"Ashes, ashes, we all fall down:" the real estate market is still in decline.

Acute Politics posts an optimistic update:

If things continue as they are right now, our military won't need a surge to chase the terrorists out of Anbar- the citizens will do it for us, which is as it should be. It's beginning to show already: more local tips, more police recruits (far more than anticipated), and sadly- in bigger and more desperate Al-Qaeda attacks...

It's a big job, but I think we may have finally learned enough forgotten lessons from places like East Timor, Vietnam, Ireland, Malaysia, and others that it just might work this time.

Color me hopeful.

An "upliftin' experience" to be sure: flying with Lutran Viking Airlines.

Analyzing the history of violence. (A&LD)

Seems one of the benefits of our modern squeamishness is less recreational violence.

More on Ali Reza Asgari, and Hezbollah as a potential domestic threat.

Whether he defected, disappeared, was kidnapped, rendered or captured remains an open question. Whatever the case, Asghari would be “an intelligence bonanza,” according to the Daily Telegraph in London. Indeed, some say, he was a CIA mole for the four years, before he was forced to flee. He is reportedly being held at a NATO base in western Germany.

Asghari was involved in the creation of Hezbollah (Arabic for “Army of God”) in 1982 and was the main liaison between the Lebanon-based terror group and its paymasters in Tehran. He is also a retired general in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.

Earlier posts here, here, and here.

LVMI reporting on inflation in Iran.

Bruce has posted some interesting thoughts on nuclear weapons, war, and disarmament.

Preemptive strike is the second most insane war doctrine ever developed. Do we really believe that by acting preemptively that somehow war will be avoided? Once the first shot is fired all bets are off.

Over three dozen representatives joined U.S. Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol today to urge Americans to pray for the U.S. and its leaders for at least five minutes each week. Forbes, who is also the leader of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, said he hopes “God will hear our prayers and heal our land.”

Five minutes? Don't you think that's pushing it a little? I mean, this is the 21st century you know.

VOM, India:

BANGALORE - On March 16, 2007 Pastor John Selvan and Brother Vijay were attacked by more than 30 Hindu extremists when they were returning home from conducting prayer meetings in Bhelahalli, Bangalore. "When they were returning home, they were suddenly stopped by more than 30 Hindu extremists. They severely beat the men with sticks, axes and other weapons. The extremists are still holding Brother Vijay, the motorbike and their cell phones," reported The Voice of the Martyrs contacts working in India. The Hindu extremists are demanding Pastor Selvan bring the senior pastor of the church to them or "face serious consequences." Pray for the safety of Vijay and for Christians in India who continuously face difficult and dangerous situations.

Blogging, audioblogging, and now videoblogging: looks like all three mediums are here to stay.

No more excuses for blogger's block after you follow this link. (HT: evangelical outpost)

When the Religious Right says "jump," most Christians just ask "how high?"

(HT: evangelical outpost)

Another Tolkien title is arriving in mid-April, compiled by his son from notes Tolkien left behind. It's possible they're just trying to capitalize on the fantastic success of the series, though that really doesn't seem to be the case. (HT: The G-man)

National Geographic has not completely lost their sense of humor.

Max has an excellent post up about the futility of modern philosophy.

It's beyond excerpting, so read the whole thing. Twice.

And the flattening continues: America's top-heavy educational institutions are starting to crumble.

Higher education, prior to the social spasms of the late 1960s, was a very different entity than it is today. Hardly perfect, having a "college degree" meant something then. It meant that you had undergone a passage, a set of experiences and to some degree had mastered important skills and knowledge. It set one apart. To announce you have a college degree today has all the heft of reporting that you have cable TV.

Iran continues to be feisty, and perhaps, this time, a bit foolish, kidnapping 15 British Servicemen in Iraqi territorial waters. Pajamas Media has a pretty good roundup.

Unions defending illegal immigrants? Never thought we'd see that.

Under current law, the legal incentives of business and labor point in opposite directions: firms face fines and other sanctions for hiring undocumented workers, while the quickest path to union membership growth is by turning a blind eye to illegal immigration. Sanctioning unions that allow illegal immigrants to join their ranks would harmonize incentives, and give both Big Business and Big Labor the same interest in obeying the law.

“Perhaps we need to rethink all of our immigration laws,” Prof. Vedder told Pajamas Media, noting that he favors more libertarian immigration policy. “But the laws being what they are,” he said, “perhaps we should rethink this mismatch in incentives. If we apply these laws to employers, we should apply them to unions as well.”

Apparently someone is working to get Michael Yon kicked out of Iraq, or at least to silence his dispatches. Instapundit doesn't get it, and neither does David St. Lawrence.

A pretty shrewd piece from AU describing a Pyrrhic victory for the Religious Right.

As usual, the end is the good part. Read the whole thing.

Keeping up with Caedmon's:

March 17, 2007 / 3:58 pm

Be warned. I just played trombone. Through my guitar rig. And then my dad came by the studio. And played trumpet. Through my guitar rig. With a wah pedal. We are awesome.

