WORD

sang-froid [Fr. sahN-fRwA] n.  coolness of mind; calmness; composure: They committed the robbery with complete sang-froid

BIRTHDAY

Andrew Carnegie (1835), Eddie Shore (1902), Joe DiMaggio (1914), Percy Sledge (1941), Ben Stein (1944), John Larroquette (1947), Amy Grant (1960), John F. Kennedy Jr. (1960), Mark Lanegan (1964), Christina Applegate (1971), Donovan McNabb (1976), Dolla (1987)

STANDPOINT

One of my greatest friends is Joe. I’ve mentioned him before. He’s someone special.

And he’s also kind of this blog’s watchdog. When I miss a day (or three), or post something subpar, Joe’s the first one to let me know, whether through a scathing comment on a particular post, a verbal tirade on GMail chat, or an obscenity-laden phone call. Most of these responses center on his annoyance with the fact I call this the daily euneJeune, and I’m not exactly stringent about the whole “daily” thing.

I love it. Because it comes from Joe and he’s one of the few people out there in the world who knows me very well, and wants to be my friend anyway.

Also, Joe and I have two things in common: (a) We’re able to drink more alcohol than any two people at any bar anywhere, and (b) We’re most likely the funniest people you’ll ever meet. And, no, the alcohol has nothing to do with why we think we’re a goddam riot. Although it doesn’t hurt.

In any case, Joe and I have this routine of exchanging late night texts, mainly because each of us know the other is most likely awake and not sober. 99% of the texts’ subject material has to do with movie quotes. And of that 99%, probably 98% deal directly with the obscure black comedy, Clifford, starring Charles Grodin and Martin Short.

As a tribute to my friend Joe, I offer the following video clip.

QUOTATION

I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart so long.  If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can play together all night. → Bill Watterson

TUNE

I’ve always loved the lyrics and music of Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” It came on yesterday at the perfect time. And, so, I now share it with you.

GALLIMAUFRY

→ As we all knew it would, Antarctica has declared war on New Zealand. Tired of living in the shadow of its more “tourist-friendly” neighbor, the frozen wasteland has launched hundreds of icebergs in a desperate attempt to get some headlines. Some experts are saying it’s not an attack at all and probably has something to do with global warming. Other experts are saying there’s too much ice in Antarctica and it’s natural to jettison some of the dead weight. The same experts also suggested people get off global warming’s back. However, all the experts agree the iceberg assault will have little effect on New Zealand, prompting a disheartened Antarctica to go back to the drawing board.

→ Finally, MTV makes a show I would actually watch  – about a squad of young Italian summertime renters at the Jersey shore – cleverly titled “Jersey Shore,” and wouldn’t you know it? There’s a group of Italian-Americans that wants to block it. Of course.

→ No new posts until Monday. What with the holiday and all. Also, be careful out there tonight. It’s the biggest bar night of the year. And drunk idiots make it suck pretty hard. Just take the following advice: Make sure to drive fast and take chances. OK. It’s not really advice.

Roger Ebert decided to review Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled” for some reason. The movie came out forever ago, but none the less, this is a welcome confounding of confusion.

In his own cheery, comedy-filled way, Ben Stein teaches us four lessons from the recession. Key lesson: policymakers have no idea where in the ocean this ship is sailing. Do they even know what ship they’re on?

I would say that Ben Stein exaggerated, but not by a lot. There is a hidden gnosis  unveiled by the mechanism of evolution that constitutes a temptation to the human species. Once we have a mechanism for the improvement of a species—once we know how nature does it (by a process of selection)—do we start directing the selection, or not?

It’s really not Darwin’s fault that we are confronted with this temptation. It is the twisting DNA tree in the garden of our body’s Eden. It’s God’s fault. God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil there. Geneticists, as we speak, are boring into that tree, and the processes are being rapidly deciphered whereby God (if God exists) makes organisms better, prettier, faster, smarter, and stronger.

Obviously, you don’t need intellectuals to spell out the implications. Any school child can look at the theory of evolution and say, “Nature does not operate by the laws of love and nonviolence. Nature selects out the fittest by a process of elimination. Why aren’t we?”

