From the Desk of the Editor...
Currently based in Springfield, MA; attending school in Greenfield to get moving toward an Astrophysics degree and looking into freelance writing. First step: a frequently-updated column on the Examiner that you should check out.
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Ron Paul is a Pragmatic Choice
I don’t deny there are certain socially questionable things about the guy. He is honestly an old-school 1930s conservative. But I mean, look at what the President can do. The President does not pass social laws about race. The President does not create legislation. The President controls foreign policy. And I’m pretty sure that Ron Paul has the sanest foreign policy out of any other presidential candidate. Even leftists who rip on the man for his social views admit he has a good foreign policy. And what I’m saying is that all things considered, his foreign policy is THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE because that ist he one thing the President influences most.
I don’t really feel like diving into whether or not Paul is the best choice on the ticket, but I would like to comment on this sentiment that it fails to understand the scope of the President. There’s a lot of fact here about the actual details of the office, but the President himself is bigger than that. Yes, the main thing they have direct control over is foreign policy (and intelligence, of which only one agency is forbidden from operating within the United States and I’m not sure who has the task of making sure they actually don’t, and then the IRS and I’m pretty sure the FBI, but sure, we can ignore those, why not), but when someone becomes President they become a symbol of the nation’s attitude and the direction the rest of the government will go. Remember that while the President doesn’t make law, very few laws can be passed if he disapproves of them. Remember that while the President doesn’t decide court cases, he influences what Justices get to do so. The job of the President is one thing, but the actual influence of the President is quite another. And, no, we cannot ignore the true scope of the office just to make one person sound better, because it doesn’t actually make him better.
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”When we have 13,000 Americans living on the Moon, they can petition to become a state.
NEWT GINGRICH.
Oh, this just gets awesomer and awesomer.
(via The Daily Show)
Lol
(via koalamermaid)
Listen. All I’m saying is, a civil war in which the Moon seeks independence will jumpstart our space program faster than anything else we have available to us.
Maybe they’ll wear brown coats, you guys
(Source: inothernews)
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53 Questions That You May Not Have Seen Before
- 1: What do you put on hotdogs?
- A: Ketchup
- 2: Do you say "anticlimatic" or "anticlimactic"?
- A: Anticlimactic. No regrets.
- 3: Do you check flyers before grocery shopping?
- A: I forget to check my own kitchen before going half the time.
- 4: Blue, black, or some other colour pen ink?
- A: I use black, except when I don't.
- 5: Do you use your parking brake?
- A: Not in this car. It's an automatic. It feels like it would be a lie.
- 6: Look to your left. How many framed pictures are on the wall?
- A: One painting, but it isn't framed and isn't really on the wall.
- 7: Do you know how to play chess?
- A: Like a boss.
- 8: How often do you clean the interior of your car?
- A: I use my cleaning schedule to measure geological epochs.
- 9: Do you ever read the last few pages first?
- A: No. Well, not with stories, anyway.
- 10: Ever fallen in the shower?
- A: I dunno, probably.
- 11: On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to swear at other drivers?
- A: A lot more now than I used to, I'll tell you that.
- 12: What's the worst thing you've ever called someone you care about?
- A: Someone else's name.
- 13: Do you have a Snuggie?
- A: No, I wear normal non-fancy blankets.
- 14: Are you allergic to anything?
- A: Nothing known to man.
- 15: Do you have any TV shows on ?
- A: Not generally.
- 16: How many times do you hit the snooze button before finally getting out of bed?
- A: I don't trust that thing.
- 17: Ever driven away in anger?
- A: Yeah, once or twice or so.
- 18: What's your favourite freezie colour?
- A: No idea what that is.
- 19: Are you a vegetarian?
- A: I would DIE.
- 20: Do you have a garbage receptacle beside you? What's on top?
- A: A flippy lid and half a towel.
- 21: Do you cross out your mistakes or erase/whiteout them?
- A: On paper, I pretty much just write over it.
- 22: Ever torn something up that you instantly knew was too important for such treatment?
- A: Once, a book I had finished writing two weeks earlier.
- 23: Do you think that things will get better?
- A: Onwards and upwards, my friends.
- 24: Do you have an unpopular opinion? What is it?
- A: Most of them, depending on the context.
- 25: What's your favourite quote?
- A: "If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing." - Benjamin Franklin.
- 26: Did you/are you going to go to prom?
- A: I went to three, I think.
- 27: What's the most physically painful thing you've ever experienced?
- A: Probably the time I cut my face in half, but I don't really remember.
- 28: What's the most emotionally/mentally painful thing you've ever experienced?
- A: The leadup to my nervous breakdown a few years back.
- 29: Have you ever legitimately saved a person's life?
- A: Yup.
- 30: What's your favourite book genre?
- A: Christian apologetics
- 31: Did you like "Gigli"? Be honest.
- A: That's a movie, right? I'm pretty sure I've heard the title before.
