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'Freddie Mercury' Art Print in Bright Yellow
Art with integrity. This artwork is hand screen printed in Hertfordshire, a traditional method resulting in unsurpassed ink density.
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Wind Speed Probabilities |
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Hurricane Wind Speed Probability 0 12 24 36 48 60 72 84 96 108 120 hours Loop |
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These graphics show probabilities of sustained (1-minute average) surface wind speeds equal to or exceeding 34 kt (39 mph). These wind speed probability graphics are based on the official National Hurricane Center (NHC) track, intensity, and wind radii forecasts, and on NHC forecast error statistics for those forecast variables during recent years. Each graphic provides cumulative probabilities that wind speeds of at least 39 mph will occur during cumulative time periods at each specific point on the map. The cumulative periods begin at the start of the forecast period and extend through the entire 5-day forecast period at cumulative 12-hour intervals (i.e., 0-12 h, 0-24 h, 0-36 h, ... , 0-120 h). An individual graphic is produced for each cumulative interval, and the capability to zoom and animate through the periods is provided. To assess the overall risk of experiencing winds of at least 39 mph at any location, the 120-h graphics are recommended.
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subset: commoncrawl


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If you have experienced flooding you will be well advised to contract the services of a professional flood cleanup contractor to carry out your water damage junk removal san francisco or your basement flood cleanup. When it comes to water damage, you might already know that it can do a significant amount of damage in a very short amount of time. Seeking professional help as soon as you can will often mean the difference between thousands of Dollars in additional expenses that a flood cleanup contractor can help you avoid. Water damage cleanup is more of a science than just simply pumping water out and allowing everything to dry. There are so many things to worry about in the form of moisture damage, mold damage, dangers of electrocution, dangers related to natural gas leaks etc that it is better for a homeowner to hire a professional basement flood cleanup company to carry out the work. Before you do, make sure that you take some of the following steps yourself to minimize or contain the damage.
- If you have not identified the source of water, it could be from a burst pipe that cannot be spotted easily. Your best bet in this case would be to shut off the water supply to stop the leak.
- Assess the damage to see if it is something that you can manage on your own. Generally, if there was enough water to stagnate, it would be better to call a professional company as the basement flood cleanup will require heavy equipment such as dehumidifiers, blowers and water extraction units that you will not have.
- Open up the windows, door and try to get some air circulation going to minimize damage from moisture. Moisture can easily be absorbed by various construction materials such as drywall, ceilings and even by furniture
- Turn off the electricity in the house or cut off power supply to the affected area as there is a serious risk of electrocution during a water damage cleanup if the electricity is left on.
- If you are carrying out a basement flood cleanup, you will first have to turn off the natural gas supply as dangerous gases can leak from pipes that might have broken from the increased water pressure.
A professional flood cleanup contractor will first inspect your house to give you a broad picture about the extent of damage. They will be able to tell you about what can be salvaged or restored and what will have to be discarded and replaced. A professional flood cleanup company will possess several commercial grade blowers, humidifiers and water extraction units that will be very expensive to buy or rent on your own. A cleanup company will ideally have several of these machines and they might use several drying units at once depending on the extent of damage in your house. When you hire a professional flood cleanup company, you can be assured that the work is being carried out by people who know exactly what they are doing, which might not be the case when you attempt to do the water damage cleanup on your own.


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Mickelson, Horschel share clubhouse lead at Merion
ARDMORE, Pa.- Phil Mickelson made his first birdie on his last putt. Billy Horschel never missed a green. It was all they could do to barely break par against Merion, which is turning out to be the real star of this US Open.
Nearly half the field did not finish the second round when it was suspended by darkness. Moments after the horn sounded to stop play, Mickelson opted to finish his round and drilled a 20-foot birdie putt for a 2-over 72. That gave him a share of the clubhouse lead with Horschel, who made it as easy as possible by hitting every green in regulation for a 67.
They were at 1-under 139.
Even with the round not finished, it was becoming clear that this US Open might be up for grabs until the very end. Tiger Woods, who grimaced with every shot out of the rough because of pain in his left elbow, was at 3-over 143 and still very much in the game.
"I don't know how anyone is going to separate too far from the field," Mickelson said. "There might be a hot round tomorrow, and they might get a hot round on Sunday, but unlikely to be the same player."
No one was hotter than Horschel, playing in his first US Open since he was a 19-year-old in college.
Nothing is tougher than Merion, the little course in the tony suburbs of Philadelphia that even in rain-softened conditions is showing plenty of might. And to think there was chatter at the start of the week about the potential for the first 62 in major championship history.
"Perhaps next time you guys will believe when we say it's really not that easy, that it's really not that easy," Geoff Ogilvy said after a 70. That put him at 4-over 144, which gave him and dozens of others a legitimate shot going into the weekend.
Luke Donald (72), Justin Rose (69) and Steve Stricker (69) were at even-par 140.
The surprise were a pair of amateurs - Michael Kim of Cal and Cheng-Tsung Pan of Taiwan. They were 2 under for their round and among those who didn't finish.
The long day, brought on by storm delays on Thursday, began with cool conditions and patches of light rain that eventually gave way to sunshine. That led players to wonder how much tougher Merion will be once it starts to dry out.
"It's not as easy as people think," defending champion Webb Simpson said after a 75 put him six shots behind the clubhouse lead. "I heard 15, 16 under floating around. And it's going to be a normal US Open winning score, I think."
Horschel hit all 18 greens in regulation, a stellar achievement at a regular tour event, let alone the US Open. It sent USGA officials searching for hours to find the last time anyone failed to miss a green in the toughest test in golf. Records of that detail only go back as far as 1989. That last documentation of someone doing that was Johnny Miller when he closed with a 63 at Oakmont to win in 1973.
David Graham used his putter on every hole - three from the fringe - when he shot 67 to win the 1981 US Open at Merion.
"I didn't know I hit every green until I walked off 18," Horschel said. "It's a cool thing. But like I said, it's not the first time I've hit all 18 greens. I've done it plenty of times in my career. Obviously, it's at a US Open, but I think the softness of the greens helped that."
Pan played nine holes and was even par, along with Ian Poulter, who was plodding along in plaid at 1 under for his round through 14 holes. John Senden of Australia had a 71 and Nicolas Colsaerts of Belgium shot 72 to finish at 1-over 141.
Mickelson, equipped with a full night of rest after his cross-country trip Wednesday from his daughter's eighth-grade graduation in San Diego, began with a three-putt bogey and appeared ready to pull away with a shot that nearly spun back into the hole at No. 8. He missed the birdie putt from 4 feet. Then he hit a beautiful tee shot over the water to a dangerous front pin on the par-3 ninth to about 7 feet. He missed that one, too.
Lefty three-putted from 20 feet on No. 12, and then flew a wedge over the green into a plugged lie for bogey on the par-3 13th. He kept battling until ending on a sweet note. With that birdie putt on his final hole, Mickelson was under par through 36 holes for the seventh time in the US Open. The previous six times, he was a threat to win on Sunday. Mickelson has five silver medals as a runner-up, and all he wants is another chance.
"I just like being in the mix," he said. "I think it's fun having a chance heading into the weekend. The way I have control off the tee and as good as the putter is - even though it didn't show today - I'm very excited about the opportunity this weekend."
Horschel doesn't lack for confidence, even though the 26-year-old from Florida won for the first time on the PGA Tour just two months ago in New Orleans. He is an explosive player, capable of running off birdies without notice. For this championship that meant keeping the ball in play.
His only bogey was on the 13th hole, the short par 3 and the easiest at Merion.
"I was not in the zone, trust me," Horschel said. "This golf course, even though it's soft, is still a tough golf course. I know what 'in the zone' is for me. I don't get nervous, I just see the shot and go. And I saw the shot and I went with it, but I was still nervous with a lot of them. Your misses here can be bad if you miss in the wrong spot."
