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This is so much less impressive than “Escape from Alcatraz,” but I guess it got the job done.
A manhunt is under way in western Germany for a convicted drug dealer who escaped by mailing himself out of jail.
The 42-year-old Turkish citizen - who was serving a seven-year sentence - had been making stationery with other prisoners destined for the shops.
At the end of his shift, the inmate climbed into a cardboard box and was taken out of prison by express courier. His whereabouts are still unknown.
The chief warden of the jail told the BBC this was an embarrassing incident.
CNN was kind to broadcast Obama’s acceptance speech and related celebrations live on their website last night, which was great for a TV cheapskate like me (Crystal and I have a small dinosaur of a set that we lug out for the occasional DVD). I watched a decent amount of the introductory fare, but I only caught the first and the last parts of the speech proper. From what I saw, Obama did a fine job honoring those who had helped him in his campaign. I thought his words about John McCain were particularly gracious, and I commend him for that.
Here’s my one thought about the event: this was a church service for many people.
Think about it. There was an opening prayer (concluded in Jesus’ name), special music (National Anthem), liturgical recitation (Pledge of Allegiance), dancing, tears, and an address by a national savior. I think for a lot of folks, last night was akin to a religious experience.
I’m not an economist. The only experience I have dealing with inflation is what happens to my eyeballs when I hear people talking about things like “principle” and “subprime loans” and “fiscal propriety” and so on. However, I am thankful that economists exist, particularly ones that care to make things understandable to non-economists like me.
In the most recent issue of WORLD magazine, Timothy Lamer penned an article titled “Anatomy of a Crisis: How Washington and Wall Street Got into Trouble” (pp. 10-11). In it, he explains what brought our country into the economic sinkhole we are experiencing. He does it in six steps, which I will try to reproduce and boil down a little for digestibility.
- In an effort to stave off economic recession after 9/11 and the “bursting of the tech bubble,” Alan Greenspan (Federal Reserve Chairman at the time) took bold strides to ease monetary policy, reducing the federal interest rate from 6% to 1% over two years (2001-2003).
- Because of the low interest rates, mortgage lenders started offering loans to people with sketchy credit history (called “subprime” loans). This increased demand, housing prices rose, and people started entering the market to “flip” houses (buying houses with debt, fixing them up, and selling them for a higher price tag). According to Lamer, “a speculative bubble began to inflate.”
- Mortgage lenders sold their dubious loans to groups such as government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two corporations then “packaged these loans into mortgage-backed securities and sold them to investors.”
- These investment banks used these securities to take on dump truck loads of debt. As a result, the state of Wall Street depended on the ability of suspect home buyers to make their monthly payments.
- Interest rates began to rise, housing demand fell, and the “speculative bubble” mentioned in step 2 began to deflate. Homeowners who had taken advantage of subprime mortgages saw their interest rates rising at the same time as the worth of their houses either stagnated or sagged. Many defaulted because they couldn’t make house payments, and the Wall Street investment banks of step 4 were left out in the rain, stuck with a bunch of debt that was “secured” by assets whose value was dwindling.
- In response, the Bush administration attempted to do what it could to avoid the collapse or recession that was feared. It “began engineering bailouts of some of these firms [see step 4] and, finally, proposed a $700 billion macro-bailout,” which we heard about recently.
Lamer sums it all up by saying:
The fundamental dynamic is this: Washington and Wall Street helped people buy houses they could not afford on such a massive scale that simply letting the lenders and debtors take their lumps would arguably do grave harm to the economy. They will take some lumps (Wall Street isn’t exactly a hot job market right now), but most of the losses will be “socialized,” or spread out among everyone who pays taxes. This includes those who exercised restraint during the bubble. That’s how it is. (pg. 11)
Crystal and I read the following portion of The Horse and His Boy the other day. C.S. Lewis is describing a battle taking place at a stronghold called Anvard:
The best way I can tell you what really happened is to take you some miles away to where the Hermit of the Southern March sat gazing into the smooth pool beneath the spreading tree, with Bree and Hwin and Aravis beside him.
For it was in this pool that the Hermit looked when he wanted to know what was going on in the world outside the green walls of his hermitage. There, as in a mirror, he could see, at certain times, what was going on in the streets of cities far farther south than Tashbaan, or what ships were putting into Redhaven in the remote Seven Isles, or what robbers or wild beasts stirred in the great Western forests between Lantern Waste and Telmar. (pg. 200)
I have two observations:
- We have the Hermit’s pool. It’s called the internet. It is astounding to me that the capabilities of a mystical pool in a children’s fiction tale are at our fingertips.
- The negative consequence of this is that it may make us more like hermits than we like to think.
Jacqueline Salmon from the Washington Post writes about a study released yesterday by the Institute for Studies of Religion out of Baylor University:
Congregants find megachurches offer more personal worship and sense of community than smaller churches, according to a study released yesterday that challenges the conventional wisdom that some large churches are too big to offer a spiritual experience.
Researchers at the Institute for Studies of Religion, who defined megachurches as those with more than 1,000 worshipers, found that their members were twice as likely to have friends in the congregation than members of small churches. They also displayed a higher level of personal commitment to the church — attending services and tithing more often than small-church members.