- 32: Have you ever walked out of a movie at the theatre?
- A: Many times for errands, once because my date couldn't handle it.
- 33: Do you peek between your fingers during the scary scenes?
- A: Horror flicks bore me.
- 34: What was your reaction to Tatum getting killed whilst stuck in the pet door in Scream?
- A: Horror flicks bore me.
- 35: Do dogs like you?
- A: Incredibly so.
- 36: Would you say that you project an air of authority?
- A: Always.
- 37: Do people listen when you speak?
- A: Yeah.
- 38: How are your elbows? Are they okay?
- A: Currently protected by a nice layer of hoodie.
- 39: What is one thing that you do exceptionally well? Be honest.
- A: Do I really have to pick just one?
- 40: Do you use torrents?
- A: Not that you know of.
- 41: When was the last time you paid for music?
- A: A Christmas gift card.
- 42: Are you addicted to technology?
- A: I asked my wife and she laughed.
- 43: Pick a person (you don't need to give their name). How do you feel about them? Be as honest as you can get yourself to be.
- A: She is second only to God Himself.
- 44: Do you check your computer's dictionary for the definition of words you'd otherwise feel confident about using during in-person interactions? Just to be sure?
- A: If I can't define them, I feel it would be morally wrong to use them. Except in Scrabble.
- 45: How heavily to you rely on spellcheck and autocorrect?
- A: I give it a token pass before I print. It generally finds something.
- 46: Have you ever gotten into an argument on the internet? Did you win?
- A: I've been in many, but really, does anyone ever really win internet arguments?
- 47: Do you pause movies/TV shows if you have to go to the bathroom or the kitchen, or do you just let them keep playing?
- A: Depends on what it is, but usually I let it play.
- 48: If you use a regular alarm clock, do you have it set to music or that obnoxious beeping?
- A: I use my phone.
- 49: Peter Pan?
- A: To die would be an awfully big adventure.
- 50: How often do you fall up the stairs?
- A: Every time we shut the gravity off to save on the electric bill.
- 51: Do you pronounce "anti" as ant-eye or ant-ee? (Example: "That scene was very anticlimactic.")
- A: annie
- 52: Do you pronounce "via" as vee-uh or vie-uh? (Example: "We can get there via Tremont Street.")
- A: Depends on what comes after it.
- 53: How often do you forget to close your parentheses?
- A: Never. That wouldn't make any sense.
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Hebrews 10:26-29 One of the most important passages.
26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. 28 Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?
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“Poison & Wine” - The Civil Wars
Recently learned about these guys, felt compelled to share.
ALSO, I finally sat down and listened to some Adele the other day. I get the obsession you people have with her now.
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Seems I’ve acquired a lot of Calvinist blogs on my dashboard lately
I suppose it was inevitable.
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Missed church this morning because I spent all last night and most of this morning dealing with an unstable stomach and eventually throwing up. Which is something the doctor had been asking about a lot and apparently is something she was concerned about showing up. I don’t know what that means, but I sent her a message about it. It still isn’t stable, and my headache is much worse than usual, and we just started a new sermon series that I was looking forward to. I’ll have to download the sermon later.
However, I did just start a new study of my own. It occurred to me that, being a father and husband, and working on forming an outreach group at school, and my column, and a couple other things going on in my life add up to having a lot more responsibility in knowing Christ than I had before, and I had yet to really kick into directed Biblical study. I mean, it was kind of a shift just getting myself back to the place where I was reading regularly at all, but I hadn’t really progressed from there aside from a Romans study Carol and I had bought to do together, which we’re about halfway through.
So I have printouts of the Pastoral Letters (1, 2 Timothy and Titus), which I started working through last night. I started with Titus, though I don’t really have any particular reason for that. I have the books printed off in a binder, because I don’t really like just highlighting things. So each page is one-sided so I can write on the back of the page before, and there’s an inch between each line so I can full in other verses that relate or other translations that give insight or the Greek words and their meaning or notes or whatever. Maybe I’ll show them to you guys later. In the meantime, since I have a bunch of followers who study this stuff now, if you guys have any suggestions on other resources on these letters that could be useful, feel free to share them.
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So I’m scrolling through the fan pages on facebook to get some more direct sources on info for the column, and I noticed something that amused me.
The facebook fan page for Barack Obama is titled, “Barack Obama”
The facebook fan page for George W. Bush is titled, “George W. Bush”
The facebook fan page for Bill Clinton is titled, “President Bill Clinton”I dunno, that might’ve been more amusing to me than anyone else.
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Without the impending pressure of exams, at least until June, I’m free to read all the books I’ve been meaning to read.
