Headlines (November 30)

The Ken Jennings Show - It is the last day of November. Just where has the month gone to? Time seems to be accelerating for some reason. Time could be slowing for Ken Jennings, the man who has won 74 consecutive shows of Jeopardy. According to the rumor mill (ie two people who attended the taping of tonight’s show several months ago) this could be the evening his amazing streak finally comes to an end. Last night he passed the $2.5 million mark so he should be pretty well set for life now. He looked a little “off” yesterday and certainly did not dominate the game, so perhaps he had a bad weekend and that affected his play since Jeopardy tapes 5 episodes per week, all on Monday.

Who Really Lost The Election? - It seems Americans have the amazing ability to make a one-day election drag on for week after week. Even now people are calling for recounts and there are even some that are privately funded and managed, so convinced are some Democrats that the Republicans cheated. It seems they simply cannot believe that anyone would vote for a guy like Bush. But who were the real losers in the election? A lot of people are pointing to the press. An article in Editor & Publisher [2] says “Media, you lost big.” The press was supposed to deliver 15% to the Democrats and somehow managed to cost them rather than gain them voters. “Staunchly opposed to Bush throughout his first term, the prospect of a second four years in office exposed the deep-seated bias among the old media and forever revealed themselves to the public at large.”

CTAOTD - I may as well just have a section here called Christianity Today Article of the Day. Today’s article [3] examines why C.S. Lewis remained Protestant while by the end of his life many of his beliefs were essentially Catholic. The author concludes “reduced to its essentials, is that Lewis had a blind spot created by a bigoted Ulster Protestant upbringing; despite his exposure to Catholic teaching and the best of Catholics among his friends, he was never able to overcome this prejudice, even on his deathbed…Lewis was a very typical Protestant in that he saw an absolute division between the claims of the Roman Church and her reality, the reality belonging only to a Church that is precisely not the Roman (or any other) particular church, and which while it touches upon and runs through this and other churches, is greater than them all. This is why he puts Mother Kirk in shabby dress, because her glory is hidden in her manifestations to us.” I am not expert on Lewis and must confess I have only read one of his books. I suppose I have read enough of his quotes through second hand sources to have read most of Mere Christianity at least. Any comments on this article from those who know more about Lewis?

Desiring God - Matt Hall [4] has put together a post discussing the highlights of this year’s Desiring God conference (Sex and the Supremacy of Christ). He links to many of the conference’s speeches that are available in MP3 format. I listened to and enjoyed a couple of them yesterday. Mark Dever’s speech on Christian Hedonists or Religious Prudes? The Puritans on Sex is both interesting and hilarious so I especially recommend that one. I’ll be listening to the rest of them today.

Devaluation - Want to buy some cheap real estate? Fifteen years ago Canadian taxpayers coughed up $600 million to build Skydome, home stadium of the Toronto Blue Jays and Toronto Argonauts. Next month that stadium will be sold to Rogers Communications for a measley $25 million. That is some shocking devaluation. I’m guessing that even real estate in Chernobyl hasn’t fallen that far. Once considered the greatest ballpark in the major leagues, it is now seen as more of an albatross and already baseball fans are clamoring for a new one. Skydome had its glory days back in 1992 and 1993 when the Jays won their back-to-back World Series Championships and the stadium was packed to the rafters most of the year. Recently games have drawn merely 8-10 thousand fans. The glory days are over!

Wycliffe Translators - And finally, here [5] is a link to a story about Wycliffe Bible translators and some of the work involved in translating God’s Word. Feel free to pass over the gratuitious Billy Graham praises. After reading that article I went to Wycliffe’s site and began poking around. I came across this [6] page of quotes and was struck by how bizarre history can be at times. Here we have an organization named after a man who was despised by the Catholic Church to such an extent that forty years after his death his body was exhumed, burned and the ashes were thrown in a river. Yet on a page at the web site are all sorts of quotes from Catholic sources and even the current pope speaking of the importance of the work of translating the Bible. Strange, isn’t it?