Random Thoughts 7/15/05

• We're hosting a garage sale for my mother-in-law today and tomorrow. Yay! (…) Shannon moved her van out of the way but the neighbor backed into it anyway. That broke a headlight and dented the fender and bumper. Oh, well.
• My brother has been a sight to see; he apparently got some poison ivy on his face. A few days after mowing at camp, his face swelled up into this horrific, puffy, oozing mess -- the kind of face that scares small children. It looked like he'd been beaten with a chain. I kinda liked it! It made me the handsome brother for a few days!
• Here's an interesting website. Whoserved.com tells you which politicians have served in the military and which ones have not. It breaks down all three branches of government with biographical information. You can see past presidents as well as the current members of the armed services committee or your state's current delegation. There's always a temptation to say that those who served have more right to be a decision maker. That's a dangerous assumption--it's untrue and more than a little fascist (but you'd like Robert Heinlein's book Starship Troopers -- where only veterans have citizenship and voting rights). I do think these vets need to be seen in a different light to some degree however and ought to be afforded our respect and gratitude.
• Oh yeah, if you saw that horrible movie a few years ago by the same name as Heinlein's book, you still don't know what I'm talking about. The book and the movie had almost nothing in common but a few character names and the idea of fighting aliens. Everything else was dumbed down and changed. Too bad, but it's not the first or last time Hollywood turned an intriguing book into a mindless waste of time. Someday, I'll make a list of movies that don't hold a candle to the books from which they were inspired.
• Speaking of books, the sixth Harry Potter book comes out tonight at midnite. I've not read them, but I've seen the movies and I'll be in line tonight to get a copy for a friend (I'm a geek but not a Harry Potter geek). This will also mark the sixth time that Christians across the country have issued warnings and advisories against these evil books. [sigh] There are so many real spiritual battles that are fought and lost every day and we're worried about Harry Potter? I mean really, what's a kid going to do? Go to Hogwarts and become a witch? It's fiction people. There are more corrupting influences almost everywhere you turn in this society and Harry Potter is pretty far down the list, if it's on the list at all. Any child that might actually be devoured by Harry Potter was already lost to the wolves we ignored. If the Lord loses an entire generation of children, it won't be because of Harry Potter. Final Word: Every mature Christian I know who has read the books has no problem with them. Every person I've met that does have a problem either hasn't read the books or they struggle with legalism and external signs of spirituality.
• If I were an Aussie (pronounced with a "z" I'm told), I'd be proud to have John Howard as my Prime Minister. He said this in an interview recently about terrorism and Australian foreign policy:

  Maxine, these people are opposed to what we believe in and what we stand for, far more than what we do. If you imagine that you can buy immunity from fanatics by curling yourself in a ball, apologizing for the world - to the world - for who you are and what you stand for and what you believe in, not only is that morally bankrupt, but it's also ineffective. Because fanatics despise a lot of things and the things they despise most is weakness and timidity. There has been plenty of evidence through history that fanatics attack weakness and retreating people even more savagely than they do defiant people.