"If I am anxiously striving to make myself feel certain that all my beliefs are true, fearfully avoiding anything that might cause me to doubt them, and fearfully suppressing any doubts that I may already be experiencing, doesn’t this indicate that I am not getting my core need for love, worth, and security from the God who is revealed on the cross? " -Greg Boyd, Benefit of the Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty
Which Star Wars Actor Became Enormously Wealthy Off The Film’s Royalties?
According to an article titled "Study shows eating Bacon will make you live Longer" ...Science has enriched the lives of bacon-lovers everywhere. A study conducted by researchers at ETH Zurich has concluded that the high levels of Vitamin B3 (known as niacin) in this meat could help you live longer.And they told me bacon would kill me! Lets all give "science" a standing ovation!
One of my blogging friends posted recently about how she wanted to use a Blogspot name that is not available because it was used many years ago and is now defunct. It reminded me of how many of my friends gave me the business when I moved to Kansas City, Missouri in June, 2010. They said that I could no longer be known as Kansas Bob simply because I no longer lived in Kansas.
It does seem to me that our history here in America has greatly influenced our thinking about guns. Some of my friends tell me that they feel a need to protect themselves from criminals - some even feel a need to have a gun to safeguard against a government takeover. My thinking is that I wish we were more like Australia - on this issue anyways.It was never much of a gun culture to start with. Sure there are gun clubs, and farmers have rifles for killing sick animals or things like rabbits (which are not native, for some unimaginable reason some early settlers thought it was good idea to bring them in, and they've been a nuisance ever since) but most of us city-dwellers (over 80% of the Australian population) have never touched a gun in our lives. After the Port Arthur shooting the government instituted a massive buy back, and people voluntarily handed their guns in. You are only allowed a gun licence (and can't buy one without it) if you fit certain tightly defined criteria -- e.g. farmer, member of a gun club etc (and gun club members have to leave their guns locked up at the club). We don't feel vulnerable -- most criminals don't have guns either, because there were never that many guns around to begin with.
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To put it in some sort of cultural perspective, we don't have a right to bear arms written into our constitution (because no one has ever thought we needed it) and we have never had a war fought on Australian soil. And since the gun buy-back, there have been no more mass shootings,and that was more than 25 years ago. Most of us are completely mystified by American gun laws, but I'm sure it comes down to historical differences -- most Australians feel no need to privately defend themselves.
At this, the audience broke out in cheers, and Stewart was left speechless. And I too was speechless. If you want to see more I suggest that you catch the interview on YouTube here."When in 2012, we were – I was with my father and someone came and she told us have you seen on Google if you search your name that the Taliban has threatened you, and I could not believe it, I said it’s not true, and even after threat we saw it; I was not worried about myself that much I was worried about my father, because we thought that the Taliban are not that much cruel that they would kill a child, cause I was 14 at that time.
But then later on I used to – I started thinking about that and and I used to think that the Talib would come and he would just kill me, but then I said: if he comes what would you do Malala?
Then I would reply myself: that Malala take a shoe and hit him, but then I said – then I said:
If you hit a Talib with your shoe then there would be no difference between you and the Talib, you must not treat others that much with cruelty and that much harshly, you must fight others but through peace, and through dialogue and through education."
From an old issue of Lifehacker :: Maybe you've heard of Bitcoin—it wants to shake the entire global economy, and has become the financial bubble du jour with a skyrocketing value. It's online money—an alternative to dollars and euros. Well what's that mean?
Growing up in New York City, I think that I have always leaned towards the cynical. My 
A few quotes from my inbox to challenge and inspire you ...
This year Ann and I have been watching a BBC show called Doc Martin. It is about a big time brilliant surgeon in London who is forced to take a job as the only doctor at a small English village. It is a pretty funny show but one that demonstrates what, in a microcosm, healthcare is like in England. Here are a few observations:
