Nice alliteration, eh?
I would hop briefly over to USS Clueless to catch a short post from Steven den Beste. I don’t think he is coming back, but it was nice to hear from him again (his comments relate to the war in Iraq and the loss of US soldiers there):
It is a tragic fact of life that sometimes we must sacrifice the best among us to preserve and protect that which we love most.
My greatest satisfaction now is knowing that their sacrifice was not wasted. I strongly argued in favor of this war, knowing full well that if we fought it that many, many good young men and women would die, whether we won it or lost it. That was always a very heavy weight. I felt and still feel that it was the right course for this nation to follow, and recent events clearly show that now to all but the most willfully blind.
But we cannot and should not forget the price that was disproportionately paid by a very few. Victory is never cheap. Liberty is the most precious thing we have, and it has been paid for in blood yet again.
Indeed.
Now if people would actually see that true freedom is completely free in Christ. Sometimes that is hard for people to believe because our “earthly” freedoms must be faught for. Our “Earthly” freedoms are still important and should be faught for, for all people, not just those in the US, but the fact that they are not truly “free” point to something else I feel. They are lacking, incomplete.
All your sins can be forgiven,
all of this was always free.
Jesus loves without condition,
this is what freedom means to me.
FIF “The Cross of St. Andrew” (Emphasis added)
What does freedom mean to you? Is it free? Should it be free?
Shalom
Alos, check out the comments at the original post [No longer available, 
sorry!].
I am still trying to get into the flow of things for this semester and balancing my time has become an issue. THe bulk of my classes are at the beginning of the week leaving me with a “free” last half and weekend. I am trying to get things more spread out so Sunday-Tuesday night aren’t insanely busy. In order to do this a little better I am going to take this week off from blogging, not just writing, but surfing and reading as well. I just figure it is the best thing to help me get on task and reduce the number of distractions. Once I have straightened things out, I will be back (look for me on Saturday or Sunday I would think). Try to not post anything TOO interesting on youg blog! I don’t want to miss anything!
Please feel free to continue commenting and I will respond when I get back. If you need to get a hold of me, my email is always on: matt [at] mattjonesblog [dot] com
Feel free to check my Blog Archive on the side bar.
Here are a few of my favorite posts (that you can still comment on, hint hint…). From most current to oldest:
Big Day in Iraq – Pictures and commentary on the historic election day.
More Tsunami Satellite Photos – Pictures and links to more pictures, other posts, and resources.
The United Nations: How the Antichrist will rise! – I don’t like the UN.
Global Warming? – What do YOU know about Global Warming?
A Beautiful Sight! – Some pictures that I took of Mount Rainier.
Better Late Than Never: A Year in Review – A short recap of Me in 2004
Christmas a pagan holiday? – A discussion of Christmas
Are you a Christian? – Well are you?
The Nature of Hell – Another possibility?
On Distant Shores – Comments on a great song by Five Iron Frenzy.
Science vs. Religion – I hope to add more to this eventually.
Jesus IS God – I hope to add more to this as well.
String Theory Primer – Yep
Predestination and Free Will – My comments on this ongoing dialogue.
Picturing God – How do you visualize God?
Dennis Miller, End Times, and Michael Moore – I also hope to do a more formal write-up on “end times”
Aliens Cause Global Warming – Brief discussion on Michael Crichton’s essay.
Am I open-minded? – Some thoughts on what it means to be “open minded.”
Ok, that turned out to be a larger list than I expected, feel free to check them all out! Heh, ok I know you probably won’t get to all of them, but maybe one that interests you!
Have a great week and I will get back to you all later!
Shalom
I have found that listening to my cousin Sal is usually a good thing. Her suggestion to check out
The Diplomad was another good one. Diplomad is
A Blog by career US Foreign Service officers. They are Republican (most of the time) in an institution (State Department) in which being a Republican can be bad for your career — even with a Republican President!
I spent a good chunk of the evening browsing through many of their posts and found them to be funny, clever, and insightful.
Because of many different things, including many of the Dimplomad’s posts, I will shortly be writing a post on how useless the UN is.
As a sample, you should read the following three posts by the Diplomad. These three posts hit directly on things I have thought much about and will also eventually write a post on (the list of things I need to write about seems to be growing!).
Terror & Islam- Time to Face the Facts
Terror & Islam, Part 2
Terror & Islam, Part 3
These posts are brutally honest and if you are concerned about being politically correct and completely tolerant of anything and everything imaginable (except for anything that goes against your ideology), they may not be for you. They have written other posts relating to this subject that I will bring up at another time.
