-Jr Family Blog » Rants

Just in case they don’t print it…

Corinne — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 01:59:05 +0000

Hello,
Babies R Us gave us a free Babytalk and American Baby in their gift box and I have to say that Babytalk is much better, even without looking at all of the negative letters to the editor in your magazine. I couldn’t find a way to write a letter to the editor easily like I could on the letter to the editor page of Babytalk. Your magazine pushes bottles, vaccines, and expensive needless things like the classifieds – what a waste of paper! The article about cookware said nothing about the health dangers of using nonstick teflon cookware ( http://mercola.com does) and the article that said vaccines are fine and not dangerous in groups (Top 10 Worries of New Parents, with the
horrendous picture of parents looking horrified at the baby) was extremely misleading ( http://mercola.com and many other well-documented websites). You constantly assume that our babies sleep in cribs and we work outside the home, completely ignoring the happy stay-at-home mothers who call their partners “husbands” and have a family bed, and nurse their children to sleep instead of trying everything else at bedtime. In the article about storing toys, nothing was mentioned about giving toys away and teaching generosity and sharing to children! I can’t believe the mother who wrote an article about her breasts also chose to show them to the whole world, as if we are teenage boys. At this point, all that this issue is good for is tearing out pictures of babies for my daughter, then throwing it in the recycle bin.

Links to close tabs

Corinne — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 04:36:04 +0000

I need to close most of the tabs on my Konqueror window so here are some links for my benefit, if not yours:

http://www.omahapubliclibrary.org/ralstonlibrary/ Ralston’s public library – don’t ask me why it’s on the Omaha Public Library page, since Ralston isn’t annexed into Omaha because the Masons don’t want to and the Ralston library is not part of the OPL system: link

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/11/news/health.php?page=1 Former Surgeon General Cites Political Interference, an article I haven’t had time to read yet: link

http://johnplaceonline.com/stress-management/11-causes-and-cures-for-procrastination/ Eleven Causes and Cures for Procrastination, a link from Dr. Mercola’s site: link

http://tinyurl.com/3a8rzo Plastic Shopping Bags Being Banned, an article on Dr. Mercola’s website: link

http://traditio.com/comment/com0707.htm TRADITIO commentary for this month; normally I don’t recommend their site because they are not yet sedevacantist but they have good pictures and report the news better than most other sites I know: link

http://tinyurl.com/379bsx Ten things your grocery store doesn’t want you to know – this could be a very useful Dr. Mercola blog webpage! Read the comments his viewers posted if you have time, too: link

And the best for last – our photo gallery in case you haven’t seen it yet: DashJr Family Photo Gallery

and I can’t finish editing this entry without crediting TinyURL! :)

Uncomfortable with term ‘planned’ pregnancy

Corinne — Tue, 01 May 2007 16:01:28 +0000

It is hard for me to explain this because the term is so common now and I don’t know if any readers will understand, because it might be the only way they think about pregnancy these days: ‘planned’ or ‘unplanned’. I felt very uncomfortable today at the clinic when I was filling out forms and I was asked if this pregnancy is ‘planned’…I asked Luke and we said “yes”, but I wanted to say, “this pregnancy was hoped for, it was a gift from God!” We had been hoping for another baby since last summer. We can’t plan to have a baby a certain month and give birth nine months later though. It just doesn’t happen that way. Even when a woman is not breastfeeding and is in perfect health, the chances of conceiving are not 50-50.
Upon further reflection, it seems to me that this is yet another symptom of society’s rejecting God in everything. The words we use make important impressions on the way we think about things.
Was your baby planned? -is it bad if he wasn’t?
Does your baby sleep through the night? -is it bad if she doesn’t, if she wakes up every once in a while and nurses back to sleep?
Are you pro choice? -do you mean do I support the right to choose raising my baby with my husband, or giving him up for adoption…or do you mean something more sinister?
Do you work? -what does it mean if I don’t work for pay, but my work is infinitely more rewarding, my work is orienting our children toward God and Heaven?

Just a few things to think about…

Proofs of God’s existence

Corinne — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 23:10:24 +0000

From another conversation with a different agnostic/atheist…

from our catechism, “My Catholic Faith”
How do we know by our reason that God exists?
-We know by our reason that God exists, because of:
1. The existence of the world.
2. The order and harmony of the whole universe.
3. The testimony of our conscience.

How does the existence of the world prove the existence of God?
-The existence of the world proves the existence of God, because it could not have come into existence by itself.
1. Everything in the world had a beginning. Men, animals, plants, the earth, planets and stars – all had a beginning. They could not have come into existence by themselves. They must have been made by Someone Who had no beginning. Planets and men could no more have made themselves than a watch can make itself.

