Category Archives: Media

Lies, Lies and Damned Lies

April 29, 2013

Jane Jimenez

If the Internet has any value at all, you would think it would be in its role in “truth telling.” If only.

Lies and deceit are as old as Adam and Eve. Lying is an equal opportunity sin: The man answered God, “The woman you put here with me….The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Lying is eternal. Only one generation out of the Garden, Cain took advantage of lies in an attempt to deceive his Maker. Where was Able? “I don’t know,” Cain said…presumably with a straight face.

The Bible abounds in wisdom grounded in knowing the difference between truth and lies. Proverbs warns us. Enemies disguise themselves with their lips, but in their hearts they harbor deceit. [Prov 26:24 NIV] Satan, the quintessential evil being, is named Father of all lies.

There is only one reason that lying is so pervasive. There is profit in being a good liar. If successful, you can retain your deed to the Garden of Eden; you can avoid the mark of Cain for murder.

Ford car company tried its best. And it almost got away with a very profitable lie. In 1968, the Ford Pinto was set up to be a hot-selling, middle-America car. Cute car, cute name…the Pinto was perfect for families on a budget and for their children just learning to drive. Only problem? Every once in a while, in a simple fender-bender car accident, the Pinto would explode into flames. And flames are quite deadly to the people involved.

In May 1972, Lily Gray was traveling with thirteen year old Richard Grimshaw in a 1972 Pinto when their car was struck by another car traveling approximately thirty miles per hour. The impact ignited a fire in the Pinto which killed Lily Gray and left Richard Grimshaw with devastating injuries. A judgment was rendered against Ford and the jury awarded the Gray family $560,000 and Matthew Grimshaw $2.5 million in compensatory damages. The surprise came when the jury awarded $125 million in punitive damages as well. This was subsequently reduced to $3.5 million.

Long ago, when truth was recorded on scrolls, one can imagine how difficult it would have been to ride a donkey down to the local synagogue and dig through their scroll library, unrolling and rolling back leather scrolls in a search for the damning evidence to prove that Ford lied. With the Internet, just type in “Ford Pinto,” and your evidence is at hand. Voila! Search finished. They lied.

The Internet, not yet in existence, would have been a great help in the 70s to reveal truth about the Pinto, saving time…and more importantly…saving lives. It took more deaths, many years, and thousands of hours upon hours of research to prove that the deaths in Pinto accidents were caused by corporate greed. Law professor Palmiter explains:

Although Ford had access to a new design which would decrease the possibility of the Ford Pinto from exploding, the company chose not to implement the design, which would have cost $11 per car, even though it had done an analysis showing that the new design would result in 180 less deaths.

In the current age, no matter how you count the years between Genesis and today, we are witnesses to a “whole lot of lying going on.” Just last night, in the commercial breaks for a one hour crime drama, three different drug companies are being accused of lying. The companies told consumers, “Take our drug. It is good for you.” They are being sued. Liars?

Did you take Accutane, Zoloft, or Actos? One word typed into your Internet search engine…one click… “Enter”…and the entire library of the universe is at your disposal. You would think that is enough to find truth and reveal lies…wouldn’t you?

If only!

And these drugs are the simple cases. Don’t even think about investigating lies that involve our sexually promiscuous society.

Have you ever wondered about the money to be made in the sex industry? Forget the obvious – pornography and prostitution. What about all of the money to be made by encouraging people of all ages to have all types of sex at any time with anyone for any reason?

If the question does not produce a string of dollar signs in your mind, please return to Genesis. If any question has merits in today’s culture, this is it. What profits are to be made by convincing people to have more of what they already are programmed to desire? Sex.

And…with all that money at stake…what is the possibility that there are lies out there waiting to be discovered? Sex…money…lies? It’s a calculation you can bet on.

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KEEP POSTED:

Upcoming columns will expose the many profits to be had for those in our culture who are in the business of promoting free and easy sex. Yes, there is a cost involved in “free” sex.

Risking Death

April 22, 2013

Jane Jimenez

Summer is the time to celebrate health! We are heading into the season for flip flops, sun screen and watermelon. And with all of our attention on health and fun, what better time is there to consider the possibility of risking death?

