Paradoxes abound in life. According to Plato, the ideal ruler is one that does not want to rule. According to Jesus, the one who does not value his own life is the one who gets to keep it (Mt. 10:39). It is in a similar vein that if one wishes to know the particulars one must know general knowledge, and to know the general things, one must know the particulars of the “branches of knowledge.” This truth makes it disturbing that our society seems to be ever more hostile to the study of the liberal arts as it seeks after only “useful” knowledge.
For professional writers (and those who aspire to be), their language of publication is their best tool. I'm not a Luddite when it comes the development of language. The point is, English is my very favorite ministry tool, and I am passionate about keeping it in usable shape. For example, we can accept the use of "twofer" as a rarely used colloquial term. Such playful terms do have a place along side the usual "Net-speak."
Perhaps Sen. John Edwards is right to claim there are two Americas – or maybe four or six would serve as a fairer assessment. As the final reckoning for many presidential hopefuls approaches – surely most of the contenders will be eliminated in the aftermath of Super Tuesday, early next month – we found no single candidate we could come to a consensus on to endorse. Some clearly are more aligned with the interests of the people and the nation than others, however, and it is these that we will highlight.
In a recently published piece, Linda Taylor addresses a favorite hate of mine, group learning. First, let's establish that a great many things we learn can and should be done in a peer group setting. That is generally limited to non-intellectual learning, such as sports, vocational training, etc. It is the worst possible setting for individual advancement intellectually.
The MacBook Air is, at first glance – or really any glance – one of the most impressive looking little laptops ever to appear. Anyone who hauls a laptop around a lot would be hard pressed not to be excited about the prospect of a good, lightweight laptop with a full sized keyboard. For me, the easy to carry PowerBook 12” has long served as my trusty mobile companion and I was excited about the idea of a lighter, newer model to follow in its path. Having seen the MacBook Air, it seems in many ways to be the true successor to my PowerBook – but if I were shopping today, a MacBook Pro would get my money.
It’s that time of year again. If you are at all interested in the trends of technology in the next year, January is the time to learn what is coming up. And not at the CES mind you – these years, the future shows up at MacWorld. Last year it was the iPhone, which managed to shake an industry that had never faced Apple before and start a major shift in the way cell phone development is done. What will this year bring? Tim puts his money on more devices coming out of the Apple-AT&T partnership, for one thing.
A single porch light glows across the night scene from my back window. The wind is blowing gently, but persuasively. A certain sadness seems entwined in this, and yet the warm glow of the Christmas lights that twinkle about me inside pulls me from waxing on too much about the cold I only see, and am not left to survive in this night. Such is 2007 as it bids us farewell.
Every year, Americans gather around their dining rooms to have holiday dinner. Unlike other special days of the year, however, this holiday is a holiday of intolerance. Of course, you know what holiday I am talking about, right? What day could I be referring to other than Thanksgiving?
For more than forty years of my life, I've been serving Christ. There are more stories there than several books can tell. Since I've read stories from the lives of others written far better, and more useful to building individual faith, than I could do, I'll confine myself to a little piece of my story here. It will be a little piece not often addressed in the stories of others, how faith trumps the politics and religious devotion many have to various expressions of high technology.
Four hundred and ninety years ago, an unremarkable Catholic monk posted a sheet of almost one hundred complaints at the place where people posted such things in those days. That would be a church door, and the monk, of course, would be Martin Luther. Unbeknownst to him at the time, he had just split the church into a group that would still be known for its “protesting” of Catholic doctrine a half millennia later: happy birthday, Protestant Church.