Headline USA Today: Air Force Academy moves to curb Bible verses in e-mails

AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AP) — Air Force Academy officials are cracking down on a practice by some staffers to put Bible verses at the bottom of their academy e-mail.

“None of this (Bible or personal signature notes) is appropriate, and it says this in Air Force instructions,” Lt. Col. Laurent Fox said Thursday….

Earlier this week, academy superintendent Lt. Gen. John Rosa said the school would bolster its religious tolerance training after a survey showed evidence of harassment or pressure toward cadets based on their beliefs.

He said about half the cadets who responded to the annual survey reported hearing religious slurs, comments or jokes, and that some cadets felt ostracized because they weren’t religious.

First of all, I don’t think it is appropriate to use Bible verses in your e-mail signature at work, particularly if there are explicit instructions not to do so. As a Christian, you should be exemplary in your work, and you should not distract others with your conduct.

But it did strike me as odd that the article links banning Bible verses from e-mails with an attempt to bolster religious tolerance. Banning Bible verses is an example of bolstering religious tolerance?

Let’s get this straight. The USAF Academy has done a survey that finds half of the students are offended by religious comments of the other students. Therefore, in the name of “religious tolerance”, the USAF Academy will train the religious students to not mention religion at all.

Toleration is recognizing that others have the right to hold opinions that differ from yours. You can discuss your differences and try to convince others to adopt your view while they attempt to convince you of theirs. But at the end of the day, you recognize that they have the right to reject your views if they do not find them to be convincing, just as you have the right to reject their views. That is toleration. Toleration does not mean that one point of view is not allowed on the playing field because the other side might be offended. Toleration is not a one way street.

Exodus 10:14-15

¹⁴ The locusts came up over all the land of Egypt and settled on the whole country of Egypt, such a dense swarm of locusts as had never been before, nor ever will be again. ¹⁵ They covered the face of the whole land, so that the land was darkened, and they ate all the plants in the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left. Not a green thing remained, neither tree nor plant of the field, through all the land of Egypt.

Reuters Photo:

Caption: “Swarms of locusts obscure the Giza pyramids near Cairo, November 17, 2004. The pink locusts that swept through Cairo recalled the plague of biblical Egypt, flying high above tall towers and scaring pedestrians who stamped on them or ran for cover. Photo by Aladin Abdel Naby/Reuters”

Q.8. How does God carry out His decrees?

A. God carries out His decrees in creation and providence.

Creation and providence. God made everything and God maintains everything. There is nothing that He did not make, and there is nothing that He does not maintain. Were God to withdraw His support, everything would cease to exist. As Paul told the Athenians at the Areopagus in Acts 17:24-28

²⁴ The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, ²⁵ nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. ²⁶ And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, ²⁷ that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, ²⁸ for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’”

Paul teaches God’s creation of all things, and His providence over all things. The life and breath we have come to us because of God’s providence. Even where and when we live is determined by God.

Saturday: I got a good amount of my tasks for the day completed today, but not all. I was able to combine a couple tasks, and that made the day simpler. I got my daily run in by dropping the van off at the tire store for the alignment and tire rotation, and then running back home. Later I ran back to the store to pick up the van. (More on this later.)

By splitting the run in halves, I actually ran a little faster than normal, averaging 7 minute miles when I normally run at about 7.5 minute miles. So I learned a new technique for setting new speed records. Run more times in smaller intervals. Theoretically, if I break the lengths down small enough, and space them out over a week or so, I might soon become a world class distance runner (on paper). On second thought, I don’t think I can run even very short distances at the same pace as the distance runners do a marathon. I’ve never come close to running a 5 minute mile, or a 1 minute 15 second quarter mile for that matter. Call me a slowpoke, but I was able to get to the tire store and back.

The tire rotation and alignment got strange. I dropped the van off at 10 AM. They informed me that they were rather busy and would not get to it until sometime after noon. No problem, since I was leaving it there until they could get to it.

But at 3 PM, they still had not called, so I gave them a ring. "Oh, we’re just pulling your van out of the bay now. It will be ready in about five minutes." I told him I’d be there in about twenty minutes, performed the highly important task of loading up the MP3 player with some Don Henley (Actual Miles, if you must know), laced up the running shoes, and hit the road.

(Side note completely unrelated to the story, but indicative of the hardships of life: I found that with the compression rate I had selected for ripping Actual Miles, the entire album doesn’t fit on the player. I was two songs short. This was not a problem for today, since the tire store isn’t that far, but it is somewhat distressing none the less. Life is full of moments of great disappointment like this, but I bravely soldiered on.)

When I got to the tire store, the van was sitting outside. I checked to see the tires had been rotated (the spare was now correctly on the right rear, so it looks like they got it right), and headed in to settle up accounts at the counter. I waited, but no one came. After five minutes or so, someone came out and asked what I would like. I explained that I had just called and was here to pick up the van. He turned around and went back into the back office. I waited for another 10 minutes or so, and got progressively more irritated. What was he doing? Why did he turn and leave like that? I began to think about what tire store to use next time since they weren’t doing anything to return our van. Eventually, I looked out and saw them pull the van into one of the service bays.

"That’s why they are stalling me," I thought. "They haven’t aligned it yet! They only said it was done because I called and they were going to try to do it before I got here. But I didn’t take as long as they expected, and I’ve caught them in their lie!"

I stormed into the service area, walked up to the manager, and demanded to know what was going on. "You told me when I called a few minutes ago that the work was done, but you’re just starting to work on it now. You lied to me!"

The manager was very apologetic. It wasn’t him that I had talked to, they are very busy, etc.

"But you haven’t done the alignment yet!" (Yes, I was talking with a lot of exclamation marks.)

"Oh, no," he replied. "The alignment’s all done."

"Then why are you pulling it into the service bay? The tires are already rotated," I was baffled now.

The service manager couldn’t explain what they were about to do. I guess they were going to rotate the tires again. He explained that, since he works at the counter in the front, he doesn’t know what they have done and not done in the service area, and he didn’t know they had already completed all the work.

I apologized for accusing him of lying to me. He hadn’t lied. I was wrong. He runs a truthful shop. It is an incompetent shop, but it is truthful.

Another successfully completed task today was unclogging the bathroom sink. It has been running a little slowly for the last few days, but last night it spontaneously stopped flowing altogether. It turned out to be a hairball. So now you know the answer to the riddle, "Q: How is Knilram’s bathroom sink like a cat? A: They both frequently get hairballs."

Why does the bathroom sink drain get clogged with hair several times a year, and the bathtub drain has never gotten clogged (with hair or anything else) in eleven years? I suppose that if we lived south of the Equator it would be the other way around. The bathtub would get clogged and the sink would always run freely. There are some mysteries in life that we will probably never solve. For now, I just satisfied that the sink is flowing again.

It is the age old problem. Your output exceeds your intake. You are working, and earning a reasonable salary, but, let’s be honest, you are just spending too much. Two new cars, the monthly payment on a huge house, the credit cards, cable TV, restaurants, clothing, vacations, and the final kicker: Starbucks coffee. Let’s face it. You’re broke. You’re in debt up to your eyeballs, and the creditors are about to start knocking down your door.

What are you going to do?

The solution is simple. Don’t cut your spending. That would involve some minor discomforts. (Remember, you have now gotten used to your daily Starbucks.) Instead of limiting what you buy, charge everyone who walks through your door for the privilege of visiting you and have them fund your profligate spending.

What? You don’t think that will work? Well, Pennsylvania’s going to try this solution with the city of Pittsburgh.

HARRISBURG — The state Senate was set to consider bailout legislation for Pittsburgh early today that authorizes new and higher taxes.

The legislation would raise taxes on all workers in the city, create a new tax on businesses, shift tax revenue to the city from the Pittsburgh School District starting in 2007 and establish a state commission to investigate school district spending.

The Senate vote was set for what could be the final day of the 2003-04 legislative session. Pittsburgh officials say the city could run out of cash in December.

The bill will raise the "occupational privilege" tax over 500% (from $10 to $52 per year). Pittsburgh kindly grants people the privilege of working in their city. Everyone who works in the city must pay for this great generosity. And since it would be uncomfortable for the Pittsburgh politicians to cut the profligate spending, the state politicians have decided to have the people who come to the city to work fund the reckless spending.

I know that $52 yearly isn’t much. I know that other cities charge more for the "right" to work in them. I also know that the original proposal was to raise the "occupational privilege" tax to $144 annually. Nevertheless, I find the whole concept of paying a city to be allowed to work offensive. I also do not believe for a moment that Pittsburgh has tried the idea of cutting spending to balance its budget and found it wanting. Rather, I believe Pittsburgh has found it hard to cut spending and not tried it. Cutting spending would involve difficult sacrifices like giving up the daily Starbucks.

I got a call at work today from one of my girls asking if we could go to the local high school play tonight. They are doing The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. That is one of my all time favorite plays, and so I agreed to take the family.

The play was well done, in the sense that the actors knew all their lines and said them all with very little stumbling. The words seemed to flow without them fighting to remember. In fact that was the problem. The words flowed too quickly. They said their lines so quickly, and with a feigned English accent, that it was very difficult to understand what they were saying. Since I was familiar with the play, I could still enjoy it, but I often felt that they were messing up some great comic opportunities.

For example, Dr. Chasuble flew through this great line:

Were I fortunate enough to be Miss Prism’s pupil, I would hang upon her lips. [Miss Prism glares.] I spoke metaphorically. - My metaphor was drawn from bees. Ahem!

He said it all so quickly that I don’t think most people understood what he said. It certainly didn’t evoke the laughter from the audience it could have if he would have said the first sentence in slow rapturous tones, and to finish in a confused and embarrassed stammering manner. I was able to enjoy it because that is one of my favorite lines in the play, but I don’t think that most people caught it.

