Wednesday April 19, 2006

Theology: David Field manages to encapsulate the 5 points of Calvinism in the form of a limerick. For other Bible-based limericks, check out the Bible Bus.

Conference: Timmy, who has organized the Band of Bloggers meeting prior to the Together for the Gospel conference, has added a post to his site telling you how you can submit questions to the panel.

Utility: If you are one of those people who lost marks on college-level essays due to improperly citing your sources, you might appreciate EasyBib, a utility which takes all of the guesswork out of creating bibliographies.

Humor: A Colorado man has been fined for operating a device that interferes with traffic signals, causing them to turn green as he approached intersections. The device, which he bought on eBay, is similar to what is used on emergency vehicles. The man received a $50 ticket.

Tuesday April 17, 2006

Politics: Arizona candidate for governor, Len Munsil (who blogs at lenmunsil.com) points to an article detailing Dick Cheney’s tax situation and says, “If Cheney walked on water, the headline would be ‘Cheney can’t swim.’” Cheney donated almost 80% of his income in 2005.

Bible: ESV Blog points to an article from the Chicago Sun-Times which discusses various Bible translations available to us these days.

Technology: Internet guru Jakob Nielsen, who backs up his beliefs with a really ugly site, has an interesting article showing that web users browse pages in “F” patterns. “In a few seconds, their eyes move at amazing speeds across your website’s words in a pattern that’s very different from what you learned in school.”

Theology: The April 9 Marks newsletter is now available. As always, it has some good articles and a great book review.

Monday April 16, 2006

Site: Over the weekend I moved my site to a new server. I hope and trust that this server will prove more stable than the last and that we’ll all enjoy more problem-free reading and writing!

Nature: This could also have been filed under “humor.” Take a look at the rabbit tracks and note how and where they end.

Entertainment: Following the unexpected success of poker on television, producers have been looking for the next big thing. They think they may have found it in darts. Like most television fads, this one is imported from Britain. The day I blow two hours watching darts on TV…

Politics: Justin Taylor points to an article which helps explain why the US of A is so hesitant to allow Iran to gain nuclear capabilities. The task of the Iranian president is: “provoking a ‘clash of civilisations’ in which the Muslim world, led by Iran, takes on the ‘infidel’ West, led by the United States, and defeats it in a slow but prolonged contest that, in military jargon, sounds like a low intensity, asymmetrical war.”

Friday April 14, 2006

Easter: Rumor has it that Americans do not enjoy Good Friday as a holiday. That is tragic. Almost all Canadians have the day off work, myself included. I suppose that taking the day off in the US of A would conflict with the separation of church and state.

Deal: Jacob Hantla alerted me to a good deal for anyone who uses Logos software. “Bob Pritchett, the founder of Libronix (logos.com), has a great freebie to boost initial sales of his just-released book, Fire Someone Today.”

Technology: Oliver Rist, who writes for InfoWorld has some fine examples of the sort of problems that technical support types have to deal with. Reading an article like this reminds me why I no longer do tech support!

Weird: A woman’s body was discovered in front of her television some three years after dying. The Telegraph reports that “Joyce Vincent was surrounded by Christmas presents and the television and heating in her bedsit were still on.”

Thursday April 13, 2006

Web: William Dicks points out that Google is hosting a blog that promotes ‘boy love’—sexual relationships between men and adolescents. He recommends urging Google to drop the site.

Music: The Thirsty Theologian has written a song. A really bad song. But he points to a post by Libbie that contains a song that is far, far worse. It could be one of the most meaningless worship songs I’ve ever read. The chorus is, “Wash over me, wash over me ‘til I can’t take any more”

Modesty: The Girl Talk ladies, just in time for summer (shorts, short skirts, tank tops and all the other accoutrements of warm weather fashion) are beginning a series dealing with modesty. “…My dad says it this way, ‘Any biblical discussion of modesty begins by addressing the heart, not the hemline.’”

