Thanks to crummy weather in Florida, I got to see the space shuttle land one last time before I leave California. I even got to take the kids and my wife with me. I remember when I first got here the shuttle was landing at a fairly regular interval. I was working on a computer one time and heard the double boom and thought “Ah, its only the space shuttle.” and went back to work. I watched it glide in to make a landing and told the kids that it had been in space 15 minutes ago and was docked with the space station the other day

I’m going to miss Edwards AFB. I have seen some great things here. Space shuttles, stealth bombers, filming Armageddon, Race to Space and a Mariah Carey video. It has been a great place to live and work.

Here it is, now you can analyze that nerd in the cubicle next to you just by looking at his computer! No, I’m not talking about hacking his hard drive or sniffing his e-mail. The BBC has an article about what people’s computers say about them:

Analysing the computer screen, the images you use or simply the way you organise your icons can reveal much about your inner desires and ambitions.

This seems to go beyond the “Mac users are from Venus/Windows users are from Mars” concept. Let’s see, my wallpaper shows a picture of a new iMac and says “iMac 2” at the top and “iWant 1” at the bottom. No deep psychological meaning there, should be pretty obvious. Screen saver is a slide show and the only thing it shows right now is a Foxtrot cartoon. I have OS X automatically arrange my icons based on the kind of file it is. I keep WebDAV, Mail, IE5, OmniWeb, Quicken and iTunes in the dock.

This says that I am a boring computer geek who needs to get out more often. No, wait. That’s what my wife and kids are tellilng me. Whatever.

I was reading Deuteronomy chapter 2 and I came across an interesting thing er two. When we think of the promise God made to Abraham to give him a land and a people, we often think that the promise of the land is unfulfilled. The Dispensationalists tells us that Israel never held that plot of real estate even under Solomon so therefore God still owes the Jewish nation of Israel something so therefore there is a future for Israel.

That is a pretty big leap but what I have been questioning lately is whether God did in fact fulfill that promise. Remember, the promise was that Abraham’s descendants would own the land. Who are Abraham’s descendants? Ishmael, Isaac, Esau and Jacob (Israel) and all of Jacob’s children (the twelve tribes of Israel). Who said that only Israel would own the land?

Check out a few quotes from Deut 2:

4 and command the people, saying, “You will pass through the territory of your brothers the sons of Esau who live in Seir; and they will be afraid of you. So be very careful;
5 do not provoke them, for I will not give you any of their land, even as little as a footstep because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession.
9 “Then the LORD said to me, ‘Do not harass Moab, nor provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land as a possession, because I have given Ar to the sons of Lot as a possession.
19 ‘When you come opposite the sons of Ammon, do not harass them nor provoke them, for I will not give you any of the land of the sons of Ammon as a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot as a possession.’
22 just as He did for the sons of Esau, who live in Seir, when He destroyed the Horites from before them; they dispossessed them and settled in their place even to this day.

So God seems to think that it was okay to give parts of the land to Abraham’s family and not just Israel.

As far as the rest of the real estate goes, Joshua seems to think that God was faithful in delivering:

Joshua 21:45 Not one of the good promises which the LORD had made to the house of Israel failed; all came to pass.

Fair enough, it speaks of a promise to Israel and not Abraham but it still says that all of the promises He made were fulfilled. Furthermore, though this passage can be interpreted differently, it seems good King Artaxerxes thought they held it all:

Ezra 4:19-20 “A decree has been issued by me, and a search has been made and it has been discovered that that city has risen up against the kings in past days, that rebellion and revolt have been perpetrated in it, that mighty kings have ruled over Jerusalem, governing all the provinces beyond the River, and that tribute, custom and toll were paid to them.

I find this all fascinating. I would rather go with what the Bible says about that promise than what Dispensationalists tell me.

Saw Panic Room today. Glad I only paid $1 for it. I expected better out of Jodie Foster.

Mickey Mouse. Think about it, what was the last movie he starred in? What was his last major motion picture or TV presence? And yet when I was at AAA a little kid, no more than three years old recognized him. Disney is so powerful it is scary.

Back to Creed. I listened to their CD in the car today and I wonder if these guys are not only Christian but Reformed?! In the song “Who’s Got My Back” are these lyrics:

Run…hide
All that was sacred to us
Sacred to us
See the signs
The covenant has been broken
By mankind
Leaving us with no shoulder…with no shoulder
To rest our head on

And it is a good song to boot. There is no vulgarity on the CD, just some hard rockin’ music.

I’ve never met him but we did exchange e-mail and posts in The Mac Observer forums so it was very sad for me to learn that Rodney O. Lain (iBrotha) took his own life this weekend. I had no idea that he was struggling with depression, Rodney’s always been a very intelligent, sharp-tongued Mac pundit and sometime critic. He always made me think and caused me to look at things in a different way. Because of Rodney I stopped using the pejorative terms “Pee Sea”, “Windoze”, “Pee Cee”, and “Micro$oft” when referring to the other computer configurations.

Rodney was a Christian but got badly burned by a church so he became a “Christian Iconoclast.” He adopted some unorthodox doctrines and questioned some foundation things about Christianity. Is Rodney in heaven? I have no idea, but I really hope he is. I hope his rebellion was against a church and not against Jesus Christ, God incarnate.

One last thing before I get off line and take the kids to a concert in the park: I picked up Creed’s CD “weathered” and popped it in the iBook. I know that I like “My Sacrifice” but the rest of the CD is pretty good too! Are these guys Christians?

Speaking of that Saturday Religion section, about a year or so ago the paper stopped running religious letters to the editor in the regular “Letters to the Editor” section of the paper. Instead they were segregated and put in the once-weekly Religion section. I was miffed when they did that. What they’re saying is that religion has nothing to say to contemporary issues. Well fear no more, the entire section is gone. As I think back over the past couple of editions of the paper I realize that is has been gone for a little while.I’m not going to yell “Censorship!” Nor am I going to gripe about freedom of speech. What irks me the most is what has bothered me from the beginning: the notion that religion has no place in the public square. The Founding Fathers wouldn’t have liked that idea at all.

This week I heard a cover version of Tears for Fears’ ‘Mad World’ by Gary Jules. Caught it on KCRW’s ‘Morning Becomes Ecclectic.’ The song has crept in and camped out in my mind. What a fantastic cover! Now I’m probably going to have to buy this cat’s CD (which is self released.)With what is happening to radio stations and the music industry in general, guys like Jules and a friend’s band ‘Golden Ticket’ who deserve a shot at some air time can’t get it. If you don’t fit the demographic and have national appeal, you don’t get played. I’m glad that there are programs like ‘Morning Becomes Ecclectic’ to give this artists at least a shot. The down side of MBE is that it is very ecclectic. Sometimes you have to sit through a really bad song or two before you find something you like. Like the time they played someone doing Bach on a banjo. But that is how this stuff works. If you want prepackaged trollip that some number-crunching music exec has figured will fit your demographic, then stick with the ClearChannel stations. If you want to find something fresh and different, wade out into the deep water and take the good and the bad.