flypaper's blog

Ig Nobel Prizes

...from the wiki:

Many things in my life are ironic. My father was a missionary but I became a computer scientist. My college buddies studied to be pilots and with much teasing about putting them out of a job my first job after college was a gig working on auto-pilot and navigation systems. The list goes on.

So the apostles and a few others hanging around back in the day got basic instructions for life in the New Covenant. As if they had no clue how to "think" about God then Christ comes along and explains when they pray they should say, "Our Father."

I grew up the child of Independent Baptist Missionaries. Much of my childhood life was spent on the pews and bowing my head with closed eyes at the dinner table. One thing I realized about the Baptist prayer habits has really hit me like a brick truck. I watch my father religiously pray before every meal. This, of course, is not a bad thing.

The most bizarre (and short) article I've read in a long time has got to be this recent two paragraph musing by John Piper. Maybe it is technically a "blog posting." Whatever it is, it reads:

"Don’t Equate Historically Early with Theologically Accurate"

When I was in college I trusted my professors- like a child. Now, I have a new Counselor.

"Eschatology And The New Christian Right by Dr. Gary North"

"BELLINGHAM, WA—October 28, 2010—The Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software announced today the release of The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (SBLGNT), a critically edited Greek New Testament. ...

... The result is a critically edited text that differs from the Nestle-Aland/United Bible Societies text in more than 540 variation units."

In an earlier blog post a reference was made to Josephus and how, by recording the fact that the Romans cut down all the trees around Judea and the City of Jerusalem, he indirectly confirmed that the very words of Jesus were indeed true: "The ax is already at the root of the trees."

Two thousand years in the making- we now have Josephus's major works (Antiquities and the War of the Jews) in seachable form as demonstated in the following link:
Masada

I'm a geek. I like my Greek and my Ruby with just a hint of Javascript. I want e-Bibles... free ones- in plain 'ol text files. There aren't many I can copy without busting a copyright law. Shame. There are no Korean e-text Bibles for example so I'm stuck when I want to search for kimchi.

Below are two articles presenting the sticky relationship issues between Israelis and Palestinians. One article explores the latest Catholic press releases. The other is a typical Evangelical defense of Israel in response the first article.

Nooooooooooooo!!!! It was only a matter of time!!! The evangelicals futurists raided my perfect little RubyOnRails coding world!!! Why can't they just leave us Geeks alone!!! But of course I jest. Geeks need pastors too.

Recently I was reunited with a childhood friend. I hadn't seen this person in 20 years. It turns out that, like myself, this child of independent Baptist missionaries was badly burned by the premillenial dispensational legalism with which she had been spoon-fed as a child. I took the opportunity to share a bit of my own journey being reborn out of that propaganda of the mind.

You'd think that somebody with a direct line to the Almighty, and tapped by Jesus to save mankind on Earth, would be able to come up with a better business plan for running a daily newspaper. But, alas, after nearly three decades of unrelenting financial losses, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a federal tax cheat, accused cult leader, and founder of the Unification Church, has decided to pull out.