Check them out. And remember kids, if your cousin Sal tells you to do something, just do it.
Shalom
For those of you that have been an avid reader of Steven den Beste over at USS Clueless, there is an interesting piece over at EuroPundits commenting on how much den Beste contributed to blogging and political commentary. Den Beste also comments on the post and talks about why he left and why he won’t be coming back.
He alludes to the fact that the large majority of his email was from people who were criticizing him and his essays and very few were from supporters. I think this is a pretty sad fact. Even if you disagree with someone, to nitpick every little thing could drive someone mad I suppose. It is too bad that someone who wrote so many interesting essays with such a variety of topics had to leave something that he really enjoyed.
I know that Beste will never actually see this post, but I would say to him: thanks. Your essays were interesting and thought provoking and I will continue to read them and suggest that everyone checks them out. I am sorry that you are going through a tough degenerative disease, all I can do is offer my prayers. Best regards with those things that do still give you pleasure and I hope you recognize that you did have many readers that appreciated greatly what you did there and I apologize that we didn’t let you know more often how we felt. Again, Thanks.
People: go read his essays, pick a topic, do a search and I am sure he will have something interesting to say about it. USS Clueless is a great site, ’nuff said.
UPDATE: Some more thanks and thoughts over here.
UPDATE: Den Beste has just posted a “Best Of” Good thing to check out. (H/T to “Instapundit”)
I have found it funny that some of my inbound linking have come from search engines where people are looking for “Birthday card verbage” or “Thank you verbage” or something along those lines. I find this funny for a few reasons. It is interesting that my title which is supposed to represent a combination of Verbiage and Garbage actually gets external links because people often misspell Verbiage. Also, why are people searching for verbiage about a birthday card? For one, can’t you just be original and yourself? And secondly, verbiage means “An excess of words for the purpose; wordiness.” I have NEVER gotten a card where I was glad someone was wordy. I would rather it be short, sweet, and to the point, or better yet, just give me the two bucks for the card and write “happy birthday” across Washington’s face.
So the question arises: Should I change my title? Does using “verbage” just make me look silly, or is it clever enough to keep as a title?
Anyway, just a few thoughts before class.
Shalom
PS. Edgar is done with baseball And the darn tv stations up here didn’t play the M’s last two games. I really wanted to see “Edgar Day” oh well, maybe someone got it on tape or something. Melvin was fired today, not too surprised about that, nor am I too upset.
Original Post [UPDATE: Original post and comments are no longer available. sorry!]
I wanted to drop a quick note to say “hey” to everyone who stops by and reads some of my thoughts. I am glad to see some family dropping by (especially because my / your email doesn’t often get here / there… argh). Please feel free post / add any comments about anything, I love to hear what is going on with people! If anyone has any particularly interesting blogs that I should check out, please let me know. Thanks for your congratulatory remarks Jill, it is really appreciated and I am very thankful that I have been given the opportunity to choose two great schools (and probably end up at both, much to the government’s delight – ie school loans). Sally (and others that are interested) you now have inadvertantly added some pressure on me to find interesting things to blog about! I really look forward to your comments about those thing!
One thing that I found out tonight that I am sure some of you will be interested in (of course you probably already know) is that there is a new CSI series starting up. Now I never really got into CSI: Miami, but this one could be cool for two reasons – firstly it is in New York (Yes New York is often overplayed, but really, it will make for some interesting stories) and secondly Gary Senise is in it. He is way cool and an awesome actor (everyone really should see his and John Malcovitch’s version of “Of Mice and Men”).
So thats all I got at 1:50 in the AM. Shalom
[UPDATE: the original post and comments are no longer available at ModBlog sorry!]
Sorry, this isn’t meant to be some huge deep, meaningful blog. Merely a reflection on why this blog is here at all. Quite frankly, I don’t know. Chances are, no one will ever read this anyway. I genearlly don’t write anything down as I hate to write, but I don’t mind typing so much, so here I am, possibly getting some of my thoughts down in 1s and 0s.
I suppose I should offer a reason for the particular posting name: Matt comes from Hebrew. מַתִּתְיָהוּ or מתתיהו (Mattithyahu) literally meaning “gift of Yah” Yah being the contracted version of יהוה Yhvh (Yehovah, Yahveh, Yahweh) translated as the proper name of the God of Israel.
I guess that is all I have for this particular second, I am sure Iwill be back with more. That is if I remember that I set this thing up…
Shalom
[UPDATE: Original post and comments are no longer available. sorry!]
Recent Comments