Graham's great round won him the US Open. Horschel still has a long way to go. Considering this packed leaderboard, it feels as though the tournament hasn't even started.
For all his travails, Woods was only four shots behind. So was Rory McIlroy, who also had a 70.
"It tests every aspect of your game," McIlroy said. "There were people talking about 62s and 63s at the start of the week and, I mean, I never saw that at all. I still think that something very little under par is going to win this week. If or if not that, around even par."
Indeed, the real winner so far has been Merion.
For such a short course - it measured 6,901 yards from tee to wicker basket - this century-old track had everyone's attention.
"You were convinced it was going to be scoring records and 62s and obnoxious scoring," Ogilvy said. "Did one player say that? Not many, anyway. The players said it was pretty hard, didn't they? Today was hard."
Everything looked like a grind for Woods, who said he first hurt his left arm at The Players Championship - he didn't say where or how - when he won at the TPC Sawgrass a month ago. He dangled the arm and occasionally grimaced with shots out of the rough on No. 12, No. 4 and No. 8.
He was more interested in his game, and that didn't cause him much pain at all. And even though he was halfway through his quest to end five years without a major, Woods was keeping his head down.
"Just keep grinding," he said. "You just don't ever know what the winning score is going to be. You don't know if the guys are going to come back. We have a long way to go, and these conditions aren't going to get any easier."


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Once upon a time there was a little boy, apprentice to a shepherd, who lived in a small village. One day his mentor told him he was old enough to tend to the flocks alone. The boy was given a staff and instructions that if a wolf approached the flocks, he should shout out long and loud "Wolf! Wolf!" so that the villagers would know he was in trouble and rush to his aid with pitchforks and axes. But, the boy was warned, this was nothing to take lightly. It was important that such an alarm be raised only in the event of real danger—only upon seeing an approaching wolf.
Do you remember the rest of the story? The shepherd boy thought it would be quite funny to upset the town into chaos and watch the population scurry about excited and scared, running to his aid. And he exercised his new power by calling out "Wolf! Wolf!" in the absence of any real danger—much to the anger of the villagers. In the end, when the real wolf approached, no one answered the boy's cries as the wolves stalked into the flock and killed the sheep.
The main moral to the story has always been that if you lie, people lose trust in your integrity—which could cost you later, when you need their help and trust. But there is something else to be learned. This is an old story. It's so old that we can't really say who came up with it. Certainly the "wolf" in the story is undeniably reminiscent of old European tales collected by the Grimm Brothers. But who knows?
Why did the boy lie? We all know what he lost—but we've grown so used to the tale that we've forgotten to ask the other central question: What did he gain? Before you read on, seriously, consider this question. On what level does the boy's lie make sense? What did the boy gain? What was his motivation to lie? Does anyone really ever ask this when they remember this story?
To put it simply, it was fun for the boy to lie. It amused him to think that the villagers could be controlled by a word from his mouth—fooled by a simple shout: "Wolf!" An entire audience at his beck and call. So alluring to his mind, he couldn't wait to test it out.
What I'd like to call out, though, is that in this old story we have an example of a general understanding of something we sometimes forget: Sometimes people don't need a material motive or benefit to lie. Sometimes, psychologically speaking, lying is it's own reward. When the boy lied he exercised control of others and amused himself. Why, when we hear this story, do we not respond, "But I don't understand—why did the shepherd think the boy would lie—and so warn him not to do so? And why did the boy lie? The story makes no sense." Nobody says this, because the story does make sense. The boy's lie makes sense. We have no material benefit, but we totally understand the boy's motive to lie.
We know that people sometimes lie for "no good reason." Some people like to lie. Some people like to cause chaos. Some people like the idea of controlling others and being the focus of attention—having that small power over others. And we understand that.
In fact, as Munchausen by Proxy demonstrates, some people will kill their own children, lying all the while by claiming the kid is chronically ill, to get that sort of attention.
These are people who are married, who have jobs, who may be surrounded by friends and family who think they're caring parents. But deep in their brains, these people are very, very needy—beyond anything I, and hopefully you, can imagine. They have a deep need for attention that overrides everything else—even parental instincts to protect their own children.
They don't need a large audience, either. The Munchausen crowd usually only has immediate friends and family and some hospital staff at their disposal. Maybe a name in the paper if they're caught. Just like the Boy Who Cried "Wolf!," it's extremely localized attention—but worth their child's life. All it takes is someone to listen to them—to pay attention to them. And infamy works just as well as fame to fill this emotional void.
Consider the Salem Witch Trials. A handful of girls become the focus of a small community's attention when they feign fits and attacks by local "witches"—knowingly responsible for the torture and executions of a dozen or so innocent friends and neighbors. And for what? For a game of "let's pretend," where the girls get to be the center of attention? Where the village listened to them—paid undivided attention to their every word? It must have been intoxicating—all eyes on them, waiting, breathlessly, for their next tale of terror—waiting to see who would be accused next of flying through the air, consorting with feline familiars or having sex with demons.
People who lie for attention will kill their own children. People who lie for attention don't care if their lies cause harm and death to others. People who lie for attention don't care if it's just a handful of people giving it to them. People who lie for attention can be your next door neighbor. They're among us. They're not all locked in asylums somewhere. They function as working parts of our society. However "abnormal" they may be deep in their brains, they are "normal" enough to be socially integrated until, and unless, they are eventually discovered when they cross a legal line.
The Claim: "Nobody Would Die for a Lie"
Christian apologist Josh McDowell's book More Than Just a Carpenter, so it's stated online, has a chapter titled "Who Would Die for a Lie?" If you're not familiar with this theist argument, here are a few theists explaining it. I like to let Christians speak for themselves when it comes to restating their claims, so I'm not later accused of building or responding to Strawmen. Emphasis throughout this article is mine.
"Nobody would die for a lie knowing that it was a lie. Many have died for a lie, but they did not realize they were dying for a lie. They thought they were dying for the truth. Fact is, all the Apostles, save John were killed for their preaching. Some were speared to death; some were killed with a sword; some were beheaded and some were beaten to death. Why is this a logical and reasonable validation of the New Testament? The answer is they had first hand knowledge of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus."If you're like me, you may have had to read it more than once to realize he was actually arguing on behalf of the validity of scripture. You might have noticed that he rebuts himself when he begins with "Many have died for a lie, but they did not realize they were dying for a lie. They thought they were dying for the truth." It sounds like something an atheist would say to rebut his later point—that these Christian martyrs believed these things happened, but were simply wrong. Still, his conclusion is not that a martyr's death demonstrates their conviction, but that it demonstrates that what they were convicted of is true. See his last line.
—Pastor Bobby W. Leggett in the December 23, 2008, Blanco County News (TX) "Focus on Faith" section, contribution of an article titled "Is the Bible Reliable and Valid?"
"…the greatest testament to their honesty was the fact that they were persecuted under the Roman government and died for what they believed in. People may die for the truth, but nobody would die for a lie that they conceived."Just like Leggett's claim, Minich claims that it's impossible that anyone would die for a lie if they knew it was a lie—if they, Minich qualifies, conceived the lie themselves.
—Timothy Minich contributed his article to the Christian section of a site called "bigissuegrou.com." It has an atheist section that includes religious articles actually presenting religious views. Minich supplies an apologist's view, above.
"This is one of the reasons, years ago, that I decided that the resurrection must have happened. Otherwise who would die for a lie? These were people who had a passion for the message of Christ, who were willing to take up their crosses daily to spread the word. Who goes into strange lands, traveling hot and dusty roads, with little money, into lands that are unsafe and where they could easily die a painful death, all for a lie?"Above, we can't dismiss that the very first sentence of this theist's claim undeniably connects the idea that if a person would die for a claim it is evidence the claim "must have happened." As he notes, these people "could easily die a painful death"—and he cannot accept a person would be willing to risk that over a lie. He doesn't even add the caveat that it could have been a lie they believed. But I'll add that, myself, to give him the benefit of the doubt. Let's make the claims all as reasonable as possible:
--Reverend Dr. N. Graham Standish, September 7, 2008, sermon, online at www.calvinchurchzelie.org.
