Old Blind Dog

my Smith

2007-11-20T00:04:00.000-06:00

This is my Smith, a model 65-7 .357 magnum.

Five Planes

2007-11-10T12:48:00.000-06:00

Tam has a post up listing her five favorite airplanes.

Go there, read the list, comment.

I have my own opinions but then so does everyone else.

Cover that thing up!

2007-06-12T01:05:00.000-05:00

What she said!! I see this same thing daily. Trashy girls with a beer belly. And they are not even out of high school most of them. These girls can't honestly think that they look good can they?

What do their mothers think (if they think at all)?

Be sure and read the comments.

THE 'NEW MAN'

2007-06-07T10:49:00.000-05:00

Dr. Sanity should be read daily. By everyone.

Shooting in snow

2007-04-08T19:29:00.000-05:00

I spent the weekend with my new main squeeze and some of her kin and they were having a shooting contest as one of their "events". It snowed all day Saturday. We shot anyway. Fishing and horseshoes were nixed.

Snowing, in Texas, in April, is .... just weird.

But we shot anyway!

Compensation

2007-04-04T20:26:00.000-05:00

Why is it so hard to get paid what you are worth?

And the worthless trash of the world rakes in millions?

The Second Amendment Protection Act of 2007

2007-02-28T07:23:00.000-06:00

Tamara has a link to a bill by Rep. Ron Paul, H.R. 1096. The text of the bill is here. She doesn't think it has any chance of going anywhere, but you never can tell about these things. After all the hoo-ha over Jim Zumbo it might be possible. Write your rep and ask him/her to vote against H.R. 1022 and for H.R. 1096.

Lincoln Lied, People Died

2007-02-27T17:25:00.000-06:00

An Inconvenient Truth

2007-02-27T15:09:00.000-06:00

They have to start with your guns because it is damn difficult to tell a man with a rifle what he can and can't do.

Heh!

Hollywood

2007-02-26T15:45:00.000-06:00

Did you watch the Oscars?

Me neither. Why would anyone want to watch a Hollywood circle jerk?

Blood Libel

2007-02-25T19:58:00.000-06:00

Update here.

Chemtrails

2007-02-22T20:09:00.000-06:00

Yes, I have already noticed what they are describing. Whether or not there are toxic chemicals involved, contrails are affecting the weather. I have seen proposals that would limit maximum altitudes to FL310 with lower altitudes in the winter.

While quantification of the effects of NOx and water vapor is still at an early stage there is evidence that contrail formation could make a significant contribution to global warming. This paper builds on previous research that analyzed a policy of restricting air transport cruise altitudes to eliminate contrail formation. Our previous work (Williams et al., 2002) examined altitude restrictions in European air space and concluded that this could be a beneficial policy for reducing climate change impacts from aviation. Since most of the flights in European air space are short haul flights, this paper evaluates the trade-offs between altitude restrictions, fuel burn and journey times for longer haul flights of up to 6000nm. Our focus is on the North Atlantic and US airspace and we examine potential contrail fraction to determine optimal cruise altitudes for reducing contrail formation. Changes in fuel burn and travel times associated with flight levels of 18,000ft and 31,000ft for different aircraft types are analyzed. We find that, in most cases, CO2emission increases would be unlikely to entirely counteract the benefit of possible reductions in contrail formation. For some aircraft types, the percentage increase in emitted CO2 was found to be strongly dependent on journey length. In general, journey times appear not to be a major issue except for some aircraft types. Our results suggest that reducing aircraft cruise altitudes could be a beneficial policy for mitigating climate change impacts from the aviation sector. This is clearly dependent on aircraft type and the distances traveled, but more importantly on ambient atmospheric conditions which can vary significantly between regions and due to daily variation. This suggests that real time flight planning to minimize contrail formation should be investigated as a possible climate mitigation policy.

Get ready folks...life is going to get interesting.

Timeline of events involving the HPV vaccine in Texas

2007-02-21T21:21:00.000-06:00

Copperheads

2007-02-18T15:41:00.000-06:00

The Democrats have been a party of traitors from the get go.

Copperheads (politics)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Copperheads were a faction of Democrats in the North who opposed the American Civil War, wanting an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates. The name Copperheads was given to them by their opponents the Republicans, probably derived from the venomous snake (the American copperhead) that strikes without warning — Copperheads reinterpreted this insult as a term of honor, and wore copper liberty-head coins as badges. They were also called "Peace Democrats" and "Butternuts". The most famous Copperhead was Ohio's Clement L. Vallandigham, who was a vehement opponent of Lincoln's policies.

During the American Civil War (1861-1865), the Copperheads nominally favored the Union but strongly opposed the war, for which they blamed abolitionists, and they demanded immediate peace and resisted the draft laws. They wanted Lincoln and the Republicans ousted from power, seeing the president as a tyrant who was destroying American republican values with his despotic and arbitrary actions.

Some Copperheads tried to persuade Union soldiers to desert. They talked of helping Confederate prisoners of war seize their camps and escape. They sometimes met with Confederate agents and took their money. The Confederacy encouraged their activities whenever possible. [1] Most Democratic party leaders, however, repelled Confederate advances.

Some historians, such as Richard Curry, have downplayed the treasonable activities of the Copperheads, arguing that they were traditionalists who fiercely resisted modernization and wanted to return to the old ways.

Would that our spineless president had a set big enough to arrest the bunch, just as Lincoln did.

Tell us what you really think, Tam!

2007-02-18T13:50:00.000-06:00

Tamara lets us know what she thinks of Jim Zumbo:

Listen, you gun-banning cretin: An argument could be made (and has been, by the Supreme Court in the Miller decision) that your hunting guns are not Constitutionally protected at all, except those that meet the requirements for militia service. In other words, if you have any scoped bolt guns in a service caliber, such as 5.56mm or 7.62 NATO, those are golden, but the .17 Remington 'chuck-popper you were fawning over in your name-dropping opening paragraph is a toy that is completely irrelevent to the spirit and intent of the Second Amendment.

Of course she is absolutely correct. Go read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Zumbo is still a dickhead!

UPDATE 2: The Brady Campaign salivates.

The Old (new) King Air

2007-02-17T20:29:00.000-06:00

The C90B, 13 years young and going strong. Updated with Raisbeck/Hartzell props and dual aft body strakes last year. She is a 245ktas airplane. Not as much flying on this one, about a 100 hrs. The big trip of the year was to Michigan last August.

The New (old) King Air

2007-02-17T20:18:00.000-06:00

Here are a couple of pics of the "new" King Air.

Note the "old" technology here. This is vintage 1978! But it is updated by having two GPS navigation systems along with TAWS and TCAS plus Raisbeck/Hartzell propellers and dual aft body strakes. She'll do 230ktas. I put about 300 hrs on her last year, including four trips to Wyoming and other points west.

Assad, Ahmadinejad vow to cooperate against US, Israel

2007-02-17T18:44:00.000-06:00

Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday night pledged to cooperate to confront US and Israeli plans in the Middle East.

"We should cooperate and work to make the public aware of the sinister aims of the United States and the Zionists," Assad said after his meeting with Ahmadinejad, according to the state-run IRNA agency.

So are you stocked up on ammo?"

H CON RES 63

2007-02-17T00:03:00.002-06:00

Disapproving of the decision of the President announced on January 10,
2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to
Iraq

The roll call.

More on HPV vaccine

2007-02-15T17:19:00.000-06:00

HPV vaccine's cost turning into key issue
State medical association cites potential toll on doctors' finances in opposing order

AUSTIN — The high cost of the vaccine that protects against a sexually transmitted virus linked to cervical cancer is becoming a key issue in opposition to Gov. Rick Perry's order that schoolgirls receive the shots.

The Texas Medical Association opposes the mandatory use of the human papillomavirus vaccine partly because of it's effect on doctors' finances. Perry's mandate has the potential to increase doctor's revenue — which will be taxed by the state for the first time next year — but not necessarily their profit, said TMA spokesman Brent Annear.

The out rage over the governor's executive order has been high and the cost is just adding fuel to the fire.

Remington 700 SPS .308

2007-02-15T17:04:00.000-06:00

Even with that whippy "fly rod" barrel it still shoots into less than 1/2 inch at 100 yds. Simply amazing, but then I have always had good luck with Remingtons.

Oh, and it does it with several different types of ammo.

AR-10A4

2007-02-15T16:41:00.000-06:00

Shown with the detachable carry handle/rear sights and detachable front sight installed. It shoots into one inch at 100yds.

I went out and bought this right after the election in November.

"Why?", you ask. Read this.

Dictator!

2007-02-06T00:22:00.000-06:00

AUSTIN – The chorus of social conservatives rose Monday against Gov. Rick Perry's executive order mandating vaccinations for girls against a sexually transmitted virus, including a public plea from an influential state senator and close ally of the governor.

State Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Grapevine, and state Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, said parents are flooding their phone lines with complaints about Gov. Rick Perry's executive order. Mr. Perry said Monday that he is "firmly on the side of protecting life." State Sen. Jane Nelson, chairwoman of the Senate's health and human services committee, said lawmakers should have been allowed to hear from doctors, scientists and patients before the state implemented such a sweeping mandate.

"This is not an emergency," said Ms. Nelson, R-Grapevine. "It needs to be discussed and debated."

On Friday, Mr. Perry ordered the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to adopt rules requiring Merck & Co.'s new Gardasil vaccine for girls entering sixth grade as of September 2008. The vaccine protects girls against strains of the human papillomavirus that cause most cases of cervical cancer.

Texas would be the first state to mandate the vaccinations.

****

Ms. Nelson said she plans to ask Attorney General Greg Abbott for an opinion on the legality of the order. Mr. Perry's office has said the Legislature has no authority to repeal his executive order.

Want to Bet?

Long Time Gone

2007-01-04T00:38:00.000-06:00

The Cessna 340 is long gone, replaced by a vintage King Air C90. Two King Airs keep me very busy which is the reason for no posts for 18 months. I finally have somewhat of a breather so will try to make a post from time to time.

King Air Trips

2005-07-15T00:00:00.000-05:00

Here are some pictures of the King Air on a couple of recent trips. The first trip was to Greenville, Texas (GVT).

The second trip was to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston (IAH), here showing the rush hour departures which were also agravated by weather delays. My passengers, inbound from California via American Airlines, had spent 20 minutes waiting for a gate to deplane after landing. They called several times by cell phone, worried about our departure. We delayed an hour for thunderstorms to dissipate before engine start, then spent about 30 minutes in line for departure.

Home again just before a thunderstorm moves across the field.

I'm scheduled to go to South Texas on Sunday but it appears that hurricane Emily [link may be perishable] will interfere with that trip before our return in the middle of the week, effectively preventing the trip.

And then it gets weird.

2005-07-06T19:32:00.000-05:00

Warning: put away all beverages before reading.

Clayton Cramer has this to say about Scientology:

There is not a religion on this planet that even begins to approach Scientology for weirdness--and I am including every pagan belief you can think of when I make that statement. I have long suspected that Scientology was a scam for separating fools from their money--but I had no idea how bizarre Scientology theology really was:

75 million years ago, Xenu was the ruler of a Galactic Confederacy which consisted of 26 stars and 76 planets including Earth, which was then known as Teegeeack. The planets were overpopulated, each having on average 178 billion people. The Galactic Confederacy's civilization was comparable to our own, with people "walking around in clothes which looked very remarkably like the clothes they wear this very minute" and using cars, trains and boats looking exactly the same as those "circa 1950, 1960" on Earth.

--

Xenu was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. With the assistance of "renegades", he defeated the populace and the "Loyal Officers", a force for good that was opposed to Xenu. Then, with the assistance of psychiatrists, he summoned billions of people to paralyse them with injections of alcohol and glycol, under the pretense that they were being called for "income tax inspections." The kidnapped populace was loaded into space planes for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). The space planes were exact copies of Douglas DC-8s, "except the DC-8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn't." DC-8s have jet engines, not propellers, although Hubbard may have meant the turbine fans.

When the space planes had reached Teegeeack, the paralysed people were unloaded and stacked around the bases of volcanoes across the planet. Hydrogen bombs were lowered into the volcanoes, and all were detonated simultaneously. Only a few people's physical bodies survived.

The now-disembodied victims' souls, which Hubbard called thetans, were blown into the air by the blast. They were captured by Xenu's forces using an "electronic ribbon" ("which also was a type of standing wave") and sucked into "vacuum zones" around the world. The hundreds of billions of captured thetans were taken to a type of cinema, where they were forced to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. This implanted what Hubbard termed "various misleading data" (collectively termed the R6 implant) into the memories of the hapless thetans, "which has to do with God, the Devil, space opera, etcetera". This included all world religions, with Hubbard specifically attributing Roman Catholicism and the image of the Crucifixion to the influence of Xenu. The interior decoration of "all modern theaters" is also said by Hubbard to be due to an unconscious recollection of Xenu's implants. The two "implant stations" cited by Hubbard were said to have been located on Hawaii and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

And then it gets weird.

I've reproduced 90% of his post because, frankly, I just didn't know where to cut it. Here is the Wikipedia article that he is quoting from.

Here is the pic of the "Space DC-8" sans jet engines -

Artist's impression of one of Xenu's space planes, per Hubbard's description.

As they say, read the whole thing.

U.S. adventurers recreate historic transatlantic flight

2005-07-04T17:01:00.000-05:00

Navigator Mark Rebholz sits in the cockpit of the Vickers Vimy biplane replica, as technicians test an engine at the airport in St. John's Nfld. on Saturday, June 25. (CP/Andrew Vaughan)

Canadian Press

July 4, 2005

ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. (CP) - After three weeks of weather delays and technical glitches, two Americans finally lifted off from Newfoundland on Saturday, beginning their 3,000-kilometre re-enactment of the first transatlantic flight.

Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett and co-pilot Mark Rebholz left St. John's for Clifden, Ireland, under cloudy skies and in high wind at around 7:20 p.m., said Dean Williams, a spokesman for the pilots, who watched from a hangar near the runway.

Fossett and Rebholz's flight was expected take up to 22 hours as they crossed the Atlantic, recreating the 1919 flight by British pilots John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown.

Doesn't that look like fun? Here is a picture from this story in the Washington Post.

In this photo released by Oceansport, millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett and his co-pilot are about to land in Clifden, in western Ireland, Sunday July 3 2005, after re-enacting the first trans-Atlantic flight made more than 80 years ago. Fossett and co-pilot Mark Rebholz left Newfoundland on Saturday night in a replica of the Vickers Vimy aircraft used by British pilots John Alcock and Arthur Brown to cross the Atlantic in 1919. The wooden biplane touched down in Clifden, County Galway, in mid-afternoon. Adhering to the spirit of the original flight, the pair flew without satellite or lights and navigated by the stars and the moon.

(AP Photo / David Branagan / Oceansport, HO) (David Branagan / Oceansport Via Ap - AP)

Here's another shot from this story at MSNBC.

David Branagan / Oceansport via AP

Adventurer Steve Fossett and co-pilot Mark Rebholz are about to land Sunday in Clifden, in western Ireland, after re-enacting the first trans-Atlantic flight made 86 years ago. Fossett and co-pilot Mark Rebholz left Newfoundland on Saturday night.

Sunrise today

2005-06-30T22:22:00.000-05:00

Toledo Bend Reservoir

2005-06-30T22:21:00.000-05:00

This is the haze previously blogged. It is the west bank of Toledo Bend about 0830.

Refueling @ PWG

2005-06-30T22:20:00.000-05:00

Cessna 340

2005-06-30T22:18:00.000-05:00

King Air C-90B

2005-06-30T22:16:00.000-05:00

I've been flying this airplane for 11 years.

The Politics of the San Francisco Bay area

2005-06-28T22:23:00.000-05:00

Qualifications include watching Law & Order and possibly staying at a Holiday Inn Express.

Yeah, right. Why am I not surprised?

Office Shuttle

2005-06-28T21:18:00.000-05:00

I've been running an office shuttle in the C340 fairly frequently. It's about a 20 minute flight in the 340 but a 2 hour drive by car from the corporate offices to plant 3.

Plant 3 is new. It has only been in operation since the middle of May and has had multiple personnel problems so it is not only the "suits" but also the office personnel that are flying back and forth. It makes for a long day. Even though it is a short flight arrivals are scheduled for before 0730 local and departures are after 1730.

