Category: Tangled Web

A blind man sees the world…with a click of his tongue. This is one of the most amazing articles I have ever read.

Kish has trained himself to hear these slight echoes and to interpret their meaning. Standing on his front stoop, he could visualize, with an extraordinary degree of precision, the two pine trees on his front lawn, the curb at the edge of his street, and finally, a bit too far from that curb, my rental car. Kish has given a name to what he does — he calls it “FlashSonar” — but it’s more commonly known by its scientific term, echolocation.

“Running into a pole is a drag, but never being allowed to run into a pole is a disaster,” he writes. “Pain is part of the price of freedom.” This attitude is not wildly popular, especially in a safety-first nation like the United States.

16 tips for beginning homeschoolers. Some are more attacking myths than actual tips, but a good read.

Ultimately, your role will be as a facilitator to your child’s learning.  There’s no need to lecture, and very often you’ll find yourself learning something new right alongside your child.

4 Myths About World War 2. Most focus on the bad light generally cast on the French.

No army in the world at that time could have withstood Germany’s blitzkrieg, planned by the brilliant Erich von Manstein, and led by the audacious Heinz Guderian, and Erwin Rommel –three of modern history’s greatest generals.

Understand by listening closely. A good article on how to establish trust in sales, and to brush up on your social skills in general.

As we got off the plane, Ann stopped me in the gangway, shook my hand and said, “Gill, you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever had the pleasure to ride with on an airplane. It was great getting to know you” – and I had hardly told her a thing about me!

The Danger of “Fruitfulness” without Purity. Scandals of hypocrisy harm the gospel witness, and should be cut at the root with confession and prayer.

Winning or losing the heart battles over confession, repentance, and humility is the difference between those who end well and those who do not. Why hypocrisy often wins the day is, I believe, because leaders learn the possibility of being “fruitful” without being pure. There is, in some sense, the ability to maintain professional administration of ministry and even to see “fruitfulness” in such activities. This, in turn, can deceive one into thinking that confession of heart struggles and personal sins are in some sense unnecessary and mere distractions to ministerial progress.

When Christians Would Be Utterly Insane, an expert from John Piper’s prayer:

It occurs to me to say, Father, that we Christians would be utterly insane to envy people who pitch themselves out of the window of sin—on top of a skyscraper—to enjoy a vapor’s exhilaration of the freefall of greed, or the freefall of drugs, or power, or fame, or sex, or job success—and then death. We would just be insane to envy the world.

A little parable from the Royal Wedding and the new bride:

As those bullies watched this moment they would realise that now, because of her Prince, she’s royalty.

The guy who says he only uses his iPhone in church to read the Bible:

What’s that you say? Am I checking my email, right here in the middle of church? Sir, I am insulted you would even ask that. How dare you!

The Amish have an intentional logic that governs their uses of technology:

By not owning vehicles, the Amish fulfill numerous dimensions of Gelassenheit. They maintain humility by not being caught up in the status-seeking of what kind of car they drive. They maintain the interdependence of a close community and resist the independence afforded by automatic mobility. They retain the human scale of living instead of the automotive scale. Thus, they have walkable communities instead of driveable suburbs.

Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs speaks to the Senate about the denigration of skilled workers in our society:

In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We’ve elevated the importance of “higher education” to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled “alternative.” Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as “vocational consolation prizes,” best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of “shovel ready” jobs for a society that doesn’t encourage people to pick up a shovel.

During a scathing review of The End of Sexuality, Dr. Peter Jones dedicates a large section to the religious and cultural implications of homosexuality:

Homosexuality is not limited here to morals or the lack thereof. It is employed as the attempt to define the very nature of the cosmos as inherently divine. It is for this reason that the Old Testament denounces homosexuality in such strong terms, since it is a sign of pagan religion.

 

A little late, but I hear Hallmark makes a card for that contingency.  It probably even uses the King’s English.