C.J. on the Cross

More C.J. on the cross of Jesus Christ:

We awaken each day with a tendency to forget that which is most important: the gospel. All of us should assume this tendency and be aware of this tendency. Because of the Fall and due to the effects of remaining sin, we have a daily tendency and temptation to forget stuff in general and to forget that which is most important in particular.

Assuming this tendency, we must create practices that will enable us to remember what we must not forget—the cross. So each day I seek to spend time in a location where I am not distracted, unhurriedly reading and meditating on Scripture and finding my way in Scripture to a hill called Calvary to meditate each day on Christ and him crucified. Each day I need to remind myself of the gospel. I cannot live on yesterday’s recollection of the gospel. I need to review and rehearse the gospel each day or I will assume the gospel, forget the gospel, and prove vulnerable to all manner of temptation and sin.

C.J. goes on to answer the question he's most commonly asked: “What books on the cross of Christ have affected you the most?” It's great read, as he writes about four books and tells how they've affected him and why he recommends them.

McCain

I was thinking about posting a rant about John McCain and the Republican presidential nomination race. But the most constructive thing I could think of to write was something along the lines of "AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!"

So instead, I'll just ask you to do me a favor. If you consider yourself a conservative, and you support John McCain, please look into the following things related to McCain's record:
McCain-Feingold (has been said to have done more harm to free speech in American than the ACLU)
McCain-Kennedy (no, it's not "amnesty" because it never uses the word "amnesty")
McCain-Lieberman (would have cost the U.S. upwards of 1.3 trillion dollars a year to try to combat global warming)
And then there's the fact that he proudly voted against Bush's tax cuts:


Seriously, I really don't want the two main candidates for President to be a Socialist and a Liberal:

(photos courtesy of MichaelSavage.com)

C.J. Gives In!

C.J. Mahaney has started a blog at Sovereign Grace Ministries. In case you don't know much about him, here's why I love C.J. Mahaney and have learned a lot from him, taken from his first blog post:

I think you can anticipate a disproportionate number of posts on one topic, “Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2), for that, by the grace of God, is what I am most passionate about. So here would be my hope for this blog, and for the handful of you that will join my family in reading it. If I can somehow draw your attention each week to the hill called Calvary and remind you of the Savior’s substitutionary sacrifice on the cross for our sins, if I can draw your attention away from yourself and direct your affections to him, then this blog will have served your soul and made some small difference for the glory of God. I pray it does.

Amen, C.J. Thank you for doing just that for me quite often over the past 8 years or so.

Parody

I enjoy good parody - I posted a little over a year ago about a Weird Al video. I got a good chuckle out of this parody of Carrie Underwood's "Jesus Take The Wheel":

Do's And Don'ts With Babies

You could maybe call this the idiot's guide to babies. I haven't laughed this hard in quite a while.

Basketball Highlights

Thought I'd put up a couple of nice highlights from my two favorite college basketball teams - the Iowa Hawkeyes and the North Carolina Tar Heels. Two teams at nearly opposite ends of the spectrum this season, with UNC undefeated and ranked #1 in the country and Iowa struggling at 8-9 (although they did just hand then #6 Michigan State their second loss of the season).

Anyway, the first highlight is of Justin Johnson trying to bring Iowa back single-handedly against then #12 Indiana (game played January 2):

Johnson scored 19 points in the final 1:56, 16 in the last 1:01, but Indiana held on to win, 79-76. The above clip is titled "Iowa's Justin Johnson Goes Reggie Miller vs. Indiana," but I think the performance was more like Isiah Thomas. In the 1984 playoffs, Isiah scored the Detroit Pistons' final 16 points in 1:34 to tie up their game against the New York Knicks, forcing overtime. The Knicks, led by Bernard King's 44, ended up winning.

The second highlight is from North Carolina's 93-81 win over North Carolina-Asheville:

The behemoth in the middle is Kenny George. The tale of the tape? 7'7" (barefoot, 7'9" with shoes on) and 360 pounds, wearing size 28 shoes. (For reference, Shaquille O'Neal wears size 23.) The young man providing the free facial is North Carolina's 6'9", 250 pound All-American Tyler Hansbrough (a.k.a. "Psycho-T").

The Most Pro-Abortion Candidate Ever?

According to this piece written by Terence Jeffrey, it's Barack Obama. Why?

He is so pro-abortion he refused as an Illinois state senator to support legislation to protect babies who survived late-term abortions because he did not want to concede -- as he explained in a cold-blooded speech on the Illinois Senate floor -- that these babies, fully outside their mothers' wombs, with their hearts beating and lungs heaving, were in fact "persons."

"Persons," of course, are guaranteed equal protection of the law under the 14th Amendment.

...

