[Abortion] 9 x 4

29/02/2008 – UPDATE: It’s official that this has to be the most popular post I’ve ever written. I’m getting visits into the 100’s daily and mostly landing at this page. But the reason for this update is that it’s come to my attention that some readers are being misled into thinking that the dead/murdered/killed/terminated/aborted baby in the second picture is Kimberly Mueller. I did not state this- in fact I provided a link to the news report that stated baby Kimberley was born the worlds smallest surviving baby.

In actual fact Kimberly Mueller is alive and well growing up with her ‘wanted’ parents. Please note that my reference to the familiarity of the image was to draw an inference between the two, that the second child was not only alive but had every possibility of health and life ahead of it, and was at a similar age to baby Kimberley before being made dead.

It’s startling, upsetting and sadly a reality, I don’t make apologies for this. I truly hope that perhaps someone considering an abortion in the second trimester would find this post and be put off. I would hope they consider adoption, or even the fact that their own mother gave them chance. I don’t believe these children are unwanted (by God, by childless couples, by the church or people of compassion), but I do believe for every ‘abortion’ there is an unwanted mother.

36. That’s the number of weeks, roughly, that it takes for a pregnancy to come to full term.

24. That’s the number of weeks (in the UK) that an abortion can be legally carried out up to.

12. That’s the ‘safety zone’, the number of weeks between 24 and 36 for a growing fetus/unborn child.

15. That’s the number of weeks that baby Kimberly Mueller was born prematurely (that makes her 21 weeks old as a fetus/child).

If baby Kimberly was killed terminated now, it would not be called ‘termination’, it would be called murder.

Here’s a picture of baby Kimberly, weighing just 10.5 ounces:

I’m trying to figure out where I’ve seen a similar looking picture before… [please do not click to continue if you are of a sensitive nature]

Just In Case You Were Interested…

It’s that time again when I divulge a little on what’s happening offline and how that affects my blogging. I usually start with some vague updates of the crap I’m having to deal with or good things come my way, this time will be a mixture of both. I then usually give a rundown of the subjects I want to tackle on the blog next, and usually this is way off mark. Finally I end by saying how all this stuff I’m dealing with is going to prevent me from blogging/reading for a while, and usually it doesn’t.

So let’s begin with where it’s at…

Declaration of Beliefs: 9/11

Following my declaration of beliefs on creation, I thought it would be a good idea to apply it to other things, especially those sorts of things that have variable opinions, areas of gray and much controversy. So I thought I’d turn my attention to 9/11 conspiracy theories and where I stand.

My opinion is it’s not just the whacko’s that believe some sort of conspiracy or cover up has taken place, there is a lot of reasonable discussion going on, coming from reasonable sources. What seems to be most damaging to Conspiraloons is those that try to link it to something like a Zion movement, the return of Jesus or numerology.

Bloggers that have discussed 9/11 that I read and communicate with include, but are not all related to, conspiracy movements: The Antagonist, Stef, lwtc247 and Josh. There is also the 9/11 Truth Movement but I don’t really get involved to that extent…

Nobody Move! Step Away From The, Err… Camera!

Top police officers keeping the streets clean from filthy… err… cyclists and dangerous… err… blokes with cameras.

HT: Famous for 15 megapixels, I laughed so hard I just had to post it myself.

Does it worry anybody else that they are seemingly not aware of the law and are targeting very low level, seemingly odd, yet non-criminal behaviour.

 

Technorati Tags: cops, police, arrest, camera, recording, crime, criminals, stupidity

Bigger Fish Eats Big Fish

I don’t suppose anyone’s seen the irony in it yet? Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads published some unfavourable commentary about Russian tyrant millionaire Alisher Usmanov and his lawyers ordered the England based webhost to take it down.

What I find interesting is the reaction of those, friend and foe alike, to the take-down. Mostly political bloggers (and mostly self-titled ‘liberal’s) who have been accusing each other and tossing about libel threats for years. Most of these people were the first to put up those stupid ‘Find Lowde’ campaign buttons and bemoan her many ‘libelous’ blog posts.

