Back from Assembly

Well, i made a misstatement. The District Assembly lasted until almost mid day Saturday and so i didn't get back home until after 6pm. i felt okay Saturday, despite the fact that i had spent half the day Friday in bed with a bad headache. It was a *great* time of fellowship and it would just be a crime if the district wasn't filming the entire Assembly (they had three cameras set up for a pair of "closed circuit" big screen projectors but nobody ever mentioned how or where to obtain video of the Assembly.) Since i am *such* a cheapskate, i was unwilling to pay the ten bucks to check my email and so i was seperated from the "e-niverse" for a few days.

Those that know me know that i am an avid reader and i never pass up an opportunity to pick up a good book. i picked up a "Philosophy of Religion" book and a little piece regarding the controversies over interpretation in the beginning of Genesis. No sooner had i come back into the conference (from the bookstore room) and the speaker (a very highly respected man) says "Now i have to be careful what i say here but i am *disgusted* with all the controversies over Genesis 1, 2 and 3!". So naturally i didn't brag to anybody about the book that i had just bought. (insert sheepish grin)

Our monthly Sunday School Board Meeting was tonight and (as usual) it ran longer than expected. (i should be expecting this by now, yes? :-) One of my goals is to have a 15 minute meeting (at least once, please?) but its not going to happen anytime soon - way too much is happening - but its a good happening.

i have to go to Washington, D.C. for a conference on Friday and (depending on how busy things get) i'm not sure when i'll be able to check back here. Thank You to everybody that has let me know that they've seen the blog. This has been kinda fun and it gives me an excuse to tweak html code - something i haven't had a chance to do since... well, its really not important how long ago that was - we'll just say that it was "20th century".

out to lunch

i probably won't be able to check in for a few days. Wednesday, Thursday & Friday i'll be in Austin, TX as a delegate at the District Assembly. http://www.southtexasnaz.org/ The hotel we're staying in has internet in the rooms but its ten bucks a day - i don't need to check my e-niverse (electronic universe) that often! i'll have my cell phone (and charger) with me if anybody *really* needs to get a hold of me and the hotel lists a "business center" as one of its amenities. (These generally amount to two PCs and a fax/printer but i guess it would do in a pinch)

i'm sending out an email tonight to a lot of people that i want to keep in touch with. i just spent more time than i want to admit tweaking the look of the blog and adding links, etc. before sending out the email. And no, i DON'T agree with everything the eBay atheist says (um, hello - he's an atheist) but if we as churches are going to be effective in reaching the world, it might be useful to find out just how we are perceived by those we are trying to reach.

The people that i have listed as "famous people" are not necessarily people who are "widely known" (the more common usage of "famous") but rather these are people who are "First Rate" and "Excellent". You have to check out Susan Wagoner, shes gonna put Pryor Creek on the map and Flood23 seriously rocks.
The blogs are (with the exception of the eBay atheist) written by people who (so far anyway) have been willing to be seen with me in public. If any of my other friends or family have a blog and you will let me link to it here - let me know about it!
"Interesting Sites" should be self explanatory and, if you're not familiar with these sites, i would encourage you to check them out.

And i finally quit just talking about it and today (Monday) i got the ball rolling to go back to school to finish a Bachelor's degree. i've been ruminating on this for a couple years now and i had landed on "BioEthics" as what i felt would be the most appropriate major for me. i will be pursuing this degree at the local branch of the University of Texas, probably one class at a time. (i gotta work) After doing some checking (read:asking people who know more about this than i do) it seems that the closest that i can get to a "BioEthics" degree is a B.A. in Philosophy with an emphasis in Ethics. i'm still wrapping my brains around that idea... but you have to admit - a couple Logic classes could probably do me a world of good :-)

Three cheers for freedom of expression - God bless America!

A (short) explanation of the title

This is the explanation as simply as i can put it. Any government that knows that it will have to answer to an armed populace is more likely to take the opinions of that populace into consideration than a government whose populace is mostly unarmed.

To put it another way, the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the rest of the Bill of Rights. If you take away the right of the people to keep and bear arms (as guaranteed by the Constitution) you will soon lose every other freedom named in the Bill of Rights.

I am NOT making the "slippery slope" argument. I am a realist. And please DON'T take my word for it - look at history. Any despot, before enacting his treachery, will FIRST act to DISARM the public. Stalin. Hitler. Idi Amin.

People will argue "gun control" (disarming law abiding citizens) from all sorts of angles. Listen, I was raised in north east Oklahoma and gun control means being able to hit your target.

Now before anybody wants to accuse me of having my head in the sand, i did NOT say that our American government is perfect. That would just be silly. More later.

And so another phase in the experiment begins...

Several of my (offline) friends are into blogging and so, to have another chance to shoot my mouth off (pun intended) i got into this blogger deal. One friend in particular (and you know who you are ;-) has asked me (um, at least three times) where my blog is, so here goes. First a little of why it has taken me so long to get here.

my "blog" chronology so far -

some afternoon of Fall 1999: while in the library of a local Technical College (lovingly referred to as "Taco Tech" by some), i overheard two students talking about reading a "BLOG". i promptly wasted the afternoon surfing the net to find out what the heck a "BLOG" was. i drove home later that afternoon proud of myself for having discovered that "BLOG" is short for "web log". (yes, i am a useless information geek and it doesn't take much to make me happy)

Fall 1999-Spring 2001: i occasionally wasted an afternoon in the library surfing the net and reading "blogs" of various types - political, personal, spiritual, philosophical. Again and again it struck me - "How can these people put all this stuff (what they're thinking, feeling, going through, etc.) out on the net where anybody can read it?!" By the time i finished my stint at the Technical College, i had convinced myself that blogs were written by people that (for whatever reason) craved attention.

Summer 2001-June 2003: armed with my degree from the Technical College, i now had to get a "real job" and provide for my family. Not much time or opportunity for reading blogs during this time but, once in a while, an email with a link to one of several political blogs would find its way to me and i'd waste a few minutes reading and maybe even post a comment. ("I'm mad too, Eddie, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!!" - and if you get that joke i bet you're even older than i am :-)

June 2003: My best friend in the world dies. no joke. way too young... Lung cancer... He didn't even smoke... i was really mad at the world there for a while and i made my first attempt at a blog. Its just a one page website that i added to a website that i run for my folks. The hosting service comes with "unlimited websites" (we're probably up to five websites on that host by now) I added comments and just kept making the page longer on a sporadic basis until March of 2005. (the software wasn't set up to be a "blog" so its presented as a letter that i continue writing to my friend) The page still exists, i read it every once in a while but i haven't updated it since around mid '05 when i rearranged the page a little.

April 2006:Several things have happened that i need to note on the letter to my friend - guess its time to re-read it and update it. And that brings me up to now - here i am actually using "blogging" software (my mother will be so proud :-)