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T u e s d a y , M a y 3 0 t h
8:38PM | Hitting Z'news
ews stories courtesy of Yahoo: a baby born with three arms, the Netherlands sees the emergence of a new polticial party called The Charity, Freedom and Diversity (NVD) party which is pushing for the legalization of pedophilia, bestiality, and the provision of sex ed to toddlers, among other wicked things, and a duck x-ray that curiously reveals what looks like an alien's head (this x-ray is up for auction on Ebay and bidding is at $4500).
10:27AM | Cerebral Vocabulary 1
anguage and alternative phrases for the Genteel, the Refined, and the Learned - Part 1.
Spelunking your nose
The refined nomenclature for the vulgar act referred to by the common populace as "picking one's nose". Spelunking is far more dignified and grand-sounding than the low connotations of "picking"; what's more, many commoners will not possess knowledge of the definition of spelunking, hence covering up any embarrassment or shame when you must demand that your child cease and desist from spelunking his nose. If they don't know what you're talking about, it is no longer vulgar - only filthy children of the unrefined pick their noses.
S u n d a y , M a y 2 8 t h
11:13PM | Span Of A Life
his evening I was thinking about the Lord's sovereignty: how all things are his creation and therefore under his control, including time (all things). I teased my mind with trying to approach that perilous concept of eternity, in which the Lord, who does not dwell in time, dwells. Being of course unable and unwilling to breach such a concept, my thoughts turned instead to eternity's opposite: my own temporality.
The span of my life, according to the Bible's estimates, should be a good eighty years - if the merciful Lord so wills. This is really an extremely short time, both in the shadow of eternity and the yawning backdrop of history, and in the knowledge gained through experience of the cumulative acceleration of years. So what I am I doing with my brief appearance in this nugget of the Lord's creative beauty called Time? In such a short appearance, is there anything that I can do which can be called important?
Answering the first question, it is with ready admission and subsequent disappointment and shame that I am for the most part wasting time in laziness, sin, and naivety. Like every other convicted soul, I know that I should be doing something different or something more and yet I predeterminedly and conscientiously make a choice on too-frequent occasions to perform a sin or engage in idleness, perhaps embodied in a poor choice of living for the moment.
Unlike some percentage of those convicted souls, I recognize my silliness and sinfulness and want transformation and sanctification. So what can I do in my eighty years that is Important, that as I breathe my last will have me catch those dear words "well done, my good and faithful servant"? There are three things, the first of which is obvious, and yet for its manifest position does not meet an equivalent measure of simplicity. First then is the conclusion of the wisest non-divine man in history: fear God, and keep His commandments. Worship the Lord in word, deed, and sincerity with joy, thanksgiving, and humility. Second, set goals and perform work oriented around the objective of working to restore the earth to an Edenic state, purifying the world from the effects of its brief yet poisonous enslavement to sin. This is a task of no short order, and so, third, raise God-fearing offspring, teaching and guiding them in the hope that they will build upon my meagre accomplishments for the kingdom, entrusting them to the Spirit's care so that they can continue the work of me and our God-fearing ancestors into the future, beyond this blink of the eye which is my allotted time.
7:59PM | Recent Listening
created a mix cd for a friend and kept a copy for myself, and have been playing it over and over again. It's a compilation of edgy alternative metal tracks, a few of which are from bands with which I only recent gained familiarity. Others, such as those for which multiple tracks appear on this cd, or from bands to which I wanted to introduce him.
1. Wilma's Rainbow - Helmet
2. Blinded In Chains - Avenged Sevenfold
3. Put It Off - Pulse Ultra
4. Sunburn - Muse
5. Dying In Your Arms - Trivium
6. World Ablaze - Killswitch Engage
7. Be Quiet And Drive - Deftones
8. Come Clarity - In Flames
9. Death Trend Setta - Crossfade
10. Slip In Sin - Pulse Ultra
11. Bat Country - Avenged Sevenfold
12. Hysteria - Muse
13. Lizaveta - Constantines
14. Magdalena - A Perfect Circle
15. Crazy - Mushroomhead
16. My Last Serenade - Killswitch Engage
F r i d a y , M a y 2 6 t h
11:57PM | Record Catch
new world record for the largest hammerhead shark ever caught appears to have been set on Tuesday. A fisherman off the coast of Florida reeled in a 14.5 foot, 1280 pound hammerhead after the fish dragged his boat 12 miles out to sea. In addition to the video within the article I have linked to, there is another video here.
T u e s d a y , M a y 2 3 r d
11:06PM | Health Update
finally asked my doctor about my leg, which has been giving me problems and flaring up with pain especially after a run - ever since last August. Describing how it is aggravated by running and how the pain spreads throughout the leg even when not putting any weight on it, she figured that some of the muscle fibers a couple of inches above the ankle (the main source of the pain) was the problem. I'll take some anti-inflammatories and not run for six weeks, and she says that should take care of it. If that is truly the case, I will be glad to have my leg back at 100% and be able to work on distance running again. At the same time, I had back spasms for the first time on Saturday, and maybe this will help take care of my back muscles as well.
