Blitherings

Starting the telescope deisgn process on the Astronomy page

I have created a new page on Blitherings to track my new hobby… let’s see how long THIS lasts

ASTRONOMY!!

I’ve recently been learning a bit about what it means for a church to “be relevant.” I used to hear this phrase and think, “Oh man… here comes someone’s lame justification for hanging out in bars, partying, and getting wasted.” Typically, this IS what people are trying to say when they say that Christians need to be relevant.

Being relevant means being able to relate to something or someone else, in this case I am speaking of the Church being relevant to the rest of the world. In other words, we need to know how the world works and have a general understanding of how society operates on a micro and macro scale. Unfortunately, Christians get involved with their church (which is GOOD!), but then they become uninvolved with non-Christian society. Christians have only Christian friends, only go to Christian places, and look down their noses at folks who are outside of their “bubble.” So… did Jesus live in a Christian bubble? uh… no. He was “caught” hanging out with “the wicked,” those folks who were not inside the bubble of the Jewish faith. The other Jews saw this from inside their bubbles and said, “Surely the Son of Man would not associate with those types of people, he’d only hang out with us and tell us what a great job we are doing by not associating with them!”

Although people flocked to Jesus to hear what he had to say, he also went out in to the world to reach the people who needed him most. People who had lost hope - i.e. the prostitutes, beggars, drunkards, adulterers, etc. This doesn’t mean that Jesus participated in these things (this is where being relevant and falling into sin are divided). Jesus understood how society operated and he knew what people needed. He understood what people were feeling, lacking, going through, but he was not involved in such things himself. This is how the church SHOULD be to the world. In the world, but not of it.

Instead, Christians have become completely ignorant and disconnected from the folks with whom are supposed to be sharing Jesus’ love. They walk through parks in the evening and toss tracts on passed out homeless folks and think, “I sure am sharing Jesus!” Please don’t think that I am taking the high and mighty path here, I am just now adjusting my vision to see that I have been existing in a bubble for years!

This video really opened my eyes to how disconnected the church is from the rest of society:

So, what can we do about it? Well, we can start getting out of our comfortable Lazy-Boy bubbles and actually showing people love. We can stop shouting from atop our soap boxes and go down and hug, feed, talk to people who are searching for love. We can stop telling people how wrong they are and start by telling them how much they are desperately wanted and loved by an almighty creator! Once they understand how loved they are, change will develop out of a desire to return love to Him - not out of a fear of Hell.

Writing this down is so much easier than real action, but before bursting my bubble I need to see that I have one in the first place. Honestly, I think we ALL have bubbles, some are just thicker than others. What do you think? Am I totally off here? Is this terribly obvious to everyone but me?

Back in the day, when Google released “G-Chat” I was quite impressed. A http chat service: convenient and light. Well now they’ve taken it to a whole new level. Http voice and video.

This morning I posted how stoked I was to get free schwag just for voting. Well, according to an article in the Washington Post:

“…freebies might be a violation of election laws — they could be viewed as bribes even after a vote has been cast.”

I think this is pure silliness since they are in no way pushing people to vote in a certain manner.

Something I thought about this morning, however, is that these promotions could be considered a form of ageism since the only people reaping benefit must be of voting age. Not that folks 18 and under necessarily drink plain ol’ drip coffee anyway.

Woohoo! Got up early and exercised my constitutional right this morning. Once I got through the line, voting was a snap! The touch screen voting machine was super easy and I’d guess it took me all of 30 seconds to get my votes through the machine. For some folks it appeared that either they were having a difficult time figuring out how to use the machine, or it was the first time they’d actually read any of the ballot issues. Either way, it’s scary to imagine how many people are voting that have no clue what the heck they are doing.

Of course, the first thing I did after voting was go to Starbucks for my free Joe… no no, not the plumber

Side note: On the little slip of paper that you bring with you to vote, it says in capital letters, “DO NOT BRING YOUR CELLPHONE INTO A POLLING PLACE!” There was a woman who was collecting cellphones from people prior to entering the voting room, and the guy in front of me had the audacity to deny that he had a cell phone though I saw him fiddling with it only moments prior. The nerve!

