers advertise skills, employers advertise jobs and matches are made through social networks.

For example, if Rajeev and Sanjay are friends, and Sanjay needs a chauffeur, he can view Rajeev's page, travel to the page of Rajeev's chauffeur and see which of the chauffeur's friends are looking for similar work.

Woohoo!

I have to admit that I've been on the fence for a while about whether or not waterboarding constitutes true torture. Mainly, I was ignorant about what waterboarding really was. And I was blissfully ignorant. I passed up many opportunities to find out what it really was.

This morning, my ignorance ended and my certainty began. Waterboarding is Torture… Period (Updated) (SWJ Blog):

1. Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period. There is no way to gloss over it or sugarcoat it. It has no justification outside of its limited role as a training demonstrator. Our service members have to learn that the will to survive requires them accept and understand that they may be subjected to torture, but that America is better than its enemies and it is one's duty to trust in your nation and God, endure the hardships and return home with honor.

2. Waterboarding is not a simulation. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim's face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

From the New York Times, this is kind of innovative idea that gets me excited:

Mr. Agassi is not planning to make cars, but instead wants to deploy an infrastructure of battery-charging stations in the United States, Europe and the developing world.

The new system will sell electric fuel on a subscription basis and will subsidize vehicle costs through leases and credits.

"We're basically saying this is just like the cellular phone model," he said. "If you think of Tesla as the iPhone, we're AT&T.;"

He said his approach was a radical departure from other electric-car ventures that relied on advances in battery technology, which have come slowly.

Instead, he plans to extend the existing electric-power grids with a wide network of intelligent recharging stations in urban areas and supplementing it with a smaller number of automated battery-replacement stations.

The economics will be more compelling in Europe, where gasoline is roughly twice as expensive as in the United States, he said. Assuming a life span of 1,500 battery recharges, he said that the energy cost of all-electric cars would be about 7 cents a mile. That would be less than a third of the cost of driving a gasoline-powered car today.

"It's much easier to transport electrons than octane molecules," he said. "We've already got a grid that goes around the entire world; all we have to do is extend it."

Mr. Agassi envisions tens of thousands of recharging spots that will adjust for both cost and use patterns. For example, a group of parking-lot chargers at a workplace might recharge a visitor's car before a regular employee's car parked for the entire day.

The system will also supplement recharging stations that require about one minute of recharge time for every minute of driving, with a smaller number of car-wash-style stations for swapping batteries. This would make it possible for a driver to go to a station rather than wait to recharge a battery, he said.

I have no idea if this will work out or not. Still, I pay around $250 month for gasoline, so I wouldn't be opposed to paying a monthly subscription fee if it came out the same, or less, per month. It's an intriguing idea and I do so like seeing ideas that are "outside the box".

Wisconsin Congressman David Obey wants to pass a war tax. I realize it's more of a political stunt, but I discovered that I'm not entirely opposed to the idea.

Noting that "we need to stop pretending that this war doesn't cost anything," Obey also announced that Murtha, McGovern and he will be introducing a bill to create a war surtax to pay for operations in Iraq instead of passing those costs on to future generations as the President has requested.

"I'm tired of seeing that only military families are asked to sacrifice in this war; and they are asked to sacrifice again, and again, and again, so we are putting together this bill in the hope that people will stop ignoring what this war is costing American taxpayers and call the President's bluff on fiscal responsibility," Obey said. "The President is threatening to veto our efforts to provide one-tenth the amount of money that he is spending in Iraq for investments in education, health, medical research, science, law enforcement, and other areas that are crucial to creating a stronger country and more prosperous families. If the President is really serious about combating deficit spending then we'd be happy to help him avoid shoving the costs of the war in Iraq on to our kids by providing for a war surtax."

I want the bill to guarantee that the tax would be gradually phased out as the war is phased out, but I do support paying for the war instead of continually increasing the deficit.

5000 years of religion in 90 seconds, that is. This is pretty cool.

How has the geography of religion evolved over the centuries, and where has it sparked wars? Our map gives us a brief history of the world's most well-known religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. Selected periods of inter-religious bloodshed are also highlighted. Want to see 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds? Ready, Set, Go!

Yesterday, Rudy Giuliani spoke at the FRC Values Voters Summit, attempting to sell evangelicals on his qualifications. Most commentators agree that he hit a "solid double" and may have softened some of the opposition to his candidacy. Several hours after the event, his campaign posted the video of his speech.

