A lot has been made about the Large Hadron Collider, which is scheduled to resume operations this October, and some are wondering whether the collider is capable of destroying the world. The most “likely” scenario I’ve heard is that the collider could cause the formation of a black hole which would suck Earth into crushing oblivion.

Believe it or not, the creation of black holes is hoped for as it would help confirm the existence of theoretical dimensions, among other things.

And you needn’t worry. Look at any object on your desk. If it were to collapse into a black hole, you would not be sucked into it, not unless you got so close as to enter its event horizon. Gravity correlates to mass, and if a book collapsed into a black hole, its mass would remain the same, as would its gravity. (Actually, a book would have to be compressed to such an infinitesimal size that if it were to form a black hole, you’d be hard pressed to notice it, I bet.)

Such is the case at the Large Hadron Collider as well. Black holes may very well be formed, but they certainly aren’t going to destroy the earth. Remember: Even if our own sun collapsed into a black hole, Earth would continue orbiting it as usual — the sun’s gravity would remain constant.

So don’t fret this October. Unless you’re worried about an out-of-control antimatter reaction.

Just kidding!

Large Hadron Collider — XKCD #401

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

You may have heard a lot lately about the cap & trade bill which was recently sped through the House and is currently in the Senate. And you may have, like I had, absolutely no idea what “cap & trade” — emissions trading — is all about.

I asked Dad for a bit of clarification, and here it is, as I understand it from my perspective:

Cap & trade legislation is intrinsically tied to the idea that not only is mankind somehow affecting the climate of Earth but that such effects are significant and could result in Very Bad Things.

The legislation would put into place measures which would curb the perceived causes of climate change by limiting how much carbon businesses would be allowed to release into the environment. This is the “cap” part. They would be able to purchase increased allowances and presumably be able to sell unused portions of their allotment to other businesses — the “trade” part.”

The legislation will increase the cost of energy. Electricity, natural gas, and even gasoline will be affected.

Various numbers have been tossed around as to how much more per year each household will have to pay for energy costs. Various conservative sources I’ve seen have cited anywhere from $1700 to $3000 per year per household. One source I’ve seen stated that the average household in (I think) Ohio would be paying $300 per month more just for electricity.

Liberal sources are quoting much lower costs, though, with increases of $150 to $200 per year per household. That’s obviously a much more palatable number!

But why is there a discrepancy?

The numbers quoted by the conservatives seem to be based on energy use remaining constant; in other words and for example, a household will be $1500 more per year if the family makes no changes in their habits and way of life.

The lower numbers quoted by liberals take into account changes in lifestyle which they hope families will embrace.

So what does cap & trade legislation boil down to?

It is the national encouragement of a changed quality of life by those who buy into bunk science upon everyone, whether they accept the science or not.

You may not think your gas-powered car is having a negative effect on the environment, but to justify Government Motors’ new line of eco-friendly cars, the government wants to jack up the price of gasoline as an “encouragement” to drive what they want you to drive.

Yes, you’re right, cap & trade is an intrusive, manipulative mess.

Good thing I make less than $250,000 per year so that none of this extra burden will apply to me… Oh, wait…

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

The recent supplier shortages on a variety of ammunition has many gun aficionados a bit upset. Target practice, hunting, and even self defense are a bit more difficult when your on-hand ammunition consists of your gun itself, which can be thrown at the target/beast/assailant. And sure it can be argued that one clip of ammunition is more than enough self defense for the majority of the populace’s day to day lives, a little more ammo couldn’t hurt. Especially this ammo:

Ammo, on Ice

If the tray folds closed… How exactly does one get the nice, round bullets shown in the image? Does one side have to be frozen first? I also foresee these things melting rather quickly due to their thin nature. I have a LEGO ice tray which holds rather small ice cubes, and they melt fairly rapidly in a drink.

Still, hand a guest a glass full of bullet shaped ice cubes, and you’ve got yourself a conversation starter. Get a couple of good conversations out of it, and that’d be worth the ~$10 price tag.

