Careful Thought

101 Cookbooks has an incredible pizza dough recipe. One thing about living here in Colorado, I was never able to get the hang of adjusting recipes for altitude. My pizza crusts are generally somewhere between styrofoam and particle board in the taste department.

“Universities are full of knowledge. The freshmen bring a little in, and the seniors take none away, and knowledge accumulates.”

– Harvard President A. L. Lowell

Alan at Theosebes posts about a Newsweak article on the the resurgence in college debate. The article mentions Jerry Falwell and the Libery University debaters.

When you believe the end of the world is coming, you learn to talk fast. On a Friday afternoon the debate team from Liberty University, Jerry Falwell’s fundamentalist Baptist college, is madly rehearsing for the tournament about to begin.Policy debate on the college level has become a rapid-fire verbal assault, an arguments-per-minute game, that sounds more like the guy at the end of the car commercial than an eloquent Oxford intellectual. There is tension and more than a little spittle in the air. The Liberty team is currently ranked No. 1 in the country, above Harvard (14th) and all the other big names. But for the evangelicals, there’s a lot more at stake than a trophy. Falwell and the religious right figure that if they can raise a generation that knows how to argue, they can stem the tide of sin in the country.

Hmmm… I don’t know if this is the Falwell/Liberty U position or Newsweak’s spin. Whatever you think of Falwell, he’s generally been reasonably sound theologically. I’m in favor of debate and understand the value of carefully reasoned logic, but you just can’t debate someone into the kingdom. How did the Great Commission go? Oh, yeah…

“ Therefore go and debate all nations, overawing them with the power of your argument and the clarity of your reasoning, forsaking ad hominem arguments and argumentum post hoc ergo propter hoc. * “

The Broncos aren’t the perfect team, but they don’t need Terrell Owens’ help.

FoxSports: Owens meets with Broncos officials “While most NFL teams slow down in their off-season, Terrell Owens’ off-season is just heating up.Denver sources have told FOXSports.com that the Pro Bowl wide receiver and his agent Drew Rosenhaus went to Denver on Monday to meet with Broncos officials at the house of coach Mike Shanahan. Shanahan wasn’t present at the meeting, according to sources, but others in the organization met privately with Owens.

Owens and his agent have been given permission to seek a trade out of Philadelphia. And teams such as Denver, Dallas, Tampa Bay and Miami have been linked to his services.

Owens’ days in Philadelphia have been anything but quiet, as he’s publicly questioned quarterback Donovan McNabb’s ability to run a team and has clashed with head coach Andy Reid.

The Eagles dismissed Owens from the team in early November after the controversial wideout got into a fight with former teammate Hugh Douglas inside the team’s practice facility.

Owens apologized to the team two days after the incident in a memorable press conference outside of his New Jersey home, but he was not invited back for the rest of the season.

If Owens does not get traded by the beginning of March, the Eagles will release him. And it is expected that any team that signs him will pay him well, but any deal will be contingent upon him being a perfect soldier .”

Hmmm. Slim chance of that happening. I hope Coach Shanahan is smarter than that.

Tags: Broncos, Terrell Owens

• Chuck Norris sleeps with a night light. Not because Chuck Norris is afraid of the dark, but the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris.
• If Chuck Norris is late, time better slow down.
• Chuck Norris doesn’t read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.
• Chuck Norris died ten years ago, but the Grim Reaper can’t get up the courage to tell him.
• Superman owns a pair of Chuck Norris pajamas.
• Chuck Norris ordered a Big Mac at Burger King, and got one.
• When an episode of Walker Texas Ranger was aired in France, the French surrendered to Chuck Norris just to be on the safe side.
• Chuck Norris owns the greatest Poker Face of all-time. It helped him win the 1983 World Series of Poker despite him holding just a joker, a Get Out of Jail Free Monopoly card, a 2 of clubs, 7 of spades and a green #4 UNO card.
• Oxygen requires Chuck Norris to live.
• Chuck Norris can unscramble an egg.
• Cars were invented to have a faster way of fleeing from Chuck Norris. Not to be outdone, Chuck Norris invented the car accident.
• Chuck Norris once bet NASA he could survive re-entry without a spacesuit. On July 19th, 1999, a naked Chuck Norris re-entered the earth’s atmosphere, streaking over 14 states and reaching a temperature of 3000 degrees. An embarrassed NASA publically claimed it was a meteor, and still owes him a beer.

Justin at Between Two Worlds posts about a couple of profs at Indiana Wesleyan who don’t like George Barna’s latest look at the future church in his latest book, Revolution . This is interesting because our guest pastor today based his sermon on excerpts from the book.

Barna predicts a less churched society that worships in cell groups and home studies, rather than in brick-and-mortar churches. He’s a whiz with statistical analysis, but apparently not so hot on the whole theology deal. Too bad. The reviews I’ve seen so far all seem to place Revolution in the lukewarm, postmodern, squishy-feely realm, much like Don Miller’s tiresome Blue Like Jazz . Best line from a review of the book, “ Church-less Christianity is like sex-less marriage—it can only last one generation. “

And from Benjamin Netayahu :

‘Before our very eyes, Hamastan has been established, the step-child of Iran and the Taliban. It’s in firing range of our airport, our highways and cities. This has to be a day of soul searching because the writing was on the wall. The policy of giving land for free gave a prize to terror and a winning card for Hamas.’ — Bibi Netanyahu, Thursday .

Turn up your speakers, it’s time for an Islamic sing along! It’s In The Koran , courtesy of Boker Tov, Boulder!

Here’s a surprise . Or not…

Fatah Activists Demand Change in Party
By SARAH EL DEEBRAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) Fatah activists marched to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ compound, police briefly stormed the parliament building in Gaza and security forces clashed with Hamas gunmen on Saturday as the long-ruling party lashed out in anger for its devastating election loss.

Fears over the future of the security forces under a Hamas-led government added to the chaos.

Most of the 58,000 security officers are allied with Fatah and worry that they will lose their jobs. The Islamic militant group, which won a majority in Wednesday’s parliamentary vote, has its own armed force of about 5,000 gunmen in the Gaza Strip.

‘The security forces will stay. Hamas has no power meddling with the security forces,’ Jibril Rajoub, Abbas’ national security adviser, told the hundreds of Fatah activists at Abbas’ compound.

The group, which included gunmen, marched to the compound in Ramallah and peacefully prayed at Yasser Arafat’s grave. ‘We came to you Abu Amar to forgive us for what happened,’ they chanting, referring to the late Palestinian leader by his nickname.”

Maybe it’s me, but I think maybe these peaceful guys with the shoulder-mounted missiles are praying to the wrong guy. The guy in the bottom picture sure seems happy, though.

Guess what you get when you Google “Tianamen Square Massacre” on the Google Chinese site ( www.google.cn )? How’s your Chinese? How do you say “File Not Found” in Chinese?

And Junkyard Blog shows what happens when you Google “Jesus Christ” in China.