David Ancell / Saturday, June 19, 2004 / Comments(0)
One of my favorite shows as a kid was Press Your Luck. I used to watch that every morning when I was home from school. The lights and the board must have fascinated me.
I remember watching one contestant named Michael go and rack up over $100,000 in cash and prizes. The game had to be played over two shows. I wondered how he did it.
Well, now I know. It turns out that they guy had figured out the board. This was kind of fun to watch since I didn’t care for the question round anyway back then.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Friday, June 18, 2004 / Comments(0)
If you are reading this, then you have found my new blog home. This blog is generated by an application that I developed using Cold Fusion. Thankfully, Macromedia provides a free version for development, and I found a host that will host the live site for a reasonable price. In the next few weeks, I plan to redesign the rest of my web page.
Please note that I have a new address here. There is a redirect on the old address to prevent people from getting lost, but please update your links to:
http://weblog.davidancell.com/
You probably noticed the new look of the blog. I have most of the features from the old blog in place. I decided to drop the “Best of This Blog” for now because I never kept it up. The category archive will not likely return here at all. The only thing that I am wanting to restore is my XML feed. This server uses Coldfusion MX, which has built in XML features. I just have to figure out how to use them, and I’ll be all set.
One thing that I have not decided is what to do about spam protection. One reason for getting away from Moveable Type was the fact that my comment boxes were the subject of frequent postings by spammers. I want to have an open comments section for legitimate users, but I’m afraid that the spammers will find me sooner or later. I may have to implement a system where I have to approve all comments; the ability to do that is already implemented in the database. I may also decide to have commenters verify that they are real people by sending an e-mail with confirmation information.
Feel free to e-mail me and tell me your preference. I’m partial to the idea of you having to get an e-mail, click a link in the e-mail, and activate your comment. The reason for this is that:
1. The mail service on this blog appears to work instantaneously.
2. It would mean that you don’t have to rely on me to approve your comment.
3. Most spammers don’t include their real e-mail address, so they would be effectively stopped.
4. If someone other than you decided to post a comment using your name and e-mail, you would find out about it when you got the e-mail. You could then notify me to stop the comment from being made public.
By the way, I have implemented invisible e-mail addresses for my comments section. Your address is required to post a comment, but it will not be displayed with your comment. It will be in the database for retrieval by no one but myself. I won’t sell or give away your address. I hate spam, too.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Wednesday, June 16, 2004 / Comments(0)
Fr. Frank Pavone wrote an excellent column on the issue of war vs. abortion. He tries to explain how war is not always immoral, but abortion is. He explains why.
One must be careful with one thing that he explained. He mentioned that Pope Paul VI, in his famous speech, was saying that we should establish conditions that no one feels the need to fight a war. Keep in mind that this is true for abortion, but it cannot be used to justify abortion on the grounds that we should instead just try to make it “unnecessary.” Abortion is always evil, so it must be prohibited no matter what.
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David Ancell / Tuesday, June 15, 2004 / Comments(0)
The USCCB is having their meeting behind closed doors as we speak. Pray for them. While I am bringing this up, please check out Russell Shaw’s open letter to the U.S. Bishops. Mr. Shaw is right on the money with this one, and his letter is charitable enough that it ought to be given attention.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Sunday, June 13, 2004 / Comments(0)
You will probably notice light blogging for the next few days. I don’t know when regular blogging will continue. The reason for this is that I am working on writing my own blog software. I have already migrated my existing posts to a temporary database, and each additional post is one more post that I have to migrate when I’m ready to deploy this thing. Sorry, but I won’t be making the software available. I am not able to handle development of an application for general use at this time.
I have almost completed the basic display of the blog, but I can’t put it on this server. I have only to develop my own interface so that I won’t have to go directly to the database every time I want to post. I am really eager to get this on the web, so I can assure you it will be done as quickly as I can do it.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Sunday, June 13, 2004 / Comments(0)
Dave Eggers writes in the New York Times suggesting mandatory volunteer hours for college students.