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

In our (slow) progression through Genesis, we have seen the creation of the heaven and the earth, of light, and the atmosphere. We have seen the formation of dry land, of Pangaea and the first, primordial sea.

We come now to the third creative day, wherein we read:

And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. ¹²The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ¹³And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. The Book of Genesis 1:11–12

After having separated dry land from the seas on the previous day, God now calls for plant life to sprout, and Earth obeys as all manner of vegetation springs forth into life. It was good, and the day ends.

Pretty simple, right? Perhaps, but there are a number of things to take away from this verse.

First, you should note that this verse refutes the idea that the “days” of Genesis are symbolic of long periods of time, corresponding in some way to the “millions of years” demanded by the foolish conclusions of geologists. In what way does the earth sprouting plants show that? It does so in the fact that if the days are in actuality untold eons, all of the plants mentioned would be long dead by the time the sun is created on day four!.

In other words, if you want to believe that the Scriptures are compatible with evolution of “old-earth” geology, you must not only redefine what the word “day” means, but you must also cut and paste verses into the proper order. Either God created the sun first as the “old-earth” geologist would tell us or He created plants first as the Scriptures tell us. One cannot have it both ways without doing great damage to the integrity of the Scriptures.

Second, you should note that this verse precludes the idea of evolution being responsible for Earth’s plant life. The plants which God caused to sprout reproduce via seed “according to their own kinds.” Millions and millions of years of a pine tree reproducing into a pine tree will never yield a fir tree. I don’t doubt that there have been mutations along the way. Sin absolutely wrecked the integrity of every gene pool. That’s why we have sickness — and sicknesses which are still mutating today, rendering medicines ineffective — and deformities and so on.

But “according to its own kind” is straightforward. It’s either true or it isn’t, and it’s an incredible leap of faith to redefine the words in that phrase to mean that the plants reproduce “in a manner which reflects the cumulative result of survival of the fittest and natural selection so that after millions of years, the resulting tree may not resemble the original kind at all.”

Third, you should take away from this verse the supremacy of God. Science and a myriad of pagan religions point to the sun — or a sun god of some sort — as the sustainer of life on Earth. Yet we see here God bringing forth life — plant life, of all things! — without the aid of Apollo or the sun. The natural order would be set in motion later, but on this one day, plants worldwide flourished by the sheer will of God. No photosynthesis. No exhaled carbon dioxide — there was no human or animal life, yet. There was only God.

In your life, there is only God. He is the only constant refuge, hope, and comforter. Apart from His sustaining will, those plants wouldn’t have done a thing on the third day of creation, and apart from His redeeming grace, you will never truly live.

Apart from Him, you are spiritually dead, your spirit bound by the guilt of sin. But through faith in Jesus Christ, there is salvation freely given by a gracious God. The plants obeyed God when He called them forth to life; will you?

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. The Gospel according to John 3:16

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

If you’re a reader via a subscription feed, you’ll want to hop on over to the actual site to see this. I’m very pleased to present the redesign of KingdomGeek, and yes, I’m still rocking the Thesis theme framework.

I’m still working on some things behind the scenes, but I do plan on releasing my customizations for the curious once things calm down a bit. I’ve also tested the site in a variety of Mac browsers — Safari, Firefox, and OmniWeb. Looks good in all those. Feedback from Windows users is welcome.

Actually, all feedback is welcome, whether you’re a designer or not. I want the site to be pleasing to you my users — I don’t have to look at the front end of the site; you do.

So what do you think? Have I overlooked anything? Can anything be improved?

To give credit where it’s due, my design was heavily influenced by Good Bytes, although the styling code I’m using to achieve various effects is substantially different. The background image is a modified version of the image freely available at Cr103.

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

…but not clever enough.

The spammer made several comments (the image links to a larger version for better readability). I’m very interested on them. I’m also pretty interested on that new Bruce Willis movie the top comment mentioned: Die Hard Religious. That has summer blockbuster written all over it. Bruce Willus is a very well known actor. He made lots of movies. Wish I could find one!

