⁷The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. ⁸Their hair was like women's hair, and their teeth were like lions' teeth. ⁹They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. ¹⁰They had tails and stings like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months.

I don't know. I'm generally in favor of military tech. I like the idea of having the little mechanical guys take the heat instead of infantry. Just extrapolating out to the future - seems like a descendent of these newly deployed 'soldiers' in Iraq last week - what if some get captured and 'duplicated' by some bad guy scientists? - might be something else entirely. I'm just sayin'.

In her post about the Director of National Intelligence nomination today, Michelle Malkin warns that the Dems will take up Negroponte's service in Honduras in opposition to him.

We didn't need to wait long dearest Michelle.

The New Republic trotted out a 2001 story by Sarah "Wildman" Wildman today that decries Negroponte's UN ambassadorship appointment because of his "making sure human rights don't get in the way" as he "doggedly defend[s] U.S. interests overseas." This during the Reagan years support for the contras - one of our key victories against Communism during the Cold War.

Of course, the allegations in the 2001 article depend on the typical insinuation of unnamed (read: possibly invented) sources:

Most close observers, including some who served within the U.S. embassy, insist America knew about the abuses. And they accuse Negroponte of turning a blind eye. Says one human rights lawyer, "A guy like that is not going to be a very credible spokesperson for American principles on human rights."

Which close observers were those, Ms. Wildman? Which human rights lawyer? Was it the one that heard about the 'close observers' from you?

This just smacks of the same kind of drivel smoked up against Judge Gonzales.

Note to liberal Dems: Defeating the Communists was a good thing. So is defeating the terrorists - despite your defense of them. Give it a rest.

Deacon at Power Line likes the choice.

Most Republicans think of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a moderate - and he is on some social issues.

But when it comes to unions and special interests that are attempting to block his reform work on the beleaguered California economy he has become the Terminator. John Fund reports in the Opinion Journal this week:

On Friday, the governor nominated a socially liberal former legislator named Bruce McPherson to be California's new secretary of state, replacing scandal-plagued Democrat Kevin Shelley, whose resignation becomes effective at month's end. A few hours later, Mr. Schwarzenegger walked across the street and gave a fiery half-hour speech to 700 GOP activists in which he asked for their help in a "great battle." He pledged his reforms will go "to the source" of California's problems. "We're going right there where all the evil is, and we're going to fix this problem once and for all," he thundered. As the governor visits Washington this Thursday, national reporters should note that the most interesting political story other than Social Security this year is going to be the championship match for control of California.

"It's the governor's 'evil empire' speech," said columnist Bill Bradley, a friend of the governor who used to consult for Democratic candidates. Mr. Bradley has suggested the governor raise taxes as part of a bipartisan solution to the state's budget woes, but now he acknowledges the governor has decided he must crush his opponents rather than continue to cajole them.

Indeed, the governor's aides were stunned when he abandoned his brief prepared remarks before the semiannual GOP state convention and instead taunted his Democratic adversaries. He called liberal legislators "spending addicts" who need "outside intervention." "Those poor little guys," he said of the attempts by teacher unions and others to run ads accusing him of budget cruelties "They're trying very hard. . . . They may have a wonderful dream about that. But the reality is very sad for them. The reality is that they're not going to get my numbers down." He said he had received word that opponents of his four reforms would raise $200 million from around the country to defeat his proposals. "I say, bring it on!" (Ed. emphasis added)

Hey Arnold, my friend: "Keep Pumping!"

Though I continue to be generally dismayed with the scientific brahmanism that characterizes much of the science world, occasionally an interesting idea makes it past the censors into the public dialogue.

Such was a cover item of the November 27-December 3rd 2004 New Scientist (yep, I broke down and subscribed - running about 2 months behind reviewing them!): Einstein Eclipsed The puzzle that relativity can't solve.

This fascinating article describes the behavior of a common enough science experiment - the movement of a pendulum - that may exhibit very strange behavior under certain conditions.

Discussing some of the things the happen during an eclipse, author Govert Schilling presents:

But there may be more to an eclipse than meets the eye. Swinging pendulums go wild as if some mysterious force were tugging on them. Sensitive gravimeters give readings that fluctuate violently. Gravity itself seems to quiver a bit. Or so say a small band of physicists who claim that these mysterious phenomena hint at a fundamental flaw in Einstein's general theory of relativity.

