Leonard Cohen's 1984 song "Hallelujah" is both beautiful and disappointing. For years Christians have been drawn to it for both its beautiful melody and its refrain of "hallelujah." But, like a lot of people, most Christians haven't listened to the rest of the lyrics or considered what the original author meant by them. Long story short: just because someone says "hallelujah" doesn't mean they're praising God.
Leonard Cohen is a Jew who converted to Buddhism is the 70's. While many different interpretations exist for this song (in part because Cohen drafted as many as 80 verses and sung multiple versions of the song over the years), all of them revolve around "different hallelujahs" other than the one that praises the Lord. Cohen writes about hallelujahs of defiance, love, apathy, passion, and loneliness. Some verses seem redemptive while most seem to express despair and emptiness. Remember, this is after he left Judaism and turned to Buddhism, which believes in no personal God. Cohen was ordained as a Buddhist monk in the 90's.
It's funny how some Christians see what they want to see, going to great lengths to defend Cohen's lyrics as if they were written by Bill Gaither or Michael W. Smith. I like the melody and find the lyrics fascinating as a glimpse into someone's mind as they are having doubts and losing their faith. But I cannot personally accept the "other" hallelujahs. I can't say for certain who is Cohen's "Lord of Song" or what he really means when he says hallelujah, but hallelujah means "Praise Yahweh." Anything else is a corruption of the word.
Thankfully, the Christian band Cloverton redeems the melody with much better lyrics in this Christmas version released last season.
[Thanks, Alanna]
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Random Thoughts 4/10/14
- Jayhawk Draft Watch Day 18: Joel Embiid, as most expected, declared for the NBA Draft yesterday. Now both Embiid and Andrew Wiggins are going to the NBA, hoping to be drafted in the top-5 on June 26th. Wayne Selden Jr. has already announced he is staying for a second year and no other underclassmen are expected to leave early.
- 6-11 center Myles Turner was the only unsigned player at the McDonald's All American game. The rumors were that he was waiting to see what Joel Imbiid was doing before he made his decision, implying that if Imbiid left, Turner would go to Lawrence. That's yet to be seen, but Turner's decision is expected next week.
- Danny Manning, 47, is now the new head coach at Wake Forest, after two years and a tournament appearance at Tulsa. Jeff Boschee, 34, is now the head coach at Missouri Southern in Joplin. He's been with the program for four years as an assistant.
- So David Letterman is out and Stephen Colbert is in as the next host of CBS's "The Late Show." Hmmm… Colbert's character on "The Colbert Report" is really funny but he's playing a caricature of a pompous conservative. The unfiltered, liberal Stephen Colbert might not go over as well. That said, whatever audience Letterman still has is probably conditioned to accept unfiltered liberalism.
- After 14 years with DirecTV, we've switched over to Google Fiber's TV package. For a guy like me who hates change, it was like pulling teeth. A different remote, a different on-screen guide, different channel numbers! Argh!!! But in the end, DirecTV was too expensive by itself. Google Fiber has been the best internet provider we've ever had and bundling the television package with it was going to save $30-50 per month, depending on what the fees and taxes end up being. Throw in the free Nexus tablet and a few other perks and it began to make too much sense.
Sweet 16 (2014) Final
Oops. I almost forgot to post this.
Our collective inability to pick the upsets in this year's NCAA tourney resulted in low scores and a rare tie for first place. Jared and Kristi stalled out at 304 points, but congratulations nonetheless.
Probably the most notable pick was Dustin taking Tennessee, a play-in team, and putting them in the correct range, 5th-9th. Another solid pick was Jared taking Kentucky over Wichita State but placing them 16th almost completely negated the potential 80 points this pick could have garnered. In the end, it was our complete blind spot for UConn that hurt the most, leaving almost 100 points unclaimed by anyone.
Honestly with a UConn and Kentucky final, none of us had a chance. If, however, we had Biff's Sports Almanac we would have come up with this lineup:
Instead, we did this:
Our collective inability to pick the upsets in this year's NCAA tourney resulted in low scores and a rare tie for first place. Jared and Kristi stalled out at 304 points, but congratulations nonetheless.
Probably the most notable pick was Dustin taking Tennessee, a play-in team, and putting them in the correct range, 5th-9th. Another solid pick was Jared taking Kentucky over Wichita State but placing them 16th almost completely negated the potential 80 points this pick could have garnered. In the end, it was our complete blind spot for UConn that hurt the most, leaving almost 100 points unclaimed by anyone.
Honestly with a UConn and Kentucky final, none of us had a chance. If, however, we had Biff's Sports Almanac we would have come up with this lineup:
Instead, we did this:
Monday, April 07, 2014
A Letter to an Unbelieving Loved One
This is the text of the letter I read on Sunday morning, 4/6/14. I wrote it but I'd like to give credit to Dallas Willard and Ravi Zacharias, whose writings heavily influenced the tone, structure, and my choice of illustrations and scriptures. Please forgive the grammar also, it was written to be read aloud to an audience thus some "normal" grammar went out the window.
Finally, this wasn't targeted at one specific individual. Since childhood, I've known and loved a number of intellectual non-believers who would not or could not see anything good in Jesus Christ. I pray their hearts will change so that their sharp minds can receive God's truth.
