The media rhetoric on this incident is really high, in part because Russia became the bogey man sometime between Obama telling Romney the 80s wanted it’s foreign policy back and 2016, but let’s be careful to call this what it is. Espionage. Extremely successful and sophisticated espionage, but espionage. It was not an act of war, nothing was damaged or…
We’re here for the time being, I answer to the query— Just for a couple of years, we said, a dozen years back. Nothing is more permanent than the temporary. We dine sitting on folding chairs—they were cheap but cheery. We’ve taped the broken windowpane. TV’s still out of whack. We’re here for the time being, I answer to the…
We took Mira to the Nutcracker a little while back and weren’t sure it made much of an impression, but this morning I got to sit and watch her be a ballerina. She (and I) had great fun as she twirled and hopped and danced around.
The Nicene creed says this of Christ: I believe… in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. (NKJV, NASB would follow.) Nicene creed ESV,…
Some people are obsessed with making diet plans from descriptive passages of the Bible, like the Daniel diet or Ezekiel bread. I wonder how many of them make sure to cook the bread over dried excrement? Ezekiel 4:9-15
This post will probably only interest the very nerdy, tin foil hat subset of my friends. But I thought I’d share because figuring out the configuration took a lot of searching and trial and error. I like to use OpenDNS because it allows me to set filters for our family’s internet, which is just the sane thing to do. But…
The Incarnation of God: The Mystery of the Gospel as the Foundation of Evangelical Theology – Clark, John; Johnson, Marcus Peter This was a great book that magnifies Jesus Christ through and through. The authors emphasize again and again that we are saved by all that Jesus was, is, and did as God-man – not merely his death. There is…
Biblical Dogmatics – Voigt, Andrew George (1917) This is a good little Systematic Theology from the early 20th century. It is from a conservative Lutheran position so there were some perspectives I hadn’t encountered before, but that was, in large part why I read it. I’m exploring this branch of Protestant Reformation thought at the moment, so it was nice…
Coming back to our foreign home-away-from-home-but-really-more-like-home-sort-of has been good. There haven’t been any real shocks that I can think of. A major grocery chain went out of business but most of their locations have been taken over by one that was always cheaper. One major difference is that I have only taken a bus once, we haven’t even bought transit…
My five or so year long quest to read The Brothers Karamazov has come to an end. I’m just glad it’s over. I devoured Crime and Punishment but this one never hooked me. Many people praise it highly, so maybe it’s just me, there we’re brilliant moments but on the whole it was one long slog full of wretched characters.
Why 6? Cause it’d be disingenuous to give more than 10% the top spot. This year I tried to read in 4 categories: fiction light, fiction heavy, non-fiction light, non-fiction heavy. What made each category was a bit subjective, and sometimes I’d move an item to a different category mid-book as I found it to be mis-categorized. My two regrets…
Went to a restaurant with friends on a day Mira got up two hours early and only took half her nap (one hour total). She fell asleep on the way home so we tried to just get her in an overnight diaper & put her down. A few minutes later she’s crying and calling, asking to read Bible, sing a…
I was showering the other day and noticed on the shampoo bottle the encouragement to turn off the water while soaping. I got to thinking about how ridiculous this was. Even in America, your hot water heater may not always get you the water exactly as you want it, and many showers have a separate hot and cold handle. So,…
The Silk Roads is an entirely fascinating book. It’s extremely readable and covers a huge amount of time (a few hundred B.C. to today) from the perspective of the region of the world between the Mediterranean and the Pacific (mostly focused in Iran and the -stans). Fun and eye-opening, it makes me far more interested in those regions and in…