Google vs. the Yellow Pages
Fortunately, the Yellow Pages turned up a shop that wasn’t too far away, was open, and could get a bulb from their supplier. They said I would need to come down and pay for the part before they would go get it. I pulled the lamp assembly from the TV, hopped in the car, and went to the shop. I stopped at a nearby Bank of America ATM, but it was out of service. With an almost empty gas tank I detoured to a nearby BofA branch. Arrived at the store, paid for the new bulb, was told to come back in an hour and a half. Walked to a nearby comic book shop to start killing time. While there, I got a call on my cell. Turns out they had one bulb in the back so I didn’t have to wait too long. They were kind enough to replace the bulb in the assembly housing. Filled up the tank, went home, and reassembled the TV.
A shout out to Electronics Master in Mall Corners in Duluth, GA. The lamp was a bit pricey compared to online, but they were willing to drive to their supplier to get it, they replaced the bulb in the assembly, and I didn’t have to wait. The TV picture is much more vivid now, too.
Love & Po-Mos
The Greeks had four words for love: agape, phileo, eros, and storge. We English speakers seem to conflate everything around eros and thereby miss the point. Love is the act of the will whereby another individual is placed ahead of yourself. That's why Christians are commanded to "love their enemies" and why the Apostle Paul wrote that the greatest act of love was when God gave His Son as the sacrifice for the sins of the world.Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
No naturalistic scientist could ever write:
or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
What I found interesting was this comment by a reader:
Wonderful post. I love the idea that "love is an act of the will." We mostly think that love is ultimately fulfilled only by the acts we undertake between the sheets. That love can be a deliberate act of the will is shocking to most of us "post moderns."
If the post moderns don’t know this, perhaps it’s because the Church has forgotten Paul’s words to the Christians at Corinth: “And I will show you a still more excellent way.”
Shiny Secular Utopias
I have almost finished the book Etidorhpa, or The End of the Earth by John Uri Lloyd, first published in 1895. While I am reading it because of a possible tie-in to my grandmother, it also sounds the same alarm as Vox Day. This excerpt is taken from chapter 51, “Beware of Biology, The Science of the Life of Man”:
Over 100 years between Lloyd and Vox Day sounding the same warning. Not being a historian, I am not quickly able to state who, how long, or how often this warning is given. But Vox is more of a polymath than I am:“Bah,” he said; “does not another searcher in that same science field tell the mother that there is no personal hereafter, that she will never see her babe again? One man of science steals the body, another man of science takes away the soul, the third annihilates heaven; they go like pestilence and famine, hand in hand, subsisting on all that craving humanity considers sacred, and offering no tangible return beyond a materialistic present. This same science that seems to be doing so much for humanity will continue to elevate so-called material civilization until, as the yeast ferment is smothered in its own excretion, so will science-thought create conditions to blot itself from existence, and destroy the civilization it creates. Science is heartless, notwithstanding the personal purity of the majority of her helpless votaries. She is a thief, not of ordinary riches, but of treasures that cannot be replaced. Before science provings the love of a mother perishes, the hope of immortality is annihilated. Beware of materialism, the end of the science of man. Beware of the beginning of biological inquiry, for he who commences, cannot foresee the termination. I say to you in candor, no man ever engaged in the part of science lore that questions the life essence, realizing the possible end of his investigations. The insidious servant becomes a tyrannical master; the housebreaker is innocent, the horse thief guiltless in comparison. Science thought begins in the brain of man; science provings end all things with the end of the material brain of man. Beware of your own brain.”
Everyone, of every creed or lack thereof, needs to get this basic fact through their college-thickened skulls. The shiny, sexy, secular science-fiction society of progressive fantasies is not going to happen. The demographic realities have already killed that dream, the corpse just hasn't finished twitching yet. The material choice is not Christian tradition vs post-Christian utopia, it is Christian tradition vs PRE-Christian dystopia. And if you don't understand what that entails, then I suggest you get caught up on your ancient history, starting with Caesar and Tacitus.
Bring back the stocks
But today I’m going to take a small step in that direction. The domains “thestocks.com” and “hallofshame.com” are already registered, so I’ll just post this here.
The exit from I-85 N at the Mall of Georgia merges onto I-20. Traffic on I-20 heading toward the Mall was bumper to bumper. The car behind me graciously let me merge, but the car in front of me was another story. A SUV was trying to merge in and was slowly creeping leftward but the aforementioned car wasn’t about to let it in. A game of chicken ensued, which the SUV won. But the driver of the car in front of me wasn’t at all happy about it. She gestured with the middle finger several times. While I saw it, I’m not sure the driver she was mad at did. She sported a Brenau University sticker on her rear window; her license plate was AGE-xxxx GA. She also had a “Save the Manatees” bumper sticker. She obviously cares more about aquatic mammals than her own species.
[Note: I edited this post at 21:00pm. I decided the remove the digits of the license plate.]
That's my girl!
Without missing a beat she retorted, “I thought that was bail!”
That’s my girl, all right!
