If even the Dutch have fallen out of love with windmills (by which I mean, they can’t afford to keep subsidizing them), you gotta’ wonder.

Right after Alabama’s illegal immigration law kicked in, unemployment dropped in a big way. Yeah, those jobs you keep saying Americans won’t do? Turns out they just might.

Spain has apparently had enough with the failed policies of socialists. They voted them in to appease terrorists back in 2004 following the Madrid bombings. But since then, Spain has been tanking economically along with the rest of Europe, and what seemed like a good idea at the time has now been revealed to be a huge mistake. This past weekend, conservatives won a landslide victory.

Iranian Christian pastor update: "Yousef (also spelled Youcef) Nadarkhani, sentenced to death a year ago after a court of appeals in Rasht, Iran, found him guilty of leaving Islam in September 2010, is in deteriorating health, according to a member of Nadarkhani’s denomination, the Church of Iran, who requested anonymity. "

"Who would Jesus protest?" According to Jimmie Bise, working from the New Testament, He wouldn’t be protesting government. He’d be changing hearts, one individual at a time.

Iran with nuclear weapons capability. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, but I’m certain many on the Left will be shocked, unfortunately.

And finally, the oldest social network is new again. (Click for a larger version.)

Don’t bet your life on outrageous claims by proponents of embryonic stem cell research. Someone  has, though.

Civility Watch: The Left has been sending death threats to the eeevil Koch brothers. The wrong Koch brothers.

Civility Watch 2: Who said, "Civility is the last refuge of scoundrels" and "Let’s not be civil"? (And said it in the same paper that blamed the Giffords shooting on incivility from Republicans.)

Civility Watch 3: If a Republican had said this, he would have been called "racist" or "Islamophobic". But a member of the Obama administration said it, so no outcry.

Do iPads cause unemployment? Does Jesse Jackson, Jr. think we should have banned cars to keep the buggy builders in business?

Hanging a small cross inside your company van is a firing offense in the UK, apparently.

A death panel in Canada pronounced their sentence on a baby in Ontario by saying that life support should be removed, against the parents’ wishes. Instead, they brought him to a country that, so far, does not have a fully socialized system (that would be America), and the child did so well that he was weaned off the ventilator and is now back home.  It’s still touch and go, I imagine, but critics said he’d never get off mechanical breathing. Way to go, baby Joseph! (Which begs the question; if the US goes fully socialized, where will Canadians go for good health care?)

And finally, the same old song. (Click for a larger image.)

But there’s one thing I’ve not figured out. I’ve always preferred CDs that I can buy and hold. I can play them on a CD player or in my car. Anytime, anywhere. Sure, I’ve had MP3 players for a long time , but I’ve always pulled the audio from the CD first and then copied it to my player; first an old RIO player, then a Sansa, and these days an iPod Touch. Never an issue.

But for some reason, huge music publishers are trying to figure out a way to do exactly that; the same thing I’ve been doing for a decade.

Apple Inc. (AAPL) is in talks with record companies to give iTunes music buyers easier access to their songs on multiple devices, three people with knowledge of the plans said.

Apple is negotiating with music companies, including Vivendi SA (VIV)’s Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG) and EMI Group Ltd., said the people, who asked for anonymity because the talks are private. An agreement may be announced by midyear, two of the people said.

The arrangement would give users more flexibility in how they access purchased music. Apple and the record labels are eager to maintain demand for digital downloading amid rising popularity for Internet services such as Pandora Media Inc., which don’t sell tracks and instead let users stream songs from the Web, whatever the device.

Talk of streaming music providers aside (and I love Pandora), I already have access to my music on multiple devices. This is because I have the physical media and can do with it what I want. Today, not 4 months from now. It’s for this reason I don’t even intend to buy any music from the iTunes store.

I like the concept of buying just single songs that you like rather than a whole album that you might not like the rest of, but if it requires Apple and at least 5 other music publishing houses to figure out how to get the music you buy onto multiple platforms, did you really buy it in the first place?

Let’s be more like Europe!  "The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer."  Even a little socialism can be a dangerous thing.  Exhibit A.