In the summer of 1975, moviegoers huddled together in dark theaters, watching death unfold on Amity Island. The new Sheriff in this small beach community discovered the remains of a shark attack victim. And horror exploded on the screen, leading to three sequels of JAWS and a theme song that, forty years later, children can hum with glee.

Sharks…and death…what is your risk this year? According to OCEANA, only about a dozen of the approximately 500 shark species should be considered potentially dangerous to humans. White, tiger and bull sharks are responsible for more than half of all shark attacks. In five years (2006-2010), an average of 4.2 fatal shark attacks took place each year world-wide. Between 2006 and 2010, a total of 179 shark attacks occurred in the U.S., resulting in three fatalities.

Bathtubs…and death? You might want to take your baths in the ocean with the sharks. In 2003, 320 U.S. citizens died in the bathtub…no sharks involved.

How many ways are there to risk dying? LiveScience on the web has saved us much work, speculating on 10 Easy Paths to Destruction. Saying Amen to Rocker Tommy Lee who once said, “[W]’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time,” they warn us away from the ten “easiest catalysts to self-destruction.” Are you surprised when you learn you should not eat junk or smoke cigarettes?

Junk food…and death? Are you thinking candy bars and deep-fried Twinkies? Think again.

Researchers analyzed the diet, health and death data on 37,698 men and 83,644 women over two decades. Participants completed questionnaires about their diets every four years. During the study follow-up period of more than two decades, almost 24,000 of the participants died, including 5,910 from heart disease and 9,464 from cancer.

Death…by eating red meat? Here are the facts. Over 10 years, eating the equivalent of a quarter-pound hamburger daily gave men in the study a 22% higher risk of dying of cancer and a 27% higher risk of dying of heart disease. Overall, one serving per day of processed red meat increased risk of cancer by 16%.

Death…and eating chicken? Using a statistic model, the researchers estimated that replacing one serving a day of red meat with one serving of with poultry would decrease the risk by 14%; nuts, 19%; beans, 10%; low-fat dairy, 10%; whole grains, 14%, and fish, 7%.

Sharks…red meat…are vegetables starting to look better on the grill?

The largest study of its kind found vegetarians have healthier hearts than those who eat meat or fish. According to two large studies, vegetarians are a third less likely to need hospital treatment for heart disease or die from it, and the diet could mean living nine additional years than you might consuming meat based diets.

So…let’s get real. And let’s get serious.

Do you know someone who has breast cancer? While Americans are planning trips to the beach this summer, do you know someone who is undergoing chemo and meeting with the attorney to write out their end-of-life wishes?

What if you knew important information about risks that lead to breast cancer? And what if that information could make a difference for you, your wife and your daughters? Would that gain your attention just as much as the stats for death by shark attack, bathtubs and eating red meat?

As reported in the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute Newsletter, “This past February, the news media widely covered a study in JAMA which showed that the incidence in breast cancer had almost doubled over the past 34 years, 2% per year, compounded. This represents an over 90% increase in women between 20 and 39 years old. The cancers they were citing were invasive and had already spread outside of the breast which are life threatening. The Author, Rebecca Johnson, had been diagnosed herself at age 26 with breast cancer.”

So…let’s consider. What is contributing to this dramatic increase in the incidence of breast cancer? Swimming with sharks? Eating hot dogs and steak?

If swimming with sharks led to breast cancer, you can be sure we would be reading about it in The New York Times. They would lead with this story at least once a month, and NFL football players would have decals of Pink Sharks on their helmets this year.

Instead, this crisis of life is being ignored. We have all the pretty pink ribbons…and NONE of the facts.

If you want to know the facts, they are available. The Breast Cancer Prevention Institute has followed this issue for years. Thanks to the Internet, we no longer have to wait for the facts in The Times. Here they are:

Non-invasive breast cancer, in-situ cancers, has risen by 300% since 1975.
In-situ cancers, treated with mastectomy, radiation, and hormonal therapy, progress into invasive cancers if not treated.
Invasive cancers have risen about 40% over 35 years.

