On dealing with the lack of hell

I sometimes listen to AM religious talk radio because I'm amazed at the sorts of the things I hear. Today, while listening into local St. Louis 24/7 "TruthTalk" Christian radio station KJ SL in my car, I heard a bit of contentious discussion between a radio host and a caller. I believe that the host of the radio show was Bob Dutko. Dutko has long held the position that "Jesus really is the only way and He really did rise from the dead, physically and historically." When I first tuned in, the caller was talking, saying something much like this: I believe that the spirit of God resides in every person, and that people can live good and meaningful lives without belonging to any church. I believe that God will reward them based upon the good things that they do, and based upon how they treat others, regardless of whether or not they follow any religion. Good-hearted people who do not believe in Jesus or follow a religion will not go to hell. The host told the caller that his "new age" religious outlook was hopelessly naïve, and that he needed to read the Bible, whereupon he would see that there is only one way to avoid hell is by accepting Jesus Christ as Savior. [More . . . ]

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Quid pro quo over at the FCC and Comcast

It's time to investigate FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, who voted for the Comcast merger with NBC only a few months ago, but is now leaving the FCC to become a lobbyist for Comcast. This is outrageous. Three words: Quid pro quo. She should headed for prison, not soaking up a big lobbyist salary at the expense of United States citizens. Here's some low-hanging fruit federal investigators. Let's see if they do the right thing, or if they do anything at all.

Continue ReadingQuid pro quo over at the FCC and Comcast

Problems with this website

I'm having some rather pronounced design issues with this site, but only when viewed by Explorer 9 or Chrome. Things look right on Firefox and Safari. I'm aware of these problems and I'm working to fix them. In the meantime, all the material at this site is readable on any browser, though the design is scrambled on Explorer and Chrome. Thanks for your patience.

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Corporatized political ritual presenting itself as “news”

To my dismay, my law office installed a flat screen high definition television in the lunch room a few months ago. You couldn’t design a better device for shutting down spontaneous conversation in the kitchen. I’ve also been dismayed to see the kinds of topics covered by the networks, hour after hour. The major news networks pump out endless headlines about war, terrorism, conflict, freaks, athletes and celebrities. There is also a constant droning on by economics-charlatans. All of it punctuated by commercials attempting to make me believe that I’m a failure because I don’t own something. I’m trying to look at this television invasion as an opportunity to be more knowledgeable about television “news.” When I go in to refill my glass of water in the kitchen or grab a snack, I often take a small camera so that I can capture something bizarre about the “news,” so I can illustrate a post. I’ve rarely been disappointed. There is always something wacky going on, both on the shows and on the commercials. The way they present the “news” is news to me because I don’t watch any live television at home (we do watch movies, but no live TV), so I only know the news by clips I choose to watch on the Internet. Seeing bits of the news streamed in live, day after day, is shocking for many reasons that I’ll be discussing in future posts.

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Report card of American telecoms: They flunk out

The few remaining American telecoms want American consumers to focus only on options that they want to offer us. But we know how to use our slow American Internet to check out how other developed countries are developing their broadband coverage and speed. At Alternet, David Rosen and Bruce Kushnick have issued a devastating report card to the American telecoms. Here's the bad news:

  • America is now 15th in the world in broadband. While Hong Kong and other countries are rolling out 1 gigabit speed services, America's average is a mere 5 mbps (i.e., 1,000 mbps = 1 gigabit).
  • Americans paid over $340 billion for broadband upgrades that never happened; by 2010, America should have been completely upgraded with fiber optic services to every home.
  • The FCC approved Comcast's acquisition of NBC-Universal, foreshadowing a likely wave of integration of transport or carriage and content.
  • Together, AT&T and Verizon control 80 percent of all wireless services and AT&T is now attempting to close down one of the only remaining competitors, T-Mobile.
What should we do about this? Rosen and Kushnick often many dramatic solutions--including divestiture--if only members of Congress would listen more to good ideas than to wads of cash handed to them by the telecoms.

Continue ReadingReport card of American telecoms: They flunk out