Don't shut down Gitmo...

I heard a extemporaneous speech at high school forensics meet recently that tickled my funny bone. A young gentleman, a likable kid from some small town in the area, told me that shutting down Guantanamo Bay was about the dumbest thing Obama could do. Why? Because "shutting down such a vital port, not allowing ships to pass through it, would ruin our economy. Isn't Obama trying to help build up the economy?" he asked. "And aren't we supposed to be more green, not less green? Shutting down Guantanamo would be bad for the environment."

His presentation was great. He had great voice quality and his eye contact was good. He spoke with authority and confidence, but his grasp of the facts was a bit questionable. Hope he gives it another try. He'll do great when he learns the ins and outs of extemp.

Philosophical bias...

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supenatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories because we have a prior commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how conterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover that materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door."

(Richared Lewontin, "Billions and Billions of Demons," The New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997, 31.)

Stuck...

Icy rain and sleet fell from the sky over our town for nearly 24 hours. Snow fell on top of the messy mix. I don't know what I was thinking when I decided it would be fun to go out and see how bad the roads were. Everyone else thought it was a great idea too. Two children jumped in with me. We got stuck just after pulling out of our driveway. We got stuck at the highway. We got stuck in the driveway upon our return. The Pierces and Dickersons helped me get unstuck the last time. (Thanks!) I parked in the parking lot next door until later in the day when things warmed up a bit. I'm not going anywhere until Sunday afternoon when it all melts away. (Only one church meeting today and it isn't ours.)

Tiller found not guilty...

Disappointing news...

WICHITA, Kansas (AP) - Jurors have found one of the nation's few late-term abortion providers not guilty of violating Kansas law requiring an independent, second opinion for the procedure.

Dr. George Tiller was acquitted Friday of 19 misdemeanor charges stemming from some abortions he performed at his Wichita clinic in 2003. Jurors found that he did not break a state law requiring that two Kansas physicians without legal or financial ties sign off on any abortion once a fetus can survive outside the womb.

If convicted, Tiller had faced a year in jail or a fine of $2,500 for each misdemeanor charge.

KSN.com

Stormy weather...

This is the Weather.com radar image I was greeted by when I checked in around 3:25pm. As you can see by the red circle around Argonia, we're smack dab in the middle of a wintry mess. Freezing rain and sleet has been falling almost continually since around 10:00am. School kids were sent home at 11:00am since roads were getting a bit treacherous. Every news channel in the area is predicting 12-15" of snow for areas south of Wichita before the sun sets tomorrow. (That would be us.) We haven't seen many flakes yet. It will have to start soon to measure up to any meteorologist's prophetic words.

Poor Levi...

Poor Levi Leipheimer. All the guy does is win the crucial time trial stage at Castilla y Leon ahead of his Astana teammate Alberto Contador, defend the race lead over two mountain stages and take the overall title for his first European stage race win since the 2006 Dauphine Libere, and no one in America even notices because we're all Twitting about Armstrong's collarbone. Dave Zabriskie of Garmin-Slipstream came in third overall.

From The Boulder Report