The astronomer Kircher had a friend who denied the existence of God. During a visit one day, this friend saw a globe in the study of the astronomer. “This is an interesting globe,” said he;” Who made it?” “Why,” replied Kircher, “it just made itself!” The friend had a hearty laugh at the idea. Kircher asserted, “It would be much easier for a little globe like that to make itself than for the immense globe of the earth to create itself.”

2. When we see footprints on the sand, we conclude that someone has passed that way. The universe is filled with the footprints of a Supreme Creator. Every single existing thing or being gives clear testimony of Him.

How do the order and harmony of the universe prove the existence of God?
-They lead us to infer the existence of a Supreme Architect and Preserver of surpassing skill.
1. The heavenly bodies go along their appointed courses age after age. The seasons succeed one another year by year. There is splendor, beauty, arrangement, and order everywhere. The whole universe is governed and preserved by immutable law. [How could it be this orderly and not so chaotic if something like the 'big bang' had occurred?]
If you plant an orange seed, you are certain an apple will not spring from it. Every morning you are sure the sun, when it rises, will appear in the east. At night you can go peacefully to sleep, that after your rest the day will come again.

2. To say that this universal order is the result of accident, or that the planets direct their own courses, is as foolish as to say that an automobile goes sensibly around the city streets running itself.
“The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of His hands” (Ps. 18:2). God is the Intelligent Cause.

3. Long ago the pagan Cicero said: “When we contemplate the heavens, we arrive at the conviction that they are all guided by a Being of surpassing skill.”
And Cicero also says, “There is no nation to be found so savage as to be ignorant of the existence of God.” [it is hard to say which was more savage, though - savages who sacrificed thousands to their gods, not to be confused with the one God, or savages who sacrificed millions to their gods of racial and other forms of purity in the last century] The great astronomer Newton often uncovered and bowed his head when God’s Name was uttered.

How does the testimony of our conscience prove the existence of God?
-By our conscience we can distinguish right from wrong.
1. Our conscience approves the right and condemns the wrong. Thus within ourselves there is a recognition of a Supreme Lawgiver to Whom we are responsible, Who will reward the good we do, and punish the evil.
“Only the fool says in his heart: There is no God” (Psalm 13:1)

2. Those who persist in denying the existence of God in spite of external and internal testimony are atheists who are eaten up by pride, or live vicious lives, or both. Of them Our Lord said:
“Seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear, neither do they understand . . . For the heart of this people has been hardened, and with their ears they have been hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed; Lest at any time they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their mind, And be converted, and I heal them” (Matthew 13:13-15).

The other proofs we have are from supernatural revelation, which you are not interested in. It was uncanny how much the Catechism of Modernism echoed what you said yesterday (a different catechism from the one that has the proofs I quoted):

The Religious Philosophy of the Modernists
Q. What do the modernists use as the foundation for their philosophy?
A. Modernists place the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine which is usually called Agnosticism.

Q. Give the teaching of Agnosticism?
A. According to this teaching, human reason is confined entirely within the field of phenomena, that is to say, to things that are perceptible to the senses, and in the manner in which they are perceptible: it has no right and no power to transgress these limits. Hence it is incapable of lifting itself up to God, and of recognizing His existence, even by visible things.

Q. What conclusions do Modernists draw from this doctrine?
A. From this it is inferred that God can never be the direct object of science, and that, as regards history, He must not be considered as an historical subject.

…

Q. What definition of the Vatican Council (in the 1800s) may be cited against the Modernists?
A. The Vatican Council has defined: If any one says that the one true God, Our Creator and Lord, can not be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason by means of the things that are made, let him be anathema; and also: If any one says that it is not possible or not expedient that man be taught, through the medium of divine revelation, about God and the worship to be paid Him, let him be anathema; and finally: If any one says that divine revelation can not be made credible by external signs, and that therefore men should be drawn to the faith only by their personal internal experience or by private inspiration, let him be anathema.

And he said:
“1) The existence of the world proves the existence of the world not god
2) Order and harmony of the universe proves science exists, not a god.
3) Emotions are an extension of out conscience, I dont want to die ergo I wont kill you for that same reason.

A fool in his heart…. I’m not talking about the heart or of feeling, I’m talking about the mind.

It is good to know however that i live a vicious life, as I am a very helpful person. So how is it that i have the ability to help others w/o the assistance of a god. How is it that i dont kill people and hurt others just for fun. If i dont follow god but have good morals towards others what makes this possible? Perhaps I operate on another system.”

So I said:
Science exists to study the order and harmony. They didn’t make it.

