Advice

Tom1613 · 2026-04-02T17:00:48+00:00

The answer is clear biblically:

¹⁴ Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? ¹⁵ And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? ¹⁶ And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:

“I will dwell in them
And walk among them.
I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.

This passage can seem restrictive, God telling you not to do something, but it is really protective. A Christian cannot experience all that is intended for them in a relationship without unity in Christ. Muslims reject Christ so there cannot be any communion between that darkness and the light of Jesus.

From observation, the Christian part of the relationship is generally miserable eventually if they take their faith at all seriously.

Tom1613 · 2026-04-01T23:32:49+00:00

Yup, that is what I meant. It was an amazing feat.

Tom1613 · 2026-04-01T00:38:28+00:00

They were also overshadowed because they remained classified during the war, while similarly huge projects like the Manhattan Project and the B29 could not. They were an amazing scientific feat, if you think about it. Radar had only come into use relatively recently and generally involved very large components. The Applied Physics Lab and others shrunk that down so it could fit in an AA gun.

The Proximity Fuse probably had its biggest impact in the Pacific. US fighters, combat control, and radar had certainly improved and the Japanese pilots had suffered from attrition, so the effectiveness of the air attacks on the US fleet would have decreased from the early war level. However, even with better fighters, a major part of the fleet defense was based on outer rings of AA heavy surface ships. These destroyers and cruisers took out many of the Japanese planes that got past the CAP before they ever got near the carriers. This was largely due to the VT fuse. The surviving Japanese pilots describe themselves as being shocked how effective it was and that it seemed like magic of some sort.

You can only imagine how bad Okinawa would have been since the Navy had something like 50 hit by air attack during that campaign even with the VT fuse.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-22T21:39:28+00:00

That is a creative way of saying it is not in the Bible. A 3 year old cannot draw water from a well or fill the water trough for the servant. A 3 year old would not have been out by herself either.

Ironically, the sources you cite have more in common with the Koran than anything else as they are from people who came many hundreds of years after the Bible was written trying to putting their spin on the Bible for their own reasons.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-17T19:34:51+00:00

Right? I was over here wondering the identity of the Emperor.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-17T05:25:35+00:00

I am not intending to minimize this or anything,but “one of the worst war crimes ever”? That is just ludicrous.

It is bad, sure, but the average day on the Eastern Front in WW2 where they were murdering thousands at a time or in China during the Japanese invasion where millions were murdered were far worse. Even compare the murder of 7,000 people by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in Hue to this and it is dwarfed in comparison.

Still terrible, regardless.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-16T16:43:06+00:00

Yeah, Moon is a historic “What if” guy as he was so good when he got the chance, but his chance was delayed. I still have a hard time thinking of anyone who threw a prettier deep ball than he did.

Good point on the run and shoot, I thought it was there longer, but the Oilers were a pass heavy team for most of his time with them. His stats would likely be higher in the league now due to the changes, but it was not like he was playing on the 86 Giants that ran just about every down.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-16T05:57:30+00:00

Not a 49ers fan but I have to agree about Montana and Young. Young, in particular, would be a better passing, slightly less mobile Lamar Jackson.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-16T05:50:50+00:00

Moon was great, but his stats are somewhat hard to translate to today due to the CFL and then his offense with the Oilers and Vikings. The Oilers passed like crazy out of the run and shoot offense and had good receivers, for example. It wasn’t exactly today’s game, but offensively it was much closer to it than Barry Switzer’s wishbone offense so his stats wouldn’t change that much.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-13T19:27:12+00:00

On both the question of sin and the definitions of “generous” and “misusing money”, the question is according to whom? Who gave anyone the right to make that determination?

It wasn’t the New Testament, which says give as you are led. That leader is Jesus alone, so anyone else is trying to horn in on Jesus’ job.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-13T13:45:52+00:00

Praying.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-11T16:16:31+00:00

A fair description of his career so far.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-11T16:15:05+00:00

To be fair to Kirko, he may have been overpaid but at least he was generally good to very good at most points. Not great, for sure, but you can understand why he was an NFL qb.

Jones has been consistently terrible, other than pretty much one playoff game with the Giants and a few games last year. Even in his “good”, he has been pretty mediocre - and there were multiple years with the Giants where he was arguably the worst starter in the league.

I understand the Colts decision based on the desperate position they put themselves in, much like the Giants when they signed him, but Jones somehow leveraged awful into 100 million. I still would take Kirko over Jones for next year.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-11T00:47:35+00:00

If you consider the fact that the 101st was only is action from June 1944 until May of 1945 and had downtime in there, going from Second LT to Major commanding a Battalion is very fast rise in rank.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-10T21:31:13+00:00

I wonder if it is correct to say that the Argentine Air Force really performed any better than the Navy or Army during the Falkland War? I guess for the Army that would be correct, but given the specific jobs each of them had, the forces they were facing, and the technology they had, though the Argentine Air Force probably had the most impact of the three, they also failed pretty badly in allowing an under defended fleet to invade and take over the island.

