Sad.
“Christians who are looking a good deal on a gun need look no further than Frontier Firearms. The Kingston, Tennessee liberty-defending establishment began offering 5 percent discounts last week for anyone who says “I’m a Christian” before purchasing a new handgun.”
Source: Guns Are Cheaper At This Tennessee Store If You’re a Christian – The Daily Beast
These are great numbers at the macro level, but this is troubling:
“Corporate profits are at record levels; stock prices have more than doubled.”
vs
“The same Census report showed that the number of people living in poverty went up in 2014 to nearly 46.7 million — which is 6.8 million more than in 2008. The official poverty rate — meaning the percentage of the population living below the official poverty line — was 14.8 percent last year, which is 1.6 percentage points higher than in 2008.”
Source: Obama’s Numbers (October 2015 Update) | FactCheck.org
“Conversely some of the earliest adopters of LTE — like the U.S., Japan, Sweden and Germany — are starting to fall behind in terms of data performance. In part, these older networks are suffering from their own success. In the U.S., for instance, LTE’s introduction in 2010 resulted in a huge base of LTE subscribers in the country today. Those subscribers are all competing for the same network resources, slowing down average speeds. In comparison, newer networks in South America and Europe are more lightly loaded. But the U.S. has also failed to keep up with the rest world in both spectrum and technology. All of the four major U.S. operators have been expanding into more frequency bands, but none have been able to match the capacity countries like South Korea and Singapore have plowed into their networks. The U.S. has also been much slower in moving to LTE-Advanced.”
Source: The State of LTE September 2015 – OpenSignal
During my first few weeks at Wofford College in the Fall of 1996, I stumped the campus IT team by asking for the TCP / IP details or a way to get an internet connection in my dorm room. “Why do you want to have the internet in your dorm room?” one of the IT team asked me. Two years later, the whole campus had a high speed fiber connection.
We’re undergoing a transition from laptops to mobile devices as a primary mode of computing for many people, young and old. However, as Thomas Whitley and I talked about on Thinking Religion yesterday, the transition is happening quickly on university campuses.
I’ve talked to young people who said that mobile service was a factor in where they wanted or decided to go to college. It wasn’t a primary factor, but it did make into the equation. I hear the same from businesses and clients I work with today when deciding on where to have meetings (“We can’t meet in that part of town…the Verizon coverage is terrible.”).
I wonder when / if we’ll, as a country, insist on investing in more development of LTE and mobile in both urban and rural parts of our country as the mobile revolution continues? Or has our political mood changed so much in twenty years that the government stepping in and working with an industry to improve what is potentially seen as a necessary service an impossibility?
“We’re here to tell you we believe that in rural North Carolina and in rural America, Internet access ought to be just as likely as telephone access…You ought to be able to use it in the fastest possible way…And if you can, it’ll mean more jobs, more businesses, higher incomes and more opportunity.”
President Bill Clinton
Wednesday, April 26, 2000
We too easily understand the differences between “conservative” and “progressive” but our churches have taught us very little about what being “pastoral” actually means…
“Americans are often tempted to read Francis as a “progressive” pope who has tossed out the conservative playbook of Church leaders past. After all, he’s thrown down scathing critiques of global capitalism, pushed for radical reform on climate change, and shifted the Church’s tone on issues like homosexuality, divorce, and abortion. So as pundits map his views, many conclude that he’s pushing the church into uncharted territory. But as a 15th-century Vatican cartographer might have put it: hic sunt dracones.”
Essential reading as Pope Francis lands in the United States today to begin his tour of the country.
“If you are arguing against climate change, vaccines, evolution, etc. you do not get to invoke Galileo because in any accurate analogy, you are the religious fanatics (or the astronomers who blindly clung to Aristotle).”
If only I had a dime for every time I’ve encountered the “Yeah? Well, everyone thought Columbus was nuts too!” or “Yeah? Well, Galileo was right despite what all the scientists of his day said!” in a conversation.
“We cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it.”
Source: Lincoln – David Herbert Donald – Google Books
A little reminder of what’s good about the United States on this night of shameful performances at the GOP Debate on the question of Supreme Court litmus tests.
