Reading the Bible Every Morning

For several months now, I been trying to spend some quiet time every morning reading a chapter from the Bible and praying. (For the first few days, I might have read less than a chapter, but on the other hand there were a few mornings that I read more than a chapter.) I'm not a morning person, so when I started this routine, I thought it would be a lot harder than it's been. In all of these months, I've only neglected to spend this quiet time with God a few times. For me, it's mostly been a commitment to have a "quiet time" every morning.

I just wanted to blog about this to remind myself what I've been doing, and hopefully to encourage other people that might want to start spending a few minutes with God every day. It's been a good experience for me, and I'd recommend for others to give it a try, too.

I started this routine by reading the Gospel of John. When I finished John, I think I read Matthew (my memory gets fuzzy after a few months). After Matthew, I read Mark (which inspired me to post a blog entry about what I had read). Then I must have read all of Luke (which I had recently read part of due to the "One Year Bible" project in the evenings with my wife). Then I jumped to the end of the New Testament to read Revelations. After that, I went through Leviticus.

Since then, I've been reading through the Old Testament starting at Malachi going backwards (I start with the first chapter of each book, and then when I finish the book I go to the previous book). I've read Malachi, Zechariah, Haggai, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Nahum, Micah, Jonah, Obadiah, Amos, and Joel.

There's some method to my madness. I'm still reading through the "One Year Bible" every night with my wife. Before this year, I had already read the entire New Testament, but I had only read the Old Testament from Genesis to where I stopped in Isaiah (for no particular reason). So by reading from Malachi backwards, I'm trying to finish reading the Old Testament before the end of December. (If I stay on schedule, I think I'll be able to say that I've read the whole Bible by sometime in November.) The Bible's a big book, but I'm kind of embarrassed that it's taken me so long to finish reading it. (And then, I'll just put myself on a schedule of re-reading.)

Since I finished reading Joel this morning, I plan to start Hosea tomorrow. (By the way, I'm not trying to brag since most of these books that I've read in the morning aren't very long.)

By the way, I've been doing all of this recent Bible reading using the ESV translation (which has been my favorite translation for several months now). I still refer to other translations, but I've been using the ESV as my primary translation for reading and studying the Bible.

Correction: This probably means more to me than anyone else, but I think I started my morning readings by reading the Gospel of Mark. Then I read Matthew and Luke. (I have read John recently, too, but it was part of my "One Year Bible" readings in the evening.) I guess then point is that I've been reading in such a disorganized order that I've lost track of what I read when.

Mike Huckabee on Headline News Tonight

Glenn Beck has mentioned on his radio show that presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is going to be on his nightly Headline News show today (Friday, October 19). It's one of his hour-long interview episodes.

I think Glenn has pretty much interviewed all of the Republicans running for President on the radio (except perhaps Ron Paul) and apparently has offered all of them the chance to sit down with him for an hour, but Huckabee seems to be the first to actually end up doing it (in their defense, some of the others might have fuller schedules).

Cascading into a Crusade Against Dietary Fat

In the first hour of today's Rush Limbaugh show, he discussed a column by John Tierney called "Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus". It's a very interesting article about the main idea of Gary Taubes's new book Good Calories, Bad Calories: that eating fat isn't bad.

The article showed how scientific consensus can come to a faulty conclusion due to a phenomenon known to social scientists as a "cascade": a confident voice can lead others in the wrong direction like sheep that have gone astray. In 1953, Dr. Ancel Keys showed a correlation between how much fat people from a particular country ate vs. how much heart disease was in the population. ("But critics at the time noted that if Dr. Keys had analyzed all 22 countries for which data were available, he would not have found a correlation.") In 1957, the American Medical Association didn't find Dr. Keys' evidence convincing. But Dr. Keys didn't give up his efforts to get his theory support:

But three years later the association changed position — not because of new data, Mr. Taubes writes, but because Dr. Keys and an ally were on the committee issuing the new report. It asserted that “the best scientific evidence of the time” warranted a lower-fat diet for people at high risk of heart disease.