If a person knows their claim is a lie—such as a claim someone made up himself—it is impossible that person would die for it.I believe this is not only fair, but a generous interpretation of the arguments, as stated, above.
Three Giveaways
I can think of three scenarios right off the bat that defy the claim above. I am going to explain them, and then discount them as "giveaways"—and I will explain why.
Coercion 1: This would be a situation where someone who knows you is being interrogated, and they name you as someone who was running around preaching the resurrection. It is a lie. You know it is a lie. You are brought in and beaten and questioned. You, like many people today who admit to murder due to police interrogations that I will wager are not nearly as horrible as what I would expect to encounter in antiquity, tell them whatever they want to hear to get them to stop beating you. You hope for leniency, but you are executed. You have now become a Christian resurrection martyr who died for a lie.
Coercion 2: This would be identical to coercion except that you know you will be executed. You tell them what they want to hear in order to die, because they are not going to believe you were not preaching, and ultimately you will either die painfully and slowly or be more quickly executed, which you deem is preferable. You confess and are executed. You have now become a Christian resurrection martyr who died for a lie.
Protecting Someone You Love: Someone reports to the authorities that a person in your house was preaching the resurrection. You know it was your child, who is involved with the Christians. You lie and say it was you. You are arrested and executed. You have now become a Christian resurrection martyr who died for a lie.
In any of the three situations above, somebody would, understandably, die for a lie. They would also be logged as a religious martyr, that is, someone who died for their religion. People would die for lies—even lies they knew were lies. And nobody can deny that people have offered confessions to capital crimes, under coercion, or to protect other people. Such people have been discovered and sometimes exonerated.
But, let's overlook those demonstrated examples of people who are willing to die for lies they, themselves, have manufactured or understood were lies. Let's overlook it because the first objection will be that martyrs were preaching the resurrection and refused to recant. So, the above only demonstrates people would die for a lie, but not that the specific Christian examples would have. Honestly, though, if all I do here is put "nobody would die for a lie they knew was a lie" to bed, or make people produce a more supportable and specific claim, I'll have accomplished something monumental.
So, I give the theists, whether they state it or not, that they meant to offer that a person would not die for a lie without coercion or external pressure of some sort. Now we have a claim that looks more like this:
Nobody would voluntarily, and without external coercion or pressure, offer a false confession to a capital offense, knowing it was false—up to, and including, something he, himself, manufactured.And I can't imagine being more fair than that with this claim. I am stretching to give every benefit of reasonableness I can imagine.
My Disclaimer:
In a way I'm torn about even broaching this because some might say the best approach is to question the validity of the tales describing the martyrs. Like any ancient history—any such tale can only be taken with a grain of salt. I don't mean, with this post, to lend undue credibility to the idea that there were actually "eye witnesses" to a resurrection, or that people who were martyred were actually martyred for refusing to deny a resurrection—versus, for social or religious persecution brought on in the same manner we see religious persecution today. You don't have to be an eye-witness to be a martyr. And the fact someone dies for a cause doesn't really tell me what specifically they claimed at trial and if that is the reason they were actually executed. In other words, a person might preach the resurrection, but be tortured and killed as a political subversive.
So, just to be clear, this post is not meant to address the question of whether or not there are legitimate claims of such martyr tales.
This post is only to examine whether or not it is justified to claim that "nobody" would voluntarily face death, without coercion, for a lie they knew was a lie.
As the claim is stated, using "nobody," means a single example to the contrary, outside our three exclusions, is sufficient to render it failed. But I'm sure the apologists who issue it would want to see at least enough examples to account for multiple martyr accounts. One example will probably be insufficient to get them to lay this down. But we must keep in the front of our minds that we need not address all Christian martyrs. This claim can only be applied to a very narrow subset of historic Christian martyr claims—only those martyrs who we can reasonably claim professed to have seen the resurrection firsthand, refused to recant, and were executed specifically for refusing to recant their claim that a resurrection occurred.
I admit right off the bat that I have not researched the martyr stories. I am familiar with the death of Stephen in Acts 6-7, but the tale says he was arrested on lies against him, and, further, that his testimony that resulted in his execution was that he claimed Jesus had been murdered, not that Jesus resurrected. Just for the record, that is a very important distinction. And it means that Stephen is discounted as a person who died for the claim that Jesus resurrected.
I have no idea if there are records of early Christians dying for resurrection testimony. But at this point, it is not relevant. I'm only addressing the martyr apologetic, not examining the martyr stories: Are there people who would be willing to lie and put themselves in harm's way, up to and including facing capital punishment, for an uncoerced absolute fabrication they created themselves?
Facing Execution for Infamy and Notoriety
The following quote is from the paper "False Confessions: Why?" (subtitled "A pathological need for attention, or blurring of reality, may underlie the phenomenon") by Kathleen Doheny (reviewed by Louise Change, MD), found at the Willams College Psychology Department Web site (Williamstown, Mass.):
"Some false confessors have a pathological need for attention," Saul Kassin, PhD, a distinguished professor of psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., says to explain confessions like [John Mark] Karr's.Described above, we have a mind, motivated by an insatiable need for attention, very much like our shepherd boy, the Munchausen mother, and the Salem children—all of whom demonstrated that only a small audience is sufficient. But the individuals Doheny is describing, rather than harming others, are willing to accept harm to themselves, including death. Interestingly, the defense for the Munchausen patient could very well be the apologetic applied to the martyrs: "Surely, nobody would kill her own child and lie about it—just for attention?" And yet, she does. And "surely, nobody would put themselves in a situation where they're lying and claiming to have done things that are known to result in execution?" And yet, they do.
"That is what everyone is speculating in the Karr case," he says. "The pathology is such that that need predominates. And everything else fades into the background." Even the risk of prison or death.
"They are driven by the limelight," adds Eric Hickey, PhD, professor of criminal psychology at California State University, Fresno, and director of the Center of Forensic Studies at Alliant International University, Fresno.
And while even a small, immediate audience suffices for such a person, what a boon it would be to go down in history as a hero to a religious faith—still recognized for your sacrifice more than two thousand years later. If there were such Christian martyrs, could they have thought they were achieving this sort of fame at the time? Certainly history logged martyrs before Christianity. But, honestly, I couldn't wager a guess. Suffice to say that I have no reason to doubt that their immediate fame or infamy presented sufficient audience to justify their lies and sacrifices. It is right in step with the examples of those who lie for recognition, listed earlier. In fact, in a few cases I came across in the literature, there was one for murder, and another for robbery, issued specifically to impress girlfriends—an audience of one.
These types of lies, were all the buzz right after John Mark Karr came forward in e-mails claiming to have been with JonBenet Ramsey when she died—earning himself a first degree murder charge. But there is some speculation about Karr's confession specifically. So, I am not using Karr as a shining example.
During his time in the limelight, though, CBS News highlighted the story and made public the issue of "Voluntary False Confession" (VFC). But it wasn't the first time the U.S. public had seen this sort of weirdness. From the numbers I came across, 200 or more of these death-wish, attention-seeking liars, living as our friends and neighbors, came forward to take credit for the tragic and historically infamous Lindbergh baby kidnapping and murder in the 1930s. In a real ironic twist, the event was labeled as "the biggest story since the Resurrection," by reporter H.L. Mencken. An event that inspired hundreds of attention-seeking liars to beg for execution is compared to the resurrection. Interesting.
In the CBS story, Alan Hirsch, a professor of legal studies at Williams College and founder of the blog The Truth About False Confessions, stated "As hard as it is to believe, there are just many, many false confessions for many reasons, and so [if] I hear that someone confessed, my reaction is not, 'Oh, they did it.'"
