Necessary Roughness

If familiarity breeds contempt, unfamiliarity breeds indifference.

Scott at DSvS has gotten into the habit of asking why LCMS people can raise a ruckus about the firing of a radio talk show host and producer but not raise a ruckus about other topics.

One answer arises from our own faults. We are too easily fatigued by hype. Is anyone not tired of the Messianic Coming of Barack Obama?

Another answer: People threw their support behind Issues, Etc., because they were listen to the show nearly daily. There was even some interaction, as some in the Lutheran blogosphere have been guests or callers. Who gets this kind of interaction from expatriate missionaries?

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The article from Street Insider is almost too short to quote for fair use:

Furthermore, Chevron announced that it expects to spend approximately $2.5 billion from 2007 through 2009 in alternative and renewable energy technologies.

That can’t make Obama and Clinton happy. They don’t get to confiscate those “windfall profits” and plow them into their own environmental interests.

This is the smart thing to do. I don’t understand why Exxon and some others want to cut R&D and raise their total profits to record numbers. It’s a behavior consistent with a lack of trust in their own people to maintain their position in the energy sector.

HT: Die Schreiben von Schreiber

Chuck Baldwin, a Baptist minister from Florida and radio talk show host, secured the Constitution Party’s entry for President of the United States. To his credit he put out a nice, direct statement of what he would do were he President.

As a matter of principle, I cringe when a pastor/minister/representative of the right-hand kingdom seeks office in the left. The statement however is refreshingly devoid of “Christian nation” or destiny language.

I like most of what he says: he is right on the money with illegal immigration, sanctity of life, the NAFTA superhighway, and nation building.

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The UK Guardian reports that only 3% of London street robberies were solved with closed-circuit TV.

Use of CCTV images for court evidence has so far been very poor, according to Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, the officer in charge of the Metropolitan police unit. “CCTV was originally seen as a preventative measure,” Neville told the Security Document World Conference in London. “Billions of pounds has been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It’s been an utter fiasco: only 3% of crimes were solved by CCTV. There’s no fear of CCTV. Why don’t people fear it? [They think] the cameras are not working.”

photo credit: internets_dairy

The police is collecting a lot of information, but the cameras aren’t good enough to give good pictures in low light. This sounded similar to my jacket fiasco. I bet a pretty penny (pence?) has been spent on simply trying to coax good images out of bad data.

The charity Victim’s Voice, which supports relatives of those who have been murdered, said it supported more effective use of CCTV systems. “Our view is that anything that helps get criminals off the street and prevents crime is good,”

We need to watch that “anything that” phrase. The return on investment and opportunity costs must be considered. If more police result in a higher apprehension and conviction rate per unit of currency than CCTV, then CCTV results in waste of the public treasury.

So I took a phone call from a field user. He wanted to make sure he was using the proposal software properly.

Technically he was using the software OK, but his proposal made no sense. He was selling cement with additives for the same price as cement with no additives. It was similar to McDonald’s selling a Big Mac for the price of a hamburger patty.

Normally we Information Technology people are classified as an “indirect expense.” Our salaries are not easily related to job revenue. Given the amount the proposal writer was going to short HAL, the amount of time fixing a botched proposal, the time a customer accountant can hold payment because the actual charge didn’t match the proposal, etc., yours truly turned out to be an indirect revenue generator.

Now, if I can just bump up my merit bonus…

Update, May 6: The original intent of this article was to show how I turned an uncomfortable situation into a salutary habit. In the first edition of this post, explicit references made some readers uncomfortable and were not necessary to the point, so those references have been removed.

There is a Lutheran blog called Priestmanship that details different ways a pastor may exercise his proper duty despite the improper wishes of his congregation. What I ran into today may fall under a similar situation, ‘Dad’-manship.

My daughter was impressed by the fact that her babysitters read their “Bible” and make notes in it before they go to bed. The five-year-old asks for a copy to take home, and they of course have plenty. The intent was all well and good, but their Bible turned out to be one of the New World Translation.

I came home today to find this out, and I wasn’t amused. I’m thankful she can’t read, but she really likes this “gift” and wants to read stories out of it at night and church. Bless her heart; I doubt I had that kind of desire when I was five.

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Rarely do we see Congress admitting it made a mistake. This may be as close at it gets, found in The Washington Times:

“The view was to look to alternatives and try to become more dependent on the Midwest than the Middle East. I mean, that was the theory. Obviously, sometimes there are unforeseen or unintended consequences of actions,” (House Majority Leader Steny H.) Hoyer, Maryland Democrat, told reporters yesterday.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) has been a stalwart free trader and has targeted some things mentioned on NR previously.

“This is a classic case of the law of unintended consequences,” said Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican, who introduced a bill this week to end the entire slate of federal supports, including the mandates for blended gasoline, the tax credits for ethanol producers, and tariffs that keep out cheaper foreign ethanol.

The Democrats haven’t learned their lesson, instead desiring to move the corn ethanol subsidy to other sources of ethanol production.

I normally don’t like to link to a lot of blogs. It feels like piggybacking. But when Pastor Weedon follows in time with a post like this, it’s like back-to-back jacks in baseball.

Example:

The task of the preacher is not to master the text, not to interpret it, not to exegete it. Rather, the task of the preacher is to hear God addressing him through that text, interpreting him, exegeting him. The text and the God who speaks through it, is the Master. God would shape through that text the mind of Christ in those He addresses. And a big help in that is the whole community of those whom God has addressed - the Church who has heard Him speak through this text through the ages.

Humility in a preacher, allowing himself to let the Word subjugate his preconceived notions, is a treasure that is growing more rare. It is a quality to be sought far and wide, and as Pr. Lehmann notes in the comments, it is entirely scriptural. Thanks, Pastor Weedon.