David Ancell / Sunday, July 10, 2005 / Comments(0)
I must admit this even though it might not be very Christian of me . . . I like the instant gratification of downloadable purchases. I buy music almost exclusively on the Internet (usually iTunes); I can download it immediately and don’t have to buy the whole album most of the time. I just pay 99 cents per song. Software can also be purchased online and give me immediate access in most cases. However, I’m really surprized that this was available online. If you want to download over 2 GB (I am not joking.) of files, you can buy the entire Adobe Creative Suite online. If you do, you had better have a DVD burner because there ain’t no way you are backing that up on CD-ROM.
I only wish that I weren’t so sloppy at keeping my downloads organized. I would probably never find half of them if my computer crashed. I burned one set to DVD some time ago, and I’m about due to do it again.
While I am at it, I want to ramble some more. There is one real problem with downloaded music. They put you through File Format Hell. For example, I like iTunes, but the tracks will only play on either my computer or an iPod. Many other stores use Windows Media files, but they won’t play on an iPod. They will play on other players. Sony uses their own proprietary format that doesn’t play on anything that I am aware of except Sony players. Wouldn’t it be nice to have something universal that allows you to use the player of your choice?
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David Ancell / Saturday, July 09, 2005 / Comments(0)
I can’t believe I forgot my own blogiversary. It was on July 6, 2002 that I first began this blog. I am now three years in. I’m still here but just not as often. I have become very busy lately. In fact, I just completed editing some audio that had been sitting on my hard drive since last September.
While you are at it, check out Musings from Memphis, which I just added to my links. This blog is written and maintained by Derek Rotty, whom I know from church. I’ll talk more about what I am doing later as I am about to stop doing some things I’ve been doing to make room for this, and I haven’t told the people affected yet.
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David Ancell / Monday, July 04, 2005 / Comments(0)
Pete Vere tackles the three big things that went wrong in marriages that he has seen in working in tribunal ministry. Read the article here.
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David Ancell / Saturday, July 02, 2005 / Comments(0)
I am at the home of my parents. I haven’t been here much lately, and they have done a lot of redecorating. While I was at it, I decided to take a trip to Cape Girardeau. On the way back, I had a major back tire blowout and got stuck on the side of the road. Fortunately, I’m a AAA member. It wasn’t much fun though, especially since my Cingular Treo 650 cell phone didn’t get a very good signal out there on the road. I managed to get help, though.
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David Ancell / Friday, July 01, 2005 / Comments(0)
At about 7:30 PM last night, I was playing with my MiniDisc recorder. I had to call Sony technical support because the battery recharging wasn’t working right. I had to answer a bunch of questions from the automated service, and when it finally decided to connect me to an agent, I got a message kind of like this:
“Thank you for calling Sony, your call will be answered in approximately 36 minutes.”
The “36 minutes” was the actual estimated time they gave me. Is it just me, or does this sound like they might be lacking in customer service?
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David Ancell / Monday, June 27, 2005 / Comments(0)
I just received notice of an article stating that Allstate fired an employee for writing against gay marriage. According to the article, the writing was done on the employee’s own time, and there was no intent to appear to be bringing forth the views of the company (which are obviously way out of line).
If this is true, I’m thankful that I’m not insured with Allstate, and I never will be unless I see significant reparation made. If they won’t do it on their own, they should be sued for a trainload of money. I just hope the courts haven’t become so corrupt that they don’t see this for what it is.
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David Ancell / Saturday, June 25, 2005 / Comments(0)
Well, I have received largely positive responses from my letter to the Bishop. Several people have asked for what kind of response I got. I haven’t received a response as of this writing. However, I think we need to allow him time.
I take many of my cues from this article from Catholics United for the Faith. It has been exactly two weeks since the letter was written and mailed, and it has been a couple days less than that since he would have received it. I will give him the full thirty days before taking other action.
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David Ancell / Saturday, June 25, 2005 / Comments(0)
I just got this weeks edition of our diocesean newspaper, The West Tennessee Catholic. Take a look at this. First, you see the picture of our seminarians. This is good and well, as all of them are orthodox. So, at least there is hope for the future.
However, right below, you will see a picture of Fr. John Atkinson standing with the “Liturgical Movement Group.” Just what in the heck is that? Judging by the apparent age of the participants, I have a feeling this isn’t a group of people trying to assist in the restoration of the Sacred Liturgy. Interestingly enough, two very orthodox priests were appointed to succeed him in that parish, so this will likely end soon.
It gets worse, unfortunately. Here is an article on the new ministry to gays and lesbians. According to the article “The basis for these diocesan ministries with gay and lesbian Catholics is as basic as our baptism.” What?!? I might believe that if the article had mentioned supporting them in a call to chastity rather than a vague goal to “reflect on Church teaching and pastoral practice.” After all, this could imply anything from a call to chastity to talking about how the “oppressive” teaching “alienates” them. That said, I feel that I was quite right in discerning that I needed to write this letter.
It seems as though our diocese has not been too forthcoming, and given some events that have happened over the last year, I am at a point where I cannot give them the benefit of the doubt. I wish it were not so.
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David Ancell / Friday, June 24, 2005 / Comments(0)
This comes out of a number of things I’ve seen and read in the past few years. There are many well-intentioned people out there who defend proper moral teaching but who use inaccurate science to do so. For example, I remember a chastity speaker who got out a package insert for an oral contraceptive and mentioned the fact that it said some cancer occurred in 0.5% of patients who took it. Her statement was that the odds may seem small, but if you were the one who got cancer, it wouldn’t matter anymore.
That might be true enough, except for one little piece of information that she was missing. Had she consulted a doctor or pharmacist, she might have found that anything with that small of an incidence may well have not been caused by the drug. The FDA makes manufacturers report anything that happened to occur while they were taking the product.
So what’s the problem with doing this? Well, for starters, it brings the person’s credibility into question. If you couldn’t (or just didn’t) verify your scientific facts, how can I be sure that you are applying the moral law correctly? Secondly, there are those who won’t believe you anyway. While you aren’t likely to convince those people, why give them ammunition? People will paint believing Christians as ignorant and superstitious regarless of what they do. Why give them objective evidence of ignorance?
Although I strongly oppose abortion as the murder of a human being, I think the emphasis being placed by many pro-lifers on the abortion and breast cancer link is misguided. If a new, well-designed study turned up that cast doubt on that link (and it could), you had better believe the pro-aborts will use it not only to tell the world abortion is safe, but also to tell the world that pro-lifers don’t know what in Gehenna they are talking about.
There’s also a problem with over-emphasizing scientific arguments, though the practice isn’t bad in itself. It seems that we are somewhat uncomfortable with bringing forth the truth that God is an objective reality. Therefore, violating God’s law is an objective problem in and of itself. After all, that’s the main concern.
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David Ancell / Sunday, June 12, 2005 / Comments(0)
I mentioned in a previous post that I attended the Young Adults Conference in Steubenville. This year, instead of selling CDs and tapes, they have released their talks for free on the web in MP3 format. You can get them here.
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