Years later, a Senate committee issued a report written by a non-scientist that relied "almost exclusively" on one particular nutritionist.

That report impressed another nonscientist, Carol Tucker Foreman, an assistant agriculture secretary, who hired Dr. Hegsted to draw up a set of national dietary guidelines. The Department of Agriculture’s advice against eating too much fat was issued in 1980 and would later be incorporated in its “food pyramid.”

Tierney also explained how as politicians became more convinced that the science was irrefutable, scientists began to risk their reputations if they questioned the "fat is bad" theory:

The scientists, despite their impressive credentials, were accused of bias because some of them had done research financed by the food industry. And so the informational cascade morphed into what the economist Timur Kuran calls a reputational cascade, in which it becomes a career risk for dissidents to question the popular wisdom.

John Tierney also has a follow-up article about this topic: How the Low-Fat, Low-Fact Cascade Just Keeps Rolling Along

Google Maps keeps on getting cooler.

I'm a map guy. For as long as I can remember, I've always liked maps. And my favorite kind of map is the free kind. So I'm a big fan of Google Maps (of course, Mapquest and Yahoo! Maps were around first, so they'll always hold a special place in my heart). One thing that I really like about Google Maps is that it keeps on getting better.

I don't know when they "made the magic happen", but I first noticed that they added exit number graphics to Interstates back in June (only a few days after "vafada" noticed). I like having the exit number when I'm looking at which restaurants are on a route that I'm planning on taking, so I really like that they've added the exit number to their maps (before I had to "get directions" to that location to discover the exit number).

Today, I noticed that I can type in a street name (or highway name) and get a map that shows where that street is. It used to be that a street and city wouldn't yield a location unless you provided a street number. (Sometimes, I would literally guess and/or make up street numbers just to get it to show where street is. And it had to be a realistic number.) Now, I can just search based on what I know, and Google will pick a place on that street to center the map. That's very helpful!

Mrs. Technocrat7's blog

My wife started a blog of her own called "Created in His Image". (I'm pretty sure the title is a reference to Genesis 1:27, but I could be wrong.)

Sometimes Secrets Are Necessary

I've been reading the Gospel of Mark in the mornings, and I've noticed a particular perplexing pattern. Why did Jesus ask people to keep so many secrets (such as Mark 5:43, Mark 8:30, Mark 9:9)? I came up with an idea. I wonder if it was because He can't lie. (Was Liar Liar actually based on a true story?)

Jesus didn't lie in His earthly ministry, and He doesn't lie now. (I believe that Jesus has always been unable to lie due to His Holy nature.) Lying would violate Commandment #9 (Exodus 20:16) in the Ten Commandments. Yet Jesus was and is "without sin" (Hebrews 4:15), so didn't ever lie. He could refuse to answer a question (which the Bible records Him doing in Mark 11:33).

I think the secrets were necessary because of timing. He knew that certain miracles (and the knowledge of certain facts about Him) would raise His profile so much among those who felt threatened by His power that He would lose His ability to move around freely. If He couldn't walk about freely, it would hurt His ministry's efforts to reach people.

Since I was sure that I wasn't the only one who was curious about Jesus's apparent need for secrecy, I looked into what my NIV Study Bible contains on the topic (I now prefer to read the ESV translation since I view the NIV as more of a paraphrase than a strict translation, but I still find the commentary and maps of the NIV Study Bible valuable). The note on Matthew 8:4 mentioned three possible reasons:

1. Jesus didn't want to be pigeonholed as "just a miracle worker".
2. He didn't want the publicity of His healing miracles to interfere with His teaching ministry.
3. He didn't want His death to come before He finished His ministry.

Those reasons make a lot of sense to me.

I guess the reason for the secrecy isn't that Jesus won't deny that He performed miracles, but that once everyone starts telling everyone about the miracles that might be all they want to talk about. If all of the witnesses came forward with their testimonies of His miracles, it doesn't even matter that Jesus isn't going to deny doing the miracles that He has done, since people wouldn't believe any such denials anyway.

