I believe in God, as many of my readers know. I believe that God can heal disease but I also believe that Jesus was the only legitimate faith healer out there. When anyone claims to be a faith healer that proves to me that they are a fraud.
I went to a Benny Hinn crusade when I was a teenager and I sat right by the wheel chair people and was distinctly unimpressed. No one got up and ran. No one got up and walked that never had before. Many people got up and gave testimony of what they had experienced there but none of the dozen or so wheel chair bound people seated by us were healed there.
I think that believing that going to a person for a supernatural healing is sacrilege. Only God can do it, in my opinion, if he is inclined to do it ask him and he will do it, you do not need the voodoo forces of some mystic. If he is not inclined to, go to the doctor. Science is a gift from God, lets use it and honor him by not being taken in by unsavory charlatans after your money and glory.
I found a particularly dramatic and dangerous case. Here is the video:
http://youtu.be/iKOwDQcPwbs
Here is part two, it contains the short portion that is the reality check, the opinions of a legitimate doctor who has examined these people and found them to be still sick.
http://youtu.be/c03FulCf6LY
I think this is dangerous. People are spending tons of money, going to a healer and getting a potion that has no proven effect. Then they go home and don't go to the doctor and they could have gotten a lot worse in the time it takes to ride out the placebo effect.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
WTF? or Who are the True Finns?
I usually do not like to blog about politics especially because it is a hot button issue I know very little about and used to be uninvolved in not having the right to vote in the USA. Now that I live in Finland I can vote, recieved my letter telling me where to vote and when. I have hundreds of candidates to choose from here from a couple of dozen parties. I am just guessing here I have not actually counted or looked up the number and am not going to.
The big parties are Kokoomus and SDP. Currently Kokoomus is in control of the parliament. Other little parties are Vihreät (Greens), Työväen puolue (workingpeople's party) and my current favourite Vasemmisto liitto (the leftist unity). All translations are the best I can do and not necessarily the official translations. There is not polarised conservative liberal divide. There is no conservative at all by American standards, until now. There is a cluster of deformed, hateful, ignorant parties rising up around the monstrosity of the Perus Suomalaiset (my translation would be basic or stereotypical Finns but we will just call them the WTF party).
When ever a member of the WTF party is interviewed on television, they sound uneducated. They lack a proper grasp of the Finnish language. They sound hickish uneducated and aggressive. That is my opinion. Their platform is, get those damn dirty immigrants out, they are all freeloaders and do substandard work and are lazy. When you point out to them that there are plenty of hardworking well educated diligent immigrants they say: "Oh them, they are fine, we are just against those that freeload and wont assimilate." Never mind most immigrants into Finland are here to study, work or following their spouses that do. Finland takes in less refuges based on population than other Scandinavian countries. I spend a lot of time with immigrants and have met no one that fits the description that the WTF party has labeled as the vocal majority and the trouble. Where are they?
They released their statement of principles and there is one particularly troubling part. They state that foreigners are supposed to follow Finnish laws and customs. I thought the first was a given but what does the second part refer to? They do not qualify it further. Are they just referring to eating rye bread, saunaing, swimming in a frozen lake, speaking Finnish etc.? Perhaps they want them to conform to the seedier side of Finnish customs like binge drinking, depression, collecting unemployment while being depressed and binge drinking. Teens drinking alcohol in the backs of busses and cussing loudly at night. I am sure they mean the better side of Finnish custom but being so ambiguous is dangerous, for them, the immigrants and those Finns who care about them. Honestly, is a black man ever going to assimilate to their satisfaction? He can learn Finnish, get a job, pay taxes, become a citizen, vote but they still would not want him to marry one of their daughters unless he could wipe the black off his face.
They are against such high "kotiutumistuki" (settlement aid), what kotiutumistuki? You can't even get it unless you have lived here for like six months and take Finnish classes or go into mol (government employment agency) approved work training. Besides it is not higher than "työmarkkinatuki" that is given to unemployed Finns that have never held jobs to aid them with living expenses so they can find one. Immigrants need that money. They have a hard time finding jobs unless they are very highly trained. Othervise they need the extra time to learn Finnish and to get trained for a job that they have harder time getting because they maybe brown. Discrimination in hiring may be illegal but it does not mean it does not happen. The only difference between kotiutumistuki and työmarkkinatuki is that one is given to immigrants, the other to citizens and kotiutumistuki is given for longer giving the immigrants more of a chance to not only get job training but ALSO to learn Finnish.
