Tolerance of everything is not good

A very good Victor Davis Hanson article about how the decline of religiosity in the west and the sometimes misused principle of tolerance have lead to a situation where we do not take ourselves and our values seriously and neither do the Islamic jihadists.

Can's Breakfast

Can chose to have a butterscotch pudding pack and a flour tortilla for breakfast this morning. Mostly we're just happy to see him eat any thing so we said OK to his request, but this was a strange combination.

False Prophets

I should not let it get to me, but last night I was really upset at all of the global warming lemmings. Drudge linked to a poll showing that 95% of Congressional Democrats are convinced that global warming is the result of man-made problems. On the other hand, only 13% of Congressional Republicans buy into the myth (13% of Republicans are gullible). I am not sure why it got to me, but I was thinking about the whole argument and how much time and money are being spent on it. I thought about how much more time and money will be wasted on this issue over the coming years, especially since the Dems are behind the wheel and I just got really ticked-off. What bothers me is that some of that money will be mine. I will end up having to foot the bill for their lunacy.

This morning while studying the Book of Mormon I came upon these verses in the 13th chapter of Helaman.

26 Behold ye are worse than they; for as the Lord liveth, if a prophet come among you and declareth unto you the word of the Lord, which testifieth of your sins and iniquities, ye are angry with him, and cast him out and seek all manner of ways to destroy him; yea, you will say that he is a false prophet, and that he is a sinner, and of the devil, because he testifieth that your deeds are evil.

27 But behold, if a man shall come among you and shall say: Do this, and there is no iniquity; do that and ye shall not suffer; yea, he will say: Walk after the pride of your own hearts; yea, walk after the pride of your eyes, and do whatsoever your heart desireth—and if a man shall come among you and say this, ye will receive him, and say that he is a prophet...

38 But behold, your days of probation are past; ye have procrastinated the day of your salvation until it is everlastingly too late, and your destruction is made sure; yea, for ye have sought all the days of your lives for that which ye could not obtain; and ye have sought for happiness in doing iniquity, which thing is contrary to the nature of that righteousness which is in our great and Eternal Head.

Maybe many people do not see the connection between global warming and the iniquitous world that we live in, but it struck me that there is a connection. We live in a world where those who teach the goodness of sin and those who peep in worldly looking glasses and make secular predictions of doom are lifted up as prophets, while those true prophets who could truly lead the world to safety and protection are scorned as madmen or naive idiots. If Satan can connvince the world that the biggest problem in the world is the supposed threat of man-made global warming, then they will not be worried about the degredation of our society around us. The destruction of the family and all moral values can and will continue until we recognize that the true great threat to our happiness lies not in the mostly fictitious harm of driving an SUV to work, but in discarding the teachings of past and modern prophets of our Heavenly Father.

Happy Manuscript Day! :-)

After months of work, last Friday I finally turned a draft of my article manuscript over to my boss. I have really been working hard to get this together and I began to wonder if I would ever get it done. It took me so long that I was feeling down on myself and my ability to organize my thoughts and write about my research. After staring at it for so long and struggling to get it written I could not look at it with an objective view, so I was worried about how it would read. As of this morning, the boss still had not read it and I was dreading what he would say. Then, this afternoon he sent me the following email.

You have made my day/week/month. Read over your draft very quickly. Entire manuscript is excellent. There will be very little to change. Keep doing exactly what you are doing.

Oh boy, can I tell you the relief that this brought me. When he came out into the lab I thanked him for his comments and compliments. Then he said, "I don't want this to go to your head but in the ten years since I have been doing this job, this is the best manuscript I have received yet."

I have written a number of grant applications since I have been in this lab and my boss has been very happy with these so it shouldn't be a surprise that he is happy with my manuscript. I just had such a hard time getting it to sound good to myself and it took so much longer than I thought it should have that I was worried about it. Tonight I'll sleep with a lighter feeling on my shoulders.

"The greatest deception in the history of science"

This is what Dr. Timoth Ball (Ph.D in Climatology from the University of London, England) said of the idea that global-warming is the result of human produced carbon dioxide. This is good article from someone looking at the science and not the agenda-driven media hype. I liked the following quote.

"I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment?"

In the article, Dr. Ball also points to Dr. Richard Lindzen, atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, as another scientific authority who often speaks out against the myth of man-made global warming.

Dr. Ball is the Chairman of a Canadian based Natural Resources Stewardship Project., which is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that is trying to provide a more reasonable voice to counter ideologically-driven environmentalist groups.

Update: I heard another good global warming discussion between Dennis Prager and Bjorn Lomborg, who is an adjunct Professor in the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at the Copenhagen Business School and the director of the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute. A couple of key points. Al Gore's film wildly exaggerates. For instance, they report sea level rises of 20 feet, while the latest UN report has revised their numbers down from ~2 feet to ~1-1.5 feet. Tubby's film also likes to give one sided statistics. For example, it says that there will be 2,000 more heat related deaths each year due to global warming. It neglects to mention that 20,000 less people will die each year due to cold as a result of global warming. There was also some talk about how little real effect on total carbon dioxide levels would actually occur if all of the cars, trucks, boats and airplanes in the US were to be taken out of use. Dennis' blog links to an LA times article that reports on this from the point of view that the carbon-dioxide levels are so high that there is no way we could bring them down to a globally acceptable level, even if we cut out ALL of our emissions. Some people may buy into this idea, but what it tells me is that the idea that we are causing the global warming is ridiculous. Maybe if we try really hard we can stop the earth from spinning and get it going the other way around.