Careful Thought

NEW YORK (AP) — An unfinished tale by J.R.R. Tolkien has been edited by his son into a completed work and will be released next spring, the U.S. and British publishers announced Monday.

Christopher Tolkien has spent the past 30 years working on The Children of Hurin, an epic tale his father began in 1918 and later abandoned. Excerpts of The Children of Hurin, which includes the elves and dwarves of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and other works, have been published before.

“It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father’s long version of the legend of the Children of Hurin as an independent work, between its own covers,” Christopher Tolkien said in a statement.

The new book will be published by Houghton Mifflin in the United States and HarperCollins in England. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy has sold more than 50 million copies and was also adapted into a blockbuster, Academy Award-winning trio of films. A stage version is scheduled to open next year.

I was born the 11th of 12 kids. One of the joys/woes of coming from such a large clan is that my siblings are incredibly diverse, running the gamut from ultra-Pentecostal evangelical to neo-pagan and covering just about every stripe of the political and social spectrum. Most of us siblings have kids and/or grandkids by now with minds of their own, so the situation amplifies by orders of magnitude. Our family email list frequently devolves into gun play when faith or politics or football come up and occasionally someone will get in a snit and ask to be removed from the fambly list. I think it’s evidence that God has a sense of humor and that He isn’t done with us yet.

Here’s a great piece on Anousheh Ansari, the first female private space tourist to the International Space Station. (Her blog of the trip is here.)

The details surrounding the trip and the validity of space tourism are worth discussing, but the real interesting side to this is her background. She and her family emigrated from Iran following the Islamic revolution and she went on to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. She and her husband founded a telecommunications company that they later sold for half a billion dollars.

Here’s a no-brainer for you - where would she be now if she had stayed in Iran? Something tells me she wouldn’t be flying in space right now and there would be no Ansari X Prize.

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (Fox News) An Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur took off Monday on a Russian rocket bound for the international space station, achieving her dream of becoming the the world’s first paying female space tourist. Anousheh Ansari was accompanied by a U.S.-Russian crew on the Soyuz TMA-9 capsule, which entered orbit about 10 minutes after liftoff from the Russian cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Ansari reportedly paid $20 million to become the fourth private astronaut to take a trip on a Russian spacecraft and visit the station. On Sunday, Ansari defended the role of “space flight participants” and said she viewed herself as an ambassador for attracting private investment to space flight.  “In order to make great leaps in space exploration … private companies and the government need to work together,” she said at a news conference at the cosmodrome in Baikonur.

Ansari gave $10 million in 2002 for the naming rights to a prize awarded to the first successful privately financed manned trip into space. [The Ansari X Prize won by Burt Rutan and company.]

Ansari follows in the footsteps of Britain’s Helen Sharman, who flew to Russia’s Mir Space Station in 1991 as a tourist as part of a lottery system called Project Juno.

Continue reading “Ansari in Space”

Technorati Tags: Anousheh Ansari, ansari, x prize

Tags: Anousheh Ansari, ansari, x prize

Wuzzadem posts the current rage level of Islamic extremists.

Continue reading “Current Rage Level of Islamic Extremists: Normal”

Um, yeah.  Okay.

Actually, “immanentizing the eschaton” is what Brian McLaren and the rest of the “emergent church” are trying to do - create heaven on earth.  The problem is that want to manage it without Christ.

Alan at Theosebes does a great job deconstructing one of the patron saints on the post-postmodern church movement.  The first paragraph is from a Washington Post puff piece on McLaren’s latest work and the rest is Alan’s commentary.

[WP writes:]  McLaren, 50, offers an evangelical vision that emphasizes tolerance and social justice. He contends that people can follow Jesus’s way without becoming Christian. In the latest of his eight books, “The Secret Message of Jesus,” which has sold 55,000 copies since its April release, he argues that Christians should be more concerned about creating a just “Kingdom of God” on earth than about getting into heaven.

