25-26 June 2005
Well, hello, everybody. What is going on? I am really tired of not communicating with everybody, so, I'm going to stop this--now.
First, for all of my friends from China. As of this past Monday, the 20th June, the U.S. State Department announced that the F-1, J-1, and M-1 visas for Chinese students and scholars studying in the United States will be extended from 9 to 12 months, and will allow multiple extensions, which will allow students to continue in their places of study in the USA without having to return to U.S. embassies or consulates to renew their visas so quickly. That will make it easier for students to get visas renewed, and, more importantly, will make it possible for U.S. embassy personnel to process new visa applications much more quickly. The effect of it will probably mean a pretty big jump in Chinese students coming to the USA. It dropped off a bit between 2003 and 2004, and picked up last year again. That number should now really grow, which helps both the students and especially the American universities, as well as the economies of both China and the USA.
Iran has had an election, and has a new President, do they? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is just the President for the ruling mullahs of the Governing Religious Council, which is the gang of religious thugs (too harsh for even most Iranian Muslims to stomach) that actually run the country. He is promising to increase oil production, get more benefits to the poor, and cure corruption (translation: amass more money in the hands of the religious mullahs, cheat the poor, torture more democracy activists, and beat more women who show the locks of their hair or worse, their ankles.). Publius Pundit has tons of sources inside her native country of Iran (she lives in Tucson, Arizona), and all of them indicate that the claimed figures of 48 percent voting in the run-off election is a sham, and that the large majority have participated in the mass boycott called by democracy activists. Well, there will eventually be a conflict with Iran, I believe, fueled by the mullah's insistence on building nuclear weapons to give to terrorists to attack the West, and partly from the presence of Al Qaeda's operations there as well as in Pakistan and Iraq. What is sad, is that the vast majority of Iranians want to be free of this tyranny. They are not enamoured by us, nor should they. Iran is a 5,000 year-old civilization, they can certainly handle themselves. But governing themselves probably would ensure an end to their increasing poverty.
The world is an amazing place, Gail is constantly showing me photos on her computer. The incredible explosion of color and complex beauty in the smallest butterfly, an almost endless array of animals, birds, plants-flowers, the skylines of human cities (she just showed me one of Perth, Australia, which I have always wanted to visit for myself--sort of like the end of the world to me). When I see things like that I remind myself that, even though the world seems so chaotic, like in what is happening in Iran, it's nice to know that this is still a beautiful world where life is worth living, and that God is in control.
Adios/Janae/Wao An/Anyo/Salaam/Ciao/Au revoir/Das devanya/Shalom/Bye and God bless for now.
1:10 a.m., 26 June:
I have been reading some of the articles from The Discovery Institute, which is an elite research institute out of Seattle, and which has put out superb information on a huge array of subjects from politics, law, economics, science and technology. It is most well-known for its work in the new scientific theory of Intelligent Design. They have a special section appropriately concentrating on ID research and critique of traditional Darwinian evolution, but in Discovery Institute's news and commentary section they published the column written by British Nobel laureate, writer and historian Paul Johnson, who is a fellow of both DI and Forbes magazine, where the article first originated last Monday the 20th. He challenges the notion of Christian or Islamic fundamentalism as a greater danger to progress today, and claims that it is atheistic fundamentalism, as the dominant scientific and philosophical system in higher education and academic research today in the world, that is proceeding to impose a dictatorship of conformity in the field of education, and therefore in world-wide culture.
Johnson's exposes inconsistencies in atheistic evolutionary thought in three areas: natural selection (Darwin's primary principle), the Big Bang theory of the universe's origin, and the origins of human language. He does not disavow evolution, and agrees with the commonly held belief that the universe is 13.7 billion years old (common to all evolutionary scientific theory). But he points out that moving from a non-designer's standpoint--essential to atheistic evolution, is literally impossible in the time necessary to develop natural selection, and in the occurrence of the Big Bang, which literally occurred in a vacuum of non-existence.
If you're into thinking thoughts deeper than what to have at the espreso bar at 10 a.m. in between classes, or during morning break at work, check the Johnson article out, and then some of the articles from DI's Center for Science and Culture. They'll challenge some of the assumptions you have accepted from well-meaning but incompletely-informed professors and teachers.
