Postage

The Forever Stamp. An idea whose time has come. I'm not sure this is worth writing home about, so you might want to write home about something else, but for years I've thought it should work like this. Once you've paid the cost of mailing a letter, you should be able to do the actual mailing of it any time, today or in fifty years regardless of how much rates rise, because you paid full price when you bought the stamp.

It doesn't take much, does it? Now I'm happy.

Respect For G-d

While doing a little recreational reading on the topic of animals and souls, (let's not go there) I stumbled onto askmoses.com and was struck by the references throughout the site to "G-d". Maybe I just haven't gotten around enough see that earlier: I know that Jews refer(red) to God as "YHVH" in order to avoid speaking The Name, considered too sacred to be uttered or written. And the Muslim suffix to the name of the prophet, "Peace be upon him". I've always thought that was kinda cool, but not cool enough to make me want to convert.

But this "G-d" thing is new to me. On the website, when you mouse over it a small pop-up explains, "It is forbidden to erase or deface the name of G-d. It is therefore customary to insert a dash in the middle of G-d's name, allowing us to erase or discard the paper it was written on if necessary."

I don't know if I'll start doing that myself, but in a world where that name is used more as a curse than as a blessing, title, or name, it was strangely soothing to see the name of God handled with such respect.

The Dawkins Delusion

Pretty funny video!


HT: Amanda

Freedom Of Speech

What do you think of the way people are treated after expressing their views on homosexuality? It seems to me that the words "homophobic" and "hate" are almost instantly attached to a person if they don't applaud homosexuality as hip, good, right and virtuous. It's almost as if it's heresy to the political correctness "religion". Freedom of speech is discarded, and bitterness flows from the Left.

I can easily understand why Ann Coulter's latest escapade would have that effect. I think she's interesting, smart and funny, but sometimes not so smart too, as that article shows. But this story is the latest example of what I'm getting at. Congress is prohibited from establishing a law abridging freedom of speech, so the Left seems to be going about it through peer pressure. It has become uncool, unkind, hateful, bigoted, and discriminatory just to say that you "believe" homosexuality to be immoral. Don't we have that right? And yes, I mean Constitutional right. They want Pace to apologize for simply stating his views.

I hope this doesn't come off as "hateful", because I'm just trying to figure out why someone's decision to have sex within their gender has become such a huge issue for the Left. I too believe homosexuality to be immoral, just as adultery and lying, gossip, stealing and scads of other behavior. But one big difference I notice is that there aren't a lot of groups pushing to make those behaviors socially acceptable. Can you help me understand?

Christians And Movies

Christianity Today film critic Jeffery Overstreet on criticism from Christians regarding his reviews of both "Christian" and secular movies. (R-rated movies that glorify God?)
An interesting read.

Snow Way

When we left Minnesota for South Carolina a week ago, the snow wasn't even ankle deep. Now we come back to this? Well ain't that a fine how-do-you-do.
On the way down, we saw cars and trucks all over in the ditches of Wisconsin and Indiana from the first storm which at times had us stopped on the interstate due to the treacherous ice, and on the way back up we saw easily over a hundred in Iowa that had gone off the road due to ice and blowing snow from the second storm. I guess a few people in Wisconsin died. We pray for those who lost loved ones in those storms, and we thank God for granting us safe passage both ways.

A Closer Look

The first stop on our vacation trip to South Carolina was a quick (really quick) visit with my buddy Josh Crain and his wife in Chicago. In the days leading up to our meeting, he kept on whining constantly about the fact that all the photos of me are from too far away. (In truth, he only mentioned it once in an e-mail, but I imagined it as sounding a little whiny.) It was the first time we had met face to face, and you know? It turns out Josh and Emily are pretty good people. And they didn't whine at all.

Hey, I love ya brother!