As we've already discussed, Hirsch goes on in the story to say, "Voluntary false confessions can be motivated by a suspect's desire for notoriety. In high profile cases, it is not rare for multiple innocent people to tell the police they are guilty."
But lest we get too hung up on notoriety, be warned, that's far from the only motive for a person to voluntarily tell a lie that could, realistically, get them killed.
VFC to be Heard and Imagination Inflation
Also in Doheny's article, in talking about VFC, Hickey points out, "Other confessors are angry and want to be heard…They want a voice. They don't feel like they have a voice."
Hickey does not speculate this is what happened with Karr, though. He thinks it is possible Karr "wanted to be connected to JonBenet so badly. Maybe he thought about it so much he fantasized himself into believing it." Kassin describes a situation where a person imagines an event, over and over, and becomes uncertain about whether it is real or not. In Doheny's paper, he says, "The memory research on this is clear—it's called imagination inflation."
We even had a caller on the show not long ago who did this as a child. He imagined a vacation his family talked about very often. When he got older, he talked about his memories of it and was informed he hadn't been with the family during the trip. It happens—to normal people. I know this doesn't qualify as a "lie" in our context, but I feel compelled to note that part of religious indoctrination and ritual is repetition—to hear the stories over and over. Think: Imagination Inflation.
VFC for Thrills
But there are more recognized psychological motivations that drive otherwise socially integrated people to be willing to offer a VFC. Doheny's paper describes something called "duping delight." In plain terms, this is a rush some people get from lying to other people. PhD and a research psychologist Cynthia Cohen attributes eminent psychologist Paul Ekman with coining the term. Cohen adds, "In putting something over on someone, they get a thrill. It's almost like someone who likes to do bungee jumping. Someone who has duping delight gets excitement from telling a lie and having someone believe it. Maybe they got rewarded for their tall tales in childhood. Perhaps their friends or even their parents thought the behavior was cute."
VFC Because of Low Self-Esteem
There's still more reasons for people to give VFC. The item below is from the chapter titled "False confessions, the Temple Murder Case, and the Tucson Four" from the book The Right to Remain Silent, by Gary L. Stewart, former editor of the Arizona Law Review:
"False confessions derive from several psychological conditions. A suspect may feel guilty about something he has done or failed to do, something completely unrelated to the crime in question."Stewart talks about the frequency of such confessions as well:
"The frequency of false confessions is a vigorously debated question in the legal world. An even more complicated question arises in trying to determine how many wrongful convictions are based on false confessions. Estimates range from a low of 35 to a high of 840 annually."Bear in mind that a false confession is not necessarily a VFC. There is a difference. But also keep in mind the Lindbergh case, alone, inspired around 200 immediate VFCs. People continue to confess to the still unsolved Black Dahlia murder. And some, like convicted murderer Henry Lee Lucas, keep confessing to murder after murder in which they had no involvement whatsoever.
While I'd like to think we wouldn't actually convict such a person, the truth is we only know about the ones we know about. If any have been executed, we have no way to know that short of an extremely unlikely post-mortem exoneration. All I intend to offer here is that, based on what we know about reality, it is not unreasonable to reject the claim that "nobody" would, voluntarily, die for a lie, if he knew it was a lie.
More About Guilt
The guilt complex motive was one that interested me immediately, since Christianity and guilt have a well-known and often humorously portrayed love-affair dating back to its Hebrew religious roots, but amplified with the resurrection story. Anyone would be hard pressed to try and claim that people who feel unworthy aren't drawn like files to a religion that preaches redemption that one cannot access through one's own worth. A religion that specifically reinforces a reality that all humans are wretched would offer a great deal of appeal, in the form of relation and identity, to someone with deep-seated self-esteem problems.
Someone recently referred to this as the "I am the Universe" fallacy on our tv list. The idea is that however I feel, whatever I think, whatever I would do, it's the same for everyone. It's not a rare perspective to exhibit. And I do get the irony of my next comment which is to say I can't imagine that anyone hasn't made this mistake at least once in their life. You generally get a heaping helping of reality slapped onto your plate after you make such a universal assumption, and find yourself corrected by someone who isn't exactly like you. A mild example would be that you buy a chocolate cake for a dinner party, plop it down on the table and say, "Doesn't everyone love to eat chocolate cake?!" The hostess replies, "I'm afraid I'm allergic to chocolate," and you have a Eureka! moment where you realize that you are, in fact, not the universe, and probably should not have presumed something about others, without checking.
But if I'm riddled with self-esteem issues that I can't free myself from, how could I even imagine a person without such issues? The fact is, someone who is motivated by jealousy will assume that they can make others jealous (that we all suffer that same fault). We think "this would motivate me, so it should motivate you." Sometimes it works. Sometimes not. But if I am horribly insecure and can't imagine what it's like to be secure, odds are I will suspect the world, like me, is also insecure. And the religion that says, "Don't we all realize, deep down, that we're just not good enough, that we need a savior?" will reach into my brain and light me up like Christmas. It will speak to me and echo my self-imposed, delusional reality. And it will ring true—for me.
The guilt motivation for a VFC—a way of punishing myself—fits Christian martyrdom like a glove. If I think I'm a wretch who deserves hell fire, and that I killed the uniquely good messiah with my wickedness, then paying with my life while I witness to god would be the most glorious death imaginable.
Would a Christian saint lie, though? Someone so devoted to god? Absolutely, yes, if they were suffering from these issues. Good Christians have lied without gaining notoriety, redemption, or a rush. Every scribe that ever doctored a canon text to make it a little more orthodox is guilty of lying for the cause of Christianity. I'm sure they were aware it was dishonest. But a higher cause, a nobler goal was prompting them. The texts were revised. We have the notes in our Bibles today describing which passages have been added or altered from older or better manuscripts. Quotes were "fixed." Characters were made more consistent or gentler. But it was all to improve on the message—all for the greater good.
Yes, people who subscribe vehemently to a doctrine will lie and die for it—even if the doctrine promotes honesty as a virtue. It's weirdly hypocritical and contradictory—but since when have religious zealots (or any of us, for that matter) been immune, as humans, from hypocrisy or contradiction? Aren't these, ironically, some of the very flaws Christianity says we're all subject to? On that note, how ironic that an apologetic would be built around the idea that a human being couldn't possibly act in a way that makes no sense. We see it all the time. The Bible condemns us for it and calls it sin and fault. I call it being human.
Would a reasonable person die for such a lie? No. But since when are humans—even most humans—reasonable? Where in the world was that fantasy bred?
Other researchers also noted the guilt motivator in VFC. In "The Psychology of False Confessions," Richard P. Conti, PhD, Department of Psychology, College of Saint Elizabeth, Morristown, NJ, writes:
"…Other possible motives for voluntary false confessions include an 'unconscious need to expiate guilt over previous transgressions through self-punishment,' (Kassin & Wrightsman, 1985, p. 77). Gudjonsson (1992) points out that a previous transgression can be either a real or an imagined act. Gudjonsson further states that the transgression does not necessarily have to be identifiable, 'some individuals have a high level of generalized guilt, which is not related to a specific transgression, and this may influence a range of their behaviours [sic], including their need to volunteer a false confession.'"The Link Between Guilt and Depression
The following quotes come from psychologist, Dr. Craig Bennell's paper "Voluntary False Confessions: An Overview." Among other things, this paper explains that the guilt that drives some people is actually part of depression—a very common psychological disorder that afflicts huge numbers of people:
"In cases where severely depressed individuals falsely confess, the confession is viewed as an attempt by the individual to relieve intense feelings of guilt. It is proposed that 'the guilt is generated by past events and experiences and is projected onto some external event [eg. a crime] which becomes the focus for the patients guilt' (Gudjonsson, 1992, p. 241). To relieve this guilt, it follows that the individual is motivated to seek out some kind of punishment. In the case of falsely confessing to a crime they did not commit, this punishment comes via fines, prison sentences, even death. These individuals seem to believe that once they confess to their 'misdeeds' and are publicly punished, their guilt will finally cease (Gudjonsson, 1992)."I'd Know If Someone Were Lying to Me
"It has been proposed, in cases of personality disordered individuals, that the false confession is motivated by a need to enhance an important psychological need, commonly one' s self-esteem (Gudjonsson, 1992). Kassin and Wrightsman (1985) suggest that 'the individual has a pathological need to become infamous, even if it means having to face the prospect of punishment...'"
