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Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures

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Let it snow baby - Let it rain dear!
How to win others
cheap-skate blog entry
How to maintain your fix
3 envelopes - a parable
Not a fan of the Nazi argument
Note to the peeps
I am so doing this
Gospel Rant
Orwellian Splendor

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Here's the part where I try to avoid getting sued ...

As you undoubtedly noticed, I like comics. I wouldn't call myself a "fan boy" because I don't give a flying FOOM what they are worth. That said, almost all the images on my blog are scanned from comics I own, and it would be frankly impossible to tell you where each one comes from specifically.

Many are © and/or ® Marvel Comics Group, with all rights reserved.

Others are © and/or ® DC Comics, which is an arm of Time/Warner, and not only are all rights reserved but they are a little jealous about it, so if I get "the letter" from them, those images are just going to turn into blank spots until I configure out what to do about that.

There are also the occasional images from Valiant, Image, Defiant, and some indies which I'm not sure even have a name, and they are all also © and/or ®, all rights reserved.

All other images not covered by this disclaimer are the property of their respective owners, and if you are one of those people and you see your image on my blog, tell me what you want me to do about it and I will. No sense making people angry.

Hope that helps.

Monday, February 08, 2010

Let it snow baby - Let it rain dear!

The Great Global Warming Collapse.

“The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,” the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics.

The impetus for the Copenhagen conference was that the science makes it imperative for us to act. But even if that were true – and even if we knew what to do – a global deal was never in the cards. As Mr. Mead writes, “The global warming movement proposed a complex set of international agreements involving vast transfers of funds, intrusive regulations in national economies, and substantial changes to the domestic political economies of most countries on the planet.” Copenhagen was never going to produce a breakthrough. It was a dead end.

Won't have to blog much more about this, I guess.

Labels: Global Warming

Thursday, February 04, 2010

How to win others

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air highlights Sally Jenkins' essay in the Washington Post. My favorite part in Jenkins' essay?

Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikini selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn’t.

There is a parable about evangelism in there someplace, but I don't have time to work it out for you. After 6 years of me blogging and you reading it, you can make up your own Turkism here, I am sure.

Labels: Abortion, current events

Saturday, January 30, 2010

cheap-skate blog entry

I am somewhat proud of this post at Evangel.

I also think I have a new solution for the comments section if I can figure out how to embed it, and how to make it start a new page of comments every time it sees a new page here at Blogger.

You can check it out here.

Labels: cent is a fat pig, Programming notes

Friday, January 29, 2010

How to maintain your fix

The few of you who are still hard-core fans of this blog are, of course, waiting for me to post something here pithy, edifying, and funny.

Truth be told: I have a great job. Finally, after 20 years, I have a job which challenges me and really does take all day for me to finish up. And that bites into my blogging.

So here's the deal:

1. I promise to blog something here at least once a week to keep it fresh. Expect it on either Mondays or Fridays; I'll blog both if I can fit it in. I am also working on a template upgrade and how to make ECHO a non-embarassment.

2. Wednesday is still my day at TeamPyro, and you can pop in there to catch my antics as we light up the post-evangelical frontier. On Wednesdays. Dan and Phil and Charles Spurgeon are responsible for the other 6 days aweek.

3. About twice a week I'll be posting at FirstThings.com's Evangel blog. If you want to follow just my blogging there, you can bookmark my author's page at Evangel and enjoy.

4. I almost forgot that you can follow me on Twitter; the last few tweets are in the sidebar here. Twitter can almost be as fun as the comments here used to be -- except that there is no clowning. What is the blogosphere if there is no clowning?

Labels: Fluffernutter, Programming notes, Reasonable Questions, stats

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

3 envelopes - a parable

So this guy gets elected president, and when I say "this guy" I mean some fella who has spent his life in politics in some sense for the good of his country, but of course he's a politician so he's also in it for pragmatic reasons.

The day after his inauguration he gets a phone call from his predecessor to ask him how things are going. Now, it was a war of attrition that year and a hard-fought victory for the new President, but the Oval Office looks a lot different from the leather chair than it does from the other side of the desk. In a moment of kindred connection, he says to his former adversary, “It’s a big job. I have an agenda, but I don’t know where to start.”

