Believing the Bible

I want to take a moment to step aside from the usual pointless blog posts and silly discussions and talk about something I think is pretty important. I was listening to a Ken Ham seminar from 1992ish that was at Cedarville (if you want to hear it let me know) the other day and he was mostly talking about the word yom in the book of Genesis which as most of you probably know can be interpreted either as "day" or "age" (usually meaning thousands of years) depending on who you ask.

Well Ken Ham holds to a literal, simplest interpretation of these verses saying that it most definitely means "day" and not "age". I have always believed this myself but have had trouble explaining why I thought it was dangerous to believe in the age theory. Ken Ham, however, is very good at explaining why so I'm basically just going to say what he says...

First of all, this age interpretation didn't even start showing up until evolution started to develop as an explanation to our existence. This is because the scientific idea of an old earth was being pushed on church leaders which led them to find a way to make the Bible fit science. Hopefully we can all immediately see the problem with that! Don't think this is the first time this has happened, not too long ago, a group of Southern Baptist churches threw out several books of the Bible that talked about David because they couldn't find archaeological evidence of his existence. The evidence of his existence was later found and the books re-accepted, but we see what happens when we put our knowledge before the Bible.

Another thought is that when you put aside all the biases on the subject of the Genesis 1 definition of day, we can pretty well see that the truth is hard to dispute. Of course if you ask someone who already has an invested interest in believing one or the other, it's hard to take their answer as an unbiased interpretation. But when Ken asked several scholars who didn't believe the Bible was true at all (meaning they just want to interpret it as it is written with no agenda) they always said it means day...as in 24 hours. This is because every time the Hebrew word yom is used in the Old Testament as it is in Genesis, it always means day, as in day, as in 24 hours. The list of reasons goes on and on.

The reason this is such a big issue for me is because this sort of thing happens is because we're putting what we know above what God has clearly told us in the Bible. The way day used in Genesis is really no different than the word we use today. Think about the sentence, "During the day I drove for a day in my car from back in the day." The context tells us what each one means as does yom in Genesis.

When reading the Bible, we can never assume we know more than God. We must also assume that God wanted us to know the meaning of what He's saying to us so he's not going to make it hard to understand in general. When God blatantly says that he created the world in 6 days, I'm just going to have to assume he knows what he's talking about regardless of what the world tells me. If you're honestly going to say that day means thousands of years, you're going to have to say that God messed up with the Bible, because that's most definitely not what Genesis says...that's not what God says.

If you need more check Ken Ham's website or maybe just this podcast. Please send me information on any opposing views to this interpretation of the Bible because I would really love to hear it.

Masterpiece Conspiracy

or Conspiracy No. 5

One of those double title things...I couldn't chose just one song to name this post after. But anyway, I think I'm really on to something. If you have been watching March Madness (the NCAA tournament) you may know that upsets (when a team ranked lower than another wins) are fairly common and unpredictable. So all the people who fill out brackets try to weed out the weak high ranked teams by predicting which of the lower ranked teams will beat them. Another thing you should know is that if you call an upset you get more points in your bracket.

Well I have determined that it's all rigged. Using the stats from the Facebook page that shows what school's students have the best bracket scores, it's clear that it's all completely up to chance! People may be good at guessing who will win, but if you ever noticed, how good they do varies a lot from year to year...because sometimes they get lucky and sometimes they don't. It's relatively random. What's cool about the Facebook stats is that is very clearly shows that the low ranked schools that do well in the tournament also do very well in the overall bracket score ranking, because, of course, they chose their schools to win against the odds, and when this happens, they get a lot more points.

You may be saying, "Well duh, of course that happens!" But I say it makes filling out brackets completely pointless. If you're from a state that has a team in the bracket, you're going to favor that team most likely, as I did with Ohio State. Had Ohio state done well this year, my bracket would have done pretty well, but as for schools with low ranked teams that are doing well, they will do even better. See, it has nothing to do with how smart the school (or the people) are, it has to do with what tournament team is closest to them. Because of all of this, the students as George Mason (ranked 11th which means every upset win is worth even more) in general have very exceptional bracket scores as do the students at LSU and Bradley. All of this doesn't apply to top ranked teams as much however because they don't get as many points for winning (since they're expected to win).

So now that I uncovered the truth to the "skill" of filling out brackets, remember to never bet against someone from a low ranked school in the tournament, or someone that is a fan of those teams because they have a much higher chance of scoring higher than you in reality. Another tip, don't brag about how awesome your bracket is, trust me...you got lucky this year!

Dedicated to a nameless friend who has a very good bracket that he filled out by chosing teams from states he's visited...

Two Things....

I know I'm a little late on the breaking news but it's now official, XP booting on Intel Macs! Why is this cool? Because you can...and if that's not a good enough reason, then becasue the first person to make it work got $12,000. That's probably a good enough reason. So if you haven't been listening to podcasts, this is the latest cool news so go here for the whole story.

In other news, I have been using Open Office now for about 8 months and I'm pretty sure I love it. It runs pretty good and using it just feels great.

Does it crash? Yes.

More than MS Office? The beta I was using, yes, but the normal versions I would say no.

Is it free? 100%

Should you use it? Well, I really like it mostly because you can still open and save as MS Office files. This is critical considering 99% of everyone uses MS files. (I will not even mention WordPerfect although it will support the Open Document format). Honestly though, if you already have MS Office and it doesn't bug the heck out of you just stay with that. But if you don't want to drop $100+ on basically the same program, go with Open Office! (available for Mac and PC)

It Came! It Finally Came!