And immediately follows with:

Needless to say, such claims have proved controversial. Celestial alignments, pendulum experiments, Einstein bashing - it all smacks of fringe science that deserves to be ignored. Surely there must be some conventional explanation.

But allows:

Yet when physicist Chris Duif of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands published a review in August this year of the various explanations that physicists have put forward, he concluded that they all fail to make sense of the bizarre findings. So now researchers are planning to pack up their pendulums and chase eclipses across the globe in the hope of settling the debate once and for all.

And the heart of the matter:

The first indication that something might be wrong came 50 years ago, in the summer of 1954. At the School of Mining in Paris, engineer, economist and would-be physicist Maurice Allais carried out an impressive series of pendulum experiments. Allais's original aim was to investigate a possible link between magnetism and gravitation. What he found was much stranger.

Let go of a pendulum and it will start swinging because gravity tugs down on it. Einstein's general theory of relativity explains this relentless tugging geometrically: every mass bends the fabric of space-time around it, so other masses slide down into the dimple in space-time. Walk into a room and you subtly distort space-time, pulling everything gently towards you.

Left to swing freely, a pendulum will always trace the same path through space. But because of our planet's rotation, the plane in which the pendulum swings appears to rotate slowly with respect to a laboratory on Earth. This effect was first demonstrated by French physicist Léon Foucault in 1851.

Surprisingly, Allais saw the pendulum's rotation rate increasing and decreasing in the course of a day, which was mysterious enough. Then, during a partial eclipse of the sun on 30 June 1954, one of Allais's assistants noted that the pendulum went mad. At the start of the eclipse, the pendulum's swing plane suddenly started to rotate backwards (see Graphic). It veered furthest off course 20 minutes before "maximum eclipse", when the moon smothered a large fraction of the sun's surface. Afterwards, the pendulum's swing went back to normal. It was as if the pendulum had somehow been influenced by the alignment of the Earth, the moon and the sun. (Ed. Emphasis added.)

In an improved version of his experiment four years later, Allais placed two pendulums 6 kilometres apart. During June and July that year, both displayed the same erratic rotation. The work caught the attention of Wernher von Braun, the pioneering rocket engineer. Spellbound by these apparent gravitational anomalies, he urged Allais to publish his results in English and not just in French (Aero/Space Engineering, vol 9, p 46).

And what could this all mean?

To Allais, the mysterious behaviour sounded as if it could signal the collapse of Einstein's general theory of relativity - a view he still holds today at the age of 93 and with the 1988 Nobel prize for economics under his belt. In particular, he claims that the pendulum results point to the existence of the ether, the hypothetical substance through which light waves were once thought to propagate. (Ed. Emphasis added)

Needless to say, none of this sits well with the established scientific views - there is a rehash of postulations that the original observations may have been due to instrument errors, 'cool spots' projected onto the earth during an eclipse - causing air movements or pressure changes, people being more active during eclipses (as if their running around would affect pendulums).

But Thomas Goodey, an independent researcher based in Brentford, Middlesex, in the UK, a trained mathematician is prepared to investigate the phenomena thoroughly - having been disappointed at a lunar eclipse on October 28, 2004 - he especially looks forward to the solar eclipse which will occur on September 22, 2006 under almost the same conditions as the one that Allais observed in 1954.

So, at least one series of scientific observations will be conducted to test a new theory - isn't that how it is supposed to work?

In a sidebar there is also discussion that the pendulum problem may be related to another real world observation:

According to physicist Chris Duif of Delft University of Technology, the mysterious behaviour of pendulums during solar eclipses may be related to another gravitational enigma: the Pioneer anomaly. In 1998, physicists and engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, discovered that the unmanned space probes Pioneer 10 and 11 are slowly veering off their expected course, as if the solar system is tugging a bit too hard on the two craft.

Fuel leaks and heat radiation are among the proposed explanations of the Pioneer anomaly, but despite extremely careful analyses the problem has never been solved. During a special conference on the anomaly last May in Bremen, Germany, a wide variety of unconventional solutions were discussed, but no clear consensus emerged. Scientists from JPL and the universities of Bremen and Cologne have now proposed a European Space Agency mission to study the mysterious deceleration in more detail.

