Metacentricities

Another major blog break, from today through this coming Wednesday. I’ll be at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, for a 5 day retreat, with Joseph Goldstien, Gina Sharpe, Rachel Bagby, and Russell Brown. I am very much looking forward to it. I’m still pretty restless and impatient. And there are all sorts of other kinds of emotional issues raising their heads. So it’s going to be a very interesting retreat, for sure.

Also, once I get back, I’ll be spending a lot more time blogging about where I am, and what I’m doing on the final legs of my journey to California, than on broader issues. I imagine that it’s likely that there won’t be much blogging on either my ministry or technology blogs. I do have a ministry blog entry brewing in my head, though, about control (or, really the lack of) of the things that happen in our lives.

Anyway, my life is pretty full, right now, and what’s primarily on my mind these days is the path I’m taking.

I LOVE this topic: People Who are Out of their Minds. Today, it’s David Runnion-Bareford, of the organization Biblical Witness Fellowship. According to a story in Agape Press:

Runnion-Bareford contends that, compared to all the other Protestant denominations, the UCC stands alone in authorizing all the homosexual alternative lifestyles in a general resolution from its rule-making body and calling them compatible with Christianity. "This is not just simply a very liberal kind of denomination that just doesn’t get it about God," he says. "They really are attempting to create a counterfeit that is saleable."

Yup, out of his mind. Thank you Chuck Currie!

OK, my very quick, and spoiler free, review of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was great. It was the best yet. The last one (Order of the Phoenix) had way, way too much teenage angst. This one was largely free of it (although there was plenty of "snogging" - I’ll let you read to figure out what that means.)

It set up the next (and last) book really well. There are some surprises, one very unpleasant. But it’s really worth a read. If you read the last one, and were worried about a downhill slide, not to worry. You’ll enjoy this one totally. And I can’t wait for the next one.

Not convinced? Here are some other reviews:

New York Times
Kirkus Reviews
AP

I like reading blogs. I like commenting on blogs. I like writing blogs. I like the back-and-forth that comes from people reacting off of what others say. One of the things I’ve realized in the past couple of months of doing fairly intensive blogging is that I notice when:

- I can’t post a comment without signing up to something
- I can’t trackback

I don’t mind so much when I can do one or the other (comment or trackback). I really mind when I can’t do either.

I understand not wanting to accept anonymous comments (although I’ve been pretty happy with the comments I’ve gotten, and have yet to delete one. I’ve not been a victim of comment spam yet - if I was, perhaps I’d be less sanguine. I also never leave anonymous comments.) But I don’t want to sign up for yet another website in order to comment on a blog. That’s just too high a barrier to jump for me.

Trackback is a really neat technology, that I know is not yet a standard. But I like knowing when my blog has been commented on, and I like reacting to other’s posts in my blog. Technorati does provide a way to do trackback, but not everyone’s blog is on Technorati. Haloscan does provide a way to do commenting and trackback even if your software/service doesn’t have those features.

I’m psyched that the blogging tools and blogging aggregation tools are getting more sophisticated - and more interesting. I’m looking forward to the time when we can easily see and trace the threads that blogs take when interacting. It’s a fun time to be a blogger.

In planning the drive across country, the heat wave has convinced us (a friend of mine is driving out with me) to go for the route that’s more northern, instead of going south. It would have been nice to go through New Mexico and Arizona, but it would also be nice to be comfortable.

One of my jobs this week was to go to AAA to get tour books and maps and the like. This is starting to feel very real…

I’ve been feeling a bit restless, over the past week or so. Chomping at the bit, as it were, ready to head in my car, and head out west. It’s a strange mix, restlessness, some anxiety about this new venture, and real sadness about leaving friends, and this place that has been home for a long time, behind me. It is making things a bit surreal, but my life has felt like a Dali painting for about 6 months now.

Today I got two emails from PSR. One about health insurance (YAY!) Most of the time, health insurance makes me unhappy. But decent health insurance that isn’t too expensive makes me happy, and they’ve got a good plan.

The second email was about registering for classes. This is what made me feel inundated. Inundated with new information that I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to navigate exactly. I mean, I will be able to navigate it, but it feels like I have to dust off some old brain cells. Registration? Classes? Advisor? Books?

And then I’m anxious because I haven’t yet gotten my housing packet, promised a couple of months ago. There is a lot to navigate, and most of it isn’t going to be done for me. I do look forward to being with other people who are in the same boat, so I can get good reality checks on my reactions.

Check out moon.google.com. Make sure you zoom all the way in, there are important details not to be missed!

Slight design change. I felt the site needed a bit of jazz, and typepad has some new templates to try. In general, I’ve been focusing more on content than on presentation. And given the fact that I am not a designer, by any stretch of the imagination, that’s probably a good thing.

… I won’t do this often (refer to my own other blogs). I just posted Part III of my Intellectual Property series on my Technology Desk. It’s in honor of EFFs Blog-athon. I know that a lot of people who read my general (and ministry) blogs will have their eyes glaze over when thinking about technology and intellectual property, but really, it’s important, and I think I’ve pared the issues down in a way that just about anyone can understand them. Comments, rants, etc. welcome.

Blog-a-thon tag:
EFF15

I know he’s written some good books (they fall into the category of ‘depressing political books’ which I no longer read). But his latest blog entry about the Roberts nomination is nuts.

He says:

"Anyway, the Roberts nomination seems to mean we should plan on saying goodbye to thirty-two years of life under “Roe,” which is not entirely a bad thing, even for pro-choice advocates.  After all, Bush did terrific with unmarried women without college educations.  It would be helpful, politically (and democratically) for them to learn just what it was they were voting for.  There’s a much longer argument to be made here, about how judicially-created and enforced liberalism has weakened its cause and alienated its potential supporters while not gaining terribly much in real world terms.  (I’m told much the same can be said for “Brown v. Board—at least the “with all deliberate speed” part of it too, but I’ve not yet read up on that argument, and it’s not nearly so germane.) "

Roe as "judicially-created and enforced liberalism"? And "not gaining terribly much in real world terms?"  I think only a man could make that argument. I hardly think that argument would be touched with a 10 foot pole by older women who knew what it was like to have an unwanted pregnancy before Roe! And to say the same about Brown v. Board? I wonder what other judicial decisions he thinks fall into that category. What on earth does he think courts are for?

He gets my "people who are out of their minds" prize for the week. It usually goes to right leaning wingnuts. This week, it goes to a left-leaning wingnut.