Saving Lost Souls

Charlie Pierce:

Let us be quite clear — Tim Tebow adheres to a particular form of American Protestantism. He belongs to — and proselytizes for — a splinter of a splinter, no more or less than Mitt Romney once did. This particular splinter has a long record in America of fostering anti-Enlightenment thought, retrograde social policies, and, more discreetly, religious bigotry. To call Tim Tebow a "Christian," and to leave it at that — as though there were one definition of what a "Christian" is — is to say nothing and everything at once. Roman Catholics are Christians. So are Lutherans, Episcopalians, Melkites, Maronites, and members of the Greek and Russian Orthodox faiths. You can see how insidious this is when discussion turns to the missionary work that Tebow's family has done in the Philippines. This is from the Five Priorities of the Bob Tebow ministries, regarding its work overseas:
It is the goal of the Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association to preach the gospel to every person who has never had an opportunity to hear the good news of eternal life in Jesus Christ. Most of the world's population has never once had the opportunity to hear the only true message of forgiveness of sins by faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.
It so happens that 95 percent of the population of the Philippines is Roman Catholic. Catholic doctrine just happens to be in conflict with what Bob Tebow and his son preach in regard to personal salvation. (To devout Catholics, for example, sins are not forgiven "by faith alone," but through the sacrament of reconciliation as administered by a priest.) Bob Tebow's goal is not to convert unbelievers. It is to supplant an existing form of Christianity. So who's the actual Christian here? This is not an idle point to be made. Down through history, millions of people have died in conflicts over what a "Christian" really is, which is what so exercised Madison, and also what brought down a lot of Hitchens' wrath upon religion in general. History says that as soon as you start talking about "the only true message" in this regard, you guarantee that, eventually, people will get slaughtered in the town square.

I thought maybe Mr. Pierce was exaggerating, and that Tebows' do work in several Asian countries, but it doesn't sound like it (but the CIA World Factbook puts the Catholic population at 82.9%):

In 1998, BTEA began to implement a plan to preach the gospel in every barangay (village) in the Philippines. There are approximately 42,000 barangays in the Philippines and it is estimated that over 64% of them do not have a single evangelical church. In a country of over 92 million, the number of people who have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ is staggering. These statistics do not even take into account the dozens of ethnic tribal groups that have been living on obscure islands and in remote mountain villages for centuries. It is our goal to go to each and every barangay and give the people the opportunity to hear the gospel at least one time. In addition to preaching the gospel, we are endeavoring to plant indigenous churches with the new converts and train national pastors. It is a tremendous task that must be completed.

Nothing like good old sectarianism.  It didn't hurt Northern Ireland much.  What's that? Oh, nevermind.  Honestly, Tim Tebow the football player should probably be judged by his performance on the field, while Tim Tebow the man should primarily be judged by his performance off of it.  He seems to do a pretty good job off the field, but I'll take Andy Dalton over Tebow any day on the football field.

News Flash: Dictators Are Often Insane

Scientific American:

Combining the results from both studies (ed. note: Hitler and Saddam Hussein), Coolidge and Segal hypothesized a “big six” constellation of personality disorders that may commonly reflect the personalities of dictators more generally: sadistic, antisocial, paranoid, narcissistic, schizoid, and schizotypal.
Then, in 2009, Coolidge and Segal extended their research to include the recently deceased dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-il. Through professional colleagues, Coolidge and Segal were introduced to a South Korean academic psychologist who had “advanced psychological training and intimate and established knowledge of Kim Jong-il.” The anonymous psychologist agreed to provide an informant report on the psychological profile of Kim Jong-il.
The personality profile of Kim Jong-il showed the same “big six” constellation of personality disorders: sadistic, antisocial, paranoid, narcissistic, schizoid, and schizotypal.

I'm stunned.  Where are all of the benevolent dictators to call these guys out for painting with such a broad brush?

Marine Robot Supply Helicopter

Wired:

On Saturday, the Marine Corps flew history’s very first combat resupply mission using a robot helicopter. The unmanned Kaman K-MAX successfully hauled a sling-load of cargo out to an unspecified base, presumably somewhere in southern Afghanistan. The successful first flight, plus a couple test runs earlier last week, “were in preparation for sustained operations,” Jeffrey Brown from Lockheed Martin told Paul McLeary of Aviation Week. Lockheed has partnered with Kaman and the Marine Corps to demonstrate two of the unmanned supply choppers in combat.
The Marines’ K-MAX is a pilotless version of a popular twin-rotor helicopter. The GPS-guided robo-K-MAX weighs in at just 2.5 tons, but can carry 3.5 tons of cargo some 250 miles. The K-MAX beat out Boeing’s smaller A160 Hummingbird unmanned helicopter for the Marine Corps demonstration contract. And the Marines, Army, Navy and Air Force are all considering buying robot supply aircraft in large quantities.
The need is clear. The war in Afghanistan is highly dependent on flexible, reliable and secure logistics — even more than the just-ended Iraq war was. NATO troops are widely spread across rough terrain, interrupted by steep mountains, with few paved roads. Helicopters have to handle most of the final delivery for front-line supplies.

