Bound By Grace

This was encouraging.

This looks like it might be interesting and informative: BugBios

An interesting perspective.

Thomas S. Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility

So far I’ve just listened to the podcast (first link above), but it gives some articulation to some things I’ve been thinking about the subject for quite a few years.

As a Christian, I may find I diverge from Dr. Szasz’s line of thought at times, though because I’m a Christian I also have serious concerns with the whole profession of Psychiatry and the general angle taken in the idea of “Mental Illness.”

Under the way it is described today, we all suffer from some form of mental illness or the other. In other words, we all sin. We all have our biases and obsessions and suffer from limited perspective, which is additionally twisted and thrown off-course because of our sin. We also have our own priorities and do not think about absolutely everything in just the same way as any one other person.

I think there is a way to seek to be firm on God’s Truth, while still being open to the possibility of error without forsaking that Truth.

God is the only true healer of “mental illness.” By which I mean that any man or accumulation of men who presume to seek to understand the psychological mind of human kind is attempting to possess the mind of God. It is not possible.

Yes, I think there is such a thing as ”unhealthy thinking,” but the real hope of healing comes through the Truth of the Gospel and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Nietzsche is an example of true madness which results from an utter rejection of God and objective Truth.

(The profession of science in general today suffers from a god-complex, a lack of appreciation of the limits of one’s own understanding or the limits of accumulated knowledge, and of the utter complexities of nature and the human body. It is idol worship to think science and central planning can fix the world. His thoughts are far above ours, even if we could ever manage to put together every thought from the beginning of time to the end - which we can’t. Our society today is showing symptoms of the maddness of Nietzsche.)

Their are times when God may individually gift us with a special understanding in particular circumstances, but the key is that it is limited and we will do well to remember that and to give all the Glory to God.

Anyway, I’ve strayed a bit from the topic of conversation in the podcast. I hope you will listen and consider sharing with me your thoughts on it and/or what I’ve written.

It’s nice to know some communities still do things like this. It shows personal and emotional (relational) investment in the family’s needs, along with the financial. Me thinks such efforts will go a long way in giving real support - in more ways than one.

From the Buffalo Reflex:

Benefit music show, auction

for Frazier family to be Dec. 6

 

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 4:05 AM CST

A benefit music show and auction for the Jessie Frazier family will be held Saturday, Dec. 6, at the Buffalo VFW Hall, 419 S. Locust. Doors will open at 5 p.m. with the country and gospel music at 6 p.m. Featured are the Flippin Family — Shirley, Ron, Roxie and Ross — and gospel music by Shepherd’s Voice — Russ and Skyla Weeks and Bob Guymon.

Jessie, a 2004 graduate of Buffalo High School, is a patient at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis and is undergoing treatment for a rare form of sarcoma. He has insurance through his employer, Polar in Springfield, but medical disability payments will end soon and the family will lose their home. Travel expense to and from St. Louis is a major concern.

His wife, Carrie, works at Wal-Mart in Buffalo. They have two daughters, ages 2 and 10 months. His parents are Randy and Linda Frazier, Buffalo. His dad works for Copeland in Lebanon, and his mother is the nurse at Buffalo High School.
Anyone who would like to donate a new or good used item, or dessert for the auction may call (417) 345-5071 or (417) 345-0184.
A special fund for the family has been established at O’Bannon Bank in Buffalo.

We rearranged the furniture in our bedroom over the weekend.

I think I’m going to like it.

But the first night I didn’t sleep very well at all.

Does anyone else have trouble adjusting to changes in their bedrooms, even when dealing with all the same furniture?

It still feels very strange to me.

 I think this idea has potential - if we are to have any hope of preserving the Union along with our liberties. I’m not saying for certain, I only just found this today, but I thought it was definitely worth directing my friends to. For us to give some attention to; to investigate.

 

The primary purpose of Thirty-Thousand.org is to conduct research on, and increase awareness of, the degradation of representative democracy in the United States resulting from Congress’ longstanding practice of limiting the number of congressional districts despite the continuing growth in the nation’s population.

---

The framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights intended that the total population of Congressional districts never exceed 50 to 60 thousand. Currently, the average population size of the districts is nearly 700,000 and, consequently, the principle of proportionally equitable representation has been abandoned.

The historical trend relative to our federal Representation is illustrated in the charts below. The vertical bar chart illustrates that the total number of congressional districts was increased every ten years from 1790 to 1910 (with a single exception). These increases were a direct result of the growth in total population as was intended by the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

~*~*~

Without exception, every influential political and economic special interest operating in this nation will strenuously oppose enlarging the House to the extent necessary to return political power to the citizens. The investment in the status quo is extensive and deep. Powerful special interest groups as well as the federal lobbyist industry depend on their ability to influence a very small number of House members (and Senators) in order to affect legislative and policy outcomes. It will become impossible to effect the same level of influence upon the House when it consists of thousands of Representatives, especially if those many Representatives are living back in the real world — among their constituency — rather than being concentrated in the surreal parallel universe known as Washington, D.C.

