ruff ruff ruff

One more ...

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Get down on it!

Oh, yes, that's the spot.

It has been a long time ...

Well, I'm going to try to get back to blogging so I have a means of self-expression, even if no one will ever read it.
For now, how about this:


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Give 'em hell, Steve!

Calling out Republican leaders in the House ...

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To blog or not to blog

Sweet fun.

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Finally! Some Christians with the guts to say "enough"!

Robert Marus & Ken Camp at the Associated Baptist Press write a great piece that is a challenge to Christians and asks them to think about their motives for spreading libelous e-mails:

Fear Not: What does virtual rumor-mongering say about Christians?

Thanks to the Internet, some gullible American Christians can engage in one of their favorite hobbies -- digging up the metaphorical corpse of Madalyn Murray O’Hair and rhetorically flogging it -- more easily than ever before.
Even though the famous atheist’s body was discovered in 1998 and positively identified in Texas -- and even though she apparently has been dead since she disappeared in 1995 -- patently false rumors about her alleged anti-Christian campaigns continue to spread. Credulous Christians who once forwarded these kinds of rumors in mimeographed chain letters or spread them on talk radio now can broadcast them around the world with the mere click of a mouse.
And, of course, O’Hair is not alone in the annals of perceived enemies of Christ about whom some Christians will spread the most ridiculous stories, not bothering to do the merest hint of fact-checking on them.
From the old Procter & Gamble Satanism libel to tales of more recent vintage about President Obama’s faith and citizenship, Internet-fueled rumors seem to run rampant. And, frighteningly, Christians seem at the very least to be as susceptible as the population at large to the habit of spreading false stories.
So, why are Christians so willing to believe unsubstantiated rumors? And more troubling, why are Christians, who should hold the highest standards of truth-telling, so eager to spread such rumors -- and even downright libels?
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The advent of the Internet only made the rumors easier to spread and harder to correct.
Rumors about what people love to hate
Rumors like the ones tied to O’Hair become more powerful when they tap into the hostility and distrust toward government that is widespread among conservative Christians. It’s easy for the average evangelical to believe any rumor that fits this larger political paradigm.
Factor in a contentious presidential election and the stakes go even higher. During the 2000 campaign -- the first in the age of widespread Internet access -- dutiful Christian culture-warriors worked overtime.
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Things only got worse in the 2008 election. With one candidate deeply distrusted by the Religious Right having a background unlike any presidential contender before him -- a nominally Muslim father from Kenya, a freethinking American mother who raised him in the United States and, for a time, in Indonesia -- the rumor mills worked overtime.
Many of those e-mails seemed marketed directly to fearful Christians. One frequently forwarded message -- also debunked by Snopes -- identifies Barack Obama as the son of a black Muslim from Kenya and a white atheist from Kansas.
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Some Christians are so willing to believe rumors that reflect well on their heroes and poorly on their opponents that they abandon even a modest concern for the veracity of the rumors. Yet the Bible clearly prohibits “bearing false witness” and spreading rumors and gossip. Perhaps Christians who spread such rumors think they serve a greater purpose, as if the end justifies the means, some ethicists speculate.
The real truth
Ethicist Tillman called on Christians to examine their biases and prejudices, which he described as “tough exercise,” because it forces Christians to explore the influences that shaped them.
Gullibility may grow out of fear and anxiety, he added. And that directly relates to what people believe.
“I suggest to my students, ‘Tell me something about your fears, and I will tell you something of your theology,’” Tillman said. “Dealing with our fears -- an action usually dismissed or ignored -- may be one of the keys to understanding just which e-mails we forward and those we don’t.”
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The key to confronting such bad habits among Christians is proper spiritual formation on the ethics of truth-telling, gossip and rumor-spreading, experts said.
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“If we are gullible, we need some help to sort out the nonsense we should question from the truth that we should spread.... If we are fearful and envious, just too quick to gossip or criticize, we need that deep love that calms our fears and removes the need to impress others. That love comes from God through Christ, but the Holy Spirit often communicates it to us through our good spiritual friends.”
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“In general, we need to help Christians act like Christians in public life and not just in private life, and not to get sucked into the polarization, partisan idolatry and demonization so common now in media and government,” Gushee said.
...''

Go read this!

A father's love ...

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Kolb Studio at the Grand Canyon

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Grand Canyon Bright Angel Trail

Good mornin' Flagstaff!

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San Francisco Peaks, Flagstaff. Arizona

Deism Ain't Dead

Loved this post and the poll about changes in religious beliefs ... Yes, Andrew Sullivan, Jefferson may be smiling ...

The Return Of American Deism

After this ghastly revival of literalist, self-help fundamentalism, there's a shift in American religion:

The rise of the Nones is usually decried by religious leaders as a sign of secularization or atheism's ascent but get this: 51% say they believe in God.

Now some of those folks might just be religious people in between churches. So the Trinity folks asked them to describe what kind of God they believed in.

24% say they believe in "a higher power but no personal God." That would mean about 3.6% of Americans could be considered Deists, making them more common than Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or Mormons.

Barry Kosmin, one of the authors of the study, points out that an earlier study that looked at Nones as well as those who did "affiliate" with a religion found that 12% were Deistic. That would make Deists bigger than all of the aforementioned groups combined, and one of the largest spiritual groupings in America.

Somewhere Jefferson is smiling.

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I want to go to Okinawa

Watch this full screen, it is so damn beautiful.

Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world - (song is Please don't go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

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Happy 17th Birthday Hannah!

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Delayed Gratification

We've talked about the "Marshmallow Experiment" a lot in our house over the last few years.
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Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo.

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Goodbye Mary

So sad.

Mary Travers
Rest In Peace
1936-2009

Sharyn and I celebrated our

Sharyn and I celebrated our 4th anniversary with an awesome dinner at Morton's on 5th Avenue ... walking through NYC on a beautiful night!

GiGi and Clio gazing out the secong floor window.

Times Square on a beautiful saturday evening.

Niagara Falls

The view from our room at Niagara Falls ... awesome!