- ‘Redemption: Freed by Jesus From The Idols We Worship and The Wounds We Carry’ by Mike Wilkerson
- ‘God’s Lavish Grace’ by Terry Virgo
- ‘Fathered by God’ by John Eldredge
- ‘Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist’ by John Piper
- ‘Godstories: Explorations in the Gospel of God’ by Andrew Wilson
In that order. I would start with good ol’ Terry, but I need to give back ‘Redemption’ to my church, and I’ve had it for months and still not read it all!
And over Lent I’ll be reading ’Hymns of The Passion’ by Hallgrímur Pétursson. I’ll probably post them on here each day as well.
And Jekyll and Hyde for school. I’ve read a bit of it so far and it’s so well written!
I also want to read ‘The Spirit-filled Church’ by Terry Virgo. And ‘Purpose Driven Life’ by Rick Warren - I’ve heard good about it, and I’ve also heard people incinerate it with criticisms, so I want to see what the fuss is about. And ‘Erasing Hell’ by Francis Chan.
“Fathered by God” is great, and I would advise checking out “Wild at Heart” around the same time as reading it. The main problem with “Purpose Driven Life” is the dogmatic approach so many people take to it. It isn’t necessarily a bad book, it’s just very easy to focus so much on it that many seem to forget that it isn’t a new Bible, because it advocates an entire restructuring of lifestyle and outreach that seems to assume the reader will take it very, very seriously.
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An open letter to Washington from Artists and Creators
We, the undersigned, are musicians, actors, directors, authors, and producers. We make our livelihoods with the artistic works we create. We are also Internet users.
We are writing to express our serious concerns regarding the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
As creative professionals, we experience copyright infringement on a very personal level. Commercial piracy is deeply unfair and pervasive leaks of unreleased films and music regularly interfere with the integrity of our creations. We are grateful for the measures policymakers have enacted to protect our works.
We, along with the rest of society, have benefited immensely from a free and open Internet. It allows us to connect with our fans and reach new audiences. Using social media services like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, we can communicate directly with millions of fans and interact with them in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
We fear that the broad new enforcement powers provided under SOPA and PIPA could be easily abused against legitimate services like those upon which we depend. These bills would allow entire websites to be blocked without due process, causing collateral damage to the legitimate users of the same services - artists and creators like us who would be censored as a result.
We are deeply concerned that PIPA and SOPA’s impact on piracy will be negligible compared to the potential damage that would be caused to legitimate Internet services. Online piracy is harmful and it needs to be addressed, but not at the expense of censoring creativity, stifling innovation or preventing the creation of new, lawful digital distribution methods.
We urge Congress to exercise extreme caution and ensure that the free and open Internet, upon which so many artists rely to promote and distribute their work, does not become collateral damage in the process.
Respectfully,
- Aziz Ansari
- Kevin Devine, Musician
- Barry Eisler, Author
- Neil Gaiman, Author
- Lloyd Kaufman, Filmmaker
- Zoë Keating, Musician
- The Lonely Island
- Daniel Lorca, Musician (Nada Surf)
- Erin McKeown, Musician
- MGMT
- Samantha Murphy, Musician
- OK Go
- Amanda Palmer, Musician (The Dresden Dolls)
- Quiet Company
- Trent Reznor
- Adam Savage, Special Effects Artist (MythBusters)
- Hank Shocklee, Music Producer (Public Enemy, The Bomb Squad)
- Johnny Stimson, Musician
Reblogging for a couple reasons. 1.) I support this, and am happy at how many of the people on it are involved in things I already like. 2.) It made me come to a realization.
See, I’d been seeing stuff, like this post, and webcomics blacking out, and thinking about how it makes sense that people who make money by way of sharing their work on the internet would like to be able to continue doing so. But in the midst of doing that, I realized that I am one now. With the column. It’s a minor one, and so far hasn’t actually paid off noticeably, but I hold the copyright on everything I write there as part of the standard agreement at the Examiner and my financial potential from that it directly related to how far word of it is spread across the internet.
I share this with you because I want you to realize that this isn’t a localized problem that would only hurt people who are nationally recognized and have already collected a fair living off their works. Writing online is one of the three jobs I have right now in an attempt to help get my family a place of our own to live while I go to school full time to secure a future for us, and I’m not alone in my reliance on it. SOPA and PIPA give the federal government (rather than the creators of intellectual property) the power to determine how and where our content can be shared, and by extension eliminates what power we have over how much benefit we can gain from it.
This isn’t just about file sharing. The cause is noble, make no mistake - there is a difference between the creators of intellectual property spreading their work and encouraging attention, and people online stealing those works and distributing them in a way that brings no revenue or attention back to the source. But the solution must give the creators the power. If anyone else has it, including the government, the creators are the ones who lose.
(Source: stopthewall.us)
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Oh, well, then. As long as he’s as committed to the gospel as Joel “God is a limitless credit card” Osteen, I guess that’s all that matters.
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Teens Put Lego Man in ‘Space’ (Actually Stratosphere)
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“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal”—
Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)...
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“But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.”—
Titus 2:1
I am not permitted to let my...
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