The Kingdom Come

May is busy around my house. My daughter will walk the aisle to mark the end of her High School days. Her mother and I are so proud of her. She even graduated a semester earlier but had to wait until now to walk. In fact she will be done with her college education by January.

On the topic of education; public primary education is almost pointless after the sixth grade. Most of the remaining six years are spent rehashing the same thing learned in the prior six years. I think our cookie-cutter education system needs a reformation; starting with moving most of it to privatization. America has become too socialistic in thinking everyone is the same. We're all different to some degree and we'd be more powerful and productive as a united country if we stopped wasting time teaching our children things they will never use.

Ω-Α
Christian Atomism is the underdeveloped notion that "everything is the same", that is, at base level, at the atomic or subatomic level everything is the same. While this may sound more like a philosophy or some sort of Gnosticism or Hellenistic/Neo-Platonic influence, there is strong biblical warrant for this notion.

First, the biblical Creation account has God creating the universe out of "firmament". (Gen 1:1-9) Eventually God creates humans from the humus or dirt of the reorganized firmament called planet earth. As we know, as any organic thing; be it humans, animals, or plants degrade - they return to "dirt". Or as the Bible puts it: "Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return." (Gen 3:19)
Is this not the epitome of Atomism?

I've been a Christian for 27 years and of that time I've seen and been in many theological "fights". Some were merely minor disagreements but some were on par with the most brutal UFC match. There are many reactions to such fierce theological rumbles. Here is a short list of reactions.

1. Ignore the cause of a dispute and simply call for everyone to "agree to disagree" -- this solves nothing.
2. Pick a side and set out to destroy all opposing arguments -- this usually ends in burn out or isolation.
3. Attempt to reconcile the disagreements in a syncretic/relativistic manner -- this insults both positions and solves nothing.
4. Drop out of all discussion on the topic -- this solves nothing.

Although these are the typical reactions, I wonder if they are the only options? I'm sure people could offer more reactions and I'd welcome the civil suggestions. (Please don't offer mere variations on the 4 listed)

In light of Google's recent announcement that it is paying extra toward benefits for homosexual employees to have "partner" health benefits (source), I took an interest in a new search engine - Yippy.com.

Although, it is going to be difficult to top Google's reach, Yippy looks very interesting. One thing Google has tried to do, that Yippy seems to be following is to make the actual search page ad-minimal. When people go to a search engine, they don't want to have to navigate through a bunch of clutter. Yippy maintains the nice, clean page. Yippy does offer something different than other search engines; a menu bar. But the menu bar is simply icons, which makes you curious (at least it did me) as to what each menu does. I especially liked the Yippy radio, Blues channel. Cool stuff.

I signed up for an account to be able to check out some of the other features. Take a look, Yippy.com

My family has been thinking about hosting a foreign exchange high-school student. Tonight we attended the "return ceremonies" for the previous year students as they return home. Host families provided a food dish so there was plenty of good eats.

We were able to speak with a few of the students; one from Columbia, Thailand, and Germany.

I often play civilization strategy/war games on the computer, both online and off. During an online game, I started joking with some of the other players about their tax policies on their population and said that my taxation was set at 100% and that my population had 0% unemployment because my citizens were all receiving government subsidies. To further the geeky fun, I told them I disbanded my society's military after making promises to the liberal supporters that if they elected me, I would make sure all our enemies loved us and would never want to kill us.

For you gamers out there, stop for a moment and think what it would really be like if you put into practice in your civilization games, the agendas of men like Barak Obama.

A few years ago, my daughter did a school report on Iceland. After looking at the material she had gathered I became very interested in Iceland, to the point now I have a dream to visit Iceland someday. Iceland is a forgotten piece of American history. And I bet Icelanders would wince at me associating Iceland with America, after all Iceland considers itself as part of Europe. But the truth is, Iceland like Greenland was one of the first places established as part of the "New World".