Suddenly it’s all turned from empty threats, hollow accusations, angry rants and become a little bit more real and threatening hasn’t it? Perhaps those who are quick to shout libel will now consider what they are saying before they commit.

A lot of discussion has taken place recently over at Cecilieaux’s blog regarding a post he made on Felicity Jane Lowde. I think his summary is spot on, in his own commentary on the explosive response that took place:

“Someone blogs about you and you don’t like it? Ignore it or blog back. Someone e-mails you and you don’t want it? Delete it, filter it out and so on.
People who get riled about these things need to take a deep breath and repeat after me: “This is just a hobby.” Breathe in, breathe out. Repeat three times. Feels better, no?
What is it about computers that induces this kind of behavior?
I write pretty much the way I speak. Most of you would not like me and — surprise! — I probably would not like you.
But I sense that some of the nonsense posted here by the commenters goes way beyond what they are accustomed to saying to someone on the street. For example, how many commenters would really go around referring to women as “tits” in the presence of women capable of beating them up or, at a minimum, shaming them?
Nonetheless, thank you all for providing a window into cyberobsessions that I never imagined existed.
I’m sure also that American visitors were also enlightened as to the appalling lack of liberties in Britain — my sympathies. As you rise and I go to sleep, rest assured I will honor your U.S. constitutional right to rant. Let the circus continue.” – Elephant in the Blog

It’s nice to rely on something as a weapon till it’s used against you isn’t it?

 

UPDATE: Tim Worstall has published a list of bloggers who have commented on and criticised the actions of the Russian tyrant billionaire. Whilst I stand in solidarity against this libel action, if you want to see what I mean about irony, take some random links from that list and type in the following to google: “libel site:[url of blog]”. It won’t be long before you find some who have previously threatened libel action against fellow bloggers.

Technorati Tags: libel, lawyers, blogidarity, tim ireland, bloggerheads, russian millionaire, alisher usmanov, trolls, politics webhosting

The Blogroll is Back

I have resurrected the blogroll on the sidebar with all reciprocal links. If I have accidentally forgotten your blog, please let me know asap and don’t be shy.

The blogroll is going to exist for reciprocal links, lesser known or obscure bloggers who deserve recognition and other worthwhile blogs, so don’t expect to see many VIP or celebrity bloggers on this sidebar unless they linked me (blogroll or post).

Declaration of Beliefs: Creation

I’m quite inspired by Ken Browns new blog C.Orthodoxy where he has posted a declaration of sorts on his personal belief regarding Creation and Evolution. I thought I’d do something similar since I’ve explored this topic quite a bit on the blog but never set officially set out my own beliefs. I’ve taken Ken’s declaration as my template and modified it accordingly. You will notice my declaration is a bit more exaggerated than Ken’s, something I tried but couldn’t avoid.

I believe:

• The existence of the universe is entirely contingent upon the will of God; it had a beginning and is not self-existent.
• The universe is probably more than 10,000 years old.
• That life on earth is irreducibly complex and no blind processes alone can explain its origin.
• All human and animal life on earth was designed and created using a common ancestor (due to the presence of DNA and carbon) but not common descent, subject to natural selection, genetic drift and gene flow.
• That while natural selection, adaption and genetic mutation explains many odd features of life, their powers are grossly exaggerated.
• It is an open question whether and how God has actively guided and propelled the continuing evolution of life.
• That humanity is in a fallen state (prone to sin i.e. error, selfishness, wrongdoing, evil etc.), that humanity has a free will to choose and act contrary to fallen nature and that it can ultimately be redeemed by believing upon and outworking faith in Christ.
• However they came about, the essential features of humanity ? including morality, reason, society, invention, etc. ? ultimately reflect God’s image – a part of our design.

