Winter Wonder-Land (The TX Panhandle)

I write, 'Winter Wonder-Land' instead of the traditional, 'Winter Wonderland' on purpose...the weather around here in the winter makes you wonder what the heck is going on.

Wednesday this week we broke the all-time high temperature record (old record was 71 degrees) with a temp of 76 degrees.  Today it is snowing.  Sorta.

They've been talking for a couple days about this snowstorm, and yesterday I participated (because of my job as a college dean) in a conference call with local officials and the National Weather Service about this approaching snow storm.  They were very confident in their models, maps and all.  We were in the 2" - 4" range, with 6" - 10" just north of us.  It was supposed to start in the early a.m., with the heaviest snow starting around 6 a.m.  Right now (its 8:30 a.m.) there is no snow on the ground.  A few light flurries around, but nothing to brag about.  Looking at the radar, it doesn't look like we'll get much more than a dusting.

I wonder what happened to that storm?

Things the Internet Has Killed (Part 3)

If you didn't see the first two posts in this series, they are here-

  Part 1
  Part 2

We are now to the next set, which includes vacations, privacy, and facts.

Vacations-  How in the world has the internet killed vacations?  Well, primarily by our own addiction to it.  It kills vacation by our staying in constant contact with it, whether that be email or just casual surfing, FB, or whatever.

I remember taking my laptop on vacation with me many times in the past.  I would spend quite a bit of time on it to the detriment of time spent with my family.  Then I started leaving it at home.  I got much more family time, but ended up with free time and nothing to do when the others were doing their own things (wife shopping, kids napping, etc.).  So I finally decided to go ahead and take the thing along, but to turn off the wi-fi connection.  It works.  Now, I can work on stuff (like my Sunday school lessons), read (I have Logos 4 installed, which includes a couple thousand books), or just organize my disorganized photos and files, if I have down time.  But since the wi-fi is not hooked up, I don't get bogged down in FB or with email.

Bottom line here is, it's really up to you, not the existence of the web, as to whether your vacation is ruined or not.

Privacy- This is the 'scary' one of the bunch, and one that we seem to have less control over than we'd like, or think.  The only real control we have is to not participate in the internet at all.  Even then, there will still be information about us on the web.  Have you ever typed your name into a Google (or other) search box and hit the enter key?  Try it...you'll be surprised at how much information is out there about you, and at how many people share your name (even if you have one of those 'unique' names, chances are its not unique).

The people that share your name are actually more of a problem than you might think.  How much of that information do you think gets associated with you by mistake?  And how hard is it to fix these false associations when you find them?  What if one of these people is a criminal?  In this culture, when everybody wants to be interconnected with all the information obtained by others (see the 9-11 Report if you need evidence), chances are pretty good that you have false information about you or connected to you floating around on the internet.

Now this, just in- a group of popular web sites has been harvesting your browser history to see if they can target  you with ads.  This 'history snooping' isn't new, but is just recently made the headlines.  Its just another example of how you have to not participate to save your privacy.

Facts-  This one cuts two directions.  First the good part:  facts are a lot easier to find with the ubiquity of the internet.  Even 20 years ago when I was a grad student, finding much information about much of anything required a trip to the library.  A couple hours in a card catalog, or searching on the terminals (after about 1990), yielded quite a few connections...all of which had to be physically found in the stacks, as they were called.  (I suppose they are still there, and still called, the stacks, but I bet its a lonely place these days.)  Now, if you need to know something, you type it into a Google box.  As one person (name forgotten) recently quipped, "In the past, if you needed to know something, you asked a smart person.  Now, the person you ask starts with G-O, and its not God."

But there's the rub...now, to find the information you need, and know it is legitimate information, you need to know more about the subject, or at least something about the sources, that you find.  And one problem I never had with a card catalog was getting two hundred thousand hits for a two-word title or phrase.  How are we to ever know if we are finding the right resources when we only skim through a few pages of the three thousand pages listed?

There's always the pages like Snopes.com, where we can check facts.  But who's checking the fact-checkers?  I remember one of those internet myth emails going around a couple years ago about Snopes being a liberal watch-dog site that was biased against conservatives.  I have no idea if it is or not, but you can bet that you won't find an entry at Snopes.com about it!  (Oh, come on...think about it...if it is true they are a liberal plant, they won't have an article confirming that they are a liberal plant...if they are not a liberal plant, they won't have an article confirming that they are a liberal plant).  I hear there are at least a dozen fact-checker sites now...but I'm not familiar with any of them.  And word is there are more starting up all the time.  But again, how do you know if the one or three fact-checker sites you consult are bias-free?


