Holiday Trees and Santa

At work, this email was sent to all employees yesterday:
As the holidays get closer, we would like to bring a little holiday cheer to our work area. You’re more than welcome to bring ornaments (Non-denominational only please… no Santa, religious etc.) to hang on our holiday tree!
Ignoring the silliness about the ‘holiday tree’, because brevity [...]

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Isolation and the Loss of Hope

I am currently reading through Guns, Germs, and Steel (a good book, although rather verbose). The author mentions in passing a few islands off the coast of Tasmania and southern Australia which were connected to Australia and Tasmania at the end of the Last Ice Age. As the sea rose with the melting of the [...]

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Meditation on Tobacco

I only have a cigar socially about once every 6 months but was introduced to this poem by a friend. If anyone knows of a ‘Drinking Spiritualized’ please feel free to share.
Smoking Spiritualized.
In Two Parts.
Part One: The Law
This Indian weed now wither’d quite,
Tho’ green at noon, cut down at night,
Shows thy decay;
All [...]

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Sovereignty, Stewardship, and Climate Change

A basic presupposition of Christianity (which is oft forgotten) is that God is in complete control of the universe; i.e., he is sovereign. God has revealed he is Creator and Redeemer and is sovereign over both creation and redemption. When he speaks, things happen. Yet God does not often thunder from beyond the sky, but [...]

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Calvin and Hobbes

While I was websurfing, I found this site with this great image.

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Xenophobia and Talk Radio

I must admit, I sometimes listen to talk radio, mostly in the morning when all the music stations have talk anyway. The local FM Talk Radio station is named ‘The Truth’, which is quite a pretentious name for news and politics radio. Recently, (well I only started listening a few months ago, but probably since [...]

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Board Game Night

Yesterday, my wife and were invited to our friends’ house where we ate dinner and played a couple of board games: Yellowstone and Acquire.
We played Yellowstone before dinner, while their rambunctious two-year old played with her large floor puzzle. Yellowstone is a fun, non taxing, game. In the game you have to control a [...]

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Locust, the BBC, and Repentance

I was watching the Planet Earth on DVD last night and again saw the locust plague. It was quite interesting to watch and I had written a note about it the first time, which is the basis for this post. (Although I have expanded it.)
Watching the destruction brought by the swarm and hearing David Attenborough [...]

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Obdurate

As the title of the blog included etymology I suppose I should include a post about it. The other day I was reading The Institutes of Christian Religion — which one should never read without a dictionary nearby — when I came across the word obdurate which is apparently very similar to obstinate. My [...]

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Homebrew

With 2 batches of homebrew under my belt, I’m looking to do another soon. I decided to appease my SO and brew a Cherry Wheat Ale; I’ll probably do a kit again until I get comfortable enough to play with the recipes. My first batch I named what the recipe was labelled, and worked as a [...]

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Revelation and Epistemology (Part One)

Nearly all the wisdom we posses, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.  
— John Calvin — Institutes of the Christian Religion
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
— J.R.R. Tolkien — The Hobbit 
Call me Ishmael.
— Herman Melville — Moby Dick 
In [...]

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