The Great 2007 OCICBW Christmas Appeal

The Mad Priest over at Of Course I Could be Wrong and That Kaeton Woman have gotten together to help support a very worthy cause this Advent season.

Fellow blogger and seminarian from Rio De Janeiro, Luis Coelho, has for past year, worked on placement at Christ the King Anglican Church in the Cidade de Deus (City of God), one of the most (in)famous, impoverished, and dangerous neighborhoods in the world. Luiz writes:

We intend to be a place where all are welcome to be free, especially in the Cidade de Deus (City of God) neighborhood, where poverty, violence and hunger are so well-known. And in order to live this Gospel of liberation and reconciliation of the entire world through Christ Jesus, we also seek to integrate the Church with society, through several social projects. Our mission is bold: to say that Christ is the King is to say that love has the last word in the midst of this world of calamities. However, we are sure that, with Him, we are victorious.

Thanks to some folks at St. Paul's, Chatham, there's a way to donate funds to Christ the King with no administrative costs, other than the cost of transferring the money. Simply click on:

to make a donation via Paypal. Or send a check made payable to "The Episcopal Church of St. Paul" to:

CITY OF GOD APPEAL
c/o The Reverend Elizabeth Kaeton
The Episcopal Church of St. Paul
200 Main Street
Chatham, NJ 07928

Please write "City Of God Appeal" on the memo line.

We may not be able to bring the Christ Child gifts at the manger, but we help some of the poorest kids in Rio get a decent meal from the church kitchen, or to receive just one present on Christmas Day. And all for the cost of a weekly Starbuck's habit, or a few dinners out...

UPDATE: There's a letter about this from Luiz over on Fr. Jake's. Go thou, and read.

QotD for 3 Dec., 2007

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
--- Herman Melville (1819-1891), American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet.

QotD for 29 Nov., 2007

In today's comic on goats.com, two bad guys return to their job after a brief coffee break:

Thug 1: "I always feel vaguely guilty about going to Starbucks"
Thug 2: "We'll burn down a Wal-Mart after and restore balance to the Force."

QotD for 26 Nov., 2007

The Universe doesn't care what you believe. The wonderful thing about science is that it doesn't ask for your faith, it just asks for your eyes.

From this xkcd comic by Randall Munroe. As a humorous, related link, see the report by SF author John Scalzi on his visit to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY.

My Totally Opinionated HDTV Review

Just took delivery of our new HDTV, a Samsung HL-T5087S and already love it. It's a 50" DLP projection set with the new LED light engine (no expensive incandescent bulbs to replace, and no rotating color wheel), goes up to 1080p resolution, and has plenty of inputs (3 HDMI, 2 component, etc... incl a VGA input for a PC :) Image is very nice on the HD channels from the Verizon FiOS service, and it does a good job displaying standard definition TV, too.

If you want a good, readable introduction to what's going on with HDTV equipment these days, you could do a lot worse than start with the Oct., 2007 Buying Guide from PC Magazine. But here's my even shorter, take-home message:

IMHO, the highest image quality with HD sources is to be found in the best grades of LCD flat panels from companies like Sony, Samsung, and Sharp. But the larger sizes of these displays (say, greater than 42") are still rather expensive and they do less well with standard definition signals. The title of "best bang for your buck" in larger displays still belongs to projection technologies like those from Samsung and Mitsubishi which use TI's DLP chips. Plasma is still the brightest and does better with signals containing lots of fast motion, but the sets are heavy, don't work well at high altitudes (above 7000 ft) and, to me, still look rather "grainy." But remember, everyone's eyes are different, so after having consulted information sources like the buying guide above, please go look at these for yourself.

However, in my house, the LED light-engine DLP sets from Samsung get a big thumbs up! Recommended.

What's Your Eschatology ?

What's your eschatology? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Moltmannian Eschatology Jürgen Moltmann is one of the key eschatological thinkers of the 20th Century. Eschatology is not only about heaven and hell, but God's plan to make all things new. This should spur us on to political and social action in the present. Moltmannian Eschatology 90% Preterist 90% Amillenialist 85% Dispensationalist 40% Premillenialist 20% Postmillenialist 20% Left Behind 15%

But I also scored the same as a Preterist and almost as high as an Amillenialist.

[tip o' the hat to Pseudopiskie]

Term of the Day for 2 Nov., 2007

Martha Mitchell Effect:

The process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient's perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly.

Psychologist Brendan Maher named the effect after Martha Beall Mitchell. Mrs. Mitchell was the wife of John Mitchell, Attorney-General in the Nixon administration. When she alleged that White House officials were engaged in illegal activities, her claims were attributed to mental illness. Ultimately, however, the relevant facts of the Watergate scandal vindicated her.