Oh Dear

From the department of it's-all-coming-together:

Oil prices rose above $77 a barrel on Thursday as official data showed that US reserves of crude and petrol had fallen more heavily than expected.

Dwindling hopes of a rise in output from next week's meeting of producers cartel Opec, also pushed up prices.

October light sweet crude rose 57 cents to $76.30 a barrel having climbed above $77 earlier. Meanwhile Brent crude surged 43 cents to $74.77.

The rise is a move towards the record high of $78.77, seen on 1 August.

Gains were pared by data showing higher utilisation of US refineries.

Shocking innovations for your church

iMonk quotes Jared Wilson's 11 innovations for your church, and adds 11 more:

1. Sing hymns.

2. Preach through a book of the Bible.

3. Talk about sin.

4. Celebrate the Lord’s Supper more frequently.

5. Have a Scripture reading in the service.

6. Transition creative content from aping popular commercials and other media to creating your own, wholly original content.

7. Read, study, and teach theology.

8. Put as much effort and resources into men’s ministry as you do women’s. On the flipside, pair up younger women with wise, older women in mentoring relationships with the same conviction you have about men being in accountability and mentoring partnerships.

9. Hire from within.

10. In promotional material, use actual photos of actual people in your community.

11. Preach the Gospel.

I’ve got a few of my own.

12. Elders.

13. Use the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds in worship.

14. Have a book table.

15. Less music. Fewer instruments.

16. A couple of good mercy ministries.

17. Partner with a third world church, and instead of going over on a “mission trip,” send a small team to find out what they need that you can provide.

18. Pray the Psalms.

19. Train up some hymn-writers.

20. Defy labels.

21. A counseling/teaching ministry aimed at marriages and families.

22. Teach the classic disciplines of the devotional life.

23. Have lots of smart ass pomotivator posters hanging around.

Four Years later

Former CIA Agents say Bush was aware Iraq had no WMD

From the department of we-all-knew-but-we're-shocked-anyway:

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

Eco Grass

Deep root system, slow growth that requires you to mow it less. More here.

Osama at APEC

This is priceless:

The Chaser team's arrest after driving a fake motorcade into Sydney's restricted zone - with one member dressed as Osama bin Laden - proves APEC security is a success, the NSW Police Minister says.

An angry David Campbell denied he was embarrassed by the comedians' ability to penetrate APEC's restricted zone - rather, he was pleased the "multi-layered'' security had worked.

He said the prank was inappropriate and he "did not see the funny side at all''.

The Chaser's production team had been specifically warned by police to behave responsibly during the APEC security lockdown, he said.

"[The police] said: 'We understand that parody and satire are entertaining and fun, many people watch the program and enjoy it, but please understand the seriousness of this matter and please take caution as you go about making your program.'

I don't watch this show - but could these people be Australia's greatest comedians? They'll be talking about this in 20 years.

Riverbend makes it out of Iraq

This intelligent, articulate Iraqi woman has been blogging about the Iraq war since the beginning. She lived in Baghdad during and after the invasion and recently announced that she and her family were leaving the country. Despite the dangers, it now appears as though she made it out alive:

As we crossed the border and saw the last of the Iraqi flags, the tears began again. The car was silent except for the prattling of the driver who was telling us stories of escapades he had while crossing the border. I sneaked a look at my mother sitting beside me and her tears were flowing as well. There was simply nothing to say as we left Iraq. I wanted to sob, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby. I didn’t want the driver to think I was ungrateful for the chance to leave what had become a hellish place over the last four and a half years.

The Syrian border was almost equally packed, but the environment was more relaxed. People were getting out of their cars and stretching. Some of them recognized each other and waved or shared woeful stories or comments through the windows of the cars. Most importantly, we were all equal. Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Kurds… we were all equal in front of the Syrian border personnel.

We were all refugees- rich or poor. And refugees all look the same- there’s a unique expression you’ll find on their faces- relief, mixed with sorrow, tinged with apprehension. The faces almost all look the same.

