For those frightened by the Mexican flu outbreak

Posted on 2 May 200923 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

here are some words of wisdom that should allay your concern. This comes from my uncle, a longtime specialist in infectious diseases who’s seen a lot of things come and go over the years; he knows what he’s talking about.

To family, friends and others:

Because of the widespread disinformation being perpetrated by the MSM, I feel obliged to share with my family and friends an accurate perception of the current H1N1 influenza outbreak. As many of you know, I am an acknowledged infectious disease specialist. What many do not know is that I have served as a subject-matter expert to both CDC and WHO over the years, and have an accurate assessment of their politics and capabilities. Therefore, I can presume to offer some opinions on this problem.

Seriously, it is somewhat of a problem, but mainly in perception. The MSM has blown it all out of proportion, showing street scenes of people wearing masks, etc, etc. This morning the Today show was all a-gog about “the first US death”, which wasn’t. It was a Mexican kid who was a few yards over the border in Brownsville, and got taken to Houston (where he exposed dozens of other people). But it was a Mexican case, not a US case.

All the US cases have been mild. The NYC outbreak is directly traceable to Mexico; a bunch of seniors had just returned from spring break in Mexico. The fact that the strain in NYC came from Mexico, but the cases are not so severe suggests that it is the Mexican health care system (or lack of same) that is contributing to the high fatality rates there (CDC acknowledged the same idea late today). It’s possible that the deaths are due to bacterial superinfection, similar to what happened in 1918. There is some suggestion that “cytokine storm” might be responsible, but, if that is so, why are Mexican immune systems reacting differently that US immune systems?

The acting head of CDC said on TV today that there is no vaccine against H1N1 influenza, which is only partially true. There have been many mixes of flu vaccine over the years which have contained H1N1 strains, just not this PARTICULAR one. Anyone who has had the flu vaccine regularly over the years should have at least partial protection, which might explain the difference between the US and Mexico.

The CDC on-line recommendations are reasonable and non-panicky. Its the media that is the problem. AND whoever the idiot was at WHO who pushed the “global pandemic” panic button. This is nowhere near a pandemic. It probably won’t ever turn into a pandemic. I think the folks at WHO are covering their sixes because of the SARS outbreak a few years ago (which wasn’t a pandemic, either, just a global episode.)

Apparently the bloggers are running wild, too. Some are saying this is a Chinese or Russian biowarfare plot (patent BS!). Others are saying it is a Federal scheme, and to avoid getting the vaccine at all costs (again, BS, but related to the 1970s swine flu immunization fiasco.)

What to do? Don’t panic. Obama has it all under control. His brilliant suggestion today that if a school has one case of swine flu, they shut down for the week is real stupidity. By the time a case is DOCUMENTED as H1N1, the exposure will have already been done. What he should do is close the border with Mexico for a week. The Cubans, and others, have already shut down all flights to and from Mexico.

A modicum of caution; avoiding crowds and enclosed, crowded places when possible; eating well and keeping a sense of proportion are the best means of prevention.

“This, too, shall pass”. We survived the 1918 pandemic; we survived SARS; we will survive this episode.

William O. Harrison, MD, FACP, FACPM, FIDSA
CAPT(MC)USN(ret)

Money and writing

Posted on 2 May 200923 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | 2 Comments

Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

—Samuel Johnson

Always pleasant to be labeled a blockhead by a genius. Still, fortunately for me, there are many other writers who disagree with Dr. Johnson. There are also many who note, essentially, that if Dr. Johnson were correct, no one but a blockhead would ever write. Fortunately for all of us, this doesn’t prove to be the case . . .

“Heresy” is a big word

Posted on 1 May 200923 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | 13 Comments

That was one of Mark Driscoll’s observations during his message at GCNC last week: “heresy” is a big word, a loaded word, that should only be used carefully, when necessary. That’s not to say that we should never use it—sometimes it’s necessary, when people are claiming the name of Jesus to teach things that are significantly at odds with the gospel—but we must be very sure of our ground before we use that word, and equally sure of the spirit in which we use it. That must never be an accusation hurled in anger, but must only be spoken gently, in a gracious spirit of loving correction.