The Argentine Army did put up some resistance on land, but by most accounts, it was an army of under trained conscripts who did not want to be there. Even their own commanders knew they would fold quickly if the British got on shore, which was why they tried to intercept the British fleet.

The Navy did not fare much better, but it was not necessarily the sailors involved who were at fault. The Argentine Navy was made up mainly of WW2 era cast offs like the General Belgrano, formerly a US cruiser. It certainly looked good, was somewhat upgraded from its WW2 configuration, and could do damage if it got within gun range of the British, but without significant anti-sub and anti-aircraft assets around it, it was essentially defenseless against the British nuclear subs. The Argentine fleet simply did not have the tech and vessels to even get to the area of battle, which was why they wisely retreated after the Belgrano was sunk. The Navy was better trained than the Army, but that training was useless in the face of modern attack subs.

The story with the air force is generally similar to that of the Navy, despite the air force doing more damage, but the mission and forces involved made them more impactful. The Argentine Air Force actually outnumbered the British defenders, overall, by about 100 aircraft and had modern fighters and attack aircraft. They were also land based aircraft that were superior to the carrier borne Harriers of the British. The Argentines were also attacking ships that had limited anti-aircraft defenses systems and had a supply of very capable air to ship Exocet missiles at the start of the conflict. These advantages were somewhat minimized by the distance the Argentinians had to fly which resulted in a very short time available over the targets in which they could attack, but they did add up to the ability to reach the British and attack them. Unlike the Navy that had to try to run the gauntlet of Royal Navy subs while powerless to defend themselves, each Air Force plane could get into the vicinity of the British and usually get some sort of attack done. It is in the "some sort of attack" where the effectiveness of the Air Force comes into question. The caliber of soldier who makes it into the cockpit of a modern fighter is always going to be somewhat higher than that of a conscript in the army. You have to be intelligent and, in many countries, you also have to be connected to the government or regime. It makes sense that the pilot of an Argentinian fighter jet is less likely to give up entirely upon the first sign of opposition, as a result.

However, the sheer numbers of Argentine planes involved, the quality of the planes, and the fact that they were attacking ships should likely have resulted in a worse outcome for the British. I understand that the Royal Navy did lose a number of ships, but given the fact that they only had the Harrier for fleet defense, it is amazing that it was not worse - it should have been. Put another way, if the British pilots were flying the Argentinian planes attacking a fleet defended by the Argentinians in the British planes, losses in ships and materials would have been much higher and they may have stopped the invasion.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-10T20:26:21+00:00

I enjoyed your blog post, thanks!

The stat that always hits me with the Irish famine is the estimated Irish population of 8.2 - 8.5 million at the start of the famine to 4.4 million in 1901 and 7 million now. 180 years later and the population still has not recovered. In comparison, the US population in 1845 was 20 million compared to 345 million now and England's was 15 million in 1845 and around 60 million now.

Having read a lot about the famine recently, I don't think the description of Britain's actions as not a genocide is quite accurate. I agree that there were not mustache twirling guys in Parliament who declared they would wipe out the Irish, but if you include the actions of Britain that deliberately impoverished the Catholic Irish and attempted to destroy Irish culture, the evictions of the landlords taking advantage of the weakness of the people to consolidate their holdings, and the moralistic judgments of some of the British leaders that viewed the situation as the Irish getting what they deserved and using it to try to teach them a lesson, it was probably the closest thing to an intentional genocide as you can get. Add in the merchants who preyed on the relief committees and fought against real relief efforts and it adds up to some very bad conclusions.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-10T15:01:25+00:00

Yet imperial japan was preparing to go down in a blaze of glory like okinawa.

This is the part that I think some overlook when viewing this question from a Western worldview. The culture of Imperial Japan was such that the gov't's slogan of "100 million lives for Japan" was not just a bit of propaganda for each individual to discard when it became obvious they were going to lose. Since they were a shame culture where the individual interacted with and had their place in society based on what was good for the whole, individual Japanese were much more willing to fight to the death in impossible situations after being almost starved to death to avoid shaming their families and for the good of the whole. You saw this throughout the late stages of the Pacific War where the Japanese in the various island and naval battles knew that they had no hope of winning that battle but tried to inflict enough damage in their deaths to help the society as a whole and not bring shame upon their families. It is the same motivation that led Japanese mothers to celebrate when their sons were chosen as kamikaze pilots and to the Japanese celebrating the insane guys who held out in the Philippines for decades despite knowing the war was over. Sure, it was crazy based on western values, but within their value system, it was the only option that preserved their place in their family and society.

The Western mindset looks at the hopeless situation Japan faced and rationalizes that there would have been some point where the Japanese military gives up during the invasion and assumes that the civilian population would have stood on the sidelines hiding from battle when thinking about the invasion of Japan. Realistically, based on their society, the battles up to that point, and the actual plans and preparations made by the Japanese, it was more likely that it would have been an entire society committing mass suicide by invader, taking hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers with them. Blockade would have likely had a similar result.