And if it is not sharks…and not red meat…what is leading to all of this cancer?

The Breast Cancer Prevention Institute provides a chart of 70 professional studies investigating elective abortion as it relates to breast cancer. Of these studies, 33 demonstrate a statistically significant correlation between induced abortion and breast cancer. In total, 55 of the 70 studies present a positive correlation between induced abortion and breast cancer.

Our mothers and daughters are being sold down the river…the shark-infested river.

Unwilling to speak truth, abortion proponents prefer to sell pink football gear to the players and to ask for your money at the grocery counter…”for breast cancer research.” Why?

We have research! We can educate women…and the men who REALLY care about women. Abortion is a real link to women and death by cancer.

Summer…fall, winter and spring…this matters! Check out the information. Share it with those you love. This is not political. It is personal. It is about saving the lives of people we love.

Sharks, red meat…and abortion…truth is truth, no matter what. If we are afraid of one shark eating our child this summer, we should fear for the lives of our wives, daughters and friends being sacrificed in silence to shield abortion from critical evaluation.

Summer is coming on. You have time to read. If you care about the women in your life, there is no better time than now to read and learn what we can do to save their lives.

Risking death? Not if we don’t have to. This is a summer for life. Take time to read and to enjoy time with the ones you love!

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BREAST CANCER RISKS

Want more information? Check out the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute publications that give a full picture of this link of breast cancer to induced abortion.

Vaya con Dios, Papa

March 1, 2013

Nearly eight years ago, in the late evening of April 2, 2005, the world said goodbye to Pope John Paul II. Vaya con Dios, Papa. As a non-Catholic who was preoccupied with my own busy life, I made little note of his passing.

Jane Jimenez

His pontificate lasted nearly 27 years, but the only real memory I have of Pope John Paul II was seeing him standing in his Popemobile, waving to us as he sped up Central Avenue in Phoenix, just a block from my home. He made 104 pastoral visits outside of Italy, and we felt lucky to witness history.

In the past month, one of my great joys has been watching the EWTN channel’s historical review of Popes. I lived for over a quarter of a century during the lifetime of one of the world’s most popular religious leaders, but until this month I had seen and heard essentially nothing about Blessed Pope John Paul II.

It is easy to forget that the first commercial access to the Internet only happened in 1990, twelve years after the election of Pope John Paul II. And YouTube did not officially debut until December, 2005, fifteen years later, too late even to provide live video coverage of his funeral.

From the evening of April 2, until his funeral on April 8, 2005, more than three million pilgrims went to Rome to pay homage to the mortal remains of Pope John Paul II. Some of them stayed in line for up to 24 hours to enter St. Peter’s Basilica. That would have been worth seeing.

Today, as I witness St. Peter’s Square filled with pilgrims, I am amazed at the Pope’s significance in our world. Perhaps I should have understood this long before today. But in an instant, being able to soak in the coverage of today’s events and revisit them on YouTube, I see for myself what the news has been reluctant to admit. The world is lucky to be able to look to the Pope for leadership.

What an absolute joy to be liberated from the stranglehold our press has held on religious news! If unable to contain positive Christian news in a black hole, main stream reporters have managed to intone darkly with their questions. On NBC, a sober news anchor suggests that the Council of Cardinals might bring the church out of the dark ages and reward the liberal non-religious by reversing the church’s position on birth control. Snide, all-knowing chuckles follow.

Changing channels, on EWTN, buoyant commentators revisit the high points of Pope Benedict XVI’s years in the papacy. They love this gentle patriarch. They pray for his well-being. And cameras scan the vast crowds who love him, too.

In Pope Benedict’s Farewell Audience on February 27, he opened his heart to the crowds and shared fond greetings and memories with them:

They write to me as brothers and sisters, as sons and daughters, with a sense of a very affectionate family bond. Here one can sense palpably what the Church is – not an organization, an association for religious or humanitarian ends, but a living body, a communion of brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ, which makes us all one. To experience the Church in this way and to be able as it were to put one’s finger on the strength of her truth and her love, is a cause for joy at a time when so many people are speaking of her decline. But we see how the Church is alive today!

