Kalos is a downloadable Greek dictionary with definitions in English, French, and Spanish. It has around 25,000 entries including New Testament and koine vocabulary. It also allows morphological analysis and it has inflection charts as well. With thanks to Mark Hoffman for mentioning it.
Drumroll please…. The winner of the stupidest advertisement of the year is Lifeway- the publishing ‘arm’ of the Southern Baptist Convention. Their ad states
Temp Help Needed at the SBC Meeting in Indy
We need two workers at the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana to assist the LifeWay Research team. We are looking for two energetic seminary students to work (for pay) Monday and Tuesday, June 9 and 10. One would work the hours of 9-5 and one is needed the hours of 10-8. Email research@lifeway.com for directions how to proceed if interested. You must be SBC and cannot have been anywhere near anything sinful in the last 6 months.
Note- that ad hasn’t been altered at all by me and has been posted as it appeared here. I mention this because I feel certain that someone at Lifeway has at least a little bit of sense and so they will change it as soon as the ridiculousness and stupidity so obvious to the rest of us is pointed out to them. With thanks to Doug Chaplin for pointing me to Darrell Pursiful who saw it first.
Ha’aretz reports today
‘Allying with Christian Zionists is bad for Israel’. “No, we cannot.” We cannot cooperate with the Christian Zionists, Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, told the annual conference of the movement’s rabbis Wednesday night in Cincinnati, Ohio, according to copies of the speech distributed ahead of time to the press.
And he’s right. 100% on the mark.
… Yoffie thinks [making the declaration that he has] is important – not because of [Christian Zionists'] stance on abortion, their policies against homosexuals or the fact they do not respect members of other religions. … “What they mean by support of Israel and what we mean by support of Israel are two very different things,” Yoffie says, highlighting the real reason.
And again, he’s right. Hagee and company don’t care about Jews. They care about Jews as a means to an end- world domination by right wing apocalypticists.
In his speech Wednesday night, however, Yoffie declared that an alliance with Christian Zionists must be rejected for the sake of Israel. Christian Zionist support for Israel is harmful, he said. It’s not “unconditional support for the Jewish state,” but rather support for certain leaders, certain parties, for a political agenda that is unacceptable to Yoffie and, he believes, to a majority of Israelis. The Evangelicals reject a two-state solution and oppose Israeli territorial concessions, and for that reason the Reform Movement cannot cooperate with them. Yoffie’s speech focused on one man: John Hagee, founder of the Christians United for Israel lobby group. That in itself is notable, since Hagee ostensible received the stamp of approval when he was invited to speak to an AIPAC policy conference last year.
And finally,
Yoffie knows his rejection of the Christian Zionists will not be embraced in Israel. But he asks: “By what right do we expect others to walk away from those who make anti-Jewish or anti-Israel statements when we will not walk away from those who make anti-Islam or anti-Catholic statements?” The Reform leader stresses he isn’t rejecting support from the Evangelicals per se, but rather only those whose political goals he sees as unacceptable.
Good for him! A man of sense, morals, and ethics! Quite rare indeed these days. And if any movement in modern America needs a good solid rebuffing by just such a man, it is Christian Zionism.
Some of you may have heard that Chris has been sick lately. I hate to be the breaker of bad news, but he wasn’t really ill. It was a ploy necessary to allow him time to take leave of Germany and make way to Singapore, where he appeared in a fashion show, modeling a diamond encrusted thong. But Chris didn’t make the journey alone. Indeed, also appearing in the show are Stephen Carlson (who has been strangely silent of late) and Jim Davila (who owns a wireless machine and is able to post even when away from work or home). If you read the report of the sale of the thong, you’ll see a photo of Chris being carried by Stephen and Jim. So- that explains Tilling’s ‘illness’ and brings to the light of day the truth of his recent doings.
I guess we all have those little things that shouldn’t bother us but do and when confronted with them feel the muscles in our neck tighten and our head’s begin to ache. The story of the so called ‘pregnant’ man is one of those irritants to me. First, he isn’t pregnant- she is. Second, Oprah’s silly promotion of this tale is annoying. Oprah-anity is becoming more and more bizarre. Heck, soon she’ll probably be devoting an entire show to her doggies. In the mutilated words of a modern comic, ‘I don’t care who you are, that’s just stupid’.
Reuters reports
A transgender man who is six months pregnant said in an interview aired by Oprah Winfrey on Thursday that he always wanted to have a child and considers it a miracle.
Rubbish. Pure, unadulterated rubbish. A miracle is divine intervention in human life. The only intervention Mrs. Beatie experienced was the intervention of the turkey baster.
40 years ago Martin Luther King Jr. was executed by a terrorist at a hotel in Memphis. I use the word ‘terrorist’ because it denotes a person so persuaded of their own political / religious / ethnic beliefs that they are willing to kill those who disagree. Whether or not one agrees with King’s politics one cannot argue with the fact that he made a difference, which is more than most will ever do. So, for that reason alone, he’s worthy of our respect. Lest we forget…