Consequently, there is a long list of powerful institutional forces that will oppose this amendment: multinational corporations, most industry trade groups, labor unions, the Republican Party, the Democrat Party, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the federal executive branch and last, but not least, most foreign governments. These disparate forces, which normally do not collaborate with one another, will be united in defending the oligarchy in the federal House of Representatives.

Source: Thirty-Thousand.org - Return the House of Representatives to the People (Home Page)

Hat Tip: The Lew Rockwell Show. Click to listen to a short interview with Dr. Mark Thornton, at least one of the guys behind this idea.

And a couple helpful sites:

http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Look.html
http://www.demanddebate.com/
http://www.oism.org/s32p31.htm - A Global Warming Petition which has been signed by over 31,000 American scientists. I’ve posted a copy of the petition below. Go to the link to find out more and see a list of the signers.

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

The researchers identified two classes of chemical compounds in commonly-used plastic lab ware that leach could into solutions. They further demonstrated that the compounds interacted biologically with, and changed the behaviour of, human enzymes and brain receptors in different experiments.

Plastic additives leach into medical experiments, research shows.

Hmm. How much of our food supply is in long-term contact with these “leaching” plastics? And who doesn’t drink coffee or hot tea out of polypropylene (styrofoam) cups when at church and such places? (Extreme heat and cold accelerates the leaching process.)

Edit: Whoops. Styrofoam is polystyrene, not polypropylene. Yet Styrofoam has still been demonstrated to leach chemicals when heated or frozen, I just don’t know off-hand where I’ve read it.

HatTip: JunkScience.com

I am able to appreciate certain aspects of the season that inspire some people to go so far as to declare Autumn their favorite season. I have even been known from time to time to be struck by the stunning beauty of spectacularly bright hues of fall foliage, particularly that of trees stretching over a cozy village road that boasts golden, glimmering leaves. I was given the pleasure of this sight just this day about 40 minutes from my home as I traveled to pick up my daughter from a sleepover. Had I a camera I most certainly would have stopped and attempted to capture the dream-like vision.

On the other hand, this time of year also represents other aspects that do not necessarily cheer me. In childhood, it meant the newness of school had begun to wear off. By October, the kids were settling into their respective cliques, comfortable in their judgments of one another, eager to test the “true” nature & limits of another child’s character, and confident enough to be however disruptive or controlling during class time as they will likely be during the rest of the school year (except for maybe the end of May as warm weather calls and before Finals, also the last couple of days of school have unfailingly been chaotic in my experience - they don’t count) in their attempts to establish their reputations for the school year. It’s also the time of year teachers buckle down with the first truly challenging schoolwork - expecting a child’s potential & performance for the entire year to become apparent - in the midst of such a tumultuous & unsophisticated cultural and societal development process. I just never handled such conflict and stress very well. I usually made a pretty good show of it the first few weeks of school, but I never quite figured out how to balance my loyalties once the demands set in. I was also extremely sensitive to classroom distractions and terribly poor at working independently. One on one or some form of teacher interaction with active student participation (asking questions and calling on individual students to answer - so long as I had not been expected to previously absorb the information independently) I responded very well to.

A couple other things that leave me unpleasantly subdued in autumn are the penetrating blackness of the suddenly dark early evenings coupled with the bone-drenching chilly, wet, wet air. It’s been constantly very damp and often actually raining for a solid week now. Throughout most of my life I’ve had a tendency toward cold hands and feet whenever the weather was cool and most prominently in combination with moisture. So even once I survived October, November offered a few more things not to look forward to.

There is one other item of fall that I find inexplicably comforting: the visual affect of the ground blanketed with fallen leaves. As a child I enjoyed jumping and playing in a pile of leaves as do most children, but only while they are still dry. Once the wet settles in, I no longer have use for piles - except for the temptation to plow through a pile along the side of the road and send the light-weights flying. I avoid such behavior these days for fear a child may by chance be hiding in it’s midst.

I would much rather see yards and streets covered in the fallen leaves of majestic trees whose proof of their most spectacular display will soon only be evident on the ground — that is unless someone rakes them up into a homely pile before whisking them out of sight.

My Backyard

I found this helpful, so I wanted to post a link to it to make it easier to find and review at a later date.

Video about controling shutter speed, aperture and ISO.