Some have taken it upon themselves to apologize for America’s recent election. May I just point out that no one, not even a narrow majority, elected these people to speak on our behalf. Many of them insult the intelligence of the other half of America. Some of them are asking if they can sleep on another country’s couch till the current term is over. Very funny but not very American. We are still a democracy after all. A divided one, but a democracy none the less.

Here’s what we SHOULD be sorry about:
i repent of my pursuit of America’s dream
i repent of living like i deserve anything
my house, my fence, my kids, and my wife
in our suburb where we’re safe and white
i am wrong and of these things i repent
i repent of parading my liberty
i repent of paying for what i get for free
the way i believe that i am living right
by trading sins for others that are easier to hide
i am wrong and of these things i repent

i repent judging by a law that even i can’t keep
wearin’ righteousness like a disguise to see through
the planks in my own eyes

i repent of trading truth for false unity
i repent of confusing peace and idolatry
of caring more of what they think than what i know of what they need
and domesticating You until You look just like me
i am wrong and of these things i repent – I Repent, Derek Webb

On the other hand, no one authorized these folks to represent us either! Just because their side won is not reason to be smug about it. This election shows how deeply divided this country is. Whoever gets in office next is going to have a very tough job pulling it all back together again.

Strike another pose
Power politics
Swallow their conventions
Get your power fix
We love to mud wrestle
We love to be politically Koreshed
Practice that smug
Post it like a man
One part Master Limbaugh
Two parts Madame Streisand
Now pretend you’re in a band
My, my, we’re looking smug
Very very very very – Smug, Steve Taylor

Doesn’t ANYONE understand what democracy means any more?

I find it interesting that Merck is being sued for Vioxx. It was supposed to be a drug for arthritis pain but it turns out that it causes strokes and heart attacks. Now there are lawyers gathering to start the litigation.

At first I was miffed at the lawyers. Blood suckers. But then I thought about the cycle. The drug company spends millions developing a drug that is supposed to do something great. They spend millions more marketing it (Vioxx had more money spent on its marketing than did Pepsi). The public decides that they need it. The insurance companies start paying for it. Millions of dollars move from the insurance companies to the drug companies and millions of doses move to the ailing public. Then something goes wrong. Someone dies or get sick. The lawyers move in and start suing. Millions (maybe billions) move from the drug company to the lawyers and insurance companies and a small portion goes back into the pockets of the injured public.

The money swirls around. It originates with the public who pay the insurance premiums and by the medicine. In the end, insurance companies and lawyers get a big chunk or it remains with the drug companies who largely produce medicines that cover our pain or the symptoms but mostly do not cure anything. They just make the disease manageable and the people dependent on the drug. I just found the entire process fascinating.

I loved Star Wars, thought Empire Strikes Back was okay, was sadly disappointed by Return of the Jedi, hated Phantom Menace and groaned through Clone War. My major beef with Lucas was the way he collapsed the entire universe into Anakin Skywalker. The entropy began when Vader turned out to be Luke’s dad, it continued when he also turned out to be Leia’s dad and it accelerated when it turned out that he was from Tatooine and he built C3P0. In my opinion, the plot line annunciated by Obi Wan in Star Wars would have been fine: Vader betrayed and murdered Anakin.

What should have happened then was for Luke to become a Jedi like his father and settle the vendetta: Hello. My name is Luke Skywalker. You killed my father. Prepare to die. Return of the Jedi could have been the actual return of the Jedi Order; Obi Wan via Luke could have rescued a bunch of beings Vader kidnapped who were strong in the Force (he was trying to turn them to the dark side) and the Jedi could have come back. Picture Vader and a bunch of Stormtroopers turning around when a blast door opens and there is Luke and 15 or so others with lightsabers drawn. Return of the Jedi (plural) instead of Return of the Jedi (singular).

So when I saw the trailer for Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, I found it very interesting the way they edited Obi Wan’s speech from Star Wars. When he is telling Luke about his father, in this trailer, they omit the part about him being killed by Vader. Humm. I wonder if Lucas is trying to get himself out of this corner? I have heard that Lucas claims to have had this plot line laid out from the beginning. I doubt it. Why did he have Luke kiss his sister in Empire Strikes Back? Why did Obi Wan lie so badly about Vader? I mean really, it would have made more sense for him to say that Luke’s father was a pupil of his and that Vader murdered him rather than claim that Vader was the pupil. Why didn’t C3P0 recognize Tatooine since he was built there?

Still, there is at least one concept that seems to have been there from the beginning. I remember reading back in the 70s that the reason Vader wears a suit and has to have a machine breath for him is because he and Obi Wan were fighting and he fell into a lava pit. That seems to be born out by the trailer so we shall see.

Will I see Episode III? I don’t know. Probably. The kids will want to see it and I would be interested to see how Lucas connects the dots from Episodes I through IV. I’m just afraid that we’re going to see Anakin build the Millennium Falcon and sell it to Lando, introduce Chewie to Han Solo and get Boba Fett started in bounty hunting. The universe may continue to collapse.

I downloaded and installed Firefox on my Wintel machine at work. It is pretty fast at rendering but it still has some “issues”.

When I installed it in Win98 on my VirtualPC it choked like Chicago traffic at 5PM, like Martha Stewart when she found no window treatments in her cell. In other words, it was very slow.

Is it better than IE? It renders faster than IE but it still has some bugs to work out. It has tabbed browsing which is a real winner and the reason I was an early Safari adopter. It also inherently blocks pop ups which is always a big plus.

So the verdict is: eh.

My worst fears are realized. What’s next? Open Theism?

You Are a Conservative Democrat

Frankly, the way most other Democrats behave embarasses you greatly. You pride yourself on a high level of morals, and you have a good grasp on right and wrong. It’s likely you think America needs to get back to its conservative, Juedo-Christian values. Why aren’t you a Republican then? Because you believe the goverment helps more than hurts.

The line went extremely fast. I was impressed. Heard on NPR about some people waiting hours in other places. What stinks is that we vote for judges here. Like I have a CLUE how these judges are doing!

The graphic looks just like the sticker I’m wearing.

Whoever wins has a tough road ahead of them. The vote will be very close and so no one can claim a mandate from the people. The hard part will be pulling this polarized country together and move us ahead.

He changes times and seasons;
he removes kings and sets up kings;
he gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to those who have understanding; – Dan. 2:21

No, we didn’t go out Trick or Treating nor did we pass out tracts instead of candy. My kids and I went and saw Sky Captain (which is an excellent movie made on Macs). The night before, we carved pumpkins. The digital camera-ette’s batteries died so I don’t have a picture of what we did.

Likewise, our church didn’t have a Reformation Day celebration or a Harvest Festival or anything like it. I had hoped that the church was going to do something to recognize the Reformation until I read this from The Dane. The Reformation was wonderful in that it moved the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone to the forefront (where it belongs) and for that we should be grateful. What we forget in the celebration of this is the sad division that it brought. Wouldn’t it have been better for a) Rome to agree with Luther or b) Luther and Rome to not anathamatize each other and continue as a united body to discuss and debate? Rome was too drunk on power and authority and Luther recognized the importance of the doctrine and wouldn’t back down. In the end Rome did the wrong thing for the wrong reasons and it kicked Luther out. They brought the division, not the Protestants.

So while we may rejoice that the gospel was made central again, we should be saddened that it divided the church. Oddly enough, the typical Protestant answer is the same as the Roman one: we’re the true church, they departed. And neither side seems to be too upset that the body of Christ has been divided.

Here in Chicago there is an ongoing stink over Sinclair Media‘s plan to air “Stolen Honor“, a documentary on Kerry’s anti-war efforts after he left Vietnam. They’ve scaled it back and will air clips in a different format. The problem is that Kerry is not given equal time. Sinclair Media owns or manages 62 TV stations in 39 markets, some of those markets are in swing states so you can see where the concern comes from.