Jared
--
Dear Loved One,
I realize that you don’t want to talk to me and DON’T want to talk about GOD. You seem to get very upset whenever I try to talk to you. But because I love you, I want you to know the things that I think are crucially important. If I thought these things were unimportant or just a matter of opinion, I wouldn’t bother you with them. If I didn’t care about you personally, I wouldn’t bother to waste my time.
But I pray… and I believe… that someday your heart will be turned to read this letter and in it you will find new answers to your questions and perhaps a rebuke of the convenient teachings that have been in your mind all these years.
First of all, you’ve been so quick to decry the supposed evils of Christianity — wars and bigotry and slavery and such. Specifically, you claimed that slavery was a Christian evil, that the Bible never condemns it. But you knew that was not true. From the one of the oldest books of the Bible (Job 31), we read:
“If I have denied justice to any of my servants,
whether male or female,
when they had a grievance against me,
what will I do when God confronts me?
What will I answer when called to account?
Did not he who made me in the womb make them?
Did not the same one form us both within our mothers? (Job 31:13-15)
From this we go to some of the last books of the Bible, 1Timothy, which lists slave-traders among other heinous sinners such as murderers, liars, and perverts, and Philemon, which argues with a slave-owner to receive back his slave “as a brother” and not punish him. Combine this testimony with the historical fact that the abolition of slavery in England and the United States was led by Christians, based on the Christian principle that all people are equal before God, and inspired by the Exodus-story of God delivering the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.
No, slavery was not caused by Christianity or even endorsed by Christianity, rather Christianity set the slaves free.
Wars? Has religion been the cause of most war in human history? Contrary to popular belief most wars were not fought for religious reasons. Land, power, money, and ego have been and always will be the primary causes of most wars. A survey of over 1,700 wars in human history shows that less than 7% of wars have religious causes and half of those were Muslim wars. Remove the Muslims and the rest of the world’s religions account for only a little over 3% of the wars in history.
Compare this to the death toll of atheism and secular governments in just the last 100 years. Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Chiang Kai-shek, Vladimir Lenin, Hideki Tojo, Pol Pot, and the list of non-religious dictators goes on and on… they shot, starved, gassed, hung, bombed, and burned well over 100 million people in just the 20th Century. Some claim the number is closer to 300 million people.
There should be a moral outcry, but not against Christianity. Instead, it is the absence or suppression of Christianity which makes the world a dangerous place, where life is cheap and undervalued. Without God, man’s evil heart leads to all kinds of evil actions. Jesus said,
“What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” (Mark 7:21-23)
Still you might object and say that God does NOT exist. So even if Christians are “good” people, that good behavior is tainted by the delusion in which they are trapped. And it is not “good” to be fooled by a lie. Christians, you have said, need to admit the truth, that God is not real. He’s a figment of their twisted imagination, an emotional crutch from which the enlightened can be freed.
To begin with, you are more intelligent than that. How can anyone say with certainty that something doesn’t exist? You would have to know what you can’t possibly know. As one philosopher asked, do green crows exist? Showing me one, five, ten, or a thousand black crows doesn’t prove that a green one might not exist somewhere. Only if you can gather all the crows that exist and have ever existed in one place and time and check them all can you be certain, and that assumes there is not another planet in a another galaxy that might have green crows.
To say that there is no God, is to presume that you can know that in every corner of the universe, at all points in time, there is not and has not ever been a God somewhere. To have that kind of unlimited knowledge, ironically, would make you God and your own omniscient existence would refute your claim.
Psalm 14 said it best, “The fool says in his heart there is no God."
So you can’t really be an atheist and claim there is NO God. Rather you could claim to be an agnostic and not know if God exists or not. But I believe you want to know. And that you CAN know.
First, look at the material things around you. Which of them caused themselves to come into existence? The chair, the couch, the television, the carpet — they all came from a factory or a craftsman. Each had component parts which were made or grown and then assembled. Those parts came from raw materials which were deposited or grown somewhere by some process, perhaps repeated ad infinitum.
In fact everything in the physical world came from something else. And no matter how you slice it up, you never find the ultimate origin in the thing itself. It’s the law of cause and effect, and every effect has it’s cause going back and back and back to the beginning.
But then what? How did the beginning begin? Is that even answerable? If there is an answer, it is that the great "uncaused first cause" could not have been a physical part of this universe. It had to be “other” …because every physical thing in this universe is caused by something outside of itself. Whatever came first had it’s cause within itself and thus is completely unlike anything here.
Is that God yet? Not yet.
Second, take another look around you. In this world you might spy beauty in a sunset, a person, or a work of art and then argue that the beautiful object occurred naturally. You can even attempt that difficult argument that not just subjective beauty but also objective order emerges naturally from the chaos. But what about intelligibility, when something makes sense and communicates information? You can try to convince me that a wooden chair naturally grew into that chair-like shape, that’s its beauty is only subjective and it’s function is only coincidental. But the sticker underneath that says “Made in USA” is impossible to refute. You could never convince the most ardent skeptic that the letters in that simple three-word sentence came together naturally and don’t actually mean anything. The sticker is very clearly communicated information.
