Barnson.org

In Afghanistan and Pakistan. Earthquake. I should be riveted.

And I care. I do.. but I’m so desensitized now, it makes me sad.

9-11, Tsunami, Katrina.. and this is huge, second only to the Tsunami.. and there will be minimal Red Cross donations- cuz we all gave to Katrina.

Man, would we have an opportunity here to be the hero, show these people we will be there for them. They hate us, and they’re hurting.. and if we step up and help.. maybe they’ll see we’re not so bad.

Problem is, we are. We all look and sigh and say “how awful” – but if anyone is like me.. my brain hurts from all of it.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I have just emotionally shut down about huge tragedies. I can’t wrap my head around them – but I only remember this happened when I log onto yahoo news. I feel terrible, like a “typical selfish American”, and I don’t know what to do about it. I guess I’ll send some money, and I’ll say a prayer or two.. but more than that.. I want to feel as devestated as i did for lesser things. I want that little piece of my soul back.

Hello again everyone. I have stopped by to read occasionally, and without fail my son is there everytime. Now my son is 3 years old. Every single time I come onto this site he thinks that I have pulled up a new picture of him. He thinks that because of the pic of Matt’s little boy in the toilet. Hunter has never done the pull a boy out of the hole trick hisself, however. He has been known to run around naked wearing nothing but a pair of bright yellow rain boots with frogs on them. He has been known to be like this and to climb onto my kitchen counters. He has been known to run outside like this. He has been known to answer the front door to my mother and her friend like this. WHAT is it with little boy’s? Must they? I know when my brother was Hunter’s age, and we lived on Allentown Rd. in P.G. county, he stripped down naked, covered himself in my mom’s powder, and streaked up and down the street. Is it the ” I’M FREE SEE MY WEE WEE!!! ” syndrome? So grown men out there, what did you do to your mother’s when you were little boy’s?

Super Soaker Flamethrower.

Must Make One. Just like the infamous Potato Gun, I must do it because I can. That is all.

Today’s Flaming Moron award goes to Senator Hank Erwin, from an article published in the Birmingham News:

Senator says storms are punishment from God

Wednesday, September 28, 2005 THOMAS SPENCER News staff writer

Hurricane Katrina and other storms that battered the Gulf Coast were God’s judgment of sin, according to state Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo.

“New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness,” Erwin wrote this week in a column he distributes to news outlets. “It is the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of God.”

After touring Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., and Bayou La Batre, Erwin said he was awed and humbled by the power of the storm. But he wasn’t surprised. “Warnings year after year by godly evangelists and preachers went unheeded. So why were we surprised when finally the hand of judgment fell?” Erwin wrote. “Sadly, innocents suffered along with the guilty. Sin always brings suffering to good people as well as the bad.”

William Willimon, bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, suggested another response from Christians to the disaster.

“I have no idea what sort of senator or politician Mr. Erwin is, but he’s sure no theologian,” Willimon said. “I’m certainly against gambling and its hold on state government in Mississippi, but I expect there is as much sin, of possibly a different order, in Montevallo as on the Gulf Coast. If God punished all of us for our sin, who could stand?

“Next week, 300 United Methodist clergy from north Alabama are spending a week working together to help folks in trouble on the Gulf Coast,” he added. “That seems to me a much more appropriate Christian response than that of the senator.”

Erwin, a former conservative talk-radio host and now a media consultant and senator, is not alone in seeing God’s wrath at work in the storms.

The al-Qaida in Iraq group hailed the hurricane deaths in America as the “wrath of God,” and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan suggested the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was divine punishment for the violence America had inflicted on Iraq.

Televangelist Pat Robertson said Katrina might be linked to God’s judgment concerning legalized abortion, and some rabbis suggested Katrina was a retribution for supporting the Israeli pullout from Gaza.

Katrina caused flooding of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and Erwin said the Baptists knew they had put themselves on the front lines ministering in a sinful place that could be targeted. He said he didn’t think the hard-hit residents of the low-income lower 9th Ward were singled out for especially harsh punishment but were merely in the way, as were the shrimpers in the struggling fishing town of Bayou La Batre on the Alabama coast.

“If you are believer and read the Bible, you know sin has judgment,” Erwin said. “New Orleans has always been know for sin. … The wages of sin is death.” Erwin said hurricanes are part of a pattern that was also in evidence in the Sept. 11 attacks. The increase in abortion, pornography and prostitution have caused God to remove an umbrella of protection from America, he said.

