Month: February 2005

Routine Maintenance

I hate cars.

I wonder if it’s still too late to finish carriage training Donna. (Donna is the horse that I saddle broke and started carriage training at my gma and gpa Walker’s farm. She’s still there but it’s been several years now since I’ve been on her back.)

The maintenance manual said that it was time to replace the sparkplugs on my car again. Continue reading “Routine Maintenance”

Belated Pings

[The Jargon File](http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html), an online compendium of all things [hacker](http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/hacker.html), defines a [“ping”](http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/ping.html) as “a slang term for a small network message sent by a computer to check for the presence and alertness of another.” In this case, as a blogger, I’m using the term erroneously: The pings for the things mentioned below will only happen once they find out that I’m talking about them. Not to mention that theologians are notoriously inactive on the web, so some of these people may never get the notice.

It’s just more fun to say “ping” than “slug.”

Plus I wanted to link the Jargon File.

Continue reading “Belated Pings”

Five Months to Go

Our Cake Topper

That right, we only have five months until shackling day. So little to do, so much time…scratch that..reverse.

In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been fiddling with some links up on the top right. “About,” “Feature Rollout,” and “Wishlist” all have links to actual pages now. They’re all being updated and the “about” page is the only one that doesn’t have anything set up yet.

Hope you all have a marvelous day.

Did You Know?

Did you know that it’s not good to put alcohol on cuts, abrasions and open wounds? It causes the blood to coagulate and anaerobic bacterial infection. When the blood coagulates the white blood cells can’t get to the wound site as well. The anaerobic forms flourish because the white blood cells can’t get there fast enough and all the oxygen is removed from the wound site. Alcohol is good for surface disinfectant because it can kill gram negative bacteria by disrupting its cell wall. A better disinfectant for cuts and stuff is hydrogen peroxide because it is an oxidizing agent and can kill those anaerobic forms of bacteria by forming super oxide radicals that the bacteria can’t break down. The problem with peroxide, however, is that it does have mutagenic properties if used too much.

Can we tell that I had a microbiology test this morning?

Continue reading “Did You Know?”

I Laughed Out Loud

[John Rabe](http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/) has a [post](http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_johnrabe_archive.html#110865918693487690) up with a er… piercing analysis of the idea that the meaning of the Constitution can change.

At least, that’s what it was yesterday. Today I think it has something to do with pink elephants. You never can tell what the same words might mean…

Horrifying

There’s a reason why I’m not in the medical field. My dad doesn’t do to well with the sight of blood; blood doesn’t bother me. I just… don’t deal well with pain. Too much empathy, you might say. Don’t tell me about your broken arm. I’ll be massaging my elbow for an hour. **Please** don’t tell me about giving birth to your first baby. It’s undignifying for a man to clutch in pain at body parts he doesn’t even have. But I could have made a fine mortician. Once a thing is dead, it’s dead. I don’t hurt on its behalf.

That said, I had always assumed that I had a fundamental difference of understanding with people who kill unborn children. Continue reading “Horrifying”

Across the Pew

Brad Hightower at [21st Century Reformation](http://www.21stcenturyreformation.blogspot.com/) has written a few posts recently about our tendency to judge a congregation’s worship by our culture. Specifically, in [this](http://21stcenturyreformation.blogspot.com/2005/02/bob-dole-and-impotent-worship.html) post, he addresses the tendency to think that a service that doesn’t do it the way you remember it when you were a kid is somehow slipping into apostacy, or at best, dishonoring God. The title of the post is “Bob Dole and Impotent Worship,” so I bet you can guess where he stands on nostalgia in worship, but he adresses the issue with much grace and insight. He continues his thoughts [here](http://21stcenturyreformation.blogspot.com/2005/02/how-big-is-your-tent-or-do-you-prefer.html) with the question, “how big is your tent?”

>We worship a Missionary God, and, if we desire to enjoy His presence, we may find that we will need to find His presence by becoming incarnational in a world other than our own. ***Those who***, like Peter, ***are being led by the Spirit*** into the world of others and who can put down their self-centeredness for just one moment, and look for God’s grace in the world around us in other boxes and other perspectives, ***these are the sons of God.***

This is a very important issue to address. A lot of churches have died over unwillingness to compromise, confusing the *content* of their worship with its *style*. This conflict isn’t always framed in terms of “hymns vs. songs.” I’ve heard of people griping because we used the contemporary worship music of the mid-90’s instead of the early 80’s.

My own church is currently making the transition from hymnals to overheads, from organs to guitars. Or perhaps, not so much a switch as a blending, which I’d like better anyway. It’s funny, though. The choir will bring out a new arrangement of a golden oldie and expect to whip it out in a night, and I’ll be completely lost. All the wizened heads will look at me: you’ve never even heard of this song? Usually, I’ll have heard one line from it, maybe a reference from a sermon. Nine times out of ten, I’ll be enamoured with the hymn, and then roll my eyes as we switch back to “Lord I lift your name on high.”