Study Shows Cell Phones Safe

Whew. This is good news…

In a move worthy of the Mythbusters, scientists in Denmark tracked over 420,000 cell phone users over the course of 21 years in an attempt to determine if the urban legend that cell phone use causes cancer is true. Their results: the RF energy produced by the phones did not correlate to an increased incidence of the disease.

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Official High School Blogging Week

OK, I know that Mark started a few days ago, but beginning here at Notes, we’re hoping to pass on the challenge to all bloggers. During this season of giving, give your readers a chuckle and describe for them (with pictures too), your high school days.

I graduated from Pulaski Academy in 1986, having grown up in Little Rock. I never had a home computer. The Franzetti’s down the street in Marlowe Manor had several different ones during my junior high and high school career. They were early adopters. I think they had a Commodore 64, a TRS-80, and even an Apple IIe or something.

High school remembrances for me, are unfortunately, fuzzy. I was just talking with the Wegley’s the other day at DP about my excellent short-term memory but my atrocious long-term memory. It’s all “in the moment” for me, it seems. Even at my 20th high school reunion this year, I wracked my brain for “stories” but just couldn’t dredge up many. However, when I heard folks telling a story, I could churn it out of the brain printer relatively easily. I’d think to myself, “Oh yeaaaaaahhhh. I remember that.” But to call it up out of memory myself? Forget it.

So, if you went to high school with me.. tell me stories about it. If you think I’m a conversational dullard, it’s only because I have nothing to contribute until you prime the pump. I hate that, but that’s the way it is.

I concluded a few years ago that the reason this picture is so bad is because it’s not my good side. But this is the “Official Senior Mug Shut” that you’ll find in my senior yearbook and probably still adorning the side of mom’s refrigerator. Oh, how I wish someone had slapped me and convinced me a few months earlier to lose the “butt part” in favor of the side part which I wore the final semester of my senior year. Not that it got me any more dates or attention, but it did seem to get me into college. I doubt I would have made it without being a distraction in class.

“Mr. Noble, could you please muss your hair? Your butt part is causing a train wreck of my thoughts and inclines me to reject an ordered universe…”

Some of my interests and activities in high school included basketball (although I stopped playing after my sophomore year, I think). I stayed involved by helping to video all the games for the coaches and even managing to secure the manager’s role for the high school girls’ volleyball team, though I was denied locker room privileges. I was heavily involved with journalism, helping with the student newspaper and the yearbook. My closer circle of friends originated within that group. Mark Dalrymple, Nick Proctor, Ray Minor, Shannon Sorrels, Becky Teddlie, and others were a daily romp of insanity.

It seemed I just as easily passed from one traditional high school social clique to the next, not really having a definite niche. I felt equally comfortable around any level of immaturity, I guess. I was involved in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, serving as president; French Club, Student Council, serving as treasurer my junior year and losing the presidential election to Jimmy Mulhollan my senior year; Beta Club and National Honor Society.

The “church kid” group was another I hung out with quite a bit. I attended Immanuel Baptist Church during that time, but most of my closer friends were members at First Baptist. During lunch or class break (surely it wasn’t called recess?!), you’d find me out in the courtyard, having first made a stop at the “candy cart” for a Snickers, visiting and laughing. Come to think of it, I wonder if Governor Huckabee’s crazy fitness program shut down P.A.’s candy cart in the last few years?

Tomorrow… all about the U.S.A for Jeff campaign…

Jay Bakker

I’d already gotten the heebie-jeebies a little about Jay Bakker (Jim Bakker’s son) was now making the rounds as a speaker in many churches. He was even recently featured on KTHV. But Tim opens the can of worms that no one else is willing to. Just because someone is edgy does not make them godly or effective.

Aw shucks

Shawn over at Fighting to Stay Awake used my blog entry about Day Mapping in his series after I submitted it. Many thanks for the link, Shawn.

Reading group anyone? Get your wallets out.

Katy, bar the door!

You know when a book begins with the following quote by A.W. Tozer that it’s gonna knock your socks off:

“The man of pseudo faith will fight for his verbal creed but refuse flatly to allow himself to get into a predicament where his future must depend on that creed being true. He always provides himself with secondary ways of escape so he will have a way out if a the roof caves in. What we need very badly these days is a company of Christians who are prepared to trust God as completely now as they know they must do at the last day.”

I’m beginning Randy Alcorn’s Money, Possessions, and Eternity, and I’d like to invite as many of you as are interested into making the journey with me.

This is a wonderful follow-up and enhancement of the past month’s emphasis for me and members of Journey, but it’s also an expanded perspective. If you want to join the reading group, then click on the title above and buy the book. I’ll post a reading schedule here in the next few days. Comment on this post to let us know if you’re “in” or not. I’ll set up a new page on the blog just for the Reading Group. Hope to see you there!

Your pages reveal your personality?

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Giving bull

I fear that I’ve been a little lax in communicating my stance on giving to folks. I want so badly to say, “God doesn’t care how much you give as long as it’s from the heart.” It’s a caveat to those who are experiencing a tinge of guilt for their wholesale pursuit of the retail god. They decide that they want to start “giving” but discover that at their present level of living, they simply cannot “tithe.”

In the past month, our church has had an incredible series on the Journey to Financial Freedom. We’ve heard from different pastors in our area as guest speakers, and we still have a few more weeks in our financial small groups. I don’t think anyone who has participated regularly has left unchanged and unresolved.
However, I don’t want to fudge on this important issue. It’s not a matter of squeezing a little giving into our existing lifestyles. If our current level of living is too great for a biblically prescribed level of giving, then there t’ain’t no squeezing that’s gonna make lemonade out of a watermelon. If your living level prohibits your giving level, then the former must decrease while the latter must increase.

I’ve got just a thin steak of mercy running in me. Most who know me well say I’ve got more than that; however, I generally appreciate receiving plain talk, and because of that, I generally give it as well. So here it is, if you’ve heard or read from me any semblance of permission to gradually grow into giving, please slap me.

Here’s why:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For
truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not
a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore
whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches
others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven,
but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the
kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5.17-20, ESV)

You see, we’ve taught consistently this past month that the tithe concept was not just an Old Testament one that New Testament Christians can replace with some type of warm fuzzy giving. I still believe that the tithe is the starting point of obedience. Jesus states clearly that His teaching is not replacement but enhancement. In fact, we know that the Pharisees tithed – even to the point of tithing on herbs and spices. According to Jesus’ point, our righteousness should exceed that of the Pharisees. New Testament giving, then, becomes a matter of standard obedience and joyful excess.

So… for all those who would “relax” the commandments and meekly counsel you to grow into giving, I say, “Bull.” Increase your giving level while decreasing your living level. If you must sell out to start over, then by all means, do so joyfully. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

technorati tags:tithing

Blogged with Flock

Five spiritual practices…

Shawn has identified five spiritual practices over at Fighting to Stay Awake. Good stuff.

Blogged with Flock

Finding God at Harvard…

This is nothing new, but it may be new to you. Know what I mean? Stop by and check out the Veritas Forum. Started by a Harvard student a few years ago that was transformed disgust into inspiration.

Harvard’s bylaws still read, “…to let every student consider that the main end of his life and studies is to know God, Jesus Christ, who is eternal life…”

So many of our educational institutions started out as Christian endeavors, to train young men and women for ministry. It’s disturbing that at some point the church turned to erecting steeples instead of equipping leaders. It seems that most of this age’s up and coming spiritual “leaders” have as much ambition to change the world and society as my big toe.

Most are content to get a contract with a recording studio and play alternative music. Woopee.

Others unashamedly seek a bigger venues for their “talents.” In doing so, they reveal more about themselves than the God they claim to glorify.

Check out Veritas. Perhaps authentic, humble Christian ambition is thriving in some places today. May we seek it to prosper in our own locales as well.

Apple positioning to revolutionize cellular industry

Update (11-18-08): I wanted to bring this back up… Published on December 3, 2006. Notice my last sentence… It feels good to be right once in a while.

I had been keeping my eye on Palmone’s Treo 680 for a while, intending to upgrade to it in the next few months, but with intense rumors now beginning to coelesce into murky confirmation, I’m going to wait for Apple’s iPhone. Industry insiders and rumor-mongers have speculated for the past year about phone patents that Apple has filed over the past few years.

Now it appears the long wait is over. However, with Steve Jobs’ obsessive secrecy and Apple’s penchant for punishing internal leaks, there’s little official way to confirm what has only been hinted at. All that to say, I’m leaning with everyone else toward a January explosive announcement by Apple of the iPhone.

If you were preparing to upgrade your phone, you might want to wait. The iPhone, I predict, will eventually dominate the cellular industry like the iPod has the digital music one.

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PowerPoint OUT – Spresent IN!

Spresent is a free Web-based presentation application based on Flash. You can create and edit high-quality Flash presentations online. You can send presentations via e-mail or publish on your web site or blog.

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LG laptop definitely droolworthy

Found this story over at Engadget, and am stunned. I’ve never even glanced twice at another computer brand since 1988. I am a faithful MacDaddy. However, the picture which reveals sleek design and stunning visuals doesn’t point out the fact that this baby runs on methyl alcohol fuel rather than a lithium diode battery. It’s also recently won a “best of the best” Red Dot Award, a German prize for industrial design.

The danger of pragmatism

It was about a completely different subject, but a not-too-distant Phil Johnson quote got me thinking.

It’s time for evangelicals to rethink their priorities, reexamine the evil fruits of pragmatic and market-driven “spirituality,” and retool their own movement. Better yet, Christians with a concern for the glory of God and the authority of Scripture should renounce the latitudinarian-style movement contemporary “evangelicalism” has morphed into. It is a hopelessly mixed and muddled multitude. The fashionable brand of NAE/Christianity Today-style “evangelicalism” actually abandoned historic evangelical principles long ago, and hasn’t taken a firm stand for biblical and evangelical doctrine for some time. The current scandal is only a symptom of that much deeper problem.

Actually Phil hits another homerun in the comments to this same post:

..an overwhelming outpouring of visible emotion is no reliable proof that someone is legitimately being moved by the truth.

Definite food for thought in this ends justifies the means postmodern church world.

Moving on up… to the top… to a de-lux apartment in the sky

Apple’s market share has increased dramatically this year! Woo-hoo! But we still live in a world more than dominated by PC users. No wonder we’re in such a mess.

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Bill Gates Foundation won’t be rich forever

In a statement posted November 29 on the foundation’s website, it was reported that plans are to give away mega-fortune within 50 years of Gates’ death.

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Welcome back!

If you’re seeing this post, then you’ve arrived at the newly-located blog. Notes from the Trail now has its own space on my server rather than just a subfolder. (If that made your head spin, it’s OK; you’re normal.)

I hope you leave a comment to let me know when you can see this site… It takes up to 48 hours to bounce around the internet, so you may see this post one moment and then the “Groovy Moving” post (which is the old location) another.

At any rate, I’m glad you’re here and ready to take up the journey together.