Obama supporters are "exhausted of defending" him.  If this turns into an exhaustion of voting for Democrats, House and Senate seats polling close now may yet be a big win for Republicans.  Obama only has himself to blame; supporters are not exhausted of defending "the mess" he inherited, they’re tired of defending his "accomplishments".  If you’ve lost Jon Stewart, you’ve lost a lot of folks who think he’s a news anchor.  (Which is, unfortunately, quite a lot of people.)

No, ACORN isn’t really dead, it’s just changed its name.  And it’s still breaking the law, so says federal investigators who are urging that the funding moratorium be made permanent.

Obama says the stimulus kept the recession from falling into a depression.  But economists are now saying that, technically, we came out of the recession in June, 2009.  That’s before the stimulus really kicked in.  We spent $800 billion on measures to save the economy from something it had recovered from on its own.  Under that guise, we got record- and precedent-setting debt. 

Which is why the Tea Party influence in the Republican party is so needed now, even if the GOP goes kicking and screaming.  (Click for a larger image.)

So while static webpages might be good for drawing in people already curious about a religion’s tenants, actually getting the attention of someone who wasn’t… that was a little more tricky without coming across as spam. That is, until the advent of social media, and its accompanying ability to build relationships online.

"Creating a web site is perhaps the most basic way to use the Internet for evangelism," agreed Rev. Michael White, a United Methodist pastor and author of Digital Evangelism: You Can Do It, Too!. He noted that newer social networking sites offered more opportunities for outreach because they could better enable conversation than a static page.

"People of faith can use such social media as Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc. to reach out both to ‘seekers’ (those looking for more information about religious faith) and believers alike to share the tenets of their faith, encourage deepening one’s religious faith, answering questions of doubt, and much more," he said.

With social media, more of a relationship can be built, which is a better foundation for sharing the gospel.  Now, I would imagine that these online relationships themselves typically aren’t enough, but they are a much better launching point than even a blog.  I have a blog (of course) and a Facebook account, and frankly unsaved friends of mine are much more likely to read my Facebook posts, notes and status updates than would read the blog.

The article also touches on specifically religious social media, like Christian sites for video sharing and Twitter-like communication.

While they may be good for uniting the faithful, some are skeptical of services that allow believers to segregate themselves from the wider world. Saddington said that both secular and religious services had their uses, but that people should keep in mind that they were unlikely to spread their faith if they confined themselves to online communities that consisted only of fellow believers.

"There’s no outreach when you’re talking to the already converted," agreed Coppedge. He said that religious social media might be useful for parents worried about their children being exposed to inappropriate content on MySpace or Facebook, but saw little use for them otherwise.

"The focus should always be on building community," he said, "If you limit yourself to only Christian communities, that’s not wise. Some people are afraid of using this technology, but you have to remember that technology is not inherently good or evil. It’s all in how you use it."

It’s the "in the word but not of it" philosophy.  The article is a good read and I think a balanced look at the issues.

My first homepage was on Geocities.  It still exists here, with old news, outdated e-mail addresses, and a pointer to the URL where the next incarnation would be (which, itself, was long ago removed as the ISP went away). 

Anyway, just saying good-bye to an old friend.

For your information, here’s what I wrote:

Personal note: This is probably longer than the usual response to this meme. I’m like that (and it’s one of the 25 items below).

I’m a Christian, I love Jesus, and I don’t apologize for it. I won’t beat you over the head with it, but I certainly won’t hide it, either. If you ask, I’ll answer.

The way I met my wife Susan is one of those small-world stories. While working at a summer camp after my senior year of high school, I met her sister, Joy, who was also a counselor. She was going to be a senior at the same college I would be a freshman at; Asbury College. So I got to know her to find out more about Asbury. Then, my senior year, as I was bringing my sister to the school (her freshman year) I saw Susan and though, “I either know her, or someone related to her.” They looked very much alike. Separately, I got to know a guy named Kevin who was also a freshman and was taking computer classes (as was I). Turned out that Susan and he went to the same missionary boarding school in Malaysia (Dalat International School).

My first car was a 1976 Dodge Coronet Crestwood station wagon, which was already rather old by the time I purchased it in 1983 from Zikakus Chevrolet (Ithaca, NY). It was so big, I named it the Battlestar Galactica. Its size came in handy, from carting a carload for camp staff breaks, to hauling all the luggage back to school after a van accident at an Asbury College SASF retreat, to hauling everything I owned in the world to my first job in Atlanta, GA. Sometimes, in order to start it, I had to take the air filter cover off, put something in the “butterfly” flap to keep it open (like a stick), and then it would crank up. Susan and I went on our honeymoon in it because the Ford Escort I had purchased in Atlanta was stolen shortly before the wedding. More and more started going out on it (power steering pump, radiator) that, in 1987, I finally gave it to the auto mechanic who’d worked on it for so long so he could scrap it for parts.