S. M. Hutchens addresses this in an editorial in the latest issue of Touchstone called “The War on Error: The Business of Confronting Heresy”; it is in general a careful and thoughtful piece that takes note both of the need to name heresy for what it is and of the dangers in doing so overaggressively.

If an accusation is made, it must be made clearly, forcefully, and memorably, so that it is understood by those one is trying to protect from false doctrine: “This is untrue; it is heresy; avoid these people who teach it.”

This must be done judiciously and in the line of duty. If I have any quarrel with certain fathers, it is not that they identified false teaching for what it was, but that they sometimes did it so frequently that it may have become difficult to hear. There is besides a certain pathological temperament that enjoys hunting down and denouncing error and subjecting those who commit it to terror and humiliation that hardens them against truth. The heresy-hunting inquisitor is not a divine office, whereas pastor and teacher are. To the former mentality, exposing error is not a painful task cast in one’s path by the duties of office, but a form of pleasure—a dungeoner’s pleasure of which no good man would be proud.

However, I think there’s a point, named in the editorial, where Hutchens himself goes over the line. Heretical doctrine is not merely doctrine which is in error, but doctrine which is in error on the core matters of the Christian faith, in such a way that the doctrine fundamentally threatens the integrity of the gospel message; it’s a significant departure from what C. S. Lewis called “mere Christianity,” nothing else, and nothing less. Only those things which lead people away from the very means of salvation, then, deserve this label. As such, I cannot agree when Hutchens writes,

These considerations have weighed heavily on me because of my concern with egalitarianism, which I have identified as a heresy. Although the identification was not difficult from a theological point of view—and our opponents are now in many places returning the compliment, accusing us of subordinationism: but surely one of us is heretical—its publication was very difficult indeed.

This is not just a matter of my being an egalitarian, though I will confess that being labeled a heretic is mildly irritating; it’s a matter of Hutchens using a word that’s far too big for the subject. Is egalitarianism wrong? Perhaps, though I don’t believe so; we can debate it. But when he says “surely one of us is heretical,” he puts that out of possibility: he says that those with whom he disagrees are not merely wrong, but grievously wrong, to such an extent that it threatens our salvation—and thus that if he were in fact wrong, the same would be true of him.

This is where I think Hutchens is seriously wrong. I don’t see any support for his conclusion, and I don’t believe he can support it; scripturally, there is clearly an argument for his complementarian position, but not for the case that that position is essential for salvation. Indeed, at this point it seems to me that he’s guilty of what Ray Ortlund dubbed “Galatian sociology”: he’s added belief in something extrinsic to the gospel to belief in Jesus. He may well be correct that belief in Jesus ought to lead to his position on male/female roles and relations, but that in and of itself is not enough to justify his conclusion that any other position is heretical.

If anything, in asserting that one must believe in Jesus and in complementarianism, he’s made himself vulnerable to a charge of heresy on the grounds that he has made salvation dependent not on Jesus but on right doctrine. This is what the late Stan Grenz (if I recall correctly) called “the evangelical heresy,” that of putting our faith not in Jesus but in our creeds. This is not to say that creeds don’t matter and right doctrine doesn’t matter, because the truth of what we believe matters immensely; but it is to say that it’s even more important to put the locus of salvation in the right place, not in the truth of what we believe, but in the truth of the one in whom we believe—or perhaps we might say, in the Truth in whom we believe. The truth of our beliefs is important, because where we get things wrong, it obscures and distorts our understanding of the one in whom we put our faith—but it’s still he and he alone who saves us, not the correctness of our understanding of him.

As such, I believe Hutchens has shown himself guilty of a grave error in pronouncing gender egalitarians guilty of heresy, because he has elevated a particular belief about how God wants us to order our lives to a position of equality with belief in God himself; this is, I believe, a displacement of the proper centrality of the gospel of Jesus Christ for salvation, and that is a serious matter indeed. I hesitate to declare that his error rises to the level of imperiling his eternal soul; as I said at the beginning, heresy is a very big word indeed, and I don’t consider that I have the right to make that judgment. But I think that Hutchens would do very well to reconsider, if not his complementarian view of gender, at least the theological absolutism with which he holds that position, and whether he’s really in line with the gospel of Jesus Christ to declare all countervailing positions not merely wrong but fully heretical. That way, it seems to me, lies nothing good.

The Obama administration and the criminalization of dissent

Posted on 28 April 200923 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

I wrote a piece early last October laying out my thoughts as to what the Obama administration would look like, and what his presidency would bring. At some point, I intend to do a full-scale review of that post, evaluating what I got right and what I got wrong, but at this point I think I can call the shot on three connected predictions I made: that Barack Obama’s talk of bipartisanship would be just empty words belied by a highly partisan administration, that Nancy Pelosi would run rampant, and (most worrisome), this:

I believe the approach we’ve seen from the Obama campaign to dissent and criticism will be repeated in the policies and responses of an Obama-led Executive Branch; given the clear willingness of his campaign to suppress freedom of speech to prevent criticism of their candidate, I believe we’ll see the same willingness from his administration and his chief congressional allies. This will mean a surge in the kind of the strongarm political tactics that we’ve already seen entirely too often this year. . . .

The Obama campaign’s efforts to shout down Stanley Kurtz and David Freddoso (in an effort to intimidate Chicago radio station WGN into canceling their appearances on Milt Rosenberg’s show) ought to be disturbing to anyone who cares about free speech. Of even greater concern should be the Obama “truth squads” in Missouri, where the campaign enlisted allies in public office to threaten prosecution of any TV station that runs any ads about Sen. Obama that the campaign deems untrue. Not only is this approach outrageously biased (one side’s allowed to lie, but the other isn’t?), it gets into some very grey areas about interpretation and intent, and thus raises some real concerns as to the approach an Obama Department of Justice might take to the First Amendment.

This kind of approach, like Joe Biden’s suggestion that an Obama/Biden administration might prosecute the Bush administration, is nothing more nor less than the use (or threat of use) of political power to punish one’s opponents, intimidate critics, and silence dissenters; it’s the sort of thing we’re used to seeing in Zimbabwe, not here—and as the case of Zimbabwe shows, there’s nothing, not even money, that can corrupt a democracy faster, or more severely. I’ve argued before that one of the great problems with our politics in this day and age is that we absolutize our own perspectives—we assume that our own perspectives and presuppositions are the only legitimate ones, and that those who disagree with us can’t possibly be doing so sincerely, but must be acting out of motives that are selfish or otherwise wrong. The criminalization of politics, which we’re starting to see urged by the Obama campaign, is a more extreme version of that problem, because it argues that those motives are not only wrong, but are in fact criminal in nature. The chilling effect of that sort of approach should be deeply worrisome not just to conservatives, but also to true liberals.

Unfortunately, it appears that many leftist Democrats aren’t true liberals, because President Obama has now invited just such prosecutions, and they don’t appear to be worried at all; to its credit, the Boston Globe did call out Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security for the egregious report that pretty much labeled all conservatives as potential terrorist threats, but an awful lot of Democrats seem to be just fine with it. Indeed, many who were First Amendment absolutists who loved to wax lyrical about the importance of dissent back when there was a Republican in the White House now seem to think anyone who dares argue with the Anointed One should be drug out into the street and shot.