Still, maybe the spammer isn’t all evil. He did compliment my cow bell. That almost redeems the comments for me. Almost.

Delete.

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

It has been nearly two months since I wrote the first part of a slow-growing series, Men of the Bible with Multiple Wives. A full-time preacher from Down Under, Armen, brought some interesting conversation to the response thread, but it hasn’t seen much activity as of late. Today, though, Armen posted a series of points on his blog meant as a reply to my pro-polygyny position. Below you’ll find my responses. I confess they are not as thorough as some may like, but there are ample resources online for further research into the subject of biblical polygyny.

1. God’s order in Creation reveals the divine principle

God created a perfect world in six literal days. On the sixth day, He created man, and then woman out of the man to be a help for him.

God’s thoughts on all this? “Very good”.

With God revealling His desire that man should be fruitful and multiply, He could have speeded things up considerably by giving Adam more than one wife.

But, He didn’t.

God’s creation of Adam & Eve ensured that we are all one human race. We are the offspring of one pair of original parents. Within Adam’s life time, there was at least one man — Lamech — who had multiple wives. No one rebuked him for it. Why?

The Scriptures never say anything to the effect of Adam & Eve’s monogamy being binding upon all marital couples. If you want to reach into the lives of our first parents and apply things to your life that the Scriptures do not, then I hope you are consistent and restrict your work to tending your garden and multiplying. You cannot pick and choose some of the principles laid down for Adam & Eve. The Scriptures apply only a few of the principles to others. Regarding marriage, we are simply told by Jesus that divorce is a sin because a husband should cleave to His wife. That does not preclude multiple wives, as exhibited throughout the Scriptures.

2. It’s God’s way to aid raising a godly offspring

In Malachi 2:15 we read, “And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed.”

What’s the prophet recording? I’ll paraphrase it like this, ‘Didn’t God make one? Yet He had power to create more. So why one? For the purpose of raising children who fear and love God’.

Read the passage surrounding the verse for further clarity.

The passage in Malachi 2 has in view divorce, not polygamy of any variety. I’ll quote the entire passage here:

And this second thing you do. You cover the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. ¹⁴But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. ¹⁵Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. ¹⁶“For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.” The Book of Malachi 2:13–16

I’ve heard this passage used against polygyny before, and I just don’t buy it. The passage is speaking of divorce: a man should not divorce his wife because they are in a covenant together, with God as a witness to it. The husband and the wife are made one, bound with “a portion of the Spirit,” for the purpose of raising godly offspring.

None of that precludes polygyny as the rest of the Bible attests repeatedly that a man may have — and thus be “one” with — multiple wives. That is what a wife is in the Scriptures.

3. The Mosaic Law does not sanction it

One of the arguments used by those who may argue in defense of polygamy, is that it is not condemned anywhere in the Mosaic Law.

This appears to be true. But, neither is it sanctioned.

However, it is regulated, which, I confess, is rather interesting.

It is indeed regulated, which isn’t a negative thing against it. Drinking wine is regulated too, in the sense that drunkenness is a sin, but the drinking of wine itself is not a sin. Likewise, monogamous unions have regulations as well (see the Malachi passage above for the biggie).

But does the Law sanction polygynous unions? Yes! Indeed, the Law requires them under certain circumstances! Behold, the Law of the Husband’s Brother (or as it is properly called, levirate law):

“If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. ⁶And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. ⁷And if the man does not wish to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate of the elders and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.’ ⁸Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying, ‘I do not wish to take her,’ ⁹then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, ‘So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.’ ¹⁰And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, ‘The house of him who had his sandal pulled off.’ The Book of Deuteronomy 25:5–10

In the close-knit society of ancient Israel, it was important for the strengthening of the family to keep a family together. This meant that if there were more than one brother, if one died, the other would be responsible for taking his brother’s widow as a wife. Note well that there is no exception clause for living brothers who already have a wife. Note also that refusing to follow through with levirate marriage carries with it a degree of shame.