Before I respond with my opinion, let me say that I regret that I thought myself “too busy” to do things for others during my time in college and pharmacy school. I was taking a lot of science courses that demanded a lot of time. However, even when I had organic chemistry, microbiology, and physics in the same semester I managed to play my Super Nintendo throughout the semester, including finals week, and still end up with A’s in all three classes. I had time, and I wasted it.
There were others, however, who had duties in their state in life that did not permit the free time that I had. Some worked many hours a week to stay afloat. Others were married with children. Any service requirements would have to take this into consideration for these students. These kinds of things can be negotiated, but I doubt that university officals will do so properly. The ones who head up these kinds of projects tend to be so gung-ho about them that they show utter disdain for anyone who doesn’t share their enthusiasm, regardless of the reason.
While the above is an important consideration, it is not necessarily a reason to oppose mandatory service for college students who are able. I oppose mandatory service, but for another reason. Simply put, a secular university has no business telling students where they should or should not volunteer.
What do I mean by this? It is likely that a university will have to place some restrictions on what constitutes community service. There are enough people in university administration who have an agenda and will expect their students to have the same agenda. I can see a student not being allowed to count hours at a church-run soup kitchen because of the “religious” nature of the activity but being allowed to count hours at Planned Parenthood. On the same note, I can see a crisis pregnancy center not being allowed to count while seeing the same Planned Parenthood “service” counted.
As a pharmacist, I can see real dangers in this with my pharmacy school. Perhaps students could volunteer to counsel patients on their medication as part of their learning. This sounds like a great opportunity, but guess what the number one dispensed medication from the university’s student health pharmacy is. I can imagine pharmacy students required to do hours in “contraceptive counseling” as part of their service requirement. Such a course was offered as an elective at my school at one time (before I went there), and a professor stated in one of my classes that birth control vending machines should be available in schools.
Things like this have already happened in high school service requirements. In today’s university climate, the danger is far too great. Sure, the student can appeal and/or sue the university, but this wastes time in litigation that should be spent in learning. Given that many students already volunteer, the increase in service hours would not be as great as Mr. Eggers suggests.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Saturday, June 05, 2004 / Comments(0)
I have found three reports (two of them are here and here) of Senator Dubin of Illinois trying to show John Kerry and himself as a faithful Catholic Senator despite having a pro-abortion voting record. He published a scorecard showing voting records. As you may have guessed, he wrote the scorecard himself.
He compared the voting record of various Catholic senators on multiple issues that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have taken positions on. In so doing, he has equated such things as the Partial Birth Abortion Act and Unborn Victims of Violence Act with such things as media ownership and reduction of the amount of mercury in thermometers. It’s just like having a police officer spending his time investigating petty larceny when a murder just took place with the killer still at large.
There are a number of issues on the scorecard that are not even matters of faith (including the media ownership and mercury poisoning issues). This just underscores one thing in my mind – that the USCCB really should stop wasting its time trying to decide issues that are not a matter of faith. Besides, it’s quite possible that the “positions” were really decided by bureaucrats, not bishops. While the bishops have a right as citizens to have their opinion on any matter, posting position statements on issues which can be morally decided more than one way confuses the faithful.
As long as we remain within the moral law, it is the duty of the laity to decide how best to resolve most issues. The bishops have no more business doing this than the laity have on the sanctuary. Per the Congregation for the Doctine of the Faith:
From the specificity of the task at hand and the variety of circumstances, a plurality of morally acceptable policies and solutions arises. It is not the Church’s task to set forth specific political solutions – and even less to propose a single solution as the acceptable one – to temporal questions that God has left to the free and responsible judgment of each person. It is, however, the Church’s right and duty to provide a moral judgment on temporal matters when this is required by faith or the moral law.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Thursday, June 03, 2004 / Comments(0)
I have found an article where, upon scrolling down, you can see that many people let Fr. Knight’s article have it. Unfortunately, the last letter, written by a man named Richard Fath, uses some of the most twisted logic I have ever seen in my life. Of course, he starts off by saying that as a Catholic, he has no problems supporting John Kerry for president.
