Can’t do it. At least if you can, don’t ask me how. Unless of course, you skip the “man” altogether and just go wired.
That’s what Lea just did using the Estonian tax filing web site. Her income, all charitable contributions, every taxable item have all been registered in the system. She logs in, answers a few questions about family changes and demographics, punches send and that’s that. Done before I can type out a quick blog post.
Yes, I am envious. Now where did I put that W2?
Some pictures from my installation service in Viimsi last Sunday (Feb 8th). I will be serving beside Pastor Raido Oras as associate pastor of the Viimsi Church. I’ll update this post with more details in a bit. For now, just some pics!
At our last bi-weekly Bible study group I received a series of congratulations on the swearing in of President Barak Obama and then the following remarks from a few scowlers: “I didn’t like the way he embraced Islam during his speech. Can you believe it, a Muslim president of the United States.” I couldn’t let that one go.
First of all, these ridiculous rumors that Obama was or is a muslim are not only factually wrong, they are repulsive because they refuse to take into account the man’s own public profession of faith. Nothing less than repulsive. We may rightly question where Obama lies on the spectrum of Christian belief. But to disregard his own testimony entirely and assign him to another faith based on speculation, fear and political shortsightedness is uncalled for.
Second, Obama’s “extended hand” to our nation’s enemies was an invitation to diplomacy not religious advocacy. The “clenched fists” out there are not only radical Muslim states like Iran but also emperor worshiping states like North Korea, avowed atheist states like China, and communist dictatorships like Venezuela and Cuba. The only things these countries have in common from the perspective is that we have intractable and longstanding diplomatic troubles with each of them. Our inability to find common ground has cost us immeasurable difficulty and grief. We may not agree with Obama’s approach but let’s not bundle his foreign policy decisions with a knee jerk conclusion that he embraces any one of the idolatries these countries represent.
Now I don’t agree with everything Barak Obama says. But I do think he is an intelligent man and I appreciate his fresh analysis of the facts and the new perspectives he has highlighted in formerly locked down debates. Let’s keep a watchful eye on whether his policies make a difference. But let’s give the man the benefit of the doubt and support him with our prayers just as we would any other public official we’ve elected to office.
Robert DeNiro in "The Mission"
One of the things that made Regent College special to Lea and I was the integration of arts and theology. As early as our first year course called The Christian Life, films were paired with the topics we studied in order to highlight certain issues and create a context for discussion.
This week Madis Raspel, our youth minister in Viimsi, called to ask if I could recommend a discussion prompting film for their youth night. I recommended one of my all time favorites The Mission but a whole list of greats came to mind, some of which I haven’t yet had the chance to see. His question also prompted a little google searching to see what lists others have compiled. My lists are below.
What about you? Use the comments at the end of this post to name a couple of top notch films that have highlighted issues of faith or somehow been influential to you.
Movies I’ve Seen and Recommend
On My Must-See List
From artsandfaith.com’s Top 100 List
I don’t usually write about tech stuff on this blog (or anywhere else for that matter). However, I thought I’d write a blog about two great tools that Google has developed which have helped me get the most out of the internet in the last year. Each of these tools can be accessed via Google’s web search page and you don’t ever need to download or install programs to your computer in order to use them. Google is basically building a set of online desktop applications. Pretty cool.
Google Video Chat
I have long been a fan of Skype for making cheap international calls over the internet (free between Skype users). But I found that some of the people I most want to keep in touch with had a hard time installing, configuring or using the program. Google has now circumvented this problem for users of Gmail with its built in chat software. Now you can even make video calls to other gmail users with your computer’s webcam. Over the Christmas season we were able to have “face-to-face” conversations with everybody in the Edminster family using this technology so I’m in!
Google Reader
The net has finally developed the ability to provide you with up to date news on all the topics you are interested in. The trouble is, now you’ve got handful of sites to visit on a regular basis rather than one central “newstand” where you can skim titles and pick up what looks good while you’re on your way to something else.
That’s where RSS technology comes into play. RSS is like a little news ticker built into a web site. If you have an RSS reader, you can subscribe to and organize these little RSS ticker tapes and collect them all in one place. Most of the time, you need to download reader software and set it up on your compluter. But I prefer Google Reader which is accessible online and very easy to use. For all the top sites that I visit the most, I now look for the universal RSS icon or for a link that say “subscribe to this feed”. Google does all the importing for me and all I have to do is visit Reader for my daily update.
And guess what? Edminsters Online has RSS feeds too. So instead of coming to visit to check if there’s anything new, you can subscribe to our feed and have updates sent to your reader automatically.
If you’d like a little tutorial on how to set either of these up, let me know in the comments section and I’ll write another post.