State and federal versions of this bill became an issue earlier this decade because of "induced labor abortion." This is usually performed on a baby with Down's Syndrome or another problem discovered on the cusp of viability. A doctor medicates the mother to cause premature labor. Babies surviving labor are left untreated to die.

...

"Number one," said Obama, explaining his reluctance to protect born infants, "whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a -- a child, a 9-month old -- child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it -- it would essentially bar abortions, because the Equal Protection Clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion statute."

So evidently Obama would think that my son that was born three weeks early could have just been left to die, and that would have been perfectly OK? I love the "pre-viable" label. Sounds like it's straight out of Hitler's "Final Solution" (read my post from November 2006 about "Baby Knauer"). Are newborn babies supposed to be able to take care of themselves from day 1?

If you have a couple minutes, read to the end of the article, which covers two pages. You won't believe how much more liberal and pro-abortion Obama is than Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer.

The Centrality Of The Home

One of my friends sent me a link to a sermon from Voddie Baucham, entitled "The Centrality of the Home." In it, Baucham addresses the role of the home in discipling our children, while providing commentary on the common church model used today.

An Inconvenient Book

I recently started reading Glenn Beck's new book, "An Inconvenient Book." In it, he shares "real solutions to the world's biggest problems," ranging from dating, marriage, and parenting; to radical Islam, America's oil dependence, and the UN; to tipping, movie rentals, and how to remember names. If you're familiar with Beck, from his radio and/or tv shows, his book comes across in a similar, funny yet informed fashion - "the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment" to use a tag line from his radio show.

The first chapter is on global warming, and I was amazed by some of the quotes included from various global warming extremists advocates:

• "Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world." - Christine Stewart, Canada's former environment minister
• "No matter if the science is all phony, there are still collateral benefits" to global warming policies. - Christine Stewart
• "To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest." - Stephen Schneider, lead 2007 UN IPCC (United Nations International Panel on Climate Control) report author, who made this statement in 1989. Schneider also wrote one of the reports that led to the global-cooling scare of the 1970s.
• "Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental." - Dave Forman, founder of Earth First!
• The Kyoto Protocol is "the first component of an authentic global governance." - Jacques Chirac, then president of France, 2000.
• "I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." - Paul Ehrlich, current president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Standford. Ehrlich made this statement in 1969.
• "In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." - Paul Ehrlich, 1970.
• "Giving society cheap, abundant energy ... would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun." - Paul Ehrlich, 1978.
• "If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels." - Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund
• "Every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned." - George Monbiot, environmental author, 2006.
• "Free enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process. ... Capitalism is destroying the earth." - Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists
• "Every time you turn on an electric light, you are making another brainless baby." - Helen Caldicott
• "The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States: We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the U.S. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are." - Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund

Seriously, I'm all in favor of conserving energy and being good stewards of the Earth and our natural resources. But can we can the rhetoric already? I think you're going to find change much easier to make if you lead by example rather than by verbally attacking people and making senseless, outrageous claims.

In completely coincidental, unrelated stories:

• Low-energy bulbs 'could cause skin cancer'
• Energy-saving light bulbs blamed for migraines

And I saved this one for last:

Congress pulls the plug on incandescents:

The light-bulb design Thomas Edison created in 1879 has been relatively unchanged for more than a century, but its days are numbered.

The death sentence comes courtesy of the federal energy bill signed into law in December. A provision will make it unlawful for stores to sell incandescent light bulbs beginning in 2012.

Customers will instead be asked to purchase compact fluorescent lights, which are more expensive but are said to last more than 10 times longer while using only a fraction of the wattage.

Are you kidding me? "Unlawful" to sell incandescent light bulbs? Not only are compact fluorescent bulbs more expensive, they are environmentally dangerous. I'm pretty sure the EPA doesn't have instructions for disposing of broken incandescent light bulbs, but the do have instructions for disposing of broken compact fluorescent bulbs, which contain mercury.

First, the EPA's general warning:

Humans use mercury in a variety of manufacturing processes and products such as thermometers and fluorescent lamps. If you improperly dispose of products with mercury in them, they may break and release mercury vapors which are harmful to human and ecological health.

• Dispose of used mercury-containing items properly.
• Clean up mercury spills properly and report them to the proper authorities when necessary.

You might want to write this next part down, because you'll need to have it handy by 2012, at least:

What Never to Do with a Mercury Spill

• Never use a vacuum cleaner to clean up mercury (but see the "What to Do if a Fluorescent Light Bulb Breaks" section below for more specific instructions about vacuuming broken fluorescent light bulbs). The vacuum will put mercury into the air and increase exposure. The vacuum appliance will be contaminated and have to be thrown away.

• Never use a broom to clean up mercury. It will break the mercury into smaller droplets and spread them.

• Never pour mercury down a drain. It may lodge in the plumbing and cause future problems during plumbing repairs. If discharged, it can cause pollution of the septic tank or sewage treatment plant.

