Desire Armed

Apparently, Stephen Crane didn't much care for college. He spent most of his short time at Syracuse University playing baseball (he was a decent shortstop). Two years after he dropped out when his name was beginning to be know as a writer, he reflected on his time in school in the following letter.

As far as myself and my own meagre success are concerned, I began the battle of life with no talent, no equipment, but with ardent admiration and desire. I did little work at school, but confined my abilities, such as they were, to the diamond. Not that I disliked books, but the cut-and-dried curriculum of the college did not appeal to me. Humanity was a much more interesting study. When I ought to have been at recitations I was studying faces on the streets, and when I ought to have been studying my next day's lessons I was watching the trains roll in and out of the Central station. So, you see, I had, first of all, to recover from college. I had to build up, so to speak. And my chiefest desire was to write plainly and unmistakably, so that all men (and some women) might read and understand. That to my mind is good writing. There is a great deal of labor connected with literature. I think that is the hardest thing about it. There is nothing to respect in art save one's own opinion of it.

Don't ask me how I found this site. I'm actually not completely sure. But I present you with:

www.godhatesvaginas.com

Kimbo's beard wins.

Well, it's TallSkinnyKiwi's reasons (Why I'm Not A New Calvinist, By One Guy Who Should Be), but I think they're great.

Here are my favorite two.

- irreversibly Western and not accountable to nor appreciative of the emerging global-south based theology (afraid of the power shift?)

- often lacking in an adequate Biblical response to the threat of materialism, consumerism, military aggression, environmental degradation, poverty, celebrity-based pulpit ministry, and a few other issues that seem to be blind-spots.

I was actually surprised that one of the 7 questions wasn't, "How do I talk to women." Guess my stereotype just doesn't fit.

How far can physics take us?

Perhaps the biggest question of all is whether the process of inquiry that has revealed so much about the universe since the time of Galileo and Kepler is nearing the end of the line. "I worry whether we've come to the limits of empirical science," says Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University. Specifically, Krauss wonders if it will require knowledge of other universes, such as those posed by Carroll, to understand why our universe is the way it is. If such knowledge is impossible to access, it may spell the end for deepening our understanding any further.

Turok says that's exactly why the Perimeter Institute exists, to harness the thinking of the world's brightest young minds in an unrestrained environment. By optimising conditions for creative thinking, it may be possible to avoid such an impasse.

"We're used to thinking of theoretical physics as accidental," says Turok. "We need to ask whether there's a more strategic way to speed up understanding and discovery."

His name was Steve Russell. He was the father of Cassie Russell (now Cassie Glave).

A few of you knew her back in the day, so I figured I'd let you know. Prayers and wishful thoughts her way send.

Do two sacrilegious wrongs make a right? Is taking a sacrilegious picture depicting Jesus as a white pro-America/Americanized thing and superimposing my face onto him ok? (Large scale Picture. Smaller Picture.)

I'm hoping to start some major research for a paper I'm doing Monday night. The Paper is on the history of American Evangelicalism and the American Gay Rights Movement. I'm hoping to clearly show and define the differing models in which American Evangelicals have approached the issues raised by members of the LGBT Community.

While just googling around, I ran across this lecture from 2003 at Princeton Theological Seminary. In it, Dr. Blair defines himself as Evangelical and Gay. He also suggests that one of the reason he experienced very little friction in coming out as a Gay born again Christian 50 years ago is because of, "the clear presentation of the plain gospel I heard as a child."

I also found this paragraph to be extremely useful in pointing out the incorrect framework that a large number of evangelicals see homosexuality in.

But in antigay rhetoric, Jesus seems to have died so an anatomical technicality might be tweaked and trumped. It’s what a couple does with two penises or two vaginas instead of what another couple does with one penis and one vagina that constitutes the sin in the antigay argument. As an Evangelical antagonist argues: ‘the complementarity of male and female sex organs [is] the most unambiguous’ indictment against homosexuality. [Robert A. J. Gagnon] But surely sexual complementarity is a bit more complicated than tinker toys! In both heterosexual and homosexual attraction, what draws two people together is the fascinating otherness that each sees in the whole persona of the other, not the shapes of genitalia. Besides, even in the physicality of sexual relationship, much more than the mechanics of genitalia is involved. Another antigay Evangelical argues that without such anatomical dissimilarity, ‘same-sex intercourse loses the symbolic dimension of two-becoming-one present in male-female sex.’ [Stanley J. Grenz] But he fails to appreciate the complexity of the one-flesh phenomenon, a union that surely has more to do with two persons than with two body parts. This ‘sin’ of homosexuality, then, comes down to a matter of anatomical correctness, for whether such same-sex behaviour expresses affection or assault makes no difference. In either case the ‘sin’ remains in the same-sex component – period. That’s hardly an adequate view of even sexual sin.

I thought this was one of the most beautiful and creative things I've seen...ever.

Is that stringed instruments playing Mettallica's Nothing Else Matters around 7:25?

I wish this guy didn't censor his comments. This video has been viewed 33,000 times and only has 9 comments? And those 9 are all positive?

The summary of the video: Christians need to control the mountain of Business, so that they control money, so they can fund the advancement of the Kingdom of God.

Funny to think that when God decided to advance his kingdom it took shape in the form of the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the resurrection of Jesus. Someone should tell God that he used the wrong business model.