I just finished watching it. Here are my rough (really rough!) notes from the speech.

Will always be honest -- even when people disagree with him and his goals are unpopular. Will not govern by polls or by holding his finger in the wind. George Will called his mayoralty "the best conservative governance in the nation in the past 50 years". Lowered NYC crime rate. Cleaned up Times Square.

Chased pornographers out of the city. Took on the New York Museum of Art, after Virgin Mary, with dung painting. People of faith need to be free to express their faith, in public. Need to defend traditional expressions of faith, in public. "Freedom of religion is not freedom from religion"

Next President needs to restore the idea that "for every right there's a responsibility, for every benefit, there's an obligation that goes along with it". Turned welfare agencies into job centers -- changed the name on the door and the mission of the organization. Largest welfare reform, happened before federal legislation. Newt called it "revolutionary". 640,000 fewer New Yorkers on welfare. Returned the work ethic back to the center of city life and people thrive when you give them some control over their lives.

Strong supporter of school choice. Product of parochial schools -- all the way up to NYU law school. Every parent in America should have the right to send their kids to the school of their choice -- even home school, if that's what they want. It takes a family -- not a village -- to raise a child. Education opportunity is the civil rights issue for the 21st century

Sign on his desk at City Hall, "I'm responsible", to remind him that accountability goes both ways. Committment to shared values can help us achieve shared goals. Committment to decrease abortions and increase adoptions. Worked hard to increase adoption in NYC -- increased by 133% over eight years before he came into office. Abortions came down 18% during that same period. A country without abortion, achieved by changing the hearts and minds of people. Will veto any reduction in the Hyde amendent or other options to provide public support for abortions. Will support any reasonable suggestion that promises to reduce abortions: parental notifications, partial birth abortions. Will remove bureacratic red tape that makes adoption so expensive.

Supreme Court judges will be most important decision. Judges must be conscientous in their role of interpreting the law, not creating the law. Will appointment judges that understand what people meant when the wrote the law or Constitution. Advisor Board: Chair - Ted Olsen, Larry Thompson, Miguel Estrada, Attorney-General Designate. In the mold of Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts.

It turns out that a privately owned bridge is responsible for "carrying one-third of all road trade -- or more than $122 billion in goods a year" between the U.S. and Canada.

In a remarkable arrangement for a crossing so major, Manuel J. Moroun, a reclusive billionaire from Detroit's suburbs who oversees a trucking empire, owns the bridge, one of only two privately owned bridges along the entire northern border of the United States and by far the most economically significant privately owned bridge in the nation.

Now, with so much commerce depending on a single structure, people have begun to wonder what would happen if a terrorist were to attack it or if the Ambassador Bridge, approaching 80 years old, were to fail.

And so a race is on to build a new $1 billion crossing here.

Of course, the local politicians want it to be a publicly owned bridge this time. They don't trust private ownership, of course.

Supporters of a publicly owned span here say it is the only wise plan, the only one that offers needed public oversight and regulation. They have deep concerns, they say, about allowing a single man to continue his decades-long reign over such a vital connector of nations.

"This man is making billions of dollars on that bridge." said Raymond E. Basham, a Michigan state senator and a Democrat, who said that only a public bridge could ensure the structural inspections and domestic security needed. "When it comes to dollars and cents, there is every incentive for him not to tell us if something is wrong. We have an obligation for the safety of people."

Really, I don't know how to respond to Senator Brasham. The flaws in his argument are so gapingly huge that I feel ludicrous having to actually point them out. But somebody's gotta do it and it might as well be me.

First of all, Mr. Moroun has at least 100 million reasons a year to keep his bridge well maintained and protected. I'd say that's one humdinger of an incentive right there. If there are any fears about the bridge's safety, that traffic could all disappear -- it's in his best interests to make sure that no one ever has any reason to fear for the bridge's safety. That, naturally, means more disclosure -- not less.

Here's how the Detroit International Bridge Company has protected their investment.

... the bridge company had hired private security guards to watch the bridge in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

Mr. Stamper [the president of the company] also said that the Ambassador Bridge received structural inspections every year from private firms and that the results of those inspections were made available to Michigan and Canadian transportation authorities, though not to the public.

Secondly, it's preposterous to suggest that the government will be on top of maintenance and repairs. The most glaring example is the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minnesota, two months ago. In the aftermath of that disaster, all 50 states suddenly realized that they were way behind on their own bridge maintenance. The levies that collapsed in New Orleans? Also publicly owned and maintained.

