Another stupid prophecy of doom

Now we're running out of carbon! You can't win, can you?  It reminds me of a Greenie scare in the '70s that said we are running out of phosphorus -- and we need phosphorus for our bones.  Then there was a huge phosphate discovery in North Africa!  So that one died.  The lesson:  Greenie estimates of available resources are self-important crap

Researchers have issued a chilling warning that life on Earth is unsustainable for humans unless there are major changes.

Unless we slow the destruction of Earth's declining supply of plant life, civilization like it is now may become completely unsustainable, according to a new paper.

It claims that humans have 'depleted the Earth's battery'.

'You can think of the Earth like a battery that has been charged very slowly over billions of years,' said the study's lead author, John Schramski, an associate professor in UGA's College of Engineering.

'The sun's energy is stored in plants and fossil fuels, but humans are draining energy much faster than it can be replenished.'

Earth was once a barren landscape devoid of life, he explained, and it was only after billions of years that simple organisms evolved the ability to transform the sun's light into energy.

This eventually led to an explosion of plant and animal life that bathed the planet with lush forests and extraordinarily diverse ecosystems.

The study's calculations, published by University of Georgia researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are grounded in the fundamental principles of thermodynamics, a branch of physics concerned with the relationship between heat and mechanical energy.

Chemical energy is stored in plants, or biomass, which is used for food and fuel, but which is also destroyed to make room for agriculture and expanding cities.

Scientists estimate that the Earth contained approximately 1,000 billion tons of carbon in living biomass 2,000 years ago.

Since that time, humans have reduced that amount by almost half. It is estimated that just over 10 percent of that biomass was destroyed in just the last century.

'If we don't reverse this trend, we'll eventually reach a point where the biomass battery discharges to a level at which Earth can no longer sustain us,' Schramski said.

Working with James H. Brown from the University of New Mexico, Schramski and UGA's David Gattie, an associate professor in the College of Engineering, show that the vast majority of losses come from deforestation, hastened by the advent of large-scale mechanized farming and the need to feed a rapidly growing population.

As more biomass is destroyed, the planet has less stored energy, which it needs to maintain Earth's complex food webs and biogeochemical balances.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Why Lesbians Are Fat

(Washington, D.C.)

A U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) study to understand why lesbians are fat has now cost taxpayers over $3.5 million to-date.

According to the study, “It is now well-established that women of minority sexual orientation are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic, with nearly three-quarters of adult lesbians overweight or obese, compared to half of heterosexual women.

Hubba-bubba!

Feminist "hero" who publicly shamed a Tinder date for voicing his body-type preference is a hypocrite. Women are just as vocal

The man criticized below was  condemned simply  for being honest.  A sad thing.  He was even honest in a polite sort of way.  And if she can swingeingly condemn the man surely that leaves her open to criticism too:  I think she is a bitch with an inflated ego.  She is also fat. So I agree with the comments below by Peter Lloyd.  Some further comments, however:

Chubby is not sexy to either men or women and chubbies of both sexes need to get over that.  If you don't like your limited chances with the opposite sex you have to reduce your food intake; it's as simple as that.  Not easy but simple.

 And just as many men ignore flat chested women as potential partners, so many women ignore short men. Ask any short man! Short men often report feeling quite invisible.  And, perhaps sadly, no amount of complaint will alter that.  (To forestall "ad hominem" comments, I am 5'10")

If you are in a disadvantaged category, you just have to deal with it.  Short men and fat women work harder at relationships and that usually gets them someone, even if that someone also falls short of some ideal.  A combination I have sometimes seen is a very rotund woman with a skinny but very scrubby man  -- JR


Michelle Thomas was hailed a feminist hero for criticising a Tinder date who rejected her because of her size.

The 30-year-old, from Crystal Palace, London, went public when her online suitor discontinued their courtship because, physically speaking, she wasn't his type.

In a Dear John letter which has since stormed the internet, the unnamed man wrote:

'I really enjoyed your company and actually adore you. 'You're cheeky and funny and just the sort of girl I would love to go out with if only my body and mind would let me. But I fear it won't. 'I'm not going to bull***t you... I think you're the prettiest looking girl I've ever met. But my mind gets turned on by someone slimmer.'

But her response reinforced the odd, unwritten rule that women can say whatever they want about sexual desire and attraction, but men can't.

Venting through her blog, she claimed his behaviour was somehow 'body shaming' and 'objectifying' the female form, but, sorry sisters, I disagree.

Yes, fair enough, he wasn't being diplomatic or sensitive, which, as Prince would say, is sadly a sign o' the times, but in an age of over-opinionated people who constantly over-share, this is the new normal.

In fact, the only thing he's truly guilty of is having an honest opinion about women - one that isn't deemed 'on message' by the sisterhood - and actually voicing it.

Even former Deputy PM, John Prescott - a man who was battling bulimia at the time - was publicly humiliated by mistress Tracey Temple when their affair surfaced. She said his penis was like 'a cocktail sausage'. Classy!

Sadly, this isn't rare. Turn on any TV or film, listen to any song lyric, and you'll soon hear something similar.

Then there's website TubeCrush which pervs, and rates, unwitting men on the London Underground, while new dating app Lulu has caused controversy for encouraging women to shame men who give them 'bad dates'. Complete with pictures.

Even on a day-to-day basis I hear women say how they've dumped their latest man because he wasn’t tall, handsome or fit enough. The same women who, while asserting that a woman's size and shape doesn't matter, judge their boyfriends on the bulge in both their wallet and trousers.

The big difference, however, is that most men are too polite to ever go into detail. Especially directly. 'Does my bum look big in this?' 'Of course not,' we say.

Ironically, talking to Femail about the furore, Michelle said how pleased she was that many of her blog respondents were men who'd shared her letter with their sons – presumably to teach them about sensitivity and politeness with women. And that's great.

My point, however, is that perhaps they should refer their daughters to this article, too. After all, it was women who started this pathological honesty about men's bodies, so - as long as it continues - the yin to their yang will always be considered fair game. And, although it's sad, it's the world we live in.

More HERE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Pennsylvania Teacher Faces Sex Charges

Katie Cross
(West Chester, Pennsylvania) A 31-year-old language arts teacher at Collegium High School, Katie Cross, faces sex crime charges for allegedly straddling a 17-year-old male student in a parked car.

Cross, 31, was jailed after her arrest and was later released on $150,000 unsecured bail, according to local reports.

Cross has been suspended from her teaching position.

Canada No Longer A Haven for US Deserters

Sgt. Patrick Hart
(Buffalo, New York) A US Army soldier, Sgt. Patrick Hart, deserted the US military and went to Canada as a war resister.

But after five years of wrangling with the Canadian immigration system, he came back to the U.S. - and ended up in a military prison.

The country that once welcomed war resisters has developed a much different reputation during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan: Supporters say no U.S. soldier who has sought legal residence in Canada, either as a refugee or on humanitarian grounds, has been successful.

"Nobody's won," said Hart, a Buffalo native who exhausted his legal options then turned himself in to the Army, was court-martialed for desertion and sentenced to two years in prison.

