Arjay's Weblog

Households To Get Coupons for Digital TV Switch

"Under the NTIA, every household would be eligible for the coupons until slightly less than $1 billion is spent.  If that doesn't go far enough, another $500,000 could be released but limited to only those people who depend on an antenna to get their TV."     Excerpt from article below

This both saddens and sickens me.  It shows how far-reaching and intrusive our federal government has become.

We've come to the place where the feds are willing to give Americans over $1 billion dollars  to ease the burden of transitioning from analog to digital TV in 2009.

I realize that the FCC controls the broadcast spectrum but, at least in my opinion, the feds have no interest whatsoever in whether or not a person has access to television, just like they shouldn't have an interest in whether or not someone has health care or a laptop computer.

I've said this before and it might help to explain this nonsense:  If television were shut down across this land for about 6 months, we would probably descend into anarchy.  Mind-numbed robots unable to obtain their entertainment fix would go stir crazy.  What would people do with all those hours?

I refer to TV as the RetardGenerator.  Too much time in front of that idiot box will mess up your head.  With the consolidation of various media empires, a handful of people can dictate what billions of people on this globe will think and how they will think it.  And it's not just the television show.  Most of the real "programming" or "re-programming" is done during the commercials.  During commercials we learn how to emulate the "beautiful" people, the "acceptable" people, the "important" people.  Far more Americans learn societal mores from TV than they do from the Bible or a church.

Think about it.  Join me in dumping television completely on February 19, 2009 - or sooner!

R.J.

P.S.  I did not consume any broadcast media this past Sunday.  I didn't think about it and I never missed it.  I didn't even use the Internet much, and that is becoming a parallel universe to television simply delivered over a different medium.  Mental retardation can be delivered over analog radio signals, copper cables, fiber optic cables, and satellites.

[Link to full story]
Households to get coupons for digital TV switch

Amusing Ourselves to Death:  Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

The Image Culture

I've read a few of Christine Rosen's columns in The New Atlantis.  In the column linked below she takes a very interesting look at how images have filled and shaped our society.  Very interesting stuff.  The New Atlantis is described as "A Journal of Technology and Society" and is published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Her piece entitled, Are We Worthy of our Kitchens? is very thought-provoking as well.

R.J.

The Image Culture - by Christine Rosen
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/10/rosen.htm

God, make it easier for me!

What a truly depressing article I ran across in today's Sunday, March 5th edition of The Detroit News.  I had heard about churches offering electronic funds withdrawal for the purposes of tithing or church giving, but to read some of the reasons folks have for doing this is beyond sad. 

"Places of worship are delicately testing whether the Sunday collections can occur in cyberspace.  If the convenience of the faithful trumps the ritual of making offerings during religious services, members of the clergy say it would help them secure larger donations and a steadier flow of financing."

"Rendering to God" is becoming as easy as the click of a mouse.

After all that God has given to us - his rich mercy in Christ, clothing, homes, family, friends - it all comes down to making my sick, selfish life just a little bit less difficult.   And this is so in line with how many of our churches conduct themselves in 2006.  Seeker-sensitive and seeker-focused.

R.J.

No Cash?  God Takes Electronic Payments

Fossett Breaks Flight Distance Record

I am an airplane FREAK!  If a plane passes overhead I will always look to see just what it is and usually can identify it.  When I was younger, the sound of a military jet would prompt me to run from the house to get a glimpse of it. 

Growing up I was into model rocketry and really enjoyed building and launching Estes rockets.  My wife and I are expecting our first child in a few weeks, a son, and the thought just hit me that I might have to get back into the old rocketry thing again soon!  Wow!  That'll be sweet! 

When I was younger, Mr. Kettlewell, an old gentleman who rented an upstairs room from my folks took me out to the observation deck at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and I can still remember that experience, watching those big ol' jets take off and land. 

My dad and I almost got in trouble by a Macomb County Sherriff one time while watching military jets.  We were on the shoulder of Hall Road near Selfridge Air National Guard Base watching C-130s and F-16s when we were asked to leave.  We said we would, but 20 minutes later when the cop returned, he wasn't too happy that we were still there!  He let us go without a ticket, but more care would have to be taken in the future.  Cops or no cops, these were MILITARY AIRCRAFT!!!

My heroes have always been men like John Glenn and Chuck Yeager.  Anyone who had the nerve to do what these men did, for the first time ever, had to be heroes.  The same goes for any man or woman who willingly straps his or herself onto a rocket and is punched into outer space.   I doubt I could do what these folks do.  If the tachycardia didn't kill me the G-forces probably would.  What guts these people have!

I just learned that adventurer Steve Fossett has set the world's flight distance record - 26,389 miles all by himself.  It really wasn't all that long ago that crossing the Atlantic was a huge accomplishment, and now thousands do it every single day.

A truly incredible feat by Mr. Fossett.

R.J.

Fossett Breaks Flight Distance Record

Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer  -  Home Page

Satan's Micro Minions

Interesting story here from today's Wall Street Journal. 

Satan's Micro Minions
Is Radio Frequency Identification a Tool of the Antichrist?

More on Electromagnetic Pulse

Frank Gaffney has a new book out that discusses this.   There's an interesting little video  here. 

Nuke Over U.S. Could Unleash Electromagnetic Tsunami

"And, what if the attacker could be reasonably sure that the United States would not know who was responsible for such a devasting blow?"

"In an instant, an invisible radio frequency wave is produced - a wave of almost unimaginably immense intensity, approximately a million times as strong as the most powerful radio signals on the earth.  The energy of this pulse would reach everything in line of sight of the detonation.  And it would do so at the speed of light."

I'm no longer a dispensationalist, thanks primarily to Kim Riddlebarger's excellent book titled, A Case for Amillennialsim.  I used to read the newspapers side-by-side with the Bible and try to figure out end times stuff.  Primary in that searching was what was going on with Israel and the Middle East.  While I don't think we can use events in that region of the world to predict Christ's return, it is still very interesting to me that Israel has begun to prepare its forces for a strike upon Iran's nuclear production facilities which, according to IDF sources, will occur before March of 2006. 

Just this past week, Iranian president and Senior Nutjob Mahmoud Ahmedinijad stated that the nation of Israel should be moved to Europe and he also made comments inferring that the Holocaust may have never happened.

Watching Israel deliver a world-class smackdown to these insane madmen will be fun to watch.  They probably won't get the green light from George "Islam is a religion of peace" Bush, but that's the beauty of it.  They do what needs to be done regardless of world opinion.  The church could learn from Israel's modern example in warfare. 

Iran recently launched its own satellite and has entered into a billion-dollar agreement to buy surface-to-air missiles from Russia.  Israel can't wait and we will wake up one day very soon to learn that brave men and women from the Middle East's sole democracy have delivered a body-blow to these Muslim fanatics, and we should be grateful.

Here's another interesting piece that gives more insight into the crazy beliefs of the Iranians.

R.J.