I'd far rather trust my life to private ownership and maintenance than public ownership and maintenance. A private owner stands to lose millions of dollars in business if his infrastructure collapses. A politician who underfunds maintenance earns an opportunity to blame someone else for skimping on safety and a chance get on TV, by promising to do better. That's definitely not an incentive for pro-active safety.

I've made no secret of the fact that Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church Seattle is one of my favorite people to listen to. I've learned a fantastic amount through his sermons and the Holy Spirit has really used him to clarify a lot of ideas for me.

That's why I'm so interested in hearing his upcoming sermon series, tentatively titled "Ask Anything".

Last year, as I was preaching through the book of 1 Corinthians, I was struck by the fact that Paul's letter was in large part a series of answers to various questions he received from the church.

Members of the church at Corinth were so distressed about various factions, controversies, and false doctrines in the church that they visited Paul to seek his counsel (Acts 16:17; 1 Cor. 1:11; 8:1; 11:18). The Corinthian church also sent Paul a letter with a number of questions that they wanted his opinion on. The situation at Corinth escalated so greatly that Paul had Timothy deliver his letter of responses on his behalf (1 Cor. 4:17; 16:10).

Throughout the letter, Paul frequently quotes directly from the letter he received from the Corinthians (e.g., 6:12, 6:13, 8:5, 10:23). He also notifies the reader of when he is transitioning from answering one question to another with the simple phrase "now" (e.g., 7:1, 7:8, 7:25, 8:1, 12:1, 16:1, 16:12).

Paul's example got me to consider what it would be like to do something similar. The result is the upcoming preaching series with the working title Ask Anything. I invite you to get involved and also get the word out by visiting http://askanything.marshillchurch.org/about.

Here are the details:

1. Ask a question about anything you want. There is a 200-character limit for each question, but you can ask as many as you want.
2. Vote for your favorites. You are limited to ten votes per day (which can be given to ten different questions, a single question, or anything in between).
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until November 1st at 5 PM, PST. At the conclusion of the preliminary stage, no more questions can be submitted; the fifty highest vote-getting questions will then move on to the final stage of voting and carry with them the amount of votes received during preliminary voting.
4. Vote for the top nine questions you want answered. All voting concludes December 14th at 5 PM, PST, and the top nine questions will be confirmed.
5. Come to a Mars Hill campus beginning in January 2008. I will answer the top nine questions in the form of a sermon series: one sermon per question. (sermons will be available for free via podcast, vodcast, and download at www.marshillchurch.org).
6. The questions and answers will also eventually be published as a book I will write for Crossway.

My opinion on American education is simple: it's outdated. We haven't changed the way we've done school in over 100 years. Society, technology, and knowledge have all changed considerably during that time. I think it's time that we took education apart, reexamined it closely, and figured out how to educate a new generation of children. We should use everything we've learned in the past 100 years about the science of education, about science itself, and about the value of technology to rethink how we teach.

Of course, that's made more difficult by attitudes likes these.

Hot classrooms, some infested with wasps; sections of the three-level school unreachable by elevator; a roof in need of replacing.

Some look at the Primary Center here -- built in 1918 -- and see a deteriorating school building that is expensive to maintain. Others see an irreplaceable example of Wisconsin Prairie School architecture that should be preserved.

The building is a community asset -- whether it is used as village offices, a community space or housing, said Kurt Nowka, a Mount Horeb resident who describes himself as a preservationist. "People have come to Mount Horeb because of (its) character."

One of the teachers, at least, has some common sense.

"My thought is that it is not an appropriate place to teach," said Colleen Mize, who has taught first and second graders at the Primary Center for about six years. "It's so old, it's hard to keep up."

She also points to deteriorating carpet, classroom temperatures that can stay in the 90s and wasps in some of the classrooms.

"Research shows that children do better in an environment that is nicer," Mize said. "I just think something needs to be done. I don't care what they do, but I don't think it's a proper place to house little children."

She's absolutely right. But as long as people who have no stake in education -- preservationists, for instance, can wield political power over a school, who cares about the children? They should be honored to be learning in such a historic location!

When I said, above, that "it's time that we took education apart" what I really meant was that "it's time that we let education entrepreneurs take education apart". No referendum or school board will ever come up with the right way to teach children. But entrepreneurs might. A more market oriented school system would allow parents to pick and choose where their children attend school, how they're taught, and who their teachers are.