Some astronomers think the Pioneer anomaly is evidence of a minor but important flaw in the laws of gravity. According to Newton's laws, the strength of gravity falls with the inverse square of distance. But Mordehai Milgrom of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, has proposed an alternative explanation which he calls modified Newtonian dynamics. In MOND, the inverse square law only applies where gravity is strong. Where it is weak, gravity fades more slowly with distance (New Scientist, 20 July 2002, p 28).

Modifying the inverse square law, some physicists claim, would also explain the motion of stars and galaxies without the need to invoke huge amounts of unseen dark matter in the universe. It may even point the way to a successful merger of general relativity with quantum mechanics - something scientists have been unable to accomplish so far.

So let's see - observable physical phenomena that call relativity, Newton's laws of gravitational mechanics, and the dark matter cosomological theory into question - and scientific observational inquiry takes place in what 50 something years privately funded by an interested researcher?

At least it's something. Which is more than we can say about most of the worshipped edifices of the new brahmans. Now those are some capes to pull on, eh?

LifeSite reports:

On Friday, the US Supreme Court is currently docketed to have an internal, private discussion conference on how to handle a petition to reverse Roe v. Wade. Operation Outcry, the group which launched the petition, is comprised of Norma McCorvey, the former Roe of Roe v. Wade and Sandra Cano, the former Doe of Doe v. Bolton, and the staff of The Justice Foundation, the attorneys representing both of them and the post-abortive witnesses of Operation Outcry: Silent No More.

The Petition for Writ of Certiorari can be read here. It is well worth a full read if you have the time.

Whether the court will grant the writ will be made public on February 22nd.

If you aren't aware - both Norma McCorvey - the Roe of Roe v Wade and Sandra Cano - the Doe of Doe v Bolton - the two seminal Supreme Court cases that legalized abortion in the United States - are Pro Life activists that want their decisions from thirty something years ago vacated.

Their legal theory has been rejected by several lower courts over the last few years so they have requested a review by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court receives thousands of Cert requests a year and takes a look at maybe 100.

We can pray.

Flash news release from the Rossi campaign:

More evidence King Co knew about No Signature On File ballots

Internal e-mail belies Logan’s claim of ‘mistake’

Bellevue, WA – An internal e-mail adds to the evidence that the King County elections department knew about No Signature On File (NSOF) ballots well before it claimed to have discovered its “mistake.”

King County rejected more than 700 ballots because it didn’t have signatures on file to match the signatures on the ballots.

On Nov. 3, 2004, an e-mail sent to King County Elections Superintendent Bill Huennekens included a list of NSOF voters.  A copy of the e-mail is attached.

(Ed: Email captured and inserted into the press release)

But in December, when news of the NSOF ballots became public, King County Elections Director Dean Logan, Huennekens’ boss, portrayed the rejection of the NSOF ballots as an error.  King County Councilman Larry Phillips, a Democrat who serves as chairman of the council, found that his name was among the NSOF ballots, and Logan worked quickly to find signatures to match the ballots.

Dino Rossi’s campaign says the e-mail indicates once again that King County is being disingenous about the NSOF ballot situation.

“We already have the December memo from Bill Huennekens describing how King County knew about the NSOF ballots at least since last spring, and how the county had tried to obtain valid signatures for all these voters before and immediately after the General Election,” said Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane.

“Now we have one more piece of evidence that the King County elections department hasn’t been straightforward with the public.”

Lane said it wasn’t until Phillips, who is one of Logan’s bosses, raised a stink that the elections department sprang into action, called the rejection of the NSOF ballots a “mistake,” and moved heaven and earth to get the ballots counted.

“It’s interesting that Dean Logan fell over himself to take ‘responsibility’ for the Larry Phillips ballots, which happened to benefit Christine Gregoire, but when he’s presented with evidence that thousands of votes can’t be matched to voters and that hundreds of felons voted illegally, he acts like it’s no big deal and says we’re just being partisan. 

“I guess you need to be a Democrat to get any problems meaningfully addressed by King County.”

The Rossi campaign obtained the internal e-mail by a public records request.

Can you say smoking gun - again?

This time in the New Republic (of all places - The New Republic requires paid subscription to read the whole article. H/t reader Charles.) Claudia Rosett squarely calls Kofi Annan to account as well as Paul Volcker for his squeamish report that simply focuses on OFF Director Benon Sevan. Claudia adds this tantalizing tidbit based on Volcker's disclosure as to the source of some of Sevan's ill gotten gains:

Investigators are now pondering Volcker's disclosure that Sevan's aunt, while living on a government pension in Cyprus, sent Sevan a series of payments from 1999 through 2003 totaling $160,000. The aunt then died in 2004 after falling down an elevator shaft, right around the time the United Nations, after much stonewalling by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and assorted protests of innocence from Sevan, agreed to launch an official probe into Oil-for-Food. (Ed: Emphasis added)

Gosh, if his family name was Foster instead of Sevan it would sound almost like the Clinton administration.

Claudia references the clear international treachery that should create worldwide outrage in commenting on Saddam's arms smuggling business and how its increase coincided with the OFF program:

Investigators for Senator Norm Coleman's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found roughly the same inflection point [Ed: a key turning point for the regime decimated by sanctions] when they looked at the oil-smuggling that became an especially large source of illicit sustenance for Saddam--helping him pay not only for palaces but also, as Duelfer documents, the import of clandestine arms. Under U.N. sanctions from 1991 to 1996, prior to Oil-for-Food, Saddam's estimated smuggling totaled $3.9 billion. Once Oil-for-Food kicked in, from 1996 to 2003, Saddam's smuggling volumes more than doubled to an estimated $9.7 billion. (Ed: Emphasis added)

And she points out that Volcker missed out on showing any culpability for Annan (remember that Annan was not mentioned in a single investigative context in the report):

What Volcker did not mention is that the proposals to revive Saddam's oil industry, supported by Sevan, were made to the Security Council by Kofi Annan. (Ed: Emphasis added)

Drawing to her conclusion Claudia provides the denoument once again:

In the run-up to Volcker's interim report, and in the debate now following, much discussion of Oil-for-Food has focused on procedure. Not yet addressed is that, in a system as secretive and creaking as the U.N.'s, the only true safeguard is the character of the boss. And, if anyone is boss at the United Nations, it is the secretary-general, who enjoys the prerogative to speak above the cacophony of the member-states. Nor is Annan shy about doing so. Last fall, during the U.S. presidential campaign, he was willing to pronounce his view that the United States overthrow of Saddam was "illegal." Since the Oil-for-Food scandal broke in early 2004, Annan's spokesmen--presumably with his approval--have repeatedly, and publicly, blamed the Security Council. That Annan would in effect point a finger at the Security Council in order to defend himself--but decline to speak up during Oil-for-Food on behalf of the defrauded people of Iraq, the betrayed trust of the world public, or the integrity of the United Nations itself (as opposed to its image)--should be troubling. (Ed: Emphasis added)

It is troubling Claudia. Thank you once again for standing in the breech and so clearly telling the truth. This is still the Mother of All Stories and will continue to be until the United Nations is cleansed of this outrage.

If you grew up during the seventies or eighties and you were a music fan you loved the Doobie Brothers. I think that they have been discovered by a new generation as well. One of the hallmarks of the band has been one of their pair of drummers: Keith Knudsen.

I just learned that Keith died of pneumonia last week. Rest in peace friend. And to the Doobie family: we grieve with you and know that there's a bit more rhythm in heaven.

I'm so thankful that I got to see Keith late last year at the Northwest Washington Fair in Lynden, Washington. Who would have known?

I don't remember seeing anything about this on the Grammy Awards on Sunday. Perhaps the program was already too scripted to do a tribute. Was there a mention?

The Doobie Brothers site has this:

Memorial contributions in Keith's name can be made to the National Veterans Foundation, 9841 Airport Blvd., Suite 512, Los Angeles, CA 90045. As many of you may already know, Keith has worked tirelessly for the NVF since the late 80's and has been a major factor in helping them all these years. I'm sure he would appreciate you remembering him in this way. He will be missed by all of us, but will be with us always.

Dean Logan, King County Director of Elections, gave a slide presentation to the King County Council yesterday. You can find the entire presentation here (h/t Josef).

Within the presentation is a slide that 'explains' "Ballot Duplication and Enhancement". I suppose that this slide is provided to give some comfort that the process was somehow fair and without bias. There are four pictures of ballots that were 'enhanced' - out of 55,177. What is also depicted is that there were marking pens on the counting floor in the presence of ballots. I can't help it -

pictures like this give me the shivers. Those pens could have been used for much more than just filling in ovals. They could have furtively made the 'checks' and 'circles' that needed 'enhancement' in the first place (Look at the pictures - by looking at the pictures can you tell what marks were made by the pens in hands? Are they showing us how various marks were made on the counting floor by these pens?). Pens and ballots don't belong together in a counting environment.

Elsewhere, another slide discusses Canvassing Board decisions on voter intent about 1,600 ballots that were given to the Board - with laud that they were 95% in agreement. Out of 1,600 ballots that would be 80 in which the Democrats overruled the lone Republican on voter intent - I'd bet that would be 100% of those 80. That alone is very close to Gregoire's 'margin of victory'. What of these 55,177? Are we to assume that they were handled to within 95% 'agreement' or 'accuracy'? That would be 2,759 ballots in question. If they 'enhanced' these ballots to within 99.8% accuracy - that would be the 'margin of victory' itself.

Of course, they don't show a picture of this ballot that we captured back on November 25th - 'enhanced' as a vote for Gregoire. How could they? Eliciting gasps of horror from their audience was assuredly not a design goal of the presentation.

Through the prompting of several people and my own interest, I have decided to do a series of posts on the Book of Revelation.

This may turn out to be a very large number of posts - the last time I conducted a small group study of this book it took us about eight months to get through it with once a week two hour discussions. That was about nine years ago I think. We'll just have to see where it goes.

I've been motivated to do this for several reasons:

1) My pastor is doing a series on Revelation and he is primarily taking an 'application' perspective that is certainly an effective form of teaching today as well as good 'daily life' ministry. But it is not informed by the rich history and meaning that I believe is intended by this epochal apocalyptic book. Blogging about it will allow me to express these views but in a context that isn't confrontational with my spiritual leadership - though it may provoke good discussion as many people that attend with me read this blog.

2) I have long seen eschatological issues as poorly discussed in general in the church - mostly because of the strong disagreement on positions - and I think relatively few Christians could have a cogent discussion on Amillennialism, Post-Millennialism, and Pre-Millennialism (in its various Tribulation forms). This is unfortunate given the times in which we live. Many emerging cult practices feature a strong eschatology and it is attractive for people to hear a prospect for the future. The success of the Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins "Left Behind" series demonstrates that there is keen interest in 'end times' literature. The fact that Babylon is in the heart of Iraq should not be lost on the Christian populace.

3) Though I am no scholar, I have a long background (more than 40 years) of eschatology studies with both a Baptist (Dispensational Pre-Millennialism) and Presbyterian (Amillennialist) background - and a reasonable working knowledge of the primarily Catholic 'Post' position. I would like to foster a discussion that attempts to explore the views with an agenda towards unity in the face of disagreement. I know that's pretty lofty but I'd like to try.

4) I believe in using the Old Testament to inform a discussion of Revelation. I personally do not believe that the Book of Revelation can be approached without a thorough grasp of Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah and parts of Jeremiah (pretty much in that order). I had an old Bible teacher that repeatedly told me: "The New is in the Old concealed, The Old is in the New revealed." I think that's a pretty good prescription. I think that this relation between the Old and New - especially in the apocalyptic literature is no longer well studied within the church at large.

A couple of people have expressed some interest in participating in this process. I'm thinking about taking contributions from additional authors especially promoting the Amillennial and Post-Millennial views. Please let me know if you have some interest in contributing to this effort.

This is not intended to be a scholarly work - my ultimate aim for doing this is to see what unity is achievable among those with a Christian world view. If you are someone that does not subscribe to the Christian faith, there may be some value for you to follow the history, arguments, and the actual 'end times' literature of the Bible.

The first few posts will be set up material. Look for one post a week for the time being.