Senate approves video game study

Democrats Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Hillary Clinton of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois persuaded a Senate committee to approve a sweeping study of the "impact of electronic media use" to be organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC.

Even though the legislation -- called the Children and Media Research Advancement Act -- does not include restrictions, it appears to be intended as a way to justify them. That's because a string of court decisions have been striking down antigaming laws because of a lack of hard evidence that minors are harmed by violence in video games. (CNET News.com)

It's amazed me the justifications that judges have used to strike down the sale of explicit video games to minors. State after state has failed in its attempt to limit sales. And with the industry unwilling to help (I imagine they like those illicit sales) I guess it's up to the feds.

The rights of the child

The president of the National Organization for Women, Kim Gandy, acknowledged that disputes over unintended pregnancies can be complex and bitter.

"None of these are easy questions," said Gandy, a former prosecutor. "But most courts say it's not about what he did or didn't do or what she did or didn't do. It's about the rights of the child." (Associated Press)

Yes, you read that right. The president of NOW says the rights of the child are paramount.

Oh wait ... that's only when a father wants to opt out of his responsibilities. When a woman wants to, she can just have an abortion.

(Glad we got that cleared up.)

Tightening Catholic Lenten regulations

The latest trend in abstinence, however, is not to loosen Lenten regulations but to tighten them, especially if there's an endangered species to save. In Mexico, conservationists are pleading with Rome to declare that the meat of sea turtles -- a popular soup ingredient -- shouldn't be on the Lenten menu, even though the flesh of reptiles and other cold-blooded animals has generally been allowed.

If the Vatican cooperates, it can expect an arkload of follow-up requests. Next on the list is probably the green iguana, another threatened reptile that's on a Latin American soup recipe.

Wall Street Journal

Shiny happy people

Evangelicals are 26 percent more likely to describe themselves as "very happy" than Americans as a whole, according to a Pew Research Center survey released last month. Almost half -- 43 percent -- of evangelical Protestants described themselves that way, compared to only 34 percent of Americans.

[...]

[Ruth] Tucker said she doesn't think happiness is necessarily biblical, but it is preached from church pulpits as a Christian calling.

"There's very little room in megachurches for lament and grief and expressing one's deep sadness," Tucker said. "If you feel deep depression or sadness and are going through a rough time, you are told to stay home from church."

The contemporary church's pursuit of happiness is markedly different from historical Christianity's, said Florida State University professor Darrin McMahon, author of Happiness: A History. Christians in the early church, he said, did not expect to have happiness before death. Much of Augustine's City of God, he notes, criticizes those who seek perfect happiness in this world. Original sin, Augustine wrote, made earthly happiness impossible.

"It's only relatively recently, since the 18th century, that people expected religion to make them happy," McMahon said. "In a way, it's a perverse affirmation of the Enlightenment."

Christianity Today

Wal-Mart increasing organics

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. aims to be the mass-market provider of organic food, and will have doubled its organic offerings over the next couple of weeks, Wal-Mart's head of dry grocery told Reuters on Monday.

[...]

Wal-Mart is the top U.S. grocery seller and also No. 1 in organic milk sales. It carries organic baby food, juice, produce and pasta sauce, but will be expanding its offerings to include products ranging from pickles to macaroni and cheese.

Priest said Wal-Mart has paid close attention to the small-but-growing organic market for several years, and decided to make its move now as studies show a majority of U.S. consumers buy at least some organic food. (Reuters)

Wal-Mart the #1 seller or organic milk? Huh.

This is especially interesting to me because Wal-Mart is angling to build a store within a mile of my house. There's a bit of local opposition (if you can imagine), but if it goes through, they'd be the closest store to me that sells organic food. I'll continue to use the local health food grocer, but it being about 7 miles away will I overcome my misgivings about Wal-Mart's ethics to pick up some milk or eggs there? I don't think so, but stay tuned.

In any case, it'll be interesting to see how their prices compare to my grocer's. When local mainstream grocers have added organics, their prices have always been higher.

smart fortwo bound for US?

Who wudda thunk? Sounds like DaimlerChrysler is seeking approval to sell the 2007 fortwo in the US.

Hybrid != green

Marketers are jumping on the green-car movement and the gears are audibly grinding over what counts as a "hybrid vehicle."

First applied to small sedans emphasizing fuel economy, the term is now blithely used to encompass a vast array of trucks, SUVs and luxury cars that in some cases offer only modest fuel savings over traditional vehicles, some critics charge. (Wired News)

It should be a simple technical matter what qualifies as a "hybrid". Perhaps where the education needs to be is that a hybrid automobile is not necessarily efficient or "green". Driving an unnecessarily oversized SUV is never "green", no matter what technology it uses, because you could always save more resources by applying that same technology to a smaller, more modest automobile.

According to UCS, the upcoming 2007 Saturn Vue Green Line SUV along with the GMC Sierra and Chevy Silverado hybrids, make claims that are "hollow" and classify them as "mild hybrids" that should not be considered the same class of vehicles.

Nathanson said that while the Saturn Vue hybrid includes useful fuel-saving features such as deactivating cylinders when not in use and shutting off the engine while idling, a hybrid should include a battery with a minimum of 60 volts of power. By way of comparison, the Saturn hybrid's batteries (produced by Ovonics' subsidiary Cobasys) are rated at 36 volts, while the Toyota Camry hybrid includes 244-volt batteries.

While hybrid vehicles from Honda, Toyota, Ford and Lexus include battery packs that can recover substantial amounts of energy from the braking system (known as regenerative braking), the Saturn hybrid battery pack "doesn't have sufficient power to provide an assist to the engine," according to Nathanson.

For more information about Hybrids, you can go to the HybridCenter web site.

Thou Shalt Separate Church and State

You might think that I, as a biblical scholar and an observant Jew, would have been overjoyed that the Supreme Court recently agreed to take up the issue of displaying the Ten Commandments in government buildings. After all, our nation's highest arbiter of justice is about to give free publicity to the book I love and teach. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.

[The] monument displayed in the Texas Capitol building -- one of the three monuments being ruled upon by the Supreme Court -- contains the words "The Ten Commandments." There is only one historical problem with the monument: There are no Ten Commandments in the Bible.

Marc Brettler explains how the Ten Commandments are a Christian interpretation of scripture and not as inclusive as some like to think.

Fashionable promiscuity

the most striking element [in the 1934 movie "It Happened One Night"] is the attitude toward drunkenness. The first time we see [Clark] Gable's character he is roaring drunk, and this is assumed to be hilarious. His drunkenness is encouraged and subsidized by other characters. In the post-Prohibition decades, being drunk (as opposed to merely drinking) was seen as rebellious, cool, and fashionable, and people who objected were depicted as prudes and squares. That fad eventually passed, when the damage done by alcoholism could no longer be romanticized away.

Now, in the post-sexual revolution decades, being promiscuous is seen as rebellious, cool, and fashionable, and people who object are depicted as prudes and squares. That fad too will eventually pass, when the damage done by abortion, divorce, and sexually transmitted diseases can no longer be romanticized away. (Frederica Mathewes-Green)

One can hope.

Falseness in Christian churches

We have attended “high” churches where the same impression of falseness was left by liturgical choreography and precisionism, low churches where programmed spontaneity is the accepted measure of piety, and others in which small but no less shocking things show the same disease -- such as musicians using the prayers (addresses to God Almighty, as reputed to be “present among us”) as an opportunity to re-arrange themselves for the next “piece.”

Were I a serious non-Christian, visiting -- visiting not because I required a religion that would “speak to me where I am,” which is a particularly recalcitrant form of atheism, but because I was seeking God -- I would find it easy to conclude that these people did not believe in God at all (or at least in any God worth believing in) but were turned in upon themselves, serving some sort of need for religion they felt, a need that could be adequately served with ceremonies, effusions, and entertainments. If I wished to find the God of whose eternal power and God-ness I already knew in my heart, it would be better to look among people who showed signs of actually believing in him by doing him the honor of taking him seriously. Perhaps among the Muslims who kill people for blasphemy and are themselves willing to die for their faith, or among Jews who fear even to speak his name.

I am in entire sympathy with those who, meeting these forms of “Christianity,” turn elsewhere in disgust, and while I believe there is no way to God except through Christ his Son, neither do I believe the Lord will abandon those seekers of truth who reject, for truth’s sake, much what has presented to them as Christianity. They will find Christ. God has promised they will.

S. M. Hutchens