To repeat: the willingness of those in power to deal with opposition by criminalizing policy differences—to use brute force as a tool for gaining and maintaining political power—is one of the things that makes places like Zimbabwe the basket cases that they are. We cannot afford to allow such an approach to corrupt our system. But even if concern for what’s best for the nation doesn’t restrain the Obama administration from such banana-republic tactics, enlightened self-interest should, as Matt Lewis memorably illustrated (HT: Joshua Livestro):

There has been a lot of debate on the potential prosecution of Bush Administration officials who offered legal opinions supporting waterboarding—with some even calling for investigations of high-ranking officials like Dick Cheney. However, one thing that hasn’t been given the attention it deserves is the precedent it would set if we were to criminalize national security decisions. Hence, I’ve finally decided to test out the time machine I’ve been building in my basement—and you would be surprised what sort of things grew out of the current debacle.

For instance, the following Associated Press story was filed on April 23, 2013, and if it sounds Orwellian, well, it is:

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS TO FACE PROSECUTION

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department announced today that charges could be filed against numerous Obama Administration officials as a result of last year’s terror attack in Los Angeles. In announcing the indictments, Attorney General John Cornyn said that top officials showed “gross and purposeful negligence” by releasing perpetrators of the attacks from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and demanding that interrogation tactics be softened against chief planner Mehmet al-Meshugeneh, who had already revealed that a major attack was being planned against a major U.S. sporting event.

“By purposefully disregarding crucial intelligence, and in releasing known participants in the plot into Saudi custody, numerous government officials took action which made the Staples Center bombing possible,” Cornyn said. He went on to note that “numerous individuals in the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security knowingly pursued policies which would endanger the lives of Americans. They placed their political priorities above the safety of the citizens of this country, and thousands of innocent people died as a result. These people must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

At the White House, Press Secretary Adam Brickley said that President Sarah Palin stands firmly behind the decision. “It’s not as if we relish the thought of prosecuting members of the previous administration,” Brickley said, “but, at this point, there is a clearly established precedent—set in place by the Obama Administration themselves—which says that government officials must be held accountable if they contributed in any way to major breaches of the law. In this case, the individuals under investigation do appear to have purposefully allowed these terrorists to continue their actions—prioritizing international public opinion over the lives of the American people. So, while this may be a politically charged issue, there is a real need to prosecute.”

In the end, the sort of tactics the Obama administration has now begun to employ are ineffective at silencing dissent (as the case of Zimbabwe, along with many other nations, shows)—all they really do is raise the stakes enormously. If you’re willing to start prosecuting your predecessors, you’re going to get the same treatment from your successors unless you can manage to do one of two things: a) overthrow the Constitution so that you can become President-for-Life, or b) never make a significant mistake. Taken all in all, I’d say the first is likelier, and neither exactly probable.

All of which is to say that Barack Obama and his senior staff and advisors would do well to remember, and live by, an ancient piece of wisdom:

“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

—Matthew 7:12 (ESV)

Christians should be more Christian

Posted on 28 April 200923 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

Remember, the three most powerful narratives on the planet are narratives of religion, narratives of nation, and narratives of ethnicity/race. You cannot afford to forfeit that territory by talking about economics or the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Don’t be afraid to be Christian ministers. If you don’t use the Christian narrative to define reality for your people, then someone else will define reality for them with a different narrative.

What makes this quote remarkable and unexpected is the speaker: Eboo Patel, a devout Muslim. Dr. Patel, an Oxford-trained scholar, teaches a course on interfaith leadership at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago together with a Christian woman named Cassie Meyer. McCormick being what it is, I would have expected such a course there to push lowest-common-denominatorism, but that seems to be far from the case. Judging by the fascinating article on Dr. Patel and the class in the latest issue of Leadership, “Ministry Lessons from a Muslim” (which doesn’t appear to be up online yet), he and Meyer advocate respectful conversation between unabashed truth claims. We need to respect and love those with whom we disagree based on our own convictions, not by setting those convictions aside, and so Dr. Patel, as a Muslim, encourages his Christian students to be more Christian. He explains this in part by saying,

If you enter a ministerial gathering as a Christian minister and downplay your Christian identity in an attempt to make everyone comfortable, as a Muslim leader, I’m immediately suspicious. I don’t trust you. Embracing your identity as a Christian creates safety for me to be a Muslim.

