So, I got to the airport this afternoon - everything seems peachy. Check in with no problem, even manage to upgrade to an exit row seat. Then I remember I need to give an American Airlines agent my British Airways frequent flier number to make sure my miles get credited by American Airlines. Unfortunately I don’t know that number, nor do I have it written down anywhere on me. It’s OK, I’ll call my dad; he has all those records. Nope. I canceled my cell phone service this morning, and even if it hadn’t gone into effect yet, my phone’s battery is dead. Internet in the airport is going to cost me 10 dollars. I guess I could mail the boarding passes back from Bolivia, but I hate needing to send or receive mail when I’m overseas (Nigeria habits die hard).
But then I remembered this handy-dandy laptop that Google sent me, and that it comes with 100 mB a month of cellular internet from Verizon. Muy bien. So I pop online, dig up my British Airways number in my email. Write a satisfied blog post about having successfully solved the problem. Ahhh….
I know, not much of a crisis. Maybe not really worth a blog post. But I really like my miles.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/3365.aspx
Here’s a feel-good story if there ever was one….
QUOTE: Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside. From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.
“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.
Zechariah 3:1-7
3:1 Next I saw Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, with Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. 3:2 The Lord said to Satan, “May the Lord rebuke you, Satan! May the Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Isn’t this man like a burning stick snatched from the fire?” 3:3 Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood there before the angel. 3:4 The angel spoke up to those standing all around, “Remove his filthy clothes.” Then he said to Joshua, “I have freely forgiven your iniquity and will dress you in fine clothing.” 3:5 Then I spoke up, “Let a clean turban be put on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him, while the angel of the Lord stood nearby.
This was a passage that was reflected on during the worship service. Most of the discussion was rightly on Christ’s atoning work in making us clean, but a thought that occurred to me and arrested me for most of the worship service. The image of Satan, accusing Joshua the high priest, was very vivid to me and spurred some reflections of my own.
First of all is the ambiguous nature of Satan’s accusations. If it’s God’s justice that demands redress, why is it Satan who makes the accusation? How are Satan’s accusations different from the conviction of conscience or the Holy Spirit? I mean, both cases lead to the realization or recognition that you’re doing wrong. It’s ironic that Satan is the Father of Lies, but in the case of his accusation, he speaks the truth. He has no need to accuse us of anything we haven’t done. Every hour of our lives furnishes him with enough legitimate wrongdoing for him to make an airtight case against us.
But his lie is that in his accusation, his goal is our despair. We know that what he says we’ve done is true, and despair is a natural response. The court imagery in this area is just so powerful to me. Imagine a criminal before a judge, hoping beyond hope that he might somehow get off, and then the prosecuting lawyer strolls in with his navy blue Italian suit and leather briefcase. He looks at the criminal as he snaps the briefcase open and pulls out a sheaf of papers. He looks both hungry and pleased. And then he proceeds to relate every detail of the criminal’s crime to the court. Any kind of hope that the man on trial had is going to evaporate and he knows he’s been caught, and he knows that he’s never going to see the light of day again.
That is the goal of Satan’s accusation - to introduce the lie that we are beyond redemption. To show us our sins and make the jump from their to the logical conclusion that we will be condemned for those. You do the crime, you’ll do the crime. But the truth is that Christ has made us clean. God didn’t need Satan to make the accusation of course, but He decided ahead of time that no matter the strength of the case against us, He would would orchestrate a way to overcome that case – to His glory. And this highlights the difference between the accusation of Satan and the conviction of the Holy Spirit; the one is intended to pull us away from God in shame, and the other intends to bring us to Him in gratitude.
Why we don’t walk straight. Fascinating and wonderfully presented.
All Electric Ford Focus
- 100 mile range
- 85 mph top speed
- three to four-hour home charging time
- this is nifty: “The home charging station for the Focus Electric includes a feature developed by Microsoft which allows owners to charge the vehicle during off-peak hours when electricity rates are the cheapest.”
I saw a charging station the other day at a Half-Price Books store. It’s the first one I’ve seen in Dallas, but I’m sure there will be more. That’d be a pretty cool competitive advantage right now when these cars and the stations are both pretty rare - charge your car while you are grocery shopping, etc. That would probably influence my choice of where to shop if I had such a car. And it’s in Ford/Nissan/etc’s best interest to get more charging stations around town to raise awareness of these new cars and to answer questions about the convenience of a car you need to plug in every 80-100 miles, so I expect that the cost of these stations could be subsidized by the automakers at this point.
Vaccine-Autism Link Not Only Wrong, But an ‘Elaborate Fraud’ -- Daily Intel
QUOTE: One of the most famous flawed studies ever conducted, Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s now-retracted 1998 paper that linked vaccines to autism has been found to be not a scientific error, but a…
The Atlantic website had a good day today. Here’s what I found interesting:
• Vaccine-Autism Scare: Researcher Who Started It All Falsified Data?
• Never Mind the Constitution, the House Should Read the Federalist 78
• A Nation of Cowards: The Bowdlerization of Huck Finn
• Fun With Numbers: High School Student Drug Use Edition
• Why Is the Path From Wall Street to Washington So Well-Trodden?
Wormworldsaga.com - An Online Graphic Novel by Daniel Lieske
This is amazing. Click “Read now!”
