Category: News

Our Mutual Friend

No, I’m not talking about mutual friends on Facebook. I’m talking about a book by Dickens that was recently made into a movie by the BBC. It is in 4 episodes and each episode is about an hour and a half…typical Dickens length. I was a little skeptical because there are some really bad movies out there based on Dickens. I’ve always maintained that Dickens is just not meant for movies. You simply can’t make a good movie out of Great Expectations. His characters are meant for the page, not for the screen. But Our Mutual Friend proved me wrong…

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Biblical Law vs. Common Law? (Part 2)

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In the first part of these posts I argued that Common Law isn’t contrary to Biblical Law but it is a natural extension of the Bible that allows us to live with and interact with those who have no respect for the Bible. And while I do have respect for the Reconstructionists and what they’re trying to do, I must continue to disagree with them. I’m bothered by this movement to use the Bible as a guide to everything we do. The Bible isn’t primarily a guide to this life, it is a guide to life everlasting. There are all…

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Biblical Law vs. Common Law? (Part 1)

I’ve intended to write this post for some weeks now, and obviously have not succeeded until now. Last month we attended a conference in Chicago and one of the topics was the title of this post. The speaker started by describing this fatal flaw in the founding and development of America. I agreed with him entirely on this point, for I believe there was a fatal flaw when our Founding Fathers said, “all theft is immoral but some forms of thievery is less immoral than others.” I am, of course, referring to the writing of the Constitution, making it legal for a…

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The Horror of Horror

Last night I stayed up late watching Hitchcock’s The Birds. It was an interesting evening. I was pretty skeptical about it, thinking the film would be corny and not that scary. Haha….after the movie I had a moment of panic as I was pulling the blinds down on my windows, like “ahhhhhh….the birds are going to peck through the glass while I’m sleeping…help….!” but I did manage to calm down. I’m going to first describe the movie negatively, 1) the movie was not an old, corny film with bad effects and 2) the movie was not one of these modern,…

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A Philosophical Dilemma

Oddly enough, this post was inspired by an Andy Griffith episode I watched last night. Let me quickly summarize the story so this will make sense. Ellie (works at drugstore) discovers there’s a girl living out on a farm near town who longs to have make-up, lipstick, perfume, etc…but doesn’t have any. So Ellie and Andy go out to the farm and give her a sampling of these items as a gift. The girl’s father walks up to them, discovers the items, and makes his daughter give them back to Ellie, saying that she doesn’t have any need for them….

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Violence Against Cops

There has been a lot of uproar about police officers being targeted by criminals lately. Apparently 11 officers have been killed in the last day or two. And this is troubling. Saddening. And wrong. But I want to offer a “middle ground” between two extremes that I’ve encountered. Extreme 1: Government is evil. Cops work for the government. Therefore all cops are evil people. There’s this mentality of “well, they deserved it because they are government officials out to get my, ahem, illegal vegetation, or because I didn’t wear a seatbelt.” Extreme 2: Government is wonderful. Cops work for the…

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Hello!

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So far this is has been a good Monday. I’m only an hour into it, but it is quite promising. Usually by this time I would be only half an hour or less into the day (because I sleep in….) but today I got up early and that’s always comforting. Well, it is nice after you get up but not while you’re laying in bed wishing the alarm clock didn’t go off and you could just forget about it. Oh well. Here’s my favorite quote from yesterday, “A big, sovereign God frees us to be little, humble people with bright…

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Path of Grass Progress

(also posted at PathofGrass.com) Yesterday I got the manuscript draft back from my editor. He did a great job on it, and now my task is to go through and decide if I want to keep all of his changes. Some of them I ignore after a long time of contemplation (shhh…don’t tell him!), others I apply exactly as he says and with a few I make alternative changes that fix the problem. It is very exciting for me to see this book coming so close to publication. I have another book draft that never made it this far (and…

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Merry Christmas!

It wasn’t until the morning of Thanksgiving that I realized, “oh, this is Thanksgiving. This is a holiday!” and then decided to take off a few hours from school and work. So for Christmas I wanted to do something more. It doesn’t make any sense to live at home, educate yourself and make your schedule if you can’t enjoy the holidays with your family without worrying about finishing a paper, reading a book, or writing blog posts. Yes, blog posts. I’m afraid they’re going to be very scarce and perhaps non-existant this week. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve tried…

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The Ritual

Here is another performance of the ritual wherein I open up my “Add New Post” window between 8 and 9am and stare blankly at the screen for 3 minutes and 47 seconds, after which I bleakly begin an unoriginal, boring and pointless blog post so I can say that I have posted something every day. It really is good discipline. I tend to think that one needs to write only when you are “inspired.” Of course, I make myself inspired pretty quickly if I need to…but that only applies to fiction, so I’m a little lost when it comes to…

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