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I'm the dad of our family, an IT consultant and a former farmer who loves the woods and streams of Kentucky
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Globally inconvenient- we protest!

Big Fix?  A renowned environmental consultant says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been cooking the Global Warming Protestbooks on global warming. Former University of Winnipeg Climatology Professor Dr. Tim Ball writes in the Canada Free Press, “The only place where CO2 is causing temperature increase is in the IPCC computer models.”

He says the IPCC has a habit of releasing computer model summaries before climate studies are even completed. He says by doing this, “The summary gets maximum media attention and becomes the public understanding of what the scientists said… they create an appearance of certainty about a human cause of [global] warming.”

Adding, “The computer models themselves are completely inadequate to represent global climate… but don’t believe me. The IPCC technical report released in 2007, says so.”

Finally, as if to drive home the point, my buddy Bob in Cincinnati sent this picture of a global warming protest attended by hundreds of … snowmen!

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Pestiferous

Ahh… now that’s a word!

In a technical sense, it means to bring or spread disease.  When I saw it used on a recent blog post, however, that wasn’t what came to mind.  Rather, I was thinking about a combination of “pernicious, evil” and “annoying or troublesome”, all alternative uses.  Here’s a partial list of my choices:

  1. Media lies- great distortions of some important truth, endlessly repeated to push a destructive agenda.  “It’s not a baby, it’s a fetus” comes to mind.
  2. Pornography is all it’s forms- the beauty and joy of marriage turned into poison.
  3. Consumer debt for depreciating things- buy what you can’t afford today while hoping you will win the lottery next week.
  4. My sins- the bad habits I can’t seem to break, and especially the unnoticed failings which offend God or hurt others.
  5. Mosquitoes- precisely!

What do you think?  For some inspiration, click on the link above and then click on the “Hear” button.  Just the sound of it should help you build your own list…

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Vanessa- an update

Vanessa Liu, our Chinese guest for Christmas, left yesterday, and we miss her so much!  As planned, we took her to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY last Wed.  The exhibits are both comprehensive and impressive, and Vanessa mostly listened, kept her Chinese dictionary at the ready, and seemed to enjoy herself.  She saw and heard many things that were new to her.  At supper the next day, we had a long discussion about “faith in evolution” vs. faith in Christ, and she restated her commitment to evolutionary beliefs.  Those are, we believe, the major impediment to her conversion, since she has been taught them constantly since childhood.  The good news is that she now has the other side, presented thoughtfully and respectfully.  In addition, she participated in giving and receiving gifts (I got a quill and ink set, for instance), attended many church services, went dancing with us on New Year’s Eve, spent several hours discussing his trip to China with our cousin, John Graham and even did some target practice.  As we parted, and some of us were close to tears, she stressed that she wanted us to visit her in China.  I hope we can! 🙂

Here are some pictures of our adventures together: Continue reading “Vanessa- an update”

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Our gift from China at Christmas

We have a special gift with us this Christmas.  Vanessa Liu, our daughter’s Chinese roommate at OSU, has come to stay over the holidays,Rene & Vanessa at Christmas 2008 and in only a few days she has become dear to our hearts.  (Here she is with Rene, her friend from OSU who brought her down.)  We talk about China & America, the ways our two cultures are different or the same, and why we do all the things we do.  She has been helping clean and decorate some, she went to the ornament exchange with the CPC ladies Mon. night, and yesterday she had fun feeding the chickens.  She will join us in gift giving and receiving on Christmas day, and be at a big family dinner this Sat.  Though she doesn’t understand much of it, she has also joined us in corporate & family worship.

This Sun. evening past we had Continue reading “Our gift from China at Christmas”

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I was wrong…

and I hereby admit it.  I always assumed that Paul Krugman (NY Times Op-Ed Columnist) was a wacko leftist radical whose opinions were fun to laugh at but hardly ever to be taken seriously.  Then I read this.  Folks, the man is making some sense here.  Madoff is clearly the worst kind of financial scumbag– he deserves hard labor in a rock quarry where all the people he ripped off get to come throw rocks at him.  Yet, it’s hard to rebutt Krugman’s argument that large sections of the financial industry deserve, in some sense, the same fate.  Here’s the point I am honing in on– Continue reading “I was wrong…”

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Do not farm

Almost 200 years ago our family came to this area to start farming.  My information on the first 75 years is sketchy; about all I’m sure of is that they didn’t move to our present location until the 1840s, when my great, great grandfather built the “old place” now restored by the Paul Hornback family.  In all that time, there were many ups and downs for farming, and no doubt many pessimists.  Nevertheless, we’re still here, growing mostly crops and a little jet fuel.

Victor Davis Hanson is a conservative commentator I respect, who is widely read and very well educated.  He is a college professor, and a farmer.  Here is what he Continue reading “Do not farm”

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Caribou and SNL

Folks, it take a lot to get me to watch TV.  I kissed it goodbye almost 40 years ago, and my life has been full of exciting times, productive work, lots of books and movies and thousands of conversations with live people.  In a word, TV (generally) is for the brain dead.  If you’re feeling a little offended right now, I suggest you … take a hike 😉  If you’re still here, however, I must confess that I just watched Continue reading “Caribou and SNL”

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A Failure of Nerve

My father tells me that my grandfather, one of the most respected and best known farmers of Shelby County, seriously considered giving up and selling out in the 1930’s.  It was after the stock market crash; times were very hard; he was in serious debt due to an unfortunate turn of events a few years before, and he wanted to sell out and become a doctor instead.  He was almost 40 years old at the time– this would have been a very iffy road.  He, and the farm, were saved Continue reading “A Failure of Nerve”

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Receprocity & the 2nd Amendment- UPDATED

Caution–New York is the only state that prohibits the transportation of handguns without a license. Travelers should therefore be particularly careful since they face severe consequences should they inadvertently violate the state’s highly restrictive statutes.

On June 26 [2008], the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment—”A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”— protects a purely individual right, as do the First, Fourth and Ninth Amendments. “Nowhere else in the Constitution does a ‘right’ attributed to ‘the people’ refer to anything other than an individual right,” the court said. “The term [‘the people’] unambiguously refers to all members of the political community.”

On Sept. 8th, while traveling home from a building seminar in NY state, I got a first hand look at how law enforcement in a “gun unfriendly” location interprets my right (see above) to individually carry a weapon as a means of protecting myself and my wife.  Although I was not actually arrested, I was effectively taken prisoner Continue reading “Receprocity & the 2nd Amendment- UPDATED”