I've been running this primarily as a VFR trip because it is short and it would take as much time to get a clearance as to make the flight. Yesterday it was borderline whether I might need a clearance or not. Everybody was reporting 3-4 miles in haze and that was just about right. Not many are out and about at 0700 so I wasn't too worried but I checked in with Polk AAF approach control ASAP just the same. When I was about 20 miles out he advised an inbound Jetlink flight that Polk had 1 3/4 miles in haze. I crossed my fingers hoping that the 4 miles of flight visibility I had would hold across town at the municiple airport. There are GPS and NDB approaches available. The 340 no longer has an ADF so the NDB approach is not an option. The KLN-90B works well however so I got the chart out in case I had to obtain an impromptu clearance and started down from my cruising altitude of 3000'. At 2000' the vis improved to about 5 miles and not long after that I got the airport in sight (4.7 mi. on the KLN-90B) and cancelled flight following.

I have some pics of Toledo Bend Reservoir on the afternoon return flight which illustrate the haze well that I'll post soon.

I'm scheduled to do the "office shuttle" again tomorrow.

Botox and the Evolution of Alcohol Synthesis

2005-06-26T17:20:00.000-05:00

My wife suffers from migraines and her neurologist administers botox shots to alleviate her symptoms about every three months. The botox is far and away better than any other type of treatment. She has tried them all. The process of getting the shots is (or could be) painful to watch as well as endure. Her doctor is well practiced and quite dexterous and the process goes exceedingly fast.

Earlier this afternoon while out back doing some chores I had bent down to turn off a water hose. Upon standing I was immediately hit in the upper left eyelid by a red wasp. It was extremely painful to say the least. Not apparent was how painful it would become. I'm not allergic to the stings, thankfully, but any sting in soft tissue about the face causes quite a lot of pain and swelling. I've been stung on the head before. It hurts!

My wife had gone to bed with one of her (infrequent due to botox) migraines so she was of no immediate help. About that time a neighbor phoned wanting something or another. To say that I was about to spaz is something of an understatement. I handled the neighbor's request about the time my eye began to shut. A few minutes later it is about more than I can stand, so I woke her up, hoping that her "pill" had killed the headache. Fortunately, it had. She couldn't really offer anything but moral support, but that was enough. And she got me a couple of aspirin.

So, after about an hour, the fire inside by eyeball began to subside, I'm thinking about what it must be like to get ten botox shots in your face compared to a wasp sting over the eye and drinking a Dos Equis Lager when I run across this.

He says,"We need to appreciate beer more."

Dude! I'm there!

I LOVE GRANDMAS!

2005-06-26T16:28:00.000-05:00

The following was sent to me via e-mail...

Here's a quote from a government employee who witnessed a recent interaction between an elderly woman and an antiwar protester in a Metro station in DC:

"There were protesters on the train platform handing out pamphlets on the evils of America. I politely declined to take one. An elderly woman was behind me getting off the escalator and a young (20ish) female protester offered her a pamphlet, which she politely declined. The young protester put her hand on the old woman's shoulder as a gesture of friendship and in a very soft voice said, "Ma'am, don't you care about the children of Iraq?"

The old woman looked up at her and said, "Honey, my first husband died in France during World War II, my second husband died in Korea so you could have the right to stand here and bad mouth our country. If you touch me again I'll stick this umbrella up your ass and open it."

...my sentiments exactly.

Icing

2005-06-17T23:08:00.000-05:00

...on airplanes, not cakes.

Over at Freight Dog Tales John mentioned some of the characteristics of the Caravan in icing conditions. The airplanes reaction to ice does not inspire confidence and, indeed, one or two Caravans go down every year due to icing related conditions.

The problem seems to be the amount of ice the Caravan can carry vs. the amount required for the boots to work properly. In my experience most POH's recommend that the amount of ice needed to break properly when the boots inflate is a minimum of 3/4". Less than that and the boots just push it out away from the wing leaving an air pocket and an arch of ice which then accumulates more ice. The pocket of air in which the boots are now moving renders them useless.

My experience with icing involves several types of aircraft. In a Lear, for instance, icing concerns are almost non-existent; the airplane literally goes so fast that the wing heats up from friction. The wing is heated with bleed air from the engines (which is anti-ice not de-ice) but is only necessary in the most severe conditions. I have departed (I was the co-pilot) in conditions that I would have questioned the wisdom of doing in a King Air or other turboprop and never collected a speck of ice. This was after needing 3 hours in a heated hangar to de-ice the airplane before the flight. We never utilized the wing heat and were through the conditions so fast that they were not a concern.

This is not usually the case with turboprop airplanes. The sales brochures have always touted flying at FL250 "above the weather". Well it isn't practical for most turboprop aircraft to go to those kind of altitudes on the trips they fly. Also, the average King Air 90/100 is a 16,000' airplane which puts it smack in the middle of most icing conditions over most of the country. I imagine the Piper Cheyennes are the same and I know the Commanders are. They can get high if they need to but it takes some doing.

Icing conditions can be encountered at any time of the year at turboprop altitudes but sometimes it is better to seek a lower altitude that is ice free. Many times in Texas it may be freezing on the ground and up to six or seven thousand at which point you may encounter a temperature inversion that is two to three thousand feet thick and then freezing from ten up into the twenties. I have flown all over Texas in a King Air at 9000' and remained free from ice. I have also flown from Nebraska to Texas and was unable to be free of ice at any available altitude until south of Dallas. I had accumulations of ice on the inboard sections of wing (which has no boot) that exceeded three inches in thickness and the airplane was approaching its minimum icing penetration speed of 140 KIAS. These conditions are what I consider to be the maximum of what would be called moderate icing. I could keep the wing clean with the boots but eventually it was going to be a losing battle and was a relief to fly out of the icing on passing Dallas enroute to Houston. This was an E-90, btw.

The Commander has a laminar flow wing which is quite thin. It is easily affected by ice since anything that "dirties it up" degrades performance immediately. As I mentioned in the comments on John's blog the Commander POH spells out that a minimum of 3/4" of ice buildup is required before activating the boots. Activating them too soon results in ineffective and disappointing performance. In my opinion the Commanders will not carry much ice. Other pilots that have flown them disagree. YMMV

The Commanders also had an annoying habit of flaming out both engines on short final when exiting icing by descending on the ILS glideslope. What happened was that ice formed around the air inlet was ingested by the engine upon entering warmer air near the surface. The fix was an AD that required installation of a passive auto-ignition system. Passive in that it is always on and no pilot action is required. The annoying incidents of landing short of the runway stopped.

I have only minimally encountered any ice in a Baron. My impression is that it behaved pretty much like a King Air would. They do have the same wing so performance characteristics should be similar although I would not want to seek out any ice while flying a Baron in order to verify.

A Thrill Before Dying

2005-06-14T00:06:00.000-05:00

"...we don't have any passengers on board, so we decided to have a little fun..."

Update: Another take on this story from Sam over at Blogging at FL250 who also linked us in his blogroll along with another aviation blog that you ought to read.

Update II: More commentary from Glenn at Rant Air.

Landings and Takeoffs

2005-06-09T20:49:00.000-05:00

Think you are pretty good? Well check out this landing and takeoff.

Family History

2005-06-09T20:24:00.000-05:00

1908 Quick Monoplane

This is the plane flown by my grandfather at age 16. The beginning of a family tradition. He became a geologist and flew his own plane (a Cessna Airmaster) in furtherance of his business.

Dad was a corporate pilot and flew Learjets.

Aviation Blogging

2005-06-09T18:29:00.000-05:00

Okay. Here is the promised aviation blogging. I am a corporate pilot. I hold an ATP certificate, have been an FAR part 135 Chief Pilot, and I have been flying for my living for more than 28 years plus a few years aviation maintenance/management in Marine Corps Aviation. I've been a CFI (airplane single and multi, instrument) for 27 years.

Currently I'm flying a King Air C-90B. I've been flying this airplane since it was new in 1994. I've flown every model of King Air there is except the B100 which has Garrett engines for those that don't know. I have experience with Garrett engines, but in the turbo prop Commanders. I've flown most models of those as well. I'm not typed in the 300/350 but most of my recurrent training is done in the 350 sim., usually done at Simcom in Orlando.

I've flown a Learjet and I've flown a Citation but I'm not typed in either. I've also flown TBM 700 s/n 1 and, once, I flew a Bell Longranger (and nearly passed out - I was concentrating so hard on hovering the damn thing that I forgot to breathe).

I also fly a 1974 Cessna 340. I don't know if this should be called an antique, a classic, or a junker(!!). I picked this up about 3 months ago. I was able to get the job because I was the only local pilot with any experience in 300/400 series Cessnas. Even though my experience was all 20+ years ago and not that much to begin with, I could meet the insurance requirements. Quite a few younger pilots grumbling over that one. I don't blame them, but hey, where do they think this gray hair came from?

The 340 is an interesting airplane, not at all like the Baron's that I flew 20-25 years ago. It has auxillary fuel tanks in the wings (the tip tanks are the mains)and not much range since it's TSIO-520-J's suck gas like an early 50's turbojet. It carries 163 gal. useable which gets you about 4 hours if you are lucky. Speed is about like a Baron - 185 to 190, depending on conditions and altitude. Supposedly it will go much faster if you take it up into the low 20's. If you do, however, engine life is considerably reduced. It is nominally a 12 to 13,000' airplane.

The airplane has vortex generators all over the wing and tail. These tame the stall and lower Vmc as well as give you a 300 lb boost in max gross weight (6290 v. 5990). There are 96 total. Only 4 can be missing after which you must revert to the original performance specs. The POH has a split personality because of this, the altered and improved (?) performance specs residing side by side with the originals.

As one of my retired pilot buddies quipped, "Makes you appreciate a King Air doesn't it?"

There is more to tell about the 340 but I'll leave that for future posts. In the meantime go over to Cockpit Conversation and congratulate Aviatrix on her school date.

Aviation Blogs

2005-06-04T22:33:00.000-05:00

Something to blog about! Here are a couple that are worth looking into.

Freight Dog Tales

and

Pitchpull

Maybe I'll do a little aviation blogging myself. Life as a corporate pilot has become more interesting lately. More on that later. Go give these guys a read. There are other links to aviation blogs in their blogrolls that might be interesting as well.

New Reader

2005-05-04T21:54:00.000-05:00

There are new comments here. I suppose sooner or later everyone gets "found". Sorry for the long delay in new postings. I've been busy with a new project that has taken me away from even reading blogs. Writing has been impossible. Maybe there will be more later.

Misreporting endangers people's lives

2005-03-04T20:48:00.000-06:00

By selectively reporting the news and turning a defensive gun use story into one that merely says "police shot him dead," the media give misleading impressions of what actions saved the lives of people confronted by violence. As Wilson's case demonstrates, defensive gun use is not a guns-rights myth. Guns have been and are used by law abiding citizens to protect and save their own lives and the lives of others.

England's ban on fox hunting with dogs to begin

2005-02-17T18:55:00.000-06:00

For two foxes in northwestern England, the ban on hunting came too late.

Caught and killed by the dog pack of the Lunesdale Hunt on a bright winter morning, they were casualties on the last day before the centuries-old sport is banned. Now it's the hounds — in kennels across England and Wales — who face an uncertain future.

The majority of hunts in England and Wales held events today before the start of the ban on hunting with dogs. Scotland, with a separate legal system, had already banned hunting.

"When the ban comes in, we're not going to break the law of course," said Peter Capasso, secretary of the Lunesdale Hunt, based in Sedbergh in northwestern Cumbria County.

Instead, he believes the 350 members of the hunt will vote to continue paying a total of $2,800 a month to keep the 60 dogs alive while hoping that the ban can be repealed. Other hunts, however, have said they may have to kill their dogs.

Warmed by a shot of whisky or coffee dispensed at the Dalesman Country Inn, the members of the Lunesdale Hunt and supporters — many following in cars — set off across the rugged landscape of Howgills as an early mist burned away and the day shone crisp and clear.

"Today, a lot of people have taken the day off work," Capasso said. "It's been like a bank holiday or Boxing Day" — Dec. 26, traditionally the big day on the Lunesdale hunt calendar.

The legislation, forced into law by the House of Commons in November, bans all hunting with hounds including the pursuit of rabbits and deer. Shooting foxes will remain legal.

So if it is still legal to kill the fox, what is the point of the ban?

Answer: So that liberal idiot whackos can cause trouble for normal people.

Islamic leaders say no radicalism preached here

2005-02-15T20:29:00.000-06:00

Local Islamic leaders say Houston's Muslim community does not practice the radical, anti-democratic theology preached in some books and pamphlets that a human rights group said were found in two local mosques.

Right. And if a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass when he hopped.

Jesus a Leftist?

2005-02-07T01:04:00.000-06:00

John Ray asks, "Was Jesus a Leftist?"

I think I might give the trinity a rest for a little while, though defences of it will still be received with interest. I think I might have a quick look at whether Jesus was a Leftist or a conservative. It's an old chestnut, I know, but the Leftist invasion of the senescent mainstream churches does tend to raise the question of what Christ's Gospel really was. Are the current teachings of such "liberal" churches Christian or not? The churches concerned would of course normally claim that they are but don't really push the claim. As Leftists are traditionally anti-religious the argument has usually gone by default to the conservatives. Leftists have usually not wanted anything to do with any religious figure so conservatives can claim Jesus as one of their own with little opposition.

I e-mailed him about it but I want to reproduce part of that e-mail here:

Jesus was a conservative in as much as he was trying to restore the temple (much as many American conservatives decry activist judges that are distorting the Constitution). The Herodians that occupied the Temple were intermarried with gentiles which, therefore, polluted the Temple. They also engaged in cousin marriage, hence the charge of fornication.

As for the "church" being leftist, I've mentioned before that Paul was a Herodian [he was a member of King Herod's family-ed.] and a Roman citizen (his "get out of jail free card") as well as a gentile Christian and he certainly had an agenda of accommodation with the powers that be, doing everything in his power to destroy the family of Jesus (James, Thomas) and disciples that may have known Jesus (Peter) or otherwise make them look foolish. Jewish Christianity died with James and the destruction of the Temple, leaving only Paul's version of events. We are left with Gentile Christianity. So the leftists won.

For those that don't know where this view comes from, I refer you to my post here in which I have reproduced the introduction to Robert Eisenman's book, James the Brother of Jesus. Eisenman takes a controversial view of the origins of Christianity (one which I subscribe to) based on his interpretation of certain Dead Sea Scroll texts.

"Neo-confederate"?

2005-02-02T21:55:00.000-06:00

Publicola fisks Glenn Reynolds. Since I don't read Glenn Reynolds, I've only seen links to this and this. That's okay. He does a jam up job!

The History Channel has too much....history!

2005-02-01T16:21:00.000-06:00

Clayton Cramer makes a valid point about historians and gets ripped a new one for his trouble.

Liberalism and Critical Periods

2005-02-01T15:07:00.000-06:00

Libertarian Girl blogs about Brain Immaturity. She linked to the WaPo version of the story, which I won't link here. Here is the same story at MSNBC.

A National Institutes of Health study suggests that the region of the brain that inhibits risky behavior is not fully formed until age 25, a finding with implications for a host of policies, including the nation's driving laws.

..

Sitting in his closet-size office in NIH's sprawling Building 10, he turns to his laptop, where the fruit of 13 years' work appears. It's an eight-second, time-lapse film of the brain, swept by a vivid blue wave symbolizing maturing gray matter. The color engulfs the frontal lobes, and ends, in "a direct hit," Giedd said, with the dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex, just behind the brow.

About as thick and wide as a silver dollar, this region distinguishes humans from other animals. From it, scientists believe, come judgments and values, long-term goals, the weighing of risks and consequences -- what parents call wisdom or common sense and what science calls "executive functions."

While society and tradition have placed the point of intellectual maturity, the "age of reason," years earlier, the study -- an international effort led by NIH's Institute of Mental Health and UCLA's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging -- shows it comes at about age 25.

..

The pattern probably serves an evolutionary purpose, he said, perhaps preparing youths to leave their families and fend for themselves, without wasting energy worrying about it.

The findings imply that many life choices -- college and career, marriage and military service -- often are made before the brain's decision-making center comes fully online. But for young adults, "Dying on a highway is the biggest risk out there," Giedd said. "What if we could predict earlier in life what could happen later?"

I left a comment about critical periods of development and speculated about the possibility of this braim immaturity being responsible for the liberal mindset. Critical periods are well recognized although most work in humans revolves around acquisition of speech in young children. Critical periods were first identified by the work of John Paul Scott during the 40's and 50's.

Some commenters on her post noted that America has an indulgent society and compared expectations for maturity in rural America to expectations in L.A. I speculated that a wealthy society that doesn't expect an individual to mature until 30 may find that the whole of society has become a population of permanently narcissistic juveniles. In fact, this points a finger at the Left which is "in your face" about their indulgence of children.

I found more here where John Ray links to a piece from The American Thinker:

The teachable lesson from Iraq is that this isn’t a very nice world. It’s a world full of conflict and killing in which there is often no option but grinding it out on the ground. War is the norm, and peace is the pause that refreshes.

In our modern era, it is easy to lose sight of this. Back in the good old days of wise aboriginal tribes that were close to nature, about 40 percent of men died from violent conflict. But in the Twentieth Century, an era we like to imagine as the very abyss of violence and war, only five percent of men died from violent conflict.

Our modern American elite has lived a life peculiarly free from conflict. Its defining moment of conflict was opposing the Vietnam War. But its battle was never a real war. Anti-war activists were cosseted and encouraged by their liberal parents and the liberal media, and indulgently made into heroes for striking a few elegant poses. Then they bravely took up arms against their liberal professors who were quite happy to cave in and grant all their demands without even the pretence of a fight. In consequence, our liberal elites imagine that everything can be decided with a telegenic demonstration and a TV-friendly spokesperson, or failing that, diplomacy and a peace process.

You can tell that liberals don’t have a clue about conflict by listening to their commentary on the war on terror. They are easily discouraged, and make every setback into a frightening quagmire. But any student of war knows that every conflict is a confusing and demoralizing grind that often seems to be an exercise in futility.

All of the liberal responses to responsibility or conflict, the desire for utopian perfection in society in particular, are the responses of a narcissistic, immature brain. Or so it would seem.

Conversations

2005-01-27T23:46:00.000-06:00

Some of my "turbulent thinking" over at Majority Rights.

"America is creating a perverted orthodoxy"

2005-01-23T15:49:00.000-06:00

Has belief in God become evidence of mental illness? Over at Majority Rights this is evidently the case.

In the post-war period American Christianity has seen a recession of the Christian element and a procession of the democratic. As the Christian element diminishes the democratic element - as if to mask its newfound muscularity - cloaks itself in sacred Christian rhetoric; a clever shell game.

This is a disturbing development for America and Christians. For instead of promoting the universality of Christ’s message – with a minimum of Christian dogma - America is creating a perverted orthodoxy with Christianity hopelessly entangled in democratic imperialism, engaged by military force.

So our President has faith in God. He is a Christian. He is a Liberal. He is showing evidence of Bipolar Disorder. He is one of the worst political criminals in American history. (see the comments section of the linked post)

I don't agree with everything George Bush does. I didn't agree with his father when he was President. Hell, I was as pissed at Ronald Reagan as I was at Bill Clinton! But, damnit, just because I don't agree with them politically is no reason to believe that they are mentally ill or somehow involved in some weird conspiracy because of the beliefs they have that are different. It pretty well precludes any meaningful dialogue doesn't it?

Demonization of the opposition is the order of the day.

The Civil War Again

2005-01-22T13:16:00.000-06:00

Libertarian Girl is writing about the Civil War again. In her latest she makes the statement:

Leftists would rather believe that the Civil War was a fight about tariffs, turning a noble cause into a greedy war about nothing but money and allowing leftists to wallow in guilt about being American.

I'm not sure where she's getting this interpretation. It isn't Leftists that think this. Leftists are the ones that think the civil war was only about freeing slaves. They also believe myths like the South's economy was based on cotton, which isn't true either.

Leftists, "blue staters", aka yankees, love to wrap themselves in the self-righteousness of freeing the slaves and claiming the South fought tooth and nail to hang on to the institution because our economy would fail when we had to pay people to pick cotton. Sorry, only 18% of the South's 569,201 farms produced enough agricultural staples to be classified as plantations by the Census Bureau. Fewer than 5% of the South's white's owned any slaves, and fewer than a third were even members of slave ownning families. Most Southerners made their living raising livestock, primarily hogs* but cattle too. This was, and still is, a battle of states rights. You can see it to this day in the recent efforts to abolish the electoral college by Sen. Feinstein and the grandstanding by Sen. Boxer and Congresswomam Tubbs in Ohio. It is nothing but an attempt to destroy this country by destroying federalism and states rights.

She says:

Paleo-conservative southerners also want to revise Civil War history. These types want to revel in the supposed "glory" of the Old South, and there's nothing glorious about a Confederacy that existed for nothing except slavery. So they made up the story that the South was about noble things like states' rights. Yet, in fact, the Confederacy was about nothing but slavery. The "states' rights" argument is bogus. The only "right" that was at issue was the "right" to own slaves, which is a right that no state should be allowed to have.

Besides the fact that that statement is breathtaking in its ignorance, it is also sad commentary on this country that the majority of people believe this PC rubbish and somehow seem to believe that if they dare to even entertain any other ideas their souls will forever be tainted. They will be branded RACIST for all the world to see.

Update: John Ray brings to our attention an article about Political Correctness in the case of professor Summers comments:

The soul of Political Correctness is a blinkered insistence that something is true, because of politics, especially in the face of all reason and evidence to the contrary.

As I have already stated above, the same can be seen in play in the debate of the causes of the Civil War.

*Walter Prescott Webb's classic The Great Plains provides a table that shows the number of Texas cattle driven to market in each of the fifteen years from 1866 to 1880. The average annual number was about 280,000, the total during the period 4,223,497. By contrast, during the last fifteen years of the antebellum period, Southerners drove or otherwise marketed an average of 4,468,400 hogs per year, the total during the period was 67,026,000. -- from Cracker Culture, Celtic Ways in the Old South, Grady McWhinney, pg. 53-55.

The Cost of being Right

2005-01-20T16:22:00.000-06:00

Clayton Cramer blogs about being right and on the Right in academia:

Then I look at examples like the ones that Lindgren gives. I look at the crap that Dr. Lott has gone through (and there are some stories he has told me on the phone that just infuriate me). I look at the political nonsense that even liberal academics have to go through because they aren't hard enough left to satisfy the prevailing orthodoxy. The only thing that I can think of, "I would love to devote my life to teaching and research, but why would any sane person throw themselves into that shark tank?"

Read the whole thing.

George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln

2005-01-20T14:28:00.000-06:00

Libertarian Girl is blogging about George Bush's inaugural address and makes this statement:

In 1865, Lincoln addressed only half the nation, which was fighting a war against the other half. The purpose of the war was to free the slaves. (Despite what hate-America leftists say, the Civil War was about slavery.)

Sorry, but that is revisionist history. Besides it is the "hate-America leftists" that claim it was about slavery. Slavery was nothing but a pretext for war and an effort by the North to villify the South. The actual cause for the war was states rights. Like so much else in this country, just because you were taught a lie in school doesn't make it true.

Here are some of the myths about the issue with the correct facts:

1. Slavery was a "Southern" institution.

(Actually, most of the slave trade was conducted by Northerners, and Northerners owned slaves too.

2. Slavery was an attempt solely by the white race to subjugate the black race.

(Actually, slave owners were white, black, AND red, and slaves themselves were black, white, AND red).

3. The Civil war was waged by the Northerners to defeat slavery, and the Southerners were motivated solely by a desire to protect slavery.

(Actually, slavery was not the major cause of the war on either side. "States rights" indeed were the major issue; slavery was merely the trigger issue.)

4. The Northern Abolitionists were motivated by goodwill toward blacks.

(Actually, anti-black sentiment and racism was much more widespread in the North than in the South. Slavery was abolished in the North not because of any moral superiority, but primarily because whites wanted to protect jobs for white laborers.)

5. Abraham Lincoln, the "Great Emancipator," was a friend of the black race.

(Actually, Lincoln was a racist who believed (and publicly stated this belief) in the superiority of the white race. Lincoln trampled on the Constitution, going so far as to have his political enemies arrested without warrants of any sort, and held in jail without allowing them legal counsel as guaranteed by the Constitution.)

From a speech by Steve Wilkins:

Slavery, so far from being the cause of the war, was merely the pretext for revolution. As Prussian military theorist, Carl Von Clausewitz once stated, ‘War is the pursuit of political goals by other means.’ There was seldom a more successful revolution. The old Constitutional Republic was destroyed and an octopus‑like centralized government took its place.

James McPherson has noted, ‘The war marked the transition of the United States to a singular noun. The ‘Union' became the nation, and Americans now rarely speak of their Union except in an historical sense.’ This is a significant change. Our speech reflects this. Before 1865 the accepted usage was ‘The United States are,’ but since that time it has been ‘The United States is.’ We are no longer a union of confederated states, but a nation where the individual integrity and political sovereignty of the states is denied.

Thus, the old federal republic in which the national government rarely touched the average citizen except through the post‑office is now dead and has been replaced by centralized bureaucracy which seeks to control every action. What we call liberty, our forefathers called slavery.

Rev Steve Wilkins is the pastor of the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, Louisiana, and serves on the national board of the League of the South.

Libertarian Girl quoted George Bush's speech thus:

The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it."

Abraham Lincoln and the Northern States denied the freedom to secede from the Union to the Southern States. The war was over states rights. Bluster about slavery does not change that but it certainly covers up the reality. The attack on our manner of government and way of life has been ongoing.

The South Was Right!

Myths of American Slavery

Justice

2005-01-20T13:12:00.000-06:00

Judge gives officer 60 days for shooting boy

By ANDREW TILGHMAN
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Despite a jury's recommendation of probation, a judge today sentenced former Houston police officer Arthur Carbonneau to 60 days in jail for fatally shooting an unarmed 14-year-old boy during a scuffle.

This boy was not involved in the incident to which the police were called and attempted to leave the area, not wishing to be involved in something that was none of his business. So the officer assaulted him and then killed him. The prosecutor charged the officer with murder.

Having grown up in Houston, I can assure you that if the boy had killed the officer the penalty would have been life in prison at the least.

The judge declined a request from Assistant District Attorney Don Smyth that Carbonneau also be required to write an open letter of apology to the residents of Harris County.

"They think their police officers are gun-toting, trigger-happy fools," Smyth said afterward. "He's put everybody in fear and he owes everybody an apology. It's all his fault."

I doubt a letter of apology will do much to dispel the fears of the community. But HPD doesn't get it.

Lt. Robert Manzo, an HPD spokesman, said he doubts the trial's outcome will hurt police relations with the Hispanic community.

"We've built too many bridges over the years," he said. "The vast majority of Houston's population, including the Hispanic population, knows the great majority of our officers are good men and women."

Marticiuc said officers will continue to have a good relationship with the Hispanic community, although tensions will always exist between the department and certain groups with "political motivations."

"That's the way it always is, and we try to work with them," he said. "Policing is a difficult job, and sometimes bad things happen in the line of duty."

I feel so much better now knowing that the "great majority" are good.

Cancer silences “the most influential voice in the fight for gun rights”

2005-01-18T23:35:00.000-06:00

Neal Knox is gone.

Evidence For Speciation & Intermediate Forms

2005-01-18T20:46:00.000-06:00

Clayton continues blogging about evolution. He's been fairly even handed at it but is still holding evolution to a standard that other sciences don't have to meet, discounting much of the evidence as just not enough.

Update: We are continuing the e-mail exchange. As Clayton says in his post, it is a stimulating conversation.

Here's a link for further study.

Alvin 6th-grader shoots himself in the leg in class

2005-01-18T20:23:00.000-06:00

ALVIN - A 6th-grade student at Passmore Elementary School accidentally fired a .22-caliber automatic pistol he had in his pocket Tuesday, grazing his leg, school officials said.

The student, who was not identified, had apparently brought his father's pistol to school and was playing with it in his pocket when the gun went off shortly before noon, said school superintendent Greg Smith.

Smith said a surprised substitute teacher in the language arts class asked "What was that?" when the gun went off.

"That was my gun," the student answered. "I shot myself in the leg."

The wound was minor and did not cause any bleeding. "He was very lucky," Smith said.

Well, that is certainly more fodder for the gun grabber's hysterical ravings.

Campus police are investigating to see if the boy will face criminal charges of bringing a firearm onto a campus. The boy's father may also face charges of allowing a minor to have access to a firearm, Smith said.

"We have a zero-tolerance policy against any kind of weapons being brought to school," Smith said.

Sounds as if they have it under control. The student will be disciplined, the father will have to shoulder responsibility for his child, but I'm certain that won't stop the GFW's from calling for more laws.

Shameless Self Promotion

2005-01-18T20:06:00.000-06:00

Libertarian Girl blogs about a piece I wrote about in her comments where we were discussing the Muslim hate crime in NJ.

Leveraging Iran's Nuclear Ambitions

2005-01-17T13:44:00.000-06:00

Last year Bush proposed a time out on proliferation of nuclear fuel making plants. Last week Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) proposed a five-year international moratorium on the further construction of such plants as documented at National Review Online.

[..] the U.S., its partners, and the IAEA should use the next five years to reassess which nuclear activities and materials can be safeguarded to provide timely warning of attempts to steal or divert them to make bombs. Certainly, after A. Q. Khan's proliferation successes (including the sale of a high-fidelity, Chinese-tested, missile-deliverable nuclear-weapons design), the amount of time, money, and staff required to make a bomb have declined. Also, with new technologies more widely available (e.g., compact uranium-enrichment centrifuges), what can be hidden from inspectors' view is greater than it once was.

The question in each case is by how much. Here, we owe it to ourselves and the future of nuclear power — to say nothing of the security of others — to find out. Certainly, what the IAEA can know and what it can adequately safeguard against is less than we previously thought. This has been made clear by the cascade of proliferation revelations in Iran, North Korea, and Libya, and the hair-raising discoveries about missing plutonium in Japan and unmonitored Pakistani nuclear sales. They're the reason why Bush last year proposed a time out on the further spread of nuclear-fuel-making plants and why ElBaradei's proposal last week is one we should back.

Certainly to be seriously considered. However, if that doesn't work, and it seems doubtful that Iran will go along with a moratorium on nuclear proliferation, another plan seems to be in the works.

WASHINGTON- U.S. commandos are hunting for secret nuclear and chemical weapons sites and other targets in Iran, and have a plan to turn the hard-line Islamic country into the next front in the war on terrorism.
"It's not if we're going to do anything against Iran. They're doing it," an ex-intelligence official tells this week's issue of The New Yorker.

Since at least last summer, the U.S. teams have penetrated eastern Iran, reportedly with Pakistan's help, the magazine said.

"Iraq is just one campaign," the official told investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. "The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign."

UPDATE (7:46pmCST):

I heard this report this afternoon almost as soon as I had posted the comments above, but just now have had the chance to get to it.

The Pentagon on Monday criticized a published report that said it was mounting reconnaissance missions inside Iran to identify potential nuclear and other targets.
"The Iranian regime's apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organizations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment than Seymour Hersh provides in the New Yorker article titled "The Coming Wars," the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Lawrence DiRita, said in a statement.

Sounds reasonable. Still, it's a pretty good dis-information campaign.

Getting your panties in a wad

2005-01-16T19:21:00.000-06:00

Libertarian Girl spends the night out and decides to kiss and tell. Okay, maybe that's not such a good idea but what is amusing is all the guys in the comments section with their panties in a wad over it. C'mon guys what about the sexual revolution? Or was that just for us? Remember, if you nail her she nails you right back. So chill!

Recognition

2005-01-16T18:16:00.000-06:00

I've been blogrolled by Publicola. As far as I know that is the first time I've been blogrolled by anyone. Thanks, I'll try to have something interesting to say.

For everyone that comes here from there, I certainly hope it is worth your while and you enjoy the visit.

Doubting Thomas

2005-01-15T16:35:00.000-06:00

John Ray has a discussion at his scripture blog about what Thomas said when confronted with the sight of a risen Jesus.

As discussed here before one must be careful about what is in the NT. This passage is certainly one that makes the family of Jesus look defective in their knowledge and certainly foolish. It has all the earmarks of having been massaged by Paul, or his scribe, Luke, in order to promote his version of gentile Christianity. One must remember that Paul was a member of Herod's family and a Roman citizen. He had a vested interest in destroying Jewish Christianity and promoting himself to his masters.

Once again I refer those that doubt this to go and read this book before commenting. You may find yourself with a new perspective on the Gospels.

The "Security of a Free State."

2005-01-11T17:05:00.000-06:00

"A Well Regulated Militia, being Necessary to the Security of a Free State"

A select militia, particularly if it existed to the exclusion of the citizen militia, might undermine the free state, if citizens excluded from it were left defenseless, or if it disarmed the citizens and infringed their other rights (or both).

Like the police, FBI, ATFE, DEA, etc.? And laws restricting or banning firearms?

Whether The Second Amendment Secures An Individual Right

2005-01-11T13:46:00.000-06:00

The Justice Department has rendered an opinion.

This is very long but a necessary read.

Here is a sample:

[..] the text of the Second Amendment points to a personal right of individuals: A "right of the people" is ordinarily and most naturally a right of individuals, not of a State and not merely of those serving the State as militiamen. The phrase "keep arms" at the time of the Founding usually indicated the private ownership and retention of arms by individuals as individuals, not the stockpiling of arms by a government or its soldiers, and the phrase certainly had that meaning when used in connection with a "right of the people." While the phrase "bear arms" often referred to carrying of arms in military service, it also sometimes denoted carrying arms for private purposes. The Amendment's prefatory clause, considered under proper rules of interpretation, could not negate the individual right recognized in the clear language of the operative clause. In any event, the prefatory clause - particularly its reference to the "Militia," which was understood at the Founding to encompass all able-bodied male citizens, who were required to be enrolled for service - is fully consistent with an individual-right reading of the operative language. Moreover, the Second Amendment appears in the Bill of Rights amid amendments securing numerous individual rights, a placement that makes it likely that the right of the people to keep and bear arms likewise belongs to individuals. Finally, a consideration of the powers that the original Constitution grants or allows over the militia makes it unlikely that the Second Amendment would secure a collective or quasi-collective right.

Read the whole thing.

Missing $10 leads to strip search

2005-01-08T14:06:00.000-06:00

LA MARQUE - The Galveston County District Attorney's Office could take the case of 10 Mainland Preparatory Academy students ages 11 and 12 who were forced to strip to their undergarments while school officials searched for a missing $10 bill.

The incident happened on Thursday at the charter school, 319 Newman, when seven girls and three boys were searched during a study hall after one of the girls reported the money missing.

The boys were sent off with a male teacher and the girls with a female teacher, who told them to strip to their underwear. The money was never found.

Does this sound right to you? Evidently most of the parents of the students involved don't think so. Others, whose children weren't involved, think it's great.

Here is what the DA has to say:

Galveston County District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk said his office is waiting to receive a report from La Marque police about the strip search incident and will then determine whether there is evidence to proceed with any criminal complaints in the case.

"As far as the search goes, the schools have the same general right as law enforcement does," he said. "If they can articulate a reasonable suspicion that a law has been violated ... then they can proceed with whatever search that they feel is appropriate."

So the school has police powers?

Our children's teachers are cops!

The Turd World

2005-01-06T21:53:00.000-06:00

Diplomad writes:

Many years ago, as we prepared our return to a tough posting in the Far Abroad after leave in the States, our son asked, "Do we have to go back to the 'turd' world?" That phrase, "redolent" with the wisdom possessed only by children, has stayed with me over these passing years. My son was right about the 'turd' world. What tips you off that you have arrived in a poor country, a truly, genuinely dirt-poor corner of the Far Abroad, is the smell. As you leave the airport, you notice a special "exotic" odor of rotting vegetation, garbage, and feces combined with a slight whiff of smoke. Once you're there a bit, you no longer notice. When you leave and come back, it slams you all over again. The kid was right: we had been and still do live in the "Turd World."

Yes. I remember well the first time. As a kid I went on a visit with family to Mexico. The change from Texas to Mexico was (and still is) striking. It stinks!

Years later I was shocked to find, as a 20-something Corporal in the Marines on my first Med cruise so many years ago, that the very same rotten smell attached itself to Europe as well. The "first" world is the United States, the turd world is everything else.

Who is the bigger threat?

2005-01-01T14:13:00.000-06:00

Many on the right love to hate left leaning "activist" judges, especially those of the 9th circuit. But the writings of these same conservative or libertarian blog and forum writers are just as alarming as those that are on the left. And these words are having an effect:

Judges must be protected, Rehnquist says

Threats to toss 'activists' from the bench may impede justice, he warns

WASHINGTON - Chief Justice William Rehnquist said in a statement to be released today that judges must be protected from political threats, including from conservative Republicans who maintain that "judicial activists" should be impeached and removed from office.

The public, the media and politicians certainly are free to criticize judges, Rehnquist said, but politicians cross the line when they try to punish or impeach judges for decisions they do not agree with.

"The Constitution protects judicial independence not to benefit judges, but to promote the rule of law: Judges are expected to administer the law fairly, without regard to public reaction," the chief justice said in his traditional year-end report on the federal courts.

"A judge's 'judicial' acts may not serve as a basis for impeachment. Any other rule would destroy judicial independence," Rehnquist said. "Instead of trying to apply the law fairly, regardless of public opinion, judges would be concerned about inflaming any group that might be able to muster the votes in Congress to impeach and convict them."

Threats to impeach judges that don't rule "correctly" is as much an assault on our republic as are efforts to eliminate the electoral college. Either will see the destruction of the country.

Congress, however, is another matter.

New Weblogs

2004-12-31T17:33:00.000-06:00

Publicola has a list of new blogs added to the blogroll. Go check out Libertarian Girl.

Woof!

List Of Most Annoying People

2004-12-28T17:46:00.000-06:00

Britney, Paris Top List Of Most Annoying People

It's a tie between Britney Spears and Paris Hilton for Star magazine's title of most annoying person of 2004.

Britney Spears

Spears got the nod for doing everything but singing and dancing, including getting married -- twice.

Hilton got it for being overexposed in every sense of the word.

Makes sense to me.

Here's the list:

1. Britney Spears/Paris Hilton
2. Anna Nicole Smith
3. Star Jones Reynolds
4. Ashlee Simpson
5. Cameron Diaz
6. Lindsay Lohan
7. Sir Elton John
8. Gwyneth Paltrow
9. Michael Moore
10. Bill O'Reilly

The question is, why do these people get so much attention (and money)? Chalk this up to the ignorance of the general public.

Merry Christmas

2004-12-25T16:44:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas, y'all!

Open Carry

2004-12-24T13:27:00.000-06:00

Over at Fish Or Man, Jason has been having an interesting life. He is determined that he can carry his pistol openly, as the Second Amendment says, and has been doing so. He thinks that he needs no permit and is against getting a concealed carry license which he could easily have done in his home state of Washington.

I agree with his position on the necessity of having a permit from the state. I don't personally agree that the state has the authority to presume to license me to carry a firearm. I have the right. It is an inalienable right that is delineated by (not granted by) the Second Amendment. It is what the founders meant, despite any "learned" opinions by lawyers and judges that would have us believe that the state has a right to reasonable regulation. Do you believe that the state has a right of reasonable regulation of your political speech? No? Then why would you believe that the state has a right to reaonable regulation of the means to preserve it?

I don't normally carry any firearms on a day to day basis and have never felt the need to. In Texas we have a system for concealed carry. I don't have a permit and won't have a permit. If I decide that I need a firearm I won't be worrying about any permits.

Letter from the Governor

2004-12-06T23:15:00.000-06:00

December 2, 2004

Mr. Old Blind Dog
Rural Route
Some town in, Texas

Dear Old Blind Dog:

Thank you for taking the time to contact the Office of the Governor regarding immigration.

During Governor Perry's visit with President Fox last November, he reaffirmed his support for a guest worker program that balances our two countries' economic realities along with the need for homeland security. President Bush's proposal reflects those goals.

As a former governor of this state, President Bush understands well the huge impact that immigration has on Texas, as well as the importance of developing a plan that simplifies the legal immigration process while discouraging individuals from entering this country illegally.

Texas will no doubt play a key role in discussions that will help shape a final strategy, and the governor looks forward to working with President Bush in the coming months.

Please let us know whenever we may be of service in the future.

Sincerely,

(signed)
Dede Keith
Administration and Constituent Services
Office of the Governor

DK:kwd

Evidently the fact that we are at war doesn't mean squat!

No "guest workers". Close the border. How hard is that to understand? I wrote him back and told him not to count on my vote if he couldn't get his program straight.

Resistance is futile

2004-12-01T20:17:00.000-06:00

This is just unbelievable. I suppose that unteachable ignorance is more widespread than originally thought. However it will take more than just resigning from the school board. Poll data like this:

In your opinion, is Darwin's theory supported by evidence?

Supported by evidence, 35%

Not supported, 35%

Don't know enough to say, 29%

is due to teachers avoiding the subject altogether. These school boards should be jailed or fined or both.

Update:

Psychotic symptoms include hallucinations, such as seeing or hearing things that aren’t really there, and delusions, which are false beliefs that do not go away with logical or accurate information.

Could be mental illness is as widespread as ignorance.

Update II:

USAToday has an online poll.

Update III:

Outside the Beltway has more.

High-tech ID cards raise privacy issue

2004-11-28T15:10:00.000-06:00

His crew cut shiny with hair gel, 10-year-old Cody M. King hopped aboard his school bus at Bammel Elementary School and waved a high-tech identification card across a card reader.

Information about the time, location and bus he boarded was instantly recorded in a database that police and other officials can access.

When he got off the bus at his north Harris County home, he scanned the card again and the computer recorded the details. He said he's glad the police know where he is.

--

The card-reader system is being touted as the latest safety tool for students at Bammel Elementary in the Spring Independent School District. By tracking students, officials say they will be able to get a quicker start on finding children reported missing.

"We can't keep them (completely) safe," said Spring ISD Police Chief Alan Bragg. "But if they get off at the wrong stop or don't go home after getting off the bus, we know where to start looking."

Some worry, however, that the new technology poses privacy concerns and offers a false sense of security.

"Big Brother is watching you for your own good," said Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, a consumer privacy group. "That's the camel's nose in the tent."

--

Spring ISD officials think they are the first to use the system to monitor students on buses in the Houston area and beyond. A charter school in Buffalo, N.Y., uses the technology to take student attendance, and two schools in Japan use the system to log when students arrive at and leave campus, according to news reports.

Beth Elliott, mother of Bammel fourth-grader Taylor Doyle, said she didn't let her daughter ride the bus until the district installed the tracking system because of concerns that Taylor would be lost or abducted.

Instead, she would dash from work each day to pick Taylor up from school or arrange for someone else to do so, and take her to a baby-sitter.

"Now, she rides the bus every day," Elliott said. "Since they put the system in, that's when my comfort level went up."

And that's part of the problem, said Robert Smith, a privacy security consultant near Boston. He said students might be safer if school buses were equipped with seat belts instead of the ID card system.

Note the complete willingness to give up essential freedom for a perceived level of safety which bears little relationship to reality.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Ben Franklin

Ancient bison done in by climate, not hunters

2004-11-26T17:26:00.000-06:00

Thousands of years before white and Indian hunters drove the buffalo of America's Great Plains to virtual extinction, the ancestors of those lordly animals suffered a similar fate -- but it was major climate change, not hunting, that did them in, says an international research team.

Moving in huge herds, more than 20 million bison roamed the American West before white men arrived. For centuries, the Indians hunted them with bows, arrows and spears for food, clothing and shelter.

But within a few brief years after 1850, the guns of the white men -- and of the Indians -- drove the American buffalo to near extinction. By 1889, naturalists could find only 550 left, giants 6 feet high at their massive shoulders and weighing more than a ton.

In contrast, the extinction of the buffalo's ancestors took thousands of years longer, according to the scientists who analyzed their fossil bones, and it was periodic climate change and the appearance and disappearance of vast ice sheets that virtually wiped out the ancient herds.

A few subspecies of the ancient bison may have survived briefly in the far north, but eventually they all vanished, the scientists believe. However, larger groups farther south survived, and their descendants were the ones that eventually populated the Great Plains.

Okay, sounds reasonable to me. But wait, there's dissent in the ranks.

Extinction by climate change is a controversial idea, and John Alroy, a population biologist at UC Santa Barbara, disagrees strongly with the Oxford- led group, arguing that there is "solid evidence" of large human populations in America by at least 13,400 years ago.

"The climate model makes no sense whatsoever," Alroy insisted in a phone interview. "It's all overkill, and even the early human populations of the region were capable of decimating the large animals that were heading for extinction at the end of the Pleistocene," the geologic period that began about 1.8 million years ago and ended about 11,000 years ago.

Not just bison, but moose and red deer also fell prey in huge numbers to the rapidly growing population of early human hunters, Alroy argues.

"Human population growth and hunting almost invariably leads to a mass extinction," he wrote in an earlier article that, like the current work, was published in the journal Science.

Sounds like your typical leftist agenda to me, i.e. people are bad, hunting is worse, and actually eating what you kill....blechh!!!

But sanity prevails:

But Cooper had a response to Alroy's argument in an e-mail interview:

"We think that for many species, the small population sizes that had been produced by environmental changes were very vulnerable to human hunting," he said. "Basically, humans turned up at exactly the wrong moment -- just when many species were already in deep trouble due to the changes in the environment.

"We wouldn't argue that humans didn't kill the last survivors of many populations and species, but the important point is that these groups had already been dramatically reduced in population size and genetic diversity by climate changes over the preceding 25,000 years. This has major implications for understanding the likely impact of global warming trends -- and they don't paint a pretty picture."

More here.

Stay tuned.

Evolution in the headlines...

2004-11-23T17:27:00.000-06:00

....according to Donald Sensing, who links two articles critical of evolution and neo-Darwinism that fail to make the case.

The conclusion to the second article:

An experience-based analysis of the causal powers of various explanatory hypotheses suggests purposive or intelligent design as a causally adequate--and perhaps the most causally adequate--explanation for the origin of the complex specified information required to build the Cambrian animals and the novel forms they represent. For this reason, recent scientific interest in the design hypothesis is unlikely to abate as biologists continue to wrestle with the problem of the origination of biological form and the higher taxa.

In other words, absent all the facts and failing a complete understanding, we will once again resort to superstition.

Update: A thorough fisking of the Meyer article is here.

A small sample:

Meyer’s paper predictably follows the same pattern that has characterized “intelligent design” since its inception: deny the sufficiency of evolutionary processes to account for life’s history and diversity, then assert that an “intelligent designer” provides a better explanation. Although ID is discussed in the concluding section of the paper, there is no positive account of “intelligent design” presented, just as in all previous work on “intelligent design”. Just as a detective doesn’t have a case against someone without motive, means, and opportunity, ID doesn’t stand a scientific chance without some kind of model of what happened, how, and why. Only a reasonably detailed model could provide explanatory hypotheses that can be empirically tested. “An unknown intelligent designer did something, somewhere, somehow, for no apparent reason” is not a model.

Running Extra Mile Sets Humans Apart in Primates' World

2004-11-20T13:54:00.000-06:00

Endurance running, unique to humans among primates and uncommon in all mammals other than dogs, horses and hyenas, apparently evolved at least two million years ago and probably let human ancestors hunt and scavenge over great distances. That was probably decisive in the pursuit of high-protein food for development of large brains.

The apparently crucial role of running in human evolution has been largely overlooked in previous research. But today, the two scientists, Dr. Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah and Dr. Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard, report in the journal Nature that their analysis of the fossil record found striking anatomical evidence for the capability of prolonged running in the Homo genus, beginning about two million years ago.

"Today, endurance running is primarily a form of exercise and recreation, but its roots may be as ancient as the origin of the human genus," the scientists conclude in the article.

Descent of Man

2004-11-20T13:07:00.001-06:00

Scientists have long believed that modern humans, the species Homo sapiens, coexisted in parts of Europe and western Asia with another species, Homo neandertalis. For reasons unknown, the Neanderthals died out about 30,000 years ago, leaving the planet to the single species of genus Homo that now accounts for all 6.3 billion people on the planet.

That, at least, is what anthropologists thought, until Australian and Indonesian researchers gave the family tree a mighty shake last month with the reported discovery of some unusual bones in the limestone caves of Flores, a volcanic island 300 miles east of Bali.

The bones in the Liang Bua caves — seven individuals in all — were unlike anything scientists had encountered before. The bones were those of creatures that stood 3 feet high, about the size of a 21st-century toddler. Despite thick brows and "nutcracker" jaws, they clearly weren't apes. Femur and pelvis bones showed that they walked upright, but more like earlier human ancestors than modern humans.

From their worn molars, it was clear that despite their small stature, they weren't children. And from the tiny, grapefruit-size brain of one intact skull — that of an adult female that Michael Morwood and his colleagues dubbed Ebu but quickly renamed "hobbit" — it was clear they weren't pygmies either. Pygmies have brains proportionately as large as other humans.

Buried in the cave floor, the archaeologists also found ample evidence that the little people of Flores — now known as Homo floresiensis — made stone tools, hunted, fished and used fires for cooking, all activities associated with human intelligence.

The real shocker, however, was the discovery that although some of the bones were 90,000 years old, some dated to less than 18,000 years ago — a time by which modern man is thought to have inherited the earth. All of it.

"This gives us a whole new perspective on human evolution," said Rick Potts, director of the human origins program at the National Museum of Natural History.

Modern man, the Neanderthals, and now Homo floresiensis are all thought to have descended from a common ancestor, Homo erectus, which migrated out of Africa and spread throughout Europe and Asia within the last 1 million to 2 million years.

Recent and controversial discoveries elsewhere in Indonesia, however, suggest that Homo erectus may have existed there as recently as 50,000 years ago. That finding, coupled with the Flores discoveries, suggests that, for a time, at least four human species roamed the planet.

But if there were four kinds of humans, why not more? Morwood says human evolution — especially in isolated settings like Flores — may prove to be much more diverse than anyone has imagined.

"I think we're going to have a plethora of human species showing up," he said. "Some may be really weird."

Archaeologists say Flores' little people may have been small as a result of "island dwarfing," a process observed in some animals that evolve smaller forms that are better adapted to a restricted island environment.

They also suspect that the isolated island population, which may have inhabited Flores for tens of thousands of years, probably died out during a period of intense volcanic eruptions there, about 13,000 years ago.

There is no evidence that the Lilliputian people of Flores survived until modern times, although Morwood says there are tales in local folklore of a diminutive group of cave-dwelling people who disappeared about the time that the Dutch began colonizing the islands in the late 1500s.

Scientists don't have a clue about how humans managed to reach the southern end of the Indonesian archipelago. Potts and others say it's unlikely that humans could have deliberately navigated open water so early in time, but he says they might have accidentally drifted there on crude log rafts.

Nor is it clear exactly where Homo floresiensis branched off the human family tree — or how many other twists and turns in the evolution of the human species remain to be discovered.

Scientists today distinguish 12 to 19 species of early humans, but there is widespread disagreement about how they are related, which are ancestors of modern humans and which represent lineages that simply died out.

The oldest fossil of a hominid — a humanlike creature called Toumai who had the smallish brain case of an ape but sported a skull and teeth with human characteristics — was unearthed in central Africa two years ago. It is between 6 million and 7 million years old, a period when anthropologists say the human lineage was becoming distinct from that of chimpanzees.

Numerous fossil discoveries from more recent times suggest that distinctively human traits emerged gradually over the last 5 million years as nature experimented with the evolution of the human species. Most of the experiments proved to be evolutionary dead-ends.

By 4 million years ago, human ancestors were walking upright, but they had brains only about one-third the size of modern humans. As early as 2.5 million years ago, they were making and using crude stone tools.

By 2.2 million years ago, the emergence of Homo habilis in Africa showed a clear trend toward larger brains — a development followed about half a million years later by the appearance of the first fully human species, Homo erectus.

Anthropologists differ over exactly how and where Homo sapiens appeared.

Thoroughly modern man — the subspecies known as Homo sapiens sapiens, with a lighter build and a bigger brain — emerged in Africa about 130,000 years ago and spread worldwide.

Until now, however, there was nearly universal agreement that, with the disappearance of the Neanderthals 30,000 years ago, only a single species of humans remained.

A fertile field of study, no?

Scientists find possible missing link in Spain

2004-11-20T01:43:00.000-06:00

Scientists in Spain have discovered fossils of an ape species from about 13 million years ago that they think may have been the last common ancestor of all living great apes, including humans.
.
The new ape species and its possible place in prehuman evolution were described in Friday's issue of the journal Science by a research team led by Salvador Moyà-Solà of the Miquel Crusafont Institute of Paleontology in Barcelona. The fossil remains were found near Barcelona, and named Pierolapithecus catalaunicus.
.
In the report, the researchers concluded that the well-preserved skull, teeth and skeletal bones promised "to contribute substantially to our understanding of the origin of extant great apes and humans."

Yet more evidence for evolution.

He's dead now!

2004-11-15T18:20:00.000-06:00

Besides getting the facts wrong the Sunday Mirror also gets the reaction wrong:

A US marine has sparked world-wide revulsion after being seen shooting an injured and helpless Iraqi.

Fox News is carrying the actual video of the incident and cautions that feigning death or injury is a common tactic of the terrorists who then attack Marines that approach closely.

The real reaction is "Good job, Marine!"

At least in Red State America, anyway.

Okla. Law Allows Guns on Company Property

2004-11-14T18:29:00.000-06:00

Whirlpool Corp. (WHR) has sued to block a new law that allows employees to keep guns in their locked vehicles on workplace parking lots. The law was scheduled to take effect Nov. 1, according to the Associated Press, but a federal judge blocked it.
--
Whirlpool, which is trying to save its ban on firearms (search) on company property, believes workplace safety should override the rights of gun owners.

"This is a standard company rule that's intended to protect employees," Whirlpool said

Heh! And the Second Amendment is a standard rule that's intended to protect U.S. citizens.

WHAT kind of world order do we want?

2004-11-12T18:34:00.000-06:00

Europeans do not fear that the US will seek to control them; they fear that they have lost control over the US and, by extension, the direction of world affairs.

Old Europe is dead. The U.S. need not seek any approval for anything we undertake to accomplish. They owe us their souls. The idea that they might control the world by controlling us shows the extent of the rot.

Evolution is "a theory, not a fact"

2004-11-08T13:29:00.000-06:00

ATLANTA — A sticker in suburban Atlanta science textbooks that says evolution is "a theory, not a fact" is being challenged in court as an unlawful promotion of religion.

The lawsuit, filed by six parents and the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (search), begins Monday and is expected to last four days.

Cobb County (search) school officials adopted the disclaimer after science textbooks it adopted in 2002 were criticized by some parents for presenting evolution as fact. More than 2,000 people signed a petition opposing the biology texts because they did not discuss alternative theories, including creationism (search).

The school district placed the sticker despite the evidence against it. And in spite of Edwards v. Aguillard (1987):

Louisiana's "Creationism Act" forbids the teaching of the theory of evolution in public elementary and secondary schools unless accompanied by instruction in the theory of "creation science." The Act does not require the teaching of either theory unless the other is taught. It defines the theories as "the scientific evidences for [creation or evolution] and inferences from those scientific evidences." Appellees, who include Louisiana parents, teachers, and religious leaders, challenged the Act's constitutionality in Federal District Court, seeking an injunction and declaratory relief. The District Court granted summary judgment to appellees, holding that the Act violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Court of Appeals affirmed.

Held:

1. The Act is facially invalid as violative of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, because it lacks a clear secular purpose. Pp. 585-594.

(a) The Act does not further its stated secular purpose of "protecting academic freedom." It does not enhance the freedom of teachers to teach what they choose and fails to further the goal of "teaching all of the evidence." Forbidding the teaching of evolution when creation science is not also taught undermines the provision of a comprehensive scientific education. Moreover, requiring the teaching of creation science with evolution does not give schoolteachers a flexibility that they did not already possess to supplant the present science curriculum with the presentation of theories, besides evolution, about the origin of life. Furthermore, the contention that the Act furthers a "basic concept of fairness" by requiring the teaching of all of the evidence on the subject is without merit. Indeed, the Act evinces a discriminatory preference for the teaching of creation science and against the teaching of evolution by requiring that curriculum guides be developed and resource services supplied for teaching creationism but not for teaching evolution, by limiting membership on the resource services panel to "creation scientists," and by forbidding school boards to discriminate against anyone who "chooses to be a creation-scientist" or to teach creation science, while failing to protect those who choose to teach other theories or who refuse to teach creation science. A [482 U.S. 578, 579] law intended to maximize the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of science instruction would encourage the teaching of all scientific theories about human origins. Instead, this Act has the distinctly different purpose of discrediting evolution by counter-balancing its teaching at every turn with the teaching of creationism. Pp. 586-589.

(b) The Act impermissibly endorses religion by advancing the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind. The legislative history demonstrates that the term "creation science," as contemplated by the state legislature, embraces this religious teaching. The Act's primary purpose was to change the public school science curriculum to provide persuasive advantage to a particular religious doctrine that rejects the factual basis of evolution in its entirety. Thus, the Act is designed either to promote the theory of creation science that embodies a particular religious tenet or to prohibit the teaching of a scientific theory disfavored by certain religious sects. In either case, the Act violates the First Amendment. Pp. 589-594.

Also in defiance of the law:

GRANTSBURG, Wis. — The city's school board has revised its science curriculum to allow the teaching of creationism (search), prompting an outcry from more than 300 educators who urged that the decision be reversed.

School board members believed that a state law governing the teaching of evolution (search) was too restrictive. The science curriculum "should not be totally inclusive of just one scientific theory," said Joni Burgin, superintendent of the district of 1,000 students in northwest Wisconsin.

Last month, when the board examined its science curriculum, language was added calling for "various models/theories" of origin to be incorporated.

The decision provoked more than 300 biology and religious studies faculty members to write a letter last week urging the Grantsburg (search) board to reverse the policy. It follows a letter sent previously by 43 deans at Wisconsin public universities.

"Insisting that teachers teach alternative theories of origin in biology classes takes time away from real learning, confuses some students and is a misuse of limited class time and public funds," said Don Waller, a botanist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wisconsin law mandates that evolution be taught, but school districts are free to create their own curricular standards, said Joe Donovan, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Instruction.

There have been scattered efforts around the nation for other school boards to adopt similar measures. Last month the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania voted to require the teaching of alternative theories to evolution, including "intelligent design" — the idea that life is too complex to have developed without a creator.

The state education board in Kansas was heavily criticized in 1999 when it deleted most references to evolution. The decision was reversed in 2001.

In March, the Ohio Board of Education narrowly approved a lesson plan that some critics contended opens the door to teaching creationism.

Update: Clayton Cramer has more on this.

Evolution Is A Fact

2004-11-06T19:48:00.000-06:00

More evidence for those that will listen:

When non-biologists talk about biological evolution they often confuse two different aspects of the definition. On the one hand there is the question of whether or not modern organisms have evolved from older ancestral organisms or whether modern species are continuing to change over time. On the other hand there are questions about the mechanism of the observed changes... how did evolution occur? Biologists consider the existence of biological evolution to be a fact. It can be demonstrated today and the historical evidence for its occurrence in the past is overwhelming. However, biologists readily admit that they are less certain of the exact mechanism of evolution; there are several theories of the mechanism of evolution. Stephen J. Gould has put this as well as anyone else:

In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"--part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus the power of the creationist argument: evolution is "only" a theory and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is worse than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science--that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."
Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory--natural selection--to explain the mechanism of evolution.

- Stephen J. Gould, " Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981

Gould is stating the prevailing view of the scientific community. In other words, the experts on evolution consider it to be a fact.

And for those that won't listen:

"... there are many reasons why you might not understand [an explanation of a scientific theory] ... Finally, there is this possibility: after I tell you something, you just can't believe it. You can't accept it. You don't like it. A little screen comes down and you don't listen anymore. I'm going to describe to you how Nature is - and if you don't like it, that's going to get in the way of your understanding it. It's a problem that [scientists] have learned to deal with: They've learned to realize that whether they like a theory or they don't like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense. [A scientific theory] describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as She is - absurd.

I'm going to have fun telling you about this absurdity, because I find it delightful. Please don't turn yourself off because you can't believe Nature is so strange. Just hear me all out, and I hope you'll be as delighted as I am when we're through. "

- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988),
from the introductory lecture on quantum mechanics reproduced in QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Feynman 1985).

Update:
Clayton Cramer blogs on intelligent design and quotes my e-mail to him.

Unteachable Ignorance

2004-11-06T13:46:00.000-06:00

I don't usually agree with commie wankers but this part of Jane Smiley's screed is right on the money.

Here is how ignorance works: First, they put the fear of God into you—if you don't believe in the literal word of the Bible, you will burn in hell. Of course, the literal word of the Bible is tremendously contradictory, and so you must abdicate all critical thinking, and accept a simple but logical system of belief that is dangerous to question. A corollary to this point is that they make sure you understand that Satan resides in the toils and snares of complex thought and so it is best not try it.

Next, they tell you that you are the best of a bad lot (humans, that is) and that as bad as you are, if you stick with them, you are among the chosen. This is flattering and reassuring, and also encourages you to imagine the terrible fates of those you envy and resent.

The rest of it is barking moonbat leftist hatred.

Not all conservatives are this closed-minded. But having a discussion with an evangelical Christian that thinks like this is just as difficult as having a discussion with a Democrat. Evolution is to the evangelical as abortion is to the liberal. One insists that God created the world and the other insists that socialism works. Neither will listen to factual arguments that contradict their worldview.

Textbook Publishers Define Marriage to Appease Texas Board

2004-11-05T17:48:00.000-06:00

The Left continues to lose ground.

AUSTIN, Texas — The State Board of Education approved health textbooks for Texas (search) high school and middle school students on Friday, after publishers changed the wording in some of the approved textbooks to reflect marriage as being between a man and a woman.

--

Board member Mary Helen Berlanga (search) asked the panel to approve the books without the changes.

"We're not supposed to make changes at somebody's whim," Berlanga said. "It's a political agenda, and we're not here to follow a political agenda."

The decision could affect dozens of states because books sold in Texas, the nation's second-largest textbook buyer, often are marketed elsewhere.

The elected board, which includes 10 Republicans and five Democrats, is allowed to reject books only because of factual errors or failure to follow state-mandated curriculum.

I'm sorry but these were factual errors that were corrected. Berlanga is correct that there is a "political agenda" in play here, however. The changes she wanted to keep were put in at the whim of the Left and she certainly is here to follow that political agenda.

Privacy Experts Shun Black Boxes

2004-11-05T17:41:00.000-06:00

Some safety and privacy experts are reacting with apprehension, others with all out condemnation over a recent ruling by the National Transportation Safety Board (search) to require electronic data recorders or "black boxes" in all new cars manufactured in the United States.

--

Proponents, including the NTSB and road safety advocates, say the data collected on these black boxes is valuable for studying how accidents happen and how to make roads and cars safer. EDR data has been used for years to fine tune air bag efficiency.

--

Privacy experts warn that once cars are outfitted for the most limited data recording, the government will find a way to argue it’s for drivers’ "own good" to collect more. They point to a push in recent years to install GPS in all cars so that emergency officials can easily find incapacitated accident victims.

"When you are telling someone it is for their own good, then it should be their own choice, they should be able to say ‘no,’" said professor Yale Kamisar of the University of Michigan Law School. "None of these things work out the way they are supposed to. Why should we believe all of these assurances when they haven’t been honored in the past?"

Indeed!

Juvenile Left

2004-11-04T11:57:00.000-06:00

It is my impression that at least a part of the reason that the Republicans won the election was that the electorate is fed up with the juvenile antics of the left. Everything from slashed tires to sour grapes. More here.

Update: Election Reflections

It's the morality, stupid! While the punditocracy blathered on about the impact of the war in Iraq and the economy on the election, something else was happening: A broad portion of the electorate was fretting over what it saw as the moral decline of the country. It was an issue that few journalists talked or wrote about, yet exit polls show it was a top issue for Republican voters -- more important than the economy and more important than Iraq. Call it the guns, God and gays vote. Call it whatever you want, but moral-issues voters came out in droves and supported Bush and the Republicans.

Just look at an electoral map. The red states stretch across the South and cover nearly all of the nation's midsection. That red swath is representative of a set of values shared by conservative voters. It's apparent to me that the cultural divide has deepened even further than Democrats and the inside-the-Beltway crowd imagined.

Also see here and here.

Gnostics

2004-10-19T23:23:00.000-05:00

I've been sympathetic to Gnosticism ever since I first found it and began to understand it's message. I don't think that many people, especially mainstream Christians, understand much about it. My experience is that they refuse to even consider it because it will somehow taint their souls and condemn them to damnation. Now, that is mere speculation on my part, but I've not found many that will actually read any of the work.

I've been reading The Templar Revelation for amusement (it's not the book I originally thought it was) and I ran across a passage that pretty much explains it the way I understand it and better than any other explanation that I've run across.

It is not difficult to understand the appeal of Gnosticism, although it was no easy option - the emphasis being on personal responsibility for one's own actions - but at the same time the threat to the Church of Rome is obvious. As Hermes Trismegistus supposedly wrote: 'Oh! What a miracle is Man!', an exclamation that encapsulates the idea that mankind contains the divine spark. Neither Gnostics nor hermeticists grovelled before their God. Unlike Catholics, they did not think of themselves as lowly and evil creatures who were destined for purgatory, if not hell itself. Recognizing their divine spark automatically bestowed what we today would call 'self-esteem' or confidence - the magic ingredient in the process of fulfilling one's potential. This was the key to the Renaissance as a whole, and the fearlessness it induced can be seen in the sudden opening up of the world through circumnavigation and exploration. Worse still, as far as the Church was concerned, this notion of individual potential for godhood implied that women were as good as men, at least spiritually. Gnostic women had always had a voice, and even officiated at religious ceremonies: this was one of the major threats that Gosticism posed to the Catholic Church. Moreover, the idea of mankind's essentially divine status did not accord with the Christian idea of 'original sin' - the idea that all men and women are born sinful because of the Fall of Adam and Eve (especially the latter). Because all children are the result of the 'shameful' sex act, that idea inextricably linked women and children in a kind of everlasting conspiracy against pure men and a vengeful God. Gnostics and hermeticists, on the whole, had no truck with 'original sin'.

Each individual was encouraged to explore both outer and inner worlds for him/herself - experiencing gnosis, knowledge of the Divine. This emphasis on individual salvation was totally antithetical to the Church's insistence that only priests were the conduits through which God might communicate with mankind. The Gnostic idea of a direct line to God, as it were, threatened the Church's very existence. With no priestly hold over it's flock, what chance did the Church have to maintain its control?

The Church is all about control and it maintains this through the myth of original sin from which you must be saved, the only path to which is through the Church. I find the very idea of original sin offensive and the need to be saved by grovelling equally offensive.

I have come to believe that this hatred of man in general and women in particular is a creation of Pauline Christianity.

It falls neatly into place, doesn't it?

Update:
I think I ought to mention that I am not certain of God, despite many years of searching.

Many Red Sox fans are however. The camera men in Yankee stadium seemed to take great pleasure in searching them out as they prayed!

Two die in plane crash

2004-10-19T13:25:00.000-05:00

A small plane with two people aboard crashed during a rainstorm

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The twin-engine Beechcraft 55 plane crashed at 10:55 a.m. soon after taking off about 12 miles away from the DeKalb-Peachtree Airport in Atlanta, said FAA spokesman Christopher White. He said the plane was headed for Venice, Fla.

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A thunderstorm was moving through the city at the time of the crash. "It looked like there was some pretty heavy wind," said Chris Spanovic, who watched the plane go down from two blocks away.

I took a look at the weather radar online. That was not just a rainstorm. It was a line of severe weather moving through the area. To takeoff in weather like that is either stupid or suicidal.

Of course, today I received an update from faasafety.gov which contains this cryptic quote:

"It takes approximately 1 hour to learn the fundamentals of flying. It takes a lifetime to know when not to fly...."

More Baseball

2004-10-18T23:47:00.000-05:00

Red Sox Stay Alive with Epic 14th-Inning Win

BOSTON (Reuters) - David Ortiz drove in three runs, including the game winner in the bottom of the 14th inning, to lead Boston to a rallying 5-4 victory over the New York Yankees which kept the Red Sox's postseason hopes alive Monday.

Ortiz's shot to center field off Esteban Loaiza in the 14th scored Johnny Damon and sent the American League Championship Series back to New York for Game Six Tuesday with the Yankees up 3-2.

At nearly six hours, Game Five was the longest encounter in postseason history.

The Red Sox have now seized two straight come-from-behind victories in extra innings after dropping the first three games of the series.

meanwhile....

Astros Take 3-2 Series Lead on Kent Homer

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Jeff Kent's three-run homer in the ninth inning gave Houston a 3-0 win over the St Louis Cardinals Monday to move the Astros within one game of reaching the World Series for the first time in team history.

The victory was the third straight for the Astros and put them up 3-2 in the best-of-seven National League Championship Series

James the Brother of Jesus

2004-10-17T13:29:00.000-05:00

This is the introduction to the book as promised. It may help to clear up any confusion that has existed about what I am talking about.

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James the brother of Jesus, usually known as James the Just because of his surpassing Righteousness and Piety, is a character familiar to those with some knowledge of Christian origins. He is not so well known to the public at large, an inevitable if peculiar result of the processes being described in this book.

James is not only the key to unlocking a whole series of obfuscations in the history of the early Church, he is also the missing link between the Judaism of his day, however this is defined, and Christianity. In so far as the 'Righteous Teacher' in the Dead Sea Scrolls occupies a similar position, the parallels between the two and the respective communities they led narrow considerably, even to the point of convergence. In the introduction to an earlier book on this subject in 1983, Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians and Qumran, I wrote with specific reference to James as follows:

In providing an alternative historical and textual framework in which to fit the most important Dead Sea Scrolls, it is to be hoped that most of the preconceptions to have dominated Scrolls research for so long will simply fade away and new ideas will be brought into play and previously unused sources given their proper scope. When this is done, individual beings, the facts of whose lives tradition has distorted beyond recognition or who have been otherwise consigned to historical oblivion, will spring immediately to life and a whole series of associated historical fabrications and accusations evaporate.

It is to the task of rescuing James, consigned either on purpose or through benign neglect to the scrapheap of history, that this book is dedicated.

Mentioned in various contexts in the New Testament, James the Just has been systematically downplayed or written out of the tradition. When he suddenly emerges as a principal personality and leader of the 'Jerusalem Church' or 'Community' in Acts 12:17, there is no introduction as to who he is or how he has arrived at the position he is occupying. Acts' subsequent silence about his fate, which can be pieced together only from extra-biblical sources and to some extent seems to have been absorbed into the accounts both about the character we now call 'Stephen' and even Jesus himself, obscures the situation still further.

Once the New Testament reached its final form, the process of James' marginalization became more unconscious and inadvertent but, in all events, it was one of the most successful rewrite - or overwrite - enterprises ever accomplished. James ended up ignored, an ephemeral figure on the margins of Christianity, known only to aficionados. But in the Jerusalem of his day in the 40s to 60s CE, he was the most important and central figure of all - 'the Bishop' or 'Overseer’ of the Jerusalem Church.

Designated as 'the brother' of Jesus, James the Just or the Just One is often confused or juxtaposed, and this probably purposefully, with another James, designated by Scripture as 'James the brother of John', the so-called 'son of Zebedee', thus increasing his marginalization. This multiplication of like-named individuals in Scripture was often the result of the same rewrite or overwrite processes just remarked.

There is a collateral aspect to this welter of like-named characters in the New Testament - even going so far as to include 'Mary the sister of her own sister Mary (John 19:25). These instances are all connected with downplaying the family of Jesus and writing it out of Scripture. This was necessary because of the developing doctrine of the supernatural Christ and the stories about his miraculous birth.

James

The leader of the 'early Church' or 'Jerusalem Assembly' in Palestine from the 40s to the 60s, James met his death at the hands of a hostile Establishment before the events that culminated in the Uprising against Rome and the destruction of the Temple (66-70 CE). To have been 'Head' or 'Bishop' of 'the Jerusalem Church' (Ecclesia) or 'Community' was to have been the head of the whole of Christianity, whatever this might be considered to have been in this period. Not only was the centre at Jerusalem the principal one before the destruction of the Temple and the reputed flight of the Jamesian community to a city beyond the Jordan called Pella, but there were hardly any others of any importance.

For instance, the famous centre at Antioch in Syria, which may have been confused with the one at Edessa some two hundred miles further east, was only just being formed in the 40s and 50s, all other, in so far as they existed at all, being in a nascent state only. According to Acts, Antioch was where Christians 'were first called Christians' (11:26). It was the former capital of the Hellenized Seleucid kingdom, one of the offshoots of the empire of Alexander the Great, and the Church there consisted mainly of Paul and several associates, including, it would appear, one person associated with the Herodian family in Palestine (13:1).

Because of James' pre-eminent stature, the sources for him turn out to be quite extensive, more than for any other comparable character, even for those as familiar to us as John the Baptist and Peter. In fact, extra biblical sources contain more reliable information about James than about Jesus.

There are also strong parallels between the Community led by James and the one reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is particularly true when one considers the relationship of James to the person known in the Scrolls as 'the Teacher of Righteousness' or 'Righteous Teacher'. This book will build on the present debate concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls, presenting an alternative manner of viewing these documents. So many doctrines, allusions, and turns of phrase emerge from the material in the Scrolls common to both traditions that the parallels become impossible to ignore.

The research I am presenting here was originally completed under a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the Albright Institute in Jerusalem in 1985-6, the well-known 'American School', where the Scrolls were first photographed in 1947. It was during the tenure of this award that the insight became clear to me that led to the struggle for open access to the Scrolls, and the final collapse of the scholarly elite controlling their publication and, even more importantly, their interpretation.

But the subject of the person and teaching of James in the Jerusalem of his day is not only more important simply than his relationship to the interpretation of the Scrolls, it is quite independent of it. Even without insisting on any parallel or identification of James with the Righteous Teacher of the Scrolls, the Movement led by James - and it does seem to have been a 'Movement' - will be shown to have been something quite different of the Christianity we are now familiar with. James' relationship to the Scrolls is only collateral not intrinsic to this.

One of the central theses of this book will be the identification of James as the centre of the 'opposition alliance' in Jerusalem, involved in and precitiation the Uprising against Rome in 66-70 CE. The Dead Sea Scrolls like other recent manuscript discoveries - as for instance those from Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, which came to light at about the same time as the Scrolls - while important, only further substantiate conclusions such as this, providing additional insight into it.

In the course of this book, it will become clear that James was the true heir and successor of his more famous brother Jesus and the leader at the time of whatever the movement was we now call 'Christianity', no the more Hellenized character we know through his Greek cognomen Peter, the 'Rock' of, in any event, the Roman Church.

Though Peter's name has now become proverbial, he may not be as historical as we think he is, and the role we attribute to him may possibly be an amalgam of that of several individuals by the same name, one a martyred 'cousin' of both Jesus and James and their reputed successor in Palestine, Simeon bar Cleophas. Nor does a normative adherence to Judaism and Christianity appear tenable after pursuing a study of this kind and grasping the real significance of James in the Jerusalem of his time.

Roman Power and its Effects

In historical writing, it is an oft-stated truism that the victor write the history. This is true for the period before us. Paul, for instance, would have been very comfortable with this proposition, as he makes clear in 1 Corinthians, where he announces his modus operandi of making himself 'all things to all men' and his philosophy of 'winning' and 'not beating the air' (9:24-27). So would his younger contemporary, the Jewish historian Josephus (C. 37-96 CE), who in the introductions to his several works also shows himself to be well aware of the implications of this proposition without being able to avoid its inevitable consequences.

There is in this period one central immovable fact, that of Roman power. This was as elemental as a state of nature, and all movements and individual behavior must be seen in relation to it. But the unsuspecting reader is often quite unaware of it, when inspecting documents that emanate from this time or trying to come to grips with what was actually a highly charged and extremely revolutionary situation in Palestine.

This is the problem we have to face in this period, not only where individuals are concerned, but also in the documents that have come down to us. For example, in the Gospels, probably products of the end of this period, one would have difficulty recognizing that this highly charged, revolutionary situation existed in the Galilee in which Jesus wanders peacefully about, curing the sick, chasing out demons, raising the dead, and performing other 'mighty works and wonders'.

But in the parallel vocabulary of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness - a key document from the Dead Sea Scrolls treating the final apocalyptic war against all Evil on the earth, led by the Messiah and the Heavenly Host - these same Messianic 'mighty works and wonders' are the battles God fights on behalf of His people and the marvelous victories He wins. In this Scroll, known among aficionados as the War Scroll, we are in the throes of an apocalyptic picture of Holy War, with which the partisans of Oliver Cromwell's militant Puritanism in seventeenth-century England would have felt comfortable.

On the other hand, where the Gospels are concerned, we are in a peaceful, Hellenized countryside, where Galilean fishermen cast their nets or mend their boats. Would it were true. The scenes in the New Testament depicting Roman officials and military officers sometimes as near saints or the members of the Herodian family - their appointed custodians and tax collectors in Palestine - as bumbling but well-meaning dupes also have to be understood in the light of the submissiveness to Roman power.

The same can be said for the scenes picturing the vindictiveness of the Jewish mob. These are obviously included to please not a Jewish audience but a Roman or a Hellenistic one. This is also true of the presentation of the Jewish Messiah - call him 'Jesus' - as a politically disinterested, other-worldly (in Roman terms, ergo, harmless), even sometimes pro-Roman itinerant, at odds with his own people and family, preaching a variety of Plato's representation of the Apology of Socrates or the Pax Romana.

Josephus, whose own works suffer from many of these same distortions, was himself a defector to the Roman cause. Much like Paul, he owed his survival, as well as that of his works, to this fact. Both, it seems either had or were to achieve Roman citizenship, Josephus in the highest manner possible - adoption into the Roman imperial family. His works were encouraged by persons, previously high up in the Roman Emperor Nero's chancellery (54-68) and equally favored later under Domitian (81-96), with whom Paul also seems to have been in close touch.

Josephus sums up this obsequiousness to Roman power perhaps better than anyone in his preface to his eye-witness account of this period, the Jewish War, a work based at least in part on his interrogations, as a defector and willing collaborator, of prisoners. In criticizing other historians treating the same events, Josephus notes that all historical works from this period suffer from two main defects, 'flattery of the Romans and vilification of the Jews, adulation and abuse being substituted for real historical record'. Having said this, he then goes on to indulge in the same conduct himself.

That historical portions of the New Testament suffer from the same defect should be obvious to anyone with even a passing familiarity with them. But the Dead Sea Scrolls do not, for the simple reason that they did not go through the editorial processes of the Roman Empire. The opposite; they were probably deposited in caves expressly to avoid it. The fact of Roman power, too, was probably the principal reason why no one ever returned to retrieve them. No one could have, because no one survived. It was that simple.

This power is also the key determinant behind the political and ideological orientation of several of the religious groups or parties in this period, including early Christians and Pharisaic Jews, not to mention the group responsible for the composition of the Scrolls themselves, who were in all likelihood destroyed by it.

The Jesus of History

The quest for the historical Jesus has held a fascination for sophisticated Western man for over two centuries now, but the quest for the historical James has never been pursued. Rather than be disconsolate that the material regarding James is so fragmentary and often presented from the point of view of persons like Paul who disagreed with him, it is the task of the historian to revive him, to rescue him from the oblivion in which he was cast, either purposefully or via benign neglect, and to revivify him.

This is not so difficult as it might seem, because the materials about James exist - quite a lot of them. It remains only to place them in a proper perspective and analyze them. This would be much more difficult to achieve for James' brother Jesus. But is Jesus as well known as most people think? Experts, lay persons, artists, writers, political figures from all ages and every time and place constantly assert the fact of Jesus' existence and speak of him in the most familiar way, as if they personally had certain knowledge of him. Unfortunately, the facts themselves are shrouded in mystery and overwhelmed by a veneer of retrospective theology and polemics that frustrates any attempt to get at the real events underlying them. Most who read the documents concerning him are simply unaware of this.

Questions not only emerge concerning Jesus' existence itself, at least as far as the character so confidently portrayed in Scripture, but also regarding the appropriateness of the teaching attributed to him there to his time and place. Where the man 'Jesus' is concerned - as opposed to the redeemer figure 'Christ' or 'Christ Jesus' Paul so confidently proclaims and with whom, via some personalized visionary experience, he claims to be in constant contact - we have mainly the remains of Hellenistic romance and mythologizing to go on, often with a clear polemicizing or dissembling intent. In fact, Paul, portrayed as appearing on the scene only a few years after Jesus' death, either knows nothing or is willing to tell us nothing about him.

Only two historical points about Jesus emerge from Paul's letters; firstly, that he was crucified at some point - date unspecified (1Tim. 6:13, which is not considered authentic, adds by Pontius Pilate), and secondly, that he had several brothers, one of whom was one called James (Gal. 1:19). In fact, taking the brother relationship seriously may turn out to be one of the only confirmations that there ever was a historical Jesus.

Jesus in the Gospels

Where the Gospels are concerned, whatever can be said with any certainty about Jesus is largely presented in the framework of supernatural storytelling. Hellenistic mystery cults were familiar over a large portion of the Graeco-Roman world where Paul was active. They would certainly have provided fertile ground for the propagation of competing models among a population already well versed in their fundamentals.

One attitude, particularly important in determing the historicity of Gospel materials, is the strong current of anti-Semitism one encounters lying just below the surface. This anti-Semtism was already rife in Hellenistic cities such as Alexandria in Egypt and Caesarea in Palestine, and ultimately led to the destruction of the Jewish populations there.

One can assert with a fair degree of confidence that while Messianic agitation in Palestine could be sectarian, it would not be anti-Jewish or opposed to the people of Palestine. This would be a contradiction in terms. Of course, there was internecine party strife, often vitriolic and quite unforgiving, but for a popular Messianic leader to be against his own people would be prima facie impossible and , one can confidently assert, none ever was - except retrospectively or through the miracle of art. The reader may take this as a rule of thumb. For corroboration, where native Palestinian literature is concerned, one need only inspect the Dead Sea Scrolls, which, while often vitriolic and uncompromising towards their opponents in Palestine and the world at large, are never anti-Semitic. The opposite.

Nor can we say that in the Gospels we do not have a composite recreation of facts and episodes relating to a series of Messianic pretenders in Palestine in the first century, familiar from the works of Josephus, interlaced or spliced into a narrative of a distinctly Hellenistic or non-Palestinian, pro-Pauline cast. This includes some light-hearted - even malevolent - satire where events in Palestine are concerned. Josephus displays a parallel, but inverted, malevolence, calling examples of the charismatic Messianic type of leader 'religious frauds' or 'impostors more dangerous than the bandits and murderers', and 'deceivers claiming divine inspiration leading their followers out into the wilderness there to show them the signs of their impending Deliverance'.

The Gospel of Matthew, even more than the other Gospels, has long been recognized as a collection of Messianic and other scriptural proof-texts taken out of context and woven into a gripping narrative of what purports to be the life of Jesus. In describing an early flight by Jesus' father 'Joseph' to Egypt to escape Herod - à la Joseph in Egypt and Moses' escape from Pharaoh in the Bible - not paralleled in the other Gospels, Matthew utilizes the passage, 'I have called my son out of Egypt' (3:15). Whether this passage applies to Jesus is debatable.

In its original Old Testament context (Hos. 11:1), it obviously refers to the people Israel as a whole. However, it does have very real relevance to a character in the mid-50s, whom Josephus - followed it would appear by the Book of Acts - actually calls 'the Egyptian', but declines to identify further. This Messianic pretender, according to the picture in Josephus, first leads the people 'out into the wilderness' and then utilizes the Mount of Olives as a staging point to lead a Joshua-style assault on the walls of Jerusalem. But the Mount of Olives was a favourite haunt, according to Gospel narrative, of Jesus and his companions. We will note many such suspicious overlaps in the data available to us.

For his part, Josephus, predictably obsequious, applauds the extermination of the followers of this Egyptian by the Roman Governor Felix (52-60 CE). The Book of Acts, too, is quick to show its familiarity with this episode, including Josephus' tell-tale reticence in supplying his name. Rather it somewhat charmingly portrays the commander of the Roman garrison in the Temple as mistaking Paul for him (21:38).

Other examples of the kind are the so-called 'Little Apocalypses' in the Gospels (Matt. 24:4-31 and pars.). In Luke's version of these, anyhow, Jesus is depicted as predicting the encirclement of Jerusalem by armies, followed by its fall. All versions are introduced by reference to the destruction of the Temple and generally refer to famine, wars, and sectarian strife, along with other signs and catastrophes. These probably have very real relevance to a section in the Antiquities of the Jews, in which Josephus describes in gory detail the woes brought upon the people by the movement founded by someone he calls 'Judas the Galilean' around the time of the Census of Cyrenius in 6-7 CE.

This is contemporaneous with Jesus' birth according to the time frame of the Gospel of Luke too and is also referred to in Acts (5:37). Josephus calls this movement the 'Fourth Philosophy', but most now refer to it as 'Zealot'. Here, as in the Little Apocalypses above, Josephus portrays this movement - the appearance of which, again, is contemporaneous with the birth of Christ in the Gospels - as bringing about wars, famine, and terrible suffering for the people, culminating in the destruction of the Temple.

These 'woes' also have relevance to another Messianic character, depicted in Josephus and a namesake of Jesus, whom Josephus calls 'Jesus ben Ananias'. This man, whom Josephus portrays as an oracle or quasi-prophet of some kind, went around Jerusalem directly following the death of James in 62 CE for seven straight years, proclaiming its coming destruction, until he was finally hit on the head by a Roman projectile during the siege of Jerusalem and killed just prior to the fulfilment of his prophecy.

The applicability of this story to the Historical Jesus (and in a very real way the Historical James), the facts of whose existence and its relevance to mankind's everyday existence have been so confidently asserted for the last nineteen centuries or more, should be obvious. In fact 'Jesus ben Ananias' was set free at the end of Josephus' Jewish War after having originally been arrested. The release of such a Messianic double for Jesus is also an echoed in the Scripture as it has come down to us in the release of another ‘double’. One Gospel anyhow calls this double 'Jesus Barabbas' - the meaning of this name in Aramaic superficially would appear to be 'the Son of the Father' - a political 'bandit' who 'committed murder at the time of the uprising' and is released by Pontius Pilate (Matt. 27:26 and pars).

It is reflected too in another curious episode in a narrative concerning which many profess scepticism but few have explained, called the Slavonic Josephus, because it came down through the Old Russian. An epitome of Josephus' Jewish War, like much in this period it is probably a forgery. However, in expanding the notices about Jesus from Josephus' later Antiquities, it portrays him as a revolutionary who is released only to be re-arrested before the final crucifixion scenario familiar to us.

Variant manuscripts of the works of Josephus, reported by Church fathers like Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome, all of whom at one time or another spent time in Palestine, contain materials associating the fall of Jerusalem with the death of James - not with the death of Jesus. Their shrill protests, particularly Origen's and Eusebius', have probably not a little to do with the disappearance of this passage from all manuscripts of the Jewish War that have come down to us. As will also become clear, other aspects from the biography of James have been retrospectively absorbed into the biography of Jesus and other characters in the Book of Acts in sometimes astonishing ways.

In fact, in what suggests that the Gospels and some Dead Sea Scrolls are virtually contemporary documents - and that the authors of the former knew the latter - it will be shown that fundamental allusions from the Scrolls have been absorbed into Gospel presentations of Jesus' relations with his Apostles. This subject is treated in the section focusing on Jesus' brothers as Apostles and Jesus' post-resurrection appearance to James. There, it will be shown that the presentation of the Apostles as peaceful fishermen on the Sea of Galilee incorporates a play on key ideological usages found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is the language of casting down nets implicit in episodes relative to appearances by Jesus to his Apostles along the Sea of Galilee both before and after his resurrection and in parallel notices in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Revelation. This language of casting or throwing down will also be shown to be integral to presentations of the death of James in virtually all traditions we are heirs to.

The 'Galilean' language, also part and parcel of the presentations of Jesus and his Apostles in these and like episodes, likewise can be thought of as playing on the name of the Movement developing out of the activities of Judas the Galilean, the founder of the Zealot Movement mentioned above, which Josephus and the book of Acts will also call the 'Sicarii' or 'Assassins'.

Changing terms with ideological connotations into geographical place names tends to trivialize them. This is certainly the case with confusions relating to whether Jesus came from a place in Galilee called 'Nazareth' (never mentioned in either the works of Josephus or the Old Testament) or whether, like James, he followed a 'Nazirite' life-style or was a 'Nazrene' or 'Nazoraean', which have totally different connotations in the literature as it has come down to us.

These are complex matters and will doubtlessly be perplexing at first, but it is necessary to elucidate them to describe the true situation behind some of these highly prized scriptural re-presentations. It is hoped that the reader will soon get used to the kind of word play and evasions at work. The evidence, which might at first appear circumstantial, will mount up, allowing the reader to appreciate the validity of the explanations provided. This is not to say that the Jesus of history did not exist, only that the evidence is skewed and that the problem is more complex than many think.

The Study of James

The situation with regard to James is quite different and clearer, probably because except for the Gospels and the first eleven chapters of the Book of Acts it has not been so overwritten. Here, too, materials regarding James, where not theologically refurbished, are very helpful. Where rewritten or overwritten, they can by comparison with external materials be brought into focus and sometimes even restored.

But one can go further. It is through the figure of James that one can get a realistic sense of what the Jesus of history might have been like. In fact, it is through the figure of James, and by extension the figure of Paul, with whom James is always in a kind of contrapuntal relationship, that the question of the Historical Jesus may be finally resolved.

The name 'James' should not cause too much of a stumbling block for readers, as this is a corruption of the Greek Jacobus moving into the Latin Jacimus. Except for Jaime in Spanish (which also knows Iago), in most European languages a version of the Graeco-Hebrew original Jacobus or Jacob is preserved. In this book 'James' will be used, despite consequent difficulties in visualizing what the name really was in Palestine.

The same is true with regard to 'the brother of Jesus'. In the original accounts - the Gospels as they have come down to us, Paul's letters, and Josephus - no embarrassment whatsoever is evinced about the relationship with Jesus, and James is designated straightforwardly and without qualification as Jesus' brother. There are no questions of the kind that crop up later in the wake of the developing doctrine of the supernatural 'Christ' and stories about his supernatural birth, attempting to depreciate or diminish this relationship. These stories about the birth of 'Christ’ are, in any event, not referred to by Paul and appear first in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, thus leading in the second century to embarrassment not just over Jesus' brothers, but the fact of Jesus' family generally, including sisters, fathers, uncles, and mothers.

Embarrassment of this kind was exacerbated by the fact that Jesus' brothers ('cousins', as Jerome would later come to see them at the end of the forth century) were the principal personages in Palestine and Jesus' successors there, important in Eastern tradition generally. What exacerbated the problem of their relationship to Jesus even further in the second century was the theological assertion of Mary's 'perpetual virginity' and with it the utter impossibility - nay, inconceivability - that she should have had other children. This even led Jerome's younger contemporary, Augustine, in the fifth century, to the assertion reproduced in Muhammad's Koran in the seventh, that Jesus didn't have any father at all, only a mother.

To the ideologue, it was simply impossible that Jesus should have had a father or brother, Gospel notices and references in Paul notwithstanding. Nor could Joseph have had any children by Mary. These had to have been by another wife. All such theological considerations will be set aside and all family designations treated naturally. If a person was said to have had a brother, then he was a natural brother, conceived by natural generation, not a half-brother, stepbrother, 'cousin' or 'milk brother'.

The wealth of extra-biblical sources relating to James has already been noted. If we include with these those in the Book of Acts, where not adulterated or retrospectively overwritten with more orthodox historical or theological materials, and notices in the letters of Paul, then there is a considerable amount of material relating to James. James is also mentioned in the Gospels, but here the material is marred by doctrinal attempts either to defame the family and brothers of Jesus or to disqualify them in some manner.

Though a parallel process is at work in the early chapters of the Book of Acts, as one moves into chapter 12 where James is introduced and beyond, the character of the material changes and quickens. For some reason Acts assumes that we already know who James is, in contradistinction to another James it calls 'the brother of John' - elsewhere 'the son of Zebedee' - whom it also conveniently disposes of at the beginning of chapter 12 preparatory to introducing the real James. It is possible to read through this material in Acts to the real history underlying it and the real events it transmogrifies

The same can be said for Paul's letters, which provide additional straightforward witness to James the brother of the Lord' and know no other James. The Historical James can also be reconstructed from the underlying circumstances to which remarks in these letters and directed. These, plus a myriad of extra-biblical materials, such as Josephus, apocryphal gospels, non-canonical acts including the 'Pseudo-' or 'False Clementines', the Gnostic manuscripts from Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, and the mass of early Church literature all constitute sources about James. The documentation is that impressive.

If we include in this mix of materials the Righteous Teacher found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, where the commonality of language, themes, and historical setting provide additional correspondences, then we are truly in a position of some strength with regard to James.

The Historical Jesus and the Historical James

It is through documentation of this kind that we can resurrect the person of Jesus as well. The proposition would run something like this: let us assume that a Messianic leader known as 'Jesus' did exist in the early part of the first century in Palestine. Furthermore, let us assume that he had brothers, one of whom was called James.

Who would have known the character Jesus better? His closest living relatives, who according to tradition were his legitimate successors in Palestine, and those companions accompanying him in all his activities? Or someone who admits that he never saw Jesus in his lifetime, as Paul does, and that on the contrary, he was an enemy of and persecuted the early Christian community, and came to know him only trough visionary experiences that allowed him to be in touch with a figure he designates as 'Christ Jesus' in Heaven?

The answer of any reasonable observer to this question should be obvious: James and Jesus' Palestinian companions. But the answer of all orthodox Church circles has always been that Paul's understanding of Jesus was superior and that he knew him better than any of Jesus' other Apostles or companions. Furthermore, it is claimed that the doctrines represented by James and the members of Jesus' family generally were defective in their understanding of Paul's Christ Jesus and inferior to boot. Given the fact that all Christianity we are heirs to is largely the legacy of Paul and like--minded persons, this is just what one would have expected and it should surprise no one.

Moreover, it has been retrospectively confirmed by the picture of Jesus that has comedown to us in the Gospels as well. This is particularly evident in the picture of the Apostles in the Gospels as 'weak' (Matt. 14:31 and pars), a term Paul repeatedly uses in his letters, almost always with derogatory intent, when describing the leaders of the community, particularly in Jerusalem, and their directives (Rom. 14:1-2 and 1 Cor. 8:7-9:22). Occasionally he parodies this, applying the term to himself to gain sympathy, but generally he uses it to attack the leadership, particular those keeping dietary regulations or relying on Mosaic Law - even those whom, as he puts it, 'only eat vegetables’, like James.

In the Gospels, reflecting Paul, when an Apostle as important as Peter 'sinks' into the Sea of Galilee for lack of 'Faith' or denies Jesus three times on his death night, the implications are quite clear. They are 'weak' in their adherence to the Pauline concept of 'Faith', as opposed to the more Jamesian one of salvation by 'works'. In addition, they have a defective understanding of Jesus' teaching, particularly of that most important of all Pauline doctrines, the Christ. This is the situation that has retrospectively been confirmed by eighteen hundred years of subsequent Church history too - however unreasonable or in defiance of real history it might appear.

Here, two aphorisms suggest themselves: 'Poetry is truer than history' and 'It is so, if you think so'. The first has a clear connection to the development of the documents that have come down to us. If the Gospels represent the 'poetry', and truly they are perhaps the most successful literary creations ever created both in terms of their artistry and the extent of their influence, then their authors were the poets. It was Plato, who, comprehending the nature of the ancient world better than many other wished to banish the poets from his 'Republic" or ideal state - not without cause, because, in his view, it was the poets who created the myths and religious mysteries, by which the less critically minded lived. For Plato, this was a world of almost total darkness.

Where the second is concerned and early 'Christian' history in Palestine, one can say with some justice that it does not matter what really happened, only what people think happened. In essence, this is the theological approach of our own time and in the court of public opinion decision has long ago been rendered, not only for Christians themselves, but also for the world at large, including Jews and Muslims - even, for instance, for modern-day Japanese, Hindus, or Latin American Indians - because for all these people the Jesus of Scripture is real too.

This is why the study of James is so important, because the situation is for the most part just the opposite of what most people think it is or consider to be true. The reader will, undoubtedly, find this proposition preposterous. How could so many people, including some of the greatest minds of our history - some even considering themselves secular - from so many different cultures and in so many different places, have been wrong? The answer to this question has to do with the beauty of the concepts being disseminated, however uncharacteristic of the Palestine of the period they might be, ideas epitomizing the highest ideals of Hellenistic Civilization.

Like Plato's picture of his teacher Socrates, Jesus refused to answer his interlocutors or avoid his fate. At least as far as his chroniclers are concerned, he met an end more terrible even that Socrates - but then Socrates was not dealing with the might of Imperial Rome, only of Athens. Of course, the very terribleness of this end is what makes the drama and its symbols so attractive.

It is, it will be remembered, Plato's pupil Aristotle who informed us how the most successful tragedy inspires terror and pity. Indeed, much of the legacy of Plato and Socrates is incorporated into the materials about Jesus, including the notions of non-resistance to Evil and a Justice that does not consist of helping your friends and harming your enemies - all doctrines absolutely alien to a Palestinian milieu, such as that, for instance, represented in native Palestinian documents like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Beauty and artistry are two reasons for the abiding appeal of the historical presentation of these documents, but so too, for instance, is the attractiveness of a doctrine such as Grace, not something anyone would have any need or desire to resist. Along with these, however, goes the lack of any real historical understanding of this period - which is complex and difficult to grasp - to the extent that oversimplification, artifice and disinformation are preferred. In turn, these have operated on the level of general culture worldwide in an almost hypnotic fashion. It is this phenomenon that has been generalized to describe religion as 'the opiate of the people'. This is not true for all religions. Some operate in exactly the opposite manner.

