No Grasp of Your Reality

Someone had written asking about the newly added email plug-in that I added, and I thought it might be cool to list the plug-ins that we’re using, and give them a little plug themselves. I am a tweaker, and I’m always on the lookout for cool new plugins. So, thanks to all the people who have written the plugins we’re using.

One of the most important plug-ins is the Spam Karma plug-in that weeds out the comment spam that I’ve been getting on the site. I was deleting anywhere from 20 to 40 comments a day that were simply advertisements, but the plug-in now filters all that junk.

I’ve got the Random Banner plug-in changing the banner at the top of the page on loads.

Sarah and I both appreciate the Spelling Checker plugin, that fixes our atrocious spelling.

Scripturizer automatically turns scripture references into hot links to bible.gospelcom.net. Like this -> John 3:16

Subscribe2 will send an email out when this website is updated, while the Email Plugin allows readers to send copies of posts to their friends.

And finally, the Headline Images plugin creates the graphical, 3-d headers for each of the posts, instead of the boring text ones.

…for they shall be called sons of God. Matthew 5:9″ - ThomasMaking-Pizza/IMG_0148

Sarah-and-Tom/s_t16_19I was cleaning my dresser today and realized I only had one copy of this picture and wanted to scan it in to save.

This is Tom and I in 1997, just before my 17th birthday. My mom took the photo in our front yard at our house in Phoenixville, PA.

We had just realized how much we liked to hang out with each other. I’m not sure if we were officially dating at the time of this picture.

Shortly afterwards, I moved with my family from Pennsylvania back to Indiana. What a difficult time apart!

For a while, it was the only photo I had of Tom and I together and it has been on every dresser top since - from my room at my parent’s house, to my dorm room, and now at our house.

New features abound every day! If there is a particular post on this site that you’d like other to see, you can now email them to your friends. Just click on the “email a friend” link at the bottom of this post (or the “email post” on the front page), and you can shoot a copy of the article to anyone you know, along with any comments you wish to make.

Also, I finally got my Weizenbier into bottles. One of my old bosses at Lockheed Martin gave me a bunch of champagne bottles, which take the same bottle caps as normal beer bottles. So, I filled 10 of the bottles, to save a little time, and have less mess. The bottles hold about two beer bottles of beer, so they won’t sit around open, that’s for sure.

Before I actually get into my commentary, I should first give you a little background. Today, Drudge linked to an article in the Guardian about the new phenomenon of “happy slapping” over in the U.K.

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For those of you who would like to know immediately when we post a new article or story, we now have the ability to send an email whenever we submit a new post. If you’re interested in this feature, just click on the following link and follow the instructions.

http://www.glamdring.org/wp/subscribe.php

Christianity Today (”Take the best and leave the rest”, as my mother in law would say) has a number of newsletters available via email. One that I subscribe to is the Leadership Journal.

Here is an excerpt from part of today’s newsletter entitled Avoiding the Argument Party by Brian D. McLaren.
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We’re in the process now of moving our hosting from our own server to an external hosting site. Hopefully, this should make things a lot quicker and more consistant. However, if you do see problems on the site, please let us know.

Permalink Test

In 1990, Paul Simon released “The Rhythm of the Saints“, which continued his foray into world music which he started with “Graceland”. The album was very successful, and being as Mr. Simon is a very nice guy, he decided to send a portion of the royalties to the government of Ghana, since one of the songs on the album, “Spirit Voices”, was based on an old Ghanan song, “Yaa Amponsah”.

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Some people had commented to me about the relatively high score that Roman Catholic had scored on my recent denomination survey I had taken. Should it be surprising that I relate more closely to the Roman Catholic church than I do to Non-Calvinist Baptists, Pentecostals, Charismatics, and Quakers? I don’t think so, and here is why.
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“Being overweight is nowhere near as big a killer as the government thought, ranking No. 7 instead of No. 2 among the nation’s leading preventable causes of death, according to a startling new calculation from the CDC.” So we see in an AP article on the subject.

Of course, our Federal Government, being the defender of truth in our modern society, immediately revamped their health campaigns… those ads that claimed that 400,000 people die yearly from obesity. Yeah…

Last year, the CDC issued a study that said being overweight causes 400,000 deaths a year and would soon overtake tobacco as the top U.S. killer. After scientists inside and outside the agency questioned the figure, the CDC admitted making a calculation error and lowered its estimate three months ago to 365,000.

CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said because of the uncertainty in calculating the health effects of being overweight, the CDC is not going to use the brand-new figure of 25,814 in its public awareness campaigns and is not going to scale back its fight against obesity.

In other words… we only quote the facts when they support our conclusions.

I was doing a search on confronting Christians who are involved with manipulation and stumbled upon this article this morning. An excerpt:

First, abusive churches have a control-oriented style of leadership. Second, the leaders of such churches often use manipulation to gain complete submission from their members. Third, there is a rigid, legalistic lifestyle involving numerous requirements and minute details for daily life. Fourth, these churches tend to change their names often, especially once they are exposed by the media. Fifth, denouncing other churches is common because they see themselves as superior to all other churches. Sixth, these churches have a persecution complex and view themselves as being persecuted by the world, the media, and other Christian churches. Seventh, abusive churches specifically target young adults between eighteen and twenty-five years of age. The eighth and final mark of abusive churches is the great difficulty members have in getting out of or leaving these churches, a process often marked by social, psychological, or emotional pain.

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One of the most difficult things that I have ever done in my life was to shoot an opossum. It was staggering around in our yard during the daytime, drooling. I only had a .22, and it took several shots to before the animal died. I remember shooting it once or twice, and it hissing at me. This was not what I expected. Read the rest of this entry »

My great-uncle Andy, before he died, went a couple times a week for kidney dialysis. I remember growing up, we’d all collect our soda tabs, because they could be used to buy time on the dialysis, and somehow alleviate the costs.

A good friend of mine is in the hospital right now with shot kidneys, and is having to undergo dialysis treatment. Discussing it with a coworker, he mentioned that he used to collect the soda tabs when he was young, too. Now that we’re more mature (yeah, right), we both realized that the story had all the markings of an urban legend.
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Found this on the Interweb. It’s a survey you can take to figure out where you stand in terms of Christian denominational preference. I’m not too surprised with my results.

1. Presbyterian/Reformed (100%)
2. Anglican/Episcopal/Church of England (73%)
3. Eastern Orthodox (73%)
4. Congregational/United Church of Christ (71%)
5. Lutheran (70%)
6. Baptist (Reformed/Particular/Calvinistic) (61%)
7. Roman Catholic (59%)
8. Church of Christ/Campbellite (33%)
9. Methodist/Wesleyan/Nazarene (28%)
10. Seventh-Day Adventist (21%)
11. Baptist (non-Calvinistic)/Plymouth Brethren/Fundamentalist (19%)
12. Pentecostal/Charismatic/Assemblies of God (12%)
13. Anabaptist (Mennonite/Quaker etc.) (5%)