Sold UTG

Orange is UTG

I sold 100 shares of UTG after reviewing 10 year total return. The orange curve lags far behind other income investments. I hate to be a trader but the fund’s strategy indicated too much risk. And in one monthI already have a whole years worth of dividend.

Sometimes paying attention to industry chatter actually pays off.

Now I can rotate some more.

Distinguished Names in InDesign Documents

I decided to create a character style in InDesign for formatting what I call a Distinguished Name. (A DN)

Whats a DN? It is a tuple consitsing of <First name> <GID> [<Middle Name] [Surname]

Example: David 32.1 Girlington

That means I am a 32nd generation Girlington and the first one in the index.

You can call me 32.1 for short

The above number, BTW, is not accurate. I am just too lazy to look up the actual number.

Or in my patrilineal line I am just 8.1 with no letter prefix. My oldest (American born) ancestor (1.1) with my patrilineal surame was 8 generations ago.

So, every place a DN appears it will have a special style applied to make it stand out in the text. Having defined the style in one place, if I redesign the style it automatically changes every DN in the entire document.

Surely You are Joking, Mr Lightman.

When an atheist (Mr.X.) declares to you “I don’t care what Alan Lightman thinks about God” you know you are talking to a narcissist.

Why?

Because Alan Lightman, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t think anything at all about God. He isn’t a theist.
https://news.mit.edu/2021/pondering-unknowable-alan-lightman-0305

Mr X, the narcissist, is either lying or he is an idiot.

Alan Lightman isn’t talking about God and religion. He is talking about physics.

The real question about what atheism is: what does atheism really have to say to humanity? Atheists need to explain the following: “How do you know thought and mind does not exist? And if it does not, isn’t your religious world view then nihilism? Is the logical conclusion of reductionism nihilism?”

Nihilism means if thought does not exist then minds do not exist. if minds do not exist then humans do not exist. The human race does not exist. its a fantasy. and values do not exist. Love, hate, justice, hope, all these are fantasies because none of them really exist. They are figments of the imagination and have no reality.

“Well, gee, batman”, a student mutters under his breath, “the trans person with hurt feelings is just going to have to lump it, aren’t they?”

What do nihilists really have to say to humanity? Nothing. They add no value. Values do not exist in their world view.

That doesnt answer the question of, “Is the logical conclusion of reductionism nihilism?”

Atheists aren’t talking. They do not know. They rage against theists on the basis of, well, as far as I can tell, a basis of ignorance. I think Jonathon Haight describes it best. They have a preconceived conclusion, really just a moral belief, and they are looking for evidence to shore up their belief. What Jonathon Haight calls “the elephant and the rider problem.” There is a cognitive dissonance in that process, and also a dishonesty.

Alan Lightman, by contrast, ponders the unknown and the unknowable and attempts to label them. That is why is is so hilarious that Mr X boldly declares “I don’t care what Alan Lightman says about God.”

Potholes and Gospel Difficulties in HamsterTown

  1. Hear the Gospel (Romans 10:17)
  2. Believe the Gospel (Hebrews 11:6)
  3. Repent of Sins (Acts 2:38)
  4. Confess Faith in Christ (Acts 8:37)
  5. Be Baptized(Acts 22:16)
  6. Believe Genesis is 100% Literal (Hamm 17:12)

    Wait a minute … that last one isn’t in the bible, is it?


    Yes, I know there are a bunch of people who believe #6, but I’m not buying it because it is added to the scriptures by the flawed minds of men.

There is a difference between being true and being literal. Don’t fall into a pothole.

InDesign Tips

(This is a HOWTO page.)


Tips I have learned when setting up a book: (A WIP: Work in progress. This article will grow.)

0. Pre-existing sources. Let me begin by saying I do not have any pre-existing text to import from that abomination called WORD. I have text from scans, PDFs, and web sources. Can’t help you if you are a victim of microsoft. “Use the force , Luke”, get off of microsoft.

