Superman combo

Random Superman things . . .

1. I see very few movies, so I’m not sure if I’ll see the Man of Steel.  But it does sound really good.  The bad guys are evolutionists — how sweet is that?!

[T]his Man of Steel movie is one of the most spiritually symbolic and Messianic-image-packed treatments ever made about this character. Here, Clark Kent even comes to understand—at the age of 33, no less—his responsibility to step up, face off with and destroy an ultimate evil that threatens all mankind.

But that’s at the end. At the climax. All through this film dialogue and images hint at connections between Superman and Jesus. Several people, from Jor-El to Jonathan to Zod’s female second, Faora-Ul, talk to Clark about his ability (or lack of ability) to save the people on his adopted planet. Superman levitates with his arms spread in a cross-like form on several occasions. When he goes to his church to ask a priest for advice, the camera’s eye frames a stained-glass representation of Christ over the young Clark’s shoulder. The priest tells him, “Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith first. The trust part comes later.”

After Clark rescues a bus full of children, a kid’s mother states, “This was an act of God!” Clark asks his dad, “Did God do this to me?” When Lara worries about her infant son’s safety on Earth, Jor-El assures her, “He’ll be a god to them.” Bad guy Kryptonians tell Superman that they will win because “evolution always wins.”

2. When digital photography and editing came out in the late 90′s I had fun with the girls and with Junior Achievement classes by taking pictures of them with their arms over their heads and then putting them in 8×10 Superman photos like this (except with the kids, instead of Wishbone as a puppy).  They had no idea why they were posed like that until they saw the pictures.  Good times.

3. Enjoy this Stephen Crowder video about how Superman would have to act if he were in a union.

Any AARP tips?

I turned 50 in January.  So what does the world do to celebrate 50 consecutive years of not dying?  (A new personal best, by the way — take that, haters!)

1. You get to have the most fun medical procedure ever!  A colonoscopy!  Note to the medical community: You have 5 years to come up with a better way to prepare for it — or better yet, replace it with some sort of MRI-thing. 
2. You get invited to join AARP.  Seriously?  I’m only 50!

I’m not a big fan of AARP’s politics, but I am a big fan of discounts.  And membership is relatively inexpensive.  So, AARP members, what benefits do you see with membership?  Do they have better deals on home and auto insurance?  Are there any travel benefits that are better than what AAA offers?  Anything else I should be aware of?

There is one other bonus: Our local outlet mall gives discounts to “seniors” like me on Tuesday nights.  Woo-hoo!

Naps!

I’m a big fan of short naps.  When I can work them in I feel better and get more done.  Long naps aren’t as effective, as I wake with a “sleep hangover.”  See Famous Nappers: 8 Men Who Napped for some interesting stories.

What is your view on naps?

Sheep, wolves and sheepdogs

I updated this in light of the current gun debate and added some thoughts on the spiritual parallels.

A now-defunct blog made some important distinctions between three types of people:

• Sheep, the ”kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep. I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep.”
• Wolves, who ”feed on the sheep without mercy.  Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.”
• Sheepdogs, who “live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.”

“If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf.

But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.”

I’m against war and violence in general, but there are times when it is required.  I find pure pacifism to be unrealistic and actually unloving in many cases.  Note that when I say pacifist I am using the Dictionary.com definition of “a person who is opposed to war or to violence of any kind” (emphasis added). 

In this metaphor, there is nothing wrong with being sheep.  What is wrong is the naive assumption that we will ever be able to live without sheepdogs.  One thing that bothers me about some pacifists is not only their lack of gratitude but their contempt for those who protect them.

A thought from George Orwell:

We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence upon those who would do us harm.

There is a spiritual parallel as well.  Consider all the wolves in sheep’s clothing who eternally danger people with their lies about God.  Not everyone is equipped to battle those wolves, but some of us have worked hard to know how to refute their lies.  We don’t expect everyone to do what we do, but we do appreciate it when people don’t blame us for being “divisive” or some such thing.  We tend to be intrinsically motivated, though I will say that I get the nicest notes from time to time from people who agree completely with the views here but are too afraid to say so publicly.  I’m fine with that.  It is nice to know that they pray and are supportive.

Shameless plug time!

If you have several seconds of spare time and want to help my daughter and future son-in-law win something for their wedding — and I’m pretty sure you do — please click here then click Like on their picture.

I, in turn, promise to click on at least one legal, moral and non-Liberal thing at your future request. And I’m not just saying that!

Many thanks to those of you who have already done so!

You can subscribe to this blog via email!

First, my apologies to the 181 people who already subscribe via email who are muttering, “Well, duh, Captain Obvious.”

Since I write this blog I never subscribed via email.  Unless someone is Blogging While Intoxicated — still a misdemeanor in 35 states! — you should know what you’ve posted.  But I tested the subscription feature today to see how it works.

If you don’t subscribe by email, put your address in the box the right and click “Follow this blog via email!”  You get the posts sent directly to your inbox and you can comment by replying to the emails (I love the Ctrl-R shortcut!) and follow the conversations from there.