Why aren’t we?

What, but religious taboo, is powerful enough to arrest the temptation? Why not eliminate the pains “that flesh is heir to”? And when religion goes away, what philosophical or ethical argument will have enough “oomph” to inhibit people from rushing full steam ahead into eugenic selection?

I disagree with Ben Stein to this extent: Stein treats evolution by natural selection as a philosophical position that one can take or leave. And so he blames intellectuals for the catastrophe. By contrast, I treat evolution by natural selection as a scientific fact that cannot be swept under the rug. The tools of selection (sexual and natural) that Darwin discovered will actually work if applied to human beings artificially. Geneticists will, over the next 100 years, be able to use eugenic techniques to make Nietzschean “super-humans” (or, if they prefer, degenerate clones as frontline fodder in war). They’ll be able to blend the genes of humans and animals. In embryos, they’ll be able to add or delete a menu of human traits (a small menu, at the start, but much larger, say, 300 years from now). These seemingly black magic arts will not be Darwin’s fault, or the fault of philosophical Darwinists, or the fault of decadent intellectuals. The ability to engage in these arts will be made possible by the facts read out painstakingly by scientists from the Book of Nature. They will come from God. Natural selection acting on the genome is how biological improvements really occur, and humans are rapidly figuring out how to read out of the genome the secrets for making improvements.

Philosophical Darwinists might well give the eugenic temptation intellectual support, and cheer it on, but it is the gnosis  that scientists have unveiled that constitutes the temptation. You have hippies who, by analogy, cheer on free love, but you don’t need the cheerleaders of free love to recognize and feel the temptation. It is the genetic apples hanging on the trees of our bodies that will give us the power to be as gods—to direct our own evolution—if we decide to take upon ourselves this knowledge of good and evil. Nazi doctors were the crude, ham-handed Darwinian alchemists of the 20th century, but the 21st and 22nd centuries will have real alchemy: geneticists able to cleanly and efficiently turn our crude human mud into transhuman gold.

Will we eat those golden apples? Should we?

Blaming this dilemma on Charles Darwin, or on philosophically enthusiastic Darwinists, or on godless intellectuals, is to shoot the messengers. The tree and its fruit comes from the King himself. God (if God exists) is the creator of the human genetic code, and he is also the chief taboo for not tinkering with that code to improve the human species.

So long live the King?

Obviously, the old King’s ongoing reign is in his children’s hands. But the day is coming (and that very soon) when we will be able to direct our own evolution.  And should we choose to do so, that will also be the day that marks the death of God. It will be a completely different world, run entirely by the children. And our great-grandchildren will not be human. They will be transhuman.

Now choose.

This semester (which is just about to wrap up) I’m teaching a course called “Theology and History of Worship.” Yesterday’s learning topic dealt with sacred space in worship–how the people, furniture and symbols of worship are arranged to best allow people to engage with God and one another. I had planned on doing a lecture, but then decided to approach it a different way. Since the lecture would be based mainly on the reading they had done (I would be reviewing the main ideas and adding more info), wasn’t this a little redundant?

I came up with this instead: I wanted them to put into practice the things they had learned through the reading, and what I would briefly review in class. I had them get into 3 groups, with this assignment: design a worship space for a particular area and tell us why you designed it that way. What are the theological and practical reasons for your choices? Group 1 designed a sanctuary for an urban church meeting in a leased office space, Group 2 designed a space for a suburban church plant, and Group 3 designed space for a rural church youth ministry that emphasized the arts.

The results were interesting, and the students took it more seriously and engaged in the process more than I expected. A couple of the groups were very detailed in their designs. I was pretty impressed.

I’ve only been teaching for a few years, and have a lot to learn (trust me on that one, or just ask my students!). But one of the things I do know is that active learning (participation and engagement) allows students to interact with and process what they learned from reading and lectures. The lecture format can be done effectively by some teachers and for some topics, but I am learning some new, different, and often more effective approaches to help students learn.

By the way, here is good quote I used in class: “Space, it has been argued, needs to be redemptive space.  It needs to reflect the work of salvation, which we celebrate.  Therefore, adequate space for gathering, for the hearing of the Word, for the celebration of the Eucharist, and for music and the arts that accompany these acts is a priority.  The major shift that has taken place in worship space is the shift from longitudinal space to a more centralized space, a space in which the worshipers become participants. ” (Robert Webber, Worship Old & New, 146)

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on
CBS Sunday Morning 0n 12.18.2005.

The Christmas lights for Winchester will be lit up tonight, and here’s a heartfelt observation (with which I largely agree) by a student at the University of Winchester: WINOL: Are we destroying Christmas?

Ben Stein, Jewish Actor, is purported to have said the following:

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:

I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don’t know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise’s wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It’s not so bad.

Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was  Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, “Merry Christmas” to me. I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

——————————————————————————-

I, and others, have been wondering at the gradual downgrading of Christmas to “the Holidays” in order to “not offend” certain people/groups, yet this year Halloween was probably the most celebrated event I have seen so far this year, highly promoted by restaurants, etc. Why is that acceptable and Christmas isn’t?

I am going to use today’s post to bring you a GREAT column by Ben Stein who is one of MY favorite writers. Ben is the author of BEN’S DIARY in The American Spectator and has contributed to numerous other conservative media outlets.

*WE FIGURED HIM OUT! By Ben Stein*

Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized
medicine bill passed?

**They may have ruined my country and yours.**
**You must as an American FORWARD this to all, or you will wake up one
morning and your freedoms are no longer there. **

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning

Ben Stein CBS 2008 before Christmas
Commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees.. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, ‘Merry Christmas’ to me. I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a creche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the Am e rica we knew went to.
In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her ‘How could God let something like this happen?’ (regarding Katrina) Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, ‘I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?’

In light of recent events… terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said OK.

Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with ‘WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.’

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?
Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on
your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they
will think of you for sending it.
Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.
Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it… no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don’t sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

My Best Regards, Honestly and respectfully,
Ben Stein

One thing that I didn’t expect to find while researching Arthur Koestler’s book, ‘The Ghost In The Machine’, was that the man was an early critic of Darwin’s evolutionary theory.

In his book, he subjects the neo-Darwinistic evolutionary theory to intense scrutiny and manages to shoot some convincing holes in it.

Just to give a few quotes so that people can get a sense of what I’m talking about (from page 115, The Ghost In The Machine):

The classical Darwinian answer to the question how man was created out of a blob of slime is much the same as Watson’s answer to the question how Patou creates a gown out of a piece of silk: ‘He pulls it in here, he pulls it out there, makes it tight or loose at the waist… he manipulates his material until it takes on the semblance of a dress…’ The evolutionary process is supposed to operate by similar random manipulations of its raw material – pulling it in here, pushing out there, putting a tail on here, putting an antler there – until a ‘pattern is hit upon’, fit to survive.

Flat-earth science explains mental evolution by random tries, preserved by selective reinforcement (the stick and the carrot) , and biological evolution by random mutations (the monkey at the typewriter) preserved by natural selection. Mutations are defined as spontaneous changes in the molecular structure of genes, and are said to be random in the sense that they have no relation whatsoever the organism’s adaptive needs.

Now that last line there needs emphasizing – because if you ask a current Darwinian like Richard Dawkins today whether their creed still hinges upon mutations being random, they will flat-out deny it and state that you ‘do not understand evolution’ and that Darwin always argued that mutations in his evolutionary theory was ‘non-random’. It could be argued that this position (on Darwin always having been right from the inception of his theories) is straight-out revisionism (or at best a cop-out, if you go by the strawman that evolution is random, but the ‘natural selection’ process isn’t) as evidenced by the numerous times Koestler goes into the neo-Darwinist mindset – time and time again he reiterates that the official orthodoxy hinges upon the consensus that mutation is random and haphazard for lack of a better description.

Although these criticisms and doubts have made numerous breaches in the walls, the citadel of Neo-Darwinism orthodoxy still stands - mainly, one supposes, because nobody has had a satisfactory alternative to offer. The history of science indicates that a well-established theory can take a lot of battering and get into a tangle of absurdities and contradictions, yet still be upheld by the Establishment until an acceptable global alternative is offered.

This begs the question: who created the ‘preconditions’ that led to it becoming an ‘accepted’ theory? And who exactly does Koestler refer to when talking about the ‘Establishment’? (assuming the myth that we’re still living in a ‘democracy’ has any validity to it – for a minute, mind you)? Big money interests and an elite interested in endorsing a particular creed perhaps? Was not eugenics pretty much the same thing – faulty science being pushed as an established fact? Is not global warming following steadily in its footsteps today? So if ’science’ is just about – oh, this sounds most plausible – then why are skeptics on the Darwinist version of evoltuion being utomatically derided for ‘denying reality’ and being ’stupid’? Is that not really evidence of an acolyte-like disdain for anyone who doesn’t concur with their views?

Continuing on from the book:

A number of corrections and amendments to neo-Darwinian theory have been proposed by evolutionists over a number of years; and if these were to be put together, there would be little left of the original theory – as amendments to a Parliamentary bill can reverse its emphasis and intent.

Darwinians are the most vocal critics of religion out there. One of their chief complaints regarding Christianity is that The Bible was written and amended by thousands of Men over the ages, including Kings and Queens interested in keeping the public under their thumb – and that it’s a hodgepodge of fairy tales and interpretations of the laws of nature that serve to control ‘people’. Yet what does that make Darwinism then given this charge by Koestler?

To leave no doubt of the shakiness of Darwinism’s foundations in Koestler’s opinion, let’s offer a few more quotes:

The propounders of the orthodox theory may have been uneasily aware that something essential was missing, and paid occasional lip service to ‘unsolved problems’, then hurriedly swept them under the carpet. To quote one authority, Sir Peter Medawar (himself not excessively given to tolerance of other people’s opinions): ‘Twenty years ago it all seemed easy: with mutation as a source of diversity, with selection to pick and choose… Our former complacency can be traced, I suppose, to an understandable fault of temperament; scientists tend not to ask themselves questions until they can see the rudiments of an answer in their minds. Embarrassing questions tend to remain unasked or, if asked, to be answered rudeley…“

Could it be that by upholding ’science’ that can’t be entirely validated – but has to be agreed to nonetheless – that the people practicing science are in fact enslaving themselves and the people they are supposed to ‘enlighten’ from the Dark Ages – because they can’t break free of its trappings? That they’re kind of like the computer code running inside the debugger – they can’t break free out of the program – they remain stuck inside that atom forever. (a somewhat flimsy analogy, admittedly. Perhaps I will think of a more valid one at a later date).

Continuing on from page 157…

Yet it is precisely this perverse view which determines the orthodox interpretation not only of the evolution of new animal forms, but also of new patterns of animal behaviour. The only explanation that neo-Darwinian theory has to offer is that new forms of behaviour, too, arise from chance mutations affecting the nervous system, preserved by natural selection. If, apart from a few tentative studies, the evolution of behaviour (as distinct from the evolution of physical structures) is still an uncharted territory, the reason may perhaps be an unconscious reluctance to put the already strained theoretical framework of neo-Darwinian genetics to an additional test.

This review seems to recognize Koestler’s criticism without the usual vindictive disdain – but seems to struggle coming up with a genuine rebuttal all the same:
http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/rawdataupload/upload/insa/INSA_1/20005af7_1.pdf

Given that Koestler gets a free pass by Darwinian evolutionist followers, what is the justification for Ben Stein being villified in the press and on blogs like the one from Richard Dawkins for merely releasing a movie that merely states the obvious – that Darwinism layed the seeds for eugenics and the Nazi movement’s own implementation of that ’science’? To my mind, that can’t even be debated – it’s part of the historical record. Perhaps they object to the pro-’intelligent design’ message – but otherwise it strikes me as odd for the entire media apparatus to denounce this as ‘unscientific’ given what Koestler and the rest of the academic community already purported about Darwinism back in the ’70s – namely, that it was composed of contradictions and implausibilities.

Submitted by Lena Harrison:

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.  Blogger’s note: For those who must only read “alternative news” or missed it (as I did), it certainly is worth the read. 

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish.  And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees..  I don’t feel threatened.  I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are, Christmas trees.

It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, ‘Merry Christmas’ to me.  I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto.  In fact, I kind of like it.  It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in  Malibu  .  If people want a creche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians.  I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period.  I have no idea where the concept came from, that  America  is an explicitly atheist country.  I can’t find it in the Constitution and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him?  I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too.  But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the  America  we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different:  This is not intended to be a joke; it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her ‘How could God let something like this happen?’ (regarding Hurricane Katrina)..  Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response.  She said, ‘I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives..  And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out.  How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?’

In light of recent events… terrorists attack, school shootings, etc.  I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.  Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school.  The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself.  And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide).  We said an expert should know what he’s talking about.  And we said okay.

 Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out.  I think it has a great deal to do with ‘WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.’

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell.  Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.  Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.  Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit.

If not, then just discard it… no one will know you did.  But, if you discard this thought process, don’t sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in. 

My Best Regards,  Honestly and respectfully,

Ben Stein

Blogger’s Note:  And I might add that as long as we have Ben Steins to counteract the Bill Mahers, God may delay His righteous judgment against Sodom and Gomorrah.

“You must take personal responsibility.  You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself” – Jim Ron

“All blame is a waste of time.  No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you.” – Wayne Dyer

“The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.”  – Lou Holtz

“Decide upon your major definite purpose in life and then organize all your activities around it.—Brian Tracy

“The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this:  decide what you want.” – Ben Stein

“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.” – Robert Fritz

“The number one problem that keeps people from winning in the United States today is lack of belief in themselves.—Arthur L. Williams

“The difference between success and failure is simple.  Success is getting up one more time than you are knocked down” – Brock Henderson

“You can be anything you want to be, if only you believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith; for whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.” – Napoleon Hill

 That’s my 2 cents.

Ben Stein took Jesse Ventura and Larry King to School

Last night, while Republicans swept to victory in overwhelming fashion, as voters rejected the Obama/Pelosi Far Left agenda; Larry King’s topic of choice was whether the Right (which he incessantly called, “the Far Right”) was a threat to the Republican Party.

Once Wolf Blitzer reported that Conservative Party Candidate Doug Hoffman had lost the New York 23^rd to Democrat Bill Owens, King declared it, “the first defeat for the far right tonight,” and the sole focus of King’s Election Night coverage became whether the Republican Party was driving moderates away and becoming the party of loonies.

To make that point, his panel included those fonts of moderate reasonableness, Air America’s Ana Marie Cox—and the pro-wrestler formerly known as James George Janos,  Jesse Ventura!

Presumably, Ventura was there to stand up for the idea of third parties; but he had no good word for Doug Hoffman, or the fact that he would obviously have been the choice of the people in a primary. No, Ventura acted as though the humiliation of the smoke-filled room candidate was going to be the catalyst for a “moderate third party.”

Cox and Ventura were balanced by the Washington Times’ Amanda Carpenter and all-around smart guy Ben Stein.  While Cox and Carpenter were evenly matched and smart, this kind of panel inevitably gravitates toward the prominent TV personalities.

Ventura was as out of his intellectual weight class trying to directly take on Ben Stein as Billy Barty would have been in the ring with Jesse the Body.

But Ventura’s sheer stupidity was evenly matched by King’s doddering cluelessness as the two competed to show who was the most out of touch with current reality.

Here was the night’s funniest exchange:

KING: All right. Ben, do you see the far right, as evidenced by — we all know who they are — as a threat to your party?

STEIN: Not at all. Not in the slightest. I think you’re talking about people like my wonderful friend Ann Coulter and my wonderful friend Rush Limbaugh. I think those people are activating the party. They are keeping the party alive while it doesn’t have, really, a national political leader. I think they’re — they’re fine people. Sometimes they go off the he deep end, but they’re really wonderful people. And I don’t think they’re — I don’t think they’re that far right. I mean, they’re a lot farther right than I am on many issues. But they’re not that far right. They are people who are trying to keep the Constitution alive. It’s really all about protecting the Constitution.

COX: I just want to say I second the…

KING: Or their interpretation of it.

COX: I second his endorsement of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter as leaders of the Republican Party. I’m all for that. Go.

CARPENTER: I don’t think he said that they’re leaders of the Republican Party.

KING: If (ph) Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are leading the party, the party ain’t going to win many national elections.

CARPENTER: I think that’s probably the case.

VENTURA: A question, Larry. If these are — if these are people that he’s talking about that follow the Constitution, then why was the Constitution violated in the Terri Schiavo case? The Constitution clearly states you cannot pass a law for one person. And yet the Republican — the Republican president did it, as well as the Republican Congress at the time.

KING: That’s another issue.

VENTURA: I don’t buy this stuff.

STEIN: The Constitution says you cannot pass a bill of attainder, which means a bill which attaints a family or person. They didn’t attaint anyone. They were trying to save someone’s life. It’s not an attaint.

KING: OK, we’ll be — we’ll…

VENTURA: You use a big word, but we know what they did.

A bill of attainder is the taking away of an individual’s civil rights by the legislature.  No matter what you think of the wisdom of the Terry Shiavo case, it’s pretty hard not to come to the conclusion that the effort toward her by social conservatives had exactly the opposite intent.

Here’s an even bigger word you shouldn’t throw around because you don’t understand it, Jesse.  Con-sti-tu-tion.

Maybe it’s time to change Jesse’s signature tag line.  How about “Ain’t got time to READ”?

WE FIGURED HIM OUT! By Ben Stein

Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed?

Because he and his cunning circle realize some basic truths:

The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008.

They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith.

They ignored his anti-white writings in his books.

They ignored his quiet acceptance of hysterical anti-American diatribes by his minister, Jeremiah Wright.

They ignored his refusal to explain years at a time of his life as a student.

They ignored his ultra-left record as a “community organizer,” Illinois state legislator, and Senator.

The American people ignored his total zero of an academic record as a student and teacher, his complete lack of scholarship when he was being touted as a scholar.

Now, the American people are starting to wake up to the truth. Barack Obama is a super likeable super leftist, not a fan of this country, way, way too cozy with the terrorist leaders in the Middle East , way beyond naïveté, all the way into active destruction of our interests and our allies and our future. The American people have already awakened to the truth that the stimulus bill — a great idea in theory — was really an immense bribe to Democrat interest groups, and in no way an effort to help all Americans.

Now, Americans are waking up to the truth that ObamaCare basically means that every time you are sick or injured, you will have a clerk from the Department of Motor Vehicles telling your doctor what he can and cannot do.

The American people already know that Mr. Obama’s plan to lower health costs while expanding coverage and bureaucracy is a myth, a promise of something that never was and never will be — a bureaucracy lowering costs in a free society. Either the costs go up or the free society goes away.

These are perilous times.. Mrs. Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, has given Iran the go-ahead to have nuclear weapons, an unqualified betrayal of the nation. Now, we face a devastating loss of freedom at home in health care. It will be joined by controls on our lives to “protect us” from global warming, itself largely a fraud if believed to be caused by man.

Mr. Obama knows Americans are getting wise and will stop him if he delays at all in taking away our freedoms. There is his urgency and our opportunity. Once freedom is lost, America is lost. Wake up, beloved America .

Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu . He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.

Written in response to this urban legend…

I find it hard to reconcile a god that would provide water for Hagar’s dying child and yet allow millions of children to be tortured in Treblinka and Auschwitz Birkenau.

But then again, it’s not the concept of god I find abhorent. Some people need to believe in a higher power. What I find absolutely revolting is the concept of organized religion. Every major conflict in the history of mankind can trace its roots to a group of people believing that their god is better than someone else’s.

As an agnostic, I think dismissing the problems of the world on the absence of “god” in society is juvenile. Blaming someone (or in this case, the absence of someone) for something is far too simplistic, built on an incredibly warped system of logic. “The dog died because I asked daddy to leave”. And people don’t question the fact that the dog died because it had cancer,not because the child asked daddy to leave.

(Have I confused you yet?)

Do I have a right to complain? Yes, absolutely. I cannot prove nor disprove the existence of god. I’m an agnostic.

I make an honest living, I pay my taxes, I do good unto others. I don’t judge on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, race, religion, or belief. I think everyone is created equal*. I have no prejudices.

What right does the Catholic Church, or the Republic of the Philippines, or the General Conference… What right do they have to say that as a homosexual, I don’t exist?

I choose not to have a theistic figure in my life because I don’t accept any theory on “faith”. Accepting a concept on faith is conceding to the fact that it cannot be taken on its own merits. I believe in reason and logic and my own natural inquisitiveness.

I have a right to complain.

I’m going to step down from my soapbox now.

(*except for the poor and the ugly. Just kidding**. LOL)

(**maybe)

Ben Stein on Christmas:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are, Christmas trees.

It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, ‘Merry Christmas’ to me. I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a creche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

On a similar note:

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her ‘How could God let something like this happen?’ (regarding Hurricane Katrina).. Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, ‘I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?’

In light of recent events… terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said okay..

Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with ‘WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.’

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit.

Link

Submitted by Norma H.

Posted on Starpulse.com

There are a lot of modern movies that love to give little winks at the audience, and one of the easiest ways to do that is through the use of cameo appearances. A cameo is when a well known celebrity or important person shows up for a brief appearance in a movie. It can be a non-speaking random role, or perhaps a whole scene that steals the show. Whatever the case may be, oftentimes in a film the cameo ends up being the most memorable part of the whole movie. Take “Zombieland” for example, out in theaters now, but there’s no spoilers here. Just go see the film and you’ll see. Here’s a look at some of the best big star cameos! Be aware there might be some language in the clips below.

Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder

Tom Cruise is one of the super stars in Hollywood, but he’s been criticized a lot in the past few years due to his vocal love of Scientology and his verbal diarrhea over his love affair with Katie Holmes. Still, Cruise proved that he’s not only a great actor but has a wry sense of humor as well when he showed up in “Tropic Thunder.” While a bit bigger than your typical cameo role, Cruise hid his good looks and winning smile behind a fat suit and a bald cap as studio executive Les Grossman. Foul mouthed, disgusting, callous, and generally unpleasant, Cruise provided some of the funniest moments in the film and had everyone buzzing afterward.

Neil Patrick Harris in Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle

Neil Patrick Harris, affectionately known as NPH to friends and fans, grew to stardom as a child actor for the television series “Doogie Howser, M.D.” For years NPH had guest roles in movies and television series but nothing too serious, and he moved to the Broadway stage. It was a quick guest role in “Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle” that brought him back into the Hollywood spotlight, which was solidified not long after by a starring role in “How I Met Your Mother.” NPH plays a fictionalized version of himself in the stoner flick, appearing to be a drugged up womanizer with no boundaries. He reprised this role in “Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay,” and you cannot think of the two films without going picturing NPH snorting coke and riding a unicorn.

Danny Glover in Maverick

This cameo is amusing only to fans of the “Lethal Weapon” series, but those fans were probably rolling with laughter when they went to see “Maverick.” Danny Glover and Mel Gibson played partners in “Lethal Weapon 4,” so apparently when Gibson started this movie they thought it would be funny to wink wink nudge nudge at the audience. Glover comes in as a bank robber and in the scene he and Gibson look at one another, almost in recognition, and then go ‘nawww!’ It showed the actors – and the writers of the film – had quite a sense of humor.

Keith Richards in Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’ End

Ever since Johnny Depp said the inspiration of Captain Jack Sparrow came in part from The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, fans were wondering if the musician would appear briefly in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. Richards did delight audiences when he agreed to come on set for the third film, and not only that but he played the father of the very character Depp based on him! Richards happily got into pirate gear and even played a quick tune on a guitar as Captain Teague.

