This is pretty balla.

The following poem is dedicated to Crystal Tan for buying us orange juice.  Cheers.

Some Pulp

Breakfast without orange juice,
Is a tragedy.
It goes well with cereal, bacon, and sausage,
Preferably all three.

For many years, I did not like pulp,
But recently I have acquired a taste for it.
Lots of Pulp, too much pulp; No pulp, not enough pulp;
Some Pulp, just right.

I thought that No Pulp tasted different,
But I think it was the vitamin D.
Unfortunately, pulp makes it harder to clean,
The glasses.

From the Desiring God 2008 National Conference

Try to listen to or watch the message.  The notes don’t include everything he says.

Here’s what he covers …

Why does God command us not only to praise him, but to sing praises to him?

How does music relate to words?

Three Ways Singing Serves the Word

1) Singing can help us remember words.

2) Singing can help us engage the words emotionally.

3) Singing can help us use words to demonstrate and express our unity.

Ben Hutton, before he got famous.

A clip of the Joker crashing a party — NOT a spoiler.  I like the look he gives to the old guy.

Nine plus minutes of clips from The Dark Knight.  There aren’t huge spoilers, but there are enough to warrant a SPOILER ALERT.

I’ve heard this question debated on a number of sports talk radio stations and the argument usually goes a little something like this …

“Figure skating isn’t a sport, because it’s lame”

That is not very good reasoning, but most reasoning on the radio isn’t very good to begin with.

However, I would agree with the aforementioned sports radio talk show host. Not because figure skating is lame, but because my friends, figure skating is not a sport — it is a spart.

I wholeheartedly believe that there is a difference between a competition that involves clear objectives (scoring a goal, shooting a basket, running faster than everyone else) and a competition which judges an individual’s or group’s skill at a particular activity: figure skating, skateboarding, diving, etc.

Let me elaborate further.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful or ugly a shot is in basketball — as long as the ball goes through the net, it counts as a basket. Professional basketball players are very skilled at what they do and the more skilled players tend to have better stats, but they are not directly rated on their skills, but on how many points they score and how many assists, rebounds, and steals they get.

In figure skating, the skater or skaters are judged on how well they skate and are given a rating by a panel of judges … they don’t get 10 points for doing a triple axle. In general the more difficult moves they pull off, the higher rating they will get, but you couldn’t just have someone constantly jumping in the air spinning around without some sort of routine. It is because of the emphasis on an artistic component in figure skating (and other similar competitions) that I have created a new name for such activities — sparts. Not quite a sport and not quite an art — spart.

I end by referring to my good friend and confidant — Mr. Raymond Li. He agrees with me 100%, on this issue of sports vs sparts . Maybe even 110%.

Here’s a sermon series by John Piper on being born-again, that I highly recommend.  I just listened to the first part of this 16-part series and I am excited to listen to the next 15.

Here’s an excerpt I found particularly convicting …

“If God would be pleased to bring about an awakening, in this church and across these cities … the world would get the real deal –  not the fake, go to church, evangelical, nominal, worldly Christian that makes the statistics.  Don’t you want the world to get the real deal?  Wouldn’t you like the church to have a reputation that is radically loving and sacrificial and committed to all the right, deep, glorious, biblical things? Like love, justice, faith, and righteousness … instead of bigger houses, more boats, more stuff.  Why wouldn’t we be known [the first] way? Because so many of us are not born again.”

Wall-E

If artificial intelligence develops and there are robots that have unique personalities and the ability to love, forgive, and empathize, along with the ability to express a number of other “human” emotions — will they have a soul? And if they do have a soul, can they go to heaven?

And no, this is not some roundabout way of advertising for Wall-E. Or is it …