You have believed that the shape of our bodies evolved over millions of years from simpler forms to more complex forms. But even in the simplest form, how can you explain the lengthy and complex information encoded in a single strand of DNA? Where did this complex, productive, and intelligent information come from? Like the sticker under the chair, though a million times more sophisticated, it is the label that the Maker proudly affixed to His work. The code had an encoder. The design had a designer. The art had an artist. In contrast to gibberish, intelligibility, in any message, assumes an intelligence.
So now we have non-physical, "uncaused first cause" which is intelligent. Is it the God of the Bible yet? Almost.
Finally, look at history and see if anyone or anything matches this concept we’re building as God. Different religious leaders and philosophers have appeared in history but Buddha, Confucius, Mohammad, and others don’t even claim to be this God we’re looking for. Others, like Zeus, Thor, or Brahma don’t show any sign they ever occurred in real history.
But what about Jesus Christ? Jesus actually existed, attested to both in the Bible and by historians of that period. There’s no real doubt that he lived. What makes him unique and controversial is that he claimed to be God, the one God of creation who pre-dated the universe.
John 10:30 “The Father and I are one.”
John 14:9 “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”
John 8:58 “Before Abraham was born, I AM”
In case that last one was vague, when he said it the people who heard him understood that he was claiming to be God and picked up stones to execute him for blasphemy. Jesus made this claim to divinity and made it exclusively. In John 14:6 he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the father except through me.”
Ultimately, he was killed for these claims but he verified them through the uncanny fulfillment of prophecies, which predated him by centuries, and by miracles, witnessed by both friends and enemies and noted both in the Bible and in secular history. Most notably, after he was executed his tomb was found empty and crowds of witnesses saw him, talked with him, ate with him, and verified that he was alive again.
No one else in History is like this.
Now we have a non-physical, "uncaused first cause" with intelligence who entered into real history in the man Jesus Christ and revealed his will to humanity.
This much is reasonably verifiable for anyone who wants to know it. But it’s the issue of what he said regarding humanity that might be offensive. He said that we have all sinned, that we must all turn away from that sin, and that, if we follow him, his sacrifice on the cross will count as payment for our wrongdoing.
Now there’s the rub. Our own guilty consciences verify Jesus Christ. In the back of our minds we know he is real and it makes us angry. People don’t get angry over the Tooth Fairy or Easter Bunny. Jesus makes people angry.
I know that you have not wanted to hear that there is a judge who knows your darkest secrets. Of course, your awareness of Him doesn’t affect his existence any more than your knowledge of the planet Neptune places it in its orbit or causes it to disappear. But he knows you and knows your destructive behavior and the thought of His knowing terrifies you. It’s the feeling of being watched; a light shined into dark places which you’d rather keep obscured. It feels like an invasion to you and you resent it. I understand.
But that does not stop him from knowing you. And His knowing you eats at the edges of your conscience, hardening your heart and frustrating your thinking. The worse you act toward yourself and others, in other words the worse you sin, the worse you feel, the more you want to escape into fantasies and self-indulgence. You long to return to the freer days of childhood and not be responsible anymore.
But it’s not the weight of responsibility you are actually running from, it’s guilt. At times you hate yourself for what you’ve done and wish you could forget. At times you hate everyone else. And then you feel it again. God is watching you. And you hate Him for it! He’s always there to hate, on the lips of do-gooders and busy-bodies. Obnoxious fools invoke His name for their every petty need but to you He is just watching you, judging you. Making you feel bad.
But you don’t feel bad because Christianity has done evil to you and caused you to hate it. No, you have been made uncomfortable by goodness. The light of God's goodness makes your selfish behavior look ugly and shameful. Before you thought little of it, but now you may feel guilty.
My prayer is that you would understand our lives without God in this light. Because if you knew that your own ways led nowhere good you would see that God is not the enemy but is offering you a peace treaty through Jesus Christ. By exposing our shameful deeds, he actually demonstrates his LOVE for us.
He wants us to be reconciled to him. No matter what we’ve done. No matter what we’ve said. The creator of this universe, who wrote your DNA, who revealed himself in Jesus Christ has paid the penalty for you to be purchased back from the other side. He loves you. He can forgive everything. It’s available to you now for free if you would only believe and surrender to Him.
I pray that you do.
In sincere love,
Jared Altic
Finally, this wasn't targeted at one specific individual. Since childhood, I've known and loved a number of intellectual non-believers who would not or could not see anything good in Jesus Christ. I pray their hearts will change so that their sharp minds can receive God's truth.
Jared
--
Dear Loved One,
I realize that you don’t want to talk to me and DON’T want to talk about GOD. You seem to get very upset whenever I try to talk to you. But because I love you, I want you to know the things that I think are crucially important. If I thought these things were unimportant or just a matter of opinion, I wouldn’t bother you with them. If I didn’t care about you personally, I wouldn’t bother to waste my time.
But I pray… and I believe… that someday your heart will be turned to read this letter and in it you will find new answers to your questions and perhaps a rebuke of the convenient teachings that have been in your mind all these years.
First of all, you’ve been so quick to decry the supposed evils of Christianity — wars and bigotry and slavery and such. Specifically, you claimed that slavery was a Christian evil, that the Bible never condemns it. But you knew that was not true. From the one of the oldest books of the Bible (Job 31), we read:
“If I have denied justice to any of my servants,
whether male or female,
when they had a grievance against me,
what will I do when God confronts me?
