Some Blog Site

Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering). It wasn’t run because I didn’t actually write a full blog post for Jon, I just sent him an outline of ideas. But I decided to fill it out and present it to you today.

Here is the headline I came up with:
Christians shouldn’t own radar detectors, and other fine points of Romans 13

I don’t really have much to the body of this post, other than to note some things about laws and speeding. But I do remember that a college professor I had said something about the American revolution being un-Christian, because it was rebelling against the established/recognized ruler.

My take on that was that it would have been un-Christian for the leaders of the American revolution, but to the average person in the colonies, maybe not. Because as a citizen of a land, if the old government gets overthrown and a new government is established, you would be within the guidelines to obey the new government. And if your conscience told you to obey the old government until they abdicated their control of your land, that too would be within the guidelines.

But I hope that none of you readers ever has to be in the position to have to make that choice.

And that really strayed off the topic of radar detectors.

Having recently driven through Virginia, I saw a bunch of signs that said “Speed Limit Enforced by Aircraft”. And that got me thinking.

I doubt the speed limit is actually enforced by the aircraft. It should say “Vehicle Speed Measured by Aircraft”, or something like that. Because there’s no way the airplane is pulling you over.

Plus, “enforced” sounds a little strict, like they have some way of making you go the speed limit whether you want to or not. I suppose that’s on purpose, as they want you to obey. The sign gave me the mental picture of the aircraft being a military VTOL that would descend and hover right in front of you, with guns very visible to let you know they mean business. That would be enforcement.

Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering). It wasn’t run because I didn’t actually write a full blog post for Jon, I just sent him an outline of ideas. But I decided to fill it out and present it to you today.

What role should luck have in Christianity? We do see people casting lots, which would seem to us to be a game of chance, but it also a way for God to communicate. Christian broadcasters should announce Stanford’s quarterback as “Andrew Providence” or “Andrew Blessing” rather than “Andrew Luck”.

Similarly, gatherings with food should be called “pot blessings”.

That’s how long ago I wrote that – Andrew Luck was a college player. Since then he has gone into the NFL as a player, retired as a player, and then joined the executive ranks.

For a recent blog post, I knew I had written about “raising awareness” a while back and wanted to reference that. Not having all my blog post dates memorized, I turned to a search engine for help.

Many years ago, when I setup Some Blog Site, I added a search feature that uses Google to provide results. So I started with that. I looked up “awareness” on the site and did not get the page I knew existed.

Then I switched to Duck Duck Go and it gave me the page I wanted as the first result. Just for fun, I tried Bing, and Bing was also helpful.

I rarely use Google anymore, because my recent experiences with it are not good. If it won’t find things I know exist and am looking specifically for, how can I trust that it will give me the right results for something I don’t know as much about?

Note that I didn’t grab the Google screenshot before the latest post, so originally it didn’t have the first four results, which are the one I just made and not the one I was looking for.

Here are Duck Duck Go and Bing:

It seems Google prioritizes recent results and just kind of forgets about older results, not even bothering to mention they exist.

For fun, I thought I’d try one more check, with the keyword “helmet”.

Here are Duck Duck Go and Bing:

Anyway, I normally use DuckDuckGo now, because it gives better results and because I can turn off any AI responses.

Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering). It wasn’t run because I didn’t actually write a full blog post for Jon, I just sent him an outline of ideas. But I decided to fill it out and present it to you today.

What is the Entryway called?

Depending where you grew up, you call the church entryway different things. Please vote on what you think the church entryway should be called:

A. Entryway
B. Foyer
C. Vestibule
D. Narthex
E. Lobby
F. Airlock

I don’t have personal experience with this, but I was thinking about the old topic of raising awareness and for some reason I made the connection with drunkenness.

Normally to have fun you go to an event and it’s a higher level than your normal activity, so you end up having fun.

Being drunk fools you into thinking you’re having fun. Instead of going to something that’s a higher level than your normal activity, what it does is bring your mental ability lower so whatever you’re doing seems fun. But if fun, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose that accomplishes its purpose.

This is somewhat related to the concept of raising awareness in that raising awareness becomes pointless when everything is raised. But it’s the opposite in that your current experience becomes better if you keep it the same but lower your brain functionality. I.e. you’re more easily impressed or amused.

Which might not seem to be a bad deal to some people, but you can’t sustain that. It’s like so many people these days – instead of aspiring to be someone better, they look to bring down the other people.

Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering). It wasn’t run because I didn’t actually write a full blog post for Jon, I just sent him an outline of ideas. But I decided to fill it out and present it to you today.

If you want to get out of some job or activity in the church, you have to bring a spiritual aspect to your reasoning. The easiest one in this case is to play the “body of Christ” card when someone asks you to do something.

“I know you need someone to teach Sunday school, but that’s like the role of the mouth or the hand or something. In the body of Christ, I’m the shoulder. Or maybe the collarbone.”

There are legitimate reasons to play that card though. Maybe you have tried to work in the nursery and you know that’s not where you belong.

Just don’t claim to be the tonsils.