See you later. Hasta luego.
First, for all of my friends from China. As of this past Monday, the 20th June, the U.S. State Department announced that the F-1, J-1, and M-1 visas for Chinese students and scholars studying in the United States will be extended from 9 to 12 months, and will allow multiple extensions, which will allow students to continue in their places of study in the USA without having to return to U.S. embassies or consulates to renew their visas so quickly. That will make it easier for students to get visas renewed, and, more importantly, will make it possible for U.S. embassy personnel to process new visa applications much more quickly. The effect of it will probably mean a pretty big jump in Chinese students coming to the USA. It dropped off a bit between 2003 and 2004, and picked up last year again. That number should now really grow, which helps both the students and especially the American universities, as well as the economies of both China and the USA.
Iran has had an election, and has a new President, do they? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is just the President for the ruling mullahs of the Governing Religious Council, which is the gang of religious thugs (too harsh for even most Iranian Muslims to stomach) that actually run the country. He is promising to increase oil production, get more benefits to the poor, and cure corruption (translation: amass more money in the hands of the religious mullahs, cheat the poor, torture more democracy activists, and beat more women who show the locks of their hair or worse, their ankles.). Publius Pundit has tons of sources inside her native country of Iran (she lives in Tucson, Arizona), and all of them indicate that the claimed figures of 48 percent voting in the run-off election is a sham, and that the large majority have participated in the mass boycott called by democracy activists. Well, there will eventually be a conflict with Iran, I believe, fueled by the mullah's insistence on building nuclear weapons to give to terrorists to attack the West, and partly from the presence of Al Qaeda's operations there as well as in Pakistan and Iraq. What is sad, is that the vast majority of Iranians want to be free of this tyranny. They are not enamoured by us, nor should they. Iran is a 5,000 year-old civilization, they can certainly handle themselves. But governing themselves probably would ensure an end to their increasing poverty.
The world is an amazing place, Gail is constantly showing me photos on her computer. The incredible explosion of color and complex beauty in the smallest butterfly, an almost endless array of animals, birds, plants-flowers, the skylines of human cities (she just showed me one of Perth, Australia, which I have always wanted to visit for myself--sort of like the end of the world to me). When I see things like that I remind myself that, even though the world seems so chaotic, like in what is happening in Iran, it's nice to know that this is still a beautiful world where life is worth living, and that God is in control.
Adios/Janae/Wao An/Anyo/Salaam/Ciao/Au revoir/Das devanya/Shalom/Bye and God bless for now.
1:10 a.m., 26 June:
I have been reading some of the articles from The Discovery Institute, which is an elite research institute out of Seattle, and which has put out superb information on a huge array of subjects from politics, law, economics, science and technology. It is most well-known for its work in the new scientific theory of Intelligent Design. They have a special section appropriately concentrating on ID research and critique of traditional Darwinian evolution, but in Discovery Institute's news and commentary section they published the column written by British Nobel laureate, writer and historian Paul Johnson, who is a fellow of both DI and Forbes magazine, where the article first originated last Monday the 20th. He challenges the notion of Christian or Islamic fundamentalism as a greater danger to progress today, and claims that it is atheistic fundamentalism, as the dominant scientific and philosophical system in higher education and academic research today in the world, that is proceeding to impose a dictatorship of conformity in the field of education, and therefore in world-wide culture.
Johnson's exposes inconsistencies in atheistic evolutionary thought in three areas: natural selection (Darwin's primary principle), the Big Bang theory of the universe's origin, and the origins of human language. He does not disavow evolution, and agrees with the commonly held belief that the universe is 13.7 billion years old (common to all evolutionary scientific theory). But he points out that moving from a non-designer's standpoint--essential to atheistic evolution, is literally impossible in the time necessary to develop natural selection, and in the occurrence of the Big Bang, which literally occurred in a vacuum of non-existence.
If you're into thinking thoughts deeper than what to have at the espreso bar at 10 a.m. in between classes, or during morning break at work, check the Johnson article out, and then some of the articles from DI's Center for Science and Culture. They'll challenge some of the assumptions you have accepted from well-meaning but incompletely-informed professors and teachers.
See you later. Hasta luego.