This morning I decided to dress up the ol’ Grape Nuts with a bit of fruit. First a heap of blueberries, then some nice sliced banana. Little did I know that this would be my first experience with a Siamese banana!

Turns out this is not the first occurance of such a thing…
Google Results on “Siamese Bananas”

BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Man, that’s good stuff.

Big news in the housing market: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been seized by the government. You may be aware that these secondary mortgage giants have been dangerously close to bankruptcy in the wake of our current economic slump. There has been a lot of speculation about what the government planned to do about this, and the best way to handle this delicate situation.

Many people feel that if the government were to allow these two entities to go bankrupt, it could have a serious negative impact on the US economy - potentially spurring a full-on recession. Meanwhile, others feel that if the government were to simply bail them out, that the monopoly held by these entities as well as the manner in which they acquire mortgages and make millions off of them would be allowed to continue unhindered.

It’s still way too soon to see how this compromise of both options will pan out. Interest rates will be the interesting item to watch over the next couple months. This comment on the article linked above is very disconcerting…

I decided to create a dedicated post in response to Greentheo’s post “Still Voting for Nader”, so that I could insert pictures, text manipulations, links etc. rather than be confined to the comment box. Also, it’s +1 to my post count!

The long list of items that Nader has been involved in, as far as legislation being passed and various organization participation/founding, is very impressive and persuading to me. More so, the interviews with Nader definitely portray Nader as a cantidate that is more concerned with creating a better United States than simply fulfilling a life goal of becoming the President of the United States of America. Not that I’m saying either of our two primaries are guilty of this, but it’s definitely not the case with Nader. His ideas for the future of health care, trade deficit correction, minimum wage, environmental protection, and mega corporations all sound just peachy to me. However, there is one featured component of his campaign that would directly impact me in a very negative way.

In part 2/4 of the interview videos, Nader begins to talk about his beliefs on government military contracts. He even specifically names Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and a couple other “big dogs” in the government contracts field. While he did not mention Ball Aerospace specifically, any restriction in funding with the “big dogs” will have a direct impact on Ball’s business. Why do I care? Well, Ball is the responsible party for funding my way of life - they are my primary employer. Ball Aerospace, a subsidiary of Ball Corporation which controls a huge amount of the aluminum and plastic packaging business in the world, is almost exclusively a government contracts entity. They are responsible for supplying the majority of the antennas to the US military, and have developed a number of satellite systems, instruments, cameras, and all kinds of little gizmos for the government. Most of the time, Ball acts as a sub-contract to a bigger player (i.e. Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, etc.). Nader even specifically mentions one of the big contracts Ball is currently working on which is antennas for the F-22.

Currently at Ball Aerospace, many of the contracts that have been awarded have been delayed or canceled all together due to budgeting constraints as a result of spending overseas - as a result we are seeing layoffs galore. By bringing our troops home, as Nader mentions is necessary for reducing the national deficit, some of that budget will be loosened up. However, there will also be less incentive for military spending. Somewhere between the two extremes of where we are now with the war and where we would be if we brought all of our overseas troops home, there must be a happy medium.

Another item that greatly concerns me is Nader’s determination that a divided Israel is the solution for peace in the middle east between Palestinians and Israelis. This is very surprising to me since he, only moments later, mentions the Bible specifically regarding greed and power. It is prophesied in the Bible that any nation that comes against Israel (in the sense that Israel/Jerusalem belongs to the Israelies/Jews/God’s chosen people) will be struck down. This site does a good job of explaining this prophecy and describing the current scenario and what will eventually happen to fulfill the prophecy. The Bible also says that “all nations will come against Jerusalem”, which means that the US WILL eventually change it’s policy on a divided Jerusalem. So I’m torn on this issue. Eventually, the US will change its policy, and eventually the US will be struck down as a result. So - is now the time? Obama doesn’t seem to think so, he is an advocate for the single state of Israel.

Just one more thing: do you really think that this is the face of our next American president?