"Earth 2" has been found ... maybe?

But don't pack your bags quite yet.

Astronomers have finally found a planet outside of our solar system that might be somewhat similar to Earth. As far as we can tell from 120 trillion miles away.

It's only about 20 light years away. And in galactic terms, that's close. But even if you traveled at the speed of light (which is supposed to be the physical speed limit of our universe), it'd take 20 years to get there. (Of course once you take into account the time dilation effect that occurs while traveling near the speed of light, you might barely age during the journey. But everyone back at home would be 40 years older if you decide to make a round trip to the new planet.)

Also, you're probably going to have to buy a whole new wardrobe since I'd suspect the dim red sun would mess up your fashion scheme.

By the way, Mars also qualifies as habitable according to the scientists' high standards (and I don't know of anyone seriously considering a move to Mars), so the climate of this new extra-solar planet may a bit too cool or a bit too warm.

Or the atmosphere (assuming there even is an atmosphere) may smell like dirty socks.

Reading the Bible in a Year

My wife and I have decided that we are going to try to read the whole Bible in a year. Today, we bought a One Year Bible (ESV translation).

We've already read today's passages. So far, so good. It's not the first time that I've started studying Joshua in the middle of the book (a few years ago, I started attending a church group while a study of Joshua was underway). Joshua might not be the easier book to start reading in the middle of, but this way we'll know right away if we start to fall behind.

Pluto's Neighborhood Gets More Interesting

I must be off my game since I just found out that scientists have discovered two more natural satellites of Pluto. Apparently, they were sighted many months ago, but I missed that news.

In case you're wondering, they've been named Nix and Hydra.

Don't get me wrong—Earth's Moon is totally awesome. But doesn't it seem strange that the tiny icy rock called Pluto now has three moons, and the best planet in the universe only has one?

Air 1 is now available in Oklahoma City

I've listened to K-LOVE for a couple years, but sometime I want a little more variety. When I've visited Wichita, I got to listen to K-LOVE's edgier sister station, Air 1. Many of the songs were unfamiliar to me, but the more I listened to it the more I wanted a station in my city. But I couldn't listen to Air 1 where I live ... until very recently.

In May 2006, EMF (the parent organization of K-LOVE and Air 1) bought KOKF (90.9 FM in the Oklahoma City area). Since Oklahoma City already had K-LOVE, 90.9 FM became an Air 1 station. I know that some people are sad that the old local-controlled KOKF is gone (oddly enough, the old website still seems to be there, though), but I think I'll listen to Air 1 a lot more than I listened to the old KOKF. I hope that the people who have listened to 90.9 for years give Air 1 a chance.

Glenn Beck's TV show to premiere May 8

Glenn, I get it.

On May 8, radio talk show host Glenn Beck brings his twisted humor to the tube on Headline News. On weekdays, the first run will be at 7 p.m. (Eastern) with a repeat at 9 p.m. The weekends will feature encores, also at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Oh, yeah!

Google now expected to take control of the Universe

Google isn't just a cute little search engine anymore. Besides being added to the English language as a verb, Google also has a popular e-mail service (the host of my current main e-mail address) and several mapping services (e.g. Google Local and Google Earth). Also, Google has gobbled up Writerly. I'm not sure what Writerly is, but if Google bought it, it must be pretty cool.

But it's Google's mapping service that seems to be going universal. On a ZDNet post, Garett Rogers mentioned that Google now has a service similar to Google Local (a/k/a Google Maps) called "Google Mars". So if you ever wanted to take a trip to Utopia Planitia (yes, I admit to be a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation), Google Mars tells you exactly where you need to land your spaceship. For people that want to stay a little closer to Terra, they can choose to visit Earth's own natural satellite at Google Moon. The Moon and Mars seem to be the only extra-terrestrial options right now as I couldn't find an official list and my other attempts (such as "http://universe.google.com/" and "http://europa.google.com/") returned "Server not found", but I bet more are coming. I'm not sure how fun Mercury would be, but I'm looking forward to checking out Venus.

