Jonathan's blog

On Monday we returned from 5 days in Orlando. Brace yourself for the barrage of photos and videos. We flew out of Flint Wednesday morning. They needed to block off our row for on the plane for some reason, so they bumped us up to first class rather than move other people around to get us seats together. We stayed at the Animal Kingdom lodge. There were giraffes and other wildlife right outside our window. Lisa really liked the decor and the high ceilings of the lobby. The boys enjoyed the pool and Elliot, especially, the water slide. We spent Wednesday afternoon at the pool. We rode a bus back and forth from the hotel to the various different parks: Magic Kingdom on Thursday, MGM on Friday, Epcot on Saturday, and the Animal Kingdom on Sunday. Here is a video from the airplane and then some photos:

This bugs me. Giuliani had some attraction as a competent, successful administrator and leader. But this tears it. There is plenty of room for difference of opinion about strategies for fighting terrorism, but with blunder after blunder the Republicans have not demonstrated that they have a superior understanding of the terrorist threat and how to successfully fight it. And Israel/Palestine has nothing to do with it? Please. From an article of the same title by Roger Simon on politico.com (via Drudge):

Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001. But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.

"If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer." "I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense," Giuliani continued. "We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense." He added: "The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us."

Giuliani said terrorists "hate us and not because of anything bad we have done; it has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. They hate us for the freedoms we have and the freedoms we want to share with the world."

Last week Scott Freeman tagged me as a "thinking blogger". It's now my turn to tag 5 blogs that make me think. Several of my favorites have already been tagged (Freeman, Elrod, GKB, etc) Scott Adams - Dilbert Blog I get a kick out of Adams' cartoons but somehow I was surprised by how engaging his blog was. Fred Peatross - Abductive Columns it's all about the missional. Phil Wilson's Blog - nice variety of topics...from Heroes/BSG to faith to kids, etc...lots I have in common with...plus we must have been at Lipscomb at the same time cause I recognize his mug James Wiser - Books, Beaches, & Blather James ain't the most prolific of bloggers, but he's always got something interesting to say. He's the one that first got me hooked on the COC blogging community when my mother-in-law sent me a link. From there it was GKB, TS, Freeman, Elrod, and so on. The other thing IIve enjoyed from the COC blogs is the glimpses of life at Pepperdine, Harding, ACU...where are the Lipscomb bloggers? Justin Mundie - Growing Up I first met Justin in the comments on Freeman's blog. My first impression there was that he was a bit over the top. I enjoy his blog and his perspectives and the fact that we often disagree.

From an article of the same title by Fiona MacRae in the Daily Mail:

The world's largest study of weight loss has shown that diets do not work for the vast majority of slimmers and may even put lives at risk. More than two-thirds pile the pounds straight back on, raising the danger of heart attack, stroke and diabetes. Indeed most dieters end up heavier than they did to start with, the researchers found. They warn this type of yo-yo behaviour is linked to a host of health problems. And they say the strain that repeated weight loss and gain places on the body means most people would have been better off not dieting at all.

Research has shown the repeated rapid weight gain and loss associated with dieting can double the risk of death from heart disease, including heart attacks, and the risk of premature death in general. Such yo-yo weight loss has also been linked to stroke and diabetes and shown to suppress the immune system, making the body more vulnerable to infection. Dr Mann said: "We decided to dig up and analyse every study that followed people on diets for two to five years. We concluded most of them would have been better off not going on the diet at all. "Their weight would have been pretty much the same, and their bodies would not suffer the wear and tear from losing weight and gaining it all back. "The benefits of dieting are simply too small and the potential harms of dieting are too large for it to be recommended as a safe and effective treatment for obesity." The psychologist, who advises would-be slimmers to swap calorie-controlled diets for a balanced diet coupled with regular exercise, added: "Exercise may well be the key factor leading to sustained weight loss. Studies consistently find that people who report the most exercise also have the most weight loss."

People are using the Va Tech massacre to support their view about gun control: either that there should be more or less restrictions on gun ownership. I think this incident is an anomaly, something that really doesn't have much helpful to say about which direction gun laws should go. The best thing I've heard lately about this story, though, is that he should have be ineligible to purchase a gun because a court had declared him a danger to himself. I don't want to own a gun. I don't have a problem with law-abiding, mentally-stable people having guns as long as they keep them out of the reach of children. If you've got mental problems, though, you've got no business with a gun. From the article by Michael Luo in the NY Times:

Under federal law, the Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho should have been prohibited from buying a gun after a Virginia court declared him to be a danger to himself in late 2005 and sent him for psychiatric treatment, a state official and several legal experts said Friday. Federal law prohibits anyone who has been "adjudicated as a mental defective," as well as those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from buying a gun. The special justice's order in late 2005 that directed Mr. Cho to seek outpatient treatment and declared him to be mentally ill and an imminent danger to himself fits the federal criteria and should have immediately disqualified him, said Richard J. Bonnie, chairman of the Supreme Court of Virginia's Commission on Mental Health Law Reform. A spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also said that if Mr. Cho had been found mentally defective by a court, he should have been denied the right to purchase a gun.

Now we've got to figure out how to fix the system for background checks. Of course, he could he found illegal ways to get guns, but I think we'd benefit by making it harder for the mentally unstable to get firearms. Knowing what harm mentally ill people can do, we may need to re-calibrate the balance between public safety and privacy rights. Here's an article the describes the difficulties universities have in dealing with the mentally ill: link