M o n d a y , M a y 2 2 n d
8:46PM | Faith Always Disappears In The Daytime
t's actually rather nice having Mondays off again. Working Saturday evenings is so low-key that it is almost like having three days off each week: on Saturday I'll spend the eight hours reading a book or watching a movie or tv. As opposed to working Monday-Friday, when I would only get to sleep in one day a week, I can now sleep in Saturday mornings and Monday mornings. I even got extra sleep time today when after lunch I opened the windows to the pleasantly cool air and took a nap in my recliner.
I finally picked up Dostoevsky's Devils again and am rapidly coming upon the conclusion of that work. Every one of Dostoevsky's novels contains an especially notable discourse from one of the character's on their opinions of Christianity - perhaps most notably Ivan Karamazov's monologue on the problem of evil and the existence of God in The Brother's Karamazov - and in Devils I think that portion is a brief statement by "The Major" (Kapiton Maksimovich) in which he speaks of faith and the existence of God:
"Wait a minute, Kapiton Maksimovich. You yourself told me you don't believe in God," Liputin squeaked at the other end of the table.
"What if I did? That's a different matter altogether! Perhaps I do believe, but not entirely. And even though I don't believe entirely, I still don't say that God ought to be shot. When I was serving in the Hussars I used to think about God. There are lots of poems in which hussars drink and have a good time. Well, perhaps I used to drink too, but believe me, I'd also jump out of bed at night and stand in my socks crossing myself in front of the icons, asking God to give me faith because I could find no peace even then, not knowing if there was a God or not. I had a very rough time of it! In the morning, of course, I'd amuse myself, and once again my faith would seem to disappear; as a rule I've noticed that faith always disappears in the daytime."
And so it is, that it is easiest to remember and believe in God when things are dark and dire, and someone is needed to turn to. But once the sun comes out and things are going well, faith disappears, God is forgotten, and life continues as if His existence is not acknowledged.
S a t u r d a y , M a y 2 0 t h
3:35PM | Trusting Love
peaking of the characteristics of love, Paul says "It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres" (1 Cor. 13:7). Jim Wilson quoted this verse on his blog when providing samples of passages that showed that Paul wasn't just a condemning meanie who talked about everything that was wrong with both Jews and Gentiles. The "always trusts" bit is what caught my attention, rendered in the King James as "believeth all things". It is a characteristic of love that I could be particularly prone to struggle with and is tied in with jealousy, which is closely related to self-love.
I could see myself allowing myself in idle or stressful moments at work allowing myself to worry about what my wife is doing while I'm away, or taking too much notice of how she interacts with other men in social situations. While some couples to drift away in affection for each other and even break marriage vows, such worrisome thinking on my part would be foolish and unloving. It is the sin of inventing faults within one's own mind and picking fights that aren't there, and the disposition of the mind and heart always manifests itself in one's subsequent actions.
Biblically defined love trusts in the beloved, and this trust is a two-way street. If I am being untrustworthy and flirting with or dating another woman on the side, then I will naturally suspect the same thing in the other. Trust is only possible if my own heart is right - if I am persevering in my own trustworthiness. If I am busying myself with inventing faults of my wife's then I am failing to protect her, because I myself have become her enemy.
W e d n e s d a y , M a y 1 7 t h
10:45AM | Links Of Interest
Christian blog that I have been enjoying for the last couple months is Reformed pastor Marion Clark's A Proverb A Day. This (mostly) daily blog traverses chronologically through each verse of Proverbs, expounding upon and making application of one proverb a day. Pastor Paul Duggan and Joel Garver are substitute contributors to this blog which serves as a nice daily devotional for me while I am at work.
For those of you who enjoy building websites, you should find it advantageous to discover and implement sIFR, an image-free method of rendering artistic text for headlines, quotes, etc. Rather than using editing-unfriendly, storage-eating, invisible to search engine image files to render fancy text, the developers of sIFR created a 10KB javascript file that will render fancy text in any font by embedding it (invisibly to you and the site visitor) as a Flash (.swf) file. This does not mean that you have to do the work in Flash... all of that is done for you. Furthermore, sIFR is supported by virtually all current web browsers - and in cases where sIFR is not compatible with a browser, the text will still be rendered... only in a plain font (but at least it is still there). Though the Flash file sizes are small, sIFR should be used judiciously for only headlines, quote extracts, and so forth; rendering entire paragraphs in sIFR would eat up bandwidth. I will not go into details of how sIFR works, because you can read all about it from the source: Mike Davidson.
