Would You Like to Learn How to Evangelize Atheists?
June 22, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Would You Like to Learn How to Evangelize Atheists?
June 22, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, Call Your Office
June 22, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Atheists are out in force these days, and they’ve thrown down the gauntlet repeatedly, demanding that Catholics and other Christians defend their belief in God.
Don’t Worry. I Won’t Quit My Day Job.
June 13, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Alright, this may be kind of weird, but here goes. Those of you who know me (you know who you are) know that I was a wannabe rock star in my youth. That’s demented, I know. But it’s the honest truth about what I thought was important back then. Those of you who don’t know me can read about this, shall we say, “colorful” time of my life in my chapter, “Conclusions of a Guilty Bystander,” in my book Surprised by Truth 2.
Among the various bands I played bass for during the late 70s (and virtually all of them were just plain old garage bands), the tightest, most creative, and most successful (which, truth be told, was a very, very modest success, to be sure) was Geneva Brown — a four-man team featuring drums, keyboards, guitar, and bass.
In addition to two or three hours worth of eclectic but cool Top-40 and other songs that we played covers of, we also had about a dozen tasty original tunes written by our talented guitarist/vocalist Jim. At our peak, I can honestly say we were good and had a devoted, if small, local following.
But in those days, there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of other bands, just like ours, who were scrapping for opportunities and schlepping their gear around Southern California, just like we were, in vans and station wagons, looking for that BIG break that never winds up materializing, except for those very few, very talented bands who happen to be at the right place at the right time. While it’s true that a tremendous amount of the success of the bands who make it is due to their genuine musical prowess, it’s also true that plain old “good luck” has a role in it, too.
As for us, we played a bunch of parties, any number of Elks lodges, parish festivals, honkie-tonks, some bar & grill-type gigs during happy hour, more than a few fiascos, and we even won first place in a Southern California battle of the bands, held in Temecula on halloween night of 1980. Something like 70 or 80 bands from around the Southland entered the contest, we were told, by sending in demo tapes, just like we did. Of those entrants, maybe 15 or so were selected to perform live that night, including Geneva Brown.
And we won. No big whoop.
Honestly, I’ll bet that few if any of the 1000 or so kids who were there that night even remember it now. But I do. We performed 4 or 5 songs in our 15-minute set, and we brought the house down (or so it seemed to us) with our final number, Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.”
I married my lovely wife Nancy on February 7th, 1981, and our first child, Jonathon, came along in utero about 3 weeks later. So . . . my grandiose fantasies of becoming the next Paul McCartney soon went out the window. (I had seriously contemplated going to NYC to audition for the role of Paul in Beatlemania, but when a good friend sensibly pointed out that I just didn’t have anywhere near the necessary vocal chops to pull off that monster role, I came to my senses).
My time playing with Geneva Brown came to an end within a year or so of my getting married, and I remember the bittersweet feeling I had then, having to unplug my guitar for good and get used to the idea that I would never be commercially successful in music. But I knew that a far better, far more worthwhile, and far more fulfilling career as a husband and father was what God wanted me to pursue.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the few years I had to mak show with the guys in Geneva Brown. It was great fun. I recently came across a pretty beat up cassette tape of some of our original songs (none of them written or sung by me).
These two songs here (click the picture to play them) were some early originals called “Nothin’ Wrong, Nothin’ Right” and “Simple Man.” What you’ll hear is the four of us playing and Jim, our guitarist, singing in a rough recording we made during a practice session in late 1979 or early 1980 (as best I can remember). We were slamming away with what I recall was just a single microphone in the middle of the room capturing the sound. Nothing was mixed, nothing was miked properly, resulting in a wall of sound.
The poor quality of the recording and the resulting audio anomalies you’ll hear were compounded by the bad condition of the 30-year old, dime-store cheap cassette tape that this music was stored on.
The audio tech guy who transferred it to digital cleaned it up as best he could, but there are some gaps & skips, here and there, because of breaks in the tape. Give it a listen and you’ll hear what I mean.
Some of you might well find this kind of music unlistenable (my kids do), and that’s okay. For me, it brings back good memories of a fun time in my life, even though I wince a little at some of those memories, not to mention wincing when I think about what my hair looked like back then.
A Persistent Question: Was Terrorism Behind the Air France Crash?