- Andy

March 17, 2007 / 8:57 pm

Andy’s dad played some killer trumpet, Danielle played some killer scratch vocal, as well as bgvs, and Garett and I tracked drums based on an idea that Danielle heard and it kills. I love that working with this band challenges me to think outside of my own perimeters, whether self-imposed or not. By the way, I mean “kills” and “killer” in a good complimentive way, not at all in a literal way. Did I mention that Ella Osenga is now 2 years old? Well, she is and we took a break from the HOD to celebrate with Guitar Hero II and bratwerst prepared by none other than Mr. O. Tune in tomorrow for more fun filled commentary and perspective…

cool,
todd

VOM, India:

• RAJASTHAN - On March 7, 2007, Pastor Reginald Howell of Good Shepherd Community Church was brutally beaten by a Hindu extremist group in Hanumangarh, Rajasthan. According to The Voice of the Martyrs sources, Pastor Howell went to Hanumangarh to pray for the sick and visit Christians in the area. The pastor was beaten with an iron rod and suffered severe injuries on his back. The police refused to register his complaint and as a result, doctors denied him treatment. Rajasthan State has a so-called "Freedom of Religion Bill," that is used as a tool to harass Christians. VOM sources report cases of anti-Christian attacks in the area keep increasing, and the State Administration turns a blind eye to the persecution.
• ANDRA PRADESH - On March 11, 2007, Pastor Anand visited a village to attend services. He was attacked by more than 10 men from a Hindu radical group. Local police who arrived at the location of the attack did not protect him, resulting in further beatings. Pastor Anand was beaten on his face and legs with wooden logs until the early hours of the next morning.

The deep, sorrowful side of Francis Schaeffer. (HT: Ivory Doghouse)

Like most stereotypes, this one of politically engaged conservative Christians contains a painful element of truth. Too often we confuse our agendas with God's agenda and demonize our opponents in a desperate attempt to score political points. What's ironic is that many of today's culture warriors look to Schaeffer as the man who fired the first shot.

Schaeffer never meant for Christians to take a combative stance in society without first experiencing empathy for the human predicament that brought us to this place.

It's happening:

Using the name of Jesus in the public square is patently offensive.

From an Alaskan free-speech school case. More here and here.

Still more on Iran's "defection infection." (HT: PJM)

Who is Ali Reza Asgari and why is he important? No one is quite sure yet, but when the Iranian general and former deputy defense minister disappeared in Istanbul earlier this year, suddenly everyone had a good spy story to follow. Did Asgari defect? Was he kidnapped by a foreign intelligence agency? And how does his fate affect the United States in its ongoing confrontation with Iran, if it does at all?

Earlier posts here and here.

Wikipedia has their collection of 2006 Pictures of the Year up. There's some good stuff in there. (HT: PJM)

Proof that scientists don't have enough to do. (HT: Instapundit)

Here's a great essay on writing and the superiority and future of the novel as a medium.

I'm often asked if there is something I think writers ought to do, and recently in an interview I heard myself say: "Several things. Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world."

Yes, the dreaded assignment: read the whole thing.

Fresh in from MercatorNet: an excellent, excellent article about the relationship between pension plans and fertility rates.

From the point of view of fertility, a compulsory pension scheme externalises the value of children (or, to be more precise, a portion of their productivity). Children can no longer support their parents in old age, because a chunk of their salary is forcefully taken away from them and distributed to the entire population of retirees. That chunk is growing systematically, because governmental pension schemes are heading towards insolvency due to, among other things, low fertility rates.

Now, such socialised generosity sounds nice. Unfortunately, it wreaks havoc on social structures and private incentives. Individual parents no longer retain the economic benefit of having children, but they must still bear the bulk of the costs in terms of time and money spent. Everyone receives the same pension rights regardless of how many children they had, if any. Many are tempted to take a free-ride on the children of others.

In other words, the welfare state becomes a "forced family" that replaces the traditional family as a provider of social insurance. It is not only an alternative to the traditional family, but an option one is not allowed to refuse. Undoubtedly it provides some benefits, but it lacks the sense of common goals and reciprocity which is essential to real families.

If you skipped the quoted section above, I'm going to slap your hand and send you back to read it. You really should read the whole thing: it's that good.

More environmentalist humor: preaching in parkas.

Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where they get off', you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.

-C. S. Lewis

AU and the continuing battle for America's past.

I've been reading some thoughts recently from Steve Scott (follow-up post) and Gene Redlin regarding Christian liberty and the weaker brother.

I think the tone may be a bit abrasive, but the perspective is worth pondering.

WORLD has been posting a few thoughts about Stanley Hauerwas, a pacifist theologian with a controversial take on the validity of Christian nationalism. I have one book of his on the shelf, which is waiting for my concentrated Church/State study, something I hope to get to later this year.