By the way (and back on Earth), Google bought Blogger a while back, too. (That's service that I use to blog with.)

Glenn Beck gets a daily show on Headline News

Glenn Beck announced on his radio show today that he's going to have a TV show on the Headline News cable network. I think he said he expects it to start in March or April. It'll be on during primetime Monday-Friday (the exact time hasn't been decided and/or announced yet). It's not that I need to watch more TV every week, but I'm sure I'll check it out since his radio show is pretty good most days.

From "Radio Personality Glenn Beck Joins Headline News":

Known for his quick wit, candid opinions and engaging personality, Beck has attracted a devoted following since hitting the airwaves in 2001. In addition to his new Headline News duties, Beck will continue hosting his daily radio show, The Glenn Beck Program, syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks. His radio show, currently heard on nearly 200 stations nationwide, is the third highest-rated national radio talk show among adults ages 25 to 54 according to Premiere Research/Arbitron.

When you hear that Glenn is ranked third, it might be useful to realize that Rush Limbaugh has the top-rated show, and the next highest rated show is Sean Hannity's radio program. Sean has been cross-promoting his radio show with his Hannity and Colmes show on FNC for years, and Rush Limbaugh practically invented the modern talk show format. Especially considering that Beck didn't go national until 2001, that's a good crowd to be in. I've been listening off-and-on since the beginning, and it seems like Beck's show continues to get even better every year, too.

From Glenn Beck joins CNN Headline News:

At Headline News, "Glenn Beck" will air out of New York and be an unconventional look at the news of the day featuring Beck's often amusing perspective. The one-hour program will include guests and produced packages.

"Having tired of the predictable left-versus-right debates in cable news, I am eager to offer a different take for Headline News viewers," Beck said in a statement. "I hope that people will come away from our show not only informed, but also entertained, in a way they're not used to seeing on cable news."

I wouldn't expect anything less than an "unconventional" show from Glenn Beck and his team. Glenn said today that he'd be surprised if his show lasted more than about 13 weeks. I for one hope he's surprised.

I Like Making Icons

I've been looking for a good free icon editor for a long time. Maybe I'm just too picky. Or maybe it's that I have no artistic ability, and it doesn't matter what kind of editor I use my icons will look terrible. Regardless of the cause of my lack of satisfaction, I've found some really nice editors in the past (such as LiquidIconXP, Ranfo Freeware Icon Editor, and Clic). But I keep on looking for a better program, and I stumbled upon a couple impressive ones a few days ago in a list of freeware tools.

Icon Edit stands out because in addition to letting the user edit icons, it also supports storing more than one icon in the same .ico file. This would come in handy when I come up with a good design for a large icon, but it doesn't scale down well so I'd like to add another icon to be used when a small icon is needed.

On the other hand, PixelToolbox doesn't seem to support multiple icons in a the same file (I could be wrong about this, I haven't studied the program in depth), but it does have an extensive set of editing tools, and it will even let the user import from another program. So even if I can't find the tool I'm looking for it in PixelToolbox, I could create the graphic in another program (such as my favorite vector editor Inkscape), and then import it into PixelToolbox. And if I wanted to combine it with another icon into a single file, I could probably use Icon Edit to bring in and combine icons created with PixelToolbox.

If I discovered that I could do this all in just one free program, I'd just use one program. But all of these programs that I've found have different strengths and weaknesses, so I just try to use the best tool for each situation. And I can typically edit an icon created in one program with another, so I have some flexibility. (I wrote "typically" because some icon editors are limited to manipulating certain color depths or dimensions.)

Even If You're Paranoid They Still Might Be Out To Get You?

My favorite source of Science Fiction entertainment news, Sci Fi Wire, recently added an article about Tim Robbins working on a new movie adaptation of George Orwell's 1984. I haven't read it recently, but I have a vague recollection Orwell's classic science fiction novel. Either Robbins remembers the book differently, or he sees the present differently that I do. (I suspect it's the latter.)

