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The Smithosianian Magazine profiled the empress Placidia in a recent article titled “The Misunderstood Roman Empress Who Willed Her Way to the Top”. I find their attempt to help us “understand” her to be a lot less interesting than the fact that she was apparently a distinctly Christian empress who God providentially placed at the fall of the Roman empire. St. Augustine wrote in his City of God an empassioned defense of Christians against Roman accusors who claimed that the misfortune that befell Rome was due to abandoning their Gods. ...

Originally posted as a comment on this Louder with Crowder post in regards to whether the right to keep and bear arms applies to individuals. I’m reproducing it here for easier reference in the future. You should add in the Militia Acts of 1792 which basically calls every citizen 18 or older a de-facto citizen of the militia and _requires_ them to be able to furnish a gun and ammo if called on. In other words, what we now understand as selective service has its roots in the “well regulated militia” clause. “A well regulated militia” meant citizens who were equipped and disciplined enough to form a standing army if called on. ...

" The Intern" could have been a great movie. Obligatory spoiler alert here. Ben is the grandfather you never had. He is in his 70s but you would never know it because he is physically fit and his mental faculties are as sharp as ever. He has led a long successful life and is apparently doing well enough financially to afford a nice house in a nice NY neighborhood and wear tailored suits every day. Ben loves learning and doing new things. Ben even learned to speak Chinese. Why? Who cares! Ben is obviously the picture of competence and professional accomplishment. ...

A friend of mine posted the following picture on my Facebook wall recently: The problem with the Christian -> KKK and Muslim -> ISIS analogy lies in how we define what a fundamentalist or radical is. For a Christian that would mean looking like Jesus. For a Muslim that would mean looking like Mohammad. Some Muslims, in their devotion to Muhammad, even enter into the bathroom with the left foot because one of the Hadiths (additional teachings and sayings of Mohammad’s life) teach that he entered with his left foot and left with his right foot. Likewise the term “Christian” literally means “little Christs” and there are many places in the Bible which spell out how followers of “the Way” (another title Jesus applied to himself) should think and act. ...

The other night I found myself watching E.T with the family. And since I can’t watch a movie anymore without also being on my laptop, here are some interesting facts about E.T I bet you didn’t know. First and foremost, E.T. is all about divorce, not aliens. After his success with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Spielberg had instead set out to make a smaller, more personal film. “E.T. was about the divorce of my parents, how I felt after my parents broke up,” Spielberg admitted. “[It was] the first movie I ever made for myself.” The idea for E.T began to form while the director was on location in Tunisia for Raiders. A lonely Spielberg started picturing something of an imaginary friend. “It was like when you were a kid and had grown out of dolls or teddy bears,” he recalled. “You just wanted a little voice in your mind to talk to. I began concocting this imaginary creature, partially from the guys who stepped out of the Mother Ship for ninety seconds in Close Encounters [1977].” He shared the idea with Melissa Mathison, Harrison Ford’s screenwriter girlfriend who had already penned two family films The Black Stallion (1979) and The Escape Artist (1982). Together Spielberg and Mathison fleshed out the story. ...

The image above is making the following argument: Premise 1: Things that look the same should be treated equally Premise 2: Under the skin, we all _look_ the same Conclusion: Therefore we should disregard all of the categories above and treat each other as equals. The first problem is that its not true that we are all the same under the skin. There are numerous differences between us even in our skeletons. These differences are such that archeologists will still know a lot about us even when we are dead and gone. ...

Thus says this ThinkProgress image, anyway: I found this image on a Facebook friend’s wall. Here’s my response interposed with comments from his rather liberal friends: It is sad that they would reject their family rather than learning to control themselves. So it’s safe to assume, Wes Widner, that you also would reject your children if/when they decided they were gay, because you read Leviticus and you choose to ignore all other Leviticus passages, but hold the one about same sex to literal interpretations. ...

Bottom line: Be mindful of your wardrobe’s effect on others. That is, if you want to be viewed as a person and not an object.

In order to try out my cool new charting plugin I decided to gather some statistics on short term mission trip opportunities from ShortTermMissions.com. Enjoy! [easychart type=“pie” height=“100” title=“Short term mission trip opportunities by duration” groupnames=“less than a week,1 to 2 weeks,3 to 4 weeks, 1 to 2 months,3 to 5 months,6 to 12 months,1 to 2 years,2 to 3 years” group1values=“248” group2values=“948” group3values=“195” group4values=“301” group5values=“239” group6values=“191” group7values=“69” group8values=“40”]

John Lennox - Science Is Impossible Without God - Quotes - Funny bloopers are a click away