OK

Is it wrong for Western firms to make agricultural investments in Third world countries?

Antony Loewenstein  (Tony is a self-hating Jew. Loewenstein is Yiddish  for Lion Stone) below roundly criticizes a host of existing  such investments but his words are a classic example of selective Leftist attention.

His wail is based on a false premise:  That the developed world needs land from elsewhere to feed itself.  Hitler thought the same.  His Drang nach Osten was driven by the simplistic assumption that Germany's growing population needed more land for farms so that the increased population could be fed.  So Germany had to take land off Russia and Poland.  Any economist could have explained to him how and why he was wrong but socialists like Mr. Hitler think they know it all so don't listen to economists.

In the case of Mr Lion Stone below he has even less excuse than Hitler.  Surely he knows that under capitalism even CHINA exports food!  Under Communism they had to import food -- Australian wheat for instance.  But under private ownership the flow has now reversed.

Despite giving their own people ever higher standards of living,  the clever and hard-working farmers of China still have enough food left over to fill the cans of most of the "Home brand" foods on our supermarket shelves.  Check where your next can of cheap tomato soup comes from if you doubt it.  And most of the world's garlic now comes from China.  And European truffle suppliers are greatly outraged by the competition from Chinese truffles!  It goes on...

And it is not only China. Both the USA and Europe use various mechanisms to stop their farmers from producing too much.  Farmers are paid not to farm part of their land etc.  And Europe's butter mountains and wine lakes are a byword.  The characteristic Western food problem is GLUT:  Too much food.

In short, Mt Lion Stone reveals himself below as what Australians call a drongo:  So stupid it is a wonder he can feed himself.  He knows not even the basics of what he writes about.  So how accurate his reporting below is, is anyone's guess.  It could be nothing more than bile.

So it's amusing that Hitler and the Leftist Jew below make the same mistake.  They are united by Leftist ignorance and unwillingless to listen.  Only their chronic anger matters to them.  Not the facts.

But, no doubt, powerless people in the Third world do get treated badly but that is not the fault of Western countries or Western companies.  It is the fault of their own revolting governments.  The companies investing in agricultural projects in Third world countries are there for only one reason:  Because the governments of the countries want them there.  The governments see that by encouraging investment they can skim some cream off the top.  That they make little use of such cream to compensate their own dispossessed people is their doing:  No-one else's

But criticizing the people actually responsible for a problem is of no interest to  Leftists.  And we certainly must not criticize those lovely brown people.  Criticising their own countries and societies is what gives Leftists erections and any illogic will do to enable that


Ethiopia’s Omo Valley is one of the most culturally diverse places on the planet. Industrial-size sugar plantations and a soon to open dam are strangling indigenous communities over more than 375,000 hectares. Ethiopia is experiencing economic growth (though it’s a brutal dictatorship) and yet millions of its citizens suffer from chronic food shortages.

The government has sold vast tracts of land to a Turkish agri-business firm and other foreign investors, all without consultation with the Kara people. Forced displacement is common though the Ethiopian government denies it. A Malaysian company stands accused of disenfranchising the Suri people with its plantation in South-western Ethiopia. India is at the forefront of taking land across Ethiopia.

American photographer Jane Baldwin has been visiting the Omo River for a decade, documenting the gradual erosion of local rights, and she tells me via email that foreign investors threaten “self-sustaining agro-pastoral communities.” A local woman from the Nyangatom tribe, who can’t be named due to threats against her life, says that, “They are taking this river to sell the hydroelectric power. We say to them, if this river is taken from us, we might as well kill ourselves so we won’t starve to death. If you decide to make a dam there, before you start the dam, you better come here and kill us all.”

Ethiopia is just one country affected by land grabs conducted by Wall Street bankers, business opportunists and countries hungry for fertile territory. In Africa, global hedge funds are purchasing vast areas of land in Mali, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. A recent investigation by the Huffington Post and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that the World Bank was complicit in the removal of the indigenous Sengwer people in Kenya.

American academic Michael Kugelman, from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars and co-editor of The Global Farms Race, says that the main problem with foreign land deals is the lack of benefit to local stakeholders.

“Impoverished and food-insecure countries are giving away not only their precious farmland but also the food that springs from it”, he tells me via email.

He explains that the key players buying up resources are China, the Gulf countries, East Asian states and the West – and they mostly target sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. The need for reliable sources of farmland across Africa and the globe in an age of deforestation and climate change means controlling food production – or the arable land on which food can be grown – can give immense leverage over developing states. TIAA-CREF is one firm, an American financial group, who has invested US$5 billion in farmland from Brazil to Australia despite the lack of quick returns.

More HERE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Utah Teacher Gets Prison for Rape of Boys - Update

(Farmington, Utah) A former high school English teacher, Brianne Altice, convicted of sex with three male students, has now been sentenced to anywhere between two and 30 years behind bars.

Tip: JR

* * * * *
Utah Teacher Pleads Guilty to Rape of Boy - Update
[Previous 4/23/15 post]

Brianne Altice

A former Utah high school teacher accused of having sex with three of her male students took a plea deal Wednesday to avoid a trial, sobbing as she accepted the agreement in court.

One of the boys was 16 and two were 17 when they were having sex with Davis High School English teacher Brianne Altice, 35.

OK

Tip: JR

* * * * *
Utah Teacher Pleads Not Guilty to Rape of Boy - Update
[Previous 3/2/14 post]
(Farmington, Utah)

A former Davis High School English teacher accused of having a sexual relationship with a then-16-year-old student pleaded not guilty to charges Thursday.

Brianne Land Altice, 34, is charged in 2nd District Court with three counts of first-degree felony rape and one count of first-degree felony forcible sodomy.

After the woman entered her pleas a two-day trial was set to begin May 12.

According to court documents, Altice is accused of having sexual intercourse with a male student, now 17, on several occasions between January and September of 2013.

Prosecutors say the teacher acknowledged to investigators that she had engaged in sex with the boy on two occasions.

An earlier probable cause statement, filed with the Davis County jail after Altice was arrested at her South Weber home in late October, alleged that one of the trysts occurred in a Kaysville park.

She has been free on $10,000 bail since her arrest. She was on paid leave until she fired Feb. 3.

So, the case continues.

* * * * *
Utah Teacher Charged with Rape - Update
[Previous 12/17/13 post]
(Farmington, Utah)

Brianne Land Altice, 34, has been officially charged with three counts of rape, all first-degree felonies.

The prosecution thickens.

* * * * *
Utah Teacher Accused of Sex with Student
[Previous 10/29/13 post]
(Kaysville, Utah) A 34-year-old teacher at Davis High School, Brianne Altice, has been accused of engaging in sex with a 15-year-old male student.

Reportedly, Altice faces two counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor.

The boy told the police about the sex, which allegedly occurred between the spring and August of 2012 when he was about 15 years old, said Kaysville Police Lt. Paul Thompson. Police then searched Altice’s home in South Weber.