That isn’t a reaction I would have predicted, but it makes a lot of sense; after all, someone capable of neutering their own beliefs and identity for the sake of a particular goal is also perfectly capable of asking others to do the same—which, to those unwilling to do so, makes them a potential threat. (By contrast, someone unapologetic about declaring and maintaining their beliefs either will make space for others to do the same, or else will expose their hypocrisy and other sin issues. That’s not pleasant, to be sure, but at least such people can be dealt with straightforwardly.)

This is really cool

Posted on 28 April 200923 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | 5 Comments

I don’t remember how I ended up with a year’s free subscription to Wired, but I’ve really been enjoying it; I knew it was a good magazine, but either it’s gotten better over the last couple years or else I’d never fully appreciated it before. The serious articles are consistently very good—for instance, there are a couple pieces from the March issue that I’ve been meaning to post on, serious pieces on the roots of the financial crisis and what steps ought to be taken to deal with it, and I was fascinated by the one in the May issue on Teller and the research he’s involved in on the neuropsychology of stage magic (if that sounds geeky, trust me, it isn’t)—but my favorite articles have been some of the lighter ones.

I was particularly pleased to see the piece in the April issue on the German board game The Settlers of Catan. If you haven’t heard of it before, you’re not alone—in America, it has a ways to go before it’s as widely-known as, say, Monopoly or Scrabble; the only people I know who’ve heard of it found out about it the same way I did, from my brother-in-law—but when they call it a “perfect boardgame” that “redefines the genre,” they aren’t blowing smoke. It’s a fascinating and enjoyable game on every level. As the article explains,

Instead of direct conflict, German-style games tend to let players win without having to undercut or destroy their friends. This keeps the game fun, even for those who eventually fall behind. Designed with busy parents in mind, German games also tend to be fast, requiring anywhere from 15 minutes to a little more than an hour to complete. They are balanced, preventing one person from running away with the game while the others painfully play out their eventual defeat. And the best ones stay fresh and interesting game after game.

Teuber nailed all these traits using a series of highly orchestrated game mechanics. Instead of a traditional fold-out board, for example, Settlers has the 19 hexagonal tiles, each representing one of five natural resources—wooded forests, sheep-filled meadows, mountains ripe for quarrying. At the beginning of every game, they’re arranged at random into an island. Next, numbered tokens marked from 2 to 12 are placed on each tile to indicate which dice rolls will yield a given resource. Because the tiles get reshuffled after every game, you get a new board every time you play.

The idea is that players establish settlements in various locations on the board, and those settlements collect resource cards whenever the token number for the tile they are sitting on gets rolled. By redeeming these resource cards in specific combinations (it takes a hand of wood, brick, wheat, and wool to build a new settlement, for instance), you expand your domain. Every settlement is worth a point, cities are two points, and the first player to earn 10 points wins. You can’t get ahead by rustling your opponents’ sheep or torching their cute wooden houses.

One of the driving factors in Settlers—and one of the secrets to its success—is that nobody has reliable access to all five resources. This means players must swap cards to get what they need, creating a lively and dynamic market, which works like any other: If ore isn’t rolled for several turns, it becomes more valuable. “Even in this tiny, tiny microcosm of life, scarcity leads to higher prices, and plenty leads to lower prices,” says George Mason University economist Russ Roberts, who uses Settlers to teach his four children how free markets work.

Wheeling and dealing turns out to be an elegant solution to one of the big problems plaguing Monopoly—sitting idle while other players take their turns. Since every roll of the dice in Settlers has the potential to reap a new harvest of resource cards, unleash a flurry of negotiations, and change the balance of the board, every turn engages all the players. “The secret of Catan is that you have to bargain and sometimes whine,” Teuber says.