"Certainly, in cases of voluntary false confessions where the confessor is clearly disturbed, perhaps even confessing to crimes that do not exist (Gudjonsson, 1992), the task of assessing the legitimacy of their confession, though time consuming, would seem less complex. However, for those voluntary false confessions that are more difficult to identify, it would be beneficial to have a system for predicting which individuals were falsely confessing—herein lies the problem. For as long as false confessions have been the studied, researchers have recognized that people, including those who deal with deception on a regular basis (Ekman and O'Sullivan, 1991), are not good at detecting whether or not someone is being deceptive (Horvath et al., 1994; Kohnken, 1987). This is not to say that research hasn't identified observable behavioral differences between 'truth tellers' and 'deceivers,' only that the ability of people to recognize these differences is not very impressive."
And here Bennell hits on something really interesting. Humans are not very good at recognizing liars. Remember that CBS News story? Hirsch, during that story said, "The rule of thumb is that everybody does overreact to a confession—there tends to be an assumption that it's true." In fact, in my reading on this topic, I read research demonstrating that people will say they would not be influenced by a confession if they found it was coerced; but when presented with a coerced confession, as the only difference in evidence in mock trial experiments, they convict more often than they did without the confession.
People's brains love confessions. And people's brains don't work well when it comes to weeding out good ones from bad ones. No wonder the martyr argument sways so many. Apparently, even if I were able to show that all the martyrs ever recorded were killed due to coerced confessions—whether we're proud of it or not—we'd still have a lot of people arguing that the martyrs were telling the truth about a resurrection.
But even more painful than the reality that we strongly tend to believe whatever lies and delusions flow from another person's mouth, there is an embarrassing inverse correlation between how well we tell fact from fiction versus how convinced we are that we're good at telling fact from fiction. The following breakdown comes from a paper titled "'I'd Know a False Confession if I Saw One': A Comparative Study of College Students and Police Investigators," by Saul M. Kassin, Christian A. Meissner, and Rebecca J. Norwick, published in Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 29, No. 2, April 2005. Pay attention to the following, and don't just let your eyes gloss over. This study asked convicted criminals to give both true confessions of their crimes and false, scripted confessions. They asked students and police investigators to review the confessions and judge whether they were true or false.
"Across participants, conditions, and items, the overall accuracy rate was 53.9%—a level of performance that is both unimpressive and nonsignificant relative to chance performance (z-test for proportions = 0.87). In signal detection terms, the hit rate (the percentage of inmates whose true confessions were correctly identified as true) was 63.6% and the false alarm rate (the percentage of inmates whose false confessions were incorrectly identified as true) was 56.1%. On a 1–10 point scale, the overall mean confidence level was 6.76. Interestingly, judgment accuracy and confidence were negatively correlated…"In plain English, the research found that none of the subjects did very well at recognizing fact from fiction. In fact, the results were so dismal that you'd have done just as well if you didn't hear or watch the confessions and just categorized the "true" and "false" tapes using eenee-meenee-minee-moe. Law enforcement officers felt more confident than the students that they could tell a true confession from a false one. But the students, who were less certain, judged better.
In the end it's my guess that the martyr argument persists for the following reasons:
1. The "I am the universe fallacy." I am not the type of person who would die for a lie. And I don't know people who would die for a lie. Ergo, nobody would die for a lie.
Even though we can easily demonstrate that "some people would face execution for a lie" is a realistic claim, it's simply hard to get people to accept that it's a big world out there with a lot of diversity, especially if you're into a religion where diversity is condemned and conformity is rewarded and constantly reinforced. Who hasn't heard that "atheists don't 'not believe' in god—they know there's a god. They're just being defiant"?
"I am the Universe" lives! And I don't see "I am the Universe" going away just because I posted this article; but, I hope to have demonstrated the claim "nobody would die for a lie" can absolutely not stand unchallenged in the face of demonstrated VFCs. "Nobody would die for a lie," is along the same lines as arguing that "no woman would stay with a man who hits her." If I didn't know that this actually occurs in reality, certainly I would be inclined to agree it was reasonable to assert nobody would continue to live with someone who beats them if they could leave. It sounds reasonable. It makes perfect sense. And yet, every one of us knows it's false and does not correlate to reality.
2. We put a high value on confessions, and we think we can tell when someone is offering us an honest or dishonest confession, even though we really can't. And the more we believe we can, the more likely we can't.
So, all a martyr has to do is make a confession. Right off the bat, some people will believe the martyr, simply because people believe confessions. Further, even if it's a lie, a lot of people won't be able to tell, but will feel confident they know the confession is true. In one article, it noted that some people will convict on a confession of guilt, even when confronted with compelling evidence of innocence. Our brains simply like to believe confessions. And the apparent validity of the confession and whether or not it correlates to the evidence is, to an uncomfortable degree, irrelevant to our brains.
Simply stated, a whole lot of people tend to believe what other people confess—too much and for horrible reasons—even for no reason at all.
In the end, though I have one rhetorical question about the martyr argument: What would be the point of any Christian dying for the truth? According to the stories, God knows whether you believe or not—doesn't He? Would merciful Jesus condemn you to hell for avoiding torture by lying to evil men—and going on to spread his Word and save others, later? If you believe, repent, confess and ask for forgiveness—isn't salvation guaranteed? "Not martyring yourself," and "lying" are not unpardonable sins. What is the gain of martyrdom in Christianity? How, in the world did that catch on?


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In Commerce, Mich., today, The Associated Press reports, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney told supporters that he and his wife, Ann, had been born in nearby hospitals. Then, Romney added, "no one's ever asked to see my birth certificate; they know that this is the place where both of us were born and raised."
That was, as you're probably aware, a not-so-subtle reference to the "birther" conspiracy: the seemingly never-ending insinuations from a few of President Obama's harshest critics that, despite all the evidence showing he was born in Hawaii, he somehow wasn't.
The Obama campaign is, of course, objecting. "Governor Romney's decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement should give pause to any rational voter across America," Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said in an email to reporters.
Just 10 days ago, it was President Obama getting in a not-so-subtle dig at Romney. Talking about wind power initiatives, Obama told an audience in Iowa that Romney had said "you can't drive a car with a windmill on it."
"Now, I don't know if he's actually tried that," the president continued. "He's had other things on his car."
That would be a not-so-subtle reference to Romney's infamous dog-on-the-car-roof story.
To which Romney spokesman Ryan Williams had this to say, according to USA Today's The Oval blog: "After sanctimoniously complaining about making a 'big election about small things' President Obama continues to embarrass himself and diminish his office with his unpresidential behavior."
So, can we now declare them even?
Check It's All Politics for ongoing coverage of the campaign. And by the way, we'll be helping out the politics team the next two weeks with blogging (at It's All Politics) from the conventions.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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U.S. officials defend review of 787 Dreamliner
Jan. 24, 2013, Washington, D.C. - Obama administration officials struggled Wednesday to defend their initial statements that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is safe while promising a transparent probe of mishaps involving the aircraft's batteries.
January 24, 2013 By Carey Fredericks
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood stood by his Jan. 11 assertion that the 787, Boeing's newest and most technologically advanced airliner, was safe. At that time, LaHood and the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, Michael Huerta, declared the plane fit to fly despite a battery fire in one plane.
Five days later, following another battery mishap that led to an emergency landing of a 787 in Japan, LaHood and Huerta ordered United, the lone U.S. carrier with 787s, to ground the planes. Authorities in Europe and elsewhere – including Chile, Poland, Ethiopia, Qatar and India – swiftly followed suit. Two Japanese airlines voluntarily grounded their planes before FAA's order.