So to sum up, since it was the aged, indigent, and black who were hardest-hit by the storm, Senator Erwin thinks God hates old people, God hates poor people, and God hates black people. Hank Erwin is an [expletive]. — Matthew P. Barnson – – – – Thought for the moment: A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility. — Aristotle

A preliminary overview of a recent study published by the Journal of Religion and Society claims to have found a strong correlation between levels of “popular religiosity” and various “quantifiable societal health” indicators in 18 prosperous democracies, including the United States.

The most interesting and controversial findings are:

• Higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion.
• Rates of adolescent gonorrhea infection remain six to three hundred times higher in the U.S. than in less theistic, pro-evolution secular developing democracies.
• John Paul II and evolution-deniers claimed that secular cultures aggravate abortion rates. The data indicates they’re completely backwards: abortion rates are highest in the most theistic democracies.
• The least theistic secular developing democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in fostering low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion.

An editorial by Rosa Brooks summarizes the potential effects of this study succinctly:

Although correlation is not causation, Paul’s study offers much food for thought. At a minimum, his findings suggest that contrary to popular belief, lack of religiosity does societies no particular harm. This should offer ammunition to those who maintain that religious belief is a purely private matter and that government should remain neutral, not only among religions but also between religion and lack of religion. It should also give a boost to critics of “faith-based” social services and abstinence-only disease and pregnancy prevention programs….

This in itself does not make religion worthless or dangerous. All humans hold nonrational beliefs, and some of these may have both individual and societal value. But historically, societies run into trouble when powerful religions become imperial and absolutist…

Arguably, Paul’s study invites us to conclude that the most serious threat humanity faces today is religious extremism: nonrational, absolutist belief systems that refuse to tolerate difference and dissent.

I disagree with Ms. Brooks: I think the most serious threat faced by humanity today is environmental. With population growth at an all-time high, we are already experiencing the side-effects of massive population: massive death tolls from natural disasters. I’d rank religious extremism somewhere after that.

But not too far after.

What an ending to a great game !!! 20 – 17 Redskins over Seattle. What a great day – Awesome weather, Great Redskin football, sound of kids playing in the other room – Can life get any better than this….

So today we went to “Warbirds over Salt Lake” (or, depending on who you believe, “Warbirds over Utah”). This is a R/C model event that’s all about flying the scale-model military aircraft.

It was pretty good fun. During the drive in, the weather changed from calm to 15-20MPH winds. Unfortunately, for many of these people showing off $4000+ model airplanes, that’s simply too much wind to fly in where they’re concerned about crashing the model. This basically meant that only the most devil-may-care pilots flew.

So not a lot of planes in the air, but the ones that were were flown with style, panache, and reckless disregard for the safety of the aircraft 🙂 It was great fun!

Unfortunately, there was one crash: a scale model twin-engine B-25. It was pilot error, clearly: the pilot initiated a downwind turn at far too low an airspeed and altitude, tip-stalled, and turned his beautiful bird into an expensive trash bag full of firewood. Alas, you never like to see that happen. This particular pilot had taken his bomber model up four times the same day, working hard to keep the fans entertained when so few pilots were willing to brave the wind. He easily had flown more than every other pilot, save one indefatigable P-51 pilot who kept his bird in the air most of the day.

Must have been exhausting.

Me? Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like shilling out the $10 pilot fee to get into the air. I had a “warbird”, of a sort… a ParkZone F-27 Stryker. It’s a foam model, darn near indestructible, and if you do crash it, repairs are just some 3M Super 77 adhesive and strapping tape away. Trying to herd four children, though (and later in the day, 3 children) pretty much precluded my participation, too.

Next year, I’ll have to arrange a babysitter for a child or two so I can actually fly in the event!

Anyway, despite the steadily increasing winds, we had a great time. The one big plus about the high winds–up to 30MPH at times!– was that the downwind passes were extremely fast. It was amazing to see a 35% scale Corsair blow by at greater than 90MPH land-speed while doing an 8-point roll.

I decided to haul out my Stryker for some backyard-field fun afterwards, but when the plane began flying backwards at full-throttle 8 minutes into the flight, I decided it was time to haul it in. The two little boys with me get bored after about 10 minutes of flight time with my plane… it’s much quieter and smaller than the big, noisy, gas-guzzling giants flown at the field today.

