International Treaties

Once upon a time, I wrote an essay conveying my concerns about how treaties that give legislative authority to extranational bodies were a grave threat to our sovreignity; the Constitution makes a ratified treaty superior to all other laws of the land. I had fretted that this could authorize the UN (or worse, a committee of appointees) power to legislate for us, and supersede our government in so doing. I had imagined that we needed a constitutional amendment to require ratification of every act of a body given authority over us by treaty. Fortunately, I was wrong. Today on Catholic Exchange, I found this:

As the treaty provision at issue was not "self-executing" — in other words, it did not become automatically binding upon ratification by Congress — it could not bind states without further Congressional action. The U.S. Constitution requires action by the legislative, not the executive, branch to transform a non-self-executing treaty obligation into domestic law.

Mafia Discourse and the Church Militant

This post is going to ramble. Once again, I've seen a number of things online that just seem to tie together.

This article was on the front page of Catholic Exchange today; in it, Dr. Stanley Williams takes Sean Hannity to task for his use of what Eric Scheske once called "mafia discourse tactics" (and on Fr. Thomas Eutener, at that)! It seems to me that all too often, such tactics are used to avoid the truth.

Then I found a link to this post by Adoro te Devote. She goes on at length about what it means to be a confirmed Catholic -- it means we've volunteered to be part of the Church Militant, to go into spiritual and rhetorical battle to defend and promote the Faith. But she also expounds on the way we are to do this: with caritas. St Paul tells us that without caritas, all other gifts of the Spirit are nothing.

I don't mean to suggest that there is no place for all-out warfare. There are cases where our opponents clearly intend nothing less than our complete destruction, and doing whatever it takes to stop them is called for by the Church. (The Caveman makes the case for executions here, and provides an example of when warfare is so justified.) But such cases are rare. I think the Church is better served by initially giving others the benefit of the doubt, and not presuming hostility before it has been demonstrated.

More blogrollin'

Catholic Analysis has just joined both my personal blogroll and my recommended blogs, on the strength of this post. In truth, what gets me is not the point that Mr. Sorbino is trying to make (which is valid, in my opinion), but the strength and versatility of the image he uses to make it.

It's a very blunt image, and he makes apologies beforehand to the squeamish. This seems prudent to me, by the way; as I am about to use this image,

I suggest strongly that the squeamish stop reading.

The point Mr. Sorbino is making is that contracepted sex does not consummate a marriage. But the image he uses is this: a woman using contraception turns herself into a condom: a disposable thing which, once used for pleasure, becomes a piece of waste. So too do all who engage in sterile sex.

Try to Not Faint

Yes, unprecedented output from yours truly: three posts in one day. I've selected a new template, as you can no doubt see. There's just ONE problem: in too many places, type is rendered in ALL CAPS. That is just really annoying to me, and I can't figure out what to change to fix it. Any help in this matter would be most appreciated. Post it to the comment box or email me: arkanabar at lycos dot com (be sure to put "your site" in the subject of the email so I can tell it isn't spam.)

Too Funny to Not Post

So the Whapsters have posted a bunch of Catholic-specific two cows jokes. I've compiled them here, along with those from their comment box. I was laughing myself silly, reading these.

Franciscan: You have two cows. Moved by the beauty of sister cow, you unleash them. Your ensuing lack of milk allows you to glory in the poverty of Christ.

Capuchins: You have the two cows unleashed by the Franciscans. Your proprietorship of the cows proves that you are closer to the spirit of St. Francis. You put long hoods on your cows.

Franciscan Friars of the Renewal: You have two cows. They are grey, more like the cows St. Francis owned. You write a rap somehow rhyming "lactation" with "transubstantiation." It's cool.

Carmelite: By concession of Pope Innocent IV, you have two cows. You don’t eat them between Sept. 14 and Easter.

Discalced Carmelite: You have two cows. You feed them by arduously dragging hay to their trough, but then you deliver it by truck. Ultimately, abundant hay falls effortlessly from the sky.