(Followed by an evil childish laugh) If you can tell me what movie that is from you get the weekly allotment of exported cool points. If not, all you get is this blog post...

JVC SU-DH1

I have been waiting for this for a while and it finally came! This may look like a boring little box to you, well you would be wrong. You may remember way back in November of 2005 I wrote about the Dolby Headphone Technology which was incredible (and recently outdone by Holophonic Sound which will hopefully replace the Dolby stuff some day) and that is what this little piece of hardware does. It adds that ability to hear surround sound from your regular headphones on portable devices. Only problem, it has to have either an optical input or the Pro Logic II input so there's really no use to most people with laptops or iPods (maybe a portable DVD player).

Really the only reason this excites me is because the Dolby Headphone stuff is finally coming out into the open. But really, why is this ability not being built into laptops, portable DVD players and, heck, even iPods! Think about watching a movie on your iPod or PSP in surround sound...keep picturing it...ok, stop salivating. But the industry is so slow at catching on to these things. This is an amazingly beautiful technology that nobody can use yet...come on hardware industry, GET WITH THE PROGRAM!

All that is Nerd

Yes, that's right, I am all that is nerd! I have now permanently been engraved into the future of the internet. I have contributed to its vast wealth of knowledge in a way that no other man ever has. That's right, I found a goof and submitted it to the IMDb (Internet Movie Database).

The goof I found is definitely not the kind of mistake most people would catch but I recognized it at first listen. While watching Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (great movie by the way), during a certain scene, I heard it! I had to go back and rewatch it to make sure it was real...but I heard it again...and again! I just couldn't believe it when I went to its IMDb page and found that nobody else had. So you can go there now and see my contribution. It's the last, most recent, and definitely the best one on there. And now you all know why I am so cool!

NYC and Back Again

It was a great, awesome, amazing, photogenic trip and I'm back (for two days now). I've been waiting to blog until I had all the pictures up and ready to go so thanks to Aaron's generosity the pictures are there! There's 79 pictures, all touched up real nice with Picasa. I mostly only put mine because it already took so much time but Rachel may put hers up somewhere too.

We did a lot while we were there starting on Friday the 10th. We got there and checked in at about 6:30 and headed off for Times Square right off. It was awesome and the pictures are all there for you to see. After that we went back to the room to sleep.

The second day we got a decent start at 8:30am with a continental breakfast and then headed off to start with the World Trade Center. And then we just wandered around the rest of the day finishing off with blowfish, chicken wings, and ice skating.

Forgetting that Jews don't work on Saturday we weren't able to go the Jewish Heritage Center and then we slept in a little on Sunday after not really sleeping so we missed that. All I can say about the ride back is that, yes, I did leave my phone at Hooters in Mechanicsburg, PA. Also on the ride home...I definitely lost!

Anyway, for those of you that didn't/couldn't go...do it...it's worth it! So go see the pictures or just go straight to the slideshow (you don't see the comments or notes that way though)!

Jamaica

So we arrived in Jamaica and just got in our hotel which is pretty much straight in the ghetto. We will either head into the big city maybe tonight but definately first thing tomorrow.

So we drove 11 hours to see New York and I already got some sweet pics. I am really excited because we will be spending all day tomorrow in the city hanging out and trying not to get mugged. If all goes well, this will be the perfect ending to a very nice spring break full of laughs, sleeping...and hopefully some of the Conan walking around NY. I'll post some pics tomorrow so stay posted.

Ponderosa....Ponderosa....Here We Come!!!

Did I Mention?

I have spring break this coming week (WHOOOO...Spring Break 2004!!!!) and I have to say...this one is definately right on time. Things actually cooled down on the being busy front since last week besides the 10 page overnight paper (which, by the way, by "Ahead of Schedule" I meant because I got done at 5am rather than the expected 6am). But despite the far more relaxed schedule this week I am still really needing the break.

See, I am the kind of person that never plans anything and just wings it all. This can prove difficult for doing large assignments here at Cedarville University but I've been able to get by pretty well so far. So whenever I have a big project coming up, I start to think of when I can get it done closest to the due date and how to get it done. You may think this means I purposefully slack off...but you'd be wrong...it's just that I know no matter how hard I try it just won't get done untill the night before. So yeah...that's me...and I'm a slacker...and I know it...

I also heard the saddest story ever the other day...Leslie once had a Tickle-Me Elmo (my favorite toy of all time) and her dog humped it to death...seriously...it didn't work anymore. After I heard this.......I cried.......

Ahead of Schedule

So, I procrastinated as always and decided that it would be fun to write my 10 page New Testament paper all in one night (to ensure consistency of my thoughts as some times they are more thoughtful than others). It went well and only really took me like 5 1/2 hours leaving me with a finish time of 5am...an hour ahead of my planned finish time. I turned my paper in just now and intend to sleep until I am forced to get up...if you don't see me at church this is why.

In other news, I met with Ty Fischer on Monday who I met randomly through his Flickr account. The first pictures you will see there are the reason I wanted to meet him. He has a ministry called Eyes Wide Open which teaches kids creativity through photography and encourages them to pursue it if that's what interests them. He picks lower income kids who may not have as many opportunities as other kids and allows them to sell their photography in a silent auction. The kids get to keep the money and have an amazing chance to see their creativity bring them income. I am hoping to be able to help Ty out in any way I can...this is a really cool opportunity to help for anyone into photography so let me know if you're interested.