Lest Blood Be Shed

Last night my christian history survey had a two hour lecture on the beginnings of Islam as well as what the basic beliefs of Islam are. The lecture was given by a professor of the LSTC side of our school who has actually spoken in another one of my classes about a similar issue. He is a practicing christian who has married a practicing muslim. They were both their talking to us about what Islam was all about. It was a pretty interesting overview of the religion and it was really cool having the wife demonstrate to us the way in which muslims pray when they pray five times a day. It was very jewish in its tradition. Three other things that I found interesting were that Islam does not believe that there is any direct connection between God and humanity, God does not beget nor is God the product of begetting, and they also believe Jesus was not crucified but rather fooled the jews and ran away to India to preach. It seems Islam is a very sacred religion but I love the Ideals Jesus calls us to uphold too much to convert.

I've been working on putting my library online now for maybe a year but never gave it much effort until about a week ago. I really put it together so I could have quick access to my books from anywhere when I'm writing a paper and might need to site a book but since it's online I thought I'd share it too. The library is completely database driven and has the ability to sort by author's last name, book title, and a random search string. Some of the information in the database is off slightly but it's pretty good for a start.

You can find my library here: http://lestblood.imagodirt.net/library/

I was tooling around the New York Times website and they have a really cool interactive graphic for the 2004 election. While I was playing around with which states would go to Kerry and which states would go to Bush, I setup the map (quite by accident) where there was an electoral vote tie. 269-269 The map did not project a winner! What would happen? So I did some checking and this is the procedure for fixing a tie (according to Amendment 12 of the Constitution):

The electors will meet in their state capitols and cast their actual votes. These will be opened and read by the President of the Senate in a joint session of Congress. Once it has been established there is a tie, it becomes the responsibility of the House of Representatives to choose the next President of the United States. However, a special voting procedure is employed in this situation. Each state receives only one vote, and the representatives from each state have to decide which candidate gets the vote. For example, all of Indiana's representatives will vote individually. Then their votes are tallied. Which ever candidate receives a majority of these votes wins Indiana's one vote; if no candidate receives a majority of these votes, Indiana's one vote is not cast. Members from at least 34 states must be present for this vote to count. Which ever candidate receives the votes of at least 26 states is declared the President. If no one reaches 26 votes, further balloting is done. (It took the Representatives 36 ballots over 6 days to reach a winner in the 1800 election!). But that's not all. The Senate Representatives are the ones that will vote for the Vice President and their choice doesn't have to match the ticket! Which in my opinion would be way cool. Each Senator gets one vote and a minumum of 67 senators need to be present for the vote to count.

Looking at some projections by polls, this scenario, athough unlikely, is quite possible. (Note, the following sites have dynamic data so they may not match up with what I have just written)
http://electionprojection.com/elections2004.html
http://www.electoral-vote.com/

Today is usually the day I go to Chicago all day for school but this week is "reading week." So, I didn't have to wake up at 6:00am this morning and make the trip up to school. There will be no less work for today though! I'm still not going into my real job at Saint Joe but I have so much to get accomplished. I have to read 200 pages of history before I can spend two hours doing my history mid-term. I also have to write my reflection paper on the Liturgical Death March (which as you can see I've already started ). But that's not all! Remember my School and Very Soon entry? Well, I still haven't finished the four 3-5 page papers or the final! I want to at least start on that stuff.

Other than that it should be a nice day of rest.

I have just barely survived the 'Liturgical Death March' for my Intro to Christian Worship class. Believe you me it was an excruciating and exhilarating experience.

The event didn't start off very well. It was 1:15pm on Saturday and I was walking out the door when the phone rings. It's B.C., "The network is down from inside the Saint Joseph's College Network!" Indeed it was. I had to go that way to get my iPod and some gas before I left so I threw all of my stuff into the car and took off. When I got there it was obvious someone was doing a D.O.S attack from inside our network. I didn't have time figure out who it was. So I disconnected the fiber link between campus and the computer center and took off for McCormick. After getting gas and some money it was now 1:42pm. Yikes! I had to be there by 3:00pm. Driving like a sane madman, I make it right at 3:00pm. From McCormick's 1400 building a group of us head off to Willow Creek Church.

Willow Creek is a mega church and when I say mega I mean mega. I believe they have 7000 members and as I was looking at their financial statements when I got there they have received 15 million dollars in offering (2 million shy of what they had budgeted). When we arrived it was like arriving at O'Hare International Airport. The building was huge! We found a parking spot (Main Entrance Lot E1). When we walked in it was like a mall. There were fountains, escalators, a coffee bar, computer kiosks, flat screen T.V.s displaying coming events and hundreds of people (we were early). We met the rest of our class in the food court (yes, a food court) and had some dinner. After finishing dinner we went to the auditorium and found our seats. The first thing we noticed because we had a person with a broken ankle is there were no differently abled persons seats. The auditorium was gigantic and had two levels of balconies and had two jumbo-screens above the stage so everyone could see. There was nothing in the auditorium or in the building for that matter that would indicate this was a Christian place of worship. No symbols, no pictures, nothing.

The "service" started with the lights dimming and a blue mustang being projected on the screens. It looked like that jeans commercial one sees in the theaters before a movie...

Reading week for McCormick is next week (Oct 18-22) but that doesn't mean I'm not going to be busy. This weekend I will be going on what is being called The Liturgical Death March. I need to drive up to McCormick on Saturday so I can attend a service at Willow Creek. Willow Creek is a mega church and we are going to experience their worship service. The service starts @ 5:30 but we leave McCormick @ 3:00pm which means I need to leave Rensselaer @ at least 1:00pm on Saturday. But that's not all, the death march continues. After the Willow Creek experience, I need to be back at McCormick at 6:30am on Sunday Morning so we can attend Trinity United Church of Christ. After Trinity we will be attending Saint Benedict the African-East. The day should end around 2:00pm. Meaning I will have spent a full 24 hours doing nothing (well I will sleep a little bit) but going to various church's worship services. That's just Saturday and Sunday of Reading Week! I also have a mid-term for History I as well as a 6-8 page reflection paper concerning the different worship services I attended during the weekend. I also need to catch-up on reading for history before I take the mid-term. Yuck!

Good news, My research topic for history has been approved. I will be researching pelagianism and original sin throughout the early church history to the reformation. Pelagius has a very ancient Jewish interpretation of Original Sin. Namely, there is no such thing!

I heard some great news today. The Indiana gubernatorial debate on Sunday will not only be Joe Kernan and Mitch Daniels but will also include Libertarian candidate Ken Gividen. The republican and democratic candidates said they would not join in the debate if Gividen was included. They have since changed their mind. If only the presidential debates could follow this trend. There was an attempt to include more voices to the presidential debates but that was defeated today.

For true progress to occur we need more voices in our public discourse. I was talking to John last night about this issue and we came to the conclusion that society cannot be represented or guided along by only two voices. It would be like trying to describe the color blue with a 1 bit binary number. Impossible without leaving out all the other colors! You would have "blue and not blue." So why is our country so bent on giving us a faux choice in the bipartisan (binary) system?

The first step for a social control system is to control the means by which the salient values are passed to others.