I get the feeling that the less risk there is for U.S. soldiers, the more likely our government will be to try to kill people in other countries.  I don't think that is a very good trend for humanity overall.

More On The Texas "Miracle"

Alex Madrigal at The Atlantic:

But even before these cuts take place, Texas' strongest cities are showing signs of weakness. Despite leading the nation in employment resilience for the last two years, they're among the worst performing cities in the country right now, according to the Brookings report, which focused on data from the third quarter of 2011.
What's happening? Once again, it comes back to government spending, which is tightening at every level. In order to understand why shrinking total government would hurt some Texas cities' growth, you have to understand what was behind their resilience in the first place.
One out of every five jobs were created in Texas in 2011. Some of this was, no doubt, the result of the state's business climate. Regulations are lax. Unions are non-existent. Land is plentiful, and office space is relatively cheap. But when you drill down into the jobs-added figures by sector, you see something surprising. Most of the jobs added aren't in the private/services sector. They're in government and government-supported industries like education and health services.

Population increase leads to government (and health care) employment increase, but austerity leads to government employment decrease.  Really, I think the Texas growth is similar to the post-war growth in California, and the turn-of-the-century Industrial Midwest.  Hopefully, the economy will recover, and employment will pick up, but things aren't looking so rosy for Texas right now.

The Battle Of The Mitten States

With Ohio thrown in. Definitely not safe for work:



More works of staggering genius, along with an interview, at The Awl.

The Cost of For-Profit Water Utilities

Austin American-Statesman (h/t nc links):

Across the state, a growing number of suburban Texans are getting their water from large, private corporations owned by investors seeking to profit off the sale of an essential resource. State figures show private companies are seeking more price increases every year, and many are substantial. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which regulates water and sewer rates for nonmunicipal customers, doesn't keep numbers, but "their rate increases tend to be 40 and 60 percent," said Doug Holcomb, who oversees the agency's water utilities division.
For years, small private companies have played a crucial role in Texas, providing water and sewer service in new developments outside of cities. Analysts say private companies will continue to fill an essential need in the future, when public money is projected to be insufficient to make the billions of dollars in costly upgrades needed in water and sewer systems.
Increasingly, however, the companies are neither small nor local. Over the past decade, multistate water utilities have expanded aggressively in Texas, drawn by the state's booming population and welcoming regulatory environment. A September report prepared by utility analysts for Robert W. Baird & Co., a financial management company, identified Texas water regulators as the most generous in the country for private water companies. Today, three out-of-state corporations own about 500 Texas water systems that serve more than 250,000 residents.
For residents living outside cities served by private utility companies, the state environmental commission is charged with setting "just and reasonable" water rates based on a company's cost of doing business plus a guaranteed profit. In exchange, the companies enjoy a monopoly on their service area.

Private for-profit water and sewer utilities, with monoploy service, and who don't have to answer to their customers, are gouging those customers?  I'm shocked and horrified.  And the "business-friendly" state of Texas allows it?  Make that doubly shocked.  I would be triple-shocked if I found out those state regulators were operating under serious conflicts-of-interest. 

Death Comes In Threes

Via the Dish:

Map of the Day

From Econbrowser, a map of major U.S. pipelines:

It is included in a review of the costs and benefits of the Keystone XL pipeline. 

Buffalo, Then And Now

The Atlantic Cities:

There were few better cities in America than Buffalo in 1902. The city installed America's first electric street lights, one of the world's first skyscrapers (Guaranty Building, 1894) and the world's largest office building (Ellicott Square, 1896). Fresh off of hosting the 1901 Pan-American Exhibition, the City of Light was cutting edge.
Time has not served Buffalo well since. Fighting rapid population loss and economic stagnation, the city's attempts to revitalize itself have resulted in swaths of surface parking and clusters of vapid office towers that impede on its radial street grid. We pulled sections from this 1902 map via the Library of Congress and compared it to current satellite imagery to see just how much has changed.

This section of downtown is dominated by elevated roadways and surface lots but was once a vibrant cluster of rail and canal-based transit.

The whole series is pretty cool.

A Bull, Simplified

Via the Dish:

I thought it was cool.  The piece was referenced in a moral philosophy discussion here.