Archive for May 23, 2010

I am settling in at my Pal’s Vinnie’s house and just had the pleasure of seeing his parents for the first time in nearly 30 years.

the Guys join the Axis of Fedora

Vinnie’s brother Joe made the chicken and let me tell you, if I knew he cooked that good it wouldn’t have taken me all these years to get down here.

I’m seeing more of the family in the next few minutes so my itinerary is not tied down yet, so I’ll be playing a lot of this by ear.

My review through the Amazon Vine program of Robert L. O’Connell’s book The Ghosts of Cannae Hannibal and the Darkest hour of the Roman Republic is available at Amazon.com here.

This book comes out on July 13th I suggest pre-ordering it now!

Hawaii vs Pa-12

Posted: May 23, 2010 by datechguy in elections, opinion/news
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I’m not going to go deeply into the the Hawaii special election since I have to catch my ride to the airport but I will leave you with this question:

In Pa-12 a republican loses a special election in a district where A republican hasn’t won since 1972, although it has gone back and forth in presidential elections over the last decade. The election takes place on the same day as he faces a contested primary. That is a sign the Republicans are in trouble.

In Hawaii a republican wins a special election in a district where a republican hasn’t won since 1990 in a place where Democrats have not lost on the presidential level since 1984 and the district where the president is born and took 70% of the vote, and it is due to democratic infighting.

Why is one due to infighting and the other not? Why is one a sign of Republican weakness and the other not a sign of democratic weakness?

Pentecost Sunday

Posted: May 23, 2010 by datechguy in catholic
Tags: , ,

Pentacost Sunday

There are two different very important things about Pentecost Sunday that I think people should think about.

The first was told to me by my pastor. Consider, Jesus is executed, the Jewish leaders are not big on the people who followed him and the Roman’s certainly are not friendly. Yet starting on Pentecost Sunday the apostles start to fearlessly preach Jesus. This is one of the great proofs of Christianity. Some dramatic thing happened between the day that Christ dies and the day of Pentecost. What is it?

It is actually two things, the appearance of Christ that they saw in person and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

The second is something that I was considering one week when I was debating some seventh day Adventists on the Bible. The first evangalists appear at the Pentecost. They are NOT the Apostles.
They are the crowd. Consider the passage in Acts:

We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.” Acts 2:9-11

These people were all visitors, they all heard the apostles in their own languages. They were all aware of it and they likely went home (as they were visitors) before Paul’s and the other Apostles journeys.

They were eyewitnesses to a miracle. They saw it and heard it and when they came home in those days before IPODS, TIVO and DVD’s told what they saw. When a person returned from travels it was a big event. How much bigger was the event when they described the improbable thing they saw and heard? How often was this spread by the people who heard her?

So the ground was prepared, yet when is this ever mentioned?

That is the second story of the Pentecost and it should not be forgotten.