Here are two examples of Missionary blogs I regularly read.

Joe Holman Live from Bolivia
He just wrote a great post about the locals driving with their headlights off “to save the battery”
He talks about what charges our battery…

But, we want to save our battery. And even though real fellowship will charge us, we think that it will drain us. We have to work late, go to soccer practice, dance recitals, and children’s events. We have to do errands, clean the house, and watch TV. We really don’t have the time to invest in fellowship…that takes a lot of effort and we need to save our energy for. . . . . driving without a light.

Read the full post.

Deputation
Paul posted two pictures of sights that only occur “In Kenya”
Here is one of them…

Click here to read the full post
I have also been closely following his blog as he has been sharing about the politics in Kenya. Talk about being “on the ground”

I’m thankful for blogging because it allows me to keep up to date on what is happening around the world. Thanks Paul and Joe for writing, I’ll be reading and praying for you guys.

Leave a comment and share your favorite missionary blogs.

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Here are are my reactions to the movie.

Disclaimer: I am a Christian who is also a young earth creationist - hence I have a presuppositional bias.

Attacking an idea by comparing it to Hitler and Nazi Germany is one of the oldest debating tricks in the book, the official term is Reductio Ad Hitlerum

The fallacy most often assumes the form of “Hitler (or the Nazis) supported X, therefore X must be evil/undesirable/bad”[2]. The argument carries emotional weight as rhetoric, since in many cultures anything to do with Hitler or Nazis is automatically condemned. The tactic is often used to derail arguments, as such a comparison tends to distract and to result in angry and less reasoned responses.[2] A subtype of the fallacy is the comparison of an opponent’s propositions to the Holocaust.[2] Other variants include comparisons to the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police), to fascism and totalitarianism more generally,[1] and even more vaguely to terrorism.[3] An inverted variant can take the form “Hitler was against X, therefore X must be good.”

I admit I’ve often used forms of this argument in fun debate, but to use it to imply that Darwin is somehow responsible for the holocaust is ridiculous.

The other main tenant of the movie is the personal stories of “oppression” as a result of giving voice to the theory of Intelligent Design (ID). ExpelledExposed.com has the other side to each of these stories.

Even if all the claims of persecution in the movie are true shouldn’t this be expected?

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. [Matt 5:10-11]

If you start with the presupposition that God does not exist - then the theory of evolution makes perfect sense and the theory of creationism or ID is laughable.

Conversely if you start with the presupposition that God does exist then creationism and ID make perfect sense and the theory of evolution ex nihilo is laughable (Yes I am aware of the differences between theistic evolution, ID and literal creationism but that is a subject for another time).

When an atheist looks at the big question marking the origin of matter that is his starting point for investigation. He knows that we currently exist therefore that had to be a cause, hence he has job security until he figures it out.

When an theist looks at the big question marking the origin of the universe he says “God started it all” and then ceases to look for an explanation because he already believes he knows the answer.

Besides all that from a film critics perspective Expelled wasn’t well made. Maybe being silly was planned but the plethora of quick cuts to highlight specific words was very “Privy Lord Seal“.

Reason To Believe has a short article regarding the movie

In Reasons To Believe’s interaction with professional scientists, scientific institutions, universities, and publishers of scientific journals we have encountered no significant evidence of censorship, blackballing, or disrespect. As we have persisted in publicly presenting our testable creation model in the context of the scientific method, we have witnessed an increasing openness on the part of unbelieving scientists to offer their honest and respectful critique.

Our main concern about EXPELLED is that it paints a distorted picture. It certainly doesn’t match our experience. Sadly, it may do more to alienate than to engage the scientific community, and that can only harm our mission.

In summery Expelled wasn’t a great documentary and will do nothing more than make those who already agree join in the chorus of “help I’m being oppressed” and make those who already disagree say “Look at the bunch of “unintelligent people being fooled by Ben Stein”.

Sadly most “creationists” are happy to write books critiquing evolutionary theory, many times twisting evolutionary theory to make it easier to “disprove”. Would they not be better off “doing science” from a creationist perspective? A rare though but there are Creationists out there doing a good job. Kurt Wise for example was called “A honest creationist” by Richard Dawkins, a statement that won’t be made regarding Ben Stein. P.S. Dr. Wise was also my science professor in college.

Well now I expect to get quite a few comments taking issue with my critique of the movie. Just remember when I attack your arguments I am not attacking you personally.

Helpful Linkss
ExpelledTheMovie.com
ExpelledExposed.com
Scientific American
Reason.org - Statement
CreationBiology.org

Helpful Videos

Expelled the Trailer

The Violence Inherent in the system

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Be Real and Be Accessible

By being real and accessible you do two things.

First you aren’t full of hype, people like honesty and they don’t like fake stuff. Sure lying can work in the short term but long term it completely fails, and here is a secret, the internet is long term. If you put it up it can stay up 4-ev-er!

Second the internet is used for communicating, as will all other communicating audience participation is key, people want to feel involved, relevant and important. This is why we have talk radio instead of monologue radio, American Idol instead of “listen to a famous person sing” it’s by blogging is huge and why the wall on facebook is the thing you really care about.