My first computer was an HP150 Touchscreen PC that I bought in 1984. No, you most likely have never heard of it. I immediately bought Borland Turbo Pascal 2.0 for it. (If you’re a programmer, you might have heard of that.) Hewlett-Packard does list that model in its Virtual Museum. Yes, I still have it in our storage room.

When it was just Susan and I, before kids, we would sometimes go camping, often with other family. As the kids came along, we continued to do that, even bringing along a crib for when we had babies in the tent. The kids have really enjoyed it, and we’ve camped in many places including the Great Smokey Mountains, which was wonderful. The thing about me is, I’m not a huge camping fan. Now, when we decide to go camping, I’m in, and do my best to make it a great experience, and enjoy many parts of it myself, especially the sounds. But overall I’d prefer a hotel. With a shower.

I love Mountain Dew. I even drink diet Dew (in fact, most of the time these days). I like most of the variations of it, except for the Baha Breeze nastiness they serve exclusively a Taco Bell (which is my favorite fast food place). I wasn’t thrilled with the orange version, and the grape was so-so. But I love Code Red, and really enjoyed the recent (2008/2009) trio of flavors they introduced for people to vote on. I’m glad the Voltage flavor won, but any of them would have suited me just fine. I love Mountain Dew.

I enjoy writing about what I think. (Hence, the length of this piece.) I wrote a number of guest articles for my alma mater’s weekly paper, the Asbury Collegian. That led to writing the (very) occasional essay and posting it on my website, which was followed by blogging. (Actually, some of my “essays” turned out to be mini-blogs, when you think about it.) That led to joining a Christian group blog. This was followed by being a contributor to a podcast.

I was mentioned in a UPI article on blogging in January of 2003. In it I’m quoted as saying, “I wouldn’t mind having a little influence, but not to the point that I would feel like I would have to write something every day. I’m not that prolific.” I’ve pretty much become that prolific, though if I miss a few days here and there, I don’t sweat it.

I’m the Anti-Toolman. Tim “The Toolman” Taylor wouldn’t let me near his show. I do what I can because I must, but I don’t enjoy it at all. I hate buying a tool that I will never use again, and I’ve had to do that a few times. It once took me three tries to get the right sizing for a simple pull-down shade for a bedroom window. (Fortunately, Home Depot is very customer-friendly.) The kicker is, I married a woman whose father built his own house in the interior of what is now Papua, Indonesia.

I was born in New York City, and since then have lived in (or in the suburbs of) Portland (Maine), Manchester (Connecticut), Long Island (New York), Syracuse (New York), Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) and Cleveland (Ohio); all before graduating High School. My parents were ministers with The Salvation Army, and they move their clergy around as needed.

Speaking of that, The Salvation Army is the church I grew up in. Yes, it is indeed a church, whose social services are an expression of their love for God (who said to take care of the needy). No, neither I nor my parents are converted drunks. Yes, I did play my horn on street corner meetings (“open air meetings” in Army parlance). No, we never played “Bringing in the Sheaves” during an open air.

Speaking of that, I play trombone and other brass instruments as required. I helped out in my son’s homeschool marching band playing trumpet (cornet, technically) while in the stands. (No, I didn’t march. I did that in high school. I paid my dues.)

We currently attend the Lilburn Alliance Church (Christian & Missionary Alliance denomination). My wife’s parents, as noted before, were missionaries for 30 years with the CMA in what is now Papua, Indonesia, which figured into our attending LAC. Fred Hartley is an absolutely fantastic preacher, and you can download his sermons from the website.

We visited Papua (then Irian Jaya) for Christmas & New Years in 1986, about a year after we got married. Pictures of the place do it absolutely no justice. I enjoyed it immensely.

We have been homeschooling our kids up until high school. Alpha Omega’s “Switched On Schoolhouse” was our curriculum of choice (since the computer does the vast majority of the grading) until Susan started running “LAC Homeschool Classes”. That’s a group of independent teachers offering classes at LAC for homeschool students.