1. Document type. This is your target media. For a book choose PRINT as a document type because it uses the CYMK color space which is narrower than RGB for digital media.

2. Pages. I myself use letter size pages. That is 8-1/2 inch by 11 inches in size. I also use facing pages for a book. One reason is I want graphics on the left page which are discussed in the text on the right page. So when you open the book flat on the table it looks like one big super-page. It has lots of re-estate for complex information to be prresented.

And for print I personally use multiples of 12 pages. That has to do with producing a hardcopy version in print. You could do 4 pages minimum but someone may ask for 6 pages or 12 pages.

For digital PDF nobody cares how many pages you use.

3. Front Matter. I am going to skip that for now. There is a bunch of it, but I want to get to the essential core issues first.

4. Columns. I use a single column on a text page because I am including source document images for genealogy which are inline. I may try to use a 2/3rds left text and 1/3 right column layout for graphics or perhaps have text wrap around images. That is intermediate level and is experimental to me. For now single column per page works beast for me. You can change this on a page by page basis.

5. Margins. I like left/right margins to be 0.5 inch. You may like less.

6. Bleed. Puts images all the way to the edge of the paper. You have to print beyond the edge of a page and trim back to the size of the page. The outer guide line around the page (in RED) shows the bleed line. Bleed, BTW, is set in “File->Document Setup”, or Ctl-Alt-P. After watching the videos I didnt remember and it took me 10 minutes to find this. Googling does not help because websites do not give good command line style presentation representing “how-to” procedures. They always assume you know how to navigate and do not need actual step by step instructions. When done here I hope I have including sufficient instructions on how to actually accomplish a task.

7. Preset. Save your document setup as a preset. Give it a name.

8. Panels and Layout. Configuring where you like your panels is covered in this lecture. This was a huge mystery to me. Not knowing where everything is (ie, all the panels) was a huge impediment to me at first.

9. Master Pages. Plan on having a None Master. That can be used to easily reset formatting from a doc page.


After that cascading master pages are useful. Start with Top-Master. Derived from that I have a Left-Start-Master and a Right-Start-Master. These are for facing pages that have a header at the beginning of a chapter. Also derived from Top-Master is LeftDoc-Master and RightDoc-Master. These are the master pages for the document pages in the body of the chapter, i.e., that do not contain chapter start layouts.

More on this later.

10. Guides. This is HUGE. I didnt know about it at first. Don’t even start until you set this up (except to play around for familiarity).

Why?

You can set horizontal guidelines to leave space at the top for a header frame and at the bottom for tunning footers. Then you drop text frames and graphics frames between these and later the header and footer will not overlap them. you want these guidelines on the master pages so you cannot accidentally select them and move them while editing text.

Layout grids can help too. Examples of layout grid results:



The grid lines appear on master pages and never appear on the document pages. They are used for laying out frames on top of them in order make them align correctly. Text and images are then placed in them.

As an example you need left and right document master pages for each of the 4 layout types shown above. this requires forethought about what you want the results to look like.

Death Meets Fantasyland

Want to see some TOXIC Christianity?


According to this guy, Isaac Bourne:

Issac Bourne

He says,

Let me explain how any deep time creation idea destroys the gospel.

By making death viable before sin, makes death a part of creation. Regardless what death it is aka animal or humans. Death being a part of the creation = the creation was imperfect. The Creator was imperfect = the Creator is not God because God does not create imperfect things. And being that death was not caused by Adam’s sin. Christ cannot die to give us life because man did not cause death, God did = gospel destroyed.

Also Jesus shed His blood in the same order as sin:

1) Adam first sin was in a garden. Jesus shed his blood in a garden when he prayed that God take this burden from Him and He sweet great drops of blood.