What will I answer when called to account?
Did not he who made me in the womb make them?
Did not the same one form us both within our mothers? (Job 31:13-15)
From this we go to some of the last books of the Bible, 1Timothy, which lists slave-traders among other heinous sinners such as murderers, liars, and perverts, and Philemon, which argues with a slave-owner to receive back his slave “as a brother” and not punish him. Combine this testimony with the historical fact that the abolition of slavery in England and the United States was led by Christians, based on the Christian principle that all people are equal before God, and inspired by the Exodus-story of God delivering the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.
No, slavery was not caused by Christianity or even endorsed by Christianity, rather Christianity set the slaves free.
Wars? Has religion been the cause of most war in human history? Contrary to popular belief most wars were not fought for religious reasons. Land, power, money, and ego have been and always will be the primary causes of most wars. A survey of over 1,700 wars in human history shows that less than 7% of wars have religious causes and half of those were Muslim wars. Remove the Muslims and the rest of the world’s religions account for only a little over 3% of the wars in history.
Compare this to the death toll of atheism and secular governments in just the last 100 years. Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Chiang Kai-shek, Vladimir Lenin, Hideki Tojo, Pol Pot, and the list of non-religious dictators goes on and on… they shot, starved, gassed, hung, bombed, and burned well over 100 million people in just the 20th Century. Some claim the number is closer to 300 million people.
There should be a moral outcry, but not against Christianity. Instead, it is the absence or suppression of Christianity which makes the world a dangerous place, where life is cheap and undervalued. Without God, man’s evil heart leads to all kinds of evil actions. Jesus said,
“What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” (Mark 7:21-23)
Still you might object and say that God does NOT exist. So even if Christians are “good” people, that good behavior is tainted by the delusion in which they are trapped. And it is not “good” to be fooled by a lie. Christians, you have said, need to admit the truth, that God is not real. He’s a figment of their twisted imagination, an emotional crutch from which the enlightened can be freed.
To begin with, you are more intelligent than that. How can anyone say with certainty that something doesn’t exist? You would have to know what you can’t possibly know. As one philosopher asked, do green crows exist? Showing me one, five, ten, or a thousand black crows doesn’t prove that a green one might not exist somewhere. Only if you can gather all the crows that exist and have ever existed in one place and time and check them all can you be certain, and that assumes there is not another planet in a another galaxy that might have green crows.
To say that there is no God, is to presume that you can know that in every corner of the universe, at all points in time, there is not and has not ever been a God somewhere. To have that kind of unlimited knowledge, ironically, would make you God and your own omniscient existence would refute your claim.
Psalm 14 said it best, “The fool says in his heart there is no God."
So you can’t really be an atheist and claim there is NO God. Rather you could claim to be an agnostic and not know if God exists or not. But I believe you want to know. And that you CAN know.
First, look at the material things around you. Which of them caused themselves to come into existence? The chair, the couch, the television, the carpet — they all came from a factory or a craftsman. Each had component parts which were made or grown and then assembled. Those parts came from raw materials which were deposited or grown somewhere by some process, perhaps repeated ad infinitum.
In fact everything in the physical world came from something else. And no matter how you slice it up, you never find the ultimate origin in the thing itself. It’s the law of cause and effect, and every effect has it’s cause going back and back and back to the beginning.
But then what? How did the beginning begin? Is that even answerable? If there is an answer, it is that the great "uncaused first cause" could not have been a physical part of this universe. It had to be “other” …because every physical thing in this universe is caused by something outside of itself. Whatever came first had it’s cause within itself and thus is completely unlike anything here.
Is that God yet? Not yet.
Second, take another look around you. In this world you might spy beauty in a sunset, a person, or a work of art and then argue that the beautiful object occurred naturally. You can even attempt that difficult argument that not just subjective beauty but also objective order emerges naturally from the chaos. But what about intelligibility, when something makes sense and communicates information? You can try to convince me that a wooden chair naturally grew into that chair-like shape, that’s its beauty is only subjective and it’s function is only coincidental. But the sticker underneath that says “Made in USA” is impossible to refute. You could never convince the most ardent skeptic that the letters in that simple three-word sentence came together naturally and don’t actually mean anything. The sticker is very clearly communicated information.
You have believed that the shape of our bodies evolved over millions of years from simpler forms to more complex forms. But even in the simplest form, how can you explain the lengthy and complex information encoded in a single strand of DNA? Where did this complex, productive, and intelligent information come from? Like the sticker under the chair, though a million times more sophisticated, it is the label that the Maker proudly affixed to His work. The code had an encoder. The design had a designer. The art had an artist. In contrast to gibberish, intelligibility, in any message, assumes an intelligence.
So now we have non-physical, "uncaused first cause" which is intelligent. Is it the God of the Bible yet? Almost.
Finally, look at history and see if anyone or anything matches this concept we’re building as God. Different religious leaders and philosophers have appeared in history but Buddha, Confucius, Mohammad, and others don’t even claim to be this God we’re looking for. Others, like Zeus, Thor, or Brahma don’t show any sign they ever occurred in real history.
But what about Jesus Christ? Jesus actually existed, attested to both in the Bible and by historians of that period. There’s no real doubt that he lived. What makes him unique and controversial is that he claimed to be God, the one God of creation who pre-dated the universe.