On with the show in a few days.

Blog Experiments

Well, as you can see, the embedded YouTube video takes up more space than is allotted in the template.  I guess those things don't automatically scale down to the available space.

I'm still new at this thing (that's why my blog isn't nearly as pretty as some of the experience folks'!).

Speaking of experienced folks, one of the Pyromaniacs has taken over an old blog titled, The Calvinist Gadfly.  This looks like an experiment itself, but a promising one.  I'd recommend signing up because I have a feeling it will be an interesting and fun experience watching the thing morph into whatever it will become.



















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Holiness of God "Sermon Jam"

I found this video on YouTube and thought it was too good not to pass along.  Instead of a simple link, I thought I'd try embedding it here.  We'll see if it works.

This is a collection of sermon-segments from R. C. Sproul, C. J. Mahaney, and John Piper.

Things the Internet Has Killed (Part 2)

Today, I'll be taking up the next four things on the Newsweek list of Things the Internet Has Killed.  These are civility, the CD, the phone book, and letter writing.

If you missed it, the first post is here.

Civility- At first thought, this one is a no-brainer.  But upon reflection, I'm not so sure the internet is completely at fault for the loss of civility in our society.  I think the series of events and trends that started the process rolling go back as far as one can see, and certainly back to the 1960s.

Another major player in the loss of civility can certainly be laid at the feet of talk radio.  But if you look at the early pioneers of talk radio, such as Rush Limbaugh, you don't have to look hard to see that what he was doing back in the late 1980s and early 1990s was a response to a lack of civility in the media, particularly television 'news' programs; he didn't create the incivility himself.  Rush has certainly been on the cutting edge of the new style of radio entertainment, and has spawned entire industries of the same, both on the right and on the left (though the left has really struggled to pay the bills with their version of talk radio).

The early days of the internet, with its bulletin board discussion groups and the like, gave birth to the anonymous online personality.  It didn't take long, with the popularity of the early  ISPs such as CompuServe (CS) and AmericaOnline (AOL), for this idea to become common in the general public.  Just like how the anonymity of being in a vehicle increases the risk of actions like road rage, the even more anonymous anonymity of the online world made polite discourse nothing more than a nuisance to many.  Today, I can't even pull up a YouTube video to show my kids for fear of all the obscenity in the comments, right there on the page.  As G. K. Chesterton once said, total depravity is the one aspect of Scripture that is empirically verifiable.  He was right.  Look no further than the comments posted on most popular blogs.

The CD- If you are my age (46), the CD came along late enough in life, and lasted long enough, that is is a surprise to many that is is already becoming obsolete.  At least, the store-bought kind is becomming obsolete.  Now that I can download songs for 99 cents from Amazon.com, I don't bother buying albums any more.  Why pay ten or twelve bucks for an album with two or three good songs?  Now I can get the ones I want without all the fluff and filler.  But since I drive an older car, with no USB port, I have to burn these to a blank CD to listen to them when I'm on the road.  So that part of the CD market is still alive, at least until automobiles are all connected to the web (which is already happening) or have sound systems designed for the newer media, like Ipods and such (which is really already happening).

I do wonder, though, if the demise of all hard media will last.  After all, solid-state drives (things like USB thumb-drives and the memory inside your Ipod or MP3 player) haven't been around very long, and the durability over time of these types of storage is really not well known.  How many fifty-thousand-song MP3 collections have to disappear before everybody starts keeping hard-copy backups?  At the rate that online videos, music, and similar productions are growing, keeping up with all the backups will be a major industry unto itself.  Blank CDs will certainly be a part of this (I'm including DVDs under the label CD here.)

The Telephone Book- This is actually one of the few things that I'm glad to see die.  Just recently, I was contacted by AT&T Yellow Pages about renewing my ad with them.  (I run the typical ad for a college/university for my work.)  I gleefully told them I had bought my last YP ad and they need not bother contacting me again in the future.  They didn't seem surprised.  My ad cost me just under $2000 a year, and I'm not sure anyone ever saw it.  Back in the 'old days', when you opened the phone book when you needed to find any kind of business or institution, a phone book ad was essential.  These days, I don't know if anyone under my age ever picks one up.  I've read statistics in several recent reports showing that almost all phone number searching, as well as business address searching, is done online. 

I was recently at the Wayland Baptist main campus down in Plainview for a meeting.  In the area where student mailboxes are, they stacked close to a thousand copies of the yellow pages.  That was done several months ago, as I happened to be on campus when they were unloading them.  When I was back the other day, it was hard to tell that a single copy had been picked up by the students.  They just aren't interested in such a throwback to their grandparents' world.

Now, with smartphones, one does not even need to dial information (which costs money)...instead, one can browse the internet (for free) for the number.  The phone book is indeed dead.

Letter Writing-  Unlike the proverbial warning on your passenger mirror, this one is bigger than it appears.  As a college instructor for years, I often wondered why people couldn't write.  It wasn't long before I realized that folks couldn't write for two simple reasons:  they don't write, and they don't read.

I've believe for a long time that people write at their basic reading level.  That is, if you read comic books and pulp fiction, you write like those, and if you read Tolstoy and Shakespeare, or the Bible, you write at a level considerably higher than the comic book crowd.  Throw on top of the fact that most students don't read anymore (they watch TV or play video games instead), the secondary fact that the bulk of the writing done by most people of school age now is in the form of 140-characters-or-less text messages.  That certainly explains why essay questions on tests never go past two or three sentences...nobody can think that far out.  (I wonder what this has done to people's ability to play chess?)

One of the main reasons I started this blog was because I thought I was losing some of my ability to communicate effectively in writing.  Here's my first post, hinting at this reason.  Over the past year-and-a-half, my writing ability has certainly been helped by writing this blog, and I've been able to remember a lot of stuff I thought I'd forgotten about spelling, grammar, and all the other minutia of writing.

I would encourage everyone who cares about their ability to communicate or wants to keep their mind sharp to start a blog.  Maybe no one will ever read it (I don't think I have much of a following yet), but it will be beneficial to you to think, to put your thought into writing where others can challenge them, and then to defend (or change your mind about) the things you've written.


More in a few days.

Things the Internet Has Killed (Part 1)

There was an interesting essay in Newsweek a couple weeks back.  It can be found in its entirety here.  (It is a photo-essay.)

The essay, in photo format, listed the following things as casualties of the internet.

1. The 9 to 5 Workday
2. The Video Store
3. Concentration
4. Civility
5. The CD
6. The Telephone Book
7. Letter Writing
8. Vacations
9. Privacy
10. Facts
11. Polaroids and other Film
12. Reference Books
13. Yearbooks
14. Peep Shows and Adult Bookstores

There's way too much here to tackle all at once, so I'll break this up into a couple (or three or four) posts.

9 to 5 Workday- This cuts both ways.  Newsweek's take is that we end up working all hours of the day, weekends, and holidays since 'the boss' can send us something via email or smartphone to which we need to respond regardless of the hour or day.  That can certainly be true, but it doesn't have to be.  Smartphones have an 'off' button, and email doesn't have to stay open on your desktop, nor do you have to carry your computer with you out to the driveway to play catch with your kids.  (If you've tried to call me on my cellphone on a Saturday or Sunday, you got to leave a message...empirical proof that smartphones don't have to stay on 24/7, in spite of what my wife thinks.

I certainly appreciate the availability of quick contact when needed.  As someone who is responsible for a facility (my college campus), a family (wife and kids), and a job (the VP and Provost who are my bosses), sometimes it is important that I be available.  On the other hand, as the boss(I'm a campus dean), I don't recall ever phoning my employees after hours unless we were going to close the campus due to weather; and I don't recall emailing anything to them after hours unless it was something for them to deal with the next day at work.  This can certainly be abused, but I try not to abuse it, and I can't say my bosses have ever abused it either.

There are also a good number of reasons why a 9 to 5 workday has become, in some ways, obsolete.  But try to convince the federal government of that fact.  (Recall George Bush's inauguration speech in January of 2005...one of the things he committed himself to do was to 'fix overtime for the private sector'.  It didn't happen.  The feds are just too big and too entrenched to fix, sometimes even if you are the president.  It's easy to make things worse (just ask Mr. Obama about that), but very hard to make them better.


The Video Store-  I'm sure you've all seen this happening.  In fact, I recall reading the prognosticators talking about how the internet would kill Blockbuster twelve or thirteen years ago, before there was much of any live streaming of movies.  Now the only thing new about this concept is trying to figure out what other related parts of our entertainment lives will be changed by the web.

I'll say more about this one when I discuss number 14 in another post.