The biggest laughs of the night came when Lady Bracknell was on stage. The part was played by a young man who has been in four other plays at the high school, and I think people were laughing at the idea of him playing a woman more than at the lines themselves. He too rushed his lines, and he had a lot of lines that are said with great agitation. Shouting very fast with a feigned English accent isn’t conducive to clear speech.

There were no major faux pas, like when our high school did Annie Get Your Gun and in the shooting competition, the person holding the balloons for the competition popped the balloon five seconds after the shot. The “judge” of the competition commented on the slow bullets. On the final shot, the person didn’t pop the balloon at all, and so the “judge” had to declare it a misfire and have Annie shoot again. Or when we did The Sound of Music and Captain Von Trapp was late from a costume change and didn’t arrive at the dinner party scene to break up the argument in his ball room between the Nazi supporters and the Austrian supporters. The people arguing had to ad lib lines to continue the argument while awaiting his late arrival. The one ad lib I remember was when one of the disputants said, “I predict that the United States will declare war on Germany when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor!” Now that was a line that got a reaction from the audience. I was watching for something fun like that to happen in the play tonight, but this play came off without a major hitch. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

All in all, it was an enjoyable play. But I was glad that I knew the lines before hand and could be waiting for my favorites.

Wednesday, we started to hear some rumors about possible layoffs at the large Pittsburgh based financial company at which I work (hereafter referred to as the Circle M). The first word I heard was when a co-worker returned from purchasing his take-out lunch at a local restaurant. He regularly gets his lunch there, and so is on good terms with the woman who works at the counter. On his return, he told us that today when he got to the counter, the woman said to him, “You work at Circle M, don’t you? The word on the street is that there are going to be a lot of layoffs tomorrow. I hope you are not one of them.”

After he got back and told us local restaurant workers are talking about layoffs at Circle M, we found out that three people in our area were already laid off that morning. On Thursday, we started to hear about people in other areas also. It seems that the restaurant counter woman has a better source for information inside Circle M than we do.

I’ve survived a few of these layoffs at Circle M, and it always surprises me how they handle it. The try to act as if nothing unusual has happened. They call the person into a meeting, inform him that he no longer works there, give him the information on the severance package, and then escort him out of the building. They have someone come and pack up the things in his cube to have shipped to his house, and they just pretend that person didn’t exist. As far as the company is concerned, the rest of us will never hear from them about this person who has just vanished. Pretend the person never existed, and go on with your work. Their direct boss will inform the person’s immediate co-workers, but management lets the rumor mill take care of informing everyone else.

The rumor mill is very efficient at carrying the news quickly. However, the rumor mill is not very accurate. I’ve heard from the rumor mill that there will be 50 people in our division and 1000 people in the company laid off. I tend to doubt those numbers, but our management isn’t about to tell what is really afoot. Just to squelch all the wild speculation, I would think the management would announce what is really going on, but for some reason, they seem to prefer to let the rumors run wild. And so we get our best information from the local restaurant and not from our management.

Strange things are afoot at the Circle M.

Headline Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Briefs: New committee to take district into the future

The “Taking Plum Schools Into the Next Century” committee has been formed.

The work ahead of this committee makes President Clinton’s role from the 1996 presidential campaign seem quite small. All he had to do was to “build a bridge to the 21st century.”

I had an opportunity to review one of my old journals this evening and ran across this entry from Christmas day 1991.

We had a huge windstorm a few days ago. It knocked down branches from the large dead oak tree by our house. We could hear branches crashing off of the roof all day. The electrical power went off a couple times, but never for more than a few minutes. Grandpap told me, when we talked on the phone that evening, that he was grateful the power was not off for long, since he has an electric furnace.

“The last time the power was out for an entire night was when so-and-so’s son ran off the road and sheered off the electrical pole a long time ago,” he told me. “Luckily, he doesn’t live around here anymore….”

That was my Grandfather.

Way back a long time ago (yesterday) I noted the headline trumpeting NASA’s new "Super-Fast Jet to Tuesday". Obviously it is a scientific breakthrough to allow people who hate Mondays to fly straight through to Tuesday. I would assume it has something to do with the theory of relativity and time dilation as you approach the speed of light, but the article didn’t explain the scientific principles behind the new jet.

Today there are pictures of this new plane that will shorten the work week by twenty percent.

AFP Photo:

Caption: "A B-52B launch aircraft lifts off with NASA (news - web sites)’s X-43A hypersonic research aircraft and its modified Pegasus booster rocket attached under it’s right wing at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, California.(AFP/Robyn Beck)"

Isn’t it a beauty, with it’s sleek design, modern stylish looks and obvious power? The X-43A looks pretty good too, don’t you think?

The only things that I’ve always thought looked a little silly on the B-52 are the training wheels on the wing-tips. But before you make fun of the 50 year old BUFF, keep in mind that without it, the X-43A sits on the ground, and you will have to work through all the rest of your Mondays.