educating eric

http://njsllearning.blogspot.com/2009/03/tapas-menu_3920.html - - - - - - Typed by thumb and sent from my St. Thomas BlackBerry Wireless Device

I keep hearing how cool/revolutionary/hip this " Foursquare " thing is, so I figured I'd give it a try. Perhaps part of my problem is that I've got a Blackberry which, for some reason, doesn't yet have a Foursquare client. It works fine from its web browser, I'm told, but... this doesn't make much sense to me. Question: Does the Foursquare client for other smart-phones have some sort of geo-location feature (using cell towers or such)? Because, when using the web browser on the Blackberry, all it does is narrow my options down to the "Twin Cities" (which, if you don't know, is pretty big). I'm 0 for 3 in the Foursquare locations I've searched for, and the search process seems really awkward. When it finds something, the results seem random; that's probably because the locations are manually entered by other Foursquare members, but it seems to lead to a mess. For instance, this morning, I was at the Holiday station in Eagan. T...

I really like this definition. I'm not sure my mind is so coherent as to differentiate "mindcasting" from "lifecasting" -- the two blend together in my world -- but I think this is worthy of some thought: http://www.wordspy.com/words/mindcasting.asp

Every so often I'm struck by a turn of a phrase that probably didn't seem very profound to most people, but happened to really cut straight to my heart. The first sentence of this Sunday's closing prayer did it for me: "Jesus, thank you for coming anyway." If the Bible is true -- or if even "the majority of the words of a rabbi named Yeshua who lived about 2000 years ago" were true -- then 1) we live out our lives in the midst of a remarkable spiritual plane that goes almost totally unnoticed, and 2) it's amazing that God would choose to interject himself into that ignorant and ungrateful world. And that's not an indictment by "me" against "them;" I'm as ignorant of and ungrateful for God's workings as the next guy is. I don't live in a state of unceasing prayer. My life isn't focused on "advancing the Kingdom." I hope (and am fairly confident) that I'm not actively undermining God and His wor...

This is just a shadow of an age-old question, but I'm still pondering it at the moment: the Great Commission has us go our and teach "everything" that Jesus has commanded us. But Jesus' teachings weren't merely Paul's "Romans Road" -- He called us to be "good people" and do "good things". I don't think missionaries are teaching the opposite... but is the emphasis on "saving faith in Jesus," or is it on being the good Law-abiding Jew that He was? Yes, I know some works-oriented heresies lurk there... but it's still important to ask the question, isn't it?

One thing that always bothered me about the "Parable of the Talents" stems from the fact that I think of "investment" in the modern-day context of "put some money into the stock market and hope it doesn't disappear."  In that sense, the servant who buried his money seems pretty reasonable -- he took a conservative but prudent step and made sure that none of his master's principal was lost. It was Joel Osteen, of all people, who gave a message that altered my perspective.  He described "talents" (the 2000-year-old monetary word) in the context of our skills or "talents" that God has given us and expects us to use. In that sense, the master in Jesus' account was exactly right: the only way to waste/abuse/lose a talent is to not put it to use. For me, that's a much more liberating view than to see God as someone who expects you to metaphorically "play the stock market" and come out ahead, punishing you if you have...

Here's something I'm pondering in my spare time -- and I'm hoping that some of my web geek friends can pitch in with some suggestions. The background: I love the 1980s. And 1990s. And nothing captures the spirit of those times like commercials and TV news clips. Thanks to my pack-rat tendencies and the miracle of home DVD burning, I've been able to go through my ancient VHS tape archive and put clips up for all to see on YouTube . But I also own the BigHair .TV domain (where nothing sits at the moment) and I'm hoping to build out a site that features (but isn't limited to) that video content. For instance, I'd love to track down some of the old TV personalities for "Where Are They Now?" interviews... but if it's written rather than video, it would need to be posted somewhere other than YouTube. But, I don't want to be manually "maintaining a blog" -- I don't want to have to post something to the YouTube channel, then go t...