Wouldn't that be better than leaving the decision up to Kurt Nowka?

Governor Jim Doyle is once again threatening to shut down the Wisconsin government. He's so desperate to pass a budget, he's trying to scare us with stories of shut down prisons and canceled university classes.

"In order to fund essential services that are needed to protect the health and safety of Wisconsin residents, a partial shutdown may well be necessary. The Legislature's failure has left the state with no other option but to plan for the disaster they have caused."

For instance, the Department of Corrections and the UW System are expected to run out of money in April, he said.

Doyle said he needs to find significant cost savings in Corrections by then to keep running the prisons. That might mean canceling contracts with county jails that house some prisoners and furloughing workers, he said.

For the System's 13 four-year universities and 13 two-year colleges, the governor said it would be irresponsible to open the campuses for the second semester in January if they would have to close their doors in April.

Doyle said he doesn't have a date to put the plans in place and he would like "to put that off as long as possible."

Owen Robinson points out that the State has plenty of money to keep things running.

The state of Wisconsin is currently operating under the previous budget. Because of the natural increase in tax revenues from a growing economy, Wisconsin's government will actually take in about a billion MORE dollars even without any tax increases. Also, the budget included COL and other built in increases. So if a budget is not passed, Wisconsin can and will spend more money than it did last year.

If Doyle chooses to shut down government services even though they are getting as much or more tax dollars than last year, then he can have at it. It would show his utter weakness as an executive to manage the state. A manager from Best Buy could keep the store open without a budget increase. I would think that the governor could do at least that.

Once again, our governor is looking increasingly inept, incompetent, and powerless. Good. That's exactly how I like the executive branch to look. We don't NEED to pass a budget in order to keep the state safe and secure. Therefore, I don't think we should pass a budget until we get the right one. Right?

Last night, the State Assembly voted on Governor Doyle's new "compromise" budget. (The Democrat controlled Senate had passed it earlier in the day.) Thankfully, it went down in flames.

The path ahead for the stalled state budget was left in the dark Monday night as two Democrats and all but one Republican in the state Assembly voted to reject a compromise proposal by Gov. Jim Doyle, defeating the plan on a 53-44 vote.

A third Democrat who did not vote formally signaled he also opposed the proposal.

And in the wake of the defeat of the plan -- which earlier Monday was approved on a straight party line vote in the Democrat-led Senate -- neither side in the budget stalemate said they had any immediate new offer to put forward to end the impasse.

I bet you're wondering who that Republican quisling was. I was disappointed to learn that it was no other than my own representative, Brett Davis.

I've learned that when you're working on a nearly $58 billion budget bill with 132 other elected officials with strong opinions, you are not always going to get your way. It doesn't mean you have to give in, but there is a place for true compromise and it's time. Not just by the leadership of both political parties, but by every legislator that has a vote. This action must happen soon or state residents will soon see the dramatic impact of not having a budget. To me, no state budget is an unacceptable answer. I'm calling on my fellow legislators to join me. We must move the state forward.

Here's my response.

Dear Representative Davis,

I was disappointed to read of your vote in favor of Governor Doyle's budget, on Monday evening. I moved into your district in August of last year. Throughout the past 14 months, I've been watching your actions in the Assembly with great interest. I happily voted for your reelection last November and was pleased to see that you won reelection, in spite of a close race and a big effort from the Democrats. I looked forward to your continuing efforts on behalf of your constituents.

Today, I feel that you've let us all down. Governor Doyle's "compromise" budget was nothing of the sort. It still included an 8.3% hike in state spending -- at a time when the state still faces structural deficits. The budget also included unacceptable new taxes, for a state that's already one of the highest taxed in the nation.

Like many of your constituents, I believe that education and health care are important. However, I think we are smart enough to recognize that we must spend money in a responsible manner. Supporting Governor Doyle's goofy raise hospital taxes to lower hospital costs proposal is not responsible. Nor is supporting a $1.25 per pack increase in the cigarette tax.

You will be up for reelection in just 13 short months. If you had voted for a fiscally responsible budget, I'd have been willing to help explain to my fellow voters why your vote was the right one. If you had voted for a fiscally responsible budget, I'd have been willing to explain how the Democrats played politics with the budget in an effort to force Republicans into voting for an irresponsible budget. But, you voted for an irresponsible budget.

Fortunately, the budget failed. You have another chance. I'll be watching your upcoming votes. Are you willing to do the right thing? I hope so.