"In the book, Big Brother says we're not really concerned about 85 percent of the people, because they're so stupefied by poverty and overwork that they're never going to be part of the problem," Robbins said. "What they're really worried about is the other 15 percent."

Robbins added: "When we think about the authoritarian world that Orwell painted, the catchphrases are one thing, but when you read the book again, the specifics and relevance for now are stunning."

Robbins wouldn't tell the site whether he wanted to act in the movie. Whether the film actually happens is "really a matter of whether I can raise the money for it," he said. "We'll see if there's an appetite for it. Orwell may have been 20 years off, but I know that I find it incredibly relevant."

So the "specifics and relevance are now stunning", and he finds "it incredibly relevant"? How exactly does he find it relevant?

Does that mean that Robbins believes that 85 percent of our population is "so stupefied by poverty and overwork"? Maybe he thinks that only 60 percent of the population is stupefied. I'd agree that people are often hoodwinked, but that doesn't require them to be impoverished overworked. Being tricked only requires hearing a lie that sounds like the truth. Also being dazed and dazzled is much worse than just choosing the lesser of two evils. I don't view most people as being idiots at all. That's just me. But since I'm not a celebrity, what would I know?

I'm pretty sure that I'm neither impoverished nor overworked (and I'm pretty sure most other people aren't either), but I doubt I'll spend any money on a movie made by someone with such a poor opinion of the general public. If you think most people are either poor, so overworked they can't think correctly, or just plain stupid, I guess you should go see his movie. And if you're among the possibly 85% of the public that's stupefied, I'm sure you're too overworked or poor to be able to see it anyway. Sorry for getting your hopes up.

(For the record, I've always preferred Animal Farm to 1984, but that might be just because I read Animal Farm first.)

Firefly, Sci-Fi, and The Inside

Friday, July 22, Firefly is returning to TV (well, cable actually). They haven't produced any more episodes but the Sci-Fi Channel is doing it Joss's way this time. It's kind of like the Director's Cut. Sci-Fi plans to show all of the episodes (includes the 3 that the Fox TV network didn't get around to airing) and even in the right order. First, they'll start with the 2-hour original pilot. Then, they'll show the "second pilot" (which Fox showed first). And so on in the order that the writers intended. In case you haven't guessed, I think it's a great plan! (This was first officially announced with a Sci-Fi wire entry in June. I actually heard about it before then, but I was afraid it was too good to be true. It should be a terrific way to promote the Serenity movie that extends the story of the Firefly universe).

In other TV news, it's all new episodes of Stargate: SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica tomorrow. It's been a while since there were new episodes. I hope I remember who all of the characters are. ;)

Also, apparently Fox has pretty much cancelled another cool show before it had a chance to shine. I wasn't so sure about The Inside after the first couple episodes, but I thought it was pretty interesting to begin with and it just keeps getting better. The episode yesterday was pretty awesome. It's not that I care about the gory stuff in the show for myself (e.g., I can continue eating dinner while they show an autopsy scene), but it might cause some people to tune out. So I wonder if the sure might have a little better chance to succeed if they had dialed down the grossness factor.

Oh, well, I guess they'll air some more of the episodes and then release The Inside Complete Series on DVD that'd include some un-aired episodes, too. I guess I'll look for it at the store. If it's a good price, it might buy it. I've already missed one of the episodes (I forgot it was on). Maybe they'll even re-run that episode. Anything could even happen (but it'd be very unlikely that Fox renews the show).