"With the assistance of the Davis County Sheriff’s Office Ms. Altice was interviewed and evidence from the residence corroborated the victim’s statement," according to a Kaysville Police Department news release.

Altice was booked into custody at the Davis County Jail.

More failed prophecy.  BOM bombs out again

The BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) is Australia's great temple of the global warming faith

Climate is the sum of weather so big failures to predict the weather cast great doubt on predictions about the climate.  The forecast for Eastern Australia below issued last Friday is a case in point.  It was headed:

"Antarctic blast begins to bite: Heavy snow falls in southern states, 90km/h blizzards set to batter NSW and drivers urged to stay off the roads as temperatures plummet to lowest in 15 YEARS"

In fact: At mid-afternoon in Brisbane on Saturday it was 22 degrees Celsius (70F)! And late on Sunday afternoon it was 20 degrees Celsius.  Some people call 70F the ideal temperature.


And the "soaking" predicted for Brisbane did not happen either. There were a few light showers on Saturday and a fine day on Sunday

It appears that there was some unusual cold weather in some parts of the Southeast but if a comprehensive forecast can not be made for just the Southeast of Australia, how likely is a forecast for the whole planet to be accurate?

Emergency services are on high alert as the Antarctic blast is beginning to hit the southern and eastern coast of Australia and people have been warned to batten down the hatches ahead of the worst of the storms overnight and into Sunday.

Damaging 'blizzard intensity' winds of 90km/h in NSW are causing havoc across NSW, and snow is also falling in South Australia and Victoria as conditions worsen.

NSW Police has appealed for all drivers to take extra care on the roads, as thousands of families return home after the school holidays. The warning calls for people to avoid 'risky behaviour'.

A State Emergency Service spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia people should avoid travel all together if possible, as roads become potentially deadly in 'icy conditions'.

It also advised people to move cars undercover, put away or secure loose items at home and be aware of falling trees and power lines.

The freezing front began to roll across the country on Friday afternoon, delivering conditions not seen in 15 years, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

Temperatures are expected to fall to zero or below across large parts of Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania, with bitterly cold winds and hail also forecast. Snow is predicted to reach as far north as Queensland, after already falling across Victoria, South Australia and NSW.

The snow spread is forecast to reach further north than it has since 2000.

Sydney and Melbourne can expect average low temperatures of 8 degrees for the weekend, while Canberra will be hit with a freezing 4 - but it could feel as cold as -1 due to the wind chill.

Brisbane will likely end the weekend soaked, with heavy rain predicted across most of the state, in addition to potential snow in areas of higher-elevation.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Utah Woman Guilty of Sex with Boy

Amber Telford
(Taylorsville, Utah) A 33-year-old dance studio owner and former Utah Jazz dancer, Amber Telford, has admitted to engaging in sex with a 17-year-old boy.

Telford, 33, pleaded guilty Tuesday to unlawful sexual activity with a minor, a third-degree felony.

In exchange for her plea, prosecutors agreed to dismiss six identical charges that had been filed against her.

Sentencing is scheduled for August.

A picture is worth 1,000 words

Receiving a hammer and sickle.  Note the small added crucifix. The media try to make out that he was embarrassed but he showed no sign of it.  It is in fact a symbol of Latin American "liberation theology", a belief system that Frank clearly shares



SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Arkansas Woman Accused of Prostituting Girls

Amber Nicole Johnson
(Wynne, Arkansas) A 28-year-old local woman, Amber Nicole Johnson, has been accused of forcing two girls, ages 14 and 17, into performing sexual acts for money.

Johnson has been charged with human trafficking.

According to court records, the 14-year-old victim ran away from her foster home in November 2014.

Police say she traveled to Jonesboro with Johnson who "prostituted" the child.

The victim told investigators "she was having sexual intercourse with four to six men each day," the affidavit said.

Details on arrest not provided.

Nevada Woman Gets Prison for Shooting at Policemen

Sara Jones
(Las Vegas, Nevada) A 31-year-old local woman, Sara Jones, was convicted in May on charges of false imprisonment, child endangerment, resisting a public officer with use of a firearm and attempted murder.

As a result, Jones was sentenced to 21 years in prison.

Reportedly, Jones suffers from some sort of mental illness.

Chinese Ambition in South China Sea

As China and other South China Sea claimant states bicker, the waters that are a conduit for energy supplies to Asia and carry about half the world’s merchant tonnage — $5.3 trillion in goods each year — are increasingly tense.[…]

For the people who live and work in the waters the risk of a mishap is real, and China — the Philippines’ second-biggest trading partner — is seen as unstoppable despite the efforts of other countries’ militaries. With a string of reefs on which to base its military it will have the potential to better control shipping lanes, fishing grounds and unproven energy reserves, and cause environmental damage to a sea that’s famous for its pristine diving waters.

China has accelerated its reclamation, dumping sand to build airstrips on tiny rocks that may otherwise be submerged at high tide. It has built 1,500 acres of a total of 2,000 acres of land since December. Whatever the legal reality, China is building a case that these are now islands with structures, implying ownership.

China argues the reefs are within its sovereign terrain, and construction is needed to ensure navigational safety. It has said the reefs will be used for military as well as civilian purposes such as marine scientific research.

“China’s lawful, justified and reasonable construction on some garrisoned Nansha islands and reefs is well within China’s sovereignty,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said July 3, using China’s name for the disputed Spratlys.

OK

NJ Teacher Accused of Heroin Possession

Jill Blau
(Mahwah, New Jersey) A 42-year-old special education teacher at Felix Festa Middle School, Jill Blau, has been accused of heroin possession and other drug charges.

Blau's blue 2015 Lexus wagon hit a pole on Kingsbridge Way, leading condominium residents to call the Mahwah police when the driver drove off toward Fox Lane, Police Chief James Batelli said.

Officer Thomas Mitchell, while interviewing residents, saw the damaged blue car, Batelli said.

The Lexus's bumper and part of its grill was left at the scene, the chief said. Blau also was driving the Lexus with two flat tires, riding on the rims.

"She claimed she thought she hit the curb but didn't realize she struck the pole," Batelli said.

Mitchell arrested Blau after talking with her and giving her a field sobriety test, Batelli said. Police impounded the Lexus.

She was found in possession of eight decks of heroin, drug paraphernalia and prescription drugs, including Xanax, Triazolam, dextroamphetamine, and Loprin.

Blau faces multiple counts of drug possession.

"From each according to his ability and to each according to his need"

Karl Marx?  Check.  But it is also the message of a pontifical ignoramus: Pope Frank.  The asshole obviously knows no history.  Does he not know the vast evils that have been done under the mantle of that slogan?  A Marxist nut for a Pope:  Just what the world needs

Pope Francis wraps up the first leg of a three-nation South American pilgrimage today after issuing an impassioned call for a new economic and ecological world order where the goods of the Earth are shared by everyone, not just exploited by the rich.

Francis will visit the elderly and give a pep talk to local priests before flying to Bolivia, where the environment, ministering to the poor and the government's tense relations with the Catholic Church are high on the agenda.

