Category: Uncategorized

I’ve been thinking a lot about developing a series of practical daily exercises for building Christian character. So much of what we do in church and Bible study is directed toward enlarging our understanding, but too little of it makes its way into behavior. It’s abstract and motivational rather than practical training in taking up our cross daily. It’s like an athlete who just thinks about their event: without practical training, there’s no improvement.

I just found a new book on this by Dallas Willard: Renovation of the Heart.

Another part of the challenge is identifying exactly what constitutes Christian character.

Factoid: according to the Pew Internet and American Life survey, only 4% of those surveyed used the Internet to “look for religious/spiritual information.” 

But’s that’s still ahead of  blogging (1%) or “to visit an adult web site” (2%, though i wonder how honest people were in this case).

How to implement an OPML Directory Browser. Dave Winer seems big into this right now … i wonder whether this is suitable for ontology representation? While it doesn’t exactly enforce single inheritance, multiple inheritance would require duplication: that may be a problem. 

More incriminating evidence against one of the participants in the Great Couch Caper at DiBlog …

Some kids at Atholton High School thought it would be funny to hang their drama teacher’s couch off the roof of the school. Why don’t parents teach their kids not to pull these kinds of shenanigans?

“Hello? Mrs. Lewis, the high school principal? He did WHAT?!? …”

Afterwards, we had to laugh. 

My layout is under construction: expect a little visual funniness the next few days

 

The world’s first “human billboard”(tm) was paid $7000 to have his head tatooed to advertise a web hosting company.

“As part of the 5-year contract with C I Host, Nelson is required to keep the tattoo visible at all times and make daily treks outside his Chicago-area home to promote the company.” The company has trademarked the phrase “human billboard”, no doubt to prevent a flood of wanna-be copycat billboarders from diluting their message.

How committed are you to your message?

“Christianity and Islam are the two religions that define civilizations” … from I’m right, you’re wrong, go to hell!, an article on the historic relationship between the two  by Bernard Lewis in the Atlantic Monthly.

Economist Review of a new book on the creation for the King James Bible suggests that even then, it wasn’t quite the language of the streets.

“A mere 39 pages survive of one team’s arguments over language. They wondered whether God should “upbraid” someone or “twit” them, and whether the beauty of a flower should be expressed as its “goodliness and sightliness” or, far better, its “grace and fashion”. For all of them, the tiniest touches made a difference. “

One important goal was a Bible that could be effectively read aloud.

Found the Bible Technologies Group website. I’m particularly interested in the Linguistic Annotation section, though i don’t see much there yet.