The Sufficiency of Scripture Conference

The SOS Conference was such a blessing to me. First off, the preaching was amazing (of course)! Its hard for me to pin down my favorite speaker. A lot of them have had a huge impact on my life. I am so thankful for all those men who are willing to stand up and speak he truth. I also enjoyed fellowshipping with new and old friends! Nice meeting everyone! Of course, much more could be said, but I'm not one that writes long blog posts. :)

Cincinnati

This was actually my first look at snow in the day time!
I have to say, it was pretty much what I was expecting. :)

I tried to revive this image on Photoshop. I think it came out alright in the end....

The Convention Area

(: Is that Emily Rose??... (I don't think I even knew your name when I took this shot)

For those of who were not at the conference, this was the main room where everyone gathered. Multiply that section of seats by 6 or 7. It was mostly filled.

I recorded about 3 hours of preaching from the conference. I picked 20 minutes of my favorite audio from the conference. I think it also does a good job summing up what the conference was about. I really did this blog post to put up these two videos. Uploading the few pics I took with my point and shoot was an afterthought.

If you didn't watch it, come back when you have 20 minutes! You will be happy you did.

God Bless!

The Fallacy of "Fairness"

A Great political piece by Tomas Sowell.

If there is ever a contest to pick which word has done the most damage to people's thinking, and to actions to carry out that thinking, my nomination would be the word "fair." It is a word thrown around by far more people than have ever bothered to even try to define it.

This mushy vagueness may be a big handicap in logic but it is a big advantage in politics. All sorts of people, with very different notions about what is or is not fair, can be mobilized behind this nice-sounding word, in utter disregard of the fact that they mean very different things when they use that word.

Some years ago, for example, there was a big outcry that various mental tests used for college admissions or for employment were biased and "unfair" to many individuals or groups. Fortunately there was one voice of sanity-- David Riesman, I believe-- who said: "The tests are not unfair. LIFE is unfair and the tests measure the results."

If by "fair" you mean everyone having the same odds for achieving success, then life has never been anywhere close to being fair, anywhere or at any time. If you stop and think about it (however old-fashioned that may seem), it is hard even to conceive of how life could possibly be fair in that sense.

Even within the same family, among children born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, the first-borns on average have higher IQs than their brothers and sisters, and usually achieve more in life.

Unfairness is often blamed on somebody, even if only on "society." But whose fault is it if you were not the first born? Since some groups have more children than others, a higher percentage of the next generation will be first-borns in groups that have smaller families, so such groups have an advantage over other groups.

Despite all the sound and fury generated in controversies over whether different groups have different genetic potential, even if they all have identical genetic potential the outcomes can still differ if they have different birth rates

Twins have average IQs several points lower than children born singly. Whether that is due to having to share resources in the womb or having to share parents' attention after birth, the fact is what it is-- and it certainly is not fair.

Many people fail to see the fundamental difference between saying that a particular thing-- whether a mental test or an institution-- is conveying a difference that already exists or is creating a difference that would not exist otherwise.

Creating a difference that would not exist otherwise is discrimination, and something can be done about that. But, in recent times, virtually any disparity in outcomes is almost automatically blamed on discrimination, despite the incredible range of other reasons for disparities between individuals and groups.

Nature's discrimination completely dwarfs man's discrimination. Geography alone makes equal chances virtually impossible. The geographic advantages of Western Europe over Eastern Europe-- in climate and navigable waterways, among other things-- have led to centuries of differences in income levels that were greater than income differences between blacks and whites in America today.

Just the fact that the lay of the land is different in different parts of Europe meant that it was easier for the Roman legions to invade Western Europe. This meant that Western Europeans had the advantages of the most advanced civilization in Europe at that time. Moreover, because Roman letters were used in Western Europe, the languages of that region had written versions centuries before the Slavic languages of Eastern Europe did.

The difference between literacy and illiteracy is a huge difference, and it remained huge for centuries. Was it the Slavs' fault that the Romans did not want to climb over so many mountains to get to them?

To those living in Western Europe in the days of the Roman Empire, the idea of being conquered, and many slaughtered, by the Romans probably had no great appeal. But their descendants would benefit from their bad luck. And that doesn't seem fair either.

Help Haiti! Buy Sugar Scrub!

Go to my sister Lauren's blog!

The Circa History Guild

On our way to the SOS conference in Cincinnati we stopped at the Weathers' House for a visit. Thanks again Weathers family for your gracious hospitality. Before we left Alpharetta GA., on our way to Cincinnati, we visited the Circa History Guild.

The following 4 pictures are items that were in the John Adams mini-series!

The election box

Messenger bags!

I really liked these chess boards...

the ol' copper Indian

A woman teaching her children... Not something you see everyday in stained glass.

Dad enjoyed this one. Can you tell?

Thank you, Mr. Potter, for telling (and showing) us all that neat history!

The Fluoride Treatment

NOTE: I know I've been out of the blogging sphere for quite some time now. In the past few months I've been quite busy, as you have probably guessed. I plan on doing a catch-up post soon, but for now I have written a post I had planned on writing a month ago....

