Pepper Road Church of Christ

I worship with the Pepper Road church of Christ in Athens, AL, and for years now, I’ve been responsible for the church website.  I have fulfilled that responsibility with varying degrees of effort, attention, and responsiveness—lacking in all more often than not.  I finally have gotten around to building the site within a content management system, namely Joomla!.  Now, instead of my being the sole soul who can edit the website, our elders, deacons, and minister can author content themselves, and I have a couple of backup administrators, too. 

Pepper Road Church of Christ Website

We have information about the church and articles on Bible topics.  Soon we should have sermon audio back online, and after that, we hope to have an introductory Bible correspondence course online.

I’m pleased but not content with look.  In the interest of getting the new site out the door quickly, I have used a free template from Joomla Shack.  It’s fine; it’s just not custom.  I hope to get around to designing something that says “church” a little more than this borrowed template.  When I do, this space will certainly reflect it.  

Of course, at the time of this writing, I’m still using the default WordPress theme on this site.  One of these days …

Conney Safety Products

Not quite a year ago, I took a job with USinternetworking (to which a friend had sold his small business specializing in e-commerce website development in IBM’s WebSphere Commerce).  The first site to go live that I’ve had a hand in is Conney Safety Products.

Conney Safety Products Website

Conney is a safety product wholesaler.  The website offers a quick order feature, shopping lists that can be shared among all of the buyers in your company, and a live chat with Conney support personnel.  There are a few post-go-live features that we are finishing up, such as an improved search utility.  Look for that in the next few days.

If you sell safety supplies, drop by conney.com.

So, the form is not something like, “This happened, and then this. So, I did this.” At least in this case, there is a causal relationship to what he/she just said.  

No, people are beginning podcasts with, “So, I’m talking to Herb Plumdiggy from Whack-A-Mole, Inc.” Managers are beginning meetings with, “So, we want to talk about the problems with our automated cotton candy spinner.” When an interviewer asks, “How can earthquakes be prevented with sheep’s bladder?” the interviewee answers, “So, this is a very interesting application. …” People are beginning stories with, “So, you guys have to hear what Gigi’s dog can do with a tricycle and a Slinky.”

So, why are people sticking this word to the fronts of their sentences? It serves absolutely no purpose.  Is “so” the next “y’know” or “like”?

So, all this got me thinking about whether we use any other words like this “so.” It occurs to me that we use “now” in a similar way:

Now Jason decided that red licorice just would not do for an industrial application.

Kids, you’re gonna regret playing with the cat with those toothpicks, now.

So, the first example is a little different from this totally useless employment of “so.” In the first example, “now” is something of a transitional word from the previous sentence. People tend not to begin a story with “now,” only continue it. You could argue that it serves no grammatical purpose; it is merely aesthetic. In the second example, on the other hand, “now” really is utterly pointless. “Meaningless!” as Orson Welles might say.

So, maybe “so” is the new “now,” but for the beginning of the sentence.

Whatever the reason, it is really annoying.

What?  Too soon?

[Thanks for the punchline, Will.]

I have to thank my buddy Kevan Moore for sparking this thought.  We were at the Atlanta Zoo.   (By the way, seeing a real, live panda in person is even cooler than you think it would be.  But I digress.)

While we were looking at one of the endangered species exhibits (I forget now which), Kevan piped up, asking why, if we subscribe to the theory of evolution, are we concerned when any animal becomes “endangered?”  Isn’t that just evolution at work, weeding out the inferior species?

I responded sarcastically, “Oh no!  You must understand that these species are only endangered because we—mankind—have hunted them down in our arrogance to make them trophies, or we have disturbed their habitats in our recklessness so that they can no longer flourish.  For nature to kill off her own species is fine, but for us to do it is abomination!”

Then it occurred to me.  Evolution theory says that mankind—uh, humankind (sorry) is simply nature’s most evolved species.  In other words, we’re not outside of nature; we’re very much a part of it.  So what’s the harm if our behavior causes other species to fall out of existence—species less capable, less fit, less able to adapt?  Such is the binding arbitration of evolution.