• Never wash mercury-contaminated items in a washing machine. Mercury may contaminate the machine and/or pollute sewage.

• Never walk around if your shoes might be contaminated with mercury. Contaminated clothing can also spread mercury around.

What to Do if a Fluorescent Light Bulb Breaks

(EPA is continually reviewing its clean-up and disposal recommendations for CFLs to ensure that the Agency presents the most up-to-date information for consumers and businesses.)

Fluorescent light bulbs contain a very small amount of mercury sealed within the glass tubing. EPA recommends the following clean-up and disposal guidelines:

1. Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more.

2. Carefully scoop up the fragments and powder with stiff paper or cardboard and place them in a sealed plastic bag.

   1. Use disposable rubber gloves, if available (i.e., do not use bare hands). Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes and place them in the plastic bag.

   2. Do not use a vacuum or broom to clean up the broken bulb on hard surfaces.

3. Place all cleanup materials in a second sealed plastic bag.

   1. Place the first bag in a second sealed plastic bag and put it in the outdoor trash container or in another outdoor protected area for the next normal trash disposal.
      Note: Some states prohibit such trash disposal and require that broken and unbroken lamps be taken to a local recycling center.

   2. Wash your hands after disposing of the bag.

4. If a fluorescent bulb breaks on a rug or carpet:

   1. First, remove all materials you can without using a vacuum cleaner, following the steps above. Sticky tape (such as duct tape) can be used to pick up small pieces and powder.

   2. If vacuuming is needed after all visible materials are removed, vacuum the area where the bulb was broken, remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister) and put the bag or vacuum debris in two sealed plastic bags in the outdoor trash or protected outdoor location for normal disposal.

Ah, yes. The magic of two sealed plastic bags.

Here's a good question & answer from Energy Star's FAQ about compact fluorescent bulbs and mercury:

What precautions should I take when using CFLs in my home?
CFLs are made of glass and can break if dropped or roughly handled. Be careful when removing the bulb from its packaging, installing it, or replacing it. Always screw and unscrew the lamp by its base (not the glass), and never forcefully twist the CFL into a light socket. If a CFL breaks in your home, follow the clean-up recommendations below. Used CFLs should be disposed of properly (see below).

How do you unscrew a bulb by it's base?

Iowa Caucus

Michael Medved breaks down the numbers from the Iowa Caucus a little more than those in the media claiming that Huckabee won just because of a large "evangelical" voter turnout:

... According to the exit polls used by major news networks, a majority of voters who described themselves as “evangelical” or “born again” Christians actually voted against Huckabee –with 54% splitting their support among Romney, McCain, Thompson and Ron Paul. Yes, Huckabee’s 46% of Evangelicals was a strong showing, but it was directly comparable to his commanding 40% of women, or 40% of all voters under the age of 30, or 41% of those earning less than $30,000 a year. His powerful appeal to females, the young and the poor make him a different kind of Republican, who connects with voting blocs the GOP needs to win back. He’s hardly the one-dimensional religious candidate of media caricature.

It’s also idiotic and dishonest for observers to keep harping on anti-Mormon bigotry as the basis for Mitt Romney’s disappointing showing. Yeah, it's true that 81% of Evangelicals voted against Romney--- but 75% of ALL Iowa Republicans voted against him, so where is the big evidence of "anti-Mormon bigotry"? In other words, there’s only a 6% difference between his general rejection and his Evangelical rejection. There’s no evidence, in other words, that those who described themselves as “born again” or “evangelical” faced an especially tough time voting for a Mormon. Romney, after all, finished second among this group—as he finished second among the electorate in general. Among Evangelicals, Mormon Mitt beat John McCain, Fred Thompson and Ron Paul by a ratio of nearly two-to-one…a bigger, not smaller margin of victory over these other non-Mormon candidates than he managed to achieve in the electorate in general. The message ought to be obvious: the core issue was phoniness, not faith-- and the religious and non-religious alike react badly to phoniness.

Meanwhile, 87% of non-Evangelicals voted against Huckabee.... compared to only 66% of all Iowa Republicans.... in other words a 21% gap! Think about this.... THERE'S MORE EVIDENCE IN THE EXIT POLLS OF ANTI-EVANGELICAL PREJUDICE than there is of anti-Mormon prejudice. Huckabee did well across the board with all groups in the exit polls except one: the 40% who said "no" to the question, "Are you a 'born-again' or 'evangelical' Christian?" He finished fourth among this group, behind Romney, Thompson and McCain.

The evidence is pretty clear, isn't it? The preferences of Evangelicals mirrored those of Iowans in general. But the preferences of the "non Evangelical" group were distorted by their religious beliefs (or non-beliefs) and led them (as the same prejudices leads angry members of the conservative establishment) to blast, resent and dismiss the Huck.