John 10:30 “The Father and I are one.”
John 14:9 “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”
John 8:58 “Before Abraham was born, I AM”
In case that last one was vague, when he said it the people who heard him understood that he was claiming to be God and picked up stones to execute him for blasphemy. Jesus made this claim to divinity and made it exclusively. In John 14:6 he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the father except through me.”
Ultimately, he was killed for these claims but he verified them through the uncanny fulfillment of prophecies, which predated him by centuries, and by miracles, witnessed by both friends and enemies and noted both in the Bible and in secular history. Most notably, after he was executed his tomb was found empty and crowds of witnesses saw him, talked with him, ate with him, and verified that he was alive again.
No one else in History is like this.
Now we have a non-physical, "uncaused first cause" with intelligence who entered into real history in the man Jesus Christ and revealed his will to humanity.
This much is reasonably verifiable for anyone who wants to know it. But it’s the issue of what he said regarding humanity that might be offensive. He said that we have all sinned, that we must all turn away from that sin, and that, if we follow him, his sacrifice on the cross will count as payment for our wrongdoing.
Now there’s the rub. Our own guilty consciences verify Jesus Christ. In the back of our minds we know he is real and it makes us angry. People don’t get angry over the Tooth Fairy or Easter Bunny. Jesus makes people angry.
I know that you have not wanted to hear that there is a judge who knows your darkest secrets. Of course, your awareness of Him doesn’t affect his existence any more than your knowledge of the planet Neptune places it in its orbit or causes it to disappear. But he knows you and knows your destructive behavior and the thought of His knowing terrifies you. It’s the feeling of being watched; a light shined into dark places which you’d rather keep obscured. It feels like an invasion to you and you resent it. I understand.
But that does not stop him from knowing you. And His knowing you eats at the edges of your conscience, hardening your heart and frustrating your thinking. The worse you act toward yourself and others, in other words the worse you sin, the worse you feel, the more you want to escape into fantasies and self-indulgence. You long to return to the freer days of childhood and not be responsible anymore.
But it’s not the weight of responsibility you are actually running from, it’s guilt. At times you hate yourself for what you’ve done and wish you could forget. At times you hate everyone else. And then you feel it again. God is watching you. And you hate Him for it! He’s always there to hate, on the lips of do-gooders and busy-bodies. Obnoxious fools invoke His name for their every petty need but to you He is just watching you, judging you. Making you feel bad.
But you don’t feel bad because Christianity has done evil to you and caused you to hate it. No, you have been made uncomfortable by goodness. The light of God's goodness makes your selfish behavior look ugly and shameful. Before you thought little of it, but now you may feel guilty.
My prayer is that you would understand our lives without God in this light. Because if you knew that your own ways led nowhere good you would see that God is not the enemy but is offering you a peace treaty through Jesus Christ. By exposing our shameful deeds, he actually demonstrates his LOVE for us.
He wants us to be reconciled to him. No matter what we’ve done. No matter what we’ve said. The creator of this universe, who wrote your DNA, who revealed himself in Jesus Christ has paid the penalty for you to be purchased back from the other side. He loves you. He can forgive everything. It’s available to you now for free if you would only believe and surrender to Him.
I pray that you do.
In sincere love,
Jared Altic
Sunday, April 06, 2014
Sweet 16 (2014) Round 5
Well, I'm pretty sure this has never happened to us before. We're down to the championship game and virtually everybody is out. Nobody had UConn at all. Only Jared had Kentucky but as his 16th team, a sign that he didn't trust them to actually beat Wichita State. 7-seed UConn and 8-seed Kentucky are the worst championship game pairing in NCAA history. Typically, a Sweet Sixteen list wouldn't include anything below a 4-seed.
We are obviously nowhere near the 461 points we could potentially have at this point. A perfect score after six rounds would be 477.
Most years, everyone still has at least one team, and often both teams, still alive going into the final game. This isn't most years.
Now UConn and Kentucky will square off and Jared and Kristi are tied 304 to 304. If Kentucky and their slime-ball head coach wins *spit*, Jared will win 305-304. If UConn wins *eye-roll*, Jared and Kristi stay tied.
What on earth happened, Kansas?!
We are obviously nowhere near the 461 points we could potentially have at this point. A perfect score after six rounds would be 477.
Most years, everyone still has at least one team, and often both teams, still alive going into the final game. This isn't most years.
Now UConn and Kentucky will square off and Jared and Kristi are tied 304 to 304. If Kentucky and their slime-ball head coach wins *spit*, Jared will win 305-304. If UConn wins *eye-roll*, Jared and Kristi stay tied.
What on earth happened, Kansas?!
Thursday, April 03, 2014
Random Thoughts 4/3/14
- So the television show "How I Met Your Mother" ended on Monday. Personally, it was a huge letdown. Barney's reprobate-redemption was almost on the mark but fell short in my opinion. And the whole final twist about the mother and kids' interaction made the entire show's concept seem cheapened to me. Some of the disconnect may be attributed to the show staying around too long past its peak.
- Speaking of shows, this is the time of year television shows get cancelled. I was going to try watching "Enlisted" or Michael J. Fox's new show but I just heard they both got cancelled. Shannon and I watch the very silly "Neighbors" (think "Third Rock From the Sun" but with kids) but it's one of the shows that's on the bubble and may not survive to see a renewal. I haven't seen "The Crazy Ones" but I've heard it's dangling by a thread as well. The same goes for "Revolution".
