MSNBC displayed this picture on their “Picture Stories” section. What is it supposed to stress? “Oh, dear God! Look at the bloodshed over in Iraq! Surely we must pull out soon!”

You know what I see? Look at those people walking past the blood in defiance, still on their way to vote… and we bitch when the line is so long it’ll make us late to the cushy job that pays for the home in suburban America.

If you’re a Windows XP user (or Windows 98 for that matter) and don’t have security protection on your computer, then you are the sole reason for the constant massive virus outbreaks on the Internet. That’s right, it’s all your fault. For the over 100,000 known viruses, the vast majority are meant for Windows users. Just one more reason to get a Mac. Of course, they are fairly expensive. Or not.

Basically folks, we need to get everybody some security protection. FREE. There are three components that every computer must have, so let’s try to make this simple:

Get yerself a Firewall
There are so many options out there, but for most people, the Windows XP Firewall will suffice. There’s no options for it other than off and on–it comes installed switched ‘on’–and it only blocks traffic coming in, not going out. Just download Windows XP Service Pack 2, and you’re good to go. If you want to get a little more creative, here are some choices with options: Kerio Personal Firewall 4 and Outpost Firewall FREE. Those aren’t as high octane as some that you pay for, but they’re better than the Windows XP SP2 Firewall and they’re still free.

Antivirus is needed
There’s a rumor that Microsoft is planning some sort of antivirus protection, which will no doubt be watered down. However, until that momentus day arrives, you need to take some initiative. There are some pretty good FREE alternatives to Norton Antivirus and the like. There’s Grisoft’s AVG Free Edition and avast! 4 Home Edition.

Spyware problems? Yeah…
There’s several free options out there for cracking down on spyware problems, but I’m gonna recommend Ad-Aware SE Personal because I use it and it works wonders. Just run it occasionally, maybe once a week.

It anyone knows of other, better free stuff out there, just comment on it and let us all know!

That seems to be said a lot right after a horrific event, yeah? Well good thing the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz brought several dozen world leaders together to vow that they would never again allow such atrocities. I’m so glad that such crimes against humanity will never again be tolerated. World leaders are taking swift, unrestrained measures to put an end to the problems, calling the crime what it is: genocide. It just gives me a nice, warm feeling inside.

I woke up today and turned my alarms off. No snooze, just off. Which helps to explain why there was no subsequent ringing to wake me sooner than 10:55. My head jolts off the pillow, and I find myself staring through bleary contacts at the five minutes I have until my last class of the day starts. Granted, I only have two, but still. After a half-moment of panic, I realized something. There was no way I was going to make it to class. I’d already completely missed my political science class, the more important of the two, and missing this one wouldn’t do much more harm. Hmm… better get up and marinate that chicken for lunch.

But on a global note, isn’t orphaned children and complete devistation hilarious?! I wonder how many times this crew laughed jokingly during the production of this song. “Oh, man we’re SO gonna get fired for this!”

Something to think about–

Interesting: 75% of Iraqis say security where they live is either “good” or “average.” Not exactly the impression you would get from the American press.

I’d been wondering about something, and now at least I’ve gotten the Presbyterian perspective on 1 Corinthians. I just had an opportunity to talk with Kevin Twit, a minister from Christ Community, about the study of 1 Corinthians 14. To the best of my knowledge, I understand the charismatic approach to this passage, but that’s what can be gotten from merely reading the passage and extrapolating without historical context or immediate literary context. Many times that can be very misleading in studying the scriptures. I wanted to know what’s Paul was talking about, who he’s addressing, and what the contemporary understanding would’ve been concerning his message.

There’s nothing I’ve read in scripture about tongues (only Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians mention it) that leads me to believe they are secret languages only God can understand. According to Kevin Twit, the historical understanding until only very recently (within the last couple hundred years) is that tongues meant other languages. Meaning that Paul was writing to the Corinthians about languages that were unknown to them specifically, but not necessarily unknown to everyone. In fact, he most likely meant that those languages were known by other people, just not to the majority of the church at Corinth. It seems that way judging from Paul’s reference to Isaiah 28:11-12; the juxtaposition of “unknown languages” and “lips of foreigners” seems to suggest that the unknown language will merely be the language of the foreign oppressors. As Kevin Twit argues, “Tongues in Acts 2 are clearly known languages, not some angelic tongue. Why should we take ‘tongues’ to mean something different in 1 Corinthians?”