Overall, 50 Dreamliners have been grounded worldwide. FAA's order applies only to United's the six 787s.
"On the day we announced the planes were safe they were,'' LaHood told reporters at an aviation industry luncheon. He became testy when a reporter pressed him on whether his initial pronouncements had been too hasty.
"I'm not doing these hypothetical look-backs,'' he said. "We did what we did.''
What changed between Jan. 11 and FAA's issuance of a grounding order on Jan. 16 was that a second battery failure occurred on an All Nippon Airways 787 while the airliner was in flight, said Huerta, who joined LaHood at the luncheon. In the first incident, the battery fire occurred in a Japan Airlines 787 that had already landed at Boston's Logan International Airport and was empty of passengers.
"We took the action we took (to ground the planes) because we saw a hazard,'' Huerta said.
The National Transportation Safety Board is also investigating the battery fire in Boston and has sent a representative to Japan to assist authorities there with their investigation of the second. The board has not so far said the battery problem would endanger the safety of the plane in flight nor recommended that the planes be grounded.
The board's technical experts are in possession of the battery that caught fire and are effectively performing an autopsy on its charred insides in a search for clues to what caused the conflagration. It took firefighters about 40 minutes to put out the fire.
The NTSB is the nation's independent accident investigation board, while FAA regulates aviation safety.
FAA is working as quickly as possible to find the cause of the problems, assembling a team of technical experts that includes experts from industry as well as the agency's staff, Huerta said. The review includes not just the 787's ground-breaking lithium-ion battery system, but how that system works with the aircraft's electronic systems, their certification, manufacture and assembly, he said.
Huerta declined to say when FAA might lift the grounding order.
"We don't know yet what caused these incidents yet. When we know the cause we will take appropriate action,'' he said.
The officials emphasized that the investigation would be completely transparent so that the public will have confidence in the outcome.
LaHood denied that Boeing had asked the government to lift the grounding order.
"Absolutely not,'' he said. "Boeing is co-operating 100 per cent with the review.''
The groundings have been a nightmare for Boeing, which competes with Airbus for the position as the world's largest commercial aircraft maker. At the time of the groundings, Boeing had orders for more than 800 of the planes from airlines around the world attracted by the 787's increased fuel efficiency. The aircraft maker has said it has stopped delivering new planes to customers, although it is continuing to manufacture them.
The 787 is the world's first airliner whose structure is made mostly from lightweight composite materials. It also uses electronic systems for most of its functions instead of hydraulic or mechanical systems. And it is the first airliner to make extensive use of lithium ion batteries, which are lighter, can hold more energy and are easier to fit into odd-sized spaces in airplanes than other types of batteries.
The FAA certified the 787 battery system even though lithium ion batteries are more susceptible to catching fire when they overheat or short-circuit than other types of batteries. Boeing built several safeguards into the design of the battery system.


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Russia's parliament has given preliminary approval to an anti-blasphemy bill that would make it a crime to offend religious feelings.
The BBC reports that the bill was drafted last year after members of the punk band Pussy Riot used Moscow's main Russian Orthodox cathedral to perform a protest song against President Vladimir Putin.
Blasphemy against religions considered "an integral part of Russia's historical inheritance" could mean three years in jail and a fine of nearly $10,000, under the bill. The BBC says it is likely to cover Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism.
According to the BBC:
"Human rights activists and some critics of the new anti-blasphemy bill in the Duma say its wording is too vague and could lead to unjustified prosecutions.
"Yuri Sinelshchikov, a Communist MP and former prosecutor, warned that it could provoke 'an outburst of combative atheism, in its most aggressive form, and enmity between believers and non-believers.'
"Some human rights activists warned that 'insults to believers' might include the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution or the Big Bang theory about the universe."
Commentators in Russia say the law is likely to pass in a parliament dominated by Putin supporters.
Two members of Pussy Riot, an all-female punk band, are serving two-year terms at remote prison camps for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" related to the February 2012 performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow.
Their incarceration has become a cause celebre for activists both inside and outside of Russia. Earlier this week at a trade fair in Germany, Putin was surprised by three women who stripped off their blouses and shouted obscenities at the Russian leader to protest the band members' sentences.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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For more than 75 years, Grifols has worked to improve the health and well-being of people around the world. We are a global healthcare company that produces essential plasma-derived medicines for patients and provides hospitals and healthcare professionals with the tools, information and services they need to deliver expert medical care.
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● Assists in maintaining a clean, organized and efficient work area, including maintaining supplies necessary to perform job duties.
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Primary Requirements:
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Source: https://www.careerbuilder.com/job/J3R58Q6PLP6T0K0GLQM?ipath=rss


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Special Feature
What's the key to Mark Munoz' three fight winning streak? It all starts with a winning mindset...
It was a fairly innocuous question, but when UFC middleweight contender Mark Munoz responded to a query about his readiness to be in the 185-pound title picture should he defeat Yushin Okami this weekend in San Diego, one word in his response told you everything you need to know about the competitor dubbed 'The Filipino Wrecking Machine.'
"I think I would put myself in the mix when I do beat Okami," said Munoz. "I'm definitely not looking past him though – he's definitely a formidable opponent and he's very tough. I'm taking it fight per fight and all my focus is on winning this fight against Okami. If title contention is in my future, then hey, I'll go for it. But I'm excited. I've always wanted to be at the top of wherever I'm at, and this is definitely a big stride in that direction."
Did you catch it? Not "if" he beats Okami, but "when."
It's not trash talk from the mouth of Munoz, one of the game's true good guys, but just a belief that when he's in a fight there's only one possible outcome in his mind. And it could be that this belief is already imbedded in his subconscious, as he chuckles when you point his comment out to him.
"I don't ever go into a fight thinking I'm gonna lose," he said. "I've been training real hard and I don't think he (Okami) can stay with my pace. I'm looking to enforce my will on him and if he can match the same pace, you'll be seeing an awesome fight."
Winning has become second nature to Munoz, a 2001 National wrestling champion and two-time All-American for Oklahoma State who has earned victories in eight of his nine pro MMA bouts. But as in anything, you can sometimes tell more about a person by the way they come back from adversity, and Munoz passed his first MMA test by winning three in a row after his 2009 knockout loss to Matt Hamill.
"I knew it was gonna be tough, so I trained really hard to be able to compete the way I do," he said. "It was sort of a bumpy ride at first, my debut didn't necessarily go the way I planned it to go (Laughs), but hey, champions aren't measured by how many wins they have, but how many times they pick themselves up after a loss. I got back on my horse and started riding again."
For a competitor like Munoz, continuing on after the Hamill fight was never a question. His wife, Kristine, and the rest of his family were tougher sells, and Munoz admits that the conversation following that bout wasn't easy.
"They never want to see their loved one lying on the floor unconscious," he said. "But it happens, and thank goodness there were no long-term effects, and as long as they know I'm okay, they're gonna support me all the way."
Kristine Munoz still keeps a healthy distance from Octagonside though, something the fighter has learned to deal with as long as she's with him on fight week.
"My wife actually doesn't watch any of my fights anymore live," said Munoz. "She watches them after the fact now. She tried watching it one more time when I fought Nick Catone, and it just didn't sit right with her stomach. She goes wherever I go, but now she gets a massage or a manicure and pedicure. She's been working hard supporting me, raising the kids, and running a gym, so she deserves that treatment. But I definitely want her around when I'm fighting because she's my number one fan and biggest supporter."
And Munoz' fan base is growing, especially since he seems to be reinvented at 185 pounds, where he has defeated Catone, Ryan Jensen, and Kendall Grove in successive bouts. Hence the co-main event slot this weekend, but as usual, Munoz is unbothered by the added media obligations attached to such a high-profile place on the card.