Anyway, if you’re in the mood for some cheap entertainment, this is a great time of year to find a local model airfield and learn what events are happening there. They’ll generally have food, friendly people, and lots of airplanes in the air.

— Matt B.

Last night, Christy and I went to the 7 PM showing of Serenity, Joss Whedon’s movie which carries on the story of Firefly, the critically-acclaimed cult-hit television series. Spoilers, discussion, thoughts below. If you haven’t seen it, best vamoose your gorram hide till you got it taken care of.

The Audience and the Theater

The first thing that struck me as we entered the theater was the audience. It wasn’t very large, for opening day of a hoped-for blockbuster hit. The theater was about 2/3 full. This is definitely not the opening day of the next Star Wars movie, eh? However, it was really interesting to listen to the conversations around me. These people were discussing the story, the plots, wondering whether the bad guy would be one of the “two by two, hands of blue” or something completely different, and waiting with very expectant anticipation for the movie to start.

Curiously, the movie opens with little fanfare. There is no blast of trumpets, followed by a familiar soundtrack. The opening is quiet, almost reserved, with no opportunity for the applause that often accompanies the opening of a fan favorite on its first day. You are plunged into a new, unexpected story, meeting a young version of River Tam in a dream sequence, and shortly thereafter reliving her escape at the hands of her brother, Simon.

The Opening

I’ve gotta say this: Simon is a convincing character, dressed in his military outfit. I seriously did not know what was going on for the first minute of the escape sequence, until just before Simon made it clear he was rescuing River, and not just observing her. River is disturbing as always, being where she shouldn’t be, doing things she shouldn’t do.

Unfortunately, the entry for the villain was all too expected. The moment the scientist and his two guards stormed into the records chamber demanding the assassin’s authorization, I knew they were going to die. There was no way they couldn’t! I thought, however, that the line “Well, I didn’t happen to bring a sword with me today” was a very clever segue into the assassination sequence. For once, in a movie, the reaction of an onlooker (the hall of records girl who had let him in) was believable. She’s petrified, moaning and tearful at the deaths she’s just witnessed.

The Witty Repartee

One of my favorite things about Whedon writing is the plethora of memorable one or two-line interactions between characters. The only sad thing about them in this movie is that several of the best ones were in the teaser trailer! But here are the ones I got a kick out of.

Mal: “Define Interesting.” Wash: “Oh God, Oh God, we’re all gonna’ die?”

River: “I swallowed a bug.”

Mal: “Do you wanna be Captain?” Jayne: “Yeah, I do!” Mal: “Oh. Uh…. well, you can’t!”

Kaylee: “It’s been more than a year since I had anything betwixt my nethers didn’t run on batteries!”

Wash: “I am a leaf on the wind.”

River, to Simon: “You’ve always protected me. My turn.”

Simon, to River: “Am I talking to Miranda now?” River: <makes face like “I can’t believe you just said that” and “that was dumb, bro” put together> Simon: “Never Mind.”

Zoe: “I will not turn this ship into an abomination!”

The Storyline

My main complaint about the storyline is that, to my mind, it didn’t seem to go where the TV show was taking it. Of course, since it’s a stand-alone movie, that’s not entirely unexpected, and I’m sure if someone sees the movie without knowing the TV series, this makes more sense. They did a great job of providing background for those people who had never seen the movie, I thought.

For once, I was very surprised when I learned the secret of the movie. It wasn’t so much that 30 million people had been killed by the government. I kind of expected something along those lines. It was that, through this failed experiment, the Reavers had been created. That was utterly unexpected! Given that the Reavers have been the bogeymen of both the series and the movie, I’ve never been satisfied with the explanation that they were men who “ain’t men. Or they forgot how to be. Now they’re nothing. They got out to the edge of the galaxy, to that place of nothing, and that’s what they became”. They wrapped this up very nicely.

The ending

OK, the space battle scene was amazing. It was all too brief, actually: seeing Serenity dodging, weaving, with Wash at the controls hurtling the ship around–and into–obstacles was really exciting. Alas, I realized, this was not an end to the Reavers as a plot device. Given that 30 million people perished on Miranda, there is ample opportunity to keep showing more and more Reavers in future movies and series.

