Dr. Scott Hahn will be speaking at Northern Kentucky University on Friday, December 7, 2007. The talk will be given at Regent’s Hall at 7:30 PM. The event is open to the public, admission is free, and no ticket is required. What more can you ask for? I’m making my plans, and hope to give a review of the even here.

Dr. Hahn is being hosted by the Catholic Newman Club. He was originally scheduled to come to town in October, but had to cancel due to travel difficulties. I’ve never heard him speak, but I’ve read several of his books, and enjoyed them greatly.

I’ve finally figured out how to embed the climate change videos I posted about from you tube. Part 1 give you the gist of the argument, but the other three parts are well worth the time. This guy knows his stuff.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

For anyone who thinks the government should fund Planned Parenthood, this is a must see post by Mark Shae.

I came across this article today about asteroid 99942 Apophis. This asteroid caused a big stir in 2004 when astronomers gave it a one in thirty-seven chance of striking the earth. While it is not as big as the one that probably killed of the dinosaurs, it is certainly big enough to take out a major city and alter the weather for years to come. Maybe it’s God’s answer for global warming?

What struck me about the article was this line,

“The largest such source of error is the sun’s ability to push small asteroids around with solar radiation; in Apophis’ case, up to 18.6 million miles (30 million kilometers) or about 2,350 Earth diameters off-course.“

Umm . . . excuse me, did you say 2,350 Earth diameters. That seems like an awfully large margin of error. Can we please not touch it until were sure of what is going on. I’d hate to send a mission into space in order to attach a solar sail to pull it off course, and then find out we’ve sailed it right into Boston Harbor. The last paragraph of the article acknowledges this fact, but it got me thinking about the butterfly effect.

The butterfly effect is a term that basically describes how the behavior of complex systems depends greatly on very small changes in conditions. For instance, a butterfly flapping its wings could affect the atmosphere in such a way as to cause a hurricane on the other side of the world.

Specifically, I was pondering how the butterfly effect pertains to the global warming debate. Now, I agree that the earth has warmed in the last decade, but I disagree with people who attribute this to man and our carbon emissions. The science on this is nowhere near settled, regardless of what you hear on the evening news. The atmosphere is such a complex system, that predicting its behavior has a huge margin of error. Before we spend trillions of dollars on programs to limit carbon emissions, shouldn’t we be absolutely sure of what is happening? After all, there are other things we could do with the money. Not to mention the unintended consequences of our programs on the atmosphere.

I ran across a fantastic set of videos on someone else’s blog (I wish I could remember who, sorry) by a climate expert in England. The videos very convincingly detail that we just don’t know exactly what is happening with global warming. I will try to post them if I can locate them on youtube.

 Update
Just moments after posting this, I ran across this story via  Instapundit. Geoengineering strikes me as an unequivocally bad idea.

I’m not really sure how I feel about this. Via Hot Air It is an article in Time that analyzes the relationship between Iran and the Vatican. It is well known that Pope John Paul II opposed the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, and Pope Benedict XVI would certainly oppose an invasion of Iran on the same grounds. Although Iran may appeal to the Pope to stop and invasion, and the Pope may make some calls, I doubt it will stop an invasion if the powers that be decide that is what they want to do.

I have to admit, when we first went into Iraq, I was behind it 100%, but since then I have grown and changed my mind about a lot of things, namely my faith. As a now committed Catholic, I’m inclined to fall back on the just-war doctrine, and although Iran continually threatens us and may be the breeding ground for many terrorists, I don’t think it give us the right to go invade the country. Certainly and economic or diplomatic action should be taken, but we have no right to invade. The preemptive war doctrine is a very dangerous idea.

If Iran develops nuclear weapons, the US will have to make it very clear to them, that if a nuclear weapon is used against the US or it’s allies, it would be the end of Iran. During the cold war, mutually assured destruction kept the powers at peace. In my opinion US foreign policy should revert to “Peace Through Absolute Strength.” Meaning, we will stay out of your business, but if you attack us, we will respond quickly and totally.

It seems Christmas comes earlier and earlier each year. This year my family and I moved into a new home. We’re still getting used to the change of moving from the city to the suburbs, and I’m having trouble sleeping because I don’t have the background noise of the city any more. My neighbors are so very normal now, so . . . suburban. This came into sharp focus for me on the weekend following Halloween. I noticed my next door neighbor taking down his Halloween decorations. I thought nothing of it until I saw a large plastic Santa sitting in his backyard. I figured he had to move it from his shed to get his lawn tractor out and he would be putting Santa back in storage until it was his time. After all, it was too early for Santa. He would get hot in that red coat this early in the year, and he isn’t supposed to arrive until the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Later on, I walked out my front door and caught a glimpse of two reindeer next door. Santa had joined them too, and the Christmas season had arrived in my neighborhood. Christmas music is now playing in all the stores, the familiar sound of the Salvation Army bell ringers has returned, and everyone is celebrating the birth of Christ the Lord.

Or are they? It seems we’ve lost what Christmas is all about. As a Catholic, the Christmas season doesn’t start for me until Christmas day. After all, how can we celebrate the birth of Christ, when in the liturgical year, he hasn’t been born yet. Advent marks the beginning of the Catholic year, and this weekend is the first week of advent. I think we should use this to set us apart in our increasingly secular world. As Catholics, we should celebrate the Christmas beginning on Christmas day at home, just like we do in Church. It can and should be part of our Catholic identity, and identity that isn’t as strong as it used to be.

We can wait to put up our lights and nativity scenes, buy our trees the weekend before and only display our advent wreaths in the weeks leading up to Christmas. We can anxiously await the birth of Jesus in darkness while the rest of the world celebrates their secular holiday. When Christmas arrives, we will burst into celebration and celebrate long after the rest of the world has has forgotten what the celebration was for. And when they ask us why our lights are still up on New Years Day, we can use the opportunity to explain what it means to be Catholic.