Sincerely,

Joseph A. Martin

Ever wondered how private roads might work? Drew Carey explains -- and it really would be better than you think.

See?

About two dozen Madison high school students courageously stood up for the right yesterday. They protested the Iraq war and President Bush in a city and county that have both overwhelmingly voted to impeach the president. What courage! What intestinal fortitude! What lack of concern for self and popularity!

Yawn. Give me a call when Madison high school students rally in support of free trade, in support of the rights of the unborn, in support of lower taxes and fewer government handouts, in opposition to "An Inconvenient Truth", or anything else that might actually hurt their popularity.

Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus - New York Times

In 1988, the surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, proclaimed ice cream to a be public-health menace right up there with cigarettes. Alluding to his office's famous 1964 report on the perils of smoking, Dr. Koop announced that the American diet was a problem of "comparable" magnitude, chiefly because of the high-fat foods that were causing coronary heart disease and other deadly ailments.

That was a ludicrous statement, as Gary Taubes demonstrates in his new book meticulously debunking diet myths, "Good Calories, Bad Calories" (Knopf, 2007).

It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After all, wasn't it his job to express the scientific consensus? But that was the problem. Dr. Koop was expressing the consensus. He, like the architects of the federal "food pyramid" telling Americans what to eat, went wrong by listening to everyone else. He was caught in what social scientists call a cascade.

Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better, according to the economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch. If, say, 60 percent of a group's members have been given information pointing them to the right answer (while the rest have information pointing to the wrong answer), there is still about a one-in-three chance that the group will cascade to a mistaken consensus.

In the Battle Against Cancer, Researchers Find Hope in a Toxic Wasteland - New York Times

Death sits on the east side of this city, a 40-billion-gallon pit filled with corrosive water the color of a scab. On the opposite side sits the small laboratory of Don and Andrea Stierle, whose stacks of plastic Petri dishes are smeared with organisms pulled from the pit. Early tests indicate that some of those organisms may help produce the next generation of cancer drugs.

For decades, scientists assumed that nothing could live in the Berkeley Pit, a hole 1,780 feet deep and a mile and a half wide that was one of the world's largest copper mines until 1982, when the Atlantic Richfield Company suspended work there. The pit filled with water that turned as acidic as vinegar, laced with high concentrations of arsenic, aluminum, cadmium and zinc.

Today it is one of the harshest environments in the country. When residents speak of the pit, they often recall the day in 1995 when hundreds of geese landed on the water and promptly died.

But the pit itself is far from dead. Over the last decade, Mr. Stierle said, the couple have found 142 organisms living in it and have "isolated 80 chemical compounds that exist nowhere else."

Panel Sees Problems in Ethanol Production - New York Times

Greater cultivation of crops to produce ethanol could harm water quality and leave some regions of the country with water shortages, a panel of experts is reporting. And corn, the most widely grown fuel crop in the United States, might cause more damage per unit of energy than other plants, especially switchgrass and native grasses, the panel said.

The report noted that additional use of fertilizers and pesticides could pollute water supplies and contribute to the overgrowth of aquatic plant life that produces "dead zones" like those in the Chesapeake Bay, the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere.

Book now for the flight to nowhere - Times Online

An Indian entrepreneur has given a new twist to the concept of low-cost airlines. The passengers boarding his Airbus 300 in Delhi do not expect to go anywhere because it never takes off.

In a country where 99% of the population have never experienced air travel, the "virtual journeys" of Bahadur Chand Gupta, a retired Indian Airlines engineer, have proved a roaring success.

"Some of my passengers have crossed the country to get on this plane," says Gupta, who charges about £2 each for passengers taking the "journey".

The Odyssey Years - New York Times

People who were born before 1964 tend to define adulthood by certain accomplishments -- moving away from home, becoming financially independent, getting married and starting a family.

In 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same.

Overlawyered: Welcome to West Virginia: Joe Meadows v. Go-Mart

Joe Meadows was drunk. Very drunk. 0.296 percent blood-alcohol content drunk, 12 or 13 beers worth. Fortunately, he didn't drive in that state. Unfortunately, he chose to sleep it off by resting under a parked 18-wheel truck. More unfortunately, the driver, Doug Rader, who didn't check to see whether there might be drunks lying under his truck at 1:40 a.m., ran over Meadows. Rader had EMT training, and was able to save Meadows's life, but Meadows lost a leg, and sued both the truck company and the store that owned the parking lot. A Kanawha County jury decided that Meadows was only a third responsible for his injury, which means he "only" gets two thirds of the three million dollars they awarded.