If polygyny were a sin, and a brother refused to take his brother’s wido as a wife on the grounds that he already had a wife, why would there be shame involved? The simplest answer is that there is nothing wrong with polygyny and that a brother’s refusal to take his brother’s widow as a wife is a slap in the face to his deceased brother.

4. The marriage can be effciently conducted with one wife

A man has no need for multiple wives. If man needed more than one, God, who was to give Adam a “help meet”, would have made him more than one wife.

The reasons for marriage can all be properly satisfied with one wife.

Marriage is more than a practical or pragmatic relationship. Also, it should be noted that this is not an argument against polygyny. Many men live happy, fulfilled lives having never been married, so would that be an effective argument against monogamy? No? Didn’t think so. And neither is the above an effective argument against polygyny.

5. No man can hold office with multiple wives

If a man takes more than one wife, he immediately disqualifies himself from ever holding office in the church. An elder is to be the husband of one wife.

The President of the United States must be a native-born American. Does that mean that every other American must be native-born?

The principles of leadership simply should not be expected to be required of the populace. Keep in mind that the biblical requirements for elders of churches requires a man not only to be a husband but to also have well-behaved kids. Does that make every single man or even married man without children somehow less of a Christian? You cannot apply one aspect of the leadership qualities to all men without being consistent in the matter.

Aside from those issues, the Greek word translated as “one” is μία (mee’-ah) which, according to Strong’s, means “one or first.” In other words, it’s quite possible the verse means that an elder must be still husband to his first wife. A man who has proven his faithfulness to his longest-term wife is a faithful man indeed.

6. The picture of Christ and the Church teaches monogamy

Lastly, the theology and teaching of Eph 5 doesn’t match with having multiple wives, if it’s properly understood.

There is one head, and one body. There is Christ, and the Church; and it’s represented in marriage with man as the head. Should he have multiple bodies?

Also, that passage tells us that men are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church. How did Christ love the church? Sacrificially and particularly. You cannot properly sacrifice yourself to one wife, without minimising the sacrifice made to the other(s). Impossible. Neither can you love each one particularly as Christ loved the Church.

Jesus’ is able to love each of us without diminishing the love given to any other. Parents love each of their children without diminishing the love given to another. Simply because you find something to be impossible does not mean that it is so. Through Christ, all things are possible, and apart from Him is nothing godly possible, for without Him, even a faithful, committed, monogamous marriage is no better than used menstrual rags in the sight of God.

In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul describes his betrothing of the Corinthian believers to Christ. He described them as a “pure virgin.” Do you see that? He’s certainly betrothed to Christ as well, but the picture painted here by the Holy Spirit has the Corinthian believers separately betrothed to Christ. Does Christ have multiple betrothed “pure virgins”? Yes! Otherwise, it must be concluded that Paul had no idea about what he was talking.

I do realize that Paul was speaking figuratively in that passage, though, and was discussing his evangelization of the Corinthians in marital terms; however, if polygyny was really a sin, why would Paul do this? Imagine a preacher — an apostle, no less! — standing up at a conference and addressing the gathered assembles: “I betrothed you believers of Indiana to Christ. I betrothed you believers of Santa Barbara to Christ. I betrothed you believers of Saskatchewan to Christ. I have presented all of you churches as pure virgins to Christ. Not let me tell you how much God hates having multiple wives…”

I’m just not sure that would fly too well. There is no confusion with God. Polygyny is and always has been acceptable. From the earliest of times man has practiced it. The “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11 is nearly a third polygynists (David, Gideon, Moses, Jacob, and Abraham).

And if we count each additional marriage after a man’s first to be a count of polygyny, there are thousands of instances of polgyny recorded in the Scriptures, yet not a single word of condemnation is leveled against it. If sin is transgression of the Law and if polygyny is a sin, then would that not make for a glaring oversight in the Law?

Finally, if polygyny was a sin, we wouldn’t find God describing Himself as one in any way, shape, or form — if anyone’s above reproach, it is He! — yet He does so. Why would that be? Can God sin?