The other guy laughs a little and says that it is a big job, but if he’s man enough to win the election he’s man enough to run the country. But just in case, in the top center drawer of the desk in the oval office, there are three envelopes. If he doesn’t know what to do next, just open the first envelope.

The new president thanked his former adversary, and hung up – certain he would never really need the envelopes. He started to work with his new cabinet and advisors, and while he tried to make good on his promises, making real advances was nearly impossible. And after a few months, his poll numbers started to slide. Then about Christmas of the first year, the bottom fell out of his first major policy change and he found himself alone in the oval office on Christmas eve not too sure what to do next.

Just then, he remembered the three envelopes, and he opened the center drawer of the desk – half-expecting to find it empty. But there they were, numbered 1-2-3, in very fresh-looking Presidental stationary from the previous administration. So he took envelope 1 out and held it for a second, thinking it might be a prank of some kind of biochemical revenge tactic from his former adversary who might just hold a grudge. But he held to up to the light and could see a single piece of paper in there, so he opened the envelop and read these three words:

BLAME YOUR PREDECESSOR

The next morning he showed up at the daily White House briefing, and after a few words from his press secretary he gave a brief but impassioned statement that framed the problems of the country in terms of the last administration. If things were every going to change, the old ways of the last president had to be pushed over – and he needed the help of the American people to do it.

The brief statement went over like gang-busters, and his poll numbers shot up. He pressed forward with a modified legislative agenda which many people supported as he governed a little more to the center, and for the next year his agenda made some forward headway. However, taxes went up, employment waivered, and his poll number started to slip. Again.

On the eve of his second Christmas, a bombshell revelation was released to the media that several of his cabinet members had shady dealings while in office, and he was himself a little ashamed of them – even though he knew in his heart he might have done the same thing in their shoes. It was going to take a renewed center of energy to fight the fight necessary to continue to make progress and refute allegations that his administration was simply corrupt. He wasn’t sure he had it in him, and he didn’t know what to do.

Then he remembered the envelopes. The first had worked so well, he thought maybe there was some strategic prophecy in the others. He took out the second envelope and opened it, and the message said:

BLAME THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES

As the words sunk in, they made perfect sense to him – the problem wasn’t his but the problem of people just being down-right un-leadable. Especially those who opposed his agenda.

The next morning he showed up at the daily White House briefing, and after a few words from his press secretary he gave a brief but impassioned statement that framed the problems of the country in terms of the lack of charity, compassion and wisdom of those who were making charges against him and his administration. If things were every going to change, the old ways of the last president had to be pushed over – and he needed the agreement of the American people to do it.

The brief statement went over like gang-busters, and his poll numbers shot up. Again. He pressed forward with a legislative agenda which some people supported as he governed a little more to the center still, and for the next year his agenda made some forward headway. However, his message of “us vs. them” left a lot of people cold – all politicians talk that way, and they thought they elected a leader they could trust to lead the whole nation and not just the few who agreed with him.

On the eve of his third Christmas in office, his poll numbers were simply pathetic – and it was time to run for re-election in earnest. But his agenda was now a lot more moderate than it used to be, and his ability to lead a coalition was severely compromised by his message against his enemies. He wasn;t sure how to proceed – and then he remembered the last envelope.

He opened the drawer and paused for a moment, wondering for a second if he was the first president to ever receive these pearls of wisdom, and somewhat perplexed by his former adversary’s intentions in leaving those envelopes for him. He paused to consider whether he should follow the advice on a letter-sized envelope from someone who was his political enemy. But he realized he didn’t have any idea where to start the new year, so he opened the envelope.

It read:

MAKE THREE ENVELOPES

Labels: current events, parables

Monday, January 25, 2010

Not a fan of the Nazi argument

But in this case, I think Jay Leno deserves what he's getting.

Labels: Leno vs. CoCo

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Note to the peeps

I'm not dead yet. I'm just restin'.

If you had a week like I just had, pheh.

Labels: Fluffernutter