Taking up the global warming issue in Quito on Tuesday, Francis pressed the arguments made in his headline-grabbing encyclical earlier this month that the planet must not be exploited by the wealthy few for short-term profit at the expense of the poor.

'The goods of the Earth are meant for everyone, and however much someone may parade his property, it has a social mortgage,' Francis said.

'The tapping of natural resources, which are so abundant in Ecuador, must not be concerned with short-term benefits.'

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has been harshly criticised by environmentalists and indigenous groups for pushing mining and oil drilling in the Amazon, which together with the Galapagos Islands make Ecuador one of the Earth's environmental priorities.

That push, coupled with high crude prices, allowed Correa to lift 1.3 million people out of poverty in his eight years in office.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Arkansas Woman Gets Prison on Sex Charges

Beth Dickerson
(Izard County, Arkansas) A 32-year-old local woman, Beth Dickerson, has been convicted and sentenced on charges of sexual indecency with a child.

Dickerson was sentenced to 6 years in prison.

Alabama Teacher Skates on Student Sex Charge - Update

Jennifer Marie Perry
(Jefferson County, Alabama)

Jennifer Marie Perry, 27, of Odenville, was sentenced by Jefferson County District Court Judge Katrina Ross to six months in jail.

But the judge suspended the sentence and placed her on unsupervised probation for a year.

Perry will have to register as a sex offender.

* * * * *
Alabama Teacher Faces Student Sex Charge
[Previous 3/18/15 post]
(Jefferson County, Alabama) A 27-year-old teacher formerly at Pinson Valley High School, Jennifer Marie Perry, has been accused and arrested for sexual contact with a 17-year-old student.

Reportedly, Perry and the student met in a parking lot on February 8 and engaged in a consensual sex act inside a vehicle.

Perry surrendered to Jefferson County Jail authorities on Monday. She was booked and released on $30,000 bond.

Are shrubs causing global cooling?

I initially thought this story about shrubs might be an allusion to George Bush II.  Leftists always thought they were enormously clever by referring to him as "Shrub".  But it was not to be.

But some amusing nuttiness below anyway.  I fully accept that shrubs are thriving these days.  There is one in my front garden that certainly is.  The known higher levels of CO2 would be the main cause of that.  But the effect should be worldwide and not confined to the Arctic.  But note what we read below:

"'While plants help to slow climate change in other parts of the world, in the Arctic, taller shrubs prevent snow from reflecting heat from the sun back into space, thereby warming the Earth's surface.'"

So plants worldwide must be doing well and we are told that "plants help to slow climate change" outside the Arctic.  As there are a lot more plants outside the Arctic than it it, shrubs should in fact overall be COOLING the planet!

The usual illogic below


Shrubs growing in the Arctic may cause global warming to get worse, according to research.  Scientists have found climate change has already resulted in an increase in shrubs across the tundra.

They say shrubs reduce the amount of sunlight reflected by snow as they provide a darker surface while they also alter the soil temperatures causing permafrost to thaw.

This can contribute to global warming by reducing the amount of heat from the sun that is reflected back into space.

Dr Isla Myers-Smith, a climate change scientist at the University of Edinburgh who led the study, said: 'Arctic shrub growth in the tundra is one of the most significant examples on Earth of the effect that climate change is having on ecosystems.

'Our findings show there is a lot of variation across this landscape. Understanding this should help improve predictions of climate change impacts across the tundra.'

The research, which is published in the journal Nature Climate Change, involved an international team of scientists studying vegetation changes at 37 sites in nine countries.

They analysed the annual growth rings in the plant stems of shrubs growing in the tundra to build up a 60 year record of the effects of climate on vegetation growth.

They found that as global temperatures have increased, the number of shrubs has increased and their distribution has moved further north.  The type of shrubs has shifted in some areas to taller plants such as alder and willow.

The study also found that the changes appear to be happening faster in Europe and Russia than they are in North America.

The researchers warn that as these changes continue, it could accelerate the transformation of the arctic ecosystem.

Some animals like moose prefer to eat shrubs while others, such as caribou, live on the lichen and grass species that cover northern parts of the Arctic.

Kevin Guay, a researcher who took part in the study at the Woods Hole Research Centre in Falmouth, Massachusetts, said: 'While plants help to slow climate change in other parts of the world, in the Arctic, taller shrubs prevent snow from reflecting heat from the sun back into space, thereby warming the Earth's surface.'

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Carolina Teacher Gets Prison for Sex Crimes

Rebekah Gammon Wright
(Greensboro, North Carolina) A 28-year-old former teacher at Rockingham County Middle School, Rebekah Gammon Wright, has pleaded guilty to a sexual relationship with a young student.

Wright has been sentenced to 2-4 years in prison as part of a plea deal. Wright must also register as a sex offender for 30 years.

Florida Woman with Baseball Bat

Lisa Elberson
(Lake County, Florida) A local woman, Lisa Elberson, 29, has been accused of attacking a teenager with a baseball bat do to an ongoing dispute between residents in the neighborhood.

Elberson grabbed a bat and went with her husband, authorities said. At the same time, a witness began recording video of the incident on a cell phone.

The video shows Elberson holding a bat and saying racial and homophobic slurs. She allegedly told the teenager that she would hang his family from her tree.

Elberson faces counts of assault with a deadly weapon, simple battery and child abuse.

Virginia Softball Coach in Trouble

Courtney E. Allman
(Waynesboro, Virginia) A 23-year-old local softball coach, Courtney E. Allman, has been charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and causing a wreck.

Last month, Allman was convicted of taking indecent liberties with a 15-year-old girl. Sentencing is scheduled for October.

Allman has been released on bond.

More on the theology of homosexuality

A few days ago I put up here a coverage of the claims by mainstream Christian clergy that homosexuality is permissable to Christians.  That permissiveness may be kindly meant and it may provide solace  to some tormented souls but it clearly flies in the face of both the Christian teachings in the New Testament and the Jewish teachings of the Old Testament.  Christ was a devout Jew living in a very orthodox Jewish community and, if you read Matthew chapter 19 in full, you will see that he was even more restrictive about sexual morality than were the very orthodox Pharisees.

I am therefore pleased that one of my Jewish readers has sent in some comments on the matter too.  See below.  He obviously has a searching knowledge of his own religion so I am impressed that he knows Christian thinking very well too. I had always imagined that only the most searching Protestant exegetes used the wonderful "Strong's  Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible" but I see that he uses it too.  I myself always have a copy on my desk in front of me


By Willem

I read your recent post, "Homosexuality and Christian apologetics" with considerable interest. You are of course entirely correct in what you say.

I would like to offer a couple of footnotes.

Your note that Paul refers to a chastisement - "kolasin" - that you translate as "cutting off" interested me, because a frequent consequence for a variety of transgressions in the Jews' Bible is "kareth" - which is translated as to be cut off. This is a chastisement from Heaven, rather than a punishment to be imposed by an Earthly court, and it is usually interpreted as meaning a life that is cut short - although I think the implications are more serious, involving being cut off from the Divine, and so on.

