A Project Doth Approacheth

This Tuesday Ey am supposed to gyve a presentaytion on Karl Barth's doctryne of Elecksion. Right now Ey am almoste donne preparing it and Ey'm eksited to see how it will goon. Ye see, Ey'm using Aepple's Keynote presentaytion sophwear insteade of PowerPointe. Ey'm verie impressed with the programme's cinamaetical effeckts. I think it lookes far better thanne my typical PowerPointe documente.

It'll bee interesting to see if it works out as welle when I actually neede it to.

Now hath Aprill eeked unto the Yeare

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.

Ey've desyghed thate Standard Engelishe is nought reallie al that much funne. It woode be better to ewse excyting, soote Chaucerian spellings to keepe all of ye from bordomme and and sew on. The spelling of kommon words was much more interesting before those nastie dyctionarie writers went and standardised it al, Ey saye.

It is Aprill now and I longen for something different thanne a pilgrimmage to the Oxford Dictionaries! Anon, all new postes will observe the great renaissance of late middle Engelishe once againe. Or maybe I shouldst go back further and ewse Olde Engelishe from before the Normanes came and rooined our greate Germanyck language. Too badde I do not ken howe to wright Olde Engelishe!

In othere news, Ey have decided to goon backe to Windowes for my operating systemme. Ey think it I shall find it harkens to mie needes much better than Aepple Macintoshe systemme (despighte Aepple now hath reached thirtee yeares of ayge). Ey've seked the beste systemme for mannie yeares now, but ye will shurely understande that Ey've ne'er founde anythyng better thanne Windowes.

We Got It Good

With the sole exception of when I'm returning from the Ozarks, I always find that taking a trip reminds me of just how good “we got it” (to use an old RCGA slogan) in St. Louis. Over the weekend, I went to Indiana for my grandfather's birthday. It was a fine enough trip, but I have to admit it felt really great to see the “The People of Illinois Welcome You” sign as I left Indiana and even better when I saw the “Welcome to Missouri” signs (complete with the official “Where the Rivers Run” stylized logo).

I may be biased, but I just love Missouri. The hills, the trees, the personality of the cities — I just love it. Indiana seems so flat and (no offense to anyone from there that might read this) bland. This wasn't the best time to visit, since the trees were all bare, but even when there is some green scenery, I still find something oddly uncomfortable there.

In other words, it's good to be home.

Melancholy

I don't know what it is. By most accounts this has been a good two weeks. Busy, yes, but good none the less. Yet a strange sense of melancholy has set over me the last day or two. I was rather gloomy at the end of last year, partly for reasons I've talked about elsewhere, partly for other reasons as well, but I thought I was pretty much moving beyond all of those reasons (at least to some extent). Yet something is bothering me tonight; I feel it in the pit of my stomach. I just don't quite know why.

The trickling of the stream outside only makes it worse, I'm afraid. It is so soft and peaceful, yet unceasing like time. Maybe that is part of it. I see a lot of endings ahead. Some within a couple of months, some within a year or two. There are some endings I know I must also bring about to accomplish what God wants me to do, yet I don't really want to relegate those parts of my life to the past (this is especially difficult since there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that which I must move beyond, it just isn't the right place for me to be right now). The last decade has seemed to teem with so many endings I tremble at more, and yet they must come, I suppose.

Challenge Revisited: Find a Quote, Get a Prize.

One of these days, I am going to revive the asisaid challenge, but in the mean time, I want to again remind everyone of my extra BIG BONUS ROUND that was announced on December 14, 2004:

5.) BIG BONUS ROUND: I don’t know the answer to this one, but I want to. Who was the author of the quote “Seek truth knowing there can be no conflict between God and truth.” My friend who gave it to me recalls originally reading it in a 1960’s magazine aimed at soon to be college freshmen, such as he was at the time (200 pts. [no typo there]). You may use Google and other search engines on this question and this question only.

200 points equals winning a round of asisaid challenge, so in other words, I'll give you one year of free web hosting (100 meg account valued at $60) and either a $15 iTunes Gift Card or a free domain name for two years, if you can provide me with the who and where of this quote.

Note: unlike normal asisaid challenge questions, you may use Google and any other tools at your disposal to find this. I really want to find this quote, so if you can provide me with its source using any means you have (presuming they are legal), please use them! Moreover, you need not be a regular asisaid reader to participate in this round — if you find this page while Googling, please feel free to join the search.

Thanks.

I Sell Domains for More!

Note: This is one of the very rare occasions that I'm attempting to sell something via my blog. I apologize in advance for targeting y'all with this — feel free to ignore it if you'd like.

If you can't beat 'em on price, don't pretend to, right?

I've had a Dotster reseller account for some years now. What that means is that I can resell domains via Dotster and receive a cut of the sale. I never bothered to promote it because my wholesale price was higher than a lot of other registrars' retail prices. Well, I still pay more than a limited number of registrars, but the price has gotten low enough that I can resell domain services for $9.95/year (versus $14.95 if you buy direct from Dotster). For my hosting clients, I usually provide full service registration (e.g. I handle all of the stuff with the registrar for them), so I've stuck with $15/year in the past. But, I've always contemplated doing something else with my domain reseller account.

Now, personally I prefer Dotster to some of the ultra-cheap places (like 1&1) simply because its management interface works better for me (which is important to me, because I own or manage nearly 50 domains). If for the same reason or some other reason, you'd like to register a name with Dotster, give me a holler and I'll give you beta access to the ServerForest domain registration service. You get the same administration tools (in fact, everything is still handled by Dotster, it just has my branding on it), but you pay only $9.95/year for new registrations of most TLD's and $7.95 for the first year of a domain transfer for most TLD's.

QOTW: CMS

I thought maybe I'd try to revive my old Question of the Week meme. Feel free to participate here or on your own blog. I'll update this post with my own answer later on. I've included my answer.

What is your favorite content management system (CMS, e.g. Moveable Type, PHP-Nuke, WordPress, Drupal, etc.)? Why? How long have you used it?

Update: That's tough. At the cost of sounding biased, I'd probably say SAFARI, which runs this blog. I've used it in various ways for about six years, and familiarity is certainly one of the big reasons I like it. But even more importantly, since I've written the code, it acts mostly how I want it to. It isn't perfect by any means, but I've had the ability to carefully avoid certain things that annoy me in other CMSes I've used.

Yoga: Physical Exercise or Religious Practice?

Apparently, after hearing about this initiative, both Protestant and Catholic Christians sent a clear message – this is not just exercise, it is Hinduism. Bishop Ivan Osusky of the Evangelical Church of Augsburg Confession commented, “Yoga is not [merely] gymnastics. It leads to individualism, which further leads to belief in reincarnation. It is an onslaught of Hinduism” (“Slovakia”). Slovakia’s Catholic Bishops also protested with a strongly worded communiqué.

Christian Apologist Robert M. Bowman, Jr., of the Institute for the Development of Evangelical Apologetics, seems to agree with the Bishops. In an article for Apologetics Index Bowman argues against Yoga, saying “Does yoga conflict with my religion? You betcha. […] Anything that encourages people to believe that spiritual fulfillment can be attained in any religion […] conflicts with my belief that without Jesus Christ people of all religions (even Christianity!) are lost.”

Milan Ftacnik, Slovak’s Minister of Education, disagrees, instead siding with the Swami. The Hinduism Today coverage quotes Ftacnik as saying, “Yoga has existed here for decades and we have not become a Hindu country. Catholics, Baptists, Hindus or Muslims can practice yoga.” The article notes that Ftacnik does not belong to an organized religion.

At the very least, even the defenders of Yoga must admit that its core purpose is religious in nature. According to Lewis Hopfe and Mark Woodward, “Yoga basically follows the Sankhya system, viewing the world as a dualism and teaching that one should attempt to yoke or join the individual spirit to god, the atman, to Brahman.” The tome also notes “The main feature of Yoga is meditation. Meditation is necessary even for the gods if they are to find release from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth” (96-97).

Perhaps the real issue occurs in that the clash is between Christianity, which historically rejects pluralistic acceptance of other religions' beliefs and practices, and Hinduism, which as one Swami put it, “believe[s] not only in universal tolerance, but [… also] accept[s] all religions as true” (71). From the Hindu’s perspective, then, it may seem harmless for Christians to participate in Yoga even if it does have religious overtones, perhaps leaving Hindus to wonder what the problem is.

For now, it seems that connection will delay any introduction of Yoga into Slovak classrooms. After the Christian Democratic Movement threatened to cease support for the ruling coalition government, the administration backed off on the program. Should they choose to renew their push for the program, it will no doubt cause the question of Hinduism’s ties to Yoga to be considered much more deeply then previously. With Yoga’s popularity in many nations, including the United States, the results of this debate should prove to have far reaching effects beyond the small CIS nation.

A Nice Treat

My professor and mentor, Dr. Alan Meyers, filled in for his pastor at Oak Hill Presbyterian Church yesterday. I knew that he preached every so often, so I've been asking for awhile for him to let me know when he would be doing so. He let me know last week, so after going to my normal church service (I needed to be there, since my usher team is ushering this month), I went further into the city and got to enjoy a service at Oak Hill.

Not surprisingly, it was a great sermon, and there were a number of interesting elements to the service as well (most out of the ordinary was an electronic oboe that one member played for the communion mediation). The sermon had a really interesting, thought provoking perspective on death and it simply being a “ceasing to be (something).” To freshen up the idea of the old self dying to the new self, Dr. Meyers used a number of metaphors of other changes in life — such as marriage — and how they represent a dying of one self and birth of a new one in much the same way.

Like most good sermons, it was interesting not so much in how many completely new ideas it brought out, but how it makes one look at ideas that have become too routine to really think about.

What a Great Day!

I wish I had time to post about it. Maybe tomorrow?