Author: admin

Health Care or Profit

~ admin ~ 1 Comment

I am astonished. I find myself in agreement with a sociologist. ‘The market in health care is not a means of achieving competitive efficiency but a pseudo-market for creating private value at public expense.’

But I suppose agreement comes in that he is speaking to the least favourite part of my education in accounting, economics. Now when a sociologist speaks to economics one would wonder whether you need to find a pinch of salt, but then you already know that you need more than a pinch when you read any of my comments on economics, so my agreement with the man does not lend any support to what he wrote.

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A safe stronghold

~ admin

A safe stronghold our God is still
A trusty shield and weapon;
He’ll help us clear from all the ill
That hath us now o’ertaken.
The ancient prince of hell
Hath risen with purpose fell;
Strong mail of craft and power
He weareth in this hour;
On earth is not his fellow.

With force of arms we nothing can,
Full soon were we downridden;
But for us fights the proper Man,
Whom God himself hath bidden.
Ask ye, who is this same?
Christ Jesus is his name.
The Lord Sabaoth’s Son;
He, and no other one,
Shall conquer in the battle

And were this world all devils o’er,
And watching to devour us,
We lay it not to heart so sore;
Nor they can overpower us.
And let the prince of ill
Look grim as e’er he will,
He harms us not a whit:
For why? his doom is writ;
A word shall quickly slay him.

God’s Word, for all their craft and force,
One moment shall not linger,
But, spite of hell, shall have its course;
‘Tis written by His finger,
and though they take our life,
Goods, honour, children, wife,
Yet is their profit small;
These things shall vanish all;
The city of God remaineth.

Words and music: Martin Luther 1483-†1546; Translation: Thomas Carlyle 1793-†1851; Harmony: JS Bach

Found on CPDL. Other versions of Ein feste Burg may also be found here and here.

Coco’s alternative set of words is here

A sure foundation

~ admin

This is Martin Luther’s melody,. Ein feste Burg, arranged with a harmony closely following Bach’s but without his passing notes, and newly written words.

A sure foundation God has laid
On which he builds the church of Christ.
The prophets and the apostles
His word have laid before us all.
His word declares the truth:
One man for us has come,
The real man of God
And God’s anointed one.
Jesus of this man is the name.

Jesus the great defender came
To claim his people as his own.
Once bound they were by sin’s strong power
He saves them in his darkest hour.
When Satan did his worst
On the cross was he cursed
To break the power of sin
And then to enter in
The kingdom which he had been given.

Jesus, the man, with troubled heart
Was vexed by Satan’s cunning art,
But Jesus failed not to perform
The task for which he had been born.
The Father saw the Son,
The obedient One,
With his work was he pleased
God’s wrath it was appeased,
His people then stood justified.

Jesus now sits at God’s right hand
From which he shall to judgement come.
He is the Lord of every man
Whate’er of ill or good they’ve done.
They all shall bow the knee;
Confess Jesus is Lord.
The righteous he shall take,
The wicked he forsake,
His justice seen on Jesus’s stake.

In Jesus Christ God’s glory shines
And shine it will for evermore.
His people a kingdom of priests
Shall sing his praise and him adore.
This is the gift of Christ
Who purchased by his blood,
The real Lamb of God
Who took away their sins,
The One Lord Jesus whom they love.

The sure foundation which God laid
Is where he builds his dwelling place.
His people safely gathered in
There offer him their songs of praise.
Nothing is there to harm
For all is peace and calm;
A world of love prepared
For those for whom he died,
And Jesus is their good Shepherd.

Found on CPDL. Other versions of Ein feste Burg may also be found here and here.

Thomas Carlyle’s translation Luther’s words is here.

Evil: the problem of it

~ admin

You will have heard it said: I cannot believe in God. Look at the evil in the world! Or perhaps more personally: I saw how they treated each other even though they believed in God. I cannot believe in that.

I should like to show that the very reason that is given for not believing in God, is the very reason that says you must believe in him. Now this is a short article and will not necessarily answer all the questions you may have, and certainly will not be an exhaustive description of all the possible understandings of the problem.

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Judgements (ASA)

~ admin

If you apply racial stereotyping to this post then as Coco is not a chocolate bean but if this article has been written by a stereotypically white middle class male who wears a tweed jacket you must presume that it is racist and anything that Coco says will be understood to have racist implications, Coco has therefore on the basis of stereotyping Coco’s readers, no expectations that when Coco speaks against these matters anyone shall listen or rather Coco has every expectation that no-one shall listen. If it has not, then on the basis (provided or otherwise) of Critical Race Theory then you must believe every word.

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SARS

~ admin

I normally think that when a thing is referred to by the initial letters of its proper name there is no need to add an S to pluralise it. The plural S is hidden behind the initial capital letter. So we have, for example, OS. You would not ask how many different OSes are there? You would ask how many different O(perating) S(ystems) are there. The plural s is hidden. There are exceptions of course but these prove the rule for the combination of the initial letters has become a noun in itself which does not describe the same thing as the string of words describes, so though we refer to LASER, if we have two sources we shall speak of having two lasers.

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