June 11, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Aviation specialist Annie Jacobson writes:
On Wednesday morning, news emerged out of Paris that two Muslim men aboard Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, were Islamic radicals listed on France’s terrorist watch list.
French foreign intelligence agents from the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure) released this information to the Paris weeklyL’Express. Immediately, the story became headline news around the globe. And then, just hours later, those same French terrorism investigators recanted.
“No Terrorists in AF447,” read the second L’Express headline posted on Wednesday evening at 5:35 p.m. local time. Translated from the French, the flip-flop was explained as follows:
Failing to have the date of birth of passengers, it was impossible [for DGSE agents] to know if they were real terrorists or homonyms. Refining their “screening,” the investigators said, raised doubts. The theory of the accident, which killed 228 people, remains privileged.
Why did DGSE agents release potentially “doubtful” information ten days into an investigation when they could have waited only a few more hours to verify facts? Before this information was released, terrorism as a cause for the crash was at the bottom of most experts’ guess lists. Investigators had been focusing on mechanical failure, namely faulty speed sensors, as well as lighting strikes. Satellite photographs suggest that the aircraft flew into a violent storm. At first there was no crash site, which only enhanced the mystery. Then the site was found. Headway was being made. Why bring terrorism into the mix so late in the game, only to say excusez-moi, our mistake?
It is implausible to think that French investigators would release theoretical information before they checked the birth dates, unless they wanted that information in the public domain. The exclusive story was generated by agents from the DGSE, not by the French press. By raising inside suspicions of terrorism, French investigators have gained collaborative possibilities from agents abroad. If critical passenger information was not being shared with international agents before, that certainly is no longer the case. Now terrorism investigators from around the globe — from Interpol to DHS — are decoding the backstory of every passenger on that list with new eyes. French investigators wanted to make the story headline news. And they did.
Philippines Airlines Flight 434, a Boeing 747 which nearly crashed into the sea back in 1994, comes to mind. En route from Manila to Tokyo, a small explosion on board the aircraft ripped a hole in the side, killing a 24-year-old engineering student named Haruki Ikegami and nearly causing the airplane to crash. Luckily, there was an island with an emergency landing strip nearby. As author Simon Reeve explains in The New Jackals, it was the quick thinking captain and his “brute force” that was responsible for saving the lives of the passengers on board. As for how the mystery was solved, that involved international collaboration.
Japanese investigators initially believed the cause of the crash was firecrackers snuck onboard. The rationale behind that thin theory was that it was Christmastime and firecrackers are notoriously popular in Asia during that time of year. But a few days later, the Associated Press in Manila got an anonymous call from a man saying the terrorist organization Abu Sayyaf was responsible for the blast. Investigators around the globe were put on notice.
Months later, police investigators in Manila responding to an apartment fire unexpectedly discovered detailed drawings of what looked like a bomb’s timing device. Mindful of the unsolved Philippines Airlines crash, they faxed the drawings to the Japanese explosives expert assigned to the case. The drawings were the necessary missing piece of the puzzle, which in turn solved the crime. The apartment belonged to Ramzi Yousef, one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists and the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center terrorist attack.
On the Philippine Airlines passenger list, Yousef had used the pseudonym Armaldo Forlani; he didn’t use a “homonym” or even his real name. But he had personally carried the bomb on the airplane, armed it, and hid it under a seat. He wasn’t on the plane when it almost crashed; he’d deplaned on a scheduled stopover in Cebu. Had Japanese investigators neglected to seek international help in solving the case, the truth may never have emerged.
For now, the reason for the crash of Air France Flight 447 remains unsolved. But terrorism as a cause is no longer relegated to the bottom of the theoretical pile. In going on record with L’Express, agents from DGSE tipped the hand of the international community. Were terrorists on board? Time will tell. In the meantime, the French submarine Emeraude, with its state-of-the-art sonar equipment, is searching the bottom of the ocean floor for clues. So are others around the globe. Was Terrorism Behind Air France Crash?
A Persistent Question: Was Terrorism Behind the Air France Crash?
June 11, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Aviation specialist Annie Jacobson writes:
On Wednesday morning, news emerged out of Paris that two Muslim men aboard Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, were Islamic radicals listed on France’s terrorist watch list.