D. James Kennedy, maker of "Evangelism Explosion", is dead

The Mole says:

The death of Dr. D. James Kennedy is yet another reminder of what the hymn writer Isaac Watts saw when he wrote that "time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away." Dr. Kennedy died this morning at his home in Ft. Lauderdale. He had been out of the public eye since suffering a significant cardiac arrest in January.... He has joined the great host now, and that chorus exceeds any on earth. I am thankful to God for the life, ministry, and personal influence of Dr. D. James Kennedy.

John Aravosis, a gay blogger, says:

Kennedy was a bigot. I have no respect for anyone, living or dead, who preaches hatred for his fellow man, and then has the audacity to claim that he's speaking for God. A higher power most certainly inspired D. James Kennedy. But that power had nothing to do with God.

Crossfire

I've been enjoying this open source RPG adventure game for the last few weeks. The graphics look rather basic but the game has depth and is reasonably addictive.

If you have Windows you can download it from the link above. If you use Ubuntu, you can download it via Adept.

Economics is Bull$%!#

This is from Angry Bear. It's so good I'm pasting the whole thing:

My father is a physcist. But when I decided to study economics, he started paying a bit of attention to the field so we'd have something to talk about. At one point, he told me: "Economics now is where Physics was before Galileo."

I've been thinking about that, and I'd like to expand on the theme. Right now, Economics is bull$%!#. Plain and simple. And it is bull$%!# for the same reason physics was bull$%!#... because people prefer to believe in myth than reality, and so many institutions crop up to defend those myths so strongly that a) even those people who would prefer to believe in reality never get exposed to it under the relentless weight of "experts" telling them what reality really is and b) those that manage to figure out what reality is usually find it best to keep their mouth shut.

And, just as before (and in the centuries after) Galileo, the acceptable "physics" myths varied by location, our acceptable economics (and I'm not putting economics in quotes the way I put physics in quotes - we know what physics really is, but I don't think any of us know what real economics might really look like)... in some countries, prices can be frozen or set by government fiat, in others, (such as our own) cutting taxes and shrinking government always produces more growth.

I want to focus on the myths we believe in here in the US... we have fewer excuses than folks elsewhere. After all, supposedly we are free to open our mouth and make up our own minds, so we should be the most free to arrive at some form of economics that is "right." And we worship technology enough to have made the data easily available.... its all there, at the BEA, the OMB, the BLS, the IRS, and so forth. And we all have access to computers and spreadsheets (no need for fancy statistics, just as there really was no need for fancy Latin prayers to determine whether you can transmute lead into gold) when Galileo was running around.

As I noted the other day... perhaps the most important question in economics, as it stands now, is what leads to faster growth... in particular, what is the optimal size of government, or what are the tax rates that lead to the fastest possible growth. And in fact, there are a lot of very well funded organizations and think tanks and universities that produce carefully worded studies that address these topics. But they generally find... we have to cut taxes more, and decrease the size of government.

Now I'm no academic (despite the 5 years adjuncting), and I'm certainly not angling for a position in academia, but I think what would happen to someone in any of the think tanks who pointed out that growth rates are higher at much, much higher tax rates than we observe now, and tax cuts have not usually led to faster growth rates than tax hikes. No theorizing, just pointing out the data. Because we all know that tax cuts and smaller government lead to faster growth (aren't Republicans supposed to be better for the economy?), even though we have over a hundred years of experience watching Alabama and Massachusetts.

But a lot of people know what the data shows... but they don't say a word. Anyone think the Dean of the business school and the Harvard Professor that advised the current president on the economy and are now advising the front runner on the Republican side don't know what the data shows?

In the end... the reason economics is bull$%!# is because the practitioners have allowed it to remain bull$%!#. And this is a problem... how many people died because physics remained bull$%!# for so long? And chemistry? And biology? How much further along would we be if things had changed centuries earlier? And the same is true of economics. How much farther along would we be if every president since WW2 had achieve JFK/LBJ's growth rates? Or failing that, Clinton's?

Put another way... this is not a game. Any movement toward and not away from the optimal tax rates and optimal size of government makes us better off, and movements away from the optima hurt us. The people who choose to perpetuate the myths and the bull$%!# are harming the country. What does that say about the ones that are smart enough to know they are perpetuating myths and the bull$%!#?