What is Orthodoxy? (Part 1, Part 2)

What is the "orthodoxy" in our "humble orthodoxy" anyway? What do we mean when we say "orthodoxy?" "What must we agree upon? What are the basics, what are the essentials?"

Now this is a dangerous question. And we have to proceed very carefully here, because if you take this wrong, this question can sound a little like the teenager in the youth group asking, "How far can I go? What's the least I have to believe and still be considered a Christian? What can I get away with?" Friends, that is not the spirit in which I'm posing this question. You want to pursue truth in every single matter about which God has revealed Himself in His word. If He's gone to the trouble of revealing Himself, you should care as a Christian, you should want to understand it, so that you can know more about who this God is that you're worshiping.

Part of what we need for doctrinal discernment is to understand what must be agreed upon and how serious errors are. Because you know not all errors are created equal--they're not all the same. We need to understand the significance of the doctrine that is in question.

... So God, the Bible, the gospel.

Those are the things that we must agree upon to have meaningful cooperation as Christians. True Christian fellowship cannot be had with someone who disagrees with us on these matters. These are the essential of the essentials.

Finally, for Adam, Pastor John Piper's view of Ayn Rand's philosophy. Several years ago, after I read Adam's copy of Atlas Shrugged, I disagreed with her view of altruism. But I couldn't put my feelings into words. Now I find that John Piper has.

Atlas Shrugged Fifty Years Later :: Desiring God

My Ayn Rand craze was in the late seventies when I was a professor of Biblical Studies at Bethel College. I read most of what she wrote both fiction and non-fiction. I was attracted and repulsed. I admired and cried. I was blown away with powerful statements of what I believed, and angered that she shut herself up in what Jonathan Edwards called the infinite provincialism of atheism. Her brand of hedonism was so close to my Christian Hedonism and yet so far--like a satellite that comes close to the gravitational pull of truth and then flings off into the darkness of outer space.

Sentences like these made me want to scream. No. No. No. Altruism (treating someone better than he deserves) does not have to involve "betraying your values" or "sacrificing a greater value to a lesser one." In other words, I agreed with her that we should never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one. But I disagreed that mercy (returning good for evil) always involved doing that.

Staying warm will be more expensive this winter -- 10-22% more expensive.

That's the sobering message from an Energy Department report Tuesday that estimates heating oil costs are likely to jump 22 percent and natural gas bills, on average, will rise 10 percent between October and March.

Why? Well, a continuing lack of sufficient U.S. refinery capacity, apparently.

Surging crude oil prices are the primary, but not the only, culprit for the jump in fuel oil costs. This spring and summer, American refineries experienced an unusual number of unexpected maintenance outages. The net result was that fewer refineries were producing gasoline, heating oil and other petroleum products.

The outages sent gasoline prices to a record $3.227 a gallon in late May as refiners scrambled to produce enough gasoline to meet peak summer driving demand.

"Because they used every ounce of the refinery to produce gasoline, it came at the expense of distillate fuels" like home heating oil, said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago.

All of the demand for natural gas is boosting supplies, however. That could push prices down in a year or two.

Despite the government forecast, natural gas futures prices have actually been mostly falling in recent weeks. Inventories remained high as new sources of natural gas were tapped this year and a cooler summer depressed demand.

"We could have all-time record storage by the beginning of February," said Tim Evans, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in New York.

On the other hand, supplies coming on line this year, including Anadarko Petroleum Corp.'s Independence Hub platform in the Gulf of Mexico and a portion of the huge Rockies Express natural gas pipeline project, are expected to boost natural gas supplies by 2 billion to 2.5 billion cubic feet.

"That's a lot of supply coming on," Denhardt said.

Finally, there's this poignant note:

Penny Taylor, who spent about $350 a month last winter to heat her Sarasota, Fla., home with electric heat, blanched when she heard about Tuesday's price forecast from the Energy Department.

"I think we're going to have to get a lot of blankets, because there's no way we'll be able to afford to run the heat," she said.

Everyone living north of the Mason-Dixon line weeps for you, Ms. Taylor. (I think she meant to say "there's no way we'll be able to afford to run the heat as high as we'd like to". We must all practice frugality, even with heating and cooling.)

