Monthly Archives: October 2005

Blog, considering church

A plug for Buy Nothing Christmas

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I always get annoyed at our focus on holidays as seasons go by, so I thought I’d jump the gun and start talking about Christmas before anybody else!

I’ll leave black Friday alone, and ask that we all take a look at Christmas. We live in a very consumeristic culture, and we live on a “everybody else is doing it” mentality. Christmas is a prime example of this.
I’d like for you to think long and hard about the simple possiblity that Buying Nothing on the holidays this year might be an incredibly wise thing for you to do.

That’s all for now, I’ll leave you with a short little video interview talking about buy nothing Christmas.

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Lifehacker.com

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my new best friend and favorite website. I read a lot of informational blogs, and most of them I find about one in 8 or less of the articles worth looking further into. When I read through lifehacker I seem to open a new tab for every post!

This probably says more about my interest then anything else, but I say it’s worth a look around.

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Cellphone Conspiracy

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So, I don’t have my very own cellphone, but my wife recently got one. We’ve been trying to keep good track of her minutes so we don’t get charged tons of extra money. During this careful attention to minutes I realized something.

You know all those automated instructions that nearly everyone has on their voice mail, “To leave a message press “1”…” My thought is that the phone companies do that so that it takes over one minute to leave a message. They double your minutes usage right there!

Besides the fact that rarely does anyone do anything besides leave a message, those who want to do the other things usually know how to.

So, To all my friends and family, take a minute this weekend and go through the complicated admin menus on your phone and figure out how to take off the instructions on your voicemail message. We have sprint and it wasn’t too hard.

That’s my two cents.

And do me a favor and post what cell phone company you use and what steps you took to get rid of that annoying message.

Blog, podcast

On Simple Living and living “a dollar above” the poverty line

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This podcast I brought a guest speaker in, Nate Manaen, all the way from Las Vegas (He joins us in the study, from inside my cellphone). The topic being discussed was originally brought about by some post Nate put on his Xanga a week ago. You can read his two post and some of the comments here: post 1, post 2.

Here is the podcast.

Please post your comments and thoughts below or on my xanga or Nate’s.

p.s. If your an audio junky, get the quality downloads here.

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WNAZ has some pretty good music

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So, I’m not one to promote Christian culture trends or things like that. In fact I have a disturbing picture to post in a bit that will balance this post out a little. But, I wanted to spread the word in Nashville, that I have been listening to a Christian radio station and… I Like It!
The choice of music on WNAZ is really good. It’s so good I can listen to it when the students are around and that can’t tell it’s not the hip-hop station (like that really means much to any of you). I guess the sort of Contemporary Christian culture is getting a little more hip, cause I’ve heard some good music on this station.
And WNAZ is commercial-free (though they have a commercial announcing that every other song, and they have businesses sponsor the traffic report)! Meaning I don’t fall into the dilemma of having to email the Christian radio station about their horrendous advertising and lack of concern about Christian values within their advertising.
So, if you got a chance flip the dial to 89.1fm in Nashville or go to WNAZ.com to listen online.

Okay, the infomercial is over.

Uncategorized

Thinking again…

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After too long of a hiatus I’m starting to write again, I had to catch up on where we were, and I was struck by this comment left on the last post:

“Maybe one of your future posts can discuss why you focus on Jesus’ words as opposed to God’s? They’re the same person, right? So they can’t think two different things.”

I’m certainly in agreement that the words of Christ and the words of God are not contrary, and I certainly hope you don’t feel I’m addressing one and not the other (how can I if they are the same?). I do feel strongly though, that as Christians, Christ words are essential for gaining proper insight into the Old Testament passages.

I really hope to dispel this idea that Christians against the war ignore the Old Testament, while those for it focus only on it (guess I’m not doing good, starting with the New Testament though).
So, let’s think about the implications the Matthew 5 passage has on our understanding of the Old Testament verse it references, as well as other OT passages.
I agree, I don’t think Christ was negating the OT law. Christ didn’t say that if someone takes your eye that’s all well and good. Nor did he even imply that a “life for life” was some how wrong, or not just. What Christ DID say is that Your place, as his follower, is to not resist that evil person. We’ll get into what he said after this which I think is the crux of this passage, probably in another post. The point I want to make is this: In no way am I trying to ignore the Old Testament; What I am doing is looking at the OT in the lense of the New Testament, and I think that is hugely important in ALL that we do.

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del.icio.us and flickr

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Okay, Let me take this moment to introduce you to a new wave in the Internet. If you haven’t picked up on it, it’s called ‘tagging.’

The basic idea is an effective labeling system for your stuff (images and bookmarks, etc). The amazing thing is collaborating this tagging system with others, known as folksonomy. Now we are just beginning to see the popularity of sites using this system, and believe me they are popping up all over.

I’m only doing a short little post on this for right now because I wanted to give others a heads-up so they can explorer this quickly up and coming Internet trend. Here are two sites that are at the head of this trend: del.icio.us and flickr. First, del.icio.us is a chance for you to not only take all of your bookmarks and share them online with friends and others. Not only can you share your bookmarks but you can see others bookmarks who have used similar tags as you, and search for tags for topics your interested in. For some of your coming Internet searches I suggest you try searching del.icio.us tags as well and see how effective it is.

Second, flickr started off as a great site to post your pictures to share with friends and family. Now, it is becoming a one stop shop for getting the pictures you want. Try a flickr tag search to see what I mean.

That’s all for now. I hesitate to show you my del.icio.us page as they are rather unorganized and incomplete, but here it is. And for those interested my flickr page for all to see.

p.s. before you start tagging here are some tips from top taggers.