He said:
Oh, by the way, If EVERYTHING had a beginning, man, animals, plants etc. how is it possible that god did not. Again I ask HOW is it possible, not that it MUST be necessary for existance.

I said:
Our minds can only comprehend things with beginnings. That’s all we know. It could be why we can’t come up with another plausible theory of the beginning of the world besides God – the big bang theory assumes some matter already existed, plus spontaneous generation which has been disproven.
God by definition is greater than we are, so part of that is that He had no beginning. He was always there, period.
I know you probably don’t like this argument…but our puny little minds can only understand so much. (mine anyway, ha ha) So it is hard for us to take that we can’t and don’t understand everything, especially something like Someone Who had no beginning.
and you not going around killing everybody has to do with the conscience thing I typed about earlier
You’ve probably heard all the proofs/arguments I typed today before. As I said, I think that’s all we have here at home. I’m sure a text of the Summa is easy to find though.
here is a small part of it http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/FP/FP044.html

He said:
let me ask you this. I god wont give us the ability to understand him, can he blame us for not following him, if he fails to give proof to his existance and then expects me to follow then the error is on him for my doubt, not me. If he wants me to follow he needs to give me every reason and not expect me to follow faith. again his error not mine.

I said:
ok…just because we’re stupid doesn’t mean we can’t accept God’s existence, and in other ways through faith. God made the beautiful sunsets, the intricate flowers and the brilliant complexity of the human body – the more I learn about these things, the more I see God’s existence, so it really depends on your attitude, not on God. You have already closed your mind to Him. Explain – and don’t say “science” even if that is your god, science only studies it doesn’t create it – how and why the human body is made to do everything it can to keep living, to fight that which would kill it, to keep surviving…if it’s all random and has no purpose other than to disentegrate once it does finally die.

He said:
good question, but not the point. Why does the body fight to live, who knows, but better yet what does that have to do with a God. Because you think he made us that way? Great! But first I want proof that he made us. Not random sighting of beauty and sunsets. Not faith because we lack the ability to know everything RIGHT NOW. Not that we must come to the understanding that our minds are “puny” just so we can have our belifes despite that they dont follow to the logical conclusion that we’ve concluded prior to any evidence. None of that matters. Prove God. If you cant then I have no use for your belief system. Like I said, I already strive to live a good life with out his help or from my fearing him. I dont need a god to be a good person. But if a God exists, prove it.

I reminded him to read that excerpt from the Summa Theologica that I linked to and the conversation ended soon after that with nap time on my end and more work on his end. I know my side wasn’t that intellectually sophisticated, so I am hoping the Summa will help him and other readers this applies to.

Pedantic Mail Servers

Luke — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 15:00:25 +0000

Some mail servers these days are getting ridiculously aggressive about trying to block spam. A perfect example of this is (surprise surprise… not!) Microsoft’s mail hosting services such as Hotmail. If we try to email anyone at a Hotmail address, our mail server immediately gets a rejection before it even sends the content of the message, just based on the IP addresses on our mail server! This is a server that has never sent any sort of unsolicited email, including spam and viruses.

The “reason” given for the block is because it is on a dynamically assigned address. This is a trivial matter, and there is no “rule” that says mail servers must have static IP addresses. Static addresses are responsible for at least as much spam as dynamic ones. Our servers are properly configured: they are not open relays, have RDNS and MX records pointing to them, etc… There is no reason they should be inherently suspect, let alone automatically banned! Now here’s the even more ridiculous part: if we relay our email through our ISP’s mail servers as suggested by Microsoft et al (which we prefer not to for other reasons anyway, such as lack of delivery confirmation), our emails still bounce anyway. No doubt this is because ISPs relay any and all mail for their customers, including spam and viruses, making them likely sources for spam.

So to put it short: We cannot email anyone who uses Hotmail, and this is primarily the fault of Microsoft who runs it.

If you’d like a recommendation for a new email service, try GMail. While they have had similar problems in the past, and still have some pretty big issues (such as not allowing disabling spam filters or supporting IMAP), they also support IM from within the web interface and it is much more reliable than Hotmail! Not to mention that you get virtually an unlimited quota for email space.

-Luke

“F” rating for “The Conception Chronicles”

Corinne — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:18:26 +0000

I am barely on page 7 of this book by Patty Doyle Debano, Courtney Edgerton Menzel and Shelly Dicken Sutphen, and already I am offended and disgusted. The authors seem to assume that:
every woman is taking birth control
every childbearing-age couple is rich enough to own a house, and stupid enough to think a baby needs a whole new addition to the house
those couples only want two or three children (thank God for the Catholic couples who say that it gets easier with five and six children and more, with more helpers)
we want to hear normal marital sex referred to as “unprotected”
the view that God made our bodies perfect and birth control absolutely should not be used is for barefoot women in long skirts who mutter prayers and actually love God…like me

Some of it is okay The above really bothers me, with the occasional swear word – the authors represent the kind of people I want to keep my family away from. Thank God I also checked out the book that inspired “The Sound of Music”, called “The Trapp Family Singers”, a heartwarming tale written by a truly Catholic mother. That’s what I’m going to read in bed while Catherine sleeps!

