Musings of a Twisted Mind|Here you will find thoughts on current events, sports, politics, court system, theology, and other things.

I didn’t think it was possible for it to snow this much in western Pennsylvania. We have at least 30 inches on the ground since Friday night and it just keeps on coming. And the Seminary has been closed all week.

And tonight the area is under a blizzard warning.

And the road crews have been positively pathetic and have been all winter. And last winter. I don’t know what happened to them but they have been far below standard. When they actually do clean the roads and its only been a small storm, the road are slush. It used to be that the roads would be cleared. Apparently there’s some reason that they choose to let people risk their lives.

And now that we’ve had a major storm, the road crews are no where to be seen.

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This is just amazing. I never would have imagined Massachusetts electing a Republican to replace Ted Kennedy. This should show the Democrats just how unpopular this health bill is with people. The only thing it does is give money to the insurance companies since it will force people to pay for it.

In an epic upset in liberal Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter anger to win the U.S. Senate seat held by the late Edward M. Kennedy for nearly half a century, leaving President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in doubt and marring the end of his first year in office.

Addressing an exuberant victory celebration Tuesday night, Brown declared he was “ready to go to Washington without delay” as the crowd chanted, “Seat him now.” Democrats indicated they would, deflating a budding controversy over whether they would try to block Brown long enough to complete congressional passage of the health care plan he has promised to oppose.

“The people of Massachusetts have spoken. We welcome Scott Brown to the Senate and will move to seat him as soon as the proper paperwork has been received,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin said he would notify the Senate on Wednesday that Brown had been elected.

I wonder how long the proper paperwork will take.

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A Vietnamese man violently forced to recant his fledgling Christian faith faces pressure from authorities and clansmen to prove his return to traditional Hmong belief by sacrificing to ancestors next month.

Sung Cua Po, who embraced Christianity in November, received some 70 blows to his head and back after local officials in northwest Vietnam’s Dien Bien Province arrested him on Dec. 1, 2009, according to documents obtained by Compass. His wife, Hang thi Va, was also beaten. They live in Ho Co village.

Dien Bien Dong District and Na Son Commune police and soldiers led by policeman Hang A Senh took the Christian couple to the Na Son Commune People’s Committee office after police earlier incited local residents to abuse and stone them and other Christian families. After Po and his wife were beaten at 1 a.m. that night, he was fined 8 million dong (US$430) and a pig of at least 16 kilos. His cell phone and motorbike were confiscated, according to the documents.

Christians Sung A Sinh and Hang A Xa of Trung Phu village were also beaten about the head and back and fined a pig of 16 kilos each so that local authorities could eat, according to the reports. The documents stated that the reason for the mistreatment of the Christians was that they abandoned “the good and beautiful” traditional Hmong beliefs and practices to follow Protestant Christianity.

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Texas is considering adding to the high school curriculum more emphasis on how religion influenced American History. Such as the founders’ faith and how Christianity impacted the early nation.

Over the past several months, much of the debate has centered on proposals highlighting the religious beliefs of the nation’s founding fathers. Some require that students “identify major intellectual, philosophical, political, and religious traditions that informed the American founding, including Judeo-Christian (especially biblical law);” explain the significance of religious holidays and observances such as Christmas, Easter, Ramadan, and the annual hajj; and describe religious motivation for immigration and influence on social movements, including the impact of the first and second Great Awakenings.

Of course there is opposition:

Texas Freedom Network, an organization of religious and community leaders advocating for church-state separation, fear students in public schools classrooms may learn that the United States favors one faith over other faiths.

“Some board members and the non-expert ideologues they appointed to a review panel have made it clear that they want students to learn that the founding fathers intended America to be an explicitly Christian nation with laws based on their own narrow interpretations of the Bible,” said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, according to The Associated Press.

But others argue that the proposed standards do not declare the United States to be a Christian nation. Rather, they provide understanding that the biblical world view of the founding fathers was a big influence in shaping the principles on which the nation was founded.

There will be no tax after all. An agreement between Non-Profits and the city averts it. The University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, and unexpectedly, Hallmark have agreed to increase their voluntary payments to the city.

For some reason it doesn’t seem very voluntary to me.

No word on if Pittsburgh Theological Seminary or the other not mentioned schools have avoided having to pay. With PTS only have about 300 students they certainly couldn’t afford much compared to the other schools.

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The protesting continues in Iran. I bet the officials never dreamed they would last this long when they gave the election to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

These protests are formed during the funeral of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri who at one point was the second in charge in Iran until he criticized Khomeini for the mass killings of political prisoners in Iran. That got him removed two months before Khomeini died.

Hossein Bastani, an Iranian political analyst, said the protests had moved beyond anger over the election and were now aimed directly at Khamenei. “Khamenei’s comments about Montazeri met with a very negative reflection in Iranian opposition websites and media,” he said. “Today we had a very great demonstration in Qom, a small provincial city and the ideological centre of the Islamic regime,” he added

“I don’t think there were demonstrations there of that size even during the revolution. The slogans people were chanting were indirectly against the Islamic regime and similar to what was chanted before the revolution against the Shah.”

