Modern communication offers many wonderful advantages. But it might be a mistake to forget that these come at a cost. This came to mind the other day when I happened onto a conversation with a fellow from Amesville, whose way of saying things — accent and usage — are what we might have found here a century ago.
I’ve always enjoyed exploring. Every time I’ve moved from one residence to another, I’ve always wandered around my new neighborhood, simply to see what was there. It’s the same with computer technology. I love poking around operating systems. Lately, one aspect of this has gotten tiring in every Open Source operating system: the rolling release. The phrase refers to the sometimes feverish effort to add new features, long before the old ones even work properly. Thus, every day sees sometimes radical changes in various projects, new features and new bloat.
Did you hear the old saw? If you live near me, you did. People have asked, so I suppose it’s right to tell: yes, the woodstove got installed and yes, the ornery old locust tree that had been the bane of my timber disassembly efforts has gotten cut and stacked.
Have you put off your Christmas shopping just a little too long and now you are panicking what to get those still on your shopping list? Never fear; the editorial team at OFB has gathered some of our favorite gift ideas, starting at under $5, and have even noted a few that you can still get shipped online if you'd rather avoid the holiday bustle of brick-and-mortar stores.
The holiday season can be a little bit of a minefield, especially in a place where everyone is a good cook and many are great cooks. Let me tell you what I mean.
Few gestures can be as delightful as a hearty “Merry Christmas” this time of year. Yet the phrase has become embroiled in a “culture war,” the most recent salvo of which came from the pro-Christmas American Family Association, which sought to get its members to turn against retailer Costco, after Costco started favoring “holiday” over “Christmas.”
Wisdom and depth are often found in quiet country folk.
We live in a world where it is common for total strangers to confide in us the most intimate details of their favorite subject: themselves. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, I think, and it wasn’t always the case. Once upon a time, a degree of genteel reserve was thought to be one of the fundamentals of politeness. Now it’s all but extinct.
In a recent commentary at ZDNet, software developer Jeremy Allison considered one of the most problematic issues with adoption of the Linux operating system: even in cash strapped parts of the world, people don’t want it. I'm not too deeply disturbed those poor souls in Africa don't want Linux. What strikes me so deeply has to do with perception.
It could be genetic. My father was a reporter and columnist, too.
What makes me think of this just now is something he wrote in his column more than 40 years ago. Though it was written in early October, I always think of it and re-read it around Thanksgiving. It sums up the season for me better than anything else. I think that you might find it nice, too.
Churches are constantly trying to find ways to bring in people and convince them to come back each and every Sunday. Often the method of drawing people in has to do with offering a particular “style of worship” to get the people excited. OFB's Ed Hurst examines how we worship in an attempt to reach a “principle of worship.”