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| Sikh cop in New Zealand |
This rule is going to lead to many law suits as people of other religions demand the right to also wear their religious items while on duty.
Also count on law suits by arrestees who may be of a different religion that the arresting cops and who will claim religious profiling, prejudice and discrimination.
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GOVERNOR WALKER GIVES SOME GOOD ADVICE TO ALL POLITICIANS
But Walker acknowledged that the recall had taught him an important lesson — to build public support for his reform and policy efforts before trying to push them through.
“If I had it to do over again, I would probably spend more time building the foundation for support,” he told Van Susteren.
That's good advice for all politicians.
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THE SPIRIT IN THE SKY
by H. Millard (c) 2012
Sometime ago, nationally syndicated columnist Mona Charen wrote a column about lawyer/author Dean Overman whose passion is investigating the big why and how of life. In his book, "A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization," Overman tries to prove that scientific reasoning actually leads to the conclusion that life is the result of an intelligent God.
The problem with Charen's reasoning, and presumably Overman's as well, can be seen in Charen's constant use of the straw man terms "random," and "accidental" as the only alternative to an intelligent God.
The example used by Charon to knock down her straw man and ridicule so-called randomness: "a typhoon blowing through a junkyard and constructing a Boeing 747," is silly, but ironically may almost be a picture of the real engine of creation, not only on earth, but in the entire universe--the spinning spiral organization of order from chaos.
True randomness, is, well, random. It has no pattern, no form, no predictability. However, we do not find true randomness in the universe. Instead, we find a pattern and this pattern is there in front of us every time we watch water drain from our kitchen sink or when we flush our toilet. It is in every typhoon, hurricane, tornado, gust of wind. It is in our DNA, and in the way branches grow on trees. It is in sea shells at the bottom of oceans and in clouds at the top of our atmosphere. It is seen in the developing fetus. It is seen in the cornucopia of the ancients. It is also in the organization of galaxies consisting of billions of stars. It is the constant in our universe and gives example to the Biblical saying: "As above, so below."
In fact, it is almost impossible to find anything in nature that does not have this spinning spiral shape involved with it as everything in existence constantly turns and spins and seeks roundness.
The problem with Charen's reasoning, and presumably Overman's as well, can be seen in Charen's constant use of the straw man terms "random," and "accidental" as the only alternative to an intelligent God.
The example used by Charon to knock down her straw man and ridicule so-called randomness: "a typhoon blowing through a junkyard and constructing a Boeing 747," is silly, but ironically may almost be a picture of the real engine of creation, not only on earth, but in the entire universe--the spinning spiral organization of order from chaos.
True randomness, is, well, random. It has no pattern, no form, no predictability. However, we do not find true randomness in the universe. Instead, we find a pattern and this pattern is there in front of us every time we watch water drain from our kitchen sink or when we flush our toilet. It is in every typhoon, hurricane, tornado, gust of wind. It is in our DNA, and in the way branches grow on trees. It is in sea shells at the bottom of oceans and in clouds at the top of our atmosphere. It is seen in the developing fetus. It is seen in the cornucopia of the ancients. It is also in the organization of galaxies consisting of billions of stars. It is the constant in our universe and gives example to the Biblical saying: "As above, so below." In fact, it is almost impossible to find anything in nature that does not have this spinning spiral shape involved with it as everything in existence constantly turns and spins and seeks roundness.
This is the organizing, non-random principle; the great builder and destroyer of all that exists. This is the great card shuffler that takes those four simple chemicals of DNA and shuffles them one way to make a snail and another way to make a man.
Of course, this leads us to the next question. What causes the spinning spiral to exist and sets it in motion? Religionists, if backed into a corner on this question, will posit an intelligent God. However, it can be explained much more simply with elementary physics and can probably ultimately be traced back to something as simple as hot and cold, and negative and positive charged particles.
If one wanted to go even further with the speculation, it could be pointed out that in some religious traditions, God is said to have brought everything in our universe into being by bringing light--which is matter--into existence in a previously all dark universe devoid of any matter at all.
Of course, this leads us to the next question. What causes the spinning spiral to exist and sets it in motion? Religionists, if backed into a corner on this question, will posit an intelligent God. However, it can be explained much more simply with elementary physics and can probably ultimately be traced back to something as simple as hot and cold, and negative and positive charged particles.
If one wanted to go even further with the speculation, it could be pointed out that in some religious traditions, God is said to have brought everything in our universe into being by bringing light--which is matter--into existence in a previously all dark universe devoid of any matter at all.
The image we might create in our minds, by way of analogy, and for ease in thinking about this, is, perhaps, of a sort of a pre-universe made out of black paper with God on the other side of that black paper who struck a match which first burned a pinhole in our universe which then grew in a spinning spiral fashion as it devoured more of the black paper.
And, since the paper is endless--since it represents nothingness and nothingness can have no limits logically-- the fiery spinning spiraling pinhole has continued expanding ever since as it devours the nothingness and fills it with somethingness. But since the somethingness was all created at once and there is no more of the stuff, and since the nothingness can supply no new fuel, the somethingness in expanding ever outwards becomes less concentrated.
Yes, of course, this is a bit like the Big Bang theory and the expanding universe.
Perhaps the true Spirit in the Sky is much like that tornado bearing down on a trailer park. Is it possible that the universe has no need for an intelligent God at all, because existence is perfectly capable of ordering itself through a simple spinning that creates and destroys matter and sorts it all out based on various properties that different forms of matter possess much as a machine sorting oranges does the sorting, not with intelligence, but simply based on the size or weight of the oranges which dumbly fall through certain holes and not other holes?
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AGENDA FOR THE CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL STUDY SESSION TODAY
Fire Department Reorganization/Budget/Drainage
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