Dallas Willard Died Today

When I get home I'm going to re-read The Divine Conspiracy

We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt. The fashion of the age has identified mental sharpness with a pose, not with genuine intellectual method and character. Only a very hardy individualist or social rebel — or one desperate for another life — therefore stands any chance of discovering the substantiality of the spiritual life today. Today it is the skeptics who are the social conformists, though because of powerful intellectual propaganda they continue to enjoy thinking of themselves as wildly individualistic and unbearably bright.

DW - Hearing God

Cleaning out the camera

I'm cleaning out the camera. Do I only take pictures of food now?

Yup. (Fried Kale. Good Stuff! Who knew?)

Yes. (Homesick Texan would approve!)

Uh-huh.

Ok, now to be fair - this was an event. Our Church made and delivered supper to a variety of folk.

Let's see - we did celebrate birthdays.

And we went to the coast.

I guess there's more to life than "Good Eats"!

Why I am an education anarchist, part 4,423

Offered without comment:

I think the other day I said it was in third grade that the school gave us trouble over Robert. I was wrong, it was actually in first grade. I sent them a kid who could read, write and was working on fractions. Imagine our shock when in our first first grade conference, the teacher informed us that Robert was learning disabled and would probably never learn to read and write. This was particularly surprising since one of her pieces of evidence was a worksheet that consisted of 1+0, 2+0 etc. across the top of which Robert had written in properly spelled words “this is stupid and boring. A number plus zero always equals the number.”

Malice or Incompetence by Sci-Fi authoress Sarah Hoyt

Happycrow is on fire

I'm still reading my blogs, even though I'm not writing much anymore. Well, check that - I've written a ton lately - but it's all technical stuff, mostly in the form of classes to teach programmers new technologies. What I haven't written much of lately is anything about the cultural/theological/political areas that still fascinate me.

Fortunately not everyone is so moribund. One of my regular reads has been on fire lately: Happycrow is an interesting character with a frequently interesting point of view. Fair warning - if you aren't an X'er you'll probably find him profanely cynical. I like him just fine :)

Advice from his most recent post about demographic/economic trends How to surf the boomer holocaust:

1. If you’ve got a job, save, save, save, save. Or, even more importantly, de-leverage. Get OUT of debt. Ignore the hucksterism about mortgage interest deductions — those are for the upper middle class, not for Random Guy #13. If you make less than six figures and are in a house you can actually afford to live in, you’ll be getting the “standard deduction” anyway. If you make less than six figures and actually have enough mortgage interest to beat the Standard Deduction, you have Too Much House, or are living in a zip code that’s beyond your means — you’re setting yourself up for poverty down the road. Learn this truth: housing is a cost. There’s cost of living, and cost of surviving. They’re two different things: any plan you make should minimize the latter. If you’re paying a third to one-half your paycheck simply for the privelege of taking up space, you’re in trouble. Get the cheapest mortgage you can get in the cheapest house your wife will let you buy, and then KILL IT OFF.

This is good advice - I agree so strongly that I took it about a decade ago!

The Pope announced his retirement.

Apparently the Pope is going to retire.

Too soon?