2) First curse was when God curse the ground to always grow thorns and thickets and man will always have to work to make a living by the sweat of his brow. They made a crown of those same thorns and thickets, and when it was placed upon His head he shed blood on those thorns and the same blood also ran across His brow.

etc…

So, to mess with death and sin order is to mess with the order of how Jesus shed His blood to forgive our sins. And also plants doubt in God’s Word to it being literally true. Because you have to use words that imply it’s a lie like: Oh it’s poetry, myth, or analogy etc… You also instill offense in the people who listen to you that the whole Word of God is not true, so where does one draw the line or is it all a lie?


Think about this silliness for just a moment ….

So, if sinless Adam stepped on an ant or a bug or ate an ant in his sandwich, or bit into an apple and chomed a worm in the apple —

TADAH! Death preceded Adam’s sin and BOOM the whole bible is destroyed!!!!

I’m not buying Isaac’s premise.

Issue 1: Definition of death is contrived. Is it death of a human? (a soulful being?) or death of any living creature?

Issue 2: Definition of perfection is contrived. Creation cannot be perfect if death exists. Who says?

Issue 3: Conflation of Adam in the garden and Jesus in a garden. Makes no literal sense at all. Isaac abandons literalness when convenient to do so.

Issue 4: Humans are messing with death and sin order. How so? They didn’t follow the instructions Isaac gave humanity. Oh, Isaac thinks he is following something God gave humanity. But in reality he merely imposed his own flawed understanding onto the bible. And onto all other humans.

Issue 5: Unforgiveability of humans. Not in this post but in others Isaac makes it clear humans cannot be forgiven by God for disagreeing with him. Even the work of Christ on the cross is not enough. Thus he elevates his own ideas above God’s redeeming work.

Issue 6: There was no biological ecosystem before Adam’s sin. What did Adam and Eve eat? Plants? Do plants have insect parts on them or microscopic animals on them? Which leads to:

Issue 7. Definition of lifeforms. Isaac’s definition of life is contrived.

Issue 8: The difference between biological death and spiritual death is totally ignored in Isaac’s theology.

This is just one cult member of Answer In Genesis.








Answers In Heresy (I mean Genesis)

AIG apologist Isaac Bourne claims Christians are going to hell (cannot be saved) because they fail to follow AIG theology. Here is his argument. It depends on having a belief about the age of the earth (being young).

Issac Bourne

That’s because the worlds education requires one to accept the worlds views. You cannot be educated with secular degrees and expect not to be rejected by the groups that educated you if you proclaim God and the Bible. God plays second fiddle to no man’s: Education, opinion or whatever. Period. And when this person gets to Heaven, God won’t be opening a science book either. And Darwin won’t be sitting next to Him giving judgment on how well every accepted evolution.

Which creation belief can you use to draw people forward to salvation?

God used evolution to create? Nope.

God used millions and billions of years to create? Nope.

God’s creation is literally true aka YEC? Yep. Happens everyday.

This is why you won’t see God used evolution to create do alter calls.

This is why you won’t see God took millions and billions of years do alter calls.

Because there is no God in it therefore God will not draw people unto his Son through a lie. So those 2 teachings come back void while YEC does not.

“Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” James 4:17 KJV

When you know what the truth is and you instead decide to believe a lie.

Then what you believe becomes a sin because you knew better. That is why the word knoweth is used. Do you know God’s Word say nothing about using evolution during creation? Of course you do. Do you know God’s Word and tracible time line supports 6-24 hour days and 6.000 years? Of course you do.

And yet you believe something else right? So your belief is now a sin, not by my opinion, but what God’s Word states. And if you do not respect God’s Word enough to accept correction then you are already lost in that sin.

Here’s what happens when you mess with God’s Word.

“And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” Revelation 22:19 KJV

And can you enter Heaven without you name in the book of life?

“And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” Revelation 20:15 KJV

And because you now know, you can never claim true ignorance which is covered by grace because this ignorance is on purpose. YEC is just a literal belief. God’s Word judges what happens when you go outside of such things, not those who believe YEC, Did I not back up everything concerning that? Then your problem is not with YEC, it’s with God’s Word. And all we do is abide by that is that also is what you have a problem with. prove me wrong.