Flat Tax vs. National Sales Tax

I find the current income tax system to be an utter waste of time. I've heard of more than one drastic proposal that I think would be better than the current system. My favorite is replacing the entire income tax system with a national sales tax (it's called the "FairTax" by Americans for Fair Taxation). So I was sad to read Dick Armey being unfair to the idea of a national sales tax in his testimony to before the President’s Commission on Tax Reform:

Of the proposals for reform, the flat tax best meets these goals. While other proposals, such as the national sales tax, may be efficient tax collecting mechanisms, we should not introduce such a powerful tax collecting regime on the country until the 16th Amendment to the Constitution is repealed—otherwise, we will then have both a national sales tax and a federal income tax, a regime very similar to the dangerous combination of taxing powers that has enabled European governments to grow so large. Repealing constitutional amendments has been very difficult historically. In the mean time, those in favor of scrapping the current code should work toward enacting the flat tax.

Who's saying that we should have both a national sales tax and an income tax? If we couldn't get rid of the income tax, I wouldn't favor enacting a sales tax. Who has come out in favor of such a plan? That wouldn't make any sense to me. On the other hand, I don't see how the flat tax is any safer from the possibility that it rolls back into a labyrinth of special loopholes for political favors.

If you want to criticize the FairTax, please use economics rather than politics. Politics is the problem with the current system. The biggest hurdle to implementing either the flat tax or the national sales tax are all of the special interests that are paid off in the current tax code.

The best thing would be to scrap the income tax and use the FairTax instead. If we have to settle for a flat income tax, that'd still be a tremendous improvement over that current monstrosity known as the tax code. But I'd rather aim for the skies. There's no legal reason why Congress can't end the income tax right away. I see the need to wait 20 years until the 16th Amendment is repealed. It's not like Congress even waited for the 16th Amendment to tax the income of Americans in the first place.

The official Serenity trailer was released!

I've already blogged on Serenity, but that was before Universal Studios released a trailer this week. Wow! I imagined it would be terrific, but it was better than expected! It looks like science fiction set 500 years from now with Western action, Chinese culture, mystery, poignant characters, and humor all wrapped into one fantastic package. It worked so well in the TV show that I know it'll work in the feature film.

Having this much anticipation, I'm going to have a hard time waiting until September for the real thing. I read a rumor that Firefly TV show DVD sales just jumped this week by about 150 place on Amazon (to #27). I wouldn't be surprised. I already have a complete series boxset, and I'm tempted to buy another.

28,984 Browncoats and counting: become one today.

I'm a RedStater now.

A few months ago I stumbled upon RedState, a Republican/conservative community blog. There's a lot of interesting topics being discussed there. Every member gets a diary. The most interesting diary entries get promoted to a story.

I haven't posted many entries in my diary yet since I've been wanting to get a feel for what the community is interested in before I get too many people ticked off with obnoxious entries. But I have been reading RedState a lot and commenting on some of the other people's posts.

I still plan to post non-political entries here at Technocracy Unleashed, but I'll probably be posting most of my political thoughts in my RedState diary.

Why restaurant staff usually don't sing "Happy Birthday to You"

Have you been in a restaurant when someone is celebrating a birthday and noticed that instead of singing the popular "Happy Birthday to You", they sing some chant like "Happy, happy birthday, hope you dreams come true, ..." instead? Ever wonder why that is? It's probably due to copyright law.

Sure it's possible that the waiters and waitresses can't carry a tune. But it's much more likely that the management realizes that "Happy Birthday to You" is still under copyright (until 2030) and they'd rather sing (or chant) something else than worry about paying royalties for the modern classic "Happy Birthday to You".

According to snopes.com:

Does this mean that everyone who warbles "Happy Birthday to You" to family members at birthday parties is engaging in copyright infringement if they fail to obtain permission from or pay royalties to the song's publisher? No. Royalties are due, of course, for commercial uses of the song, such as playing or singing it for profit, using it in movies, television programs, and stage shows, or incorporating it into musical products such as watches and greeting cards; as well, royalties are due for public performance, defined by copyright law as performances which occur "at a place open to the public, or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered." So, crooning "Happy Birthday to You" to family members and friends at home is fine, but performing a copyrighted work in a public setting such as a restaurant or a sports arena technically requires a license from ASCAP or the Harry Fox Agency (although such infringements are rarely prosecuted).