"I've been noticing that people have been wanting to talk to me a little bit more, but it comes along with the territory and it's pretty cool to have all that attention," said Munoz, who fits the extra interviews and appearances into a rigorous training schedule that has focused on dealing with an opponent who may be one of the few who can match the Californian in the strength department.
"I've been preparing by going with bigger and stronger guys, as well as southpaws," said Munoz. "I've wrestled a lot of strong guys too, but I've heard that he (Okami) is incredibly strong and has a good base because of his judo background. But it's no secret for me – I'm looking to take him down and demonstrate my ground and pound, and I know he's going to be prepared for that."
And Okami has been showing off more of his standup attack recently, perhaps in an attempt to convert more UFC fans, with the results in his March stoppage of Lucio Linhares certainly being impressive. Yet whatever the Japan native decides to do, Munoz is ready for it.
"If he wants to stand with me, that leaves the door open for me to take him down," he said. "I think his strength is his judo, and using that to push people against the cage and take them down from there so he can utilize his ground and pound. But he has been working on his striking – I've seen his 1-2, and his straight left is actually pretty devastating. So I'm looking to capitalize on him getting out of position when it comes to being on his feet. I've been watching some of his film with wrestlers, so I'm pretty excited to fight, just to know where I'm at."
Where Munoz is at right now is that he is a wrestler finally coming to grips with all aspects of mixed martial arts, not an easy transition for anyone. And while there are still rough edges to be smoothed out, the 32-year old appears to have a grip on this ever-complex sport.
"With mixed martial arts, there are so many different ways you can win or lose, so you've got to be prepared in all situations," he said. "In wrestling, at least you could actually control a position or know a position quite well because you just have to wrestle. In mixed martial arts, there are so many disciplines and you find yourself in a new position every day. So there's definitely a new anticipation just because of that, and I think it behooves you to train every day and learn those positions."
Learning every aspect of the sport and being able to put it all together under pressure are two different things, but Munoz made big strides in a positive direction in April, when a horrific first round turned into a second round TKO victory over Kendall Grove and a Fight of the Night bonus.
"I definitely didn't anticipate getting rocked by an uppercut (Laughs), but you have to be able to roll with the punches – literally," he said of his shaky start against Grove and subsequent comeback. "And I think my instincts came into play there because right when I got rocked, all I remember is waking up on a single leg. 'I've got a single leg – that's awesome.' (Laughs) It all came together there."
Now all that remains is to stay consistent while adding new wrinkles to his game before every fight. If Munoz keeps to that gameplan, there will be even more "whens" and no "ifs".
"I've been working on my ground and pound quite a lot and working on my striking too, and I'm just looking to improve every time I step into the Octagon," he said. "I've been training really hard and I'm looking to win this fight and win it in convincing fashion."
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Welcome to Everett Area of NA
Narcotics Anonymous is a non-profit fellowship of people who suffer from the disease of addiction. We meet on a regular basis to help each other stay clean and share our experience, strength, and hope. If you think you might have a drug problem, please call our Helpline, or come to one of our meetings. We can only help those who are willing to help themselves.
Service System Project
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Among the beautiful, meaningful and solemn ceremonies of the Catholic Church is the gathering of the faithful on Ash Wednesday.
This special day begins our Lenten journey. It is the start of 40 days of prayer, penance and almsgiving as we prepare ourselves to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. But why does Lent begin on a Wednesday, and what is the significance of ashes?
Ash Wednesday was added to the liturgical calendar well after the 40-day penitential season of Lent became the norm throughout the Latin Church. Lent, in turn, was universally established only after the early Church sorted out the date of Easter. The issue was clarified at the famous Council of Nicaea in 325 where "all the Churches agreed that Easter, the Christian Passover, should be celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon (14 Nisan) after the vernal equinox" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1170). The vernal (spring) equinox generally falls on March 21, thus the date of Easter in the Western Church can occur anytime between March 22 and April 25.
Lent in the Early Church
The word Lent is from an Old English term meaning springtime, and by the second century the term was being used to describe the period of individual fasting, almsgiving and prayer in preparation for Easter. Among the Christians of the first three centuries, only those aspiring for baptism — the catechumens — observed a defined period of preparation, and that time lasted only two or three days. The idea of Lent being 40 days in length evolved over the next few centuries, and it is difficult to establish the precise time as to when it began. Among the canons issued by the Council of Nicaea, the Church leaders, in Canon Five, made reference to Lent: "and let these synods be held, the one before Lent that the pure gift may be offered to God after all bitterness has been put away, and let the second be held about autumn." The language of this canon seems to validate that Lent, in some fashion, had by the fourth century been established and accepted by the Church. While the exact timing and extent of Lent both before and after the Nicaea council is unclear, what is clear from historical documents is that Christians did celebrate a season of Lent to prepare themselves for Resurrection Sunday and used a variety of ways to do so.
That Lent evolved into a period of 40 days in length is not surprising as there are numerous biblical events that also involved 40 days. Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving instructions from God for that number of days (see Ex 24:18); Noah and his entourage were on the Ark waiting for the rains to end for 40 days and 40 nights (Gn 7:4); and Elijah "walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb" (1 Kgs 19:8). Mostly, though, the 40 days of Lent identifies with the time our Lord Jesus spent in the desert fasting, praying and being tempted by the devil (Mt 4:1-11). "By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert" (Catechism, No. 540).
There is, therefore, evidence that by the end of the fourth century Christians were participating in a 40-day Lent before Easter. The dilemma now became how to count the 40 days. In the Latin Church, six weeks were used to identify the Lenten period, but you didn't fast on Sundays, so six Sundays were subtracted and there remained only 36 fasting days. In the early seventh century, St. Pope Gregory I the Great (r. 590-604) resolved this situation by adding as fast days the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday before the first Sunday of Lent. Thus the Lenten 40-day fast, or the Great Fast as it was known, would begin on a Wednesday.
Initially, people fasted all 40 days of Lent. They ate one meal a day and only an amount of food that would sustain survival. But the Church taught, and people believed (then as now), that fasting is not about what we eat, it is about changing hearts, interior conversion, reconciliation with God and others. It's about living in an austere way, giving from our abundance to the poor. St. John Chrysostom (347-409) explained it this way: "Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works!… If you see a poor man, take pity on him! If you see an enemy, be reconciled to him! If you see a friend gaining honour, envy him not! If you see a handsome woman, pass her by!" (Homily on the Statutes, III.11).
The Church has long used ashes as an outward sign of grief, a mark of humility, mourning, penance and morality. The Old Testament is filled with stories describing the use of ashes in such a manner. In the Book of Job, Job repented before God: "Therefore, I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes" (42:6). Daniel "turned to the Lord God, to seek help, in prayer and petition, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes" (Dn 9:3). Jonah preached conversion and repentance to the people of Nineveh: "When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes" (Jon 3:6). And the Maccabees army prepared for battle: "That day they fasted and wore sackcloth; they sprinkled ashes on their heads and tore their garments" (1 Mc 3:47).
Ashes were imposed on the early catechumens when they began their preparation time for baptism. Confessed sinners of that era were also marked with ashes as part of the public penitential process. Other baptized Christians began asking to receive ashes in a manner similar to catechumens and penitents. Christian men had ashes sprinkled on their heads while ashes were used to trace the cross on the forehead of women. Thus the use of ashes as the sign of penance, in readiness for Easter, was becoming a Churchwide practice. During the papacy of St. Gregory the Great, the practice was further expanded and is mentioned in the sixth-century Gregorian Sacramentary. Around the year 1000, Abbot Aelfric of the monastery of Eynsham, England, wrote: "We read in the books both in the Old Law and in the new that men who repented of their sins bestowed on themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth. Now let us do this little at the beginning of our Lent, that we strew ashes upon our heads, to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten feast" ("Aelfric's Lives of Saints," 1881, p. 263). This same rite of distributing ashes on the Wednesday that begins Lent was recommended for universal use by Pope Urban II at the Synod of Benevento in 1091.