Tom Cruise, Kevin Spacey, Gwyneth Paltrow, Danny DeVito, Steven Spielberg in Austin Powers in Goldmember

The third “Austin Powers” movie was an enormous success worldwide, which wasn’t really a surprise considering how favored the entire series was once it exploded onto the scene in 1997. One of the best parts about the third film was the opening sequence in which several big names appeared. They were making a movie inside of a movie, with Spielberg directing and Cruise playing Powers, Paltrow playing Dixie Normous, Danny DeVito as Mini-Me, and Kevin Spacey as Dr. Evil. It’s still funny even after all these years to see the actors laughing at themselves, and it came as a surprise to most audiences since very little world was released about any of the cameos.
David Bowie in Zoolander

David Bowie is one of the most celebrated singers of the last thirty years, so it is no surprise that people would be clamoring to get him to cameo in their films. The singer has worked in films before, but it was a random surprise and delight when he showed up in “Zoolander.” The silly film is written, directed, and starred in by Ben Stiller, and it is numbered as one of Bravo’s 100 funniest movies. In the famous walk-off scene with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, David Bowie shows up as guest judge to everyone’s delighted satisfaction. Who else but this fashionable musician to judge a model walk-off?

Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

There are a lot of genius quotes and moments in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” but several of these lines are given by Ben Stein, and he’s only in the movie for a scant few minutes. As a droning teacher at Bueller’s high school, Stein mutters the famous lines “Anyone? Anyone?” and “Bueller?” This perfectly counteracts the excitement and joy of Ferris’ day off, and what exactly he is missing (nothing!) at school. It’s hard to think of the film without hearing Stein’s deadpan voice, but would someone just answer a question already? The poor guy keeps giving the students chances!

I was watching Expelled and when I heard the segment from this song (Evolution) I had to stop watching and search the Internet for it. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a song that’s had little exposure, has a one-word title, a nobody artist, and the title of a controversial issue that’s also in the titles of more famous songs?

Evolution by Kevin Lee:

I didn’t crawl out of the ocean. I didn’t come from no monkey.

Science tends to forget; evolution’s just a theory.

They present it in the textbooks and on animal TV

Like it’s fact. But, tell me, were you there twelve million B.C.

.

And if you’re right and there’s no God, I guess we’ll all know before too long

If there’s nothing to believe in after we’re gone.

If you’re right I’ll eat my words and you can disregard this song.

But I’d hate to be in your shoes when you find out that you’re wrong.

.

When did evolution stop? ‘Cause fish still swim in the sea.

And last time that I checked, apes still lived in trees.

They’re not our distant cousins. And I don’t care what you say;

Giraffe’s neck is long because God made it that way.

.

And if you’re right and there’s no God, I guess we’ll all know before too long

If there’s nothing to believe in after we’re gone.

If you’re right I’ll eat my words and you can disregard this song.

But I’d hate to be in your shoes when you find out that you’re wrong.

.

Now it doesn’t take a genius to know there’s more than this.

But I’ll put my faith in the Word of God – not in scientists.

There’s nothing wrong with science. There’s too much good to list.

But you can stop trying to teach my kid to become an atheist.

.

And if you’re right and there’s no God, I guess we’ll all know before too long

If there’s nothing to believe in after we’re gone.

If you’re right I’ll eat my words and you can disregard this song.

But I’d hate to be in your shoes when you find out that you’re wrong.

Yeah, I’d hate to be in your shoes when you find out that you’re wrong.

I also found a YouTube video:

Each year, the area’s free-market think-tank, Washington Policy Center, celebrates its achievements and honors local and national figures.  This year, developer Bill Conner, received the prestigious, Stanley O. MacNaughton Champion of Freedom Award on a day when headliner and special guest – author, movie star, Nixon-speech-writer, economist, Ben Stein, regaled the happy audience with his unique humor and global economic perspectives, accepted the WPC’s Columbia Award; given each year to one who exemplifies a commitment to free market principles and strong public leadership.  Past Columbia awardees included Czech Republic President, Vaclav Klaus, former Gov Jeb Bush and journalist George Will.  Red Fish Blue Fish was there to capture those events as well!  We began the day with the usual intimate luncheon at the Rainier Club while the Center’s largest-ever crowd packed the ballrooms of the Seattle Sheraton Hotel for the endless reception line and evening event.