Teuber also made the game as flexible as possible, with numerous means of earning points. Building the longest road is worth two points, for instance, and collecting development cards (purchased with resource cards, these can offer a Year of Plenty resource bonanza or straight-up points) also brings you closer to victory. Having options like this is critical. The games that stand the test of time have just a few rules and practically unlimited possibilities, making them easy to learn and difficult to master. (Chess, for example, has 10¹²⁰ potential moves, far more than the number of atoms in the universe.)

Finally, the game is designed to restore balance when someone pulls ahead. If one player gets a clear lead, that person is suddenly the prime candidate for frequent attacks by the Robber, a neat hack that Teuber installed. Roll a seven—the most likely outcome of a two-dice roll, as any craps player knows—and those with more than seven resource cards in their hand lose half their stash, while the person who rolled gets to place a small figure called the Robber on a resource tile, shutting down production of resources for every settlement on that tile. Not surprisingly, players often target the settler with the most points.

In addition to deploying the Robber, players will usually stop trading with any clear leader. In tandem, these two lines of attack can reduce a front-runner’s progress to a crawl. Meanwhile, lagging opponents have multiple avenues for catching up.

All of this means that players must use strategy and move smartly, but even flawless play doesn’t necessarily lead to easy victory. This is why kids can play with adults, or beginners with experts, and everyone stays involved.

“When a lot of us saw it, we thought this was the definition of a great game,” saysPete Fenlon, CEO of Mayfair Games, Settlers’ English-language distributor. “In every turn you’re engaged, and even better, you’re engaged in other people’s turns. There are lots of little victories—as opposed to defeats—and perpetual hope. Settlers is one of those perfect storms.”

If you like playing games—of any sort—and have people to play with, go pick up a copy and introduce yourself, and them, to Catan. You’ll be glad of it.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Posted on 27 April 200923 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

With all due apologies to Inigo Montoya . . .

This is what the president promised us:

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

So, what’s he doing about it? Well, according to the Washington Times,

The Obama administration, which has boasted about its efforts to make government more transparent, is rolling back rules requiring labor unions and their leaders to report information about their finances and compensation.

The Labor Department noted in a recent disclosure that “it would not be a good use of resources” to bring enforcement actions against union officials who do not comply with conflict of interest reporting rules passed in 2007. . . .

The regulation, known as the LM-30 rule, was at the heart of a lawsuit that the AFL-CIO filed against the department last year. One of the union attorneys in the case, Deborah Greenfield, is now a high-ranking deputy at Labor.

And courtesy of Michelle Malkin:

I wrote two weeks ago about transparency killer Ron Sims, the King County WA bureaucrat nominated to the no. 2 spot at HUD by supposed transparency savior Barack Obama. Those in his backyard who know him best know the lengths Sims has gone to in order to obstruct public disclosure and stop taxpayers from finding out the truth about his office’s shady dealings.

As I mentioned in the column, blogger Stefan Sharkansky sued Sims over his refusal to release public records related to voter fraud during the 2004 contested gubernatorial election. Today, Sharkansky reports, Sims and King County settled for $225,000, one of the largest settlements for public records violations in state history.

I think someone in the administration needs to go look up “transparent” in a good dictionary.

A pastoral comment on Sarah Palin

Posted on 26 April 200923 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

I forgot to mention this yesterday, what with everything else going on, but I have another post up over on Conservatives4Palin. Counsel for leaders within the church is also of value for Christians called to leadership outside the church, since I believe exercising Christian leadership in the marketplace and in government is an important form of Christian ministry.

On this blog in history: January 26-31, 2008

Posted on 25 April 200923 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

Whose table?
A brief reflection on the Lord’s Supper.

The Jesus heresy?
You can’t be properly Christ-centered without being Trinitarian; worshiping Jesus without the Father and the Spirit isn’t really worshiping Jesus at all.

Church as consumer option?
I’m looking forward to following up on this one by reading Skye Jethani’s The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity.

Justice and mercy
On the need to affirm the justice of God, and why even his mercy is, in a way, an act of his justice. I want to go back to this one at some point and develop it at greater length.