Matt Jones' Random Acts of Verbiage

Now that the University of Arizona has taken over the ground mission of the Phoenix Mars Lander, they have posted the first few images from the ground of the northern pole of Mars! You can read my live blogging of the Phoenix Mars Lander touching down for additional information and links.

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Well, today is the day! In about 45 minutes, the Phoenix Mars Lander will be touching down on Mars. Specifically, it will be landing in the ice rich northern polar region. Check out the Phoenix Mars Lander @ NASA and at JPL for additional information. Here is a cool animation of the Phoenix Mars Lander mission. The actual event times are 15 minutes prior to the given times as it takes the radio signal about that much time to reach Earth from Mars.

I will attempt to update this as things are happening, but you should also go read the Phoenix Landing Blog for updates and you should also be watching NASA TV for live coverage from mission control at JPL!

The live blogging:
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Summarize your life in a six word memoir, with optional photo illustration.

I was asked this over at Vox and thought I would post it here too.

Happiness is only real when shared.

-Chris McCandless

It is truly tragedy that Chris didn’t figure that out until it was too late.

Well, the big day happened. As of Saturday night at 10:44pm I have entered the last year of my 20s. How old do I feel right now?

I’m still young though, right? RIGHT? Really though, I am feeling pretty good about things. Yeah, I am a little late getting a career started… I am still in grad school… massively in debt… and no dates on the horizon… humm.

I brought in the new year by visiting the family down in southern Washington for a birthday/Mother’s day weekend. It was a very relaxing and fun weekend filled with a wonderful family, tasty food, amazing gifts, and, of course, shopping at Powells Books. On Saturday night Erin and I drove down to Portland to see the Lonely Forest play a show, it rocked and I got wished happy birthday from on stage, so that was cool.

All-in-all I am looking forward to this year. I am sure it will be as blessed as all my previous 10595 days have been.

Gifts are still being accepted.

I thought I would post this PowerPoint presentation I used last night in a talk I gave as part of a trilogy of talks about the Bible at a UCF Pizza Theology. The presentation doesn’t stand very well on its own; it is best accompanied by a good explanation… which you don’t really have here. Feel free to ask me any questions about what I have to say. It is also somewhat similar to a talk I gave in a Bible study a while back. Also, for the bloggers out there, I was able to embed a powerpoint (or many other files actually) directly into the post using Docstoc.com (my profile there), you might want to check it out.

The Word: How the Bible Came About
The Canon and the Community of God
Text and Translation
(download: 4.9 MB)

The Word