This is why I never get things done

Procrastination is in my nature; these posts have no redeeming value and are simply a waste of time.

Who Wrote This?

/ Mike Frizzell / 5 Comments

Let’s play a fun little game: who wrote/performed the following song? Please don’t Google it, as that would only prove you have the computing skills of my 4-year-old daughter.

Have you ever thought about your soul – can it be saved?
Or perhaps you think that when you’re dead you just stay in your grave
Is God just a thought within your head or is he a part of you?
Is Christ just a name that you read in a book when you were in school?

When you think about death do you lose your breath or do you keep your cool?
Would you like to see the Pope on the end of a rope – do you think he’s a fool?
Well I have seen the truth, yes I’ve seen the light and I’ve changed my ways
And I’ll be prepared when you’re lonely and scared at the end of our days

Could it be you’re afraid of what your friends might say
If they knew you believe in God above?
They should realize before they criticize
that God is the only way to love
Is your mind so small that you have to fall
In with the pack wherever they run
Will you still sneer when death is near
And say they may as well worship the sun?

I think it was true it was people like you that crucified Christ
I think it is sad the opinion you had was the only one voiced
Will you be so sure when your day is near, say you don’t believe?
You had the chance but you turned it down, now you can’t retrieve

Perhaps you’ll think before you say that God is dead and gone
Open your eyes, just realize that he’s the one
The only one who can save you now from all this sin and hate
Or will you still jeer at all you hear? Yes! I think it’s too late.

First correct answer wins a No-Prize. Continue reading →

You'll Rue the Day, I Tell You

/ Mike Frizzell / Leave a comment

To all parents who send their kids to AWANA or vacation Bible school ((BTW, can we get a better name for this than Vacation Bible School? Two out of the three words are things kids generally don’t like. This explains why many churches refer to it as VBS, hoping to confuse children)) : you are really going to regret this one day. One day, and the time may be here sooner than you can imagine, the United States is going to declare war on Christianity, thus placing your children in a terrible quandry.

You see, for years churches have been forcing kids to not only pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States, but also to the Christian flag. So now you have two or three generations of children who are honor bound to both religion and country, and in the case of armed conflict they won’t know who to follow. Either way, they are going back on their word, which makes them liars, cowards, and dishonorable. ((We could debate the difference between “oath” and “pledge”, but I think Matthew 5:37 clears the confusion up for us.))

Thank you parents for doing this to your children. You better hope and pray they will never have to reap what you have sown.

How Many Spaces After a Period?

/ Mike Frizzell / 5 Comments

There’s a good discussion here over whether you should put one or two spaces after a period. The author, who uses double spaces, suggests three reasons to do so:

  1. It gives closure to your thought
  2. Single spacing is pretentious
  3. It’s more efficient (because you were taught to do it that way; why go against your DNA?)

Despite sounding good, and appealing to our conservative nature, none of these arguments make any sense. The period itself gives closure to a thought, no matter how many spaces you use. It is not relegated to being little more than a comma if you use one space because the period tells the reader to make a full stop. The other arguments are fluff, not even worthy of our attention.

The reason for using a single space, however, has more to do with modern typography rather than what the space actually means. In ye olde days of typewriters, double spaces were needed because it used a monospace font that made picking up the end of a sentence difficult. Now, with the advent of electronic typesetting and variable-width fonts, the extra space merely takes up room and creates too much whitespace.

Take a look at the following comparison paragraphs to see what I mean:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. In et justo metus. Donec risus velit, cursus a molestie et, ornare vitae erat. Etiam ligula enim, tincidunt sit amet volutpat sit amet, laoreet malesuada leo. Aenean eu sodales enim. Proin malesuada lorem at felis tincidunt at laoreet tellus gravida. In at.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.  In et justo metus.  Donec risus velit, cursus a molestie et, ornare vitae erat.  Etiam ligula enim, tincidunt sit amet volutpat sit amet, laoreet malesuada leo.  Aenean eu sodales enim.  Proin malesuada lorem at felis tincidunt at laoreet tellus gravida.  In at.

The first paragraph uses a single space while the second uses double. While you may feel like there’s no difference, the net effect is that the sentences are more broken up. It looks more like a list than a cohesive thought. (If you really can’t see a difference, then your browser may render double spaces single; as I’ve said before, I have no inclination to see how this site looks in IE.)

The final argument in favor of a single space is that the bible tells us to do it:

In all these cases, the period is a terminal period and should be followed by a single space. (21.1, pp. 296)