Benedictine: You have two cows. You use one to preserve the art of animal husbandry for all time. You kill the other and make intricate, colored markings on its hide.

Dominican: You have two cows. You feel as if you should share one with the Franciscans, but can’t bring yourself to trust them with it.

Dominican, ver 2: You had two cows. Then you had a good meal. Now you have a new book written on vellum.

I also looked in my Dominican library, and found Aquinas' work:

Summa Taurologica: (De Res)

Article 1: Whether the bovine essence is always expressed as two individuated cows?

Objection one: The Musician often asked for "more cowbell." Yet he does not ever ask for more than one cowbell. Therefore bovinity is expressed in one individuated being.

Objection two: The Announcer argued at every game that there was a "Holy Cow!" This is because cowness is sufficient in itself and does not need multiplicity.

Objection three: The Boy also argues that one should "Not have a cow." We witness again the singularity of bovinity.

Sed contra: The Prophet Amos warns us: "Listen, you fat cows of Bashan!" (Amos 4:1). He argues in the plural, thus speaking to more than one.

I argue that, while bovinity can indeed be expressed in an individuated essence, the true completeness of the bovine is best expressed in two cows: namely, an older cow for milk and all your regular carnivore expressions of butcher cuts, and a young cow for veal. Thus, the perfection of the cow is best expressed in two individuated cows, yet each cow contains the essence of cowness, or the potential for succulence.

Reply to objection one: This is because there was only one musician worthy of the skill of playing the cowbell in the band at any one time. If a trio of skilled cowbell musicians were assembled, we'd have more cowbells.

Reply to objection two: Although the Holy Cow is one, it covers a multiplicity of events on the diamond, from a home run to a triple play, so analogically, we could argue for different cows, expressed equivocally in the word "cow."

Reply to objection three: The Boy is speaking metaphorically.

Cistercian: You have a more extraordinary method of procuring milk.

Carthusian: You should have two cows, but they never made it to the Grand Chartreuse as they kept mixing up the difference between "Cistercian" and "Carthusian."

Carthusian, ver. 2: You have two cows. Each has its own little barn. They moo only on Sundays, between 3.00pm and 5.00pm.

Trappist: You have two cows. You do not appreciate their mooing, yet require their milk to craft high quality fudge. You assign them to a novice.

Society of Jesus: You have two cows, but everyone from Louis XIV to Pastor Luke at 1st Community Baptist believe you control the cattle industry. Admittedly, you founded many farms in the bovine tradition, but struggle with what bovinity means in the 21st century.

The De LaSalle Christian Brothers: You have two cows. You sought them out and adopted them after the Jesuits threw them out of their educational field. Ideally, the cows will realize their milk is a gift from God, and their vocation is to share that milk with others for the common good of society.

Opus Dei: You have two donkeys, and tend to them very carefully. You never admit that you engage in this work, but are delighted to meet other covert donkey owners.

Opus Dei, ver. 2: You have two cows. You put one cow in a barn, the walls of which you decorate with pictures of the cow's father and its other ancestors. You send the other cow on the street and tell it to try to "blend in". The second cow comes back to the barn every week in order to get milked by the first cow.

Communion and Liberation: You have two cows, and bring them to huge annual gatherings. You speak to them only in the present tense.

St. Egidio: You gather two cows together in a very old barn and reflect on Scripture. Other cows begin to come, too. You sell their milk for third world debt relief.

Augustinian: Posthumously, two cows claim you as their owner. One of them burns down the northern half of the barnyard.

Salesian: You have no cows, but work to improve the welfare of calves orphaned by factory farming. You are a visionary when it comes to cattle futures.

Salesian, ver. 2: You have two cows. You teach them to stop swearing and to juggle. In turn, they find more cows, teach them to stop swearing and to juggle, then bring them back to you so you can share the love of Christ with all the cows and their calves.