What is his argument? First, he claims that there are differing views on when God actually creates a soul. Is it at the time of conception or at some later time. Supposedly, according to “medical testimony,” the vast majority of the zygotes do not even make it to implantation in the mother’s womb. Therefore, we can’t be sure if a particular abortion is wrong or not because the zygote may not have a soul, yet.
I sincerely hope that Mr. Fath is not in the business of demolition or fumigation of buildings. Using his logic, he could just as well say “I don’t know if anyone is still in the building or not, so let’s go ahead and fumigate [or tear down] this building. We’ll let God judge whether we did the right thing.” Such negligence would never fly.
St. Jerome and St. Thomas Aquinas both debated when the soul was actually created. However, both unequivocally condemned abortion because, at the very least, there was the possibility of an ensouled human being in the womb. St. Basil the Great said in the fourth century “The hairsplitting difference between formed and unformed [ensouled and unensouled fetus] makes no difference to us. Whoever deliberately commits abortion is subject to the penalty for homicide.” (see this article for further information). In other words, this answer to this “debate” has been known for centuries among the saints.
On another note, unless one has an intrauterine camera of some kind, we can never say with certainty that “a significant majority of zygotes never attach to the womb.” Even if we could, it is irrelevant. Heaven may very well be populated by billions people who never so much as implanted in their mother’s womb on this Earth. There is nothing absurd about this. The Lord can do what he wills.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Thursday, June 03, 2004 / Comments(0)
It was quite predictable that those who oppose the teaching of the Church would be up the sexual abuse scandal whenever a bishop spoke on moral issues. I’ve seen it in several articles articles and heard it in conversation. Supposedly, the bishops have no right to deny Communion to pro-aborts because of their failure to control the sexual abuse of minors by priests.
What these people do not seem to understand is that the failure of bishops to denounce pro-aborts and their failure to control the sexual abuse of minors are related. They both represent dereliction of duty on the part of the bishops. I dare say that both are of equal concern. The sexual abuse scandal did not originate in a vacuum but came about because the bishops did not exercise their teaching and governing authority.
I do believe that these bishops who are demanding that pro-abort refrain from Communion realize the need for an evaluation of how they carry out all of their duties. Perhaps they realize the need to correct more than just the child sexual abuse scandal. This is not to suggest that the sexual abuse scandal is unimportant, but it is to suggest that the culture of dissent and disobedience that has spread in the Church plays a large part in the scandal.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Wednesday, June 02, 2004 / Comments(0)
While I believe that abortion is sinful, not all sins should be made crimes.
OR
I believe that abortion should be illegal, but it is not necessary for all Catholics to believe this.
First, read this, from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. This document was written specifically about the responsibility of Catholics in public life. It was written to clarify some points in which ambiguities have arisen. For those of you who don’t have the time to read the entire document, take a look at this:
John Paul II, continuing the constant teaching of the Church, has reiterated many times that those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a “grave and clear obligation to oppose” any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them.
So, it is clear that we do have an obligation to oppose abortion politically as well as “personally.” Abortion is the taking of an innocent human life. We have laws against other kinds of murder which are clearly necessary. Therefore, laws against abortion are also necessary. The statement of the Congregation did not come out of thin air, nor did it generate new teaching. It reiterated what was already there. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that the Church does not teach that Catholics do not have to support making abortion a crime.
Those who use this argument often invoke the straw man of “infallibility,” or rather lack thereof. A Church teaching need not be ex cathedra to be binding. One may correctly assert that the teachings on the war in Iraq and capital punishment are not “infallible.” This isn’t the issue. As stated in previous posts, capital punishment and waging war can be morally permissible in the proper circumstances. Whether these circumstances have been met calls for prudential judgment. This is not true of abortion, which is an intrinsic evil.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized