Belief-O-Matic -- A personality quiz about your religious beliefs and spiritual beliefs

"Warning: Belief-O-Matic tm assumes no legal liability for the ultimate fate of your soul."

The Belief o Matic is a pretty funny little quiz. There are very deep groves in the test though, and there is no differentiation between the "Mainline Protestant" groups. The funniest thing is that I know I picked some things which were opposed to "Mainline Protestant" beliefs (their explanation of what "Mainline Protestants" believe even says that what I picked was different.) Yet I still received a 100% "Mainline Protestant" Score... They also show you how much you match up with other belief systems...

Cici's Pizza

The Cici's pizza in Stephenville closed, much to this resident's chagrin. The word on the street is that they were forced to close because Cici's corporate gave them the choice of closing or a huge capital outlay to upgrade their "look."

Thumbs down Cici's... Thumbs down.

Spam Poison

Thanks to Jordon Cooper for the Link



This messes up crawlers that automatically run around harvesting email addresses from webpages.

Yatta!

If you have ever wondered what those crazy guys in underwear and leaves are saying, there is a translation at http://web.mit.edu/patil/www/web/yatta.txt

Have fun!

All right! All right!
We're doin' great in college!
All right! All right!
Made president at our jobs!
Long as we've one leaf on, we're doin' fine! Hey, we're lucky just 'cause we're alive!

All right! All right!
We've been confirmed for the prize!
All right! All right!
We're representing Japan!
We're so healthy, it just makes ya sick!
Everybody say "All right!"

pictures via flickr

lets see if this works

Mission Window Originally uploaded by Dwight.

New Layout

You might notice the new layout... Im sure this post will garner more comments than any of the thought provoking ones

Separation of Church and State

Many people will be shocked to learn that this term does not appear in the U.S. Constitution


The often looked to spot for this "separation" is the first amendment, specifically the first part:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Hmm... So when some one files a suit complaining about the "government endorsing religion" where do we turn to decide the case?

The Supreme Court (this case isn't at that level, and I don't know about federal courts, but lets pretend it makes it to the Supremes) is limited to interpreting the constitution, so can anyone tell me how the Justices could do anything but throw a case like this out?

Congress has made no law. Therefore the first amendment is not broken. Therefore the Supreme Court must throw the case out.

Or am I missing something?

Celtic Daily Prayer

I'm doing the Daily Office from Celtic Daily Prayer (Just Morning, Midday, and Evening Prayer, and Compline.)

It's a great book. And the Northumbria community is pretty cool too. Their vows are to 1. Live a life of availability and vulnerability to God and to Others 2. To embrace a life of risky living and 3. to treat the Sermon on the Mount as a practical teaching.

Check out the website for more info (and you can get the daily office w/o buying the book)

Doom3

Is it just me, or have the Doom III screenshots gotten less and less impressive...
Looking at the original shots from... how many years ago?... compared to what they are putting out...

I dunno... I'm not impressed...

Jar

Jar

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I like how these pics look in the RSS feed (but the html is pretty hard to remember (thanks stickies!))

I want to make something like this, except without the moving elements... I just gotta pick a topic, and learn flash ; - )

Moved the Pic

Water

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So, I got rid of the picture, I'm going to start putting it in the posts like this....

Comments

Switched over to Blogger Comments... not like anyone commented anyway

Napoleon Dynamite

Run, don't walk to see Napoleon Dynamite. Best comedy I've seen in 21 years (even better than Big Lebowski) AND it is PG.

Church Division

Division in the Christian Church stems partially from the thought that all Christians should look alike, that we should all experience God in the same way. Lutherans, for example, looking at Methodists and saying: "they aren't grounded in the Word well enough" is like the eyes looking at the hands and thinking "why can't they just see for themselves the true work of the body?" For another example, Methodists thinking that Lutherans don't participate enough in community service is like the hands thinking of the eyes: "They just don't seem to grasp the true work of the body."

The divisions in Christianity are at the same time sad and beautiful. They are sad because some Christians think that only eyes or only hands get to heaven. The divisions are beautiful because there are many different parts of the body, each to fulfill a different role in the work of the body (of Christ.)

A. W. Tozer on the Church

It is time for us to seek again the leadership of the Holy Ghost. Man's lordship has cost us too much. Man's intrusive will has introduced such a multiplicity of unscriptural ways and unscriptural activities as positively to threaten the life of the church.

--A.W. Tozer The Pursuit of Man

"what I would buy if money were no object"

Cars:
Show off Car:
Ford GT: $157,095.00
Driving Car:
Mercedes-Benz S600: $123,620.00
Truck:
Dodge RAM 3500 Quad Cab Laramie 4X4 LWB: $45,980.00

Computers:
40 GB iPod, 2 15" Powerbooks(loaded), 2 23" Displays, Dual 2.5 GHz G5 Power Mac (loaded), 2 30" Displays, 1 XServe G5 (loaded), 2 XServe RAIDs (loaded), 6 XServe Cluster Nodes, Spare Parts, Power Management, Racks, (and some misc other stuff) and Apple Care for all of it:
$142,507.90

Camera:
Canon EOS 1Ds Digital SLR:
$6,549.00
Lenses and Accessories:
$10,000.00

Grand Total: $485,751.90

(remember this is just crazy-talk :-) )

Money Stuff

I am in San Antonio, helping my mom take care of my grandmother after Dental surgery, and trying to sell her '87 Lincoln Town Car check out the ad. Grandmama offered me half of the final sell, so I'm pretty excited. Thinking of all that money made me look around on the internet to see what I want to buy. This is what I ended up with:

New Laptop:
Apple 15" 1.5 GHz 128MB VRAM 1GB RAM 80GB HD w/Apple Care and 17" External Monitor...

$4046 (That's from Apple, probably get it for about the same price other places, but with some extra stuff... free printers and stuff, and apple would add sales tax... $330 in Texas...)

New (to me) Car:
1990 Volvo 740 GLE Wagon 184K miles, Anti-Lock Brakes; Air Conditioning; Alloy Wheels; Cruise Control; Rear Window Defroster; Leather Seats; Power Door Locks; Power Mirrors; Power Windows; Power Steering; Sunroof/Moonroof; Tinted Glass;

$3397(from some dealer in Pennsylvania, it is a 4 cylinder, which is wussy for a wagon, but it has a manual transmission, which I really want, and kinda makes up for the four-banger (does volvo make 6 or 8 cylinder?) )

New Camera:
Cannon Power Shot Pro 1 (8MP, chose this over the Digital Rebel, because it is cheeper, and has higher res (I really want one of the medium format 14+MP cameras, those are like $5grand)

$784.98 (Plus some more, because I'd need to get a new memory card... lets say a 4GB microdrive... $369, total= 1113.98)

so that would set me back:

$8596.98... (way more than I'm gonna get for selling the car... but hey, maybe there is a crazy millionare who reads my blog and would cut a 10K check, just for the fun of it? :) )

Isn't it weird that I would spend almost 1,000 dollars more on my laptop than my car?
My next post will be "what would I get If money wasn't an issue" (think laptop, AND desktop, NEW car, one of those fancy shmancy cameras...)

New Picture page

Flickr: Photos from Dwight

It is a lot more restrictive than fotopages, but I like some of their features... I won't put any pictures on this page that I don't put on fotopages for the time being.

Noah's Ark?

According to skepdic.com: Evidence of a great flood, perhaps caused by melting glaciers bursting through the Bosporus strait some 7,000 years ago, has been discovered off the coast of Turkey by  Robert Ballard (who found the remains of the Titanic) and some (like Ryan and Pitman) have claimed this is evidence of Noah's flood, but this is pure and inane speculation. The Biblical flood is due to rain, not a bursting dam. As archeological anthropologist John Alden notes

...the story in the Bible is clear -- it rained for weeks before Noah's flood, and after it stopped raining the floodwaters receded. The Black Sea flood wasn't caused by rain, and after the water rose it never went away. And neither [the Sumerian nor the Biblical] story mentions the most dramatic consequence of the Black Sea flood, which turned fresh water into salt. Noah's flood, in short, doesn't sound anything like the inundation of the Black Sea.

Hmm... that's weird, Genesis 7:11 says "...on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened."

Dorks

Current Books:

I'm half through War and Peace (about where I stopped a couple years ago) I'm also reading Celebration of Discipline and Celtic Daily Prayer and also Seven Storey Mountain

TV to Go? I say No

There is a Wired article about Microsoft's new portable video players. I'm going to go out on a limb and say these aren't going to catch on.

People listen to music while they are walking around, you can leave your earphones on during all of the time you aren't interacting with someone/thing that requires your ears. These devices require ears and eyes... that probably knocks off 90% of the time these things are useful compared with audio players.

The article talks about "small-screen optimized format" just after saying "instead of carrying around a stack of DVD's." DVD quality is not the same as small screen quality.

Most laptops have DVD drives on them, and some high quality video out (sorry I use Apple, I really don't know about the PC world, maybe this isn't a valid comment) this "$400" device doesn't really add anything to what I have now.

Happy Blogaversary to Dwight::Knoll

I won't be here on the 10th, so I am wishing my blog an early blogaversary...