That Scripture forbids homosexual acts was, as you note, very clear to the early Christians from Leviticus 18, which proscribes and condemns a variety of possible sexual liaisons, including a variety of forms of incest.

It is surely of interest, that the vast majority of prohibited relations are simply listed as being forbidden, without further "editorial" content. In the wonderful King James version:

7 The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not uncover: she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.

8 The nakedness of thy father's wife shalt thou not uncover: it is thy father's nakedness.

9 The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover.

10 The nakedness of thy son's daughter, or of thy daughter's daughter, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover: for theirs is thine own nakedness.

11 The nakedness of thy father's wife's daughter, begotten of thy father, she is thy sister, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.

12 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's sister: she is thy father's near kinswoman.

13 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother's sister: for she is thy mother's near kinswoman.

14 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's brother, thou shalt not approach to his wife: she is thine aunt.

15 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter in law: she is thy son's wife; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.

16 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife: it is thy brother's nakedness.

17 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, neither shalt thou take her son's daughter, or her daughter's daughter, to uncover her nakedness; for they are her near kinswomen: it is wickedness.

18 Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time.

19 Also thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness, as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness.

20 Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour's wife, to defile thyself with her.

21 And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.


Remarkably, alone among so many prohibited relations, are homosexual acts labeled an "abomination."



22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

23 Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.

24 Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you:

25 And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.

26 Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you:

27 (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;)

28 That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you.

29 For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people.

30 Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance, that ye commit not any one of these abominable customs, which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the LORD your God.

Bestiality is denounced as "confusion," and collectively, all of these sexual liaisons are considered "abominations," but only lying with a man as one would lie with a woman is an "abomination." (It occurs 117 in Scripture.)

"Abomination," or "to-evah" (Strong's 8441) is used in many different situations and I am not sure that we can be sure of all of its connotations today. The word for confusion, "te-vel" (Strong's 8397) is also translated as "perversion." (It occurs only twice in Scripture, in Leviticus 18 and 20.)

It is as if the Bible knows, that in the future (as I am sure it was contemporaneously, in some parts of the ancient world) homosexual liaisons would be regarded as normal, and therefore an extra emphasis is needed.

The recent recognition and sanction given to same-sex marriage by the Supreme Court of the United States, a judicial body that had never defined or opined on traditional heterosexual marriage, suggests that same-sex liaisons have a cachet and status even better than the status of traditional marriages today. In the "Reform" Jewish congregations, the rule has been for many years, that "anything goes." (If - in the last words of the founders of the Assassins, to mix creeds, "nothing is true," then "everything is permitted," is it not?)

Some 7 years ago or so, the governing body of the "Conservative" Jewish movement's Jewish Theological Seminary agreed that it would ordain as a "Rabbi" or "Cantor" a practicing homosexual, so long as he promised not to engage in anal intercourse, which the governing committee of the Conservative movement's scholars determined was the only act prohibited by Leviticus. A traditional marriage ceremony for a same-sex couple would remain beyond the limits, however.

Thus a curious situation would be possible: no Conservative congregation would employ a man as Rabbi who openly lived in a sexual relationship with a woman with whom he was not married, but a homosexual Rabbi would be employable if he openly lived in a sexual relationship with a man with whom he was not married.

It is as if the Conservative movement sees same-sex relationships as benefiting from an inherent sanctity and propriety not possible for traditional, heterosexual couples without a formal marriage.

In contrast, the traditional Jewish Weltanschauung sees the splitting of the primordial Adam into Adam & Eve as a clear depiction of what the Bible sees as the proper and inevitable sexual relationship - one man and one woman.

Finally, with respect to divorce, and the Christian Church's teaching against it - you quote Matthew 19:

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

I would put this teaching in the context of the Sermon on the Mount. The entire Sermon on the Mount is of great interest in the history of Jewish religion, and as a lengthy example of the preaching and teaching of Jesus. I don't think there is any part of it that would be incongruous if preached by an orthodox Jewish preacher to an orthodox Jewish audience - as of course it was.

He says:


17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus is proceeding along the same work that the Rabbis were engaged in - building a fence around the Law - although in a different way.

That is, the Rabbis were concerned to enact additional practical restrictions, so that one's behavior would be circumscribed well before one came into danger of violating God's commands. Jesus seeks to accomplish a similar goal, but by extending the prohibitions concerning actions, to the realm of thoughts and feelings.

27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Jesus does not counsel that the way to avoid the frank sins and transgressions forbidden by God is to give in to the zeitgeist. He teaches a thoroughgoing rectification of the individual's inner nature, to bring it into conformity with the Divine plan. The early Christian Church surely stood up against the world, and all of the powers that were arrayed against it.

In contrast, I am amazed by the extent to which ostensibly believing Christians -and Jews!- are willing to abandon the time-proven practices and principles of their religions (practices and principles which many real martyrs have died in order to uphold against a hostile World) - in favor of the latest shibboleths of, for example, the editorial board of the New York Times.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Florida Woman Accused of Killing Kittens

Veronica F. Gordon
(Navarre, Florida) A local woman, Veronica F. Gordon, 39, has been accused of throwing several small kittens out of her SUV while driving along a state road.

Don't make a lot of sense, eh? Gordon has been charged with felony animal cruelty.

Is Operetta the right musical entertainment for conservatives?

I think it is but I realize I am going to have to talk fast to make that case.

As all the surveys show, conservatives are a lot happier than Leftists. Leftists are the miseries of the world whom in the end nothing suits.  Leftist literary figure Gore Vidal once said: "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little".  Leftist envy has long been known.  As a contrast, it makes me happy when other people do well. Where Leftists abhor Bill Gates, I admire him.  And I think many conservatives are like that.

So that must must influence what we like in entertainment.  Like much of Hollywood's output, Grand Opera is romantic but has sad endings.  In grand opera, the lovers mostly die in the end.  Romeo and Juliet is their model.  In "Carmen", for instance, Carmen is  in the end stabbed to death by her jealous lover.  And in "Aida", the lovers end up immured.

Operetta is much nicer.  It is also very romantic but the lovers end up happily together and heading off to get married.  Isn't that better? It sure suits me a lot better.

And operetta has wonderful songs. They are often well known but people don't realize that they originate from operetta.  Try this song, for instance. Or this one.  They're sung in German but you probably know what they're all about anyway.  Operetta was all originally in German but you can get it on DVD with English subtitles.  Sometimes you can even get them online with subtitles -- as here. Andre Rieu has a great medley of operetta tunes here.

In the end, however, it's a matter of taste.  But if you've got a romantic bone in your body you will surely enjoy Viennese operetta.  It's not heavy.  It's fun.  And there's some nice-looking ladies in it too.  See below:



No subtitles but what the clip is about it that the lady thought her husband was too boring until he moved to Vienna.  But once he moved there he acquired the Viennese spirit (Wiener Blut) and she tells him that because of that she now loves him.  And he falls back in love with his wife too.  Isn't that grand?