Priestly Society of St. Peter (FSSP): You have two cows. While acknowledging the legitimacy of modern farming methods, you prefer your own cows to develop organically.

Mercedarian: You had two cows. Long ago they were captured by infidels. They began to convert to avoid being made into shawarma. A ransom consisting of coins and a few novices was sent and the cows came back. Nowadays you teach their descendants.

Society of St. Pius X: You have two cows. You raise them precisely according to USDA standards, c. 1950. One cow denies that the USDA exists and runs off to take care of itself.

CMRI: There have been no true cows since 1958.

Sede vacantist: You have a cow and an ass. You dress the ass as a cow, and proclaim him as the only true cow. You spend the rest of your time insulting your cow.

Knights of Columbus: You have two cows. You teach your cows the secret handshake and they carry prolife sandwich boards at the next march. Later, they will be popular at the annual barbecue.

Norbertine (Premonstratensian, or "White Canon): You have two cows. You and all your confreres refer to them as "kine." You are baffled when other people have no idea what you are talking about.

Neocatechumenal Way - you have two cows that you nurture to a very high degree, then you send them to missionary barns in foreign countries.

Oratorian: You have two cows. You stand them up in a field and tip them over periodically.

Knights Templar: You have two cows. Forward the bovinary!!

Knights of the Garter: You have two cows, of such surpassing beauty, pomp, and elite grace as have never been seen before. All other cows aspire to belong in this herd.

Knights Hospitaler: You have two cows, which are the only source of food for holy pilgrims. Prepare to defend them from the surrounding envious infidels.

Knights of the Swan: You have two cows. They are almost but not quite as beautiful and gracious as those of the Knights of the Garter. They are unfortunately not waterproof...

Usus Antiquior fans: You have a bos taurus. You have two of it. Their barn is facing east. You must light six candles (maybe seven!) when you milk them.

Holy Cross: You have two cows. One of them was recruited by the farms Michigan and Penn State run, but stuck with you because he wanted a high-quality education. The other is planning to go to Uganda after spending a few years at your farm in order to spread the message and spirit of your farm to less fortunate cows.

Congregatio a Sancta Cruce: You see two cows. You work on their footwork and put them on the offensive line.

Legionaries of Christ: You have two cows. You groom them meticulously and feature them in glossy publications to attract more cows to your farm. And don't you say anything bad about the farm's founder.

Catholic Worker: You don't have two cows. And even if you did, you wouldn't consider them yours.

Womenpriests International: You have two bulls. You have a ceremony on a boat and tell everyone that they're really cows now. No milk, but plenty of bull....

"Spirit of Vatican II": You are two cows. One strums a guitar while the other shakes a tambourine. Rearrange the pews.

Death and the Eucharist

From Lifesite News:

[Francis Cardinal] Arinze said that he is regularly asked if a person who votes for abortion can receive Holy Communion. He replies, "Do you really need a cardinal from the Vatican to answer that?

"Get the children for first Communion and say to them, 'Somebody votes for the killing of unborn babies, and says, I voted for that, I will vote for that every time.' And these babies are killed not one or two, but in millions, and that person says, 'I'm a practising Catholic', should that person receive Communion next Sunday? The children will answer that at the drop of a hat. You don't need a cardinal to answer that."

Indeed, it's so obvious that any child can answer it. It takes a self-deluding, self-appointed alternate magisterium, "I am my own personal Pope" type of pride to deny that such a person has abandoned Christ and His teachings.

Paying to Starve the Poor

I've regarded biofuel subsidies as malignant and evil for months, perhaps even a year. Biofuel producers aren't really capable of making a profit, unless they're given half or more of the money they use to buy their corn, and that money is taken from the public treasury. Because it's not their money, they're willing to bid the prices for these things way up. Not only was this driving up the price of tortillas, cornbread, and dog food, but also eggs and dairy products, and to a lesser extent beef and chicken, because those farmers depend on corn to feed their livestock.