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle said today he would call the state Legislature into special session to consider a compromise budget bill.

The Legislature is 100 days late in passing a new, two-year budget, and Wisconsin is the only state without a taxing and spending plan. Without a budget, the state continues at last year's taxing and spending levels.

Leaders of the Republican-led Assembly and the Democratic-led Senate have met in private with Doyle aides for more than two weeks but have not reached a compromise. The closed-door talks began at Doyle's insistence after a larger group of negotiators had previously made no progress in resolving differences between the two chamber's budget proposals.

The compromise bill Doyle said he would introduce for the special session is still being drafted. But he said it would include the full cigarette tax increase, a $418 million tax on hospitals and $430 million in spending cuts compared to his original $58.2 billion budget proposal. It would also include a transfer of an undisclosed amount from the medical malpractice fund.

The bill would not include Doyle's proposed tax on oil company revenues or deal with the state's road fund, which he said would be dealt with in a later special session.

Doyle also said his compromise would not include a $15 billion universal health-care plan proposed by Senate Democrats or an increase he previously proposed in a tax on people selling their homes.

I dunno. I still prefer going on with no new budget. The state will continue operating under the old one -- which means no new taxes and no new spending. I can think of worse things that could happen.

The Recess Supervisor has some commentary on the situation:

Mind you, Jim Doyle is currently working in a political environment where Corky Thatcher would look like Albert Einstein. What he's doing isn't exactly hard. He sits back, watches both sides look like idiots for three months, and now comes in to play the role of serious grown-up. The press and the public afford him all kinds of clout because Mike Huebsch and Judy Robson look like a couple of third-graders fighting over the lead in the school play.

Doyle, of course, is effectively forcing the AssGOP to show its hand. For months, Mike Huebsch has talked about compromise, while members of his caucus like Steve Nass are slipping out the back door and giving word to the base that the caucus isn't going to compromise and doesn't care if we have a budget. So there's seems to be a bit of disagreement on where, exactly, the AssGOP caucus stands on the budget.

I'm not saying that Doyle's bill can't be improved upon, or that further compromises cannot or should not be made. But it's high time that the AssGOP decides once and for all to fish or cut bait on this budget, and live with the consequences either way. Either it accepts that compromising with Democrats means raising some taxes, or it walks away for good and takes its case to the voters.

My money is on fish. There aren't enough zealots in that caucus to hold progress up.

Yesterday, I read a very interesting op-ed about universal coverage: Bad Medicine For Health Care.

Individual mandate supporters typically justify the policy by citing the problem of uncompensated care. When uninsured patients receive health services but don't pay for them, the rest of us end up footing the bill one way or another. So advocates of insurance mandates contend, plausibly enough, that we should make the free riders pay.

But how big is the free-rider problem, really? According to an Urban Institute study released in 2003, uncompensated care for the uninsured constitutes less than 3% of all health expenditures. Even if the individual mandate works exactly as planned, that's the effective upper boundary on the mandate's impact.

Savings of less than 3%? That doesn't sound so good.

What about the states that mandate minimum coverage levels? Surely that does some good?

Some proposals couple mandates with subsidies for the purchase of private insurance. As far as policies to encourage more private coverage go, you could do worse. But as long as the public has to subsidize the formerly uninsured, the problem with free riders has not been solved. We're just paying for them in a different way.

Even now, every state has a list of benefits that any health-insurance policy must cover--from contraception to psychotherapy to chiropractic to hair transplants. All states together have created nearly 1,900 mandated benefits. Of course, more generous benefits make insurance more expensive. A 2007 study estimates existing mandates boost premiums by more than 20%.

Oops. Maybe if we allowed people to buy only the coverage that they actually needed, more people could afford coverage.

Finally,

Some people will not comply: 47 states require drivers to buy liability auto insurance, yet the median percentage of uninsured drivers in those states is 12%. Granted, that number might be even higher without the mandates. The point, however, is that any amount of noncompliance reduces the efficacy of the mandate.

Let's assume that 12% of the U.S. populace ignores an individual mandate and doesn't buy health coverage. What's 12% of 300 million people? Oh, about 36,000,000 people. That's about the number of people in the U.S. that currently don't have healthcare.

I'm supremely skeptical that passing universal healthcare will do much to help Americans get better healthcare.

I've written before that I'm a fan of the FairTax -- it's a flat consumption tax would do a lot to boost tax compliance, boost U.S. exports, and reduce complexity. So, it was with some interest that I read a New York Times article on a new proposal for a consumption tax. It only took me a few seconds to be horrified by what I read.