The retiring Pope encourages the Church:

We are in the Year of Faith which I desired precisely to reaffirm our faith in God in a context which seems to push him more and more into the background. I should like to invite all of us to renew our firm confidence in the Lord, to entrust ourselves like children in God’s arms, certain that those arms always hold us, enabling us to press forward each day, even when the going is rough. I want everyone to feel loved by that God who gave his Son for us and who has shown us his infinite love. I want everyone to feel the joy of being a Christian.

And, with his farewell, he leaves us with his great assurance that God will endure even as we each will eventually make way for a future generation.

At this moment I feel great confidence, because I know, we all know, that the Gospel word of truth is the Church’s strength, it is her life. The Gospel purifies and renews, it bears fruit, wherever the community of believers hears it and receives God’s grace in truth and charity. This is my confidence, this is my joy.

Love, faith and hope…the Pope gives everyone a parting message that all faiths can cherish. He is willing to open his arms wide with a humble embrace large enough for even his critics. In the modern world of communication, his light cannot any longer be hidden under a basket. It is a beacon, shining on the hill.

The crowds waving goodbye to Pope Benedict XVI reaffirm our trust in people and in the God of their faith. From each face representing all nations, cultures and generations, love is transmitted to their beloved Papa.

We can see it. We are a witness to truth. We can share it with those who missed it. And we can return again via the Internet to see it again, our visual memory of a cherished relationship that will pave the way for the next Pope.

Thank you for your service, Pope Benedict. Thank you for your love. And may you be greatly encouraged in knowing that we feel much loved, knowing you will fulfill your vow to pray for us into Eternity.

Vaya con Dios, Papa.

Economics of Family

February 15, 2013

Jane Jimenez

It’s anybody’s guess…where the economy is headed. And lots of people are guessing.

With Obama duly sworn in for another four years, we are headed into uncharted waters. Tuned to the daily news reports, we try to gauge our economic plight with familiar terms: taxes, spending, deficit, sequestration, budget, interest rates, short sales and austerity measures.

But one thing is missing from the discussion of America’s economy…the economics of family. And it is no small thing.

We have come to treat the financial and the social parts of our lives as two completely different and isolated realms. In politics, people are known to say, “Economically, I am a conservative, but socially, I am a liberal.” At election time, we hem and haw, trying to decide whether to vote for economic issues or for social issues. We couldn’t be more wrong.

At the very time when we pray for economic recovery, America seems ready to abandon its commitment to traditional marriage between a man and a woman. Economically, our failure to support traditional marriage is also a financial decision.

Marriage is not just about a wedding cake, a piece of paper and insurance benefits. It is the foundation of society, the supporting structure for building families and caring for children. While we try to guess whether the GDP will go up or down next month, we do not have to guess about the consequences of deconstructing traditional marriage.

The Brookings Institute has extensively studied the phenomenon of out-of-wedlock births in America:

Since 1970, out-of-wedlock birth rates have soared. In 1965, 24 percent of black infants and 3.1 percent of white infants were born to single mothers. By 1990 the rates had risen to 64 percent for black infants, 18 percent for whites. Every year about one million more children are born into fatherless families. If we have learned any policy lesson well over the past 25 years, it is that for children living in single-parent homes, the odds of living in poverty are great. The policy implications of the increase in out-of-wedlock births are staggering.

Sadly, as we continue to keep count of the number of children living in single-parent homes, we do not seem to have the stomach for considering our personal and cultural failures that have brought us to this point. We want a strong economy. We just don’t want to fix the economy at the personal level.

We have reduced marriage to the trivial. We declare it as unnecessary for fathers and mothers, men and women. Conversely, we declare it to be the “a right” for those in same-sex relationships.

Our ambivalence about marriage is quite apparent in the educational programs being used to teach the next generation of Americans. Teens are taught that they can have sex “when they are ready.” We encourage their readiness for sex by supplying baskets of condoms and pills. Now, judges have secured Plan B drugs for children of any age “if they have an accident.” And if Plan B should fail, our government will assist our children in getting an abortion.