I don’t like spoilers. I like to be surprised at movie twists and endings. I realize that there will be times when I am spoiled about something (like the recent casting of the next Doctor Who), but I’m OK with it. I just don’t seek it out and will avoid it when possible.

My siblings and I all have the same initials; DEP. We never had monogrammed things as kids.

I like strategy games. Growing up, my favorites games were old Avalon Hill “Bookcase Games” like “Rise and Decline of the Third Reich”. A group of friends and I would play this over a weekend, where one turn for the Allies, one turn for the Axis and a 10 minute diplomacy/strategy break would take 1 hour. I especially like AH’s “Kingmaker”. This does not mean I’m some sort of history buff (that’s Susan’s territory), but I enjoy the games; the strategy and the human elements, even in a computer game. I still have those old board games, and occasionally pull them out, but my family is mostly a card-game sort of crowd. My kids, however, do enjoy more strategy-type games. Current favorite: Killer Bunnies. Yeah, technically it is a card game, but this ain’t Spades or Hearts, lemme tell you.

Currently on my MP3 player: The Electric Light Orchestra (big fan from way back), Michael W. Smith (big fan since his first album), ABBA, England Dan & John Ford Coley and lots of podcasts. Also like a lot of the Christian Pop (OK, OK, “Contemporary Christian Music”) out these days. I was very happy when Atlanta finally got a Christian music station, and quickly got my kids into it.

When at college, I took the introduction radio course so I could spin disks on the college radio station, WACW (5 watts of pure POWER wired directly into The Grill and maybe, if the weather was good, to your actual radio). I always wanted to be the morning show guy after a few years of listening to Jack Bogut on KDKA in Pittsburgh. Yeah, only 6 or 7 songs an hour, but that guy was an entertainer. One year when I worked at a summer camp in New York, instead of having someone play the Reveille bugle call in the morning, I would do a 5 minute “morning show”. I shamelessly stole some of Bogut’s material. (The camp staff that would normally take turns having to get up to play the Reveille recording was more than happy to allow me to do this.) If this whole computer fad ever wears out, I want to be a DJ. Or a call-in talk show host.

I’m a fan of science fiction & fantasy. Since I don’t do much personal reading, my fandom consists mostly of TV and movies. I seem to have passed it on to my kids, who read much more than I ever did. Our current favorite is “Doctor Who”.

Speaking of that, while I’m more a movies than books, I would read to my wife early in our marriage and now to my kids. These days, we mostly do it during the summer, as reading during the school years gets broken up with things like homework and busy weekends, and you lose track of the plot. We’ve read short stories like The Magic Garden, and A Dog of Flanders, but have also read The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings, and historical fiction like The Cat of Bubastes. (We had to finish the whole thing before we’d let them see the movie. Hey, get your own “movie” in your head before letting Hollywood put theirs in there.) Most recently read the books in the Eragon series (Eragon & Eldest) and Inkheart. (The Eragon movie was pitiful, but the Inkheart one was very good.) My favorite moments reading to the kids, when I knew it hit them, was the tear drop from my oldest at the end of A Dog of Flanders, and the consternation they all felt when Frodo appeared to die in The Return of the King.

I have Multiple Sclerosis, which first hit in July of 1986, 9 months after I got married. Different parts of me have gone numb because of it (one time, the whole left side of my body), but fortunately I have the kind that comes and goes. The only lingering affect is mild numbness in my hands, which is a little annoying since computer programming requires typing. (I can still touch type, but my error rate has gone up a bit.) Also, my legs give out after about 1/2 mile of walking.

If I was served Mexican food every day for a month, I wouldn’t complain.

I appreciate living through historic events (e.g. the first Africa-American president), even though some of those events are horrific (e.g. 9/11). Some of my favorite places to visit are historic sites (Washington, DC, colonial Williamsburg), even though I don’t remember much history.

As a community, we have come to count on each other to be entertained, challenged, and moved by what we watch and share on YouTube. We’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to make the collective YouTube experience even better, particularly on our most visited pages. Our goal is to help ensure that you’re viewing content that’s relevant to you, and not inadvertently coming across content that isn’t.

