Image Issues

Whose image are you made in?

"God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." -Genesis 1:27

I've seen a lot of people lately making themselves in Peyton Manning and Reggie Bush's images - or at least wearing their jerseys. There are also a bunch of people making themselves in the image of a "Tea Party," aside from those making themselves into the image of President Obama or Rush Limbaugh. One of the guys at work chafes every day that he must make himself into the image of an office professional and wear khakis and a shirt, rather than being the image of Mark Martin, his favorite NASCAR driver. Personally, I just put on my boots and belt buckle and make myself into the image of a cowboy.

1 John 2:6 says that we should do as Jesus did - basically be His image. Luke 6:40 tells us that when we're fully trained, we'll be there. My question is do I really have that as my goal? Whose image am I making myself in?

Bridles and Fences

James 1:26 says that if anyone doesn't bridle their tongue, their religion is worthless.

So do you bridle your tongue? Or do you fence it? Or does it roam free?

There are two reasons to build a fence. One is to keep things in; the other is to keep things out. When we're talking about horses, fences keep them in the pasture and out of the dangers of the wild. So if James had written to "fence your tongue," we'd be good if we just never said anything bad - if we kept ourselves from gossip, malice, deceit, and all unrighteousness (Romans 1:29). But he didn't. He wrote that we must bridle our tongues.

When you bridle a horse, it's not to keep it out of the bad places. It's so that you can control and direct it to the good ones. So we must control and direct our tongues to the gospel. We must read scripture, exhort, teach (1 Timothy 4:13) - we must preach Christ glorified. If we aren't active in that endeavor, our tongues aren't bridled. They might be fenced, but that's not enough.

RealCrypt == TrueCrypt in Fedora

So, I didn't know this, and I've been installing TrueCrypt from source every time I update my system, but via a comment on this guide page I found out that RealCrypt is a rebranded version of TrueCrypt that's available in the RPMFusion repository. Hello, encrypted files (with no compiling required).

Just thought I'd share the knowledge since it's Data Privacy Day.

I Could Do Better

With $5,725,813,591.00.

That's the total amount (thus far) spent on 100 interesting projects funded by the recent government stimulus bill. It includes such gems as $2.2 million spent to build water pipelines to a golf course in San Francisco and $350 million to build a map of America showing where broadband internet is and isn't available. Or $219,000 for a "Study on 'Hookup' Behavior of Female College Coeds."

No really, that last one didn't come from some college humor website or even Facebook - it's real (number 33). The Stimulus Checkup is Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Senator John McCain's (R-AZ) look at what's costing America so much money. I vote we fire some people.

For a real-time view of how bad it is, visit www.usdebtclock.org.

Banking and Newspapers

Just opened my iGoogle page and the "Quotes Of The Day" widget had two very insightful quotes... so here they are!

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.

- Aleister Crowley

He was right... but nowdays, the newspapers are failing due to their failure to adapt to the ubiquity of the internet... but I'm sure Aleister Crowley would say the same about ninety-nine percent of the 3.6 zetabytes of data consumed daily in the United States: "canned chatter" at best.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

- Thomas Jefferson

Can anyone say financial crisis? Who builds an economy on credit, anyway? Oh, wait....

Engels and Gray

Today at a Saturday morning study with some guys, one of them mentioned the Engels Scale, of which I had never heard. So I looked it up. Basically, it's just a number line applied to a person's receptiveness to the Gospel.

     +5 Stewardship
    +4 Communion with God
   +3 Conceptual and behavioral growth
  +2 Incorporation into Body
 +1 Post-decision evaluation
New birth
 -1 Repentance and faith in Christ
  -2 Decision to act
   -3 Personal problem recognition
    -4 Positive attitude towards Gospel
     -5 Grasp implications of Gospel
      -6 Awareness of fundamentals of Gospel
       -7 Initial awareness of Gospel
        -8 Awareness of supreme being, no knowledge of Gospel

I'm not entirely sure how useful it is, except to inform one's personal ministry, but as a Christian I believe that part of my purpose is to influence others to accept Christ and become disciples (Matthew 28:19-20). If I can understand where a person stands in relation to the Gospel, it makes it easier to know my role in my relationship with them.

There's an "improvement" on the Engels scale, called the Gray Matrix, which divides openness to the Gospel from internalization of its message and places them on two different axes (a Cartesian plane), but the idea is pretty much the same.

Just thought I'd pass on some interesting ideas.

You Are Insecure

This post brought to you by writer's block. If you'd like, find the Skribit box in the sidebar on the right and give me something to write about!

You're reading this blog, which means that you're using the internet. Which means your data is insecure. If you don't believe me, here's some evidence. Read it, and you'll want to lock yourself in an internet-free box for the rest of time... until you get bored with no Twitter. If you want more information, two books I'm reading through that cover the topic pretty extensively are Googling Security by Greg Conti and Steal This Computer Book 4.0 by Wally Wang

• For starters, I bet all your software isn't up to date. Mozilla just released Firefox 3.6 - have you upgraded? Microsoft released an out-of-cycle patch this week, and there are already exploits all over the place - are you protected?
• Are you using a laptop? Is its hard drive encrypted? If not, what happens if you lose it? What happens when someone else finds it? It might not be millions of social security numbers, but it could mean your credit card data....
• What about thumbdrives? Is the data on your data stick encrypted?
• Ever wondered how email works? It sends your message across two, five, ten, maybe twenty other computers before it reaches the destination you put in the "To:" box. What happens if someone compromises one of those computers and starts reading your email? Will they find it in plain text, or do you encrypt whenever possible?

• Do you use secure passwords? Most people don't. Do you use just one password for every account you have? Lots of people do. Makes it pretty easy to steal your data if one password (especially an easy one like "12345") gets someone into every account you have.
• Do the websites you trust actually care about protecting your password? Your account? Your privacy? (Hint: no.)
• What if all your online activity could be traced back to you via your IP address? It can - just like email, it crosses all kinds of other computers before getting to you. Are you using anonymizing tools like Tor/Privoxy to protect your web surfing from snoopers? Do you even know how much data is being collected at every page you visit?