Merry Christmas!!! Or Happy Jesusmas...

Hey, what would you have thought if I went the PC way and said "HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!"? Let's just reflect on Jesus and reconsider our lives in light of him.

So for the few of you who come here, you may notice that I haven't posted for a while. There's a lot of reasons - it's been a crazy month - but let me just give a general update of myself in quick bullet form for your speed-reading convenience.

- I finished up Metaphysics I with J. P. Moreland and wow do I feel dumb. Like, I learned a ton, but there's just so much to take in. I'm still awaiting my grade and I think I have a shot to get that A (why is it 96% for an A now!?). We'll see.

- I'm only taking 3 units next semester, just like this past semester, which is Symbolic Logic with Tom Crisp (smaaaaaart dude). Logic isn't my favorite topic but it's foundational and I'm willing to put in the time for it. I already bought the book ("Deductive Logic" by Warren Goldfarb) and the plan is to read it all before school starts up again Jan. 26. That way I can devote more time to wedding planning next semester and already have a good idea of where the class is going.

- How's the wedding planning? All's I gotta say is that Kels and I are behind right now and we have to get a lot done before I go back to school in 4 weeks. Yup, really busy next semester.

- I'm 20 pages away from finishing Peter Enns' "Inspiration and Incarnation" which is amazing and I highly recommend it (with certain reservations). He's pretty much outlining a ton of things that I've been thinking about, but just more from a strongly OT perspective whereas I think of it more theologically (he does apply it to theology many times though). I'll most likely be posting on this too.

- I got "The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism" by Greg Beale for Christmas so I can't wait to read that next. It is a book-length response to Peter Enns' aforementioned book and it will be pretty enlightening I'm sure.

- My former prof Dr. Lunde is getting me his new book "The New Testament Use of the Old Testament: Three Views" for $8. SWEET! I'll probably try to read that too soon. Note: the contributors to this book are Walter Kaiser, Darrell Bock, and Peter Enns as well as Jon Lunde and Kenneth Berding (both at Biola :D) as editors.

- Did you know Christopher Hitchens is coming to Biola to debate Craig sometime soon? So excited!

- I got a WiiFit for Christmas ( :D )and it says I'm inhumanly out of shape. I also got one of those pistol adapter thingies and so now I'm probably going to be "forced" to go buy a first-person shooter like "Call of Duty: World at War". Woe is me!

- The new JETS issue (Vol. 51, No. 4) is great - go check it out. I'll probably try to read it all because all the articles are so dang interesting.

- I recently found out that I LOVE Radiohead and have been listening to them non-stop for like the past 3 weeks. I do wanna go get the other two CD's of theirs that I don't have: "The Bends" and "In Rainbows" (salivating at the thought of driving to Best Buy to pick up "The Bends" and "In Rainbows" or, alternatively, buying them on iTunes as I stuff my face with good homemade food...mmmm...homemade food...).


'Til next time.

Study Prayer

There's a certain point you reach after reading so much, that you forget why you're doing it. It happens to me a lot. I've been wanting to write a prayer out that I would try to slowly pray and meditate on before any prolonged study session (or even a semi-short one). This is what I came up with, and I think I'm sticking with it. It sums up everything that's important to me when it comes to studying.

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STUDY PRAYER

My loving Father, Daddy,
Cultivate in me a habit of thankfulness.
Thank you for the privilege of studying your Word and your creation.

Holy Spirit, my Comforter,
Give me the wisdom to understand,
the patience to persevere,
the determination to ignore distraction,
and the strength to endure.
Guard me from envying others,
and keep pride far from my heart.
Imbue me with a burning passion to descend from abstract clouds into daily life,
to those who are physically and emotionally abused,
to those who are dying, even without You.

My savior Jesus,
Prepare me to serve your church,
for the equipping of the saints,
for the defense of the faith.
Remind me, that I once was also in darkness.
Help me empathize with the skeptic, as I also was one.

Most beautiful, holy Triunity,
may this all be for your glory above all
- not my fame but yours alone -
and lead me into a more profound personal and experiential knowledge of who you are.

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I feel like I should add "So let it be written, so let it be done" at the end or something. haha, j/k. Now, only to try and memorize it...

Joe Satriani vs. Coldplay

So I'm coming out of my philosophy cave for a moment (finals coming up!!!) to relay something very important I saw on Fox News. I'm a big fan of Joe Satriani, and his song "If I Could Fly" is one of my favorite songs of his. Now Satch is suing Coldplay for allegedly plagiarizing this song in "Viva la Vida". My opinion is that they sound exactly the same - same chord progression, rhythm and melody - and that it's way too much of a coincidence. Still, not too sure that they would actually do this intentionally. Ok, I guess it wasn't that important...anyway, here's the Fox News article (about halfway down) and here's a YouTube video that overlays the two songs.

"Engrish in Dragon Ball Z"

So I've been really busy with school. I just finished writing a paper on "Substance and Modern Science" by Richard J. Connell, have read "The Identity of the Self" by Geoffrey Maddell which is most of what the final is about in 2 weeks, and am now reading "Naming and Necessity" by Saul Kripke which is also on the final. There's some other reading along with that and I'm working weird hours from 10pm to 4am. So I'm still getting used to all this to say the least! So that's why I've been slacking on my posts. Something will be up soon though.

Anyway, check this out:


I was taking a break from studying and found this "Engrish" on a Dragon Ball Z episode that Funimation has put out on DVD. I thought it was hilarious! It's supposed to be a close up shot of a computer's structural analysis of a burning building with a water tower at the top. If you want to go see it for yourself, it's on season 7 (with Piccolo on the front cover), disc 2, episode 202, minute 39 and about 56 seconds.

And yes, I did send it in to Engrish.com