I said to him

Issac Bourne Origins theories have nothing to do with salvation as far as I can figure. Ive started to ask lifelong bible scholars, ordained ministers, and theologians about this. Is Christianity dependent upon a particular narrative or belief about origins? The answer I get is “no”. Salvation depends on Jesus of Nazareth and his death, burial, resurrection, and propitiation for sin, etc, etc, and faith in him and his work Age of the earth? Has nothing to do with that except you have constructed a narrative and turned it into a doctrine. The sorting of sheep and goats will depend on response to the Christ, not on opinion about origins. Unless you create some kind of “new and different?” doctrine that says judgement does depend on a believer’s opinion about origins. I dont see that requirement in the scriptures. It looks to me like this doctrine, if it is a doctrine at all, did not exist in the 1st and 2nd century but was added in modern times. Which adds doctrine to the scriptures. Its either modern additive doctrine or its not doctrine at all but instead is just personal opinion. A bit hard to tell.

I dont see the core beliefs of christianity being affected by your world view here.

Dustin Burlet, another AIG apologist says no, their belief about the bible and theology does not affect salvation per se. But if not accepted it does destroy the truth in the bible.

There is a lot to unpack here – if I have understood the scenario (about YEC) correctly much hinges on Jesus. Allow me to explain (citing C. John Collins, Science and Faith: Friends or Foes, pg. 106)

Collins states:

“The argument for a young earth . . . goes like this: the phrases ‘from the beginning of creation’ (Mark 10:6) and ‘from the beginning’ (Matt 19:4, 😎 do not refer to the beginning of mankind [sic] but to the beginning of creation itself. Therefore, Jesus was dating the origin of mankind [sic] to a time very shortly after the initial creation of Genesis 1:1. If there is any kind of time very shortly after the initial creation and the beginning of the creation week, or if the week itself lasts much longer than an ordinary week, then we must conclude that Jesus was mistaken (or worse, misleading), and therefore he can’t be God. “

Collins goes on to clarify:

“If this argument is sound, I’m in trouble, because . . . I cannot follow this reading of Genesis 1. On the other hand, I firmly believe in the traditional Christian doctrine of Christ, and tremble at the thought of doing anything to undermine it. But the argument is not sound. It finds its credibility from the way the English “from the beginning” seems so definite; but the Greek is not fixed in meaning. “

NB: Specifically, the use “of the article in Greek is not like use of the definite article in English, not least because Greek does not have the same choice of forms . . . Once a Greek speaker or writer chose to use the article, there was not a choice whether an indefinite or definite one would be used. Therefore, the presence or absence of an article does not make a substantive definite or indefinite.” Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament (London: Sheffield Academic 2nd. ed, 2005) 103. See too Middleton, Doctrine of the Greek Article (London: Rivington, 2nd ed, 1841). Notably, though, the term ἄρχη is not actually articular in any of the texts cited above save Matt 19:4 (Cf. John 1:1).

Irrespective of the minutia, what is clear from the above is that Collins does not dismiss the question of the age of the earth as a secondary issue. Instead, he (rightly) ties a proper understanding of these matters to biblical authority via connecting them to the doctrine of Christ (cf. John 18:37).

As such, In a similar way, Terry Mortenson asserts: “Exodus 20:8–11 resists all attempts to add millions of years anywhere in or before Genesis 1 because in Exodus 20:11 . . . God says He created the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them during the six days described in Genesis 1. He made nothing before those six days. It should also be noted that the fourth commandment is one of only a few of the Ten Commandments that contains a reason for the commandment. If God created over millions of years, He could have not given a reason for Sabbath-keeping or He could have given a theological or redemptive reason as He did elsewhere (cf. Exod 31:13 and Deut 5:13–15) . . . Ultimately, the question of the age of the earth is a question of the truth and authority of Scripture. That’s why the age of the earth matters so much and why the church cannot compromise with millions of years (or evolution).” Terry Mortenson, “Young-Earth Creationist View Summarized And Defended.” No Pages. Online. Italics original. https://answersingenesis.org/…/young-earth-creationist…/

Elsewhere, Mortenson also opines: “The . . . larger controlling thesis for this book is that the age of the creation is foundationally and critically important for Christian doctrine. It really does matter what we believe on this issue. To be sure, we are not insisting that a person must be a young-earth creationist to be saved and in a right relationship with God. Faith in Christ alone is sufficient for that. But what we believe on this topic does relate critically to inerrancy, hermeneutics, and Scripture as the final authority in all matters that it addresses.” Terry Mortenson, “Foreword,” in Coming to Grips with Genesis: Biblical Authority and the Age of the Earth, 20. New Leaf (2008).

Lastly, another YEC scholar (Joanthan Sarfati) maintains:

“OK, let’s assume for the sake of the argument that firstly, creation was by evolution, over millions of years of death and suffering—and that Jesus did perform some sort of lobotomy7 on Himself, so that He could no longer recall what really took place. So He just understood Genesis in the most natural straightforward way, not realizing what the real truth was. What you’re claiming in that case amounts to this: That God the Father, knowing the real truth, permitted not just the Apostles, but His beloved Son, while on Earth, to believe and teach things that were utter falsehoods. Furthermore, it means that the Father permitted these false teachings to appear—repeatedly—in His revealed Word. With the result that for some 2,000 years, the vast majority of Christians were seriously misled about such things as not just the time and manner of creation, but gospel-crucial matters such as the origin of sin, and of death and suffering.”

The doctrinal position of AIG

What you’re claiming in that case amounts to this: That God the Father, knowing the real truth, permitted not just the Apostles, but His beloved Son, while on Earth, to believe and teach things that were utter falsehoods. Furthermore, it means that the Father permitted these false teachings to appear—repeatedly—in His revealed Word. With the result that for some 2,000 years, the vast majority of Christians were seriously misled about such things as not just the time and manner of creation, but gospel-crucial matters such as the origin of sin, and of death and suffering.”


Wow, all of Christianity has been misled for 2000 years? Really?


AIG Fragility?

What I am left thinking:

Seems to me that if Adam ever stepped on a bug, or ate a bug, then death came into the world before the sin of Adam and their entire theological world view instantly collapses.

A Re-evaluation

If all the truth in the Bible were to be destroyed then how does anybody come to a saving faith in Jesus of Nazareth as their saviour? So, truth be told, perhaps the AIG belief really is about who can be a Christian? It is all about heresy.

Caveat: Is it possible for the bible to be true but AIG simply does not understand what it says? BINGO!

Is it possible for God to have spoken in parables in Geneis and the bible is still true? You see, AIG claims if Genesis is parables then the bible is not true. That is based on their opinion. Only on their opinion.


Mr Market Meets Spike Dragon.

So it looks like on Feb 22 UAN spiked, probably upon announcement of a $10.50 dividend. This after a period of doldrums based on energy volatility and lack of retail faith. As Mr Market spread the word the price rose and rose to about $117. Then this morning, the day of the ex date, we see a plunge to $103, and the market is riding at just under $106 at about the level of the Feb 22 spike.

Hmmm. I am going to rake in the dividend.

But it is clear the time to buy, for believers, was in the $92 (and under) doldrums. It took faith. At the time I was rotating to less risk and did not want to overweight on fertilizer. Natural gas was high at the time and faith was thin fumes found somewhere in the stratosphere.

This is play money for me and it is not for the faint of heart. Still, I suppose I am addicted. The world will starve without this mineral being added to grain crops.

The only question is how to safely play the volatility. Not whether, but how.


Raindrops Caught My Eye:

Scientific knowledge is of two types: knowledge of the properties of physical objects, like the size and mass of a raindrop, and knowledge of what we call “laws of nature.” One of the first human beings to formulate a law of the physical world was Archimedes, more than two thousand years ago. Archimedes “law of floating bodies”:

Any solid lighter than a fluid will, if placed in the fluid, be so far immersed that the weight of the solid will be equal to the weight of the fluid displaced.