But wait. Why was there such a warm reception of Fahrenheit 9/11 by the Democrats? Moore’s point in making that film was to defeat Bush. Where is the equal time for Bush during the screening of 9/11? Where is the Democratic cry of “unfair” in the airing of that film?

My point is that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If it is okay for Moore to do his slanted “documentary” why is it not okay for Carlton Sherwood to “document” Kerry’s protest record?

In the end I think they are both inappropriate uses of the media of film for political purposes. Sinclair capitulated to the pressure not to air Stolen Honor but Moore reveled in the opposition. It bothers me that both the Left and Right are resorting to this kind of tactic.

I know that people get sick with the flu. I know that some people die from it. I know that the flu shots are supposed to prevent it. But I’m glad that now that I’m out of the military I don’t have to get the flu shots and so the present shortage doesn’t bother me personally.

Here’s how I think about it. Normally you would get the flu via dirty hands or a sneeze in the face or contact with someone who has it or whatever. So why is that we bypass all those natural defenses and jam the disease under the skin to trick the body into fighting it? It seems to me that this only weakens the body’s defensive systems and makes us more susceptible to the dreaded thing.

Second, once we get it our bodies try to get rid of it by developing itchy eyes and runny noses. We sneeze, our body temperature goes up and we need more rest. This is the natural course of action our body takes once it has lost the first round to the dreaded bug. But what we do once we get to this state is take antihistamines to shut down the sneezing and the runny nose. We take Tylenol to bring down the fever and we take Nyquil to put us to sleep.

In the end we’ve bypassed our natural defenses with the shot and then we take medications to inhibit our body’s method of fighting the infection. Drug companies are making money on this entire enterprise. Sure, we’ve greatly diminished many life threatening illnesses, but I wonder about the general health when it comes to non-life threatening illnesses. I wonder if we are really any better.

I prefer not to get the shot and let me natural defenses do what they can. If they fail me, which they have in the past, I chose to use natural methods to fight it. I have found Oscillococcinum to be excellent against the flu if you take it at the first sign of symptoms. If you miss it, you need to take remedies that follow the symptoms. They don’t shut down the symptoms, they try to help your body do what it is trying to do better.

Drug companies hate homeopathy because they can’t patent the ingredients. Scientific studies have found homeopathy to be no more effective than a placebo, but I’m not persuaded. I think they may have treated them as they would a drug; you have this symptom you take this pill, the symptom either goes away or it doesn’t. With homeopathy, the symptom may actually get worse before it goes away. Also, different types of people respond better to different remedies, there isn’t that one-to-one correspondence there is with other medicines. It has done wonders for me.

Gee, can you tell I work at Whole Foods Market?

I was working on a database in Access yesterday and wound up fishing through the help file looking for a clue. I never did find what I was looking for but I did come across this:

For additional information, select the item in question and press F1 (in Windows) or HELP (on the Macintosh).

Okay, first off, Microsoft never made Access for the Mac. Apparently there is something about the engine that is built in to Windows and isn’t present in Mac OS X. Fair enough and I have not heard a big outcry from the Mac users out there. Secondly, there isn’t and as far as I know never was a HELP key on the Mac keyboard. Wonder how this got in there.

Engage Geek Mode.

What I was trying to do was dynamically address controls on a form in VisualBasic. The name of the controls is in a table and I needed to get to each one to make some changes.

If ControlName is a variable with the name of the control in it, ThisForm is the name of the form, and you want to change the caption, the syntax looks like this:

(“Forms”)(“ThisForm”)(ControlName)(“Caption”) = “Caption Changed”

Place that in a While loop and walk through that table one record at a time and you’re dynamically addressing controls! Unfortunately, if you search the help file for this you won’t find it. I had to pull out a database I’d written in the Air Force to figure out how to do this. Not that the help file is a waste, I used it to teach my self how to program Access. It is just that sometimes this kind of advanced programming is hard to locate in the help file.

I’d forgotten how much I missed doing heavy duty programming like this. <:-) (that is a cone head simley)

Disengage Geek Mode.