It’s a taboo and touchy subject, but I’m interested in your thoughts.

It is sad commentary regarding the state of the church today that normal, everyday aspects of the lives of biblical heroes is “taboo.” Armen’s correct on that point, though; far too much has become taboo in today’s churches. The Scriptures are explicitly sexual, vividly violent, and would be every bit deserving of a Restricted rating or worse were it ever faithfully turned into a movie. These things shock and startle us. We have become insulated by a comforting picture of a Santa Claus god or some other gross abomination. The very thought that God might have different standards for the different genders is appalling to our “enlightened” ears.

Let the Scriptures speak, friends. Let them define your values, mores, and ethics. Don’t let yourself embrace a culture-colored faith.

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

The situation in Iran has had my heart stirred for a while now, since I first started hearing about it, no thanks to the mainstream media (yes, I heard it first on Twitter). There are people demanding freedom from an oppressive regime, there are people being murdered for their conviction.

Who will stand for these people?

Neda Soltani, the angel of Iran

On the one hand, it is nice to believe that our government shouldn’t intervene in the sovereign affairs of other nations. We’re stretched thin as it is with operations still underway in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention North Korea potentially knocking at Hawaii’s door.

But on the other hand, I dare not elevate money, effort, or time above the lives of the Iranians.

I confess that I have no sympathy for Islam, but I cannot — nor should anyone — turn a blind eye to what has taken place. I have seen the videos coming out of Iran for myself. I have seen real people bleeding and dying in the streets. I’ve never seen real-life death before. No amount of movies or otherwise fictional death could have prepared me for what it’s like. It unnerved me, and I’ll never be able to shake the images from my mind.

And I can only wonder why no one is stopping this. Certainly President Obama knows that the United States military is capable of forceful corrections. Certainly there are stronger measures than the oh-so-threatening sanctions which we’ve unleashed on the still-defiant North Korean regime?

How many must die?

Or are we all too busy worrying about anti-smoking measures, reforming health care, and trying to fundamentally altar the definition of “marriage” to care? Quite frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if an exceeding number of Americans care more about how Uncle Sam handles their next pay checks than if a few Iranians are being killed by a jacked up government.

Our nation — still perhaps the greatest nation on the planet — was birthed out of the struggle for independence, for freedom, for the reclaimanation of God-given liberties of which no man should be deprived. That is our heritage. Perhaps the Iranians are on the verge of the same.

Will the nations of the world sit idly by while the protesting voices are silenced by state police forces? Or will force be lent to their voices?

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

If you’ve visited my site (as opposed to reading only via feed reader) today, you may have noticed that the site is very, well, naked, stripped down to the basic style included with Thesis.

I did that because I was getting a little sick of the previous blue-themed customization that I was running here. I know I’m no designer, and those styles were simply my best attempt at something other than the default. However, as one of the pillars of the Thesis community, I think my personal site’s style ought to be just a little more impressive than that.

So I stripped away the previous style so that it could no longer sit there lookin’ all mediocre, found I site whose style I could shamelessly steal base my own entirely original code off of. And I’m venturing forth into areas I’ve never tread before as an amateur designer — using Thesis’ full-width framework and a healthy dose of CSS 3, for example.

Oh, and the primary colors will be purples and pinks.

I also make no guarantee that the site will look decent at all in any version of Internet Explorer, as usual. My Windows comp — a Dell of less than two years of age — takes over twenty minutes to start up, and I’d rather just let it rest in peace. I’ll be testing the style in Firefox, Safari, OmniWeb, and other Mac browsers. My faith might be historical, but my coding style doesn’t have to be.

Some things that I’m doing for this redesign:

• I’m going to be serving as much static content as possible from a subdomain to allow users’ browsers to download more at once. I don’t yet have enough traffic to justify using (& paying for) Amazon CloudFront (which Dreamhost supports with just a few clicks) or some other content delivery system, but having the content already segregated on a subdomain will make it that much easier should I ever decide to upgrade in the future.