- Nothing apparently can kill "Community," the share that dares you to cancel it. Obviously, show-runner Dan Harmon knows where the bodies are buried.
- Do you remember when "American Idol" was a thing?
- Some shows have had more success and I might consider binge-watching to catch up, if the show is worth it. I haven't ever tried "Mike & Molly", "The Goldbergs", or "Sleepy Hollow"; does anybody have any recommendations?
- Here's a fascinating but brief survey of British accents. The speaker is a dialect coach and it's impressive how easily he slips out of one accent and into another.
- The McDonald's All-American game was last night. Kansas had a player on each team, power forward Cliff Alexander and shooting guard/small forward Kelly Oubre. Both played fairly well and had their share of highlights though it's hard to say an all-star game like this really shows you anything. Hopefully both players will make significant contributions next season.
Tuesday, April 01, 2014
Random Thoughts 4/1/14
- No April Fool's Day pranks here today. It's almost impossible to get on the internet and read anything on April 1, with everybody tripping over themselves to show how clever they are. Snore. I'm not believing anything I read or hear until April 2.
- KU Draft Watch Day 9: Andrew Wiggins had a press conference yesterday and declared his well-known intentions to go pro after just one year. Supposedly Joel Embiid is still undecided. Wayne Selden, Jr. has announced he is staying for another year. Is it just me, but I haven't heard anything about second-year forward Perry Ellis leaving early. It seems like he'd have at least a little interest from NBA scouts. Perhaps not.
- The best review of that Noah movie I've read yet… of course, it's from Matt Walsh's blog.
- Naadir Tharpe, you're on thin ice already, buddy.
- 5-star future Jayhawk power forward Cliff Alexander claims he's considering staying at KU for two years instead of just one. This in an article with an April 1 dateline. We'll see.
- President Obama claims 7 million people signed up for Obamacare, just in time to meet that 7 million person goal. Again, on April 1st he says this.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Sweet 16 (2014) Round 4
Things have swung Kristi's way. If either Florida or Wisconsin win another game, Kristi will take the contest. If both Florida and Wisconsin lose, Jared will gain a point with each of Kentucky's wins. One Kentucky win will tie him with Kristi. A Kentucky championship (blech!) will put him up one point for the win.
Again, nobody had UConn. Oops.
Jared is the only contestant to pick Kentucky at all, and thus is the only one with three remaining teams.
Mike will gain three points with each Wisconsin win, but is too far back to catch Kristi. He was the only one to have his top two picks make the Final Four.
Again, nobody had UConn. Oops.
Jared is the only contestant to pick Kentucky at all, and thus is the only one with three remaining teams.
Mike will gain three points with each Wisconsin win, but is too far back to catch Kristi. He was the only one to have his top two picks make the Final Four.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Sweet 16 (2014) Round 3
And… the wheels are coming off. At this point, after the Sweet Sixteen round, we are about one hundred points off the mark (a perfect score would be 372 at this point). The main culprits are Duke, Kansas, and Wichita State, which we put way too much hope in this year.
Nobody had Dayton and UConn getting to the Sweet Sixteen, let alone the Elite Eight.
In theory your top-8 teams should still be active. All six contestants have between four and six teams still alive, scattered across their lists. Jared is the only one with six teams remaining but Bryan has his top four still alive, which no one else can say.
Jared has surged into the lead with 281 points and five of his top-8 teams still active. But Kristi is only five points down and gains four points with every Florida win and two points with every Wisconsin win. So a Florida-Wisconsin-UConn-Kentucky Final Four would be ideal for Mrs. Champ. An all-Michigan final would hand it all Jared.
Here's the spreadsheet with way too much red all over it:
Nobody had Dayton and UConn getting to the Sweet Sixteen, let alone the Elite Eight.
In theory your top-8 teams should still be active. All six contestants have between four and six teams still alive, scattered across their lists. Jared is the only one with six teams remaining but Bryan has his top four still alive, which no one else can say.
Jared has surged into the lead with 281 points and five of his top-8 teams still active. But Kristi is only five points down and gains four points with every Florida win and two points with every Wisconsin win. So a Florida-Wisconsin-UConn-Kentucky Final Four would be ideal for Mrs. Champ. An all-Michigan final would hand it all Jared.
Here's the spreadsheet with way too much red all over it:
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Random Thoughts 3/27/14
- I guess that college basketball continues tonight. But without the Jayhawks, does it really?
- My brother, Dustin, made a brief appearance in a recent KCK Chamber video. Catch him at the 12-second mark.
- Dick Morris has a short video here explaining the problems with Common Core curriculum in schools, with mention of Indiana's recent rejection of it.
- KU Draft Watch: Day 4. Wayne Selden has announced two days ago that he is staying at KU for another year. This in spite of the fact that Selden was seen as a potential first round draft pick this year. It was reported that Joel Embiid had decided to declare for the draft. That has since been corrected, as the official position now is that he has not yet made a decision. Andrew Wiggins hasn't made an announcement yet but he was never expected to come back for a second year.
- I had someone tell me today that "each person needs to find the religion that's right for them." Um… no. If all religions were equally valid, then fine, pick whichever one suits you. But world religions can't even agree on what's "real" or "good" so if some are true and some are false then you have a problem because it might suit you to believe one that has lied to you. That lie might be, at best, useless and, at worst, destructive. Now Jesus says that he is exclusively the only way to get to God (John 14:6). So unless Jesus is lying, which makes his religion a bad one, then Jesus' way is the only way. Other ways are false ways. If you say other religions might be good for some people then you are saying that Jesus is a liar (and by extension that those who follow Jesus are bad people). Jesus does NOT allow for other religions to also be true. So, is Jesus a liar and is Christianity a bad religion? I challenge you to see who Jesus is by reading the book of John in the Bible.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Sweet 16 (2014) Round 2
We are obviously not very good at this. All we had to do was pick sixteen teams and the best any of could do was pick ten; most of us could hardly pick half of the actual Sweet 16.
Dustin and Kristi are leading the way with a modest 222 points each. That said, Kristi has a distinct advantage with her top-5 teams still active. Mike also has his top-5 active and can catch up to Kristi with Wisconsin and Virginia success.
Dustin's secret weapon, Tennessee, is still going strong. Unfortunately Dustin is the only one who has lost all three of his top-3.
Here's the spreadsheet:
Dustin and Kristi are leading the way with a modest 222 points each. That said, Kristi has a distinct advantage with her top-5 teams still active. Mike also has his top-5 active and can catch up to Kristi with Wisconsin and Virginia success.
Dustin's secret weapon, Tennessee, is still going strong. Unfortunately Dustin is the only one who has lost all three of his top-3.
Here's the spreadsheet:
Random Thoughts 3/24/13
- Well, my wife has me back until August/September (when football starts again). Five months. That's all she gets.
- Roy Williams got old-looking! For the record he's only 63.
- Wichita State could have won that game but they didn't. That said, no matter how great they are, they were disadvantaged by not having played against top competition all year. The Shockers prove that a team like this really can compete and even win it all potentially but I'm convinced that they would be better off to have lost a few games but gained the experience by playing a few more Kentucky-like teams during the season.
- It's too bad about Kansas falling apart at the end of the season. It's worse that these young one-and-done players are going to leave the college game after less than six months.
- I obviously know less about brackets than I do fantasy football. But…
- Jimmy Fallon makes me smile:
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Sweet 16 (2014) Round 1
Yes, yes, I know. The NCAA is calling this "round 2." Whatever. "Round 1" was play-in games. This was the real round 1.
We got off to a great start, with most of our scores in the 120's (out of 136). The key exception was Dustin, who had a 140. How did he get 140 points? He picked Tennessee, which already won a play-in game. It's risky but, so far, the strategy has paid off in giving him an extra nine points on top of a near-perfect list of sixteen. It's funny, too: I saw his lineup and thought it was more of a from-the-gut, sentimental list. Shows what I know.
Duke was the biggest goat so far. The idea is that every team on your list will win at least two games. To have a team like Duke go out win-less is a tough blow. Five of us had Duke and the Blue Devils were ranked as high as fourth (13 points per) on Matt's list.
Here are the numbers:
Note: We've been counting play-in games since the NCAA started scheduling higher seeds in those games. This year included a pair of 11's and a pair of 12's, as well as four 16's.
We got off to a great start, with most of our scores in the 120's (out of 136). The key exception was Dustin, who had a 140. How did he get 140 points? He picked Tennessee, which already won a play-in game. It's risky but, so far, the strategy has paid off in giving him an extra nine points on top of a near-perfect list of sixteen. It's funny, too: I saw his lineup and thought it was more of a from-the-gut, sentimental list. Shows what I know.
Duke was the biggest goat so far. The idea is that every team on your list will win at least two games. To have a team like Duke go out win-less is a tough blow. Five of us had Duke and the Blue Devils were ranked as high as fourth (13 points per) on Matt's list.
Here are the numbers:
Note: We've been counting play-in games since the NCAA started scheduling higher seeds in those games. This year included a pair of 11's and a pair of 12's, as well as four 16's.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Sweet 16 (2014) Prelim
We have six participants in this year's contest.
It took me awhile to put the spreadsheet together, but here you go. The top team will get 16 points with each win, the second team will get 15 points, and so on…
Please double-check to make sure your teams are listed correctly.
I'll update after each round (sometimes the next morning).
Good luck!
[click to embiggen]
It took me awhile to put the spreadsheet together, but here you go. The top team will get 16 points with each win, the second team will get 15 points, and so on…
Please double-check to make sure your teams are listed correctly.
I'll update after each round (sometimes the next morning).
Good luck!
[click to embiggen]
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Sweet 16 Contest (2014)
The NCAA tourney starts Thursday (play-in games won't count for this contest) and we're all looking at our brackets trying to determine how much we actually trust Wichita State and whether Kansas might find a path to go all the way.
But in addition to filling out a bracket, try my "Sweet 16" contest we've been playing the last few years. Instead of predicting almost 70 games, we pick the best sixteen teams in the tournament and rank them best to worst. The best team will get 16 points for each win, the second team will get 15 points and so on until you get to the 16th team which gets one point per win. If you put them in the correct order, your maximum score would be 477 points.