But I had no idea, until I read this column by David Warren (whose commentary I highly recommend), just how much misery and evil we were creating. We can look at the food riots in Egypt, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Mexico, and food rationing in Pakistan and China, and proudly proclaim, "This is our tax dollars at work."

Abortion

I can at times get inured to the horror and evil of abortion. And then I'm noodling around on Catholic Exchange, and find a link to Men and Abortion. And right on the front page was this video by Flipsyde:



I wept. The Piper brings home, most poignantly, the loss of fatherhood that comes with an abortion. I thank God I never advocated an abortion to anyone, even when I was too self-blinded to see it for the homicide that it is.

Still, I was reminded of another video that made the rounds of St. Blog's last year.



Mes Aïeux - Dégénération

It was the distinctly pro-life second verse that got people's attention. I had just enough French left over from high school to follow the lyrics in the original with the help of the subtitles. That brought home to me just how weak the translation was. It is highly accurate, but the prose used sucks all the impact out of the original language. It was a crying shame. So, fancying myself a bit of a wordsmith, I created English lyrics for the second verse, based on the French, but not directly translated from it. Don't ask me why, but they work better if a French accent is used.

Your great-great-grandmother, she had fourteen enfants/

Your great-grandmother, she had about the same amount/

Your grandmother had three, and found that sufficient/

Your mother just had you, and you were an accident/

And as for you my girl, you go from man to man/

And when things go wrong, you get an abortion/

Sometimes you wake in tears, and cry until the dawn/

On nights you'd dreamt of home, all full of your children....

Academic Freedom

I found a link to this movie on LewRockwell.com, where I was reading some of the Western Confucian's essays. While it may or may not be as biased as any of Michael Moore's so-called "documentaries," it surely deserves as much attention. I hope it gets it.

In it, Ben Stein records his investigation of the Intelligent Design movement. He makes the claim that their work is suppressed on the basis of the conclusions they reach instead of their data or methodology. The trailer does not make the case, but then, it isn't supposed to; it's supposed to get people to go see the film.

If Mr. Stein is correct, I think that's unfortunate, though hardly surprising. Every subsidy given to academics has had the net effect of making them beholden to government, and government is always far more likely to be freedom's enemy than its guardian. And from my own knowledge, admittedly mostly anecdotal, nearly every academic discipline has its own acceptable orthodoxy and tolerates no dissent outside of narrow variations.

In his novel Bug Park, hard science fiction author James P. Hogan asserts, through one of his characters, that such orthodoxies only truly die when most or all of their adherents do, and that science is stifled greatly thereby. It wouldn't surprise me if Hogan is correct, and that Mr. Stein is merely finding another example of it.

Proof I'm a Nerd AND a Geek

I have just classed John Woo with the Marx Brothers for command of utterly absurd humor.

As that deserves just a bit of explanation, Mission: Impossible 2 is on the telly, and I'm watching Ethan Hunt (the Tom Cruise character) violate the laws of dynamics and probability, and laughing because it's so silly.

Spiritual malaise

One of the most powerful things about the Internet and hypertext markup language is how easy it becomes to connect things.

Like many and perhaps most libertarians, I loathe the War on Drugs (one of several Wars On Rights our government is waging). I find it impossible to credit the idea that making marijuana, opiates, and cocaine illegal has done more good than harm. Criminalizing has had a neglible impact on demand, but has made satisfying that demand so profitable (by driving up the price) that the market can bear even the expenses associated with the businesses all being run by criminals, many of them drug-addled.

Ann Landers once asked a very perceptive question regarding the War on Drugs: "The real question is why are millions of people so unhappy, so bored, so unfulfilled, that they are willing to drink, snort, inject or inhale any substance that might blot out reality and give them a bit of temporary relief." And people do this regardless of the facts that the risks are just about unreal, and the primary result of indulging in recreational pharmacology is to make you stupid. I've been sort of asking myself this question for years, long before my reversion to mere Christianity or to the Catholic Church. As a libertarian, I tended to blame the lack of liberty.

