I've spent some time developing a defense of the FairTax against common criticisms, in How FairTax Critics are Always Wrong. Head on over to the Conservative Rant to check it out.

Labels: politics

So I got a new external drive today. Total price: $279. Check out this screenshot:



A little small? Let's zoom in on that a bit:



931 gigabytes. As in, this is a one terabyte drive. For $279. Granted, it's actually two 500 GB drives that's allocated as a single disk. But it's still really cool.

Labels: tech

So I've updated the site layout a little bit. Nothing drastic, but I wanted to highlight the improvements:

Different Font - I got tired of Trebuchet. It's a nice font, but it looks awful without ClearType. Also, it's just too curvy for online use, especially at a medium font size. So I decided on Arial. It's so Write.exe (a Windows 3.1 reference for any non-geeks out there), but it's also very Web 2.0.

Width Limit - Large computer screens are getting more and more common, and there's just no reason for my blog to word-wrap text at 1440 pixels. But I also hate fixed-width web design, where you can't see everything horizontally unless you're browser window is big enough. So I've got the best of both - the site is resizable between about 600 pixels (small enough for an 640x480 screen) and about 1000 pixels (fill most of a 1024x768 screen).

New Header - I changed the font used in the header to reflect my more musical nature.

Updated Sidebar - My sister got married almost a year ago. And it took me that long to put Jason's name on the sidebar... I'll admit it, I'm a slacker! I also added links to some of my favorite political and programming sites that I read (or contribute to). And now up at the top are my "critical posts." These are the handful of things I've written that most define what I believe and how I think.

New Photo Albums - I've added a link to my Picasa photo album. I'm still behind on getting everything moved over, but that's where the new baby pictures will go. Eventually, videos, too. And it has its own RSS feed, so you can know as soon as I get around to putting more pictures up there.

Labels: life

There's a great article in Christianity Today this month by Mark Galli titled On Not Transforming the World. The subtitle is "we have better and harder things to do than that."

We are certainly responsible for going to the ends of the earth and making disciples from people of every nation. There is plenty in Scripture about doing justice and loving mercy and feeding the hungry and caring for the widow and orphan. But I find little or nothing about us having the task of transforming the culture.

Britt has talked about how Changing the World is something that isn't found in scripture. At least not something that is assigned to us.

Galli's article touches on how service is our number one task, in terms of transforming the world:

Servants aren't about world-changing initiatives as much as about washing the dirty feet of the travelers sitting at their kitchen table. Jesus never tells us to do anything because it will transform the culture. Surprisingly, he didn't seem interested in transforming the Roman Empire, one of the most oppressive and unjust cultures in history. He seemed rather to think that society would always have economic disparity, and that not only should changing Rome not be a priority, but also we should not even object to underwriting it with our taxes...

I remain puzzled as to why we're so bored with the very things Jesus asks us to do, like picking that foreigner up out of the ditch, giving away our goods to the poor, going to court with a young man who's being railroaded by the system, taking an orphan into our home, going the extra mile with the oppressive and manipulative, forgiving the offender, baptizing, and witnessing. I find these things really, really hard to do. I fail all the time. If I can't even do these things well, why would I believe that I could transform my culture, let alone change the world?

Despite my political rants and opinions, I've been learning more and more that it is not our job to make political systems reflect the church. Does that mean we should be apathetic towards politics? I don't think so. But it makes it all the more difficult to discern when we are pushing our own religious agenda into politics.

People tend to think that Christ's mission was about transformation, and that in today's culture, we should redeem the culture (by keeping it sanitary), transform social politics (by enforcing charity), or other high ideals. But by doing so, we are trying to place a significance onto ourselves that simply isn't rooted in scripture. Galli says "we all face the common temptation of Adam and Eve. We want to feel significant."

Scripture is clear that Christ's mission was about service, and that this is our mission also. In today's culture, I think the targets of that service are clear. While it is hard, it is not a complicated thing to fulfill what the scriptures have required of us. And it is about doing it ourselves, not about creating a governmental structure to force everyone else to do it our way.

Labels: church, politics

Part 2 of the saga... Amy woke me up at about 3:30 am today to let me know that the contractions she had been feeling before we went to bed were about 4-5 minutes apart. Still not very painful, but they were keeping her from getting back to sleep. So she did the checklist of things to see if they lessened - go to the bathroom, take a bath, have a snack, etc. At 4:30 am things hadn't really changed, so I called my mom and she called the doctor. The doctor was still in the mindset to try to stop the labor, so he went ahead and told us to come in.

We got to the hospital around 7:00 am. The contractions had slowed down a little bit by that time, about 8 minutes, but they were thinking about trying some medication. We decided to wait a little longer instead. By 8:30 am they were about 20 minutes apart and they sent us home.

So we're back at home now. With orders to stay at home until the contractions get painful, and are really progressing. In other words, they are definitely not going to try to stop them next time. Which is fine with us, because we don't want any more false alarms! But it could tomorrow, next week, who knows?

As they say with any good trilogy, the third installment changes everything. So next time will be the third time we've gone to the hospital thinking we'll have the third baby. Hmm...

Labels: life

Well, things have slowed down enough that they're sending us back home. We have no clue how long it will be until we have to come back - things could pick back up anytime. But at least we can wait it out at home instead of having to wait here.

We'll keep you all posted on how things are going. They're hoping we can put this off for another week or so. Keep us in your prayers!

UPDATE: Things are still calm as of this evening. Amy is still having a 3 or so contractions an hour, but they're not painful. Which isn't unusual for this point in a pregnancy, anyway. Before we left, the doctor told us to call when things were more intense than they were yesterday - which indicated to me that they won't try to stop it next time.

Labels: life

Amy called me at 9:30 this morning saying that she was having contractions. And that she had three of them in the course of 15 minutes. They weren't the typical, minor pre-term contractions, either. These were painful.

After a couple hours of resting, and talking with the doctor on the phone, we came in to the hospital at about noon. We've been here since, and they've not been able to lessen the contractions with the medication they've tried. Things haven't really progressed yet, so there's still a slim chance that they'll go away. But we'll be staying overnight in any case, while they monitor the contractions.

The couple of hours we had at home this morning gave us a little bit of time to finish getting some stuff packed and for my mom to come over to watch the kids. So we're ready if it is indeed time. Amy is at 34 weeks, which is a little earlier than ideal. But our other kids were born at 37 weeks at over eight pounds - based on some estimates from ultrasounds a few weeks ago, this little girl should be over six pounds when she's born. But we would definitely appreciate your prayers!

And yes, I'll post here when we're sure this is it. They've added free Wi-Fi here since the last time we did this three and a half years ago. So you'll see a birth announcement up here within a hours instead of days.

Labels: life