We can speculate on how Archimedes arrived at his law. At the time, balance scales were available for weighing goods in the market. The scientist could have first weighed an object, then placed it in a rectangular container of water and measured the rise in height of the water. The area of the container multiplied by the height of the rise would give the volume of water displaced.

Finally, that volume of water could be placed in another container and weighed. Undoubtedly, Archimedes would have performed this exercise many times with different objects before devising the law. He probably also performed the experiment with other liquids, like mercury, to discover the generality of the law. 

All laws of the physical world are like Archimedes’ law. They are precise. They are quantitative. And they are general, applying to a large range of phenomena. Most importantly, all laws of nature discovered by scientists are considered provisional. They are considered to be approximations to deeper laws. They are constantly being revised as new experimental evidence is found or new (and testable) ideas are proposed. 

It is in the process of revision that we see the strongest differences between the methods and beliefs of science and religion.

Knowledge and believing

Everything that we know about the physical world – the domain of science – is subject to revision. Everything must be tested and proved. The knowledge of religion, coming from either the divine authority of the sacred books or from the irrefutable personal transcendent experience, is not subject to revision. It is not an approximation. It is certain. And it cannot be proved. It must be taken on faith.

Paradoxically, all of the knowledge of religion is considered certain, and all of the knowledge of science is considered uncertain. Still, science has done pretty well with its uncertainties and approximations. The approximations of science have been good enough to give us antibiotics and smart phones and rocket ships that can land men on the moon.

Science demands proof for what it believes, even though those beliefs are constantly changing as new experimental evidence becomes available. There is something that scientists believe in that cannot be proven. It is a principle I call the Central Doctrine of Science: The physical world is lawful. All properties and events in the physical universe are governed by laws, and those laws hold true at every time and place in the universe. Graduate students in science absorb this belief through every pore of their skin. It is an unconscious but powerful commitment.

I call the Central Doctrine of Science a doctrine because, despite its success in the past, it cannot be proved. It must be accepted as a matter of faith. No matter how lawful and logical the material cosmos has been up to now, we cannot be sure that something illogical, unexplainable, and fundamentally unlawful might happen tomorrow. Our faith in the Doctrine is so strong that when we find physical phenomena that cannot be explained in terms of current laws, we attempt to revise those laws rather than abandon our belief in a lawful universe.

When it was found in the 19th Century that the orbit of Mercury could not be completely explained in terms of Newton’s law of gravity, scientists did not attribute the discrepancy to an unsolvable mystery or to the breakdown of order in the physical world or to the intervention of a whimsical god. Instead, they recognized a physical problem that required a more advanced physical understanding.

That more advanced understanding was provided by Einstein’s theory of gravity. In fact, I cannot imagine any event in the material world that would cause most scientists to label the event a miracle, unexplainable by science. If a wheelbarrow began to float, a scientist would look for magnetic levitators or, if necessary, assign the phenomenon to some new kind of force. But a natural and lawful force, not a supernatural force. 

So, perhaps I am a person of faith after all. I will have to share this discovery with Micah.

Memphis native Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist and professor of the practice of the humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His new book, “Searching for Stars on and Island in Maine” is published by Pantheon.

Cannot resist.

An atheist was seated next to a dusty old cowboy on an airplane and he turned to him and said, “Do you want to talk? Flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.”

The old cowboy, who had just started to read his book, replied to the total stranger, “What would you want to talk about?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the atheist. “How about why there is no God, or no Heaven or Hell, or no life after death?” as he smiled smugly.

“Okay,” he said. “Those could be interesting topics but let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff – grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, but a horse produces clumps. Why do you suppose that is?”

The atheist, visibly surprised by the old cowboy’s intelligence, thinks about it and says, “Hmmm, I have no idea.”

To which the cowboy replies, “Do you really feel qualified to discuss God, Heaven and Hell, or life after death, when you don’t know crap?” 😁