I just have to give the YouTube folks a big "’atta boy" for this.  Taking common sense steps to keep, not just porn (which they don’t accept anyway) but even "suggestive content" out of the limelight ought to be cheered when it happens.  If you really want to find it, you can, but if you don’t, you don’t have to sift through it.  This is especially true for kids; YouTube is a nice resource to have for many purposes, but it can be a minefield.

More like this please. 

Christian and other religious groups opposed to abortion were allowed to advertise on Google for the first time from today, after the search engine capitulated in the face of a legal challenge.

Google had banned pro-life religious groups from buying adverts against search terms such as “abortion” and “abortion help” but was forced to abandon its policy after it was accused of breaching equalities legislation.

The challenge was brought by the Christian Institute, a cross-denominational pressure group, who said that Google’s change of heart was an acknowledgement of the rights of everybody to hold an opinion on the subject.

Mike Judge from the Christian Institute said: “Google were taking adverts from pro-abortion groups, and our view is that was a free speech issue. What we want to do is set out the acts in a pretty factual and pretty sensible way”.

Google had been taken to court by the Christian Institute earlier in the year, arguing that its policy was in breach of the Equalities Act of 2006. Initially, Google said it would fight in the courts, but changed its mind over the summer. Its new policy applies globally.

Acknowledging that the issue of abortion was “an emotive subject”, Google said that it reconsidered its policy following the Christian Institute’s challenge, and said it would be “creating a level playing field and enabling religious associations to place ads on abortion in a factual way”.

(FYI, the status update to which I comment "Guess who this is?" is the update of the guy who runs GSPN, Cliff Ravenscraft, announcing the availability of new episodes of some of his podcasts.)

Personally, I never really "got" Twitter.  Seemed to me a nifty new technology looking for an application.  The elevating of the mundane ("I’m going to work", "I’m at work", "I’m leaving for home", "Going to see movie X") didn’t seem like it would be sustaining.  You can only read mundane messages for so long before it’s just, well, mundane.  The technology is snazzy, no doubt, but the application didn’t seem to click with me.

I’m on Facebook, and their status updates, Twitter-like as they are, don’t excite me much either.  I’m much more interested in two-way communication, so the messages you can send back and forth, or even the blog-like notes you can write, are much more interesting to me than "Going to lunch with my Senator".  OK, that’s cool and all, but write it up later on; *that* would be interesting (me being a political junkie). 

I do see applications for this, and in that space I can see how it can be useful.  Cliff posts Facebook (and I assume Twitter) updates when he releases new shows, and for those waiting on those shows that can be helpful.  (But it is any more helpful or timely than just checking new posts to the GSPN website via an RSS feed?  I mean, if you have to hear the next episode just as soon as humanly possible, all well and good, but most of us can wait until our podcatcher picks it up on its next run.)

I’ve heard of software development teams using it to keep their widely-scattered team up-to-date on what they’re working on.  Sounds great, and a blog would be overkill for something like this. 

But here’s my most recent Facebook status updates as an example.

(so-and-so) is preparing to really do some writing tomorrow after faffing about today and just reading.  [Nice, but writing about what, and what have you been reading.  Expounding on that is too much for a status update.]

(so-and-so) is getting ready for tomorrow and Saturday.  [Mundane]

(so-and-so) Released Almost Daily Devotional #70 & My Crazy Life #276. I very thankfully added our 142nd gspn.tv Plus Member. Looking forward to 143rd!  [Guess who’s this is?   ;)  See above.]

(so-and-so) will never "assume" again.  [Meaning?  This guy needs a blog.]

(so-and-so) is Reading a book called River of Mercy w/ Spiritual Journal.  [Informative, and invites those who have also read it to write to her.  Again, a blog would give this person a way to communicate to anyone who’s read it (and those who haven’t) all at once with their thoughts.]

And the next one down says it all:

(so-and-so) should be doing something other than facebook:-).

Heh heh.

Blogging is still a rather geeky thing, but I think Facebook can make this simpler for folks.  They don’t need to create a new account with Blogger or WordPress.org, they have a built-in audience of people they know, you write it once instead of a bunch of different e-mails/messages, and it’s far more interesting to read than one-liners that either don’t say anything or make the reader beg for details.

OK, off my soapbox.   (…and onto my blog; I think this qualifies for a post on it)  ;D 

Doug