Many thanks to all of you readers!

 

 

Go check out this blog . . .

A long time commenter started his own blog @ Lone Star Blessings ~ Musings about living a faith driven life.

Check it out.  He holds all the right views (which is to say, we agree on most everything).

Follow this blog!

Thanks to all of you who read this regularly!  I didn’t realize until last week that over 100 people follow via email.  Since I read blogs via Google Reader I assumed most folks did the same.  The stats show about 500 hits per day, but I’m sure lots of those are for random search topics.  And I don’t know if it counts those who view via readers.

If you want to receive it via email then just click the cleverly titled “Follow via Email” button towards the upper right of the main page.

Anyway, I appreciate you all and that makes me want to write more (and spell-check / grammar-check more, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate!).

Fooducate

My brother-in-law introduced me to a cool app called Fooducate.  You can search for foods online or just scan the barcode of a food product with your phone and it gives you nutritional information like this.

Most things aren’t surprising.  Dr. Pepper gets a D?  Wow!  Organic carrots get an A?  Who would have thought?

But it is very useful to discover what foods pretend to be healthy but aren’t.  Even the most nutritious looking, name brand protein bars get lousy scores.  Just eat a Snickers instead (cheaper and tastier).

Cereals are often much less healthy than you’d think.  I recommend checking them before you buy.  If you want a treat, then don’t worry about the score.  But don’t be fooled into thinking you are eating healthy when you aren’t.

If you subscribe to my blog in a blog reader . . .

. . . you’ll want to click “Mark all as read” right after I import a bunch of posts from my other blog (I’m consolidating to save administrative time!).

My apologies for any inconvenience!

Joe Paterno liked Joe Paterno. A lot.

He liked him so much that he looked the other way on a serial child rapist even when the guy was caught in the act. But contacting the authorities might have affected the reputation of Joe’s program and put his friend in jail.

Sure, Joe told his boss, but that was it.  What if it was murder instead of rape?  Would he have just notified his boss?  Really, how hard is to press 3 digits on a phone to call the police?

I’m glad that Penn State has fired those involved, including Paterno.

I’m surprised that the students rioted in defense of Paterno.  Really, kids?  The Ohio State coach was fired over what was, relatively speaking, akin to stealing a paper clip.

Sadly, those kids have probably already been victimized a second time if their abuse led them to question their sexuality, as is often the case.  The Leftists will insist that they were “born that way” and steer them from the treatment and care that could help them heal from the abuse.

There is a timeless lesson here about finishing strong and doing the right thing even if it costs you.  Joe Paterno won’t be remembered for decades of winning and the most all-time victories.  He’ll be remembered as a selfish man who put his desires over the protection of victims of child rape.  Who knows how many more victims there were because of the cover-up?

Fool-proof recovery plan for when you say something inappropriate

It only takes 11 seconds to learn this lesson.

Krusty: It’s a joke.  When you give me that look, it’s a joke.”

Watch Youtube Videos twice as fast!

I love time savers like this.  Listening to Podcasts at 2x speed (actually is is more likely 1.5x) lets me cover a lot more material on my commute.  Now this: How to Watch Youtube Videos Faster (2x speed) – Apologetics 315.

Go towww.youtube.com/html5. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the link that says “Join the HTML5 trial.” Once you have clicked that link, all videos you play in Youtube will not play with flash, but will play with HTML5. That will enable a speed setting on the video player control bar. Just click it to select your listening speed. Now you don’t have to waste so much time on Youtube.

Warning: Others driving with you may not appreciate the faster speed.  At least I know my wife doesn’t.

Travel tip: Bing price predictor

I just wanted to share a quick tip about getting lower airfares.  The Bing travel site has a feature which recommends whether you should buy now or wait for fares to go down.  In my experience it has been accurate.

I’m back. Sort of.

I was in Kenya the last 17 days on a mission trip, so I just had a few blog posts set up to publish while I was gone.

One of the posts got tons of traffic from the allegedly pro-science crowd (they aren’t any more pro-science than I am, they are typically just pro-abortion atheist Romans 1 poster children looking for reasons not to believe and they reflexively repeat the religion vs. science false dichotomy).  I had limited and sketchy Internet access and was surprised to see all the traffic come in one day.  I’m in catch up mode, as you can imagine, so I’ll probably not post many of the comments (nearly all just oft-refuted gems from the Big Book O’ Atheist Sound Bites) because I just don’t have the time.

One of the things I love about mission trips is getting away from Facebook, the news, politics and blogging debates for a while.

Hope you regulars are all doing well.  I’ll be blogging on the trip and more soon.

Review of To Kill a Mockingbird documentary

I enjoyed this piece at Institute on Religion & Democracy (IRD) – 50 Years of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and “To Kill a Mockingbird” is an enjoyable new film documentary recalling the iconic 1960 novel and 1962 movie about race and small town life in 1930s Alabama. The author, now age 85, famously disappeared from public life not long after her explosive success, and never published another book. The movie naturally tries to explain.