We had our first real taste of winter yesterday and today, with about of inch of snow on the ground here in the city. That made for an interesting ride to work on skinny road tyres and nice coating of fresh snow on the road. I should begin to rebuild the singlespeed mountain bike very soon, just to save the Steamroller from getting too abused by salt and slush. I will say, however, that despite the occasional squirelly-ness thanks to my tyres, I did feel much more in control with the fixed gear.

Posted on 14 December 2004

I tried yesterday (really I did) to break the silence in this space, but my workstation crashed rather ungracefully while I was writing a post. So well.

There have been several things I’ve been pondering this week, and I don’t have long entries for any of them. But I’ll mention a couple:

1. Gideon Strauss has a post about evangelicals and politics. One of the more interesting links in Gideon’s post is to an article by William Stuntz (“Faculty Clubs and Church Pews”). Stuntz hits upon a kernel of truth here:

I don’t think my liberal Democratic professor friends like this state of affairs. And — here’s a news flash — neither do most evangelicals, who regard helping the poor as both a passion and a spiritual obligation, not just a political preference. (This may be even more true of theologically conservative Catholics.) These men and women vote Republican not because they like the party’s policy toward poverty — cut taxes and hope for the best — but because poverty isn’t on the table anymore. In evangelical churches, elections are mostly about abortion. Neither party seems much concerned with giving a hand to those who most need it.

2. Matt Chester also talks about finding common ground between the political aisles. He also includes the following quote from Charles Bowdon:

“We are an exceptional model of the human race. We no longer know how to produce food. We no longer can heal ourselves. We no longer raise our young. We have forgotten the names of the stars, fail to notice the phases of the moon. We do not know the plants and they no longer protect us. We tell ourselves we are the most powerful specimens of our kind who have ever lived. But when the lights are off we are helpless. We cannot move without traffic signals. We must attend classes in order to learn by rote numbered steps toward love or how to breast-feed our baby. We justify anything, anything at all by the need to maintain our way of life. And then we go to the doctor and tell the professionals we have no life. We have a simple test for making decisions: our way of life, which we cleverly call our standard of living, must not change except to grow yet more grand. We have a simple reality we live with each and every day: our way of life is killing us.”

I don’t know much of anything about Bowden, and it has a bit of a Tyler Durden-esque tone to it, but it’s also an accurate description of our society.

Also, a bit of rally news. Subaru has signed Stephane Sarrazin to share the second works Impreza with Mikko Hirvonen. The factory rosters are now set for season:

Subaru
Petter Solberg
Mikko Hirvonen/Stephane Sarrazin

Peugeot
Marcus Gronholm
Markko Martin

Citroen
Sebastien Loeb
Francois Duval

Ford
Toni Gardemeister
Roman Kresta

Skoda
Armin Schwarz
Janne Tuohino/Jani Paasonen/Alex Bengue

Mitsubishi
Harri Rovanpera
Gilles Panizzi/Gigi Galli

Posted on 10 December 2004

Mitsubishi announced the signing of Harri Rovanpera today. Rovanpera will contest all 16 rounds of the championship next season. Mitsubishi management said the Gilles Panizzi and Gigi Galli will share the second Lancer, with Panizzi running all of the sealed surface events and selected gravel events. There is also a possibility that a third car will run in certain events.

The only remaining question for driver lineups next season is the second seat at Subaru, though it’s widely expected that the team will retain Mikko Hirvonen.

Posted on 7 December 2004

Ford announced today that Roman Kresta would join Toni Gardemeister and drive the second works Focus for the 2005 campaign. Kresta previously split his time between a third works car at Peugeot and a Bozian racing privateer Peugeot. The only team with a seat remaining is Mitsubishi, and that is expected to be filled by both Harri Rovanpera and Gianluigi Galli (with Rovanpera driving the loose surface events and Galli on sealed surfaces).

Posted on 3 December 2004

First, there’s an interesting discussion taking shape on Gideon’s site. When he orginally posed his question about virtue and state, I had started to respond to it here, but couldn’t quite get my thoughts in order. This discussion should help.

Also, Fr. Jape has two interesting posts that are worth reading.

Also, of local interest, Pittsburgh city government is fighting among themselves about a financial recovery plan. In case you don’t know, the city is in DEEP debt (currently, they are $77 million below what they need to cover the 2005 budget), mostly thanks to very poor decisions by the mayor and the city council. At this point, there isn’t a pleasant solution to this problem, and no one seems to be willing to make a concession or two to right the ship.

Posted on 2 December 2004

Mother Nature has decided to throw some truly bad weather my way for the ride to work today. The wind kicked up quite a bit last night, and before I left I was looking at 30mph winds with gusts up to 45mph. The rain had held off though, so at least I would be dry.

The ride was an adventure, though not as bad as expected. The wind was typically at my back or in my face the whole way, so I wasn’t too concerned about getting blown over. There were times, however, when I would just stop moving forward. Literally. There was also the occasional moment with flying debris heading toward me. Generally it was just in the form of trash, but there was also a garbage can that threatened to take me down as well.

In other news, the WRC team rosters are beginning to take shape. Skoda announced yesterday that Armin Schwarz would drive the first Fabia, and the second factory car would be shared between four youths: Janne Tuohino, Jani Paasonen and Alex Bengue. Each showed glimpses of promise last season during limited factory programmes, so this should be a fine start to Skoda’s return to the WRC full time. Also, Peugeot has announced the signing of Markko Martin to drive the second 307 behind Marcus Gronholm. As I’ve said before, this is a curious move by Martin, given that Peugeot has only one year left in the WRC, and typically Gronholm doesn’t work well with teammates who can challenge for rally wins (as evidenced by his strained relationship with Richard Burns). As it stands now, there are two open seats for the upcoming season — one at Ford and one at Mitsubishi (assuming, of course, that Subaru will sign Mikko Hirvonen for another year). The biggest names on the market without a factory drive at the moment are Colin McRae and Harri Rovanpera. While McRae has admitted to speaking with Ford, he hasn’t confirmed that anything is in the works. Rovanpera could help either team, though Mitsubishi will probably sign either of the younger drivers who shared the second Lancer last season.

Posted on 1 December 2004

is that Pittsburgh’s next alleycat will be December 18.

Posted on 29 November 2004

We had a pleasant Thanksgiving holiday, spending time with both sides of the family. Cold weather seems to have descended on Pittsburgh, finally, as well. Saturday was a beautiful day, though, with crisp temperatures and lots of sunshine. It would have been a nice bouldering day, but family trumps climbing (most of the time), and so I just took a nice spin around the city to work the turkey and stuffing out of my system.

In rally news, Ford signed Skoda’s Toni Gardemeister to replace Francois Duval. There is no official news from Markko Martin, but as I said before, he’ll likely go to Peugeot. Colin McRae has taken himself out of the running at Skoda, and rumors are circulating that he and protege Kris Meeks may land in the second seat at Ford.

Also, we (along with Jen’s family) took a trip to the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum on Saturday. It seems most of the city had the same idea. It is a very neat place, but I think Seb was about 6 months too young to really appreciate it. There was some fun stuff for him, but nothing he couldn’t have done at home.

Posted on 29 November 2004

Fr Jape has another tirade against the criticism of single issue voters (SIVs). At first, I was a bit upset, and went so far as to write a quick entry at my in-laws house right after Thanksgiving lunch. But then I thought I wasn’t really understanding the issue well enough. Perhaps I was being to critical of Fr. Jape and letting my distrust of all things Republican (and Democrat) cloud my thinking. In an effort to understand the issue at hand a bit better, I reread Jape’s first entry on the subject. Let me make this comment first:

I think at least a slight majority of all evangelical Christians who voted for Bush this past election aren’t really SIVs. That is, while they share the same ethusiasm for the SIV issues (abortion and gay marriage), they are truly on board with the current Republican/neo-conservative philosophy — they believe in limited government, they may be members of the NRA, they believe in the free market. While the media would like to portray them as SIVs (or “moral issue” voters — MIVs), they really aren’t. If abortion wasn’t such a political issue, they’d still be pulling the lever for George Bush.

That means that people like Dr. Eric Miller are truly in the minority. What Miller represents (and I’ve said this before) is truly a SIV. While his pro-life leanings led him to vote for George Bush, he didn’t feel comfortable with that decision because he wasn’t truly on board with the neo-conservative agenda. If abortion weren’t a political issue, he would not have pulled the lever for Bush. In fact, if I read his essay correctly, he may have even voted for John Kerry. But now, finally, we’re getting at the crux of my issue with this whole argument.

Most of the country only sees two answers.

Fr. Jape, Dr. Miller (to some extent), and Joel Betz fall into a typically Republican mindset — if you’re not for George Bush, you’re obviously a Democrat. Conservatives do really prefer to see things as simply black and white issues — you’re with us or you’re against us. I’m not advocating nuance here, but I am advocating, along with others, a better political choice. I am not, as Belz puts it, wobbling carelessly on the road. I am looking for a political group that isn’t playing nice with a political party that is not, at it’s very core, a Christian organization. Voting for George Bush because of moral issues, while noble and theologically defensible, is nothing more than, to paraphrase Matt, changing another flat tyre instead of sweeping the nails from the driveway. We aren’t fixing the problem — we’re only stopping the bleeding.

Posted on 26 November 2004

Fr. Jape‘s latest rambling, Against Theodicies and Theology examines the controversy at Huntington College over the dismissal of a theology professor for his views on Open Theism. He finishes on an interesting note:

Or, perhaps even better, theology could be left to the realm of farmers/soldiers/steelworkers, or anyone else of the sort who is daily engaged in the base realities of existence with little means of recourse other than the casting of their souls into the arms of either the Devil or our Lord. The discipline, I’m sure, would then achieve a level of clarity not before seen in our lifetimes.

Posted on 24 November 2004