So when we go to that early Mass on Ash Wednesday morning and receive the blessed ashes on our forehead, we are repeating a somber, pious act that Catholics have been undergoing for over 1,500 years. As "The Liturgical Year, Septuagesima," by Abbot Gueranger, O.S.B., written in the middle decades of the 1800s, puts it: "We are entering, today, upon a long campaign of the warfare spoke of by the apostles: forty days of battle, forty days of penance. We shall not turn cowards, if our souls can but be impressed with the conviction that the battle and the penance must be gone through. Let us listen to the eloquence of the solemn rite which opens our Lent. Let us go whither our mother leads us, that is, to the scene of the fall."
Like all those before us, we unhesitatingly embrace this invitation to sanctity, this time to turn away from sin. We are part of that great cloud of witnesses who through all the ages have donned the ashes, publicly acknowledging that we are Christians, Christians who have sinned and seek to repent. We acknowledge that "we are dust and to dust we shall return."
D.D. Emmons writes from Pennsylvania.


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Boolean XtIsSensitive(w)
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XtSetSensitive calls XtSetValues to change sensitive and ancestor_sensitive. Therefore, when one of these changes, the widget's set_values procedure should take whatever display actions are needed (for example, greying out or stippling the widget).
XtSetSensitive maintains the invariant that if parent has either sensitive or ancestor_sensitive False, then all children have ancestor_sensitive False.
The XtIsSensitive function returns True or False to indicate whether or not user input events are being dispatched. If both core.sensitive and core.ancestor_sensitive are True, XtIsSensitive returns True; otherwise, it returns False.


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Bell Sound Meditation
This four-part, bell sound meditation is a short guided practice led by Arthur Zajonc. For our (overdue) weekend exercise, take these ten minutes to try this contemplative meditation. Then, reflect on your experience and share your thoughts with us:
- How did the sound of the bell help you focus your attention?
- Did you find that paying close attention allowed you to "let go" and be openly aware?
- How did/didn't the voice of a guide help you in this exercise?
At Amherst College's the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, you can find other guided meditations and Zajonc's five-minute introduction to the bell sound meditation you heard above. Here, he describes this unfamiliar state of open awareness with a lyrical passage from the Tao Te Ching:
"Do you have the patience to wait 'til your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving 'til the right action arises by itself? The master doesn't seek fulfillment. Not seeking, not expecting, she is present and can welcome all things."
Updated: 2010.07.14 with stricken language.


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By Sen. Roberts
Just when we thought that election season was over, December threatens to be a slog through more of the same.
November's results were disappointing from my side of the aisle and good friends and hard-working policymakers will be on to new pursuits in the coming year.
The election is over, though, and we continue to face monumental tasks at the state and federal level. We need solutions, sacrifice and leadership from all to get beyond our challenges. Continued failure to come up with a compromise to deal with our national deficit and debt won't only ruin the holiday season, but threatens to ruin our nation.
One might wonder, since I'm a state, not federal, legislator, why do I care so much about this?
All Americans should care deeply about the over-subscribed house of cards that we've built for ourselves. Also, failure to address the national finances impacts my job, as 25 percent of Colorado's revenue is federal funds, with plenty of strings attached.
Colorado's fiscal future is tied directly to the health of the federal government's balance sheet.
I'll be in Washington, D.C., this month as part of the National Conference of State Legislatures' fiscal leaders' forum and co-chairing the fall meeting of the Budgets and Revenue committee. We'll be reminding congressional members of the consequences of their action, or inaction, on the daily lives of the citizens as seen through the eyes of state legislators, from both sides of the aisle.
Colorado's Sen. Bennet deserves recognition for working alongside Tennessee's Sen. Alexander to offer the Obama administration yet another bipartisan proposal to consider. Working across the aisle often generates more criticism than praise from one's own party and I admire their courage and resolve; I hope it spreads like a positive flu in the halls of Congress.
On reducing spending, unlike special interest and advocacy groups who are shouting a message of don't touch our perks and benefits, NCSL's message is: The problem is so big and real, you must touch everyone, including state legislatures' budgets, just do it thoughtfully.
Sequestration, as a big part of the "fiscal cliff" discussion, was supposed to be the ultimate stop to delays in meaningfully addressing our fiscal house of cards. Unfortunately, once again back down to the wire, avoiding or delaying sequestration is the only thing anyone seems to agree on.
In addressing revenue, as the largest, bipartisan organization of state legislators, NCSL advocates strongly for the passage of the federal Marketplace Fairness Act. In a nutshell, the federal bill would stop the tax avoidance that happens through internet sales by authorizing the collection of state and local sales and use taxes from remote sellers.
The 2010 Colorado Legislature attempted this at the state level only.
I voted against that bill because it was legally flawed and compliance with it put Colorado's Department of Revenue, already holding a troublesome record on effectiveness, on steroids.
The "Amazon tax" bill was struck down by the court as unconstitutionally burdensome. However, I support the passage of the federal bill as it'll put Main Street businesses back on a level playing field with Internet retailers.
Personally, I'm looking forward to time with my family before the next session starts in January and I wish all a terrific holiday season and optimism for a good year ahead.


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This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Vatican City • The Vatican is digging in after gay marriage initiatives scored big wins this week in the U.S. and Europe, vowing to never stop insisting that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.
In a front-page article in Saturday's Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, the Holy See sought to frame itself as the lone voice of courage in opposing initiatives to give same-sex couples legal recognition. In a separate Vatican Radio editorial, the pope's spokesman asked sarcastically why gay marriage proponents don't now push for legal recognition for polygamous couples as well.
Catholic teaching holds that homosexuals should be respected and treated with dignity but that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered." The Vatican also opposes same-sex marriage, insisting on the sanctity of marriage between a man and woman as the foundation for society.
The Vatican's anti-gay marriage media blitz came after three U.S. states approved same-sex marriage by popular vote in the election that returned Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency, Spain upheld its gay marriage law, and France pushed ahead with legislation that could see gay marriage legalized early next year.
"One might say the church, at least on this front, has been defeated," L'Osservatore Romano wrote. "But that's not the case."
The article insisted that Catholics were putting up a valiant fight to uphold church teaching in the face of "politically correct ideologies invading every culture of the world" that are backed by institutions like the United Nations, which last year passed a non-binding resolution condemning anti-gay discrimination.
"The church is called to present itself as the lone critic of modernity, the only check ... to the breakup of the anthropological structures on which human society was founded," it said.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi, for his part, said gays can have their rights protected by means other than through legal marital recognition. He stressed that children should have a right to say they have a father and a mother.
"If not, then why not contemplate freely chosen polygamy, and naturally so as to not discriminate, polyandry?" he asked sarcastically. Polyandry is when a woman has two or more husbands.
"As a result, don't expect the church to stop insisting that society recognizes a specific place for marriage between a man and woman," he said.
The U.S. election had been closely watched at the Vatican because of the strong divisions that erupted during the campaign between the Obama administration and U.S. bishops over gay marriage, which Obama endorsed in May. The administration and bishops clashed more vehemently over Obama's health care mandate requiring nearly all U.S. health insurance plans to cover contraception, which the church opposes.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said the contraception mandate which exempts houses of worship but applies to faith-affiliated employers is a violation of religious freedom.
The Vatican's reaction to Obama's re-election was tinged with such lingering criticism, with Pope Benedict XVI congratulating Obama and praying that the ideals of freedom and justice continue to be upheld.
Lombardi went further urging the administration to respect essential values in "promoting a culture of life and religious freedom" Vatican buzzwords referring to abortion, contraception and the insurance mandate.
It was a far cry from the Vatican's enthusiastic response to Obama's election in 2008. Then, the pope termed Obama's election an "historic occasion" in a personal note of congratulations sent right after he won, a break with traditional Vatican protocol that usually sees official telegrams of congratulations sent on inauguration day.
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