[Allen writes:]  There is nothing more insidious than Christianity without Christ (or is that Christ without Christianity?) and salvation without heaven. This is nothing more than Eric Voegelin’s definition of liberalism, ‘immanentizing the eschaton’, that is trying to make heaven on earth. To be somewhat more charitable, it is the old nineteenth century post-millennial approach, which sought to establish a perfect society–the Millennium–in order to hasten the return of Christ. Of course, these people aren’t really interested in Christ returning. Christ is only relevant as a selectively edited starting point for their preconceived notions of social justice.

The central message of the New Testament is the redeeming death and life-giving resurrection of Jesus. Jesus said many vitally important things, but those teachings are relevant only if Jesus died and was raised again. In other words, the teachings of Jesus are only critical insofar as they are linked to salvation and resurrection. If you sever that tie, then Jesus is not a good teacher, he was a liar or madman.

Paul was very clear about that point when he wrote to the church at Corinth, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”  (1 Cor 15:17-19, NIV)

This is the dangerous trap that McLaren, Andrew Perriman, Donald Miller and the rest of the emergents fall into - they seem to hate “the Church” and seek to recreate it in the shape of a social organization solving the social ills of society, unencumbered by a risen, atoning Christ or the need for Christlikeness.

As a wiser man than I once said, “Church-less Christianity is like sex-less marriage—it can only last one generation.”

Technorati Tags: brian mclaren, emerging church, nonsense

Tags: brian mclaren, emerging church, nonsense

Somebody got here by googling “rug making affront to god“.  They’re right; I think he much prefers linoleum.

Sydney Morning Herald reports (by way of INDC) that AlGore is finding that his message of Global Whining is not being well received, particularly in Australia.

“There are three places I do not go for advice on climate change,” fumed Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, dismissing the film in which Gore singles out Australia as trailing the rest of the world on climate change.

“One of them is to unsuccessful candidates for the US presidency who cannot even convince their own people that they are right. The second place is the movie,” he said, adding that the third was the Australian opposition.

Technorati Tags: algore, global whining, ian macfarlane

Tags: algore, global whining, ian macfarlane

How do your rights measure up? Brussels Journal posts this gem on the state of rights in the People’s Republic of Eurabia.

Just Over an Inch

Is about the size of a book(let!) handed out by the Directorate General for Justice, Freedom and Security (don’t laugh!) entitled, “My fundamental rights in the European Union“.

The EU “citizens” on the front cover are even smaller than their rights. Midgets in the EU’s scheme of things.

The ruler is Made in Great Britain and is a Royal Sovereign Product! Unlike a tape measure which I own, it does not need European certification to prove that it accurately measures length.

Or is that “Part III”?  When the Germans begin a six-month EU presidency in January, they intend to “facilitate trans-European territorial integration”.  The last time they tried it, the word they used was lebensraum.  They had that guy with the funny mustache, too.

Wolfgang Tiefensee, the Socialist Minister of Construction in the German Coalition government says, “There is great hope underlying the goal of a United Europe that we can permanently overcome old borders.”

There was no indication if he clicked his heels and his hand sprang up in a salute as he said it.

Interesting piece in the Brussels Journal (by way of Jack Lewis) on Norway’s growing Muslim immigration problem.  Seems there’s a divide between the sexes on how - or if - to do anything about it.

How the Feminists’ “War against Boys” Paved the Way for Islam [ed: Great title, by the way!]

The only major political party in Norway that has voiced any serious opposition to the madness of Muslim immigration is the rightwing Progress Party. This is a party which receives about two thirds or even 70% male votes. At the opposite end of the scale we have the Socialist Left party, with two thirds or 70% female votes. The parties most critical of the current immigration are typically male parties, while those who praise the Multicultural society are dominated by feminists. And across the Atlantic, if only American women voted, the US President during 9/11 would be called Al Gore, not George Bush.

The standard explanation in my country for this gender gap in voting patterns is that men are more “xenophobic and selfish” than women, who are more open-minded and possess a greater ability to show solidarity with outsiders. That’s one possibility. Another one is that men traditionally have had the responsibility for protecting the “tribe” and spotting an enemy, a necessity in a dog-eat-dog world. Women are more naïve, and less willing to rationally think through the long-term consequences of avoiding confrontation or dealing with unpleasant realities now.

Smiling and voting for parties that keep the doors open to Muslim immigration, the same Muslims who will be attacking their children tomorrow?