And what of the prophesying? I know I’ve had many experiences where I feel God impressing something on my heart, but my knee jerk reaction is to check it in the scriptures. If it is contradicted in any way by the Bible, then it’s most likely the deceit of my heart. Are these prophecies just impressions on people’s hearts that are being misunderstood as an authoritative word directly from God? That’s a pretty strong statement to make, that a message is for you from God. It basically leaves you no wiggle room. How does one know that a word is truly from God? I’d say this is a pretty good test.

But I feel I should mention this: I am trying to come at this passage unbiased, but I have to admit that almost immediately I felt uncomfortable with the “speaking in tongues” thing. Uncomfortable in the sense that it seems there are many churches that emphasize this sort of thing, but it’s all concentrated. It’s a whole church doing it, but then over here you’ve got another church that doesn’t have anyone speaking in tongues. If this is something from God, the Holy Spirit manifest in a person, wouldn’t it just happen all over the place, unhindered by the walls of a church? It shouldn’t be some skill that you have to be taught how to do. Acts doesn’t portray Pentecost as a seminar on how to speak in tongues, it just happened (even assuming we want to interpret scripture to mean that speaking in tongues is a secret prayer language or utterance to God). Coming at it from a sociological viewpoint, it looks a whole lot like groupthink to me, but I’ll continue to study this and report on it more later.

[Edit]
I would greatly appreciate reactions to my current thoughts. I am merely charting my own study of this passage, and critique is most welcome, particularly the critique of those whom I may have offended or otherwise disagree with me.

Last weekend Dad came to visit, and among the things he brought, one included a small plastic canister of bruschetta, a tasty Italian treat that we’d recently had spread on our toast at home. Sometime yesterday Matt was standing at the fridge looking inward and commented:

“Oh, I’ve been meaning to try that salsa your dad brought.”

“Salsa?” I peer inside. “Oh, that’s not salsa, that’s bruschetta.”

“What?”

“You spread it on toast or something. It’s Italian. It’s good.”

“The bottle says salsa on it.”

“I know, that just an old bottle my mom put the bruschetta in.”

Silence. Matt gets a confused look on his face, his brow all scrunched up.

“Can it be used like salsa?”

Take note, friends. Study this being, for he has somehow enabled himself to take classes that require almost no outside work, leaving ample time for many racquetball adventures weekly. And of course, the napping.

Today a woman came to tell us that we needed to be more liberated in our minds and open to diversity. It was by far the worst convocation I’ve ever been to at Belmont. She began with a convincing argument that we should all celebrate our differences, blah, blah, blah. Then come the videos: ridiculous enactments of a white girl and a black girl and their interaction with each other. Apparently they’re friends, but the white girl is too scared to go talk to the black girl at the lunch table. Big wuss, I say. A good chap near me raises his hand and makes a valiant effort to explain to this lady that our generation just doesn’t feel that way about race. Sure there are problems, but please don’t assume we’re also living in the 60’s. Then she started to yell at him and it got a little ugly. She claimed that he couldn’t speak for everyone; he was projecting his assumptions onto the “millions of people that live in this country.” But isn’t that exactly what she was doing?

I think that’s a huge problem with race relations today. The people running these “healing programs” aren’t willing to admit that there are glaring differences between those who grew up in the civil rights years and those of us who didn’t.

Oh, and this probably doesn’t help much:

[Edit]
TSU being hostile to white candidates for the University Presidency is apparently okay, but UT narrowing down their field of top candidates to three white males is an outrage. Sure, I’d love my tall mug of hypocrisy topped with some frothy racism.

Hmm… interesting.

It’s already a little late… so why not kill some more time.

Today was wonderful. Since it snowed last night I was forced (for safety of course) to remain in bed until almost 1pm. It’s okay though, I talked it over with Jesus, he’s cool with it.

Dad came to visit this last Thursday evening after I’d finished with some showcase setup for Saturday. We had ribs, ribs that had been marinated for almost 3 full days, ribs that smelled amazing marinating every time I opened the fridge, and ribs that were just a bit too big to be from a pig. We had cow ribs. How utterly disappointing.

But all was not a disaster, as he did come bearing gifts. Mom hasn’t used the bread machine in a while, so I thought I could take a crack at some homemade breads. He also brought three mixes that she still had lying around. That should have been the first red flag. But the question is, How long does it take for an air-sealed bread mix to go bad?

Mom sent spice cake. I had to take a step down from the ol’ “healthy eating” plan for tonight. Okay, maybe for the week.

And for the political comment: Good thing Z-man decided to declare war on democracy. Don’t worry everybody, he just wanted to make sure we know he hates freedom.