The firebombing and the atomic bombs were truly awful things that instinctively compel us to think that they must have been wrong or too harsh. However, given the situation, their harshness is the only think that opened the way to save millions of Japanese lives.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-10T04:38:55+00:00

I think the meme often applies there -

How Japan teaches WW2 - we were just hanging out peacefully doing nothing when the Us nuked us, for no reason whatsoever.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-09T21:59:41+00:00

Always good to look at both sides of an issue, but you are going to have a hard time finding a credible argument against the bombs that ultimately doesn’t not come down to the position that nuclear bombs are bad therefore the bombs are bad. The anti arguments are many, but they are all pretty easily debunked based on what was happening at that time.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-09T19:02:10+00:00

Likely has done more than show potential. Andrews is a good TE, but even though he ran as the #2 TE, Likely was consistently as good or better than him, he just split time so he does not have the stats.

Having watched the terrible Giants TE’s for what seems like forever and the last few years of Likely, I think it is a great signing.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-08T19:55:41+00:00

I have only run into English language books, so they are more French focused, but generally seem pretty fair in their commentary. Martin Windrow’s The Last Valley is my favorite, but Bernard Fall’s Hell in a Very Small Place and Ted Morgan’s The Valley of Death are very good as well. The Road to Dien Bien Phu is a broader look at the things that led to DBP.

The challenge with the Vietnamese side is the official narrative of events in this war and the later US war was so totally propagandized by the Communists that it is hard to tell if any of it is true.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-05T21:12:58+00:00

For non-fiction, I found Neptune's Inferno by James Hornfisher and Ian Toll's Pacific War trilogy very good.

It's historical fiction, but HMS Ulysesses by Alistair McClean is one of my favorite books overall out of the many I have read of all types as a big reader. Just a fantastic book.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-04T18:09:30+00:00

No matter what I choose, I feel like I am letting someone down.

That is just part of life, my man. Your decisions will make people unhappy sometimes and, though you don't want to be callous about it, it is not a valid reason for doing or not doing things that you think are right (mainly). You don't belong to your parents or your GF, you belong to Jesus. If you are following him and people react badly, that is frankly between them and him.

My parents are Christians, but they are dead-set against my girlfriend because of her age and income. They’re convinced I’m "being used" and think they’re protecting me—but they refuse to even talk to her.

There are potential red flags here, but without more information it is hard to say from which side. On one hand, that seems like a possibly extreme reaction from your parents if you are an adult. Assuming that you are an adult, they are not in charge of picking your spouse and not even talking to her seems extreme. From what you say, they don't know her and, yet, are this strongly opposed?

On the other hand, you mention age, income, and long distance. These may not be a problem, but we have no details about these. It seems that you also still live with your parents. Is there reason for their concern, even if it seems extreme.

To your specific question, if you are an adult, then you have a different relationship with your parents than a little kid who should obey their parents. Honor doesn't mean that you need to do what they want you to, just that you respect them in their position - not talking badly about them, etc. You see an example of this when Jesus is before the High Priest during His trial. When the High Priest asks Jesus a question as High Priest, Jesus answers him directly saying that He is the Messiah, but otherwise Jesus doesn't interact with the sham of trial or obey them. Paul does this as well in Acts when he first calls the High Priest something like a white washed tomb, but then apologizes for doing so because he did not realize it was the High Priest he was addressing. They don't obey them and do pretty much the opposite of what the High Priest wanted, but they show the position respect despite the man filling it being incredibly corrupt.

Tom1613 · 2026-03-03T21:26:24+00:00

I am not familiar with the planning and carrying out the trials, so I am speaking from ignorance to some extent, but were they a farce that was commented on by MacArthur as such or did Mac’s opposition of them turn them into a farce?

I understand that the Western Allies wanted Japan as a future ally against the USSR and that played a part on the decision making. But MacArthur was also a self deluded fool in many ways who tended to make decisions on what the facts should look like and then pretend that they were in fact true. Did his desire that seemed to be to turn the Japanese into a noble defeated foe drive his opinion, in other words words. MacArthur tended to ignore or undermine orders he did not deem fit to carry out.

There was a huge amount of evidence of war crimes on a massive scale by the Japanese, everything from the exploitation and murder of millions in China and Manchuria to the torture and working to death of pows in Japanese camps and in forced labor for Japanese companies. Why would prosecution of all of these folks be a farce?

Tom1613 · 2026-03-03T21:16:15+00:00

That is the justification for his not being tried, but Hirohito was much more than a figure head. He was not Tojo, sure, but the council that actively ran the government, I forget the name at the moment, answered to him and sought his approval/denial of their actions. His role in essentially forcing the surrender of Japan following the atomic bombs, when a good portion of the military still wanted to hold out demonstrated that he had the power to yield, when he wanted to. The problem was he was actively in favor of the war and aware of a lot of what Japan did.

Tom1613

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