I ought to have known better. The minimal and anecdotal evidence I have doesn't much support that; the US and Europe have unusually high levels of liberty, compared to much of the world, but as far as I know, they are also where people most often seek obliviation through drugs.

And then I ran across this post, by Jennifer F. Here's the pertinent bit, where she describes the feelings brought on by victory and triumph back when she was an atheist:

I'd forgotten about this until now, but up until a few years ago, almost every time something exciting or good happened I would feel a tinge of depression. No matter how great or exciting the situation, for some reason I could never quite feel fully happy about it. Just as my happiness would be about to reach a crescendo, something would make it fall flat, like when a singer just barely misses the high note. I didn't generally struggle with depression in this time in my life; it was just that for some odd reason whenever something particularly good occurred, it would trigger a vague sensation of despair somewhere deep down inside. I didn't understand why this happened, but my best guess was that maybe I had some problem with not feeling like I deserved good things, or that I had some issue with depression that I wasn't acknowledging.

Though those two things may have been factors, I don't think they were at the root of the problem. Thinking back on it today, it's clear that something else, a very real, inconvenient truth was there in the back of my mind when I got that promotion, deposited the big paycheck, bought the cool car, moved into the downtown loft, got that amazing Christmas present, traveled to the interesting places, went to the hip parties, landed a big client: this is as good as it gets...but it's not quite good enough.

The fun wasn't fun enough, the luxuries weren't luxurious enough, the excitement wasn't exciting enough to completely smother out that part of my soul that begged for something more. It wasn't that I wasn't grateful -- to the contrary, I regularly felt overwhelmed with gratitude for all the wonderful things in my life -- it's that there was a subtle but present sense of despair that these things weren't doing what they were supposed to do. I was kind of happy. But why wasn't I fully happy, why wasn't I completely at peace, why was I still a little bit restless, even when I technically had it all?

That's when it hit me square between the eyes: that Godless life she described lined up with Thoreau's description of lives lived in quiet desperation. People are turning to drugs because turning to themselves and their things, as our culture advocates, cannot satisfy. Western culture has turned to drugs in proportion to how far it has turned from God, in an ultimately fruitless attempt to fill the enormous God-shaped holes left in our lives by our unbelief.

So I am left with this conclusion: Rampant drug abuse is a scourge, to be sure. The War on Drugs is an even worse one. Because it's always best to fight evil as early and often as possible, the thing to do about them now is to evangelize.

To repeat the concluding paragraph of my first post on this blog:

One of the themes you will see me revisit, time and again, is the sincere belief that great evils are only rarely defeated by force and laws. Force and laws can resist evil, and that is the proper use of them. But evils, be they terrorism, violence, abortion, pornography, drugs, or what have you, are only suppressed by force and laws. They are defeated only when evil hearts are transformed by love.

The Inflation Tax

from www.ronpaul2008.com:

Today, the federal government burdens us with one of the most dangerous taxes it can impose — the inflation tax. When the federal government finds that it cannot afford its out-of-control spending, and is unwilling to directly tax the public, it resorts simply to creating the money out of thin air.

Inflating the money supply is the easiest form of financing the government. The Federal Reserve, an unelected and unaccountable private organization, pumps more dollars into the economy whenever it chooses. Because the public is forced to accept these bills, the Fed essentially gets away with legally counterfeiting. We cannot possibly expect the government to control spending when it has a blank checkbook.

This greatly benefits the politicians and special interests — they are able to finance the massive welfare-warfare state. But how does this inflation affect you?

Basic economics tells us that the more there is of a good, the less valuable it becomes. This is also true of money. The dollar is worth four cents of what it was when the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

Day by day, every dollar you have is being devalued. You pay an inflation tax without even realizing it because you are forced by a falling dollar to pay more for goods and services....