The End Result

It will transpire that the person of James is almost diametrically opposed to the Jesus of Scripture and our ordinary understanding of him. Whereas the Jesus of Scripture is anti-nationalist, cosmopolitan, antinomian – that is, against the direct application of Jewish Law – and accepting of foreigners and other persons of perceived impurities, the Historical James will turn out to be zealous for the Law, xenophobic, rejecting of foreigners and polluted persons generally, and apocalyptic.

Strong parallels emerge between these kinds of attitudes and those of the Righteous Teacher in the Dead Sea Scrolls. For instance, attitudes in the Gospels towards many classes of persons – tax collectors, harlots, Sinners, and the like – are diametrically opposed to those delineated in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but in agreement with anti-Semitic diatribes of the time in Greco-Hellenistic environments such as Caesarea and Alexandria.

At the center of the agitation in the Temple in the mid 50s, hostile to Herodians, Romans, and their fellow travelers, James will emerge as the pivotal figure among the more nationalist-inclining crowd. In his incarnation of ‘the Perfect Righteous’ or ‘Just One’, he will be at the center of the Opposition Alliance of sect and revolutionary groups opposed to the Pharisaic/Sadducean Establishment, pictured in Josephus and the New Testament.

The election of James as leader of the early Church, missing from Scripture in the form we have it, will be shown to be the real event behind the election of the Twelfth Apostle to succeed Judas Iscariot in his ‘Office’ (Episcopate), as pictured in the more orthodox presentation of the Book of Acts. James’ death too, in 62 CE, will be shown to be connected in the popular imagination with the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE in a way that Jesus’ some four decades before could not have been.

Two attacks on James also emerge in our sources – both physical – one paralleling the attack pictured in Acts on the archetypal Gentile believer Stephen in the 40s, and the other in the 60s, described by Josephus and in early Church sources, ending in his death. The attack on Stephen in Acts, the like the election of Judas Iscariot’s replacement that precedes it, will turn out to be totally imaginary – or rather dissembling – yet written over very real materials central to the life of James.

The modus operandi of New Testament accounts such as those in Acts, some merely retrospective refurbishment of known events in sources relating to the life of James, will be illumined. Once the aim and method of these substitutions are analysed and correctly appreciated, it will be comparatively easy to understand that the highly Hellenized Movement that developed overseas, which we now call ‘Christianity’, was, in fact, the mirror reversal of what actually took place in Palestine under James. It will be possible to show that what was actually transpiring in Palestine was directly connected with the literature represented by the Dead Sea Scrolls, which in its last stages was either equivalent to or all but indistinguishable from that circulating about and normally associated with James.

Paul, on the other hand, will emerge as a highly compromised individual, deeply involved with Roman officials and Herodian kings – a proposition given added weight by the intriguing allusions to a parallel character in the Dead Sea Scrolls called ‘the Lying Spouter’ or ‘Scoffer’ – even to the extent of actually being a member of the family of King Herod.

His contacts will go very high indeed, even into the Emperor Nero’s personal household itself (Phil. 4:22). Appreciating this context will help rescue Jesus’ closest relatives and his religious and political heirs in Palestine from the oblivion into which they have been cast either intentionally or via benign neglect. Coming at this juncture in the debate over the relationship of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Christianity, these kinds of insights should prove enlightening.

This book is written for both the specialist and the non-specialist, particularly for the latter, where interest, as in the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is often the most keen. Therefore, all the quotations and explanations necessary to pursue this subject will be provided in the book, which is meant to be complete in itself and treat James in a comprehensive and exhaustive manner. A first volume will treat all aspects of James’ relationships to the New Testament, early Church sources, and the problem of the brothers of Jesus generally. A second volume will explore the Pella Flight and James’ relationship to Eastern conversions and communities generally, as well as providing a more detailed, in-depth, and point-for-point analysis of his link-up with the Dead Sea Scrolls and an identification of the document now popularly known as ‘MMT’ as a letter (or letters) to ‘the Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates’ Agbarus or Abgarus or the character we shall encounter as Queen Helen of Adiabene’s favorite son, King Izates.

Readers are encouraged to make judgements for themselves and, where possible, to go to the primary sources directly and not rely on secondhand presentations. Because of this, secondary sources will not prove particularly useful, except in so far as they supply new, previously overlooked, data, because writing or materials later than 500 CE are for the most part derivative. Later writers too – even modern researchers – sometimes forget the motives of the predecessors, adopting the position and point of view of the tradition or theology they are heirs to. In the recent controversy regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls, a struggle developed with just such an academic and religious elite, not only over the publication of all the documents but even more importantly – and this conflict continues at the time of writing – over their interpretation.

All too often, a docile public has been easily dominated by a religious or scholarly hierarchy claiming to know or to have seen more. In religious matters, given the place of scholarly élites in upholding religious ones, this has been the case more often than not. Therefore, almost everything in this book, from the restoration of James to his rightful place as successor to his brother Jesus and heir to Christian tradition in Palestine, to the elucidation of the Dead Sea Scrolls in a manner at odds with dominant scholarly consensus, will occur outside the traditional or received order. Only a knowledgeable and enlightened public can change this state of affairs.

I have done my best to make the Dead Sea Scrolls, which have come along as if miraculously to redress the balance or haunt those who would adopt an ahistorical approach, available across the board to a wider populace. It is now time to move to the next level and a wider subject matter. The matters before us are not for those who docilely accept biblical writ or scholarly consensus as the final word. The criticism we are doing is historical and literary criticism, looking at the way a given author actually put his materials together and to what end. It is the weight of the gradual accumulation of detail and textual analyses of this kind that ultimately renders the presentation credible.

To follow the arguments, as well as to make sure the materials are being correctly presented from the sources, the reader is urged to have a copy of the New Testament, the works of Josephus and a translation of principal Dead Sea Scrolls at his or her disposal. Nothing more is really required. Even though all necessary quotations from these sources are provided verbatim in the book, it is still very useful to see them in their original context and to follow the sequencing and order surrounding a specific historical or legal point.

Where the New Testament is concerned, it should be realized that, aside from the Greek original, most translations are only that. But even a knowledge of Greek, while helpful, does not always guarantee clear understanding. Common sense is the better tool, for even those with the most accurate knowledge of languages often miss the underlying relationships or crucial meanings lying just beneath the surface of the text. Therefore, when it comes to key passages and allusions, I have tried to follow the original languages as closely as possible. These, I hope, will at least be consistent where key Palestinian usages are concerned. This is important, because often the sense of a translation one encounters is wrong.

With regard to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the best translation in English is that of G. Vermes in the Penguin edition, though this also should be used with caution where key formulations are concerned. Michael Wise and I recently published translations in the Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (penguin, 1992) of what we considered the Qumran fragments from the previously unpublished corpus. While helpful in emphasizing the ‘Jamesian’ aspects of a given document or its uncompromising ‘Zealot’ bent, it was not meant to be exhaustive or include the principal Qumran documents, which had already been published, though it does signal important sections from these last.

When using Vermes, it should be remembered that translations are simply one person’s view of the sense of a given passage as opposed to another’s. What is crucial is a firm historical grasp and literary-critical insight. His translations sometimes fall short in key passages, for instance, in the all-important interpretation of ‘the Righteous shall live by his Faith’ in the Habakkuk Pesher and other obscure materials related to this, describing the destruction of the Righteous Teacher and/or the Wicked Priest.

Often translations of pivotal terminologies such as the Messiah, doing, works (both based on the Hebrew root), justify, the Holy Spirit, Judgement (‘the Last Judgement’), Belial, and Satan, are inconsistent and sometimes even misleading. Occasionally, a critical phrase is omitted or singulars inexplicably changed to plurals. The more recent Dead Sea Scrolls Translated, by F. Garcia Martinez, done in the Netherlands (Leiden, 1994), while more complete, is even more inconsistent and inaccurate, being rendered into English from the Spanish! Therefore, as far as possible, I have endeavoured to provide my own translations. The reader will be able to find my complete translations of the Habakkuk Pesher, the Damascus Document, and the Community Rule – the three most important previously published Qumran documents, in The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians (Rockport, 1996). These will be included in an appendix to Volume II.

Where Josephus is concerned, any translation will do, as fine distinctions such as these in a historical work are not so crucial. Josephus’ works are packed with data and, as far as showing the scope and flow of events in this period, invaluable, Translations of the relevant passages are provided here too, along with the analysis necessary to understand them.

The same applies for Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History and the other early Church Fathers and their works. Eusebius, for instance, was resulting in Christianity’s takeover of the Roman Empire. His works, though tendentious and often vindictive, present either epitomes or long quotations from Josephus and early Church historians such as Hegesippus, Papias, Clement of Alexandria, and Julius Africanus – now lost.

Wherever an important quotation is taken from a text as, for instance from Josephus or the New Testament, an effort is made to give the reader some idea of its context or surroundings in the original. Too often in this field and religious matters in general, readers have been treated to words or quotations taken out of context. This is not only unfair to the original text, but misleading as well, allowing the person using the quotation to mystify or otherwise take advantage of the ignorance of the person for whom it is intended. Paul does this often. So do the Gospels.

It is important to look into the original contexts of passages used in scriptural and scholarly debate, because the ambience of such materials in important in determining the frame of mind and intent of the original, not its derivative application. References are confined as far as possible to primary sources, the trends implicit in secondary one often ebbing and flowing with the times and one generation’s consensus being overturned by the next’s.

For this reason, readers are advised to go directly to the ancient sources themselves. It is in the ancient sources that the data is to be found and this is where the battle must be joined. What is required is a critical faculty-sensitivity to language, and simple common sense. These, one hopes, are shared by everyone.

Fountain Valley, California
May 1996

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Comments are invited.

Robert Eisenman

2004-10-14T18:58:00.000-05:00

I thought I would post some info on the author of the book we have been discussing and get the horse back in front of the cart. Sorry for not having this readily available before now. This comes from the inner pages of the book:

JAMES THE BROTHER OF JESUS

Robert Eisenman, coauthor of The Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls and The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, is Professor of Middle East Religions and Archaeology and Director of the Institute for the Study of Judeo-Christian Origins at California State University, Long Beach; and Visiting Senior Member of Linacre College, Oxford Universtiy. The consultant to the Huntington Library in its decision to free the Scrolls, he was the leading figure in the worldwide campaign to gain access to the Scrolls. A National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, he was a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies.

I will be working on the introduction to this book which will make more understandable what is being conveyed here. I read this book in conjunction with my search for knowledge on the historical Jesus and Christianity in an effort to understand it. I welcome discussion but I must warn that using the Bible as justification won't get anywhere with me. To me that is no more than the claim, not proof. If you want to convince me you must go farther than that and be open minded enough to entertain books such as this one that may differ with your ideas about religion.

Pauline Christianity

2004-10-13T18:24:00.000-05:00

Earlier this year I read a book, which I have linked to in previous posts that I have found to be very interesting. It is an eye opener and not everyone will be happy about it's message. I'm going to post again an excerpt from the book to illustrate a point.

In addition, it is James, by Paul's own testimony in Galatians 2:12, who has sent the messengers - the names of whom for the moment are immaterial - done to the Church in 'Antioch' (Acts 15:1), Acts has many names for these representatives, referring to this episode, as it were, in freeze frame, since it is so important - always coming back to it as one of the only really certain bits of information it can rely on until the 'We Document' intrudes in the text in the next chapter. And James must be present, too, for the climactic final confrontation with Paul five chapters later in chapter 21.

It is the position of this book that the authors of Acts and the authors of the Pseudoclementines are, in fact, working off the same source. Both are Hellenistic romances, but where points of contact can indisputedly be shown between the two narratives - as, for instance, in the First Book of the Recognitions - the Pseudoclementines are more faithful to their original source. Not only is there less fantasy, there is less obfuscation and out and out fabrication. This is particularly the case in the matter of the key attack on James in the Recognitions, where the 'Enemy' (Paul) is introduced, and we can see it paralleled in Acts by the attack on Stephen, introducing 'Saulus" (later known as Paul). But it is also true of the picture of Peter's conduct and teachings - the direct opposite of Acts.

This is not the normal scholarly view, which holds the Pseudoclementines as late. But on this point, scholars - many governed (as in the field of the Dead Sea Scrolls) by subconscious preconceptions or orientations they themselves may often be unaware of - are simply mistaken. There is no other response one can make. It is patent that the Pseudoclementines are superior, at least as narrative - and no doubt ideology and history as well - except where the 'We Document' begins to make its presence felt in the second part of Acts. Perhaps this was why Jerome was so angry at his erstwhile colleague Rufinus who published the Pseudoclementines in the West at the end of the fourth century, probably based on a Syriac original. It is also possibly the reason why no Greek version of the Recognitions has survived - the manuscript went directly from the Syriac into the Latin.

Granted, speeches in the Pseudoclementines cannot, perhaps, be relied on any more than those in Acts (there are exceptions), but neither can they in Josephus, to say nothing of the Gospels. It was the custom in Greco-Roman historical narrative from Thucydides onwards for the narrator to supply important speeches according to what he thought the speaker would or should have said. The same is true for Hebrew literature of the time - and earlier. Therefore, we refer to the vast body of this literature in whatever language as 'pseudepigraphic'. This approach has been raised to an art form in the Gospels, to the extent that little or nothing in them can be relied on as authentic representations of what Jesus did or might have said. The early chapters of the Book of Acts, too - though none the less creative - are on the whole even less convincing.

Which is pretty much the point of the book: Christianity as we know it today bears no relationship to the historical men James and Jesus and their brothers and sisters and the movement that they began in an effort to regain the Temple from the foreigners that were defiling it. They were fundamentalist Jews that wanted to return their faith to its roots and restore it to what it was supposed to be. Christianity was not what Jesus wanted and, in that regard, he failed in his mission.

At long last

2004-10-12T00:49:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it! I've been an Astros fan for as long as there have been Astros. They finally did it!

Finally, there was a postseason series victory to celebrate for the Houston Astros.

After years of carrying the burden of the Astros' postseason failures and a city's frustrations, Bagwell and Biggio finally rejoiced Monday night when the Astros beat the Braves 12-3 to earn a berth in the National League Championship Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Monica's Blogs

2004-10-12T00:37:00.000-05:00

Please go and read Monica's blogs:

Pieces of Me

They Said That

Inspired Insomniac

I particularly like the quotes on They Said That. Amazing what comes out of peoples mouths, isn't it?

Anyway, go there and read daily.

Exposing the Truth About Jesus

2004-10-10T16:21:00.000-05:00

In response to The Crusade for Truth's post Exposing the Truth About Jesus I'm posting an excerpt from the book James the Brother of Jesus .

It is a popular impression that Herod was a Jewish King. This is simply untrue. This mistake has been encouraged as much by New Testament caricature, as it has by titles like 'the King of the Jews', superficially employed in that literature, the significance of which has been lost on most people. To be in Roman parlance, for instance, 'King of the Jews' at this time, one did not necessarily have to be Jewish!

For their part, Jews too have both encouraged and misunderstood this picture, partly out of ignorance and partly because their Rabbis under the Herodians - who determined the course of Judaism after the fall of the Temple - and writers like Josephus, for their own political reasons, went to great pains to legitimitize these same Herodians. This is the obsequious thrust of the above episode about Agrippa I, too, and sycophantish, unctuous behaviour of this kind generally in this period.

The opposite side of this coin is the rough treatment accorded this same Agrippa I- who supposedly so loved Judaism and Jewish causes - by the Simon above who convened an Assembly in Jerusalem to have him barred from the Temple as a foreigner, despite the fact his grandfather Herod built it - not to mention how Agrippa I was seen by a host of other Jewish Revolutionaries, 'Innovators', and 'Zealots', most of whom come to a bad end.

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But Herod, the progenitor of this family along with his father, the Idumaean Antipater, as we have shown, is not a Jew. He was a foreigner. As explained, his father seems to have been of Greco-Idumaean background - what today in this region would simply be called 'Arab' and, if Acts is any measure, probably was then as well (or 'Ethiopian') - and, as Josephus' testimony above reveals, he was hated by the people, because:

He [Herod] was evil by nature, cruel in punishment, and merciless to those he hated, and everyone admitted that he was more friendly to Greeks than to Jews. For instance, he adorned foreign cities of foreigners with large gifts of money, building baths and theatres, erecting temples in some and porticoes in others, whereas there was not a single city of the Jews on which he deigned to bestow even minor restoration or any gift worth mentioning.

Good vs. Evil

2004-10-09T18:09:00.000-05:00

Why must there be an invisible man in the sky for man to be moral?