Jolly Digest 1-18-05

I have been a bad blogger of late.  One of the cardinal rules of blogging is that he who blogs should read the blogs of others.  A corollary is that he who blogs should link liberally to others.  I haven't been doing this lately - time has been a bit scarce and so whatever blogging time I have had has been used to do my own posts and I really haven't been reading too much of others stuff, nor have I been linking.  My apologies to all who have so graciously linked to many of my own posts, and here comes an attempted remedy.

Following the lead of august bloggers like Joe Carter who has started a regular series of posts called "Outtakes," and Rusty Lopez at New Covenant who has started his regular "Rusty Nails" feature, and J. D. Mays at Army of One who has become much more of a linker than a thinker, I am going to do something similar.

I tried to come up with a really cool, sexy, pizzaz filled title for this and the best I could come up with was "Jolly Digest."  So, we'll see how it goes.  Here's a digest of things I stuff I have read recently in the blogosphere.

We've all heard how dangerous things are in Iraq right now but would you believe that the murder rate in Iraq is comparable to the murder rate in the city of Chicago?  That's what Machias Privateer says.  I"m not saying that makes it all ok, I hope we would all agree that one murder is one murder to many.  Still, the mainstream media makes it out to be the case that our troops have completely lost control in Iraq.  Hmm . . . could this be a case where the mainstream media is making our troops and our government policies look worse than they are?  Nah, they wouldn't do that now would they?  (Hat tip - Diplomad)

On that same point Weapons of Mass Discussion agrees - the violence has gotten so bad that we need to completely pull out . . . of Cincinnati - see here and here.

Tim Challies is giving away stuff and making me jealous at the same time. He's started a monthly drawing where he gets autographed copies of books that he gives away.  He has found a way to contact publishers and has gotten them to give him these to give away.  I'm sure it is because they have found out, like most of us, that Tim is an excellent (and honest - check out this one where he has the audacity to not completely fawn over one of John Piper's books) book reviewer.  And I'm quite sure that Tim gets copies of these things for himself.  This is where I'm jealous, I can't stand the fact that there is someone else out there getting books and I'm not.  So, let me officially announce to all publishers and authors out there that I am willing to accept copies of your books - I'll read them, I'll review them, I'll take silly pictures with your books - I'm not proud, I'll do what it takes to take your books.

LaShawn Barber is doing some preliminary research for a project that she is asking for some help from bloggers on.  She has a few questions that she asking bloggers to answer to help her out.  LaShawn is so popular that she already has over 120 responses, but I haven't seen anything telling people to stop commenting so go ahead and respond. While you are there you might want to check out some of her reasons that women want to avoid hooking up with a married man who leaves his wife for them and why none of us should vote for Newt Gingrich.  The two go together in this post.

I just found out from my good friend Terry that Mozilla is working on a calendar program called Sunbird. This is good news for all of the Firefox-ophiles and Thunderbird-experimenters out there.  There is a growing backlash against, or at least a desire for alternatives to, Microsoft these days.  More and more people are using the Firefox browser and now the Thunderbird e-mail client is getting a bit of press.  These are good alternatives to Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.  However, I have been using Microsoft Outlook for quite some time now but have been having some problems with it and have looked for something else.  I like the Thunderbird e-mail program as a replacement for Outlook's e-mail, but Mozilla hasn't yet had anything to replace the calendar functions of Outlook.  With Sunbird it looks like they are moving that direction.  It's in beta now, I've downloaded it today and will start playing with it.  Hopefully they will come up with a way to integrate Thunderbird and Sunbird and maybe by then I'll have a Microsoft fee computer.  Oops, can't do that - I'm using Microsoft Office - there are too many goodies in that to cause me to want to switch.  But at least I'll be able to get all of my online activity off of Microsoft.

Ashlee Simpson has a blog . . . well not exactly.  Actually this is a blog from a non-fan who devotes himself or herself to "Chronicling the adventures of the lovely but less talented younger sister of Jessica Simpson in all her lip synching glory." The blog owner needs to learn some things about formatting the blog, so you'll have to scroll down to find the text. I've still got a burr under my saddle about the whole Simpson family, particularly the father Joe, who used to be a youth minister, but now spends his whole life promoting his girls.  He's traded his and their birthright for a mess of pottage.  This quote sums up the whole problem with this guy - "Then again, that's the cost of being controlled by a man like Joe Simpson, who's more concerned with being a rapacious manager than a protective father and prefers tossing his daughter into the public fires rather than shielding her from its flames."  As the father of quite a lovely young lady, I agree completely.

Comments

[Ryan]

You may be able to start moving away from MS Office if you're willing to do some learning. Check out www.openoffice.org and download their free office productivity suite. I've been using it (not exclusively) for several months and have found it to be useful. There is a learning curve, but if your goal is to be MS free this may be the way to go.

[David Wayne]

Thanks for the info Ryan - I use MS Publisher a good deal - is there anything in the Open Office program that is comparable - I know they have something comparable to powerpoint but I haven't seen anything comparable to Publisher.

[Kristofer]

Hi, I agree that Thunderbird and Sunbird probably will be a good combination. I also read that Ximian Evolution (The "Outlook" for Linux) is being developed for windows. Outlook might get another competitor there.

[Tim]

David - There is no alternative to Publisher as far as I know. I looked into this a while back hoping to save our church some money. However, you can purchase Publisher on its own and get the rest of the suite for free. Until there is a good (and finished) replacement for Outlook, though, MS has a huge advantage.

As for all those signed books, well, that is my little secret. Well, not really. I know a bunch of authors. Heck, Nancy Pearcey is a great family friend, so that one is easy. The upcoming three or four months are all taken care of with people I know. After that I'm going to have to do some begging! :)