I keep some similar items in my quotes file:

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist system was to debauch the currency." -- John Maynard Keynes, THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE

"By a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens... The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." -- John Maynard Keynes, English economist and board member of the Bank of England

I've said before that public goods are very few and far between. Government control of currency is NOT one of them, any more than government control of telecommunications, news media, the water supply, education, health care, or roads. (Now there's a big stack of rants I must remember to do some time.)

I've been tagged!

There's a first time for everything. This is the first time I've been tagged. I checked to see who'd linked me, and up popped Shakespeare's Cobbler, one of the more regular combox commenters. The meme:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

I keep very few books within close reach. I decided to not count the ebooks I keep on my HD, since not all of them are paged, and it wouldn't really be possible to say which was "closest." Having finished "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," it's now over on my roomate's desk. Most of my other books are not in my home, but for a few that I don't keep within arm's reach.

The closest bound codex type book is one of two references I keep at hand for online discussions regarding the faith and the Church: Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, revided in accordance with the official Latin text promulgated by Pope John Paul II. Page 123, sentences 5-7 are in paragraph 489.

By virtue of this promise, Sarah conceives a son in spite of her old age. 129 Against all human expectation God chooses those who were considered powerless and weak to show forth his faithfulness to his promises: Hannah, the mother of Samuel; Deborah; Ruth; Judith and Esther; and many other women. 130 Mary "stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from him.

And I used to read novels and fiction voraciously. These days, other things are much more important.

Who to tag? I am not going to impose anything on anyone. Whoever feels like it can say so in the combox, and I'll put up a link here.

Best of 2007

I reckon it's about time to reflect on the past year, and I've decided to link to those of my posts that I think are best.

Regarding Doctrine
My Dad, the Hero
Obligatory "Journey" Post
Global Warming
The Truth is Inconvenient for Al
The Television Ration
Do Not Click The Links
China, Stronghold of the Culture of Death
Captain America
Vampires

Vampires

This is another one of those things I've meant to write for quite some time. It's an exploration of an insight that came to me during a vampire movie marathon. The basic insight is that vampires, as popularly portrayed, are a perfect mascot or emblem of the culture of death.

Consider their traditional weaknesses: garlic, sunlight, running water, holy water, the crucifix, and the Eucharist. These things have in common that they are all sources of life. Running water and sunlight sustain our physical life. It's clearly impossible to live without them, and yet vampires must. The Crucifiction and the Eucharist give us our spiritual life. The basis for ignoring or denying that things of God have any power over vampires is clearly denying that God exists or has power. That's a fool's stance, but clearly very popular these days.

Vampires do not have any life of their own. They must steal it from others in order to sustain themselves, much like abortionists and embryonic stem cell researchers.

Vampires typically have great wealth and power, usually are able to kill, command, or have sex with anyone they want, and rarely suffer any consequences for their actions. That's the basis of their appeal, of course -- power from the self. Given how cut off from life itself vampires are, and how they have no reason to exist beyond their own pleasure, I would actually be surprised if they were not given such powerful sexual overtones in our contraceptive society. And of course, the power to kill whoever you want is the true appeal of eugenics and euthanasia.

I didn't understand how integral to the vampire mythology their lack of reflection was until I saw the very opening of Dracula 2000 (or possibly one of its sequels). One of the first things on screen is a quote from a medieval cardinal claiming that the reason that vampires have no reflections is that God wouldn't tolerate something so evil having a reflection. The reason early screen vampires recoiled from mirrors is that it makes evident to them their own evil. I think it'd be pretty cool if some film showed a vampire seeing his true self, with all its evil and corruption, in a mirror. But of course this sort of thing is far too subtle for most content creators these days.

I think that it will be reasonable to use the popularity of vampires as an indicator of the pervasiveness of the culture of death for the forseeable future.

Merry Christmas!

Since I've yet to say it, may all the Joy that Christ can bring be yours on this, His nativity, and throughout the remainder of the Christmas season.

God's Plan

The Spirit works through Catholic Exchange. Perhaps not 100% of the time for 100% of people, but often enough for me to thank God for leading me to this community.