There's lots of detail about operetta on my personal blog.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

IRS Scam

Voicemail message received by many:

"Hello, we have been trying to reach you. This call is officially a final notice from IRS, Internal Revenue Services. The reason of this call is to inform you the IRS is filing lawsuit against you. To get more information about this case file, please call immediately our department number 360-362-4730. I repeat, 360-362-4730."

According to 800Notes.com:

Total scam.  Originates in either India or Pakistan.  DO NOT CALL THEM BACK.   The Indian/Pakistani scammer/extortinoists become very abusive when they find their scams are not working.

IRS does not file lawsuits.  Nor does it cold-call.  Court action, if any is handled by the DOJ and all parties are entitled to legal assistance if it is a criminal matter.  

But--tax disputes are for the most part civil matters.  90% of all IRS tax disputes are settled administratively.  IRS has absolutely no authority to call on local law enforcement for anything. Local law is never involved in IRS tax disputes. IRS has no powers of arrest.    

If LE [law enforcement] is necessary, US Marshals do the job.  IRS does not cold call anyone and ask for money.

Thanks, CWG40

More info from Treasury.gov is here

Report a scam here.

Posted by Note Taker

Tennessee Woman Accused of Shooting Husband

Jennifer Darlene Smith
(Morgan County, Tennessee) A 39-year-old local woman, Jennifer Darlene Smith, has been accused of inflicting a gunshot wound to 61-year-old Leroy James Smith, Jr.

Smith has been charged with attempted second-degree murder. She was booked into custody at the Morgan County Jail on $100,000 bond.

Creativity 

I often get emails from the energetic Deniz Selcuk, who, judging by his name, is a Turk.  I assume he is a he but I could be wrong.  He could be a she.  I know nothing about the naming conventions of Turkish and suspect that I never will.

Deniz is obsessively interested in creativity.  He scours the net for possibly relevant information about it.  Even so, he fell into what I gather is a rather common trap.  He assumed that there was such a thing as creativity.  More precisely, he asssumed that there was a general trait of creativity.  There are of course individual  creative acts but there is no such thing as a generally creative person.

In that way it differs from IQ.  A person who approaches one problem intelligently is highly likely to approach other problems intelligently, even quite different problems. IQ generalizes,  Creativity does not.

I managed to convince Deniz that he was wrong, which is a compliment to his open-mindedness, but I thought I should also mention here some of the things that I told him.

So how do I know that there is no such thing as creativity?  Three  ways:  From a reading of the research on the topic, from known facts and from personal experience.  I am not actually up to date with the latest research but the findings were quite consistent  when last I looked at them so I doubt that much has changed.  The finding was that a person creative in one field might be knowledgeable about other fields but was creative only in his own specialty.

And that brings me to known facts.  How many great painters were also great composers?  None.  A lot of distinguished (and undistinguished) people paint in their latter years but that is about it.

And that brings me to a Canadian lady I once knew rather well: "B".  She was head of a rather large art school here in Brisbane that formed part of one of our universities.  So the visual arts were clearly her thing.  But in her home she did not have a single device (stereo, hiFi etc) for playing music. Music hardly existed for her.  Her daughter had a small portable device but that was it.  I have no idea how creative "B" was in any visual art but she must have gained some distinction to be in the job she held.  But there was clearly zero chance of her being creative musically.

And I am much the same.  I have only one narrow field of creativity: Scientific writing.  I would not have over 200 academic journal articles in print without that.  I write only for blogs these days but I think I do that to the same old standard of care.

But is academic writing creative?  Not always.  It is just hack stuff a lot of the time.  But the hack stuff mostly doesn't get published.  The journal editor and his referees have to find something interesting in the paper to pass it for publication. They commonly accept only around 10% of what they see.

And to be interesting, you have to be creative to at least some extent.  You have to have something new to say.  That made things easy for me.  I see things from a conservative/libertarian viewpoint whereas journal editors in the social sciences almost invariably see things from a Leftist viewpoint.  So my writings were rather amazing to them. Leftists live in their own little self-constructed mental bubble that insulates them from disturbing non-Leftist thought so bursting into that bubble delivers surprise.

Leftists don't like irruptions into their bubbles, however, so what I was saying had to be very strongly defended.  My research had to be very "waterproof".  But it was, so I got published.  My usual trick towards accomplishing that was to do real sampling.  Your average Leftist psychological researcher does no sampling at all.  If he wants to find out what people think and why, he just hands out a bunch of questionnaires to his students and accepts the findings from that as valid for all people for all time.  That shows, of course, the utter intellectual poverty of most Leftists.

My approach, by contrast, was to go and knock on randomly selected doors in some big city and talk to an actual representative sample of real people!  I talked to "the people"!  Leftists often talk about "The people" but they usually know nothing about them -- as I found when comparing my findings with what was in the existing literature on the topic.

But since social scientists do in theory view sampling as important, when I presented them with some, they found it very hard to knock back.  They did manage to knock it back about 50% of the time but I mostly broke through eventually.  Since my conclusions were invariably the diametric opposite of what Leftists believe (facts and Leftism have a VERY uneasy relationship) it would only have been the unusually open-minded editor who published my stuff.  And it was.  There were three editors who published my writings repeatedly while other editors would be good for only one or two acceptances  -- generally on rather technical subjects that were not too alarming.

You might think that an ability to write well in an academic way would generalize  to other fields of writing.  Not in my experience. Being aware that I was doing well with academic writing, I tried on a couple of occasions to write short stories.  I submitted them to various publications with zero success. I will probably put them online the day before I die.  So even creative  writing does not generalize from one field to another.

So to be creative you have to have ideas and you have to work on them but that is about all you can say about creativity in general.

An interesting thing that I note is that, although I say many "outrageous" things on my blogs, I rarely get abusive email and comments from Leftists in response.  I think it means that academic-standard argument leaves them lost so they avoid reading it at all.  Must keep that bubble intact!

The ancient Greeks had an interesting theory of creativity.  They felt that there was a "muse" behind each creative person.  The muse was a spirit being who was the real creative force.  The muse would for instance "send down" the words that a writer was writing, with the writer himself having only a minor part in the final product.

That is not quite as silly as it sounds.  I have experienced something like that.  Sometimes the words I want to write pour out and it is a real challenge to get them all written down before they go away.  All that it really means, I guess, is that we can think a lot faster than we can write. But I don't blame the Greeks for thinking what they did.  It does feel the way they describe it.

Hitler

I don't think that anything I have said so far is terribly controversial so let me stir the pot a bit:  I think Hitler was a good artist.  Just the fact that everybody says he was not tends to lead me to that view.  In the simple world of propaganda, ascribing anything good to him would risk attack as morally reprehensible. But not much in life is all black and white so I see no moral risk at all at holding that there might have been one praiseworthy thing about him.  But let me nonetheless explain in two parts:

Google the words "Hitler" and "paintings" together and click "images" and you will see a veritable gallery of the many paintings and watercolors that Hitler produced in his youth.  I think a lot of them are quite good.

