The Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells were really freaking interesting because they had a whole bunch of really cool influences from loads of different crazy cultures.  You had the crazy frigging vikings, whose metalwork was borrowed for the interesting designs. Then you had the crazy frigging celts, whose use of infinite patterns, as demonstrated in the freaking cool picture

Also, there were the religious influences. But no one cares about those.

The End

You also have these hand held signs that people take pictures of themselves with. This one from We Are the 99%.

Then you have the reactions.

This is an interesting phenomenon.  We are still a text based culture, perhaps increasingly so in the post-television world.  These are new forms of communication that embody both art, text, and dialogue.  It is fascinating that this is how the conversation over the future of the West is playing out.

The seriousness of the situation cannot be ignored. When people wake up to massive inequality they seek change. That is the conversation that is occurring, and this is the medium it is occurring in.

It occurred to me as I was busy drafting my snide commentary on the vapidity of assuming little material things are gifts that I have a massive poverty in my own view of God. He is the God who dresses lilies and feeds ravens, but I refuse to believe that he gives a crap about my day to day existence.  Even when Jesus says explicitly that he does.

Yesterday as I was particularly despairing over my (still) incomplete thesis my girlfriend told me I should pray and ask God for strength and wherewithal to finish it.  I couldn’t do it.  I finally humbled myself to it today, but why do I not see God as wanting to help me?

I think perhaps it has to do with my desperate need to believe in free will to believe God is a God of love. This belief has led me to believe that God is hands-off, even though he is so obviously not.  What is even stranger is that prayer is an act of free will. Maybe what I need to realize is that God is waiting on me to acknowledge my desperate need for his help to accomplish not just what seems impossible, but to truly accomplish anything.

All I can do is ask.

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But Pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.

CS Lewis – Mere Christianity

Any thoughts in terms of how this relates to the financial issues we are facing? I feel like there must be but I’m not seeing them.

That being said, I really do want to talk about these things. So if you are reading this leave a comment, I will write back soon, maybe we can even get some good ol’ fashion online debating going. Alright here goes.

Welcome to a world where marriage no longer makes sense. I have thought for the longest time that in a true post God era we would move beyond institutions like marriage. This article seems to be trying to preserve an institution while at the same time undermining its very purpose. The heading alone is worth discussion, “Can ethical non-monogamy save marriage.” My question: why bother getting married? I certainly wouldn’t.

Tangentially related, we move from modern marriage to contemporary divorce, involving fake Facebook accounts (fakebook accounts?). How crazy is this?

Apparently, email is outdated. I can tell you that I’m dealing with, on average, 60-80 emails a day, a solid 20% of which require some form of action on my part. How do we improve communiation, especially internal communication, to improve efficiency in our workplaces?

Finally, apparently an Ontario company has managed to use compressed air to power a motorcycle. I have no idea how this works, but if it is for real, I’m really interested.

Let’s talk, shall we?

I could not help thinking about this as Twitter and the media lit up in reaction to Osama Bin Laden’s death. Has he been killed? Certainly. Has terrorism and it’s causes been cured? Certainly not. We get a false sense of comfort and increased sense of security when really nothing has changed. We continue to do irrevocable damage in our farming, mining, and oil extraction, not to mention our use of their products. We also have an unthinkable amount of people trapped in poverty, often held in place by regimes our Western governments support.

Our hatred for Osama Bin Laden and our satisfaction in his, deserved, death cannot allow us to ignore that until such a time that there is true justice in our actions and economies there will always be those who are willing to kill, maim, and die in bringing it about. One man is dead, but nothing has really changed.