French foreign intelligence agents from the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure) released this information to the Paris weeklyL’Express. Immediately, the story became headline news around the globe. And then, just hours later, those same French terrorism investigators recanted.
“No Terrorists in AF447,” read the second L’Express headline posted on Wednesday evening at 5:35 p.m. local time. Translated from the French, the flip-flop was explained as follows:
Failing to have the date of birth of passengers, it was impossible [for DGSE agents] to know if they were real terrorists or homonyms. Refining their “screening,” the investigators said, raised doubts. The theory of the accident, which killed 228 people, remains privileged.
Why did DGSE agents release potentially “doubtful” information ten days into an investigation when they could have waited only a few more hours to verify facts? Before this information was released, terrorism as a cause for the crash was at the bottom of most experts’ guess lists. Investigators had been focusing on mechanical failure, namely faulty speed sensors, as well as lighting strikes. Satellite photographs suggest that the aircraft flew into a violent storm. At first there was no crash site, which only enhanced the mystery. Then the site was found. Headway was being made. Why bring terrorism into the mix so late in the game, only to say excusez-moi, our mistake?
It is implausible to think that Fre
nch investigators would release theoretical information before they checked the birth dates, unless they wanted that information in the public domain. The exclusive story was generated by agents from the DGSE, not by the French press. By raising inside suspicions of terrorism, French investigators have gained collaborative possibilities from agents abroad. If critical passenger information was not being shared with international agents before, that certainly is no longer the case. Now terrorism investigators from around the globe — from Interpol to DHS — are decoding the backstory of every passenger on that list with new eyes. French investigators wanted to make the story headline news. And they did.
Philippines Airlines Flight 434, a Boeing 747 which nearly crashed into the sea back in 1994, comes to mind. En route from Manila to Tokyo, a small explosion on board the aircraft ripped a hole in the side, killing a 24-year-old engineering student named Haruki Ikegami and nearly causing the airplane to crash. Luckily, there was an island with an emergency landing strip nearby. As author Simon Reeve explains in The New Jackals, it was the quick thinking captain and his “brute force” that was responsible for saving the lives of the passengers on board. As for how the mystery was solved, that involved international collaboration.
Japanese investigators initially believed the cause of the crash was firecrackers snuck onboard. The rationale behind that thin theory was that it was Christmastime and firecrackers are notoriously popular in Asia during that time of year. But a few days later, the Associated Press in Manila got an anonymous call from a man saying the terrorist organization Abu Sayyaf was responsible for the blast. Investigators around the globe were put on notice.
Months later, police investigators in Manila responding to an apartment fire unexpectedly discovered detailed drawings of what looked like a bomb’s timing device. Mindful of the unsolved Philippines Airlines crash, they faxed the drawings to the Japanese explosives expert assigned to the case. The drawings were the necessary missing piece of the puzzle, which in turn solved the crime. The apartment belonged to Ramzi Yousef, one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists and the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center terrorist attack.
On the Philippine Airlines passenger list, Yousef had used the pseudonym Armaldo Forlani; he didn’t use a “homonym” or even his real name. But he had personally carried the bomb on the airplane, armed it, and hid it under a seat. He wasn’t on the plane when it almost crashed; he’d deplaned on a scheduled stopover in Cebu. Had Japanese investigators neglected to seek international help in solving the case, the truth may never have emerged.
For now, the reason for the crash of Air France Flight 447 remains unsolved. But terrorism as a cause is no longer relegated to the bottom of the theoretical pile. In going on record with L’Express, agents from DGSE tipped the hand of the international community. Were terrorists on board? Time will tell. In the meantime, the French submarine Emeraude, with its state-of-the-art sonar equipment, is searching the bottom of the ocean floor for clues. So are others around the globe. Was Terrorism Behind Air France Crash?
What Happened to Air France Flight 447?
June 10, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
UPDATE (06-10-09): Terror Names Linked To Doomed Flight AF 447 Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on the Air France flight which crashed with the loss of 228 lives, it has emerged.
What Happened to Air France Flight 447?
June 10, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
UPDATE (06-10-09): Terror Names Linked To Doomed Flight AF 447 Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on the Air France flight which crashed with the loss of 228 lives, it has emerged.
Behold the New GM! (An Amerikan Revolution)
June 8, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Newsweek Editor: Obama Is "Sort Of God"
June 8, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
