2004 – Page 64 – Jimmy Akin

I'm A Flappy Bird!

flappybird No, really. I am!

Don’t worry, I’m not crazy. Don’t call the nice young men in their clean white coats. I’ll explain. . . .

Y’see: There’s this blog-ranking system called the TTLB Eco-System (TTLB = “The Truth Laid Bear”). I first encountered it on Jeff Miller’s {Monty Burns voice}EX-cellent{/Monty Burns voice} blog, The Curt Jester, who is a Large Mammal in the eco-system.

TTLB, y’see, is a nature-themed blog ranking system based on how many other people in the eco-system are linking you. People start off (with nobody linking their blogs) as Insignificant Microbes. Then they evolve up to being Multicellular Microorganisms, then Wiggly Worms, then Crunchy Crustaceans, then Lowly Insects, then Slimy Molluscs, then Flippery Fish, then Crawly Amphibians, then Slithering Reptiles, and then to the level where I’m at right now: Flappy Birds.

It sounds funny, I know, but it really is so: I’m a Flappy Bird. (I’m also my own granpa, but that’s another story.)

It turns out that if people in the eco-system are linking to you, you are automatically included in it–whether you know it or not–so check to see if your own blog is there. (Here’s my page in the eco-system. You can search for your own blog here.) Shortly after I first moved my blog to its current location, I discovered that I was already a Flippery Fish without me even knowing it since folks in the eco-system had been linking me.

Over time, I evolved my way up to being a Flappy Bird, at which point I decided that that the humor value of the system outweighed my low-ranking, and I decided to put the code needed into my left margin to auto-display my ranking. (Scroll down to see it.)

Hopefully, in the future, more people will link me, at which point I will graduate to being an Adorable Rodent, then a Marauding Marsupial, then a Large Mammal, a Playful Primate, a Mortal Human, and finally a Higher Being. (As if! That’s the level where Matt Drudge and Andrew Sullivan are at!)

Well, maybe I’ll just settle for being Large Mammal. That sounds nice and cuddly.

{Sigh.} Maybe . . . someday . . . {Sniff.}

I’m A Flappy Bird!

flappybird No, really. I am!

Don’t worry, I’m not crazy. Don’t call the nice young men in their clean white coats. I’ll explain. . . .

It sounds funny, I know, but it really is so: I’m a Flappy Bird. (I’m also my own granpa, but that’s another story.)

Well, maybe I’ll just settle for being Large Mammal. That sounds nice and cuddly.

{Sigh.} Maybe . . . someday . . . {Sniff.}

Get The Insight Scoop!

Ignatius Press has created a blog for their staffers and authors called The Insight Scoop (cool name, BTW!).

Check it out, here!

I’m adding it to my bloglist and will be checking it rebularly.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: They also have nice things to say about me. But that ain’t why I’m linking them. This has all the marks of a class act. 🙂

Election 2000 Disproves Myth Of Overpopulation

For a long time we’ve been hearing scare stories about overpopulation. Well, it MIGHT be true that certain (very small) areas of the globe are overpopulated, though even that is in doubt. There are certainly areas of the globe where people are jammed in cheek-by-jowl (like Hong Kong or Tokyo or Singapore), but what constitutes overpopulation isn’t just the population density: It’s the outstripping by the population of the ability of the available resources to sustain them. Since the cities I just mentioned have a high level of development, overpopulation even there is going to be disputable.

But all of that is elsewhere.

It’s not in the U.S.

Surprisingly, the 2000 Presidential election provides an illustration of this. As we all know, the nation was closely divided between the “blue” or “Gore” areas and the “red” or “Bush” areas. Recently I printed a map of these when calibrated by state, but the division can also be calibrated based on county, as in the first map accompanying this entry. (Thanks to one of the folks in the comments box for recalling such county maps to my memory!)

Here’s the deal: Gore apparently slightly won the popular vote, though he didn’t win the election because the way the electoral college works, since Bush slightly won that. That means that the blue areas of the map have a population approximately equal to that of the red areas. (In reality, there’s more to the story than this since there are “blue voters” in the red areas and “red voters” in the blue areas, but it’s not enough to void the point I’m about to make.)

The point is: The blue areas are a tiny portion of the country, while the red areas are huge. This means that–unless the red areas are far more resource-poor than they actually are–we could have many, MANY more people in the U.S. than we do without hitting true overpopulation.

Since overpopulation is one of the key reasons offered for contracepting and aborting our progeny, this means that this “reason” does not exist in our country. The 2000 election proved it.

Now, as I indicated, there are more dimensions to the story than I indicated. To see some of these dimensions, read this page from a “Bush perspective” and this page from a “Gore perspective.” The latter, in particular, contains a number of cool maps. The former, in particular, contains some cool analysis.

None of the other dimensions challenge the basic point I am making. In fact, there are more sophisticated maps making the same point–like the second one associated with this entry, which is a straight population map of the U.S.

The basic point remains the same: The U.S. is not overpopulated. In fact, the world is not overpopulated. Our real problem is not lack of resources but barriers to food and resource distribution that are put in place on the local level (like the north, Muslim area of Ethiopia deliberately trying to starve the south, Christian area of Ethiopia). If the distribution avenues commonly available in the U.S. were available worldwide, the earth could sustain many times the people it currently houses.

In fact, you may have read accounts noting that the entire world population could comfortably fit in my home state of Texas, leaving the rest of the planet empty.

That’d be juss fine with me! Then ev’ryone would be Texan!

Resistance is futahl.

Y’all will be assimilated.

(BTW, Rodeo is now the national pasttime.)

Search Engineering

Ain’t Google the best?

Well, it’s got some competition now. Amazon.com is going into the search engine bid’ness, and they’ve got some functionality that might give Google a run for its money. If you haven’t noticed it yet, check out their new A9.com search engine.

While waiting to see if that pans out, though, I thought I’d pass along a page that has some excellent search tips for using Google.

For some time I’ve been using the “site:” tag on Google to datamine particular pages (e.g., the Vatican’s horribly organized site). I’ve wanted a complete list of the tags Google will respond to, but haven’t had one. Though I don’t know if the site above offers a complete list, it does offer a much more robust one than I’ve henceforth had available. Some of the tags it offers look of limited utility to me, but others will be quite useful.

The page is part of a larger Google Guide that you might check out, too.

The Cardinals, The Bishops, Abortion, Communion: Confusion

The blogosphere–and the Web in general–has been reacting to the release of Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter taking a very strong line against pro-abortion politicians being given Holy Communion. I’d like to call your attention to a couple of pages in this regard.

First, there a Catholic World News story headlined US BISHOPS REJECTED RATZINGER’S ADVICE. Among other things, the article says:

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, who heads a committee of US bishops studying possible responses to pro-abortion Catholic politicians, told reporters that the Ratzinger letter left the issue in the hands of the American hierarchy.

At their Denver meeting, the US bishops adopted a policy statement re-affirming the Church’s condemnation of legal abortion, but stopping short of any call for withholding the Eucharist from prominent abortion supporters. The bishops reportedly turned down a milder form of the resolution, backed by Cardinal McCarrick, which would have said that it was imprudent to deny the Eucharist to Catholic politicians. In conversations with the press, Cardinal McCarrick had hinted that the Ratzinger letter gave support to that position.

This article seems to draw a rather stark contrast between what Cardinal McCarrick said and what Cardinal Ratzinger said. How accurate is that contrast? That leads to the second page I mentioned:

Jamie Blosser, of The Magnificent Blossers, offers this page providing a point-by-point comparison between Cardinal McCarrick’s summary and what Cardinal Ratzinger apparently said.

Check it out and judge for yourself.

The Passion of the President

redblue175 No, I’m not talking about Bill Clinton.

It occurred to me while reading this editorial about Michael Moore’s Bush-bash Fahrenheit 9/11 that something explains the boxoffice success that the film has enjoyed.

It’s no secret that American society today is quite polarized–the whole “red state/blue state” thing–with one group of folks standing for traditional American and Christian values and the other group standing for–well, hatred of traditional American and Christian values.

The first group of folks earlier this year made the incredibly moving film The Passion of the Christ a runaway boxoffice success. Following a pre-release controversy that was a marketing bonanza for Mel Gibson, its core audience was fully alerted to the film’s existence and, since the film was extremely well-made and a celebration of their faith, the audience turned out in droves.

That left a lot of the other folks feeling left out, though.

But they’re not left out any longer. Following a pre-release controversy that was a marketing bonanza for Michael Moore, the core audience for Fahrenheit 9/11 was fully alerted to the film’s existence and, since the film is apparently well-made and is a celebration of its audience’s faith, they are now turning out in droves.

In other words, Fahrenheit 9/11 is the blue states’ The Passion.

Of course, despite the fact that it’s more in line with Hollywood’s blue-state value system won’t mean that it’ll do the same boxoffice as The Passion. It won’t even be close.

In cinematic terms, casting Jim Caviezel as the Christ is far more interesting than casting George W. Bush as the Antichrist.

AP's Gitmo Info

Well, this is encouraging.

After the awful Abu Ghraib fiasco there has been a worry in some quarters that a similar scandal might erupt concerning the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. (Remember all the hullabaloo over the Taliban and al-Qa’eda prisoners being taken there–gasp!–in shackles? Murderers and terrorists in shackles? The horror!) The scandal, if it were to happen, also might emerge in the press suspiciously close to this year’s presidential election. An “October surprise,” as it were.

Well, the folks at Gitmo apparently decided to get out ahead of that possibility and invited a group of AP reporters in to tour the facility.

The story is a relief. Nothing horrifically scandalous emerged from their visit. In fact, it was quite reassurring.

That’s not to say that those would might want to see a scandal couldn’t concoct one–nor is it to say that there may be things about conditions at Guantanamo Bay that haven’t yet come to light–but taking the story for what it is, it’s a relief. Unless something changes, the U.S. won’t have to endure an Abu Ghraib-like scandal coming from that facility.

AP’s Gitmo Info

Well, this is encouraging.

Well, the folks at Gitmo apparently decided to get out ahead of that possibility and invited a group of AP reporters in to tour the facility.

The story is a relief. Nothing horrifically scandalous emerged from their visit. In fact, it was quite reassurring.

IDENTITY CRISIS

pic_medidcrisis1cvr Every summer DC Comics has a major publishing event, which usually ties together heroes from across their line of publications. Most years there’s a lot of razzle/dazzle, but the results don’t live up to the hype.

This year is different.

If you have even the faintest interest in comics, even if you haven’t read one in years, GO BUY A COPY OF IDENTITY CRISIS #1.

I just finished reading the issue (which is still on the stands), and it is the best written comic that I’ve read in ages–even better than J. Michael Straczynski’s wonderful stuff on Spiderman.

It is powerful.

It will rip your heart out and stomp it into the ground.

Identity Crisis is a seven-issue limited series which is set in motion when someone who has been around for a loooong time in the DC universe is brutally murdered. This event forces to light a dark secret that several members of the Justice League have been keeping for years, even lying to fellow League-members to protect it.

The art is gorgeous, but for me the writing is what really makes or breaks a comic book. A few pages into IC #1, I was thinking “This is really well written.” And there’s a reason for that. It is penned by Brad Meltzer, who is a bestselling author whose “books have a total of almost six million copies in print, have spent over eight months on the bestseller lists, and have been translated into over a dozen languages, from Hebrew to Bulgarian.” You can read an interview with him about Identity Crisis here. After reading Identity Crisis, I’m going to be checking out his other works.

Deaths of long-established characters have been done before, and long-buried secrets have been unearthed before in comics, but this may well be the best it’s ever been done (even topping when Captain Marvel died of cancer). It certainly breaks new ground in terms of how the heroes deal with the situation.

This also is not a meaningless superhero death that will be undone in the course of time. This change is permanent. When you read it, you will know why.

This series starts even more powerfully than Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns. If forthcoming issues can keep up the standard set in this one, it will become more of a classic than they are.

I can’t tell you how powerful this comic is. There will be a lot of people reading it who will be choking back tears.

There will also be a lot who won’t bother choking them back.