NT Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, p. 216-217:
"As far as I can see, the major task that faces us in our generation, corresponding to the issue of slavery two centuries ago, is that of the massive economic imbalance of the world, whose major symptom is the ridiculous and unpayable Third World debt. I have spoken about this many times over the last few years, and I have a sense that some of us, like old Wilberforce on the subject of slavery, are actually called to bore the pants off people by going on and on about it until eventually the point is taken and the world is changed. [...]
"This is the number one moral issue of our day. Sex matters enormously, but global justice matters far, far more. The present system of global debt is the real immoral scandal, the dirty little secret—or rather the dirty enormous secret—of glitzy, glossy Western capitalism. Whatever it takes, we must change this situation or stand condemned by subsequent history alongside those who supported slavery two centuries ago and those who supported the Nazis seventy years ago. It is that serious."
Bono, Labor Party Conference, September '04:
"Listen, this is a real moment coming up, this could be real history, this could be something that your children, your children’s children, that our whole generation, will be remembered for at the beginning of the 21st century. Putting right a relationship that has been so very wrong for so very long. The North, the South, the Have Nots, the have yachts.
"If I could ask you to think a hundred years ahead, to imagine what we, and our times, will be remembered for, I would venture three things: the Internet, the war on terror, and the fate of the continent of Africa. We are the first generation that can look extreme and stupid poverty in the eye, look across the water to Africa and elsewhere and say this and mean it: we have the cash, we have the drugs, we have the science -- but do we have the will? Do we have the will to make poverty history?
"Some say we can't afford to. I say we can't afford not to."
Hi, guys! Nate Wilson says there's no reason why we should have blogs, so I'm going to keep my mouth shut as much as is Stephensonly possible. Have some quotes.
“Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which we will not put.” Winston Churchill
“I'm majoring in soup.” A boy I met
“'I can tell,' said Michael savagely, out of the gloom; 'marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.'” GK Chesterton in Manalive
“More like Kierkegaaaaargeous!” Craig Ferguson
“Creation is God's living room, the place where He sits down and relishes the exquisite taste of His decoration. Things, therefore, as things, are inseparable from God, as God. Separate the secular from the sacred, and the world becomes an idol shrouded in interpretations; creation becomes too meaningful to make love to. As religion devoured life for the pagan, so significance consumes the world of the secularist.” Father Robert Ferrar Capon in The Supper of the Lamb
I'm still here; just checking in. What's new? I want to pass on what Audrey's awesome grandma said to me in the graduation card she just sent me:
I bless you with being everything that God designed you to be. I bless you with singing songs of joy each morning as you start the day - for Jesus your savior has shown you great love and favor. I bless you with knowing God so well that great peace flows from you to bless those around you. I bless you with the exhilaration of experiencing God's goodness and unfailing love and care all the days of your life.
1. Claire talked me into getting a facebook; that's where a lot of the NSA people are. Feel free to look me up and add me there too. But I'll continue to be active on xanga, perhaps using the word "active" loosely.
2. Two huge cans of escargot fell into my hands and I cooked some tonight. Ever wanted to know what canned snails smell like? Breakfast sausage. But in alfredo, they just taste like alfredo. They're like mushrooms for people who don't like mushrooms. Except my mom, who now does not like either.
3. If I mess with an entry after I post it, do you get a double email if you're subscribed to my xanga? I try to make my OCD as less annoying as possible. I will try to prove that by not editing this and correcting that last bit. Oops, I'm editing anyway. Bad llama.
"I shall be told, perhaps, that Alyosha was stupid, undeveloped, had not finished his studies, and so on. That he did not finish his studies is true, but to say that he was stupid or dull would be a great injustice. I'll simply repeat what I have said above. He entered upon this path" -monkery- "only because, at that time, it alone struck his imagination and presented itself to him as offering an ideal means of escape for his soul from darkness to light. Add to that that he was to some extent a youth of our last epoch--that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth, seeking for it and believing in it, and seeking to serve it at once with all the strength of his soul, seeking for imjmediate action, and ready to sacrifice everything, life itself, for it. Though these young men unfortunately fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, perhaps, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set before them as their goal--such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them." -Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
From cleanerplateclub: they "picked the Westland/Hallmark plant at random. Not based on any kind of identified risk assessment. Completely at random. Kinda’ makes you wonder how the other 6,200 facilities are doing."
