I found quite a lot of stuff this week… Let’s go.
There are groups trying to make abortion mainstream. They’ve been working on this for 40 years. New York Times Magazine recently featured a story on a newer strategy to get this shameful practice back into your local hospital or doctor’s office. Al Mohler provides some great commentary as usual.
Also on abortion, last week it was Pennsylvania. Now, we can add Maryland to the list of states that look to be providing Federally funded abortions from its high risk fund.
Related to abortion, our pastor has finished deliberating on whether or not to sign the Manhattan Declaration and decided not to. I’m glad to see we agree on this decision. Though, I can’t really think less of a person who has signed it, considering that Al Mohler signed it. I disagree with Dr. Mohler’s decision, but Al Mohler is a great man and a hero of the faith nonetheless.
And related to advice for pastors, this pastor has an interesting “visitation ministry” where he visits the men of his church at their place of work. Pastor Flack et. al., if you read this, you are welcome over my house any time. (HT: Justin Taylor)
Moving on to government, I’m beginning to wonder if any promise made in trying to sell the idea will be kept. It’s so bad even the MSM is reporting the news that promises about keeping insurance and keeping your doctor were probably wrong. This is not at all surprising to me. Massive changes to the system mean massive changes for the individual and this is a massive bill. Lies and exaggeration to sell policy is a political norm, no surprises in that.
Are you worried about all the top secret stuff the guv’ment has going on? You should be. Washington Post has a new resource, Top Secret America, that takes a look at the world of secret government operations. (HT: Dan)
As someone working on projects related to the credit card industry, I find this news about the profitability of credit cards interesting. The government took away a revenue source from the industry. Is the industry going to do with making less money. Of course not. They just find a new way to extort fees. That’s what businesses do. That’s life. Just as political bureaucrats and elected officials do what they can to keep hold and enhance their personal power and prestige. It’s not different except in context. It’s the way of Adam.
And from the ohnoes-we’re-all-gonna-die department, check out this museum exhibit. The Chicago Field Museum, a wonderful land of scare tactics and propaganda. Teaching children that we’re all going to get itchy from poison ivy and die of malaria because of global climate change.
Here is another sign that religious freedom in this nation is eroding. That is, you can have religious freedom so long as you don’t share it with anyone else and have politically correct views on sin. In this case, a woman is claiming that she can’t get a counseling degree now from a certain state university unless she gives up her religious beliefs regarding what is a sin and what is not.
And in Dearborn, Michigan, the police seem to think that peacefully handing out Christian literature at a Muslim festival is inciting a riot. Even the ACLU, based on the video footage, is sympathetic to the Christian missionaries in this case.
Justin Taylor has a great post regarding eight principles on how not to read classic literature. I can boil it down to one for you: just read them like you would any other book. Very complicated, yes?
And if you want to learn a whole bunch of really great stuff about Christianity, history, apologetics, and the like, try listening to a few things listed here. (HT: DJP)
And while we’re discussing audio, I recently have tried listening to the Dividing Line, which is Dr. James White’s podcast. If you’ve heard some recent comments about Christianity and corruptions of it on FOXnews, you might find his recent program discussing Glenn Beck interesting.
Also from James White, if you want an example of the lies of Ergun Caner, whom I mentioned last week, if you think it’s an exaggeration, here’s a sample:
These aren’t misstatements as his defenders have said. Clearly. Not accidental. You can’t lie like this by accident.
The men over at Triablogue have posted a book, The Infidel Delusion in PDF form (free download) that contains a refutation of the collection of atheist and agnostic authored essays published in *The Christian Delusion. I have not read either of these books myself, but it may be useful to you if you are discussing Christianity with an anti-theist. Related to that, part of the discussion does cover naturalism and it’s relation to atheism. If you want a fairly brainy analysis of how naturalism and atheism and logic are related, try here.
In the vein of properly opposing false teaching, Thabiti Anyabwile has a survey of the pastoral epistles on the subject.
Matthew Harmon is in Africa and got asked an interesting question that might put perspective on things, “Do they go to witch doctors in the US?” Evangelicals in the United States share much with our brothers and sisters across the world, but the perspective of culture strongly impacts our notion of what is “normal.”
Patrick over at Triablogue also points to A Brief Introduction to Christianity that I found to be pretty interesting.
Switching subjects completely: Regarding phones, I thought the recent Consumer Reports decision not to recommend the iPhone 4 was a little over the top. Then again, it’s kind of what I expect from them: helpful but fickle. (HT: ramereth for the comic.)
On the other hand, Peter-Paul Koch has some interesting analysis on how Apple has done it’s best to harm themselves with bad PR in the last year or so. (Warning: PG-13 language. ppk likes to use a certain offensive four letter word.)
Also, sounds like the Nexus One is all done. Since it lacks a physical keyboard, I was never interested, but it looked like a really nice phone otherwise. However, it led the way to the great new phones on the market now.
Also in phones, despite the news that modding a Droid X will turn it into a brick, the modders are still trying to find a way in. They’ve reached the first milestone by gaining root on the phone which allows the first round of customizations. That’s only the first step though. They still have to get around bricking the phone when installing custom ROMs.
If you’re not a developer or want to show a non-geek why it is that Internet Explorer 6 causes cursing you’d normally expect from someone engaged in plumbing or electrical work, see this.
Looks like David Golden got Perl 5 development version 13.3 released on time. It’s nice to see these monthly releases going well.
I am excited by the new Tron. The original Tron was like the Matrix before the Matrix and with less sin:
Sweeeeeet!
Speaking of sweets, I really want to try these… mmmm…. pretzels… mmmm…. M&Ms:
This next bit makes me very glad that there isn’t even a subway to be ridden within 500 miles.
Six story tall Optimus Prime made from old cars. Awesome.
And finally, remember, the best way to avoid debate is to call your opponent names.
Cheers.
Leave a comment