People don’t want to listen all the time, they want to talk back.

Here is a recent story that illustrates this perfectly

NPR has a new radio program called the Bryant Park Project (BPP) they interview regular people about unique things.

They also blog - they use Twitter - and facebook

I first started following them on Twitter then started listening to their show every now and then.

They tweeted about the California ruling (which I had just blogged about) and mentioned their blog

I went to the blog and commented [right over here]

They emailed me and asked if I would do an interview

I said yes

They called and we chatted for about 10-15 minutes

I hung up

They put a few seconds on the radio

[link - here it is]

Analyze:

NPR the BPP included me and made me feel relevant, I got chosen because I was real (a real live homeschool graduate) and I was accessible, I was on Twitter, I commented on their blog. Now I’m more likely to talk about the BPP and now I’m their friend on facebook. A win for them and a win for me, this is the internet done well.

That’s all.

Be Real and Be Accessible!

questions, comments, interviews, let’s talk
ethandemme@gmail.com 717-556-0333

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One of the problems a startup company faces is wether to start with a free based or a fee based business model. Everyone want’s to be the next google so most start with a free based model then once they get a bunch of folks on board they ad another tier of “extras for a fee” sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t.

Twitter is a great, simple, fast, easy to use microblog that has attracted a ton of users. But they are free and there aren’t many options that could be added that anyone would pay for, because hey we already love what were getting for free.

I know Joel Comm says I should give away ideas but I believe in generosity so I’m giving this idea away for free (I’ll add a subscription fee if they implement it j/k)

This is how Twitter can keep the base and make money all while making twitter more fun, a win win win

The solution set a bandwidth limit to twitter so that when the limit is reached rolling blackouts randomly affect users who aren’t on a premium account. Twitter’s draw is that it is up do the second microblogging, time is of the essence and during a big twitter event, like super tuesday or #sxsw the rolling blackouts will go into effect unless you pay a monthly/quarterly/weekly small fee to get your own slice of guaranteed bandwidth.

For those casual users or those wanting to try the service out a rolling blackout doesn’t really make a diffence, but for the twitterholics who think the “need to know” they will be more than happy to pay 2-4 bucks a month for twitter.

But what can make this fun is if Twitter also set’s up a rewards system for the high end of twitter where the people at the top (based on some sort of internal algorithm) have a score attached to their profile and if you reach a certain score you get “free premium” twitter that you can either keep or give to another tweeter.

The key to the leaderboard is to make it something attainable and also a based on personal prowess not some “we featured you” list.

Also if I’m paying 3 bucks a month for the service I will defiantly use it more, paying a small price will give it more worth and as a result more satisfaction a la Seth Godin

That is how Twitter can start to make some money without making all us tweeters mad at them

The other option is for Twitter is to get purchased by a big company who will continue the free service.

Follow me on Twitter

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*warning major geek talk used in this post, if you don’t understand what the heck I’m talking about don’t worry

Hello my name is Ethan and I am a tech geek…. hi ethan

I spend a lot of time on the internets and have “virtually” met tons of really cool people. I have actually met quite a few of these people in real life. First through Xanga I met some great people then met them for real when I traveled to California. I them met some more folks via twitter down in Washington DC both at the Heritage foundation’s modern media strategies workshop and at CPAC.

But there are a ton of cool people in the world and I can’t “follow” all of them.

So in my ruminations of this subject I have decided that the megatrend is for people worldwide to connect but the counter trend is for the Internet to get very local.

One tool that I’ve begun using to achieve the local nature of the internet is Twitter.com. I discovered @KnownHuman while using the Super tuesday Google Maps/Twitter mashup which would display election related tweets via their location on Google maps.

And when he tweets about local supermarkets I am much more interested than when @scobleizer tweets about a restaurant in Southern California. This local interest makes the internet much more engaging.

So I went on a quest to find all the people in Lancaster, PA on Twitter, I used google to search site:twitter.com location lancaster pa

hat tip to Radical Behavior

And I found several people whom I am now following.

Here is my local list for Tweeter’s in Lancaster, PA If you know of any more please leave a comment

Matthew Harrington
@penti

Lon Farenwald
@lfaren
http://ghostwheel.net/

P. Bradley Robb
@KnownHuman
http://www.bradleyrobb.net/

Ethan Demme (me)
@ethand
http://ethandemme.com

Paul Rothrock
@icelander
http://www.movetoiceland.com/

Josh Babetski
@quixado
http://www.quixoticbravado.com/

@tracibabe

Kristofer Harzinski
@kharzinski
http://www.krisharzinski.org/

Morgan Kochel
@Alkhemist
http://www.ziki.com/en/alkhemist
http://zodpa.blogspot.com/

Admittedly this works well in a small non techie town like Lancaster Pennsylvania but try it out and see who you can find.

Comments?

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Here is what HSLDA has to say,

A California Court of Appeal recently decided that homeschooling is illegal in California unless a parent is a certified teacher.

The case arose in a confidential juvenile court proceeding. The family was represented by court-appointed attorneys and HSLDA did not become aware of the case until the Court of Appeal case was published on February 28, 2008.

The Court could have restricted its