My testimony, part 1

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I’ve been wanting to publish my testimony for some time now and have had an outline written for at least two years. I was inspired last week by Tim Challies’ Testimony Tuesday, so I’ve decided to start a regular Testimony Tuesday of my own. I’m going to write my testimony in installments and publish them every Tuesday until I’m done.

The outline I’ve got is currently divided into seven sections, but I may combine or split a few sections, so it should end up between six or eight installments long. I’m going to try my darnedest to publish weekly, but some of the sections require more work than others to write, so I may give myself two weeks for those.

The first installment has been published. You can get to it by clicking the link I just provided or by using the “Testimony” link on the navigation bar across the top of every page on the site. :syzygy:

Bible literacy

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TIME Magazine Cover: Why We Should Teach The Bible In Public School - Apr. 2, 2007

I read a controversial article the other day in TIME Magazine: “The Case for Teaching The Bible”, which makes a clear call for courses teaching about the Bible in public high schools. The author, David Van Biema, TIME’s senior religion writer, carefully couches his call with some guidelines, namely that such teaching must be entirely secular and constitutional. The emphasis within the teaching should be on the Bible’s impact on Western history, literature, and culture.

The article mentions a couple of groups producing texts for such classes, including The Bible Literacy Project, which, in cooperation with The First Amendment Center, published a document in 1999 called “The Bible & Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide” and has more recently released a textbook called The Bible and Its Influence.

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Sitenotice Generator

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As far as I could tell, WordPress doesn’t have any kind of global sitenotice feature like MediaWiki, but I needed one to promote my upcoming ride in the 2007 MS Bike Tour, so I wrote my own quick-and-dirty plugin.

I’m in the process of submitting this to wp-plugins.org so I can start some more serious and stable development, but if you’d like to try it out in the meantime, feel free to download the alpha version:

* sitenotice-1.0alpha1.zip
* sitenotice-1.0alpha1.tar.gz

To use the plugin, you’ll need to add a new template tag to an appropriate place where you’d like the sitenotice to appear when it’s enabled (I have mine right at the end of my header.php template file). The new tag is . The plugin adds a new admin panel called “Sitenotice” to the WordPress options menu, from which you can edit the sitenotice message and configure other features.

This is alpha software, so if you install it, realize you’re using it at your own risk. If you do try it out, let me know if you have any feature requests or find any bugs I should squash! :syzygy:

MS Bike Tour ’07

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Start to Finish MS - MS Bike Tour '07

I’ll be riding my bike in the Harmons MS Bike Tour this year on June 23 in Cache Valley, Utah. Read on to find out how you can help me.

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, inflammatory disease that interrupts the flow of information from the brain to the body and, in severe cases, causes impaired mobility and disability. There is currently no known cure for multiple sclerosis and more than 400,000 Americans live with this debilitating illness. This tour (and about a hundred more like it across the country) is a chance for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society to raise awareness and funds, and it’s a great way for me to get in shape and have some fun this summer.

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Simba, my favorite kitty

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Here’s one of the first videos I uploaded to YouTube myself, a demonstration of why Simba is my favorite cat in the world.

Update August 2, 2007: This video (along with all my videos) has been moved to Vimeo. I don’t like some of the new features YouTube released recently so I went looking for an alternative. Vimeo seems to have better privacy controls and I just like their interface a little better than YouTube’s.

Also see “Simba, my favorite cat pt. 2” →

Christian basics

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I just finished a couple of great books: Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know by Wayne Grudem and Basic Christianity by John R.W. Stott.

Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know

If I had to choose one of these books over the other, I think it would be Christian Beliefs. It follows the same major topics as most full-blown theology texts, and, in fact, is a condensation of Grudem’s 528 page Bible Doctrine, which is itself a condensation of Grudem’s 1,296 page Systematic Theology. As such, there is a wealth of information packed into this svelte volume. I especially found the Westminster Catechism, the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy, and the ancient Christian creeds in the back of the book to be a nice touch. Grudem also provides a list of roughly 45 books for additional study from a variety of perspectives. I can’t think of a better, more easily digestible introduction to Christian theology than this book, and have already recommended it to several friends and others who have inquired about what I believe.

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See you later, spam!

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SPAM!

When I first started hosting my own domain five or so years ago, I was happy to discover this really neat thing called a catch-all email account. Basically, I can set up as many static email addresses as I want or need, but any unrouted mail, no matter who it’s addressed to, is redirected into the main catch-all account.

This comes in handy for tracking who I’ve given my email address to (among other obvious reasons). For instance, if I were dealing with a fictional company called Wally’s Widgets, Inc., I might give them the address, [email protected]. That way, if I start getting a lot of junk mail pointed to that address, I know it’s either coming from Wally’s Widgets, or Wally’s Widgets has sold my email address to the evil spammers. Over the years that’s happened with a few of the addresses I’ve given out, and when it does I simply add that address to a server side filter that bounces those emails.

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NPR miscellany #3

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NPR Logo

I’ll come clean and say that Poker is one of my guilty pleasures. I’ve got a Texas Hold ‘Em game on my Treo and I usually stop to watch whenever I’m channel surfing and run across a high-stakes Poker tournament on TV. I’m also a modest fan of Jazz music, so I was entertained by a story I caught today on Weekend Edition. The story was about a new music collection that’s been released by Ricky Jay called Ricky Jay Plays Poker. The collection includes Poker-related music down through the decades, a good portion of which is classic Jazz and Folk music. Snippets of the songs were played throughout the interview. I especially like the last song they played, “Dolan’s Poker Party” by Frank Crumit. Here’s the story: “Hustler Ricky Jay Deals Poker Music, History” (listen).

Another interesting story I heard today, also on Weekend Edition, was about an Eagle Scout from Maryland who has earned all 122 merit badges the Boy Scouts of America has to offer. His last merit badge was bugling, which he says he saved until the end because he never was very musical. It’s interesting to hear how getting all these merit badges has positively affected his career choices and his understanding of the world around him. Here’s the story: “Maryland Eagle Scout Earns All 122 Merit Badges” (listen).

A third and final story I found interesting today, once again on Weekend Edition, was about the Scott’s Miracle-Gro company and a controversial policy they have against employing people who smoke cigarettes. The policy (among other changes) was initially proposed to cut health care costs. The story was done in two segments. Here’s the first one, where Scott’s VP of Corporate Communications, Jim King, answers questions about the policy: “Miracle-Gro Faces Lawsuit over No-Smoking Policy” (listen); and here’s the second one, where they discuss in further detail a lawsuit over the policy that’s being brought against Scott’s by one of its employees: “Former Miracle-Gro Employee Challenges Policy” (listen). :syzygy: