Disturbing Search Results...

Well aparently thanks to Mr. Hibbity Gibbity we are now the number 2 site returned by a MSN search on Search for Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Teenagers stats 2003!

It never amazes me the number of ridiculous search terms that bring people to our doorstep, virtually speaking.  Just creepy if you ask me.

Trepidation indeed...

I guess I should be flattered since I started the whole getting married trend that MHG, as I will refer to him from now on, mentioned in the post preceeding this one.

Although I am not sure I entirely agree with his idea of winning a race.  It would seem to me that you have not really even joined the race yet; oh sure you have been training and even run a prelim or two but as for the Big Dance ^TM you are still a no-show.

I think it takes more courage and perseverance to dedicate your life to loving someone more than yourself and “Accepting the Martyrs Crown” on their behalf than to be the last single in your particular group of friends.  But then again you will remember you don't buy into all this fate crap... you're in charge of your... oh wait, not right.

The good, bad and the fugly...

I was just reflecting on this blog and the many discussions that have been had over the 283 posts and counting.

When I started this whole thing back in 1999/2000 I really had no idea that it would become this much a part of mine, and many others lives.  I am beginning to see more and more the potential that this medium has to be the New Media ^TM, in all honesty this is the last form of free unmoderated communication that exists in this world.

I wonder if this fact has taken root in the minds of the 1 million plus active bloggers out there; if they understand the power that is at their command the ability to touch and change the views and ideologies of someone halfway around the world with a single, simple post.  The next couple of years are going to be very interesting as Big Business^TM is beginning to awaken to the unmined dollars that exist in this phenomenon.

If we, the independent content providers can survive the commercialization of the blogoshphere.

Trackback VS Pingback... revisited

UPDATE I will try again and make this as plain as possible.

The two specs achieve the same goals using XML-RPC.  With Trackback you cannot use the URLs in the post itself for the trackback, it must be entered somewhere else, at least it is that way for those of us using b2.  Also you can only trackback one post per entry into your blog.

With Pingback it uses the URLs already residing in your post, there is no need to input them again, as well as they fact that all the URLs in your post are pinged, not just one.  As an example the link to your post on this subject below is being pinged back, you don't see it because MT does not give you that capability out of the box.   If I also linked to a post by Our Man Bishop and Kevin Basil on this subject they would be automagically pinged back as well, just because they are in my post and I have it set to ping back all URLs; I do nothing other than put them in the body of the post as I normally would and pingback takes care of the rest.  As I understand it with Trackback you would have to pick which site would be tracked back to and input that one as the Trackback for that post.

I don't know any way to put this any more straight forward so hopefully this will do Bacchus.

Well the unsinkable Dr. Bacchus has stated that some of us need to attend to our Trackback systems.

While I am sure that some of the people mentioned in his post might have a configuration problem, mine is more about choice; I despise the trackback mechanism and utilize the more robust and open-source pingback, and here's why:

With pingback everything is wrapped around open technology, and it is open to development. One big point in Pingbacks favor in my estimation is the fact that it requires much less from the user to make it work. In pingback, any URL contained in the post is pinged back to the appropriate blog/journal without requiring another step from you and allowing multiple pingbacks per post.

On the other hand with Trackback, you are tied to only one trackback per post, as well as the fact that you have now two steps to "ping" the other blog.  Not only do you have to include the URL of the off-site post in the body of your post, you have to remember to throw it into the track back a URL box located somewhere else (at least in my case with b2 this is the way it must be done).  These things coupled with the fact that it is a part of Movable Type which is a proprietary system makes it a LUSER in my book.

And I do concede that there are some projects to shall we say "re-invent the wheel" that is trackback providing an open-source implementation for the rest of us, but with the power and simplicity of Pingback I don't see them going anywhere.

Last time...

As the title implies this will be the last time that this is blogged about on this site.  I would like to respond to some of Mr. Hibbity's remarks in his last comment to Seriously Let Down.

What's problematic with any Christian religion is when that denomenation or sect believe that their faith is superior to others. The very fact that you would even toy with the idea that your friends and loved-ones, whom you've known your entire lives, are living the life of heretics is truly upsetting.

Again I would like to point out that I never said or hinted that I believed that Orthodoxy is superior to the other flavors of Christianity, only that it is what is right for me and my family.  I also stated that Orthodoxy maintains that they have perserved the faith and teachings of the Apostles and the 1^st Century Church; as yet I have not seen any evidence to refute that.  And again I would like to point out that the definition of heretic that I am using simply means one who is in error, and from the scope of Orthodoxy anyone who is not practicing the Apostolic faith as they(the Orthodox Church) see it is in error.  And as for me, all the research I have done into Christianity would seem to support the theory that there should be standards, rules and laws; read the letters of Paul to the early churches, they are full of gentle correction and teaching about heresies they were falling into, but again that is my impression only, your mileage may vary.

It makes me wonder how exactly you think of me.

I think of you now what I have always thought; You are my dearest and closest friend whom I love like a brother who is on his own search for meaning and God.  In this journey God willing you will be lead to the place already laid out for you before the foundations of the world.

God came to save us all. To think that YOU have the key to eternal salvation is, in my opinion, the very definition of heresy and blasphemey.

Again I don't think that any of us who have been commenting on this feel that way, and if it has been presented that way by myself or any other Faithful of the Orthodox Church, then please forgive us unworthy sinners that we are, I have no hope other than the saving grace of Christ Jesus and the compassion of my brothers and sisters.   Furthermore that is not the teaching of the Orthodox Church, so any other Orthodox Christian you meet who says or acts this way is in error, and therefore fallen into heresy. (see it goes for us as well)  In fact the official teaching of our Church, the Orthodox Church in America is thus:

In the first place it must be made clear that it is not enough for anyone merely to believe these things, or merely to be a formal member of the Church. In order to be saved one must live by the truth and love of God.

It is the common teaching of the Orthodox Christian tradition that the Church has no monopoly on grace and truth and love.  The Church teaches on the contrary that God is the Sovereign Lord who saves those whom He wills.

The Church believes as well that salvation depends upon the actual life of the person, and God alone is capable of judging since He alone knows the secrets of each mind and heart.  Only God is capable of judging how well a man lives according to the measure of grace, faith, understanding, and strength given to him.

The Orthodox would insist, nevertheless, that an honest seeker of truth and love will see these things perfectly realized and expressed in Jesus Christ and will recognize God, the end of their seeking, in Him.

We all know, however, that our image of Christ is deformed both by the lives and the doctrines of those who claim him, and thus His truth and love and His very person remain obscure and hidden to those who might follow Him if they could see Him clearly.

But once again, let it be clear that every man is judged by God alone according to the actual truth and love in his life.  This goes for Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike.  And although the Orthodox confess that the fulness of truth and love is found in the life of the church, nominal church membership or formal assent to some doctrines does not at all guarantee salvation.

This answer as well as many others can be found at this Q & A section of OCA.org.

of getting upset over how people react to and respond to your beliefs, pray for them.

We do actually. At every gathering of every canonical Orthodox Church we pray for the unity of the faith, or the healing of the myriad of schisms that exist in the body of Christ today, and for all the Clergy and people of every denomination on the planet.

Again I would like to say that if any of us have hurt or offended you then please forgive the offender, I am sure it was not the intention, and if it was then pray for them that God may give them soft and tender hearts of repentance.

More discourse...

Originally what follows was going to be a comment on the previous post entitled Seriously Letdown..., but it grew so large that I decided it deserved its own entry.  So here is my answer to our own Mr. Hibbity Gibbity to his question:  So wait a minute . . . according to Orthodoxy, I'm living a heretical Christian lifestyle? Hmmmm.  First lets throw out some definitions:

• Heretic: Someone who is in error.
• Apostate: Someone who knows that they are in error and will not repent of it and continues to lead others astray.

So yes, by the above definition you are living in heresy, since to the Orthodox Church you are living in error, that is not to say that you don't have a place in the Kingdom of God, merely that you are not in line with the faith of the Apostles.  The Orthodox Church is not in the business of saying “if it feels good to you then it is okay by me”.  We practice and protect the faith as handed down by the apostles, and any deviation from that faith is error, so in this sense you and every Protestant and Catholic on the planet is praticing one form of heresy or another. It is no different from the way that Protestant Evangelicals view Catholics and Orthodox today.

To them we are viewed as being in error and as heretics, since we do not adhere to the doctrines that they put forth; and like it or not people the Protestant Reformation was about cleaning the heresy out of the Church, the Catholic Church specifically but that mattes less today than it did then.

As I stated in my blog entry, it is not so much about we are right and you are wrong as it is do you keep the faith as set forth by the apostles and practiced today by the Orthodox Church?  Well your answer would be no; then you are to the Orthodox Church a heretic.

But the same could be said about me in the eyes of say the Methodist Church.  Take the Eucharist, or communion as it is called more widely.  For me there is more going on than just bread and grape juice; but to the Methodists it is only a rote ceremony that is performed. So since I am not inline with that doctrine I am a heretic in the eyes of most Methodists.

Seriously let down...

I try not to blog about my faith that much anymore, since there are so many sites that I link to that do a much better job of communicating Orthodoxy than I ever could.

That being said I will be breaking from that pattern today to blow off a little steam.  There aren't that many things that really bother me, I try to take things easy and when possible with a grain of salt.

This past Saturday I had an experience that really put my tact to the test.  My wife and I ventured into a Family Christian Bookstore in order to aquire a Mother's Day gift for her mother.  After we had decided that we would be purchasing a gift card for her mother we moved to the counter to finish our transaction and move on, we had a lot to do that day.  We tell the woman helping us what we wanted and she instantly started on the "Do you have one of our -insert appropriate type here- cards that allow you to get... something free after you spend way more money than it is worth?"  We said no and she automatically started filling out the card.

Now I would like to say at this point, that sort of behaviour ticks me off; she did not wait for us to say hey I would like that, or ask us if we wanted it, she just started filling it out.  Well I moved to end this right then and there, telling her we didn't want one, we wouldn't be shopping here again so there was nothing to justify having the card.  The woman then proceeded to ask me why, and I said as politely as possible that we were Orthodox Christians, which she repsonded to with "Catholic Orthodox?", taking a steadying breath I said no, not Catholic Orthodox... just Orthodox, the Catholic Church split from us in 1052.

Now you would think that this exchange would have ended it, but oh no that would have been to easy.  She then asked me why I would not be coming back to purchase anything at thier wonderful store, to which I responded, "Well honestly you carry nothing we need or use... I mean you don't even carry the Orthodox Study Bible, I looked. You don't have Icons, incense, or any writings of the Desert Fathers, or even an Epistle in the entire place."  To which she responded, with what I can only assume was smug satisfaction on her part, "Isn't it all Christianity?".

I was a very good newly allumined, and did not repsond with what was on the tip of my tongue: "Well mam, since what you view as Christianity we view as Heresy, I don't think so, no."  I don't have a problem with people being something other than Orthodox; after all we beleive that we "Know where the Church isn't, not where it is.  My problem was the ignorance and arrogance she was displaying in reaction to the fact that I would not return to that establishment to purchase items that they don't carry!  She actually was offended that I would not be coming back to buy books from Max Lucado and Frank Peretti!  It was infuriating, but luckily my wife, ever the voice of reason and a calming force in my life, took over and got me out of the store before I said or did something I would have to take to confession.

Back online

Sorry for the downtime folks.

I installed some new hardware at the nuklear bomb shelter that serves as Sillyness's server room, and inadvertantly cut off outside access to the server.  But rest assured that all is well again here and there shouldn't be any other interruptions in service until I move to our new house in July... something; still not sure about the actual move in date.

But yes that is right the Queen of Davistonia and I are moving the seat of power from Wilmore KY to Nicholasville KY in a short while.  Our new domicile is very nice and much bigger than the fort we were using as our habitation for the last year.  Should be exciting, I will keep you updated.

Updates...

Well well, there have been a few developments in the blogosphere low these past few days.

After a withering season of absence, Kevin Basil has returned with revelations, updates and descriptive verse.  This week we also welcome the newest member of the St. Athanasius Blogroll, or Athanasius contra mundum (

Stupider me Be...

I found out yesterday that apparently I have become less intelligent over the course of the past 11 years.

A little background for that statement follows:

When I was fifteen I was forced to take an intelligence test to determine which advanced classes, if any I was to take in my remaining years of Primary Education.  I scored a 155 on that test.  For some perspective most IQ scales are laid out in the following manner:

• Average: 85 - 115
• Above average: 116 - 125
• Gifted Borderline Genius: 126 - 135
• Highly gifted and appearing to be a Genius to most others: 136 - 145
• Genius: 146 - 165
• High Genius: 166 - 180
• Highest Genius: 181 - 200
• Beyond being measurable Genius: Over 200

Yesterday I scored 130 on the same IQ test.  You can see from whence my discomfort originates... It appears that I have lost 25 points of intelligence since the age of fifteen!  That is just depressing.  I would like to believe the sage words of Simeon's Wife Ashley, that the original score was artificially inflated due to my advancement at that age but I somehow can't.  I have been thinking alot lately that I don't have the ease with words or the quick wit that I used too in those bygone days.

I can only blame it on having lived in Kentucky for the past 5 years.