I received an email from the President of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary today informing the Seminary community about the current attempt by the mayor to blackmail the schools into paying the city $5 million dollars plus trying to get them to help them get $10 million more. With the ultimatum to promise $5 million or else within three days, all ten schools told the Mayor to take a hike.

Pittsburgh
Seminary Community,

In the spirit of keeping the campus community fully informed on the tuition tax issue, I write to provide you with some facts related to recent
public comments on the topic.

Yesterday Mayor Ravenstahl threatened to go forward with his unprecedented plan to tax our students if area universities do not
agree—within three days–to his demand for an annual payment of $5 million. Of course, a tax on the universities of this sort is just another form
of tax on our students.  Pittsburgh area university presidents believe that both kinds of taxes are illegal.  They are certainly both bad for Pittsburgh Seminary and for Pittsburgh.

The number of $5 million is not related to anything having to do with Pittsburgh universities.  Like the proposed 1% tax on our students, it is not related to any city services provided to us or to our students.  Instead, it is an amount needed to help with an underfunded pension plan.

In his statements to the media, the mayor described the $5 million as a “compromise” amount, saying that Pittsburgh nonprofits had earlier agreed to commit $6 million to the city each year.  No such agreement ever existed. Temporary, large-scale assistance to the city by the nonprofit sector was undertaken through the establishment of a Public Service Fund in 2005. Section 3 of the agreement that established the Fund is very clear about the limited time frame of the 2005-2007 commitment made by the nonprofit sector.  It states, “The contributions to the fund are not
precedential and do not indicate any intention on the part of the contributors to provide support for the city after the term of this agreement. The City shall not use the fact that the contributing charitable organizations have voluntarily determined to support the City in its time of financial crisis as evidence that contributing charitable organizations can or should support the city under other circumstances or as a basis to argue for taxation of or to assess contributing organizations during or after the term of this Agreement.”

Pittsburgh Council on Higher Education (PCHE) has recently had numerous productive discussions with members of City Council regarding this issue. Several Council members see merit in developing a collaborative group to address the city’s financial problems, involving representatives from the government, nonprofit and corporate sectors.  But Mayor Ravenstahl has been unwilling to engage in dialogue seeking alternative solutions to taxing students or universities. Therefore, the PCHE institutions have unanimously rejected his ultimatum.

Please be assured that Pittsburgh Seminary, along with our fellow PCHE institutions, will remain strong advocates for Pittsburgh, and will continue in our role as key drivers of the re-emerging vitality of this great city.  And we will be vigorous in protecting our students.  Thank you for the important role you play and the many contributions you make to our Seminary and the city that has been our home for 215 years.

Please note also below a link to a video for YouTube put together by students at Chatham
University. You will find it interesting.

http://animoto.com/play/90mBzeRetGiDSjW9O00TUQ

Thanks for your encouragement and support.

William J. Carl III

President

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This is appalling.

Anyone can look through my blog and see that I oppose ordination of practicing gays in the church because they are unrepentant in their sin and thus unqualified for ministry. Just as those that engage in premarital sex and try to defend it also are unqualified for ministry. Or any other sin that they are unrepentant of and defend their actions.

And I’m not trying to make ministers above the rest of humanity. They are all sinners. BUT, accept that you sin and try to refrain from it. You might not succeed but at least recognize it, confess it and try to be better. Don’t try to change what the texts say to make yourself feel better.

But to make it a capital crime? That is insane. There is no justification for turning it into a capital crime. I know someone can come up with a proverb or Leviticus verse that commands it, but John 8 shows what we’re supposed to do with such capital crime verses. Forgive them and tell them to sin no more. And all know that “to sin no more” is not really possible.

Insane.

It means the company doesn’t care about their service or making sure its number one. Instead, they want to trick people into signing up for the service and then holding them to it as their service heads south.

That’s why Verizon has doubled their fees. They don’t want to lose customers because their service isn’t that good.

I’m a former owner of a Verizon Cellular phone and would never go with them again. Prepaid is the way to go.

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There has been news recently of leaked emails that showed that scientists have been ignoring data that does not support their presuppositions.

Spencer said he believes those scientists did so because they are “true believers” that the earth is fragile.

“These scientists are absolutely convinced that we are destroying the environment,” Spencer said, “that mankind has caused all the global warming that we have seen…They believe it is serious and the way they look at it – all data, all measurements, there are errors in the data – is that all the errors in the data are not showing the warning.”

He continued, “So it is reasonable to analyze the data in ways that maximize the warning signal.”

I do think that it is reasonable. Science is supposed to be seeking truth, Not supporting the researchers already conceived ideas. If that is all it is, then science is no different then any other discipline that studies data and its talk of a Scientific Method is completely a lie. Let the data speak for itself.

Of course anything that involves humans will be influenced by bias. If an artifact is sent to a lab to be analyzed  by a lab and that lab has a position on when it thinks the artifact should be chances are that that lab will date it to that time. That’s why artifacts are often sent to 2 or 3 different labs. And labs that have different presuppositions. Unfortunately they tend to support the presuppositions which is why you choose three and hope.