The school will host the Commander-in-Chief Presidential Forum, featuring Republican presidential candidates, from 7 to 9 p.m. on Oct. 15 in Leonard Auditorium. All major Republican candidates have been invited to participate in the event, part of the Hipp Lecture Series on International Affairs and National Security. The event is co-sponsored by the S.C. Republican Party, and will be moderated by former S.C. Gov. David Beasley. It will be free and open to the public.
Source: Wofford College to host presidential forum in October | GoUpstate.com
Go Wofford!
We’ve teamed up with Square to enable anyone in the US to make a donation directly to a US candidate through a Tweet, starting today. This is the fastest, easiest way to make an online donation, and the most effective way for campaigns to execute tailored digital fundraising, in real time, on the platform where Americans are already talking about the 2016 election and the issues they are passionate about.
Source: Political donations, now through a Tweet | Twitter Blogs
I wonder if this will get any coverage during tomorrow night’s Republican Presidential Debate?
Regardless, you can also send me money at my “cashtag” if you’d like to test the system: $samharrelson.
But seriously… why don’t more churches and non-profits use this??
“The eighteen minutes that Joe Biden spoke with Stephen Colbert produced the most public and painful demonstration of emotional honesty by any politician in months, if not years. Biden could never speak in a campaign quite the way that he spoke on Colbert. But a version of that would be powerful, and it was impossible not to see, in the Biden interview, a rebuttal to Trump’s moment in America—to the notion of self-promotion as success, of cruelty as candor, of empathy as weakness.”
Source: Biden, Alone in a Crowd – The New Yorker
“I fully think apologizing is a great thing,” the famously self-assured Trump replied before winning the studio audience’s applause by adding: “But you have to be WRONG. … I will absolutely apologize sometime in the hopefully distant future if I’m ever wrong.”
Source: Donald Trump gets rich with his humorous ‘Tonight Show’ turn
Run, Joe.
“Since President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the War on Poverty 50 years ago, the characteristics of the nation’s poor have changed: A larger share of poor Americans today are in their prime working years and fewer are elderly. In addition, those in poverty are disproportionately children and people of any age who are black, Hispanic or both.
But perhaps just as striking is that the geographic distribution of the poor has changed dramatically, too. A new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data finds that the South continues to be home to many of America’s poor, though to a lesser degree than a half-century ago. In 1960, half (49%) of impoverished Americans lived in the South. By 2010, that share had dropped to 41%.”
Source: How the geography of U.S. poverty has shifted since 1960 | Pew Research Center
Thomas Whitley and Sam Harrelson discuss the Prayer of Jabez, Sex and the Bible, pansexuality, the Pope’s new chair, and why Islam isn’t limited to the originating text.
Source: Thinking Religion: Jesus on the Kinsey Scale | Thinking.FM
It turns out that the problem of wisdom is not easy to solve. Acquiring it is dangerous. The individual who pursues true insight is, to use Nietzsche’s phrase (though the perception goes back at least as far as Plato), untimely. That is, he strives to be ahead of his time in his perceptions, albeit sometimes basing his thoughts on the intellectual achievements of the past. He is out of joint with his moment, and the result often is the enmity of others. People do not like his ideas, which seem to be an indictment of the way they are living. The thinker is a walking criticism of the lives of the rest, as Socrates showed. He paid with his life.
Source: Why We Need to Resurrect Our Souls
Working on an episode of Thinking Daily now with this as the soapbox.
We just passed an important milestone. For the first time ever, one billion people used Facebook in a single day.
On Monday, 1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family.
A more open and connected world is a better world. It brings stronger relationships with those you love, a stronger economy with more opportunities, and a stronger society that reflects all of our values.
Source: Mark Zuckerberg – We just passed an important milestone. For the…
Of course, that means 6 in 7 people on earth didn’t use Facebook.
That means that there are lots of people who choose not to use Facebook in the developed world.
More critically, that means there are many people in our world that don’t have access to the internet or devices that can access the web (or Facebook if you please).
Companies are working to crack this nut for their own bottom lines but also the improvement of humanity. Access to information and the ability to communicate near instantaneously with someone on the other side of our planet (and eventually beyond) will be an amazing issue to cover in the coming decades.
It’s incumbent upon all of us now to make sure the internet is as welcoming and transformative as it should be for everyone (whether old or new user).
I got into a discussion today with someone from an opposing politician’s team, I think. I was using my script, and I think he was using a script, too. Answers from a can. It felt weird to have a futile discussion between liars. I wonder what that person really believes? Anyway, I just thought people should know not to take the political things they read on here too seriously. If you want to have a genuine discussion about that, keep it in person or on facebook where you know the people you’re talking to. If you’re doing it on an anonymous forum, you’re probably being marketed to.
Source: I get Paid to Chat on Reddit : offmychest
#advancedgaming
“Wittes and Bedell argue that Apple’s decision to “move aggressively to implement end-to-end encrypted systems, and indeed to boast about them” after being “publicly and repeatedly warned by law enforcement at the very highest levels that ISIS is recruiting Americans” — in part through the use of encrypted messaging apps — could make the company liable if “an ISIS recruit uses exactly this pattern to kill some Americans.”
Source: Obama Administration War Against Apple and Google Just Got Uglier
The wars of the future will be fought between increasingly archaic nation states and corporate states just as the Glorious Revolution and the French Revolution (and in part the American Revolution) signaled the decline of monarchies in Europe.
The NRA likes the idea of training so much that it’s floated the idea of mandatory firearms training for school children. On the other hand, it’s opposed laws requiring mandatory training for gun purchases. Many states allow concealed carry without any training or permit for people as young as 16. Most states don’t require gun owners or purchasers to even be licensed, much less trained. And a handful, like Arizona, have passed laws prohibiting localities from imposing their own training requirements.
Source: Watch what happens when regular people try to use handguns in self-defense – Washington Post
I grew up around guns in our home and the homes of my friends (and the occasional gun rack on the back glass of pickups), and hunting culture. I understand the sentiment that guns are tools and can be used for evil just like any other tool. What I don’t understand is the resistance from some groups to legislate mandatory licensing and training (similar to what we do with automobiles).
If you’re really of the “government wants to take away our guns” so we need to hold up the 2nd amendment as our way to preserve freedom persuasion, I’d argue that a citizenry that is licensed and trained to handle firearms is a much bigger threat to “the government” than the current situation.
“What is left is pretty much McDonald’s — the restaurant of the masses, the great democratizer, the substitute for the community square, where it is possible to read or nurse a cheap cup of coffee for hours, or to nap after taking a daily methadone dose.”
Source: A Manhattan McDonald’s With Many Off-the-Menu Sales – The New York Times
Discouragement is for wimps. We aren’t going to change the Constitution, so we need to make the system we have work. We are still, despite our shortcomings, the most successful experiment in self-government in history. Our greatest strength is our ability to bounce back from mistakes like we are making today. Get over your nostalgia: Congress has never been more than a sausage factory. The point here isn’t to make us something we’re not. The point is to get us to make sausage again. But for that to happen, the people have to rise up and demand better.
Source: Confessions of a congressman: 9 secrets from the inside – Vox
Anonymous member of Congress with some interesting insight into the workings of our government in 2015.
The title refers to a “congressman,” so I assumed this is a male. However the writer never uses that term but frequently uses “member of Congress” or “Congress member.”
“Providing written notice, courts have determined, does not constitute a substantial burden on religious exercise. Beyond that, the rulings emphasize, contraception is made available and paid for by others under the plan, not the objecting religious organizations.”
Source: Obama Administration Issues Final Contraception Coverage Religious Accommodation Rules
Finally.
Now let’s move on to issues affecting our communities, states, and country that deserve the type of scrutiny, examination, and money that this has received.
“Nothing surprises our God. He is perfect in omniscience. He knows everything that can be known including what is going to happen in the future. In other words, what happened on the Friday before last came as no surprised to God. Neither will it prove any kind of meaningful impediment to the advance of His kingdom. We serve the God whose plans could not be derailed by the unjust death of His Son. His church survived the Roman Empire. It survived Christendom. It survived the Enlightenment. It survived Darwinism. It survived Stalin. It survived Mao. The church is surviving ISIS and Boko Haram and Al Shabaab and Al Qaeda. Christians holding to the historically orthodox position on sex and marriage should in no way think that the legalization of same-sex marriage in this country on the basis of the opinion of five people will pose any kind of an existential threat to the church.”
This strand (fractal?) of a theology is so troubling to me.
