Spurgeon's Cigar

The Fair Tish’s three favorite hobbies are knitting, web-design, and concocting random projects to be performed by me in whole or in part during the first twenty minutes of super-exciting football games. Invariably, either a turnover will be committed by the team I’m rooting against, or a touchdown will be scored by the team I’m rooting for during this span. This causes me to become irritated at the whole idea of doing the project, forces me to complete the project in a haphazard way, and then further frustration is evoked because my team generally does poorly as soon as I start watching. The preeminent example of this phenomenon was during the Bears/Colts Superbowl. I was cheering for the Bears because their coach, Lovie Smith, is from a nearby East Texas town, where he coached high school football. As I was immersed in the project, Devin Hester returned a kickoff for a touchdown—the only time that’s happened in Super Bowl history. I promptly began doing crummy work to complete the pr...

She would be the first star to shine from China’s athletic galaxy, more graceful than the nimble gymnast Nastia Liukin , more beautiful than the elegant swimmer Luo Xuejuan . Yet we never heard her name. She would be the only solo dancer featured in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics. Already worshiped by her native country China, now the world would see her, admire her, adore her, praise her. This would be her moment. Almost from the time she was born her parents detected her natural grace–her delicate ivory hands and fingers floated like feathers in Beijing’s blue sky; her exquisite feet learned their first steps with effortless poise. She never walked or ran–she danced, like a leaping gazelle, a darting swallow, an elegant swan–she danced. Her rigorous training began in early childhood. Day after day, she spent infinite hours in the grueling discipline of ballet. Swiftly beyond her peers, she excelled in every precise pirouette , simple to complex adagios , bright and brisk...

Consider the following from Book VII of Plato’s The Republic and what is commonly known as The Allegory of the Cave : Imagine human beings living in an underground, cavelike dwelling, with an entrance a long way up, which is both open to the light and as wide as the cave itself.  They’ve been there since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered able to see only in front of them, because their bonds prevent them from turning their heads around.  Light is provided by a fire burning far above and behind them.  Also behind them, but on a higher ground, there is a path stretching between them and the fire.  Imagine that along this path a low wall has been built, like the screen in front of puppeteers above which they show their puppets.   The prisoners would in every way believe that the truth is nothing other than the shadows of those artifacts.   When one of them was freed and suddenly compelled to stand up turn his head, walk and look up toward the l...

I just finished this article, in which the author discusses the devolution of western society (though I don't think he knew that's what he was writing about). Courts in the Western World are overrun, and have been for decades. To combat this, legislatures in the West came up with something called Alternative Dispute Resolution ("ADR"). ADR works by litigants agreeing to have their dispute heard, and decided, by an arbitrator. The arbitrator's decision is binding on the parties, and can be enforced by a court. In Britain, the mother of our judicial system, Muslims have taken advantage of the applicable ADR statute by setting up a number of Sharia courts that act under the auspices of ADR. Up until last year, the rulings of the Sharia courts were nonbinding in nature, but after a clever Muslim identified the ADR rules in Britain, the Sharia courts are now making rulings that are enforceable by British courts. What kinds of cases are the Sharia courts handling? Well...

I have been pondering my own education frequently of late, dwelling on both its good features and bad. As an amateur educator, parent, and student, the subject is naturally quite important as I have to take care and fill in the gaps that I currently have. And as my oldest child begins school, the subject becomes more urgent. This week my mind dwells on planning. It is a good thing that schools plan. After all, if every teacher did something different in a school, each grade ignored what came before and what would come after and nobody cared that the students were getting a well-rounded education, I think we would have little hope for students attending those schools. It makes sense for a 12th grade teacher to teach calculus knowing that students had been able to take algebra before, but not otherwise. It makes sense for a teacher to teach a course on advanced French, but only if there was an intermediate French class the year before. But the planning goes beyond that; there are broad s...

Barack Obama's black-liberation theology and the fact that his "spiritual mentor" is an anti-semitic/anti-American/anti-white loon is troubling. I have no qualm about saying that in a two-man race McCain is far and away the better man. I also have to say that I've been enamored by Palin. She believes the right conservative stuff, and seems to be Reagan in a skirt, as I heard Glenn Beck describe her the other day. However, just as I denounced Obama for going to a nutty church, I must denounce Palin, too: perhaps even more so. Frankly, I doubt Obama believed anything his church taught him, and that he was just using membership and involvement at a locally famous church to get ahead. Unfortunately, I think Palin probably believes the drivel coming from her Pentecostal pulpit. You can find the relevant clips here , here , and here . In the first clip you'll see a CNN report where they play a clip from the church where the pastor says that Alaska will be a refuge for p...

Two years ago as I was relating to my sister some exchanges between myself and a Jehovah's Witness friend of mine, she asked this simple question. As I stammered through a feeble and less than lucid argument, I came to realize that I didn't have a good answer. I could explain away the hows relating to the deity of Christ but not the whys . It forced me to consider, "am I really that prepared to witness to the average cult following neighbor/work associate/friend or the intelligent agnostic friend explaining why I believe what I do--why Jesus must be God?" So I began searching for an answer. Scores of volumes have spoken to the mystery of God-man over time. From the blood thirsty cries of Jesus' Jewish contemporaries who accused him of blasphemy to Arius and his modern day followers (known as Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons) who claim that he was some lesser shade of deity and many others, the debate over Jesus' true identity continues today. Certa...

Recently, a friend of mine challenged my thinking on baptism. Specifically, he said that he wanted to ensure that my reading of Scripture in this area is exegetical and not eisegetical. Essentially, the question presented is whether I am a credo/immersing baptist due to study or due to culture. The gauntlet thrown down, I’ve now immersed myself in a study of baptism (its meaning, mode, and proper subject), and I plan to write a paper on my findings. When engaged in lengthy legal writing I have a proven system; I look for the best positive arguments for all sides of an issue, then for articles critiquing the positive arguments. I then create a spreadsheet with all arguments and counterarguments, and then begin my writing. For legal writing, this mechanical system is an easy way to go about discovering the law. However, for thoroughly addressing the positive arguments for paedobaptism my normal method has proven difficult for a variety of reasons. I’m fairly well versed, for a layman, in...