I'm moving the domain off the current web host, so the site might not be available until I can get everything set up on the new server. I'm trying to keep the downtime to a minimum, but this has become necessary as my current web host's services give me no end of grief (and I lack the kind of control I want for the website).
At first, I thought this was a joke. Then I realized it wasn't.
Ingenious. Too bad this has never been tried before
I'm sure it'll work great.
A dash of Python and a smattering of HTML will make all the difference in how government by committee works.
I'm reading St. Augustine's Confessions as the non-biblical text in my own personal study and I came across this fantastic quote from Book I, which seems to smack writers squarely in the forehead:
When a man seeking for the reputation of eloquence stands before a human judge while a thronging multitude surrounds him, inveighs against his enemy with the most fierce hatred, he takes most vigilant heed that his tongue slips not into grammatical error, but takes no heed lest through the fury of his spirit he cut off a man from his fellow-men.
— St. Augustine
Confessions
Expect me to quote him more as I get through the entire work.
Another towel thrown into the ring in the long-standing argument over whether Christianity is treated unfairly by Hollywood:
Are we so confident, I wonder, in how virtuous we are and how virtuously we act in and towards the rest of the world, that the only possible explanation for a negative reputation is an irrational and unfair prejudice? Could it be—I’m just asking—that one reason so many Christians are portrayed as jerks in contemporary media is that a lot of Christians act like jerks in contemporary society?
— All Things Ken
Read the whole thing. (HT: Looking Closer/Jeffrey Overstreet)
Just learning Corel Painter X. Digital mixed-media (mostly chalk and blenders).
My sermon from yesterday:
I
1 A good name is better than precious ointment,
and the day of death better than the day of birth.
2 It is better to go to the house of mourning
than to go to the house of feasting,
for this is the end of all mankind,
and the living will lay it to heart.
3 Sorrow is better than laughter,
for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
Ecclesiastes 7 (ESV)
It turns out my Gothic sensibilities aren’t all that far off the mark after all!
It’s not that I don’t like being happy. And it’s not that I don’t like seeing others being happy. Sometimes, I’m absolutely running out the ears with happy. It’s just, well, to use a cliche: complicated.
You know, the past couple of days as I’ve been walking around the lake during lunch, I’ve postulated the theory that Jesus Christ was really an alien DNA experiment, and that the whole premise of the human race is that we are a long-running genetic experiment being conducted by a very old (by our reckoning) race of people. Maybe they have been evolving for 500 billion years, and they live for 500,000 years. Let’s say they are a very peaceful, giving people.They started this experiment say, 20 or 30 thousand years ago, and have been making repeated visits to our planet to infuse us with some sort of gene-splicing material. That’s why there were so many different people, from early ape-man, through Neanderthal to Cro-Magnon to modern Homo sapiens. Each jump in the evolutionary tree was another genetic test.
At one point, they decided to go with one race, let’s just say the Jews, maybe because they were the most cohesive, since they don’t intermingle much with other races. All the accounts you read about in the Old Testament are just the scientists trying to make sure that their control group doesn’t get destroyed.
Let’s say these alien people have evolved to the point where they can communicate through telepathy, and manipulate the elements around them using their minds. Let’s say you’re a shepherd named Moses in ancient Egypt, and you "hear" a voice telling you to do God’s will. Maybe this voice tells you his name is "Yahweh" (which could be the actual name of the lead scientist, for example), and you must do things for him and protect your people. When really what "Yahweh" wants to do is protect his experiment, and continue to get "funding" for it! It goes on and on through the years.
Read the whole theory here: Unexplained Mysteries
Sounds like somebody needs a little more to do during their lunch break.
Reading A Story On the Front Porch
Digital pencil and oil (Corel Painter X).
...my profession of faith should not understood [sic] as an assertion of holiness. Quite the opposite, in fact. My profession of faith is an admission of my sinfulness. This is something many unbelievers seem to have a hard time grasping.
—Frank WilsonFrom Frank Wilson's blog.
We're not politically correct in our household. We say Merry Christmas. Sure, Happy Holidays and all that. Be happy. I've no qualms with being Happy.
But I personally want to wish merriment on you at CHRISTmas.
Just keep in mind you can't strip Jesus from Christmas. There may be aspects of our celebration that are not scriptural. Big deal. That just means the holiday is more meaningful because it's multi-cultural and incorporates pieces and parts of the various cultures that have influenced the celebration. If it wasn't for Jesus, this holiday would have no meaning.
Personally, I wouldn't care if they moved Christmas to July. It's still a celebration of the birth of The Savior. Not "A" savior (one of several); we're not celebrating the birth of a great prophet and teacher (though He was those things). The Christmas holiday celebrates the birth of the one-and-only Savior of mankind (oddly enough, not Man himself, which seems to be the theological fad these days--that Man can save himself). The Creator of the Universe in flesh-and-blood.
You don't have to believe all this to celebrate Christmas, by the way. You don't have to stand up in church and become a Christian to join in the celebration of the holiday. It won't kill you (quite the contrary), but you can glom onto the celebration even if you don't think there's anything you need saving from. That's the great thing about a Christian celebration that incorporates elements of the cultures through which it travelled.
Believe it or not. That's up to you. I'm still going to wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS!
