Help Find John Alley

I don’t pretend that this little blog has much of a reach but, just in case, please keep an eye out for a missing person – especially if you or people you know are in the Pensacola, FL area. He’s the son of a dear friend of mine.

Tips can be submitted via helpfindjohn.info.

Update:

I’m very sad to report that John’s body was just found on the beach near the accident site. I know that the family racked up some expenses during the search, in case you’d still like to hit the PayPal button on the web site linked above. I’m sure that any surplus would go to John’s widow.

Last Update:

I received this announcement from John’s mom, who said I could pass it along.

John Harold Alley, 26, passed away on Saturday, 24 May 2008, in Pensacola,
Florida. He was a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force and was
stationed at NAS Whiting Field, Florida where he was in pilot training.

A memorial service will be held in the theater at NAS Whiting Field in
Milton, FL at 10am on Saturday, 31 May 2008, where he will be posthumously
commissioned a First Lieutenant and receive his pilot wings. A funeral will
be held in Bountiful, UT at the Bountiful Heights Stake Center (33 S. Moss
Hill Drive) at 11 am on Friday, 6 June 2008. A visitation will be held
Thursday evening from 6 to 8 at Russon Brothers Mortuary (295 North Main,
Bountiful). Interment will be in the Bountiful City Cemetery, with full
military honors.

A trust fund has been established for Emily and their child. Contributions
can be made by sending checks marked “Alley Family Trust Fund” to Air
Warrior Courage Foundation, PO Box 1553 Front Royal, VA 22630.

ID is dead. Long live the new ID.

Biologist Ken Miller gives a very interesting talk at Case Western: The Collapse of Intelligent Design: Will the next Monkey Trial be in Ohio?

It’s a good, long dose of common sense. Some of the science gets a little technical, but he’s a very good presenter (and funny) and anybody should be able to follow along and get the idea. He’s very personable and very clear. The whole video is about two hours long. The talk itself is one hour – I highly recommend it.

As he spoke I was reminded of John Derbyshire’s speculation that the West will eventually embrace evolution as it eventually embraced the round earth theory, and that creationism will find its home in Islam. In the Q&A Miller warns that what happened to Islam – once the seat of science and mathematics – could happen to us.

No matter how lame the questions were (and there are some windbags at that university) his answers were always illuminating and civil. I particularly enjoyed his response to the old Commie with BDS which comes at about 1:30 into the video.

Intelligent Design was, as Miller admits, a brilliant marketing term. Since the Dover decision it’s really dead. This talk makes it clear that ID is a fraud. But just as they (literally) did a global search and replace to rename Creationism as Intelligent Design, they are already coming up with a new avatar. Critical Analysis of Evolution is the next step. I mean, what scientist could be against “critical analysis”? In a few years, after Critical Analysis is exposed, I suppose their name will evolve again. May I suggest they go straight to “Mom and Apple Pie”?

If you haven’t yet seen the Dover decision, Judge Jones’ decision is very worth reading.

Dear Barry

Iowahawk has another hilarious chapter.

British Cultural Suicide Watch

Mark Steyn linked to this editorial from the Church of England. I’m going to paste the whole thing here because I don’t know how long the link will be good. (They offer no permalink that I can find.) Emphasis is mine.

If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is an Islamic nation, and therefore needs a share in any religious establishment to reflect this. The progress of conservative Islam in the UK has been amazing, and it has come at a time of prolonged decline in church attendance that seems likely to continue.

This progress has been enthusiastically assisted by this government in particular with its hard-line multi-cultural dogma and willingness to concede to virtually every demand made by Muslims. Perhaps most importantly the government has chosen to allow hard-liners to act as representing all Muslims, and more liberal Muslims have almost completely failed to produce any leadership voices to compete, leading many Britons to wonder if there are indeed many liberal Muslims at all, surely a mistake.

At all levels of national life Islam has gained state funding, protection from any criticism, and the insertion of advisors and experts in government departs national and local. A Muslim Home Office adviser, for example, was responsible for Baroness Scotland’s aborting of the legislation against honour killings, arguing that informal methods would be better. In the police we hear of girls under police protection having the addresses of their safe houses disclosed to their parents by Muslim officers who think they are doing their religious duty.

While men-only gentlemen’s clubs are now being dubbed unlawful, we hear of municipal swimming baths encouraging ‘Muslim women only’ sessions and in Dewsbury Hospitals staff waste time by turning beds to face Mecca five times a day — a Monty Pythonesque scenario of lunacy, but astonishingly true. Prisons are replete with imams who are keen to inculcate conservative Islam in any inmates who are deemed to be culturally ‘Muslim’: the Prison service in effect treats such prisoners as a cultural block to be preached to by imams at will. Would the Prison service send all those with ‘C of E’ on their papers to confirmation classes with the chaplain?! We could go on.

The point is that Islam is being institutionalised, incarnated, into national structures amazingly fast, at the same time as demography is showing very high birthrates. Charles Taylor’s new and classic work on the Secular Age charts the rise of the secular mindset and what he calls the ‘excarnation’ of Christianity as it is levered out of state policy and structures. Christianity is now regarded as bad news, the liberal elite’s attack developed in the 1960s took root in the educationalist empire, and to some extent even in areas of the church.

Today the Christian story is fading from public imagination, while Islam grows apace. There needs to be some fresh thinking in this area where the claims of Christ are sensitively explained. Our church leaders must develop ways of explaining this, as our feature on mission and evangelism this week demonstrates.

Here we go again

Cold fusion, anybody?

Here’s hoping it’s not a repeat of the Fleishmann and Pons fiasco. If it’s real, it’s the biggest news of the decade. Or century.

But I’m not holding my breath.