By replacing federal income taxes with a steeply progressive consumption tax, the United States could erase the federal deficit, stimulate additional savings, pay for valuable public services and reduce overseas borrowing -- all without requiring difficult sacrifices from taxpayers.

First of all, the words "steeply progressive" send chills up and down my spine -- and not chills of excitement. But let's ignore that for a moment. How is it possible to simultaneously erase the deficit, provide brand new services, and eliminate borrowing -- all without requiring difficult sacrifices from taxpayers?

As far as I call, it's not possible.

Under such a tax, people would report not only their income but also their annual savings, as many already do under 401(k) plans and other retirement accounts. A family's annual consumption is simply the difference between its income and its annual savings. That amount, minus a standard deduction -- say, $30,000 for a family of four -- would be the family's taxable consumption. Rates would start low, like 10 percent. A family that earned $50,000 and saved $5,000 would thus have taxable consumption of $15,000. It would pay only $1,500 in tax. Under the current system of federal income taxes, this family would pay about $3,000 a year.

That's great for low-income families. What about high income families?

Consider a family that spends $10 million a year and is deciding whether to add a $2 million wing to its mansion. If the top marginal tax rate on consumption were 100 percent, the project would cost $4 million. The additional tax payment would reduce the federal deficit by $2 million. Alternatively, the family could scale back, building only a $1 million addition. Then it would pay $1 million in additional tax and could deposit $2 million in savings. The federal deficit would fall by $1 million, and the additional savings would stimulate investment, promoting growth. Either way, the nation would come out ahead with no real sacrifice required of the wealthy family, because when all build larger houses, the result is merely to redefine what constitutes acceptable housing. With a consumption tax in place, most neighbors would also scale back the new wings on their mansions.

Uh-huh. That's a mind-blowing definition of "no real sacrifice". Give the rich an "inventive" to build smaller houses and they'll be better off because they won't have to compete with other rich people to build ever bigger houses. Wow.

Let's also look at the idea that expanding a house isn't investment. Expanding a house results in jobs for construction workers, foremen, and architects. It results in orders for more bricks, lumber, plaster, flooring, roofing, insulation, etc. Isn't that beneficial to the economy?

The alternative to spending money how they want is that people save more, whether in banks or investment accounts. That would make credit cheaper for all kinds of borrowers -- mortgage borrowers, automotive borrowers, education borrowers, home improvement borrowers, and businesses of all kinds.

What are people going to do with these cheap new loans? Buy things, I suppose. In the end, isn't consumption just another form of investment?

Let me clear: I think this particular consumption tax is a horrid idea. Wealth isn't the measure of how much money someone has in their bank account, it's the measure of much useful things they have. What good does $20,000 in the bank do me, if I can't use it to buy a bigger house, a bigger car, a better education, or a holiday in the Wisconsin Dells? It seems that this tax would encourage me to save, then penalize me for enjoying my savings.

Sounds like social engineering dressed up as tax policy -- exactly what I dislike about current state of income taxes.

I vote "No".

Everyone "knows" that Canadian's get better healthcare than Americans do. After all, not only do Canadians live longer but their healthcare is free too!

Recently, June O'Neill and Dave O'Neill submitted a new working paper to NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research), comparing the U.S. and Canadian healthcare systems. Their results may surprise you.

First,

It turns out that once we condition on infant birth weight -- a significant predictor of infant health -- the U.S. has equivalent infant mortality rates. In fact U.S. infant mortality is lower for low-birthweight babies than Canadian infant mortality for low birthweight babies. Overall infant mortality, however, is higher in the U.S. because the incidence of babies with low birthweight is higher than in Canada. This may be due to demographic or epidemiological factors, or it may be the case that the U.S. is better at having a live birth for a low birthweight baby.

Second,

Why do Canadians live longer? One reason is due to the excess number of accidents and homicides in the U.S. compared to Canada. In fact 50%-85% of the mortality gap between American and Canadian adults in their twenties can be explained by the increased American accident/homicide rates. For people over 50, 30-50% of the difference in age-specific mortality rates can be attributed to the excess number of heart disease patients in the U.S. These heart disease findings are more likely driven by American lifestyle choices rather than the efficacy of the U.S. medical system.

Moving to Canada won't increase the quality of your healthcare nearly as much as you think it will.