Last year was a rough year for most of us, but Chris Coker jumped out to an early lead and dominated us through the end.
If you want to play along, just post your list of of sixteen, in order, in the comments section (or email me) and I'll keep a running tally as we go along. The cutoff is Thursday morning.
Oh, and what does the winner get? As always, the satisfaction of a job well done.
But in addition to filling out a bracket, try my "Sweet 16" contest we've been playing the last few years. Instead of predicting almost 70 games, we pick the best sixteen teams in the tournament and rank them best to worst. The best team will get 16 points for each win, the second team will get 15 points and so on until you get to the 16th team which gets one point per win. If you put them in the correct order, your maximum score would be 477 points.
Last year was a rough year for most of us, but Chris Coker jumped out to an early lead and dominated us through the end.
If you want to play along, just post your list of of sixteen, in order, in the comments section (or email me) and I'll keep a running tally as we go along. The cutoff is Thursday morning.
Oh, and what does the winner get? As always, the satisfaction of a job well done.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Happy 8th Birthday, Graham
My sweet little boy, Graham, turned 8 today. Graham is our family comedian. He competes with his older brothers by being funnier and goofier than anyone else and, frankly, he probably has the best natural wit of anyone in the family. Graham, I absolutely love you. You're the delight of our family.
Here's my blog post (and first picture) of Graham when he was born.
Here are a few more of Graham and his easy smile.
Here's my blog post (and first picture) of Graham when he was born.
Here are a few more of Graham and his easy smile.
Friday, March 14, 2014
It May Seem Right…
Proverbs 14:12 says, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."
I've read this a hundred times before but today it really saddened me. There are people I know who think they are wise but they refuse to live by God's standards. They may be very intelligent but they refuse to know God's truth. Their life choices lead to pain and destruction but they blame others or bad luck. Evidence of God surrounds them but they just won't see it.
To those dear people:
If you think you are an accident of evolution and your existence serves no real purpose, then have believed a lie about your value.
If you feel a sense of outrage, injustice, or right or wrong, then you cannot deny a moral standard may exist that transcends you.
If a standard exist and you compare yourself to it, then you know that no human being is perfect.
If it's possible that a God exists who really loves you, then you know nothing would be more important than fixing the distance between you and a perfect God.
If you've ever really looked at Jesus, then you know that reconciling us to God was his primary purpose.
If you don't make peace with God through Jesus Christ, then you'll never have peace at all.
I've read this a hundred times before but today it really saddened me. There are people I know who think they are wise but they refuse to live by God's standards. They may be very intelligent but they refuse to know God's truth. Their life choices lead to pain and destruction but they blame others or bad luck. Evidence of God surrounds them but they just won't see it.
To those dear people:
If you think you are an accident of evolution and your existence serves no real purpose, then have believed a lie about your value.
If you feel a sense of outrage, injustice, or right or wrong, then you cannot deny a moral standard may exist that transcends you.
If a standard exist and you compare yourself to it, then you know that no human being is perfect.
If it's possible that a God exists who really loves you, then you know nothing would be more important than fixing the distance between you and a perfect God.
If you've ever really looked at Jesus, then you know that reconciling us to God was his primary purpose.
If you don't make peace with God through Jesus Christ, then you'll never have peace at all.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Random Thoughts 3/12/14
- My little girl turns FIVE today! Happy birthday, Anneliese.
- It is interesting to hear the buzz about the injury to KU's Joel Imbiid that will have the 7-foot phenom on the bench through the Big-12 tourney and possibly beyond. It's ridiculous how the conspiracy theorists and muckrakers are making mountains out of molehills. Players like Imbiid are very valuable to KU, no one is going to knowingly risk his health for some nefarious purpose. As valuable as Imbiid may be, Bill Self has no plausible motivation to lie or deceive, because his fate is not tied to one single player. Bill Self and KU will still earn their millions, even if Imbiid doesn't play and KU loses early in the NCAA tourney. They are big enough to survive it.
- The Chiefs have seen five players leave the team in free agency, including two guards and tackle (Brandon Albert) and Dexter McCluster. So far they have not signed a single player from another team. According to NFL.com they are not even listed as an interested party for any of the top-100 free agents.
- I'm a long-time talk radio fanatic, going back to listening to Paul Harvey as a child. And, though I still listen to Rush Limbaugh on occasion with a bit of sports radio sprinkled in, I've all but given up the many hours of news talk radio I used to listen to. First of all, the quality is going downhill fast. Not just the skill of the local on-air talent, but also the programming. I'd like to listen to intelligent analysis of the day's news but instead I get moderate-to-liberal, loud but uninformed water-cooler chat. Bleh. The last two or three months, I've been listening to Christian talk radio and podcasts through the day and feel much better for it.
- I started a discipleship program at church this year and I have thoroughly been enjoying it. I picked three guys to work with me through the year, meeting weekly one-on-one, to study Christian disciplines (like prayer, fasting, study, worship, etc.). Meeting with each of these guys has become the highlight of my week. Thanks, guys.
Tuesday, March 04, 2014
Happy Birthday, Shannon
Happy birthday to my beautiful and talented wife.
You are my best friend and my "very favorite." I love you.
Have a wonderful day, pretty lady.
You are my best friend and my "very favorite." I love you.
Have a wonderful day, pretty lady.
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