Concentration- This one is sure to spark some debate among those who've thought about it much.  On the one hand, we have folks telling us how the internet, text messaging, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are all working together to damage our brains and make us unable to relate to other people, focus on a single task for more than a few seconds, or even to think about abstract things at any depth.  On the other hand, a different set of folks is telling us that all the interaction with multimedia is keeping our brains healthier (the use-it-or-lose-it phenomenon), especially among the 70+ crowd who have finally started adopting computers and the internet, even if they still can't program their VCR (see above for why this never-learned task suddenly became a moot point).

I don't know where this one is going, but I do have some idea that it didn't start with the internet or social media.  I've had a theory for years that much of what is now called ADD/ADHD in children is simply the results of conditioning by too much television consumption.  It isn't the programs that are the problem, its the commercials. 

The average time an image stays on screen during a TV commercial is about 0.8 seconds.  Pay attention next time you have the TV on, and try to do the 'thousand and one' or the 'one mississippi' count during commercials, and you'll see what I mean.  Now, throw in thousands of those commercials, and think of the affects that this exposure has on the brains of two- and three-year-olds.  They learn to not concentrate by rote.  Parents who regularly read (yes, from a book) to their children don't seem to have nearly the trouble with attention that their counterparts who don't read to their young children.  Think about that- reading involves a child engaging her mind on a single topic for a period of time...five, ten, or even thirty minutes or more.  The imagination is used instead of sensory input, and the focus mechanism is honed and conditioned for use. 

This one will be worth watching for the near future...it should be within the next five years or so that we see any marked changes in concentration ability in teens who've been sending twelve thousand text messages a month instead of focusing on what they are doing.  That is, we should have some good evidence whether these changes are developmental (can't be easily reversed) or simply sociological (can be easily reversed).


Enough for this post...I'll pick this up in a day or two.

I Love the 1590s

Other than missing the date by about 70 years, this was pretty funny.  Probably even funnier if you are a Lutheran or a German (I'm neither).  But to anyone in the reformed tradition, it's worth a watch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJewiD6YaSk&feature=related

Remember Pearl Harbor! (And St. Crispian's Day)

Today marks the 69th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 

There are fewer and fewer veterans left who were there...I think the number is in the low hundreds now.  One of the indicators of the gravity of that event is, that even after all these years, many of the veterans of that event choose to be buried in the military cemetery that is comprised of the USS Arizona.  Some of them left good friends there, others just can't get past the events that changed their lives so much in a couple of hours on that December morning.

I honor those who served there, and everywhere else and every-when else, on this day.  Thank you for your service!

Many are aware of the excerpt from Shakespeare's Henry the Fifth St. Crispain's Day speech because of the TV series Band of Brothers.  I'd like to run a bit more of this in honor of those who served, because it truly captures some part of what it means to have been in combat together with your brothers-in-arms.

[The work of Shakespeare is in the public domain, but I borrowed this copy from this web site.  There is a short explanation of the historical events in which Shakespeare placed his fictional speech...interesting read.]

This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.

    He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

    Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,

    And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

    He that shall live this day, and see old age,

    Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

    And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'

    Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,

    And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'

    

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,

    But he'll remember, with advantages,

    What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,

    Familiar in his mouth as household words-

    Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,

    Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-

    Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.

    This story shall the good man teach his son;

    And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

    From this day to the ending of the world,

    But we in it shall be remembered-

    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

    For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

    Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

    This day shall gentle his condition;

    And gentlemen in England now-a-bed

    Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,

    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

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Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

I often hear this question, or some variation of it, from well-meaning folks.  But the question is really not a valid one.  A better question would be, "Why do good things happen to bad people?"

You see, there was only ever on truly good person in history, and bad things happened to him.  He was humiliated in public, turned over by a terrorist mob to an oppressive government, and tortured to death.  And all this was in my place (and yours).  I (and you) were guilty of all the charges the angry mob made, and more, but he was innocent, as the judge at one of his sham trials declared.  Nonetheless, that same judge handed him over to the military for torture and execution.

And we wonder why bad things happen to us?

R. C. Sproul, in his book The Holiness of God put it this way-

“If ever a person had room to complain of injustice it was Jesus. He was the only innocent man ever to be punished by God. If we stagger at the wrath of God, let us stagger at the cross. Here is where our astonishment should be focused. If we have cause for moral outrage, let it be directed at Golgotha.”

“The cross was at once the most horrible and the most beautiful example of God’s wrath. It was the most just and the most gracious act in history. God would have been more than unjust, He would have been diabolical to punish Jesus if Jesus had not first willingly taken upon Himself the sins of the world. Once Christ had done that, once He volunteered to be the Lamb of God, laden with our sin, then He became the most grotesque and vile thing on this planet. With the concentrated load of sin He carried, He became utterly repugnant to the Father. God poured out His wrath on this obscene thing. God made Christ accursed for the sin He bore. Herein was God’s holy justice perfectly manifest. Yet it was done for us. He took what justice demanded from us. This ‘for us’ aspect of the cross is what displays the majesty of its grace. At the same time justice and grace, wrath and mercy. It is too astonishing to fathom.” (Holiness of God, p. 121)

And all this happened to the most righteous "good" person who ever lived.

Understanding why bad things happened to a genuinely good man in history is the most crucial (pun intended) thing you or I will ever seek to know.  And the answer will change your future for all eternity.

A Woman's Perspective on the TSA's Abridgement of the 4th Amendment

Amy Scott has written a two-part story about her experience and views on the illegal search methods employed by our government at airports.  This is a great read, especially for anyone who wants more than just a, just-the-facts-ma'am look at it.

Here's part 1.

Here's part 2.

Good read...don't skip it.

Great Book Giveway (Includes ESV Bible)

Zach Neilsen is giving away a pack of books this week.  These are all definite must-haves...they include-

Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God by John Piper
Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears
Surprised by Grace: God's Relentless Pursuit of Rebels by Tullian Tchividjian
What Did You Expect?: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage by Paul Tripp
Rescuing Ambition by Dave Harvey
ESV Thinline Bible

Here is the link where you can read his blog and enter the drawing.

Why 'Xmas' Is Not, and Should Not, Be Offensive to Believers

R. C. Sproul gives a good concise explanation why the use of the term Xmas is not offensive nor an attempt to remove Christ from Christmas.

If you don't follow Ligonier's blog, you should...there are two or three useful little articles a day, just like this one.

Friday Follies- Help You Make it To Your Flight

Here's a good one from Buck Howdy over on YouTube.  It is to the tune of Help Me Make It Through The Night by Kris Kristofferson.

The Last Vestige of Theology Around Christmas (Music!)

I've long been interested in hymns and their stories.  I have multiple iterations of those hymn-story books, and love reading about the origins and meanings of some of the hymns therein.  I especially enjoy reading about songs that are more than two hundred years old.

As Christmas season approaches, it isn't too hard to see that there is really little theology left in the holiday.  It has become secularized and commercialized (more of the latter, which results in the former, I think).  The last vestige of any theology outside church services is found in some of the Christmas music that has remained popular in spite of their lyrics.  Here's an example- I have XM/Sirius satellite radio in a couple of my vehicles, and I tune in to the couple of seasonal stations that they put up during the holidays.  One, called Holly, is really about as secular as it can get, and is new music, so I don't listen much.  The other, called Holiday Traditions, is more older stuff that we heard when I was a kid.  (But note, there is no Xmas hint in the station's title.)  The Holiday Traditions station plays a lot of secular seasonal music, but occasionally slips in a religious Christmas song, if it was performed by one of the greats (Crosby, Martin, Presley, etc.).  I heard Hark! The Herald Angels Sing yesterday.  Have you ever paid attention to the lyrics to that song?  The gospel is in there, and it can't be confused with any moralistic therapeutic deism, much less secular winter solstice worship.

Pete Scribner, over on his Sola Gratia blog (which I both follow and recommend), has just posted a couple of really neat posts about the song O Come, O Come Emmanuel. 

The first post of the pair is here, and the second is here. 

He talks about several aspects of this song, but also about how the real Christmas music works year-round, because it isn't oriented toward a holiday, but toward the gospel, at least the part of the gospel that is the incarnation of Christ.  I don't think the gospel orientation is why the songs have become traditions...if anything, the wording is offensive to secular culture and in many cases the lyrics get changed to fit the artist's taste (heard Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas lately?  It's not even a religious song, but the line, ...if the Lord allows has been changed to, ...if the fates allow.  And they say Calvinists are fatalists...).  I think R. C. Sproul got it right, in the video of the Q and A time at one of the Ligonier national conferences, when he points out that the high church music lasts because it is complex and strives to glorify God rather than be simple to perform; that's why the music has become a landmark.

But enough analysis.  Give these posts a read...they are worth the time taken as a devotional this time of year.

She Will NOT Be Silenced

Dr. Laura's blog today needs to be passed on.  Even if you don't always agree with her, what she says is courageous and needs to be repeated.

Here's the blog.

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