For a good laugh, ScrappleFace places a humorous spin on their retelling of the news, and smart-alecky re-writing of news stories. Mmm, scrapple.
Work on recreating my blog on my new domain will continue to progress slowly, as I clean up the code, make the code XHTML compatible, rework some of the CSS and tweak the layout, and test out the application of new things, such as sIFR and maybe some fun things for you all to play around with.
M o n d a y , M a y 1 5 t h
5:29PM | Working For The Man
rather unexpected and major layoff at work helped put careers and employment in perspective for me. I was not cut in this layoff, but since the company I work for is small (in quantity of employees), its effects were very much felt and noticeable. In short, an entire software suite that this company has been working on for about five years was terminated completely. Three months ago I was promoted to join the IT workforce devoted exclusively to this software. Even before my joining that particular group within this company, this product line was noticeably the biggest marketing and development concern for the company, and many people were engaged in long hours of work on building and selling this product. The landing of major clients was in the works, and there was excitement about the future profits that this product would bring.
Suddenly, though some may have suspected this doom, the project was yanked completely. Employees who had been patted on the back a couple weeks before were dismissed, as were others who gave many hours of effort beyond 40 a week, night and day.
Though my promotion was short-lived, I was one of the fortunate ones who were chosen to remain with the company in a different role, which for now happens to be my former role. Layoffs are a regular part of life in the corporate world, but this event was a personal reminder that my position is determined by six or seven individuals sitting around a table who do not know me personally, and who can either reward and promote me, or deem me expendable at any time. It comes with working for another man. The perspective this brings to my attention is a question: how much of myself do I want to give to my employer in light of this setup, and how high a priority should my work be in my life?
M o n d a y , M a y 8 t h
8:44AM | Sharing The Spotlight
arry Bonds complains that there is "no joy" among baseball fans, the press, and the baseball community as he chases the last two stalwarts on the career homerun list. Fans jeer him in every ballpark outside of San Francisco, his image is tainted as he is surrounded by steroid and perjury allegations, and swarms of press hover around him and the San Francisco Giants clubhouse as they just wait for a comment or some hubbub about which to write.
What does Bonds expect? In an age where it has been revealed that steroid use among athletes abounds, the implication of the most important active player, historically speaking, using steroids is bound to draw the most ire and controversy. As a fan-created sign in Philadelphia said "Babe Ruth did it on hot dogs and beer... Hank Aaron did it with class...", leaving us to consider how Bonds got where he is with 713 homeruns, and leaving us doubting his legacy and place in history.
For all the negativity and despite the steroid scandal, Bonds is still essentially a media icon. Whenver he hits a homerun it is a front page story on sports websites or a highlight alert on ESPN. In the past couple years sports websites feature a Bonds HR tracker. The truth is, players admire his accomplishments and he features a tremendously powerful short compact bat swing. But he will remembered as the best player who (probably) played on steroids. If investigations and testimony reveal that Bonds really did take steroids, which is probably the truth, Bonds will have to understand that his associations and actions come with consequences. He'll have to pay his dues and share the spotlight with what got him to where he is.
W e d n e s d a y , M a y 3 r d
1:38PM | Price Tag
.S. mothers now have a dollar value. Go tell your wife.
T u e s d a y , M a y 2 n d
11:58AM | How To Recover From A Cold
own with a cold, I am taking the afternoon off from work, throwing open the windows, and trying to rest and recuperate. There is plenty to do:
1. Sleep
2. Watch baseball games, which start at 12:35
3. Catch up on reading
4. Catch up on reading blogs
5. Work on transferring my blog to its new domain
6. Create compilation cd's with Lightscribe
BBC news online is my favorite source of news, despite what we here in America would call a liberal spin, because they offer the most international news up front. There is good selection and variety all nicely presented on the best-designed, least-cluttered, ad-free frontpage (but you'll have to pardon their spelling and grammar mistakes; and no, these are not British foibles in the use of English). Yet my most nagging complaint against BBC news online is their overuse of quotation marks in headlines. Sometimes it is ok, as in today's headline French PM 'hurt by terrible lies' because that is a story on how the French PM says he feels, though honest reporting could leave out the quotes because the readership would expect that the news source is reporting the facts. Then you have many headlines such as Sudan heads 'failed states index' where the quotes are really unnecessary. The abundant use of quotation marks instills in me a feeling that the BBC is almost apologizing for what they are reporting, or refusing to confidently assert the veracity of their reporting, in order to cover their backs in case they are wrong. Well, we envoloped that phrase in quotation marks because we felt this may or may not have been true. It's timid yet not humbly so, and is the reverse of the confidence and deliberately measured clarity of their radio broadcasts.
One thing that continues to intrigue me, and is again reported on by the BBC today, is the reality of online virtual reality. It is interesting to ponder the ramifications and possibilities of this going forward.
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