Month: December 2005

First Sharon has a stroke and is presently scheduled for some sort of heart surgery. Nothing major. Apparently.

Now this:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas was urgently admitted to hospital in Ramallah, medical sources said.

The sources did not provide any additional information about his health condition or the reason for his hospital admission.

Without any doubt there a plenty of even-more-unsettled people who have high hopes riding on both of these men.

I wonder if there are as many Israelis celebrating the Abbas incident as there were Palestinians celebrating the Sharon incident.

You’re going to have to wait a bit longer for 2006 to arrive.

Thus have decreed the time gurus:

Get ready for a minute with 61 seconds. Scientists are delaying the start of 2006 by the first “leap second” in seven years, a timing tweak meant to make up for changes in the Earth’s rotation.

I think that’s neat.

However, none of us should assume that this action makes our lives longer.

We should still (wisely) number our days, giving our hearts and lives to that which is right as well as to Him Who is Right.

Merry Christmas!

My elder son and his girlfriend fly back to MO today to be with her family for Christmas. Imagine them going through security at Portland International Airport.

“May I please see your ID?” requests the ticket agent.

“We don’t have any,” replies Russell, speaking for himself and Shari.

“Don’t have any! But why not? How do you expect to get anywhere without ID?!” the stunned airline agent sputters.

“Judge John Jones says we don’t have any ID, so how can we carry it?” is Russell’s reasonable response.

Yeah, I know — my imagination here is corny at best, dumb at worst. (But it would be fun to be part of an exchange like that!)

Well…anyway.

The Jones vs Dover (I know, I know — that’s not what the case is really called) pebble is making a few ripples in the teacup.

So reports USA (Yester)day in this story:

Backers of “intelligent design” have been advising school boards to avoid lawsuits by encouraging criticism of evolution rather than mandating that students learn about intelligent design. But a judge’s ruling this week has given ammunition to those fighting challenges to evolution in three states.

In Kansas, the state board of education adopted standards that opponents say single out evolution for criticism and open the door to supernatural causation.

In Cobb County, Ga., a three-judge federal appeals panel is weighing whether to uphold a lower court ban on a textbook sticker that said evolution is “a theory, not a fact” and should be “critically considered.” The stickers were removed from more than 34,000 books in the summer.

In Ohio, the state board of education adopted a statement supporting critical analysis of evolution and lesson plans opponents say were lifted straight from creationist and intelligent design literature.

So the judge says Dover’s public school science classes can have no ID. Too bad. I wonder if they’re left with unintelligent design or intelligent chaos or unintelligent chaos. Maybe they’re just left with an identity crisis.

Come to think of it — is Judge Jones saying he has no ID?

Whatever may be the case, a majority of Dover’s citizens sided with the judge in disclaiming any ID:

In Dover last month, voters ousted eight school board members who approved the ID policy.

Maybe that’s Intelligent Democracy at work, maybe even at it’s best?

Did I not recently blog about this?!

Mexico uses the same methods to deal with migrants _ mainly from Central America _ that it opposes in the United States, human rights officials here said Wednesday.

Sure I did!

Now maybe you’ll read here more often. 😀

So, yesterday union head Roger Toussaint “suggested” that

the union might resume negotiations and possibly go back to work without a contract if the MTA took its current pension proposal off the table.

If. Of course. We humans do well with the ifs.

I think of two other ifs for Mr. Union Head.

“If that judge revokes our $1 million a day fine for each day we’re on strike.”

“If that judge quits threatening us union leaders with time in the slammer.”

Oh, yeah. That too. 😉