We are totally fixated on how to NOT have families. Nowhere in any of our educational plan for teens do we teach them about constructing families…about the positive link between sex, marriage, and children. This is not just a sexual issue. And it is not a religious dogma.

It is economics! It is basic Economics 101. Marriage between men and women is an issue that should matter to government because it is the strongest foundation for our economic system.

If we want to revive our economy, we must open a national dialogue that truly respects traditional marriage as a valuable institution worthy of our support. This dialogue must be more than media-friendly sound bites demanding same-sex marriage. The same-sex debate has completely derailed our understanding of marriage.

If we want economic recovery, we must start by restoring the economics of family. And these economics are grounded in the security of healthy marriages between men and women.

Cooooooool, Man!

January 15, 2013

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. ― Isaac Asimov

There are not enough “o”s in Cooooooool to describe the absolutely delicious ten winners of the 2013 Cool Science Image contest sponsored by The Why Files.

Every realm of scientific study is represented in the field of winning photos. At the macro level, a satellite image from October 28, 2012, shows the amount of water vapor in the Earth ’s atmosphere and sea surface temperatures. Brilliant colors of orange and red pass over cooler blues and greens, all of these colors wrapped in a blanket of white cotton fluffs, highlighting the unmistakable brown land of South America in the center field. [Source: Rick Kohrs, staff, Space Science and Engineering Center]

At the micro level, under the microscope, slime mold becomes decidedly more attractive than its name suggests, revealed as a social group of multicellular organisms rising from the ground in a fluid modern dance of single-celled amoebae. [Source: Sheryl A. Rakowski, staff, Bacteriology]

And in the mysterious interior realm of a living creature, we can only wonder at the images of neural pathways tracing the brain activity that produces the physical and emotional activity of the brain’s owner, a monkey. [Source: Christopher Coe, faculty, Psychology]

Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, from its Why Files headquarters, the goal of the contest is to highlight the aesthetic aspects of Scientific imagery obtained in the search for data that “can yield important and sometimes striking insights into nature and the way things work.” In its third year, the contest produced 105 submissions and has now gained support from the Madison-based Promega Corp.

Science, seen as a field of analysis quantified in number and calculus is often reduced to the dispassionate exploration of the world we see, touch, hear, taste and smell. What a mistake! Consider the photos from the Hubble telescope. Named with dispassion as STScI-PRC2013-17, one can only marvel at the glory of stellar material hurling through space, larger beyond imagination in a photo, yet a speck of the totality of the universe. [Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC and the University of Potsdam, JPL-Caltech, and STScI]

How amazing is this universe that contains humanity! Yet, the unfortunate result of our accumulation of this large body of scientific information is our creation of an even larger number of people who lack appreciation for the unknown and of the magnitude of human ignorance.

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be. ― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

We are so wrapped up in the “pile of data” we have amassed, that we turn our back on the mysterious, the things we may never know. We continue to map DNA. But when the map is complete, will we be any closer to understanding the intellect that created DNA? Sadly, the spheres of knowing and wondering have moved further and further apart. We are a world of brains that analyze and synthesize separated from the world of the spirit that trembles with humble amazement.

The Knowable and the Unknowable…how vast the distance between the two! We live in that vastness, our intellect confined as much by hubris as by gray matter. The advantage we have at hand with our telescopes and electron microscopy is more than matched by the humble openness of a man who scans the skies in wonder.

Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory
in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them? [NIV]

Science and spirit are not enemies. They are both part of the created existence. Science can reveal both the limits of man and the realities of the absolutely extraordinary universe that is our home. Without this understanding of the unity of science and spirit, a scientist is merely caught up in enumerating the number of genes in a homo sapien, the measuring the circumferance of the moon, and the illustrating the structure of DNA.

What a marvelous gift we have been handed in the third millennium to be able to spy into creation and share our vision through these beautiful photographs. Most importantly, may we stand in humble awe of what we see!

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious – the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. ― Albert Einstein

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From the Home Front

DEFENDING THE FAMILY WITH ETERNAL TRUTH

Category Archives: Media

Lies, Lies and Damned Lies

Risking Death

Vaya con Dios, Papa

Economics of Family

Cooooooool, Man!