• I’m organizing my customizations better as I plan on releasing my Thesis custom files (via a Creative Commons license). I’d like to think that at least some of what I’m doing will be interesting or even useful to others!

• I’m re-thinking which features of Thesis I use. Sure, the multimedia box is a great feature, but do I really need it, at least in its current implementation? Likewise, I ditched the Thesis nav menu entirely and used a greatly trimmed down, hand-rolled menu. Yes, I lose the ability to customize it via WordPress’ backend, but does that hurt my feelings? Nope.

• I haven’t started on this yet, but I want to make my site more interesting to visitors, especially first-timers. I’m eyeing a number of plugins which will help to do this. I may be stripping a few plugins too. Along with releasing my customizations, I guess I could share a list of which plugins I’m using too.

And there are probably more, they just aren’t coming to mind right now. And I know that all this has probably been a bit boring, so I’ll leave you with a sneak-preview of the new design. Keep in mind I’m actively working on this so the final result might change quite a bit:

Bonus points if you can identify the site which has inspired me.

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

I should thank The Internet for keeping me up-to-date on the goings on over in Iran over the past few days. The mainstream media have good company when it comes to being silent on the matter, though. Still, I’ll hand it to CNN, who had the story covered… via user-submitted content. The agency itself was much more concerned with reporting that hundreds of thousands of people were whining about their televisions failing to perform in the new digital age. Please pray for the Iranians. Events such as this serve to reveal beyond question the world’s need of a Savior, of our constant need for the Gospel.

For all you Web-heads (bloggers, not Spiderman fans… Well, them too!), Thesis 1.5.1 was released a few days ago featuring a number of improvements, new features, and performance enhancements. Most importantly, v1.5.1 allows Thesis to play nicely with WordPress 2.7–2.8, two major versions of WordPress awesomeness with which you can use Thesis.

On that subject, Chris & I have all sorts of great ideas for the future of Thesis. Don’t you worry ’bout that well drying up anytime soon.

A friend of mine (hi, Glen) recommended A. W. Bullinger’s study Bible to me; well, I didn’t get the Bible, but I did order two of Bullinger’s books. Currently, I’m reading The Witness of the Stars, which I’m finding fascinating. Bullinger traces the earliest history of zodiacal observation and relates it the the witness of the Scriptures, which more than once speak of the testimony of the stars. My opinion thus far? Bullinger was either a certified genius or an authentic wacko.

And if you got that reference, then I’ve no doubt that you, like me, are eagerly awaiting this!

Finally took the time to watch the Google Wave preview in its entirety. Set aside an hour & twenty to immerse yourself in the future of online communication. Google has taken the best parts of e-mail, message boards, blogging, collaborative document creation, wikis, instant messaging, and even PowWow (the best chat program I have ever used, and it’s been unavailable for years) to an extent. Are you prepared to ride the Wave?

Dad’s blog is taking off nicely, which is awesome. His most recent post, Science and Religion, is interesting. I like the part about science being unable to prove that the universe didn’t actually begin just a few hours ago. I’d like to add that it takes a lot of faith to believe that the universe is billions upon billions of years old when it could just as well be 6,000–10,000 years old, created with the appearance of age. Granted, it takes faith to believe that as well.

In the time it took me to write the above paragraph, a new entry popped up on Dad’s site. Amazing. I should point out it’s spelled “Walmart.” No hyphen, just one capital.

The local city park has announced that beginning very soon, they will be providing free wi-fi access. I know I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but the service is being provided by these guys. It’s been a while since coming across a site that broken. Can anyone else get any content to pull up? Still, perhaps this will be the incentive I need to hit the park more often with Alicia. Now all I need is a Frisbee flying disk.

If you’ve not seen Up yet, I highly suggest it. Adults may even enjoy it more than younger children do. Pixar touched on a number of “grown-up” themes with this film, including death. Kids may not get it — and perhaps that’s a good thing — but you will. It may be wise to take a few tissues along.

So what’s been on your mind and radar this past week?

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.