HAUERWAS: That I have some sympathy with those who would refuse to allow another person to be unjustly injured or killed is simply a statement that any person should make. But that sympathy does not mean I think we should kill in order to prevent another from being killed. I've always insisted that Christian nonviolence is a harsh and dreadful love requiring that at times we may have to watch the innocent suffer for our convictions. But that is true of any serious moral position including the just war position. Of course Christians should have tried to prevent the massacres in Rwanda and Darfur. The question is how?

Read the whole thing.

More Iranian defections. (PJM)

(Keeping the original story on top.)

Less killing is always good news.

More on the surge, from Pajamas Media and WorldViews.

UPDATE: More here.

My, my: since when are death threats good science? Whether or not the planet is heating up, tempers surely are. More here.

Another article on the fascinating Ali Reza Askari story. (HT: PJM)

Here's an incisive piece from the Wall Street Journal about comparative depression rates in different countries. The statistics are surprising, and the prescription is refreshingly wholesome. Read the whole thing. (HT: PJM)

LVMI is podcasting.

The Modern Economic System

There is one bit of advice given to us by the ancient heathen Greeks, and by the Jews in the Old Testament, and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money at interest: and lending money at interest - what we call investment - is the basis of our whole system. Now it may not absolutely follow that we are wrong. Some people say that when Moses and Aristotle and the Christians agreed on forbidding interest (or 'usury' as they called it), they could not foresee the joint stock company, and were only thinking of the private moneylender, and that, therefore, we need not bother about what they said. That is a question I cannot decide on. I am not an economist and I simply do not know whether the investment system is responsible for the state we are in or not. That is where we want the Christian economist. But I should not have been honest if I had not told you that three great civilizations had agreed (or so it seems at first sight) in condemning the very thing on which we have based our whole life.

- C. S. Lewis

Those stupid cell phones. (Instapundit)

Pajamas Media: reporting on the Secular Islam Summit. Video interviews here.

We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.

We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons.

We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights.

We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind.....

We say to Muslim believers: there is a noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine;

to Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Baha’is, and all members of non-Muslim faith communities: we stand with you as free and equal citizens;

and to nonbelievers: we defend your unqualified liberty to question and dissent.

Before any of us is a member of the Umma, the Body of Christ, or the Chosen People, we are all members of the community of conscience, the people who must chose for themselves.

VOM, Uzbekistan:

VOM sources report police burst into a church in Qarshi ("Karshy") on February 25, 2007, confiscated literature and demanded to know who was funding the church. Police also brought video cameras to video tape the worship service. When police started to film, Pastor Sergei Shandyvayev did not panic, but simply continued the worship service. After the service finished, the officers shut the doors and began to question the believers gathered there, especially asking why they had become Christians. Pastor Shandyvayev's church is not registered with the Uzbek government. The Christians expected to be summoned to court for a hearing. Pray God gives Christians in this area wisdom and protection as they face persecution. Pray they might even have opportunities to witness to police and court officers as they are questioned.

The Evangelical Outpost looks at morality and the market. Blessed Economist has also been talking about this a lot lately.

Gene Redlin with more on the fight against global warming gobbledygook.

Stephen Hawking

I've always had a sort of inexplicable liking for this guy, perhaps because of the heroic combination of handicap and genius. He just always seemed to me the right sort of scientist. Instapundit reports that he's receiving a free, zero-gravity ride out of Cape Canaveral.

Peter H. Diamandis, chief executive of Zero G, said that "the idea of giving the world's expert on gravity the opportunity to experience zero gravity" was irresistible.

Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse - so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be.

Tech Update:

• Google Reader is now handling my ravenous RSS needs: Newsgator just proved too slow. Make sure and check out the snappy keyboard shortcuts.
• I'm finding Amazon wish lists quite useful. It's a more streamlined way of keeping track of things than putting them in your "later" cart. And it goes a long way towards soothing that ungodly "I have to buy it right now" feeling.
• I finally got my other email account routed into Gmail. Well worth the 3 minutes.
  

The cost of kids: I'm not sure whether to be disgusted or depressed. Surely makes one appreciate the priceless heritage of sanity. (HT: Instapundit)

Verily, verily, Caedmon's is recording! Andrew Osenga has the wrap on the week, and the band has a new little splash site dedicated to the project.

I am actually listening to these songs we recorded. I haven’t done that since share the well,and before that long line of leavers. that was me, Cliff/the boring guy in the hat that can’t write songs or think very good.

(Thanks to Peter for the tip.)

Just in from LVMI:

Daycare providers allow unqualified parents to care for children!

Gee whiz.

I don't like the sound of this.

This is actually rather handy: a look at which Poliblogs (think: poliwogs,) use the fewest offensive expletives. The best part? You don't even have to know what they are!

I added a few of the best (lowest) scoring sites - from both the left and right - to my feed list.

(HT: Instapundit)

On forgiveness:

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life - to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son - how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.' We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God's mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what he says.

Making-Ripples has some comments and a roundup on the stock market and the state of Chinese banking.

Our economy and the economy of China are increasingly entwined, and the bright and shining Chinese economy is built on an appallingly unstable banking system.