I cheerfully admit that I know nothing about art but I doubt that anybody does.  When skilled forgers and copyists regularly fool art critics and when random blobs of paint smeared onto a canvas by some ape or other simian are warmly praised, I think I would be embarrassed to claim that I know anything about art.  I think I would be calling myself a fool.

What rather gets me is when a painting worth millions is discovered to be a forgery, its value suddenly drops into the mere thousands.  Clearly, an evaluation of its worth reflected something other than the goodness of the art concerned -- snobbery perhaps.

So that is my first blast on the subject.  I don't think that Hitler was a great artist but he seems as good as any other outside that top range.

My second blast is that Hitler's real creative achievement was not in painting at all.  He had clear artistic instincts but they reached greatness in politics.  And I can divide that into two parts.  He was an indisputably mesmerizing orator who made most of Germany fall in love with him and his vision.  If that is not great creativity, tell me what would be.  Nobody before or since has been so successful in oratory.

From reading his inaugurals and other speeches, Abraham Lincoln probably was as good at oratory in his day but he was an old fraud too.  Lincoln convinced Americans that 600,000 of their young men had to die to abolish slavery -- when no other  nation on earth needed to shed a single drop of blood to abolish slavery.

And, getting back to Hitler, part of his political genius did include a visual component.  He was largely responsible for the design of Nazi rituals, displays and rallies and they helped make his speeches and rituals so emotionally powerful.  So that was clearly a remarkable artistic achievement. And that too would seem to be a pinnacle achievement.  I  know of no other political rallies and speeches that are re-run on TV even a thousandth as often as Hitler's.

All those re-runs surely attest that even we who are long past any sympathy with his aims are still powerfully affected by the speeches and spectacles involved. How could such a failed and disastrous politician still figure so largely in our minds?  There was clearly something about him that was way outside the ordinary.  He still fascinates.

So Hitler may have been merely a good painter but as a political persuader he was the best ever.  He was supremely creative in only one field but it was in a field that was, regrettably,  immensely  influential

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Florida Teacher Sentenced for Sex with Student - Update

(Lakeland, Florida) Former teacher Jennifer Fichter, 30, was sentenced Thursday to 22 years in prison.

* * * * *
Florida Teacher Guilty of Sex with Student - Update
[Previous 4/3/15 post]
(Bartow, Florida)

It was a surprise legal development Thursday in a Polk County court, involving a former teacher accused of having sex with her teenage students.

Jennifer Fichter had been scheduled for a pretrial hearing, but instead, unexpectedly entered a plea of guilty.

This lady was a true predator," said Lakeland Police Sgt. Gary Gross, whose department investigated Fichter's case.

Fichter plead guilty to 37 counts against of having unlawful sexual contact with a minor. Police say the victims were teenage students from the Central Florida Aerospace Academy in Lakeland.

Sentencing is scheduled for July 2.

* * * * *
Florida Teacher Accused of Sex with Student
[Previous 4/15/14 post]
(Lakeland, Florida) A 29-year-old English teacher at Central Florida Aerospace Academy, Jennifer Christine Fichter, has been accused of engaging in sex with a 17-year-old male student.

Fichter faces six counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor.

Police said Fichter and the boy had been texting each other and meeting in the early morning hours for sex in her car in the parking lot of an apartment complex.

According to police, the mother of the boy saw the text messages and contacted Fichter, who admitted to the encounters and said she loved the boy.

Police said the boy admitted to meeting Fichter for sex six times inside Lakeland city limits and said the two met several time outside the city limits to have sex.

Fichter was booked into custody at the Polk County Jail.

Homosexuality and Christian apologetics

Derision is my normal response when people claim to be Christian and then go on to countenance homosexuality.  Both the Old and the New Testaments are crystal clear that it is an abomination to the Lord and must therefore be avoided or repented.  And yet the mainstream churches go as far as having homosexual clergy.  How do they do it?  What conceivable excuse can they have for disobeying their Lord?

In the case of the Church of England and its various offshoots the answer is clear.  They DON'T believe in their Lord --  and many clergy are closeted homosexuals themselves.  The present Archbishop of Canterbury does appear to believe in something but as far as I can tell he is a rarity among the Anglican episcopate.  The Anglican clergy like gracious old  buildings, gorgeous vestments, "bells and smells" and the occasional bits of respect that they get -- but proclaiming the Gospel is a very low priority for them  Even their Easter sermons are often very wishy-washy, with at best passing mention of redemption.  With honourable exceptions (as in Sydney diocese) The Anglican clergy  are mostly just poseurs, atheists in drag.

Some mainstream clergy, however, do make some sort of a fist of justifying their heresy and I want to say a few things about that.  Unlike Leftists, I do take an interest in what "the other side" are saying so I do know their main lines of argument. I have no fear of being tripped up by awkward facts and hearing both sides of any question is in principle the safest way to a reasonable judgement about it.

And I note that real Christians generally seem to be a bit slack about countering the pseudo-Christian arguments about homosexuality. Real Christians think it is sufficient to quote the relevant texts and leave it at that.

But the pseudo Christians do have some real arguments to offer and they are good enough to lead some people astray -- so somebody needs to point out the sophistry in the pseudo-Christian arguments.  It is rather crazy that I as an atheist should take on that job but I have never lost my early interest in exegesis and theology so am reasonably positioned to do so

Argument from the first century environment

One argument I see is that homosexuality is condemned only about three times in the New Testament so they cannot really have meant it seriously.  If it really was a serious concern it would have been mentioned more often.  And Christ himself did not mention it at all.  Allied to that is an argument that Christ and the apostles lived in a Greco-Roman world where homosexuality was normal, common and unquestioned so it cannot have been seen as very wrong or it would have been condemned out of hand.

That is the sort of argument you might get from the U.S. Supreme Court -- one that completely ignores what the documents actually say -- and it seems to me to be an argument of desperation.  But let me point out the simple and major flaw in it anyway.

Christ and the early Christians lived in an environment that  was overwhelmingly Jewish.  And Jews had always stood out in their rejection of homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22 etc.).  They did indeed live in a Greco-Roman world and pedophilia had been routinely practiced by the Greeks for centuries -- something that the unfortunate Chris Brand got fired for after he pointed that out once too often.

But Israel was not Greece then any more than it is today.  Regardless of what other subjects of the Roman empire might say or do, Jews lived in a society where homosexuals risked being stoned to death.  Rejection of homosexuality could be taken as read in that environment so needed only incidental mention.  And when the apostle Paul did in fact comment directly on Roman civilization, he absolutely ranted and raved in his condemnation of it.

Paul started travelling very early on and so came into much more contract with Greco-Roman civilization than one would have done in Israel.  Most of his missions were at least initially to congregations of the Jewish diaspora so he still lived in something of a Jewish bubble.  But when it came to Rome itself he could not restrain himself.  He condemned just about everything Roman.

