Category: Uncategorized

George Will on “The Doctrine of Preemption”

From [the Curmudgeon](http://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/) I received word of an [excellent speech](http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/) on preemptive war, nation building, and American idealism that is very well worth the read. It was both inspiring and wise.

The odd thing though, is that whatever his intended effect, the general impression I received had little to do with the content of his speech.

Man, I thought, if only *I* could do that with the *gospel*!

First Greek Exam

“I looked upon the words under the cage door…and understood them.”

Last week was a downhill week for me in Greek. I like to think I have a great mind for words, be they English or any other language, but my mind has a very peculiar way of learning. Learning by rote is very very hard for me, whereas any kind of learning in context is ridiculously easy. For instance, in fourth grade I was supposed to memorize the multiplication tables, but I just couldn’t do it. I was the last person in my class to get it down, and if I remember right, It wasn’t until the school year was completely over. I finally ended up assigning personalities to each number in such a way that, when each was multiplied with another, it resulted in some kind of metaphysical combination of the two prior personalities. Suddenly, memorization was a zip.

So, ideally for me, learning a language involves handing me a stack of progressively more difficult children’s books, a lexicon, and a few simple grammar charts. Wait two weeks. Serve chilled. Continue reading “First Greek Exam”

Goofiness

I’m sure by now you know that Bush has selected Harriet Miers for appointment to the Supreme Court to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. And I’m sure you’ve heard the disquiet that Harriet Miers has never served as a Judge. My understanding is that this is not that unusual, since Rehnquist also had never served as a Judge before being appointed to the SCOTUS. But that the consternation comes from not knowing hardly anything about her. William Dyer at [Beldar’s Blog](http://beldar.blogs.com/beldarblog/) has some [good arguments](http://www.beldar.org/beldarblog/2005/10/the_miers_nomin.html) for why we can still be reasonably confident Bush knows what he’s doing.

Nevertheless, to the rest of us, Miers is a bit of an enigma. So I was pleased to look over Valerie’s shoulder this morning and read that [Miers is an Evangelical](http://www.theconservativevoice.com/articles/article.html?id=8727). Continue reading “Goofiness”

Christian Underground

WARNING: PIPE DREAM ALERT

I recently sent a note out with an updated email address to everyone on my address book (which was surprisingly *short*. If you didn’t get that email, and you want to be able to send me stuff, put a comment to that effect below and I’ll send you my new address). One of the results was that I’ve started getting email updates from my [mom’s](http://mingobird.blogspot.com/) friend Kerry Urbanski. If you don’t know who she is, that’s because you’ve never met her.

This got me thinking. Kerry’s a great writer, with a lot of good things to say, but she’s not particularly active on the web. She does a lot of stuff at her church and in her community; she writes articles and distributes them to friends. But she doesn’t have a weblog. Why? Because starting a weblog is still too tech-heavy for a lot of great writers. My mom only has a weblog because we forced her to, and the formatting’s still not so great on her site because Blogger and Outlook don’t play too nice. This makes me think that there are still a huge number of Christian writers out there who are off the web for all intents and purposes because they don’t have anybody to help them across the transition.

Which got me thinking. How about a multi-user weblog (like Xanga or Blogger) dedicated entirely to publishing quality lay Christian writers? Call it the “Christian Underground.” Support for technical and design issues would be supplied free of charge, with the understanding that the subject matter on each person’s blog would be “public” issues (religion, politics, and culture: yay; catblogging: boo). New blogs would have to be recommended by others in the community and qualified outsiders to limit the costs of said technical and design support.

Basically, the goal would be to have three limiters to zero in on the kind of blogs I’m thinkig of: lay Christians, Public issues, high quality writing. Lay Christians, because professional ministers seem to be able to get themselves in the public eye without too much help. Public issues and high quality writing, because there are plenty other free portals for the personal newsblog.

My original idea was just to call such a site the Charismatic Underground, because that’s what *I* am, and it’s what I miss the most, but a few minutes thought showed that was probably a little too narrow. However, it gave me the idea that we could perhaps include a tagging system where people could indicate their particular religious perspective (Evangelical-Epicsopal-High Church-Charismatic?), and so that people visiting the site could view a list of blogs according to different kinds of categories.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of limiters keeping me from trying out such an idea: It costs about $75 – $135 a year to run a site with a separate domain name. That’s money I ain’t got. It takes time to run tech-support for somebody else’s website. That’s time I ain’t got. The first problem could theoretically be solved by running carefully selected blog ads, and hoping for the right level of traffic, but it’s hard to imagine recruiting a volunteer webmaster for a site that doesn’t exist yet. I can imagine eventually recruiting a fill-in after I’d done the initial setup, but I don’t have time to do even that yet. Sigh.

Anyway, it’s still a great idea, right? Can anybody think of others they wish were blogging, who are being kept out by the technical details?

My Heart Hurts

I’m really, really, really tired of being in school. No, mom, I’m not having a mental breakdown, I’m just worn out. Have you ever read something that made you feel sick to your stomach? Make your heart ache? Well I have and rather recently too. I knew I was going to have some difficulty when my health law class got to “reproductive rights,” I just didn’t realize that it would make me feel physically ill.
Continue reading “My Heart Hurts”