WIRED's NextFest was featured on the Science Channel last night as well as the evening news the night before.

Jeff doesn't receive WIRED magazine anymore but did for many years. I liked reading it, actually, because even though it was technology, it was more than just industry. Ya know?

Kenny often comments that he would like to visit the many science museums that he sees featured on the Science Channel. But usually these museums are across the country!

So, here's an opportunity for Jeff to take Kenny to a relatively close "museum," in the Jacob Javits Center, a very familiar venue to us from years of Unix Expo. The last Unix Expo was in '96? Has it been that long?

And Kenny would get to ride a train and have his first trip to NYC.

But when I suggested it to Jeff, he said sarcastically, "OK, I'll take him during the 'extra day' this weekend. The day between Saturday and Sunday." Like I said, he doesn't often think that my suggestions are good ideas. Maybe he has safety concerns. There's been a lot of talk these days about "the gap."

They don't have school on Monday for the holiday, so it's a shame that the convention doesn't last an extra day.

Well, it's an annual event, so maybe Jeff will take Kenny one of these years. The problem is that the older Kenny gets, the older his younger brother gets. I don't see how, next year, Jeff can take one and leave the other at home.

With all the genuine Christian charity that I can muster, I suggest that he tell it to his priest.

"'The Confession': More than we needed to know" - The Examiner, 9/28/06

I have three words to describe my reaction: too much information.

McGreevey told The Star-Ledger that he plans to drop out of public view after completing the publicity tour for "The Confession."

We can only hope that this time, for once, he's telling the truth.

From Sept.'s Christianity Today, "Two Degrees of Separation"

"It is obvious the [conservative resurgence in the] SBC is a work in progress," John Greening, the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC) national representative, said.

He applauded the SBC International Mission Board for deciding missionaries would not be permitted to practice a private prayer language.

Greening also said no evangelical has done more to "blur the distinction between evangelicals and Catholics than Billy Graham," whom the SBC recently honored ...

Blurring the distinction, oh, like three years ago when Rev. Graham told Larry King: “He (the Pope) and I agree on almost everything.” Boy, that’s gotta ruffle some feathers, eh?

"degrees" must be a pun, in that schools are involved.

She is letting her hair down in this fourth Precepts segment. Better late than never.

In treating the four interpretative approaches to Revelation, she says of "historicism":

the historicist's goal is to figure out when the antichrist, in the form of the Roman Church and Papacy, came into power and then add 1260 years which will help discern when Jesus will return and bring to an end the reign of the antichrist.

I don't think that she exhausts any of the four views in her brief survey and while a clear reflection of this mentality is evident in Clarke's commentary on Daniel 7:25¹ and Albert Barnes, etc., Eugene Boring in his volume in the Interpretation series (WJKP) has commented, "Although widely held by Protestant interpreters after the Reformation and into the twentieth century, no critical New Testament scholar today advocates this [historicist] view."

We looked at Zechariah 12-14.

One sweet, faithful, sharp elder lady asked, "Why does verse 21 speak of sacrifice when Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice?"

Our leader did not offer an answer. Maybe because she knows that there isn't one. This unpretentious, humble reader of the Scriptures had picked up on the Achilles' heel, as pointed out in Currie's Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic².

I wanted to suggest to her, one-to-one, that the prophet describes the future in images familiar to himself and his contemporaries and that his vision ought not be taken literally. But I didn't get a chance.

¹From Clarke's commentary: If we knew precisely when the papal power began to exert itself in the antichristian way, then we could at once fix the time of its destruction.

The end is probably not very distant; it has already been grievously shaken by the French. In 1798 the French republican army under General Berthier took possession of the city of Rome, and entirely superseded the whole papal power. This was a deadly wound, though at present it appears to be healed; but it is but skinned over, and a dreadful cicatrice remains. The Jesuits, not JESUS, are now the Church's doctors.

If the papal power, as a horn or temporal power, be intended here, which is most likely, (and we know that that power was given in 755 to Pope Stephen 2. by Pepin, king of France,) counting one thousand two hundred and sixty years from that, we are brought to A.D. 2015, about one hundred and ninety years from the present [A.D. 1825.] But I neither lay stress upon nor draw conclusions from these dates.

²From Currie's book, page 45ff: This verse had been an enigma to me for sixteen years, ever since I had been a student at TEDS. I vividly remember standing in a hallway, in conversation with a man whose specialty was eschatology. A young man approached us and asked the specialist about this verse from Zechariah. His question was "If Jesus' sacrifice is final and complete, why will there be sacrifices needed in Jerusalem after the death and resurrection of Jesus?" The scholar's face momentarily clouded with annoyance, and I have never forgotten his next statement. He admitted that he knew of no plausible Evangelical explanation for this passage.

This was my thinking exactly:

"Sharing schools temporarily is not a welcome option" - The Examiner, 9/28/06

they are looking to "temporarily" come into our new middle school when it finally opens for 2007-08 school year. We have been struggling for a great number of years with overcrowding of our own children and have been very creative about accommodating this problem; now our children will finally have a little more breathing room next year.

So now that Upper Freehold has a contaminated site for their new middle school, they would now like to come into our already extremely large classes, overcrowded building, albeit keeping their students and staff separate, from the Millstone children ...

All of our children have, at one time or another, sat in the trailers for one or maybe all of their classes ...

I picked up the first book reviewed here yesterday and would have gotten the second one if it had been available.

When Kenny got his cast a couple of weeks ago, I carefully scheduled the follow-up at a time that would allow me to make my swim aerobics class and not impact his school activities too much.

The doctor's automatic appointment reminder yesterday morning confirmed that. Then, at 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon, in between picking them up at school and visiting the barber shop, the doctor's staff called to reschedule.

"We can see you tomorrow at 8," she said cheerily.

"That won't work," I replied, thinking of my obligation to get Timmy to school, not wanting Kenny to be marked "tardy" and wondering how in the world I could be on the road to Lawrenceville with Kenny and the baby by 7AM.

"The next available time would be Monday at the Yardley office," she offered.

"Yardley?" I asked. "In Pennsylvania," she confirmed.

"No, that's no good," I said. "Then we can't see you ..., " she trailed off and I thought, "What, EVER?"

Then she put me on hold for a moment and came back with "9:45". Better than 8AM but not as good as 11:45, our original appointment time.

I wasn't expecting his cast to come off so it wasn't my intention to keep the appointment at all costs. But, the cast did come off today; the nurse had Kenny slip his hand right out.

The x-ray reveals that the hand has healed nicely. So, it was worth the trouble to be finished with this episode. But I'll always think that my original plan was perfect: allowing me to swim and Kenny to miss only lunch & art instead of his spelling test and music. Best laid plans ...