Dora

Corinne — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 22:30:45 +0000

I never thought I would be doing this. I am writing a post to defend Dora.
A friend doesn’t like Dora because we are in an “English-speaking country”. Yes, and from its beginning, America has been largely made up of people from countries where people do not speak English. There are millions of people here in the USA who speak Spanish, others Asian languages, and many more. Through the centuries my family has spoken German and Luke’s family spoke Polish and a few other languages. As Luke says, “Not to mention that English is one of the hardest languages to learn.” The office lady here in our apartment complex is named Dora, for doll’s sake! The doll is cute, she has a backpack on her back that is a real book that I can read to my daughter, and I can find nothing offensive about her, except the pictures where a slice of her belly is showing. I say, let’s welcome our neighbors and show them some good Christian charity. Many of the Mexicans and Pacific Islanders dress much more modestly than those who have been speaking English all of their lives and are prejudiced against these new people. The Pacific Islander children in this building are probably the most well behaved in the complex and they are the ones I want my daughter around. So welcome, Dora. Let me help you with your shirt and give me a few minutes to make you a Dora necklace, and I hope you’ll feel right at home.

makeup

Corinne — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 06:40:00 +0000

I don’t wear makeup. That could be seen as rebellious here in America, or you could think me a simpleton. Here’s my take on makeup: it’s a waste of time and money. I suspect that women and girls who wear makeup are insecure and vain, and they are just trying to impress others. You don’t need to wear makeup to look beautiful – in fact, you shouldn’t. God made you beautiful (even if you don’t think so) so why cover it up with paint? Why not stop buying makeup and give that money to charity or pursue a hobby with it?

my Mother my Confidence,
Corinne

There is no such thing as praying against someone

Corinne — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 09:05:00 +0000

When a nun told Gerry Matatics that she would pray for him and Scott Hahn, he wondered if she was going to pray for him or against him. When my husband told someone that he was praying for her, she wondered roughly the same thing. Friends, there is no such thing as praying against someone! You can pray that God will kill someone. I really doubt that God will do that. God doesn’t work that way.

my Mother my Confidence,
Corinne

Women: beware of the birth control pill!

Corinne — Fri, 27 May 2005 11:07:00 +0000

Side effects of the birth control pill include:
murder of preborn children; irregular menstrual bleeding or spotting; nausea; weight gain and/or water retention; headaches; dizziness; tender breasts; mood changes; blood clots (rare in women under 25 who don’t smoke); spotty darkening of the skin; vomiting; bloating; increase in vaginal infections; greater chance of blood clots, stroke and heart attack; worsening of migraine headaches, gall bladder disease, increase in blood pressure and an extremely rare liver tumor; painful or missed periods; depression; decreased libido; abdominal pain; chest pain or shortness of breath; eye problems like flashing lights or vision disturbances; severe leg pain; risk of cervical cancer; gallbladder disease; decreased appetite; vaginitis; urinary tract infection;
contact lenses may not fit due to changes in the cornea; aggravation of asthma; numbness;
speech problems; breakthrough bleeding; coughing up blood; fainting; heart attack; weakness on one side of the body; yeast infections; improvements or worsening of acne; reduction in blood levels of folic acid, vitamin B6, vitamin b12 and vitamin C; gallstones; jaundice or yellowing of skin and eyes; changes in carbohydrate metabolism (diabetic condition), especially if your parents or siblings have diabetes or if you become diabetic during pregnancy; inability to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases

My sources:
Birth Control Pill
The Pill – Oral Contraception – from the Birth Control Comparison website of Cedar River Clinics
Birth Control: Emergency Contraception – from the Birth Control Comparison website of Cedar River Clinics
The Pill: Side Effects and Current Issues
Birth control pill
Birth Control Methods
Sexual Health: Birth Control – Side Effects of Birth Control Pills
Birth Control Pills
Go Ask Alice!: Side effects of birth control pills
Birth Control Pill Instructions – Combined Oral Contraceptives
Overlooked Side Effect Causes Many Women to Stop or Switch Birth Control Pills
Health 24 – Woman, Content
Birth control pills

Abstinence is the only 100 percent accurate method of avoiding conception.