Publix has cleared yet another hurdle in its process to re-open its Palm Beach store: The new Palm Beach Publix was issued a conditional certificate of occupancy Wednesday from the Town’s Planning, Zoning and Building Department. The store was inspected Tuesday and late last week. “This essentially means that the project is substantially complete,” said …
"Extreme events induced by man:" the new euphemism for acts of terror
While digging through my email, I could not help but notice this, from the promotion of a new publication by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO): New and extensively researched, Bridge Security Guidelines offers guidance on bridge design for extreme events induced by man. This document provides the designer with information …
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Baptists: the "One Way Calvinists" Split Over Making It a Two-Way Street
George Conger documents the growing split in the Southern Baptist Convention over the adoption of Calvinism: The question of Calvinism is one of the major challenges facing American Christianity today, a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) said last month. In an 18 October 2011 interview posted on the website of SBC Today, the …
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Reply to Brian McLaren: If Church is the Problem, Maybe We Should Get Rid of It
I have to confess that Brian McLaren's piece Seminary Is Not the Problem -- the Church Is is one of the most curious pieces I have ever read. It's not often that an academic (?) so baldly proclaims that the "real world" is so deficient that it should be remoulded to follow the academic one …
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Today's Iraq, From a 2005 Post
What I thought was going to happen in Iraq now that we are leaving and other things, from a July 2005 post: A hallmark of Ba'athist regimes is minority rule. In Syria, the Alawi al-Assads have ruled a predominantly Sunni country for many years. In Iraq, the Sunni Saddam Hussein had ruled a predominately Shi'ite …
Maybe We Need Some Christian Imams
As the leaves start to fall on campuses here in Tennessee, we are treated to the ongoing spectacle of Vanderbilt University using its nondiscrimination policy to progressively ban Christian student organisations from campus. There are so many logical nonsequiturs to this move that it's hard to know where to start: will they extend this to …
It's Not Equality After All
It's hard to believe that the Old Grey Lady has finally broken down and admitted the truth: IT’S a puzzle: one dispossessed group after another — blacks, women, Hispanics and gays — has been gradually accepted in the United States, granted equal rights and brought into the mainstream. At the same time, in economic terms, …
Gaddafi's Death and the End of the Nuremberg Idea
The Russians are right about this one: As politicians in Western capitals were taking quiet pleasure in the capture and killing of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi yesterday, opinions elsewhere were divided. In Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the Geneva Conventions had been breached with the killing of Colonel Gaddafi. "We have to lean on …
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Book Review: Laurence Leamer’s Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach
One day while growing up in Palm Beach, I stopped to visit my grandmother. As I’ve documented numerous times on this blog, I frequently found myself on the wrong end of Palm Beach’s brutal social system (well, the young part of it, at least.) In response to my complaints about the place, she, in some …
The China Currency Bill is Not the Answer
John Boehner is correct about the nature of this, which is about to clear the Senate: Defying Chinese anger and White House warnings, the US Senate was set Tuesday to approve legislation to punish China for alleged currency manipulation widely blamed here for costing American jobs... The Democratic-held Senate was due to approve the measure …
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Positive Infinity 