I therefore believe:

• Morality is properly grounded in God?s own character, not created by humanity or inferred from evolution.
• That while atheism itself implies a meaningless and amoral universe, acceptance of evolution does not require acceptance of atheism or its implications.
• The Bible:
• Is intended to reveal the character of God and the person of Jesus, and exists as a testament to this.
• Is inspired by the Spirit of God upon men, hence it is the fallible word of God which must be interpreted in context.
• Is a mash-up of historical data, census data, poetry, parables, songs, sayings, prophecies and eye-witness testimonies, written by 40 acknowledged authors (but possibly hundreds of contributors), which must be interpreted in context.
• That, ideally, public school science classes should teach students to:
• Be skeptical of popular opinion and consensus.
• Question and analyze all evidence and all data
• Avoid bias and representing their own beliefs or conclusions as fact, where the results are inconclusive.
• Practically, parents and local schools districts should have the right to decide for themselves what their students need to learn.
• That the relationship between Christianity and mainstream science is, and will remain, a complex one, but there is no unbridgeable chasm between them.

Interestingly, whilst doing a bit of wikisearch (Wikipedia research), I noted that whilst young earth creationists are usually derided, traditional Hindus who believe the earth is 77.76 trillion years old rarely get a mention. I wonder why that is?

 

Technorati Tags: religion, science, evolution, creationism, beliefs, young earth, old earth, universe, god, c.orthodoxy

Titanic Slowdown

“A spokesman said: “This is a line-of-credit funding problem rather than an irresponsible lending problem. This is not anything to do with arrears or repossessions, which were no worse than industry norms. It’s about the global credit squeeze and the fact that funding has been withdrawn by the banks, which are generally pulling in their horns.” – Guardian Unlimited

Utter bullshit. What is a line-of-credit problem? Well, generally if you have a line-of-credit problem it means your lenders don’t think you are responsible enough to take out another loan, right?

I’ve been going on about interest rates, but it’s not just the rates rises that will finally kill it. This is what also needs to happen, banks having their own borrowing hit by the American subprime meltdown, in turn they tighten their lending belts and use better criteria. The significance of this is that less experienced Buy-to-Let’ers also have more difficulty acquiring a mortgage. Less people able to borrow, means less money able to spend on housing, meaning more difficult to sell a house, meaning sellers forced to lower prices, compete and… panic!

Two first-time buyers cling to the edge of a sinking ship and just survive. Watch those who took the plunge too early get sucked under. Witness the slowdown of the Titanic.

“And my mortgage will go on… and on”

 

Technorati Tags: titanic, slowdown, subprime, housing market, property, bbc, first time buyer, buy to let, mortgage, borrowing

Bill Moyers On Karl Rove: He Poisoned both Politics and Religion

“You have to wonder how all those folks on the Christian Right must feel discovering they were used for partisan reasons by a skeptic, a secular manipulator.”

 

 

Technorati Tags: god, karl rove, fear and loathing, bigotry, politics, religion, bill moyer, presidential race, election, secular, texas

RSS Clearout: August 2007

The lowdown on my RSS feeds for August. Before I start, I just want to say that Google has now added a search feature to it’s Reader, which now makes it oh so easy to find older items when you have a vague recollection. Yay.

Missional Position

Garet Pahl of Mongrel Horde features a video of John Piper preaching against the prosperity gospel. I don’t think I’ve heard anything clearer and more concise than this as to why it’s borderline heresy and should not be an agenda of the church.

Matt shares some information on a new archeological find. You may not agree with the bible, but can you really still claim it’s a work of fiction?

On his blog Power of Suggestion, Elmo writes about a discussion with his brother-in-law based on Dawkin’s God Delusion. His bro-in-law asks the old and tired stock question “If God created the universe, who created God?”. Which could equally be said of the multi-verse. His counter-points analysis of The God Delusion starts here, including a link to B-I-L post.

We know the Cross, and the Ichthys, What happened to the Rooster?

