Posted in Gospel, Pilgrimesque on December 6, 2008| Leave a Comment »
One of my favorite college teachers would repeatedly remind us of the next upcoming test or project and then nudge us to prepare hard because afterward, we could just coooasst through the rest of the semester. He would say this before every test or project.
I know that my soul is too content to live off the spiritual capital that has been learned or forced in during my 3 1/5 decades on this orb.
This is a good article with Five Suggestions for Staying Fully Alive.
Posted in Culture Wars on December 5, 2008| 2 Comments »
From Ray Ortlund:
“One way of catching class attention is to ask what advice [medical] students would give when presented with the following family history. The father has syphilis, the mother tuberculosis; they have already had four children — the first is blind, the second died, the third is deaf and dumb, and the fourth has tuberculosis. The mother is pregnant with her fifth child, and the parents are willing to have an abortion, should you so decide.
Assuming there aren’t too many Catholics in the class, you will usually find a majority in favor of abortion. You congratulate the class on their decision to abort — and then you tell them they have just murdered Beethoven.”
L. R. C. Agnew of the University of California School of Medicine at Los Angeles, quoted in “A gripping lesson on abortion,” The Palo Alto Times, 27 September 1977.
Posted in Photoblogomous on December 5, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Good pictures take great timing. These pictures fit the bill.
Posted in News and Sports, Photoblogomous on December 4, 2008| Leave a Comment »
The streets of Venice (not just the canals) have flooded and the residents and tourists look to be taking things in stride. See how life seems to go on there in this photoessay.
Posted in AMUSEMENT: "Muse" Means to Think and "A" Means..., The Things of This World, Variety Pack on December 4, 2008| 1 Comment »
This is exactly why so many inanities (including the bailout) seem plausible to today’s populace.
Posted in Pilgrimesque, Quote of the Day on December 4, 2008| Leave a Comment »
I came across this Howard Hendricks quotation after I had been mulling again over the quote, “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Hendricks said,
I live with the dread of tame, domesticated Christianity. I fear for my students that they will chase after what they want — and therefore miss what God wants.
Posted in Culture Wars, Family on December 4, 2008| Leave a Comment »
I subscribe to the Free Range Kids blog which is a call to parents and society to return to the earlier days of child-rearing where there wasn’t this disorder called hyper-protectionism [my word].
Here is some background where Lenore Skenazy tells why she started the blog. It was precipitated by her op-ed piece entitled “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Take The Subway Alone.”
Stunting Our Kids With Safety is the most recent post and is what I mean to draw your attention to. It deals with what happens when the school gets involved.
Humorous and sad simultaneously.
Posted in Goings On, Variety Pack on December 3, 2008| Leave a Comment »
I’ve been having a really hard time with the surge in piracy this year. Yes, me, so far away and so unaffected and usually so unwilling to voice an opinion [today was the first day I’ve ever considered making a post category called Opinions].
I am for lawfulness. I am against lawlessness. I am opposed to piracy in reality. I’m pro pirate movies. I am against uprisings and insurrection. I am pro thinking outside the box (which sometimes smells like rebellion).
In summary of this fine defense, I am for shooting pirates with guns. Big guns, little guns, arrows, and poison-dart guns. They after all carry guns and scimitars, don’t they? I’m not trying to be simple or silly, I’m just trying to end piracy.
This FoxNews story is sort of a summary of the current state of things. It calls pirates the Enemies of All Mankind. They even capitalize it just like I did. I really love that ship owners fear that the crews would kill each other if they had guns more than they were fearful of pirates. That’s classic. I think as hijackings increase (and they will), they might change their minds.
I also loved the code of honor in protection companies that says, “if you commandeer a ship I am protecting, I will jump overboard.” I hope that sticks, ’cause that’s kind of funny. Perhaps there could be a law that they would get to keep the pirate’s boat, but maybe that’s just selfish thinking.
Mark my words [and also mark that I don’t know if I’ve ever used that phrase before so I must be very serious about what is about to be said] that very soon, ship owners are going to need to be comping pirates for injuries that occur during attacks. They are going to be required to start affixing permanent ladders to the sides of their ships and relaying floorboards with grit to prevent slippage. They are going to have to start paying for lazy pirates who want to stay at home and watch TV because piracy is so hard. And they are going to have to start funding poor pirates who have boats too slow or small to keep up with the big freighters.
Shooting people with guns is brutal yes, and often quite permanent, but it’s much less brutal than the ancient methods of pirate removal/disposal. Perhaps we could at least make a law that it’s ok to shoot the air out of the pirates inflatable boats. That would solve the problems, too.
In summation and in answer, please reread paragraph three, the first sentence.
To Be A Pilgrim 