Read what he says about Roman practices in his epistle to the Christians in Rome, chapter 1, from verse 21 onwards.  Being a good theologian, Paul puts his condemnation in the context of what Jewish backsliders in the past had done but there is no ambiguity about the general applicability of what he says. And he is clearly motivated by what he has observed of Roman civilization, which is why he felt the need say it when writing to the congregation in Rome.  So on occasions when it was needful to condemn homosexuality, the Bible writers did just that.  I quote from verse 27:

"And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet".

And in the final verse of the chapter Paul moves into the present tense,  indicating that it is the malign influence of then-current Roman civilization on Christians that he has particularly in mind:

"Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them"

What did Christ say?

A related argument is that Christ never mentioned homosexuality so it was only that old puritan Paul who thought it was a bad thing.  Since Paul's writings form a large part of the New Testament, that is simply a repudiation of the Bible and is, if anything, an anti-Christian argument and reveals those who put it forward for what they are:  Disciples of Satan maybe but certainly not disciples of Christ.

But, that aside, context again is explanatory.  Because Christ was a devout Jew in a Jewish society, the question never arose. It was not an issue.  The Jewish law still unquestionably applied.  Let me quote the only thing that Christ said about marriage -- in Matthew 19.  He specifically put his teaching in the context of a debate about Jewish law:

"Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'.  So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Clearly, for him, marriage was between a man and a woman and it was only they who could become "one flesh". And his authority for that was what was found in the Jewish scriptures.  So there is no doubt whatever about his view of sexual relationships. Only male/female marriage was on his horizons.

Universal salvation?

A remaining argument from the pseudo Christians is that God is a God of love so therefore he must love homosexuals too. That is also an amazing argument. The Bible repeatedly makes clear that God loves his children but, like any parent, he also has rules for his children.  And just as children can be disinherited, so God can sentence unrighteous people to everlasting "kolasin" (cutting off).  Let me quote  Matthew 25.

"When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world ...

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal"

The word translated as "punishment" above is in Greek "kolasin" and it simply means "cutting off". It is the word a Greek gardener might use to describe the pruning of a tree. So it would be a proper  translation to say that the goatish ones will be cut off and thrown away like the unwanted branch of a tree.

So the argument that the love of God is unconditional is utter rubbish.  You have to do your best to obey his rules if you want salvation from death.  There is no universal salvation.

So those are the arguments that the pseudo-Christians use. They are so weak that you could only accept them out of desperation. You could only accept them if you wanted to use Christianity as a false front.  They are arguments that mock the Bible, not arguments from the Bible -- JR.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Carolina Teacher Indicted for Sex with Student

(Currituck County, North Carolina) A 24-year-old teacher formerly at Currituck Co. High School, Kimberly Lynne Umphlett, has been accused of engaging in an inappropriate relationship with a student.

Umphlett has been indicted for felonious sex offense with a student.

Authorities say the investigation, which began after a report was made in May, determined that there was inappropriate conduct and sexual contact made as early as April and had continued to the time it was reported.

Umphlett is free on $5,000 bond.

Florida Teacher's Aide Nasty with Student

Alecia Kay Dotson
(Lakeland, Florida) A 45-year-old teacher's aide at Highlands Grove Elementary School, Alecia Kay Dotson, has been accused of engaging in a romantic relationship with an 11-year-old boy.

The boy’s mother found disturbing text messages on her son’s phone. Lakeland Police say Dotson sent text messages to the boy asking to pick him up and take him to the library. That’s when the mother quickly called police.

Shortly after, as Lakeland officers were at the boy’s home, detectives say Dotson sent another text. It read, “Love bug what are you doing” and “I’ll be sure to tell her we won’t have sex on the first visit…LOL.”

Details on arrest not reported.

The church of global warming

The new rosary: "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is unhappy with the Pope's backing of what Zeg insists on calling "anthropological" global warming.

Zeg seems to be a bit of a Latinist too.  That gobbledegook above the Pope's head in the toon is not dog Latin  but real Latin.  It translates as, "The crack-brained poison of Rome".

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Once more: Climate was highly variable in prehistory too

Findings from Finland yesterday, South America today.  Another finding of big climate swings.  Also found below: Insolation (the sun) was primary driver of tropical S. American climate in the past 120,000 years.  Just the first half of the unusually long abstract below.  The second half deals with models

Nature and causes of Quaternary climate variation of tropical South America

Paul A. Baker et al.

Abstract

This selective review of the Quaternary paleoclimate of the South American summer monsoon (SASM) domain presents viewpoints regarding a range of key issues in the field, many of which are unresolved and some of which are controversial. (1) El Niño-Southern Oscillation variability, while the most important global-scale mode of interannual climate variation, is insufficient to explain most of the variation of tropical South American climate observed in both the instrumental and the paleoclimate records. (2) Significant climate variation in tropical South America occurs on seasonal to orbital (i.e. multi-millennial) time scales as a result of sea-surface temperature (SST) variation and ocean–atmosphere interactions of the tropical Atlantic. (3) Decadal-scale climate variability, linked with this tropical Atlantic variability, has been a persistent characteristic of climate in tropical South America for at least the past half millennium, and likely, far beyond. (4) Centennial-to-millennial climate events in tropical South America were of longer duration and, perhaps, larger amplitude than any observed in the instrumental period, which is little more than a century long in tropical South America. These were superimposed upon both precession-paced insolation changes that caused significant variation in SASM precipitation and eccentricity-paced global glacial boundary conditions that caused significant changes in the tropical South American moisture balance. As a result, river sediment and water discharge increased and decreased across tropical South America, lake levels rose and fell, paleolakes arose and disappeared on the Altiplano, glaciers waxed and waned in the tropical Andes, and the tropical rainforest underwent significant changes in composition and extent.

Quaternary Science Reviews. Volume 124, 15 September 2015, Pages 31–47




There's nothing unusual about current levels of CO2

Even though there were no coal-burning power stations in the Eocene. The late Eocene interglacial was ~100,000 years ago. Data from China

The pCO2 estimates of the late Eocene in South China based on stomatal density of Nageia Gaertner leaves

X.-Y. Liu et al.

Abstract.

Late Eocene pCO2 concentration is estimated based on the species of Nageia maomingensis Jin et Liu from the late Eocene of Maoming Basin, Guangdong Province. This is the first paleoatmospheric estimates for the late Eocene of South China using stomatal data. Studies of stomatal density (SD) and stomatal index (SI) with N. motleyi (Parl.) De Laub., the nearest living equivalent species of the fossil, indicate that the SD inversely responds to atmospheric CO2 concentration, while SI has almost no relationships with atmospheric CO2 concentration. Therefore, the pCO2 concentration is reconstructed based on the SD of the fossil leaves in comparison with N. motleyi. Results suggest that the mean CO2 concentration was 391.0 ± 41.1 ppmv or 386.5 ± 27.8 ppmv during the late Eocene, which is significantly higher than the CO2 concentrations documented from 1968 to 1955 but similar to the values for current atmosphere indicating that the Carbon Dioxide levels during that the late Eocene at that time may have been similar to today.

Clim. Past Discuss., 11, 2615-2647, 2015

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).