A mega-church cancels a veterans funeral upon discovering he was gay. There’s a few things I shall say here. For one, it is entirely up to the church’s discretion who they want to bury. My question is, if the guy was not even a member, why should his sexual preference even come into it? If you’re going to bury people who are not Christians or church members then refusing to bury someone who was gay is hypocritical to me. Kudos to the church though, they offered to pay for the funeral to be hosted at another site, which I think is not unreasonable.

A huge debate exploded on Emerging Grace’s blog, over Team Pyro’s posters featuring their interpretation of the values of the Emerging Church. I featured one of the posters in a previous post. I thought they were funny as heck.

I had an interesting debate over at The Osterley Times regarding the churches stance on abortion. Notice how the Roman Catholic Church was brought into the debate without my reference to it, considering the God’s Warriors video was discussing fundamental evangelicals. More on God’s Warriors here.

If it was possible to reincarnate, how would you actually enforce against it? Wouldn’t it be like ordering the wind to get permission before it blew?

Cecilieaux makes some interesting philosophical observations on the state of fallen human nature (though he probably wouldn’t use that term) and the redundancy of ‘innocent until proven guilty’. It causes one to wonder about how we make and enforce laws.

Cranmer weighs in on calls to ban the Qur’an in the Netherlands. His Grace rightly asserts that books should be conquered with the pen, not with state control as this atheist advocates. Ironically, the Dutch MP calling for this ban is the leader of the Dutch ‘Freedom Party’. Presumably some people are more free than others.

Ex-Pastor Haggard still has some lessons to learn about humility, it seems.

Speculation

The Guardian reported that house prices are destined to soar by 40%. It’s really up to the first time buyers, do you want to continue being conned? Makes sense that the banks would want interest rates to stay high unfortunate, but necessary.

Stef at Famous For 15 Megapixels has an innovative list of things to do in London before you f*** off out of here.

Probably one of the reasons for the runaway market has to be that home-hunters only take 17 minutes to make a decision.

You didn’t know that banks borrow money? Oh poor you. Yep, they all unite to keep you screwed. Who can blame them- they’re feeling the fury of their victims.

Credit Card companies have devised ingenious new ways to add charges. After 3… what a surprise!

Incompetent Leadership

The Osterley Times features a video of Donald Rumsfeld being questioned on propaganda strategies regarding the invasion of Iraq. Guess what, he tries to divert all questioning to everyone else before settling on “I don’t recall”. The only thing he seems sure about during the questioning is that they “don’t have a scrap of evidence” to prove a cover-up. See my previous post on these complete idiots who can’t ever recall. This man deserves no respect.

Should a man who cannot drive or ride even a bicycle really dictate policy for the roads, creating more and more ways to get fined? Well that’s what happens in London, read Neil Herron’s post.

Phil Taylor reports that Parking Services Councillors are to become mystery shoppers to test out Ealing’s parking enforcement. For it to be a fair test they should be given a job interview to get to in the centre of town, a cheque to cash and no spare change in their pockets. Alternatively substitute the job interview with two children to drop off/pick up from creche. Phil also noticed something peculiar about the Mayors propaganda rag, pretty faces.

If you were wondering how bidding for government contracts works, Dilbert has an excellent cartoon demonstrating this, via Ideal Government.

A council wrongly scraps a family car, another one of those fantastic policies introduced to fight crime which ends up being turned on innocents.

There is at least one smart politician in the UK.

LWTC gives a snippet of an interview between John Pilger and David Monroe on how individuals like Rupert Murderoch gets away with paying little tax. Also read his thoughts on boycotting the US and Israel (and UK when abroad), there’s lots of debate around whether boycotting should include vandalism and other criminal behaviour.

Camp Okutta trains children to in Canada to use AK-47’s and land-mines, which some people may think is wrong.

Despite how funny it is that Bush is once again saying the opposite of what he said before, his comparison to pulling out of Vietnam is only preparation for the inevitable implosion that is going to happen when America pulls out. This is why I say Bush, or one of the shadow Presidents need to swallow their pride and ask the UN to step in when they pull out. To not do so would be immoral and the only reason would be for them to declare, “we told you so”.