I’ll have to watch the movie again, but I got the sense that the bad guy had a unique sense of honor. Much like Jubal Early (one of my favorite bad guys from the series — I wonder if they based this bad guy on him?) there is a perverse logic to what he does and how he does it. In the opening scenes, he doesn’t kill the scientist right off: he allows him to choose his own fate first, then does it for him when he fails to fall on his sword. When the weird guy with all the TV screens betrays Mal, the villain offs him with no explanation or further discourse. It’s as if he has no respect for his intended victim due to the betrayal.

“Guy killed me with a sword, Mal…” That’s a haunting line, for some reason.

Best camera shot sequence, IMHO: The blast doors open. Camera rises from the floor. River is silhouetted, posed, axe in one hand, sword in the other, dead Reavers in a circle all around her. The wall behind her implodes. Soldiers enter. Close-up of axe. A drop of blood falls to the ground. A finger tightens on a trigger. River’s eyes contract.

“Stand down.”

Loved it.

So what did you think of the movie?

— Matthew P. Barnson – – – – Thought for the moment: So much food; so little time!

Alarmingly, a Factual Error was Found on the Internet! This little news blurb is from 2002, somehow slipping under the radar for three years before the major news services picked it up.

OK, I’m joking, the Onion is a fake news site. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t abundant factual errors on the Internet. They abound, everywhere. Even here (though I’m hard-pressed to find a link).

But Christy and I were just talking about this yesterday. A side-effect of the Internet is that more and more people will use the Internet to express their freedom of speech. In China, they make no bones about arresting people for expressing opinions on topics the governmet disapproves of. In the US, we satisfy our need for censorship by banning books in the name of “the children” and throwing webmasters of free sites in jail for not knowing that explosives information was on their site.

But this pure, unadulterated ability to, within reasonable limits, set up a web site and say what you want is a fantastic innovation for putting power in the hands of the people, without precedent since the invention of the Gutenberg press. I work with it every day, and yet I still think it is amazing, and the impact far-reaching. I can chat on a message board with anybody, anywhere in the world, for almost free as long as we both have Internet access. And carry on conversations in almost-real-time, the back-and-forth and witty repartee an unending stream without interruption.

Compare that to just twenty years ago, where if you wanted to correspond with someone in Great Britain, your choices were either time-consuming or expensive: post, telegram, fax, or long-distance phone call.

And yet… Sturgeon’s Law applies. 90% of everything is crap.

In this day of instant access to information, how do you filter what you read so that you’re not overwhelmed? Do you rely on major news sites? Blogs? Magazines? Or do you just randomly read, relying on your intuition to guide you as to what to believe and what to write off?

I have to post this blog, because the story needs to be recorded where others will see it, in the hopes that they might reference the story as a clear manifestation of spiritual involvement. Like fate. Or Nabu, the Assyrian god of knowledge and destiny.

This story is absolutely true. There is no embellishment for shock purposes.

Dan C. was a goody buddy of mine in high school. On weekend nights we would drive over to the Silver Diner on Rockville Pike dressed up in tuxedos. We would assume our regular position in the corner booth and send drinks to girls at other tables. Accompanying these drinks were napkins with pickup-lines scribbled. When the girls didn’t respond, we laughed at their missed opportunity, and heralded our premier position at the corner booth by slogging down french fries dipped in Old Bay sauce. We had a waitress named Ellen who we thought loved us. Now that I’m an adult, and can reflect on the situation, I bet Ellen hated our guts and secretly spit in our fries. We were some obnoxious teens. And we had driver’s licenses and a curfew past midnight.

I graduated high school back in 1991, the last year that U.S. teenagers spoke English in complete sentences. That was also the last year I ever saw Dan C. I went off to college, and while we spoke a couple times afterwards over the phone, we never reconnected. At least I have the memories of the good ‘ole days.

Fast forward to 2005, a year during which the majority of U.S. teenagers have identified the term “literacy” as a form of cancer. I’m in the process of cleaning out my basement. I’m going through all kinds of old boxes when I come across my high school yearbook from 1991. While flipping through the pages, I read where friends signed my yearbook from 14 years ago. I see Matt’s writing. And Kevin’s. Even Ben.

Then I come across Dan C.’s writing AND IT IS THE EXACT MOMENT THAT THE PHONE RINGS AND IT IS DAN C. CALLING ME AFTER 14 YEARS.

I recall that after the basement stopped spinning, my first words to Dan were, “Is this some kind of joke? Are you for real? What?”

So you can all have your 5,000 word posts on religion and faith. Based on my experience, Dan C. is a god.