Business: In an interesting little bit of business news, the BBC has discovered that Google earns $0.12 in revenue for every Google search you and I do. Google controls almost half of the search market and that number seems to grow constantly.

Wednesday April 12, 2006

Music: Here is a song that, if you listen to it, will be playing in your head all day (whether you want it to or not…and you probably don’t).

Family: Dr. Mohler discusses a rather shocking new book. “When that discernment evaporates, desire is all that remains. When such a desire emerges, someone will move to exploit that desire in order to make a profit.”

Easter: J.D. Wetterling hits another home run with his post on Easter. “Listen carefully to the anguished excuses of Judas Iscariot—his last words before stubbornly dispatching himself to eternal damnation—and ask yourself, ‘How much of Judas is there in me?’”

Law: A student in a Kentucky Baptist university has been expelled for being gay. The Herald-Leader reports. “Johnson, a sophomore majoring in theater arts, was expelled from the university Thursday because he declared online that he is gay. In a statement released last week, the university’s president, Jim Taylor said students are held to a ‘higher standard’ and that ‘students know the rules before they come to this institution.’”

Tuesday April 10, 2006

Just for kicks I thought we would do an all-Emergent A La Carte for today.

Emergent: Yesterday I attended a meeting in which my friend Paul presented a paper on the Emerging church. I thought he did a very good job of representing and critiquing this movement. He will be incrementally posting the paper here if you are interested in following along.

Emergent Bonus: Plenty of other people are writing about the “emergent weekend” in Toronto. Darryl Dash has some thoughts on the events he and I both attended, as well as events which I did not go to.

Emergent Bonus 2: Coloratura Christian has some very astute comments on Brian McLaren’s friends. She notes that whenever McLaren wants to suggest something that is anti-Biblical he comes up with a story of “a friend” who believes something. “I couldn’t help thinking of Mrs. Elton’s false humility in Jane Austen’s Emma. When complimented on her sandwiches, she responds with something like, ‘While I don’t say so, my friends say I certainly know how to make a sandwich.’”

Emergent Bonus 3: Ian, whom I finally met this weekend, has a good roundup of people who commented about this weekend’s proceedings.

Monday April 9, 2006

Film: Justin Taylor passes along an email telling Christians how to respond to the Da Vinci Code movie.

Theology: John Hendryx of Monergism fame writes about “The Historicity of the Resurrection.”

Humor: “Bin Can Can” is a short film showing what happens to our trash cans when there is no one around.

Church: Ingrid collects evidence that sexual abuse is epidemic in Protestant churches as much as Catholic. Parents need to exercise great caution within the church as much as without! Perhaps even more…

Thursday April 6, 2006

Education: Justin Taylor quotes Mortimer Adler on “The Pain of Learning.” “One of the reasons why the education given by our schools is so frothy and vapid is that the American people generally—the parent even more than the teacher—wish childhood to be unspoiled by pain.”

Creation: National Geographic has an interesting video of a “critter cam” they booked up to a bear.

Humor: The latest issue of The Sacred Sandwich is ready for consumption. If you enjoy satire, head on over and give it a read.

Theology: David Wayne is the latest blogger to tackle the question of “What is the Gospel?”

Friday April 7, 2006

Help: If there is a PHP braniac out there who could spare the time to answer a couple of my questions, I should would appreciate a little bit of help with a project I’m working on. Contact me if you are willing and able to help!

Culture: Joe over at Evangelical Outpost has a great article entitled “Beyond Legalism: Jesus, Wisdom, and Tongue Piercing.” Joe just has a way of cutting to the heart of these matters.

Books: The ladies at Girl Talk Blog are discussing the upcoming book edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor. This one, based on last year’s Desiring God Conference, is entitled Suffering and the Sovereignty of God. It will be hitting the shelves in September of this year.

Theology: Josh Buice discusses Paul’s theology and asks whether it represents Total Depravity or Partial Deficiency.