So is mankind—uh, humankind part of nature or not?  Can we just make up our minds already?

First, let me deal with the idea of cruelty.  The cruelty in such a situation is on the part of the rapist. It is on the part of the father who abuses his daughter.  It is on the part of the near kin who do not think about the consequences of their creepy, consensual relationship.

Second, how do the circumstances of conception change the fact that a fertilized embryo is a life?  A distinct human life!  That is all it is about: Is it life?  Life is all it must be about because as soon as we start making exceptions for what we think are extenuating circumstances, it becomes far too easy make exceptions for simple convenience.

If we all agree that A, B, and C are extenuating (and cruel) circumstances and worthy of exception, some situation D will come along that is almost, but not quite the same as A, B, or C.  Still though, D is basically the same as A, B, or C, so surely we can allow an exception for it.  Then later case E arises, which bears a lot of resemblance to case D.  Yes, it’s a little different, but if we allow for D, no one can argue that E is not also an exceptional case.  Before long, the list of things we make exception for is longer than the list we hold the line on.

What about the life of the mother?  I mean, the mother’s mental health is one thing, but we’re talking about her physical health, her life here!  I could perhaps be persuaded in theory that abortion is the lesser of two evils if a mother would lose her life in delivery.  Why bring a child into the world without a mother?  Wouldn’t it be better to try again?  Perhaps the next pregnancy will go better, and the family unit will be intact.

The problem is that no one can say with any degree of certainty that a woman will, in fact, lose her life if she attempts to deliver a child in situation X.  There are odds based on the research we have on the matter, but they are only odds.  How many times have doctors given someone no chance of living only to watch the person pull through in the end?  For that matter, it sometimes works the other way around: a seemingly routine pregnancy and delivery end up with complications that result in the mother’s death.  We just cannot know.  It is therefore unjust to choose to terminate a life in favor of another when we are not sure that either life is truly in danger.

Isn’t it just beyond the pale, though, to ask a woman to rear up the child of her attacker?  How can a woman look every day into the face of her child, a child begotten by her own father?  The answer, of course, is adoption.  If seeing that child every day would be too grim a reminder of how the child came to be, the mother need not see the child again after giving birth.  There are would-be parents who are not concerned with how a child was conceived.  They simply long for a child.

There is no cruelty in preserving life.  Still, that is not to say that there would be no difficulties.  The emotional trauma would be grueling.  The medical expenses could be crippling.  Doing the right thing sometimes demands a heavy sacrifice, especially when one suffers the consequences of someone else’s misdeeds.  In the end, the truly cruel thing would be to end a life that has come about by no fault of its own.

I’d like to thank the Academy, Mom & Dad, my wife, …

In her April 22 Earth Day news release, Pelosi said, “The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.’ On this Earth Day, and every day, let us pledge to our children, and our children’s children, that they will have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to experience the wonders of nature.”

Hm.  Can’t say that I remember that one.  Must be from one of those modern paraphrase translations.  Then again, according to Wikipedia, Pelosi is a Roman Catholic.  Maybe it’s a quote from the Apocrypha.

OK, look, it’s got to be somewhere!  A public servant of her stature wouldn’t just make something up!

Shortly after the first of the year, ColorBurn just stopped working.  I looked around on the Net for an explanation, but all I could find were others also wondering what had happened.  I had given up hope, assuming that the guys at Firewheel just got tired of maintaining it. But here they are with entries for today and the last week as if they never skipped a beat.

And there was much rejoicing.

That’s right, as of Valentine’s Day 2008, I am the cool guy on the right, not the geeky guy on the left.

Well, OK, it’s gonna take more than an Apple product to make me cool.

Well, as my wife is taking down the Christmas tree today, she finds one last present wrapped in a blanket under the tree. Courtesy of our three-year-old.