Interestingly, one of the keys to achieving a more personal feel is small groups:
To achieve a less impersonal environment, researchers said, megachurches consciously break down the congregation into smaller groups that meet regularly.
Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, which draws 5,500 people to its Sunday services, offers more than 100 types of small weekly groups — choirs, Bible study, sports teams and mentoring programs, the Rev. Grainger Browning said. “We are a large church during the weekend, but it becomes a small church during the week,” he said.
What do you think? Do you feel the size of a church affects the relational potential of its congregation?
Al Mohler has the details:
The greeting card features two male torsos in tuxedos. The message is clear — Hallmark is ready to join the celebration of same-sex marriage.
According to the Associated Press, America’s most prominent greeting card producer decided to roll out a line of same-sex greetings after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May. The company had released a line of “coming out” cards last year.
The AP article Mohler cites reports:
The nation’s largest greeting card company is rolling out same-sex wedding cards — featuring two tuxedos, overlapping hearts or intertwined flowers, with best wishes inside. “Two hearts. One promise,” one says.
Hallmark added the cards after California joined Massachusetts as the only U.S. states with legal gay marriage. A handful of other states have recognized same-sex civil unions.
The language inside the cards is neutral, with no mention of wedding or marriage, making them also suitable for a commitment ceremony. Hallmark says the move is a response to consumer demand, not any political pressure.
“It’s our goal to be as relevant as possible to as many people as we can,” Hallmark spokeswoman Sarah Gronberg Kolell said.
Mohler interprets the significance of this move by saying:
…the decision to market the same-sex marriage celebration cards reveals some tipping point in the culture. The normalization of homosexuality and homosexual unions is significantly enhanced when a company like Hallmark joins the revolution.
To be honest, I thought corporal punishment was a thing of the past. However, CNN reports today that more than 200,000 children have been spanked or paddled in U.S. schools during the past year, according to human rights groups.
Apparently this form of discipline is still legal in 21 states. 13 practice it regularly.
Alice Farmer is among those who oppose the practice altogether:
“Every public school needs effective methods of discipline, but beating kids teaches violence, and it doesn’t stop bad behavior,” wrote Alice Farmer, the author of a joint report from Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. “Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehavior and at times even provokes it.”
James Dobson, however, isn’t so comprehensive in his denunciation. He believes spanking can be effective with younger students:
“Corporal punishment is not effective at the junior and senior high school levels, and I do not recommend its application,” Dobson said on the organization’s Web site.
“It can be useful for elementary students, especially with amateur clowns (as opposed to hard-core troublemakers). For this reason, I am opposed to abolishing spanking in elementary schools because we have systematically eliminated the tools with which teachers have traditionally backed up their word. We’re now down to a precious few. Let’s not go any further in that direction.”
What do you think? Is spanking an effective means of discipline in school, or should physical punishment be left to the parents’ discretion? Were any of you — I mean, were any of your friends — ever spanked at school?
Denny Burk has the scoop. He quotes the Vancouver Sun:
“One of the world’s most famous evangelical theologians quit the Anglican Church of Canada this week because he believes many of its bishops are ‘arguably heretical’ for adhering to ‘poisonous liberalism.’”
Here is Burk’s summary commentary:
“After reading the excerpt above, you may be thinking: ‘I thought the split within the Anglican Communion was about homosexuality, not liberalism.’ Well, it’s about both. The Anglican Communion is being split apart because the liberal wing of the church is willing to ignore or distort the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality. At bottom, this is a question of biblical authority, and the liberal wing of the Communion has rejected that.”
Charleton Heston, versatile movie actor and recent president of the NRA, passed away this past Saturday in Beverly Hills. The cause of his death has not been released. Heston had announced Alzheimer’s-related symptoms in 2002.
Anthony Sacramone over at First Things posted a helpful round-up of articles related to Heston’s death. He writes:
“Heston was one of those towering figures you could count on to bring a certain dignity to even the most surreal premises, and who wouldn’t get swallowed up or overwhelmed by CinemaScope. Who’s left of his generation of equal stature? Peter O’Toole. Maybe Connery. That’s about it.”
Heston was known for his roles in movies such as “The Ten Commandments,” “Ben Hur,” and “Planet of the Apes.”
A description of the actor at CNN.com includes the following comment:
“With his large, muscular build, well-boned face and sonorous voice, Heston proved the ideal star during the period when Hollywood was filling movie screens with panoramas depicting the religious and historical past. ‘I have a face that belongs in another century,’ he often remarked.”
The family plans to hold a private memorial service.
On April 3rd Christianity Today posted an article titled “Cedarville’s Tenure Tremor.” The current article reflects an update from the Board of Trustee’s decision yesterday.
From the opening paragraph:
“Cedarville University has become entangled in a dispute over theology and academic freedom after it terminated two tenured professors in July 2007. Cedarville’s board of trustees upheld Bible professor David Hoffeditz’s termination Friday, despite a report from a faculty grievance panel of five professors that determined that the college had made “administrative missteps” in the termination process. In classrooms, the professors openly challenged other faculty members whom they felt encouraged postmodern or Emergent theology.”
Please pray for Cedarville as this is a difficult time for all.
