The Origins of Valentine's Day... a free lecture!

It's not an important holiday simply because it happens to be your dating anniversary (Sean) or wedding anniversary (Hamlet). The Teaching Company is giving away a free lecture from their High Middle Ages series about the origins of this holiday and how it became associated with love and courtship. Listen to it with a loved one. Or listen to it alone and laugh at us foolish neo-pagans.

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A Valid Path

Last weekend I completed ripping my Alan Parsons CD collection and started listening to it at work off my portable media player. While listening, I figured I might as well google Alan, maybe there would be some interesting historical stuff on the web. As it turns out, Alan Parsons is still kicking and has a new album out! Even better, he's doing electronica now! I'll be receiving it shortly and will do a review. This will be the first record without his long-time bandmates Ian Bairnson, and Stuart Elliott. The new album will take Alan in a new direction and into the world of electronica. Artists appearing on this record include: Nortec Collective, The Crystal Method, Shpongle, PJ Olsson, and Pink Floyd's David Gilmour.

US death toll in Iraq tops 1,000

Senator Kerry calls this a "tragic milestone," and the most catastrophic of the administration's mistakes made so far. Regardless of his mistakenly voting for the war at the time, he's right. For him to turn against the Iraq war is a flip-flop I would be happy with. Hopefully he has an exit strategy, even though he's not telling us about it at the moment. This is why Bush must be defeated in November. I realize the economy is an important issue, but compared to 1000++ dead soldiers? Come on. Not to mention 7,000++ wounded, and the 11,000++ estimated by the Iraq Body Count . This is a slam dunk, as George Tenet would say. Prediction: if Bush is [re]elected, the U.S. will engage in pre-emptive war against Iran and/or North Korea. Is that really what we want?

And What Happens When I Don't Wait Well?

I guess you get anxious ... and we all know what that’s like. But I think that “ yakhal ” (Hebrew) or " elpis " (Greek) does not preclude the possibility of action - whether it’s writing about the situation, or something more (and don't underestimate the power of journaling!) Indeed, you don't think of prophets or apostles as the kind of people to sit around just waiting for something to happen. They act, but their action is tempered by the realization that things don’t look too good at the moment (otherwise why would the issue even be coming up?) So they act and wait at the same time, knowing that the fruits of their action are ultimately dependent on the Lord. And of course the Lord is known to have us do things for a while before any kind of clear result is made known. Like planting, and then watering, and then waiting, for a seed to turn into a plant. Farmers probably understand waiting a lot better than we do. They think in seasons and years, not months or we...

rare bird

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