RedBlueChristian features some stupid quotes from politicians. I would have thought the post would be much longer given the wealth of material.

London Mayor again, this time he’s glorifying terrorism. Don’t get me wrong, I like Nelson Mandela, but I’m not the government setting ridiculous laws am I?

Media Madness

The Independent reported that a rich tyrant complained about his treatment in his attempt control the media and influence public opinion.

Elitist kids show their true colours. I’m not a fan of the Chav culture, and enjoy the odd joke but I sometimes think the reaction towards this culture is basically the same threatening behaviour dressed up in middle-class attire.

ISP’s grow concerned that the BBC’s new iPlayer might cause blockage in the tubes. More money for the building of extra tubes should solve the problem.

Josh at Silent Speaking noted journalist Stu Byofsky for the Philadelphia Daily News, was calling for another 9/11 to save America. Whilst it is noted that Byofsky later apologised, it’s not difficult to make a leap from that to conspiracy theories that 9/11 was an inside job. I note that many can’t imagine that the American government could be behind it, but governments have been murdering their own people since the beginning of time. It’s not beyond the imagination of this journalist that in a twisted bid to unite a country and find new sources of energy, a government would try to manufacture an enemy attack.

Stef writes on the importance of local knowledge and possibly coins a new (grr.) meme. Couldn’t have chosen a better title for the summit of the leaders of the worlds largest countries.

No-one disses The Hoff.

A sufferer of PTSD tries to justify being a murderer, but doesn’t succeed. I am not surprised since PTSD is not strictly a mental disability such as schizophrenia, I have had arguments about this before on the blog.

David Duff features a quote from Dr Dairymple and there is no truer analysis. It is not Times readers, it’s the poor who are the victims of most crime. Typically, those without a voice, who may not even have online presence.

Viacom once again act like pricks, this time they get caught out. Previous posts featuring Viacom’s aggressive business strategy.

Scientific Consensus

It appears Human and Neanderthal co-existed, shooting out of the water, the theory they were our direct ancestors. As Regis Nicoll points out, rather than question the theory, they just keep moving the evolutionary goal-posts.

Denyse O’Leary discusses a recent article by Phillip Johnson (the ‘Godfather’ of ID) on the exasperation of a Science Professor trying to convince his students of the Evolutionary process. The conclusion is that of a two-brained student. One that can give correct answers when questioned on evolutionary biology but holds personal ‘heretical’ beliefs. All I have to say is what I don’t hear many asking- If something is real and conclusive, it shouldn’t be too hard to educate someone on it. For example there is a theory that if you plant a seed, something will eventually grow out of the soil. This theory is proved and relied upon by farmers all over the world. A person would be crazy to argue against it, so why is it so difficult to teach evolution? Also, check out this follow up article on vested interests in the debate, and how hard-line evolutionists are shooting themselves in the foot.

Satellite data contradicts global warming hysteria, as the informed Wat Tyler points out. As I’ve been trying to warn people all along, it’s global cooling we should be worried about.

Baudrillards Bastard warns about the dangers of Cybereugenticism and highlights recent botched abortion in Italy.

A really good website from Alan Weisman, A World Without Us. It doesn’t seem to be making any political statement, though it did make me think of that other fiction event: the Rapture.

Technically Speaking

LWTC writes a post defending Microsoft’s new XML document format. Personally I’ve started sending out documents in .odt format. I don’t mind people emailing back saying they can’t read it and can I send a word document, but how else is the revolution going to get started?

Readprint is a new online service for free book reading. I’m psyched because not only can I now read 1984, I have bookmarked it into my new Nokia E65 web-browser which I can HTML surf through any Wi-Fi connection!

Has it really got so bad that Microsoft must now get court orders to force people to install Windows? One question, how is this going to be monitored. Do the authorities know about duel-booting?

Sony have been at it again. When will they learn.

Nacho from the Language Trainers UK blog, discusses affective connotations. Required reading for bloggers, I think.