Today, God helped put a couple of articles on the front page. First, this one, from Thomas Wenski, Bishop of Orlando's first appearance on CE:

In the prologue to John's Gospel (John 1:1-18),read at Mass during Christmas Day, the complete fullness of God's plan of salvation is spread out before us. The One who was with God at the beginning before the whole word and who, as God, created, brought into life and enlightened everything in the world, has entered into the world - and he does so not in a grand style that would intimidate us, but in humility. He comes in the poverty of Bethlehem, born of a woman. He comes to us small and weak, so that we can draw near to him without fear, so that we can embrace him without hesitation.

On to Chuck Colson, with this article on Catholic Exchange. Here's the cool bits:

It is through the Incarnation God sets His grand plan in motion. He invades planet earth, establishing His reign through Christ's earthly ministry. And then Christ leaves behind an occupying force, His Church, which is to carry on the work of redemption until His return and the kingdom's final triumph.

It just struck me as so cool, to be part of God's occupying forces, an army waging war for salvation through love! Truly is the wisdom of God folly to the wise!

And if the Protestants ever stop using the term, "Salvation Army," I hope we pick it up.

Christmas music

If there's anything that really annoys me about this season, it's how much deliberately Christless holiday music gets played. Even the local Billy Graham station falls prey to this malady. So for Pandora, Deo Gratias! I've created a station just for specifically Christian music celebrating the season -- here's a link.

Like all Pandora stations, it's a work in progress. But given how thin the reasons they give for playing the selections they do, I think that either they have a hard time wrapping their software around my nearly completely traditional tastes in Christmas music, or they aren't willing to fess up to their recognition of it.

Blogrollin'

Salute to Amy Welborn at Historical Christian for tipping me to Jogger Mom. In this post, she reflects on doctrinal infallibility and how it helped lead her to cross the Tiber. The crux of the argument she makes for infallibility is here:

Papal infallibility is the machinery that puts truth into place within the Church. Catholics believe in apostolic succession- that is, Peter was the first head of the Church, given this authority by Jesus, and his authority has been passed down to each successive head, who we call popes today. The other piece of this is that bishops, when in union with the pope, also have authority and infallibility, like modern-day apostles. This authority comes from Jesus, not any special power of their own. Jesus clearly granted Peter authority in Matt. 16:14-19...

Here Peter is singled out among the disciples - he alone is shown a truth by God the Father (that Jesus is the Christ), and is given the 'keys of the kingdom of heaven' and some pretty hefty authority.

Darkness

It's been nearly a year since my last post on cycling. In fact, I was still struggling with my old blog. That time, I spoke of foul weather gear, because it was raining. So, as we approach the very darkest day of the year, I'm going to talk about lights.

Riding in the dark without lights is far more likely to get you killed than riding in the rain without fenders and foul weather gear. The vast majority of motorists have every desire to avoid a car-bike collision, but to do so, they have to see the cyclist coming. And in the dark, that absolutely requires the cyclist have lights -- especially a headlight.

I rarely, if ever, worried about the drivers overtaking me. I have reflexite straps for my ankles, and a Helmet Halo, not to mention the reflectors on my pedals. These work well to make me visible, but only to drivers whose headlights are pointed at me. In my many years of experience cycle-commuting, I learned that the drivers who most often don't see me -- day or night -- are those who are going across my path. It is for them that a headlight is absolutely required.

It doesn't take a whole lot of headlight to make yourself visible; a krypton bulb powered by two 'C' cells, or white LEDs are enough. Street lighting was enough for me to see, but I absolutely depended on my headlight to make myself seen.

A note about lights and visibility: the higher the light is mounted, the further away you can be seen, and the further away you seem to be. A motorist would think me further away if he only saw my (helmet-mounted) taillight, than if he saw my pedal reflectors.

If you don't have a local bike shop that can provide you with lighting, you can order from Bike Nashbar or Performance Bike.