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Fluoride. You know, that harmless, helpful additive found in toothpaste and our water supply. We've been told it's an essential mineral that prevents cavities and helps maintain healthy teeth. Right? ....Right?

Wrong.

First of all, there are no recorded benefits of fluoride. In fact, there is far more conclusive evidence that it is indeed harmful. The fact is, fluoride is a cumulative toxic waste that is more toxic than lead! It has been banned in 13 countries like Germany, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Italy, and Austria to name a few. It causes birth defects, cancer, osteoporosis, and it can actually cause your teeth to erode and discolor.

So, if fluoride is really a terrible, harmful toxic waste, why do we put it in our water and toothpaste? For decades we have bought the lie of fluoridation. This lie has not only weakened tens of millions of immune systems, but has lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Federal health agencies have known these facts for years, but they have been controlled by manufactures to keep it a secret. Manufactures of what, you ask?

In the 1920's, aluminum manufacturing was booming due to aluminum cans. Dealing with large amounts of toxic fluoride waste was a growing problem. Fluoride waste was very costly to safely dispose of. ALCOA, an aluminum company in Pittsburgh, decided they needed to find a way to cut some of their costs. At the time, a man by the name of Andrew W. Mellon was over the jurisdiction of the U.S Public Health Services. He was also a founder and major stock holder of ALCOA.

So, in 1931, a PHS dentist was dispatched to 300 small towns in Texas where wells contain organic, natural fluoride. His mission was to determine just how much fluoride people could tolerate without taking damage to their teeth. He found that people's teeth were often discolored and eroded, but he also reported that they apeared to have fewer cavities than average.

I think you can probably connect the dots. This group of people (and others) devised a plan for this apparently worthless product. They launched a propaganda campaign to sell fluoride to the masses in toothpaste (despite any real evidence that it is beneficial). Apparently, they weren't making enough money on their newly launched sales campaign of selling fluoride in insecticide and rat poison.

In 1945 the American Dental Association decided to pump water into the Grand Rapids to do an official 15 year comparison study to determine if there really were benefits from fluoridation. But six years later, 6 more American cities were given the go ahead to pump fluoride into their water. The so called "15 year" study was abandon after only six years and the results were inconclusive.

Thus, manufactures of aluminum turned this once costly drag on their companies into a huge money maker.

Also, note that there are 2 types of fluoride. Calcium fluoride is found naturally in plants and water. The fluoride being added to our toothpaste and water is not calcium fluoride, but sodium fluoride, hydrofluorosilcic acid, or silicofluorides (all three are toxic wastes).

Have you ever seen the warning label on a tube of toothpaste that says "keep away from children". If a child ingested an entire tube of toothpaste, the dose would likely be fatal.

The first occurrence of fluoridated drinking water was found in Germany's concentration camps. The Gestapo was worried about little children in the camps getting cavities...um- NO! They used sodium fluoride to sterilize people and force them into a calm submission.

I could go on about the negative effects that fluoride has on our bodies, but I think you get the picture. Fluoride has been in dripped in our American water supply for close to 50 years and our toothpaste just as long.

So what should you do? I recommend buying toothpaste and mouthwash that doesn't contain fluoride. (Try www.vitacost.com)

I'd also recommend finding a filter that will filter it out of your water (something we have yet to do, as it can be expensive to find filtering systems that do). In case you were wondering, Brita filters aren't much good, but they do make the water taste good!

Anyway, I hope I didn't scare anyone too badly. Awareness is good though, right? You can click here for the article, 50 Reasons to Oppose Fluoridation.

Until next time,
Joseph

Food, Inc.

Recently, our family watched a new movie called Food Inc. This film is extremely eyeopening as it describes where the vast majority of our food comes from. It goes into great depth as it documents the reasons why a hamburger costs less than a bag pf apples. It dives into topics like the dangers of E Coli and how they bathe meat in ammonia to kill bacteria.

Do you really know where your food comes from? I thought that I had a pretty good idea until I watched this movie!

Basically, most of the food in grocery stores comes from a few major companies that control how the food is made and who it is made by.

Although the people who made the movie did not appear to be Christian, they did seem to understand that food left in its natural state (the way God created it/ planned for us to eat it) is best. However, they mentioned "evolutionary design" a couple times. (Please.... now I've heard it all!!)

Aside from the humanist aspect of the movie, it's a great film that everyone in this country should watch! You'll never look at dinner the same way!

Finally Fixed...

For as long as I can remember, the only chair in my room has been broken. Recently it almost reached the point of no return, as you can see.

Molly was quite fascinated by the old glue.

A little too fascinated...

My seat in the mean time.

After taking it apart, my dad and I used J-B weld to put in back together.

At one point, many years ago, my Dad refinished the desk, chair, and dresser set.

To tell you the truth, it's not the most comfortable work station. But the neat thing about it is that my Dad worked on it when he was young. It makes my happy to see the chair restored for future generations.

...'til next time....

:)

Broken Promises

I want to apologize to my readers for not posting recently. I have been working on a few posts, but have been very busy lately. Just what has been keeping me so busy may show up in later posts... We shall see.

In the mean time, I thought some of you would enjoy this...