I am not saying there are no problems with immigration in Finland. What I am saying is that the WTF party is blowing it way out of proportion. They have no idea what the challenges faced by immigrants are because all the experience they have with it is traveling to other countries, getting plastered for an entire week at a time, acting like an idiot and not remembering a thing about it. That too is another Finnish custom.
The big parties are Kokoomus and SDP. Currently Kokoomus is in control of the parliament. Other little parties are Vihreät (Greens), Työväen puolue (workingpeople's party) and my current favourite Vasemmisto liitto (the leftist unity). All translations are the best I can do and not necessarily the official translations. There is not polarised conservative liberal divide. There is no conservative at all by American standards, until now. There is a cluster of deformed, hateful, ignorant parties rising up around the monstrosity of the Perus Suomalaiset (my translation would be basic or stereotypical Finns but we will just call them the WTF party).
When ever a member of the WTF party is interviewed on television, they sound uneducated. They lack a proper grasp of the Finnish language. They sound hickish uneducated and aggressive. That is my opinion. Their platform is, get those damn dirty immigrants out, they are all freeloaders and do substandard work and are lazy. When you point out to them that there are plenty of hardworking well educated diligent immigrants they say: "Oh them, they are fine, we are just against those that freeload and wont assimilate." Never mind most immigrants into Finland are here to study, work or following their spouses that do. Finland takes in less refuges based on population than other Scandinavian countries. I spend a lot of time with immigrants and have met no one that fits the description that the WTF party has labeled as the vocal majority and the trouble. Where are they?
They released their statement of principles and there is one particularly troubling part. They state that foreigners are supposed to follow Finnish laws and customs. I thought the first was a given but what does the second part refer to? They do not qualify it further. Are they just referring to eating rye bread, saunaing, swimming in a frozen lake, speaking Finnish etc.? Perhaps they want them to conform to the seedier side of Finnish customs like binge drinking, depression, collecting unemployment while being depressed and binge drinking. Teens drinking alcohol in the backs of busses and cussing loudly at night. I am sure they mean the better side of Finnish custom but being so ambiguous is dangerous, for them, the immigrants and those Finns who care about them. Honestly, is a black man ever going to assimilate to their satisfaction? He can learn Finnish, get a job, pay taxes, become a citizen, vote but they still would not want him to marry one of their daughters unless he could wipe the black off his face.
They are against such high "kotiutumistuki" (settlement aid), what kotiutumistuki? You can't even get it unless you have lived here for like six months and take Finnish classes or go into mol (government employment agency) approved work training. Besides it is not higher than "työmarkkinatuki" that is given to unemployed Finns that have never held jobs to aid them with living expenses so they can find one. Immigrants need that money. They have a hard time finding jobs unless they are very highly trained. Othervise they need the extra time to learn Finnish and to get trained for a job that they have harder time getting because they maybe brown. Discrimination in hiring may be illegal but it does not mean it does not happen. The only difference between kotiutumistuki and työmarkkinatuki is that one is given to immigrants, the other to citizens and kotiutumistuki is given for longer giving the immigrants more of a chance to not only get job training but ALSO to learn Finnish.
I am not saying there are no problems with immigration in Finland. What I am saying is that the WTF party is blowing it way out of proportion. They have no idea what the challenges faced by immigrants are because all the experience they have with it is traveling to other countries, getting plastered for an entire week at a time, acting like an idiot and not remembering a thing about it. That too is another Finnish custom.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Just got done writing a challenging paper. I suck at writing papers. I always do really mediocre. You would think the practice of writing a semi-regular blog would be good practice for this, especially because it was an opinion piece, I write those all the time, right? wrong. Writing this blog has made it easy to throw words on to a page. I can produce a piece of writing fast and painless and with a measure of pleasure, it is calming. Still it does not teach me quality. My quality rarely gets evaluated, worked on and, therefore, never improved on. So, I am like a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters. I produce stuff really fast and it maybe good on occasion, but usually it just tends to wander toward the average.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
I'm Sorry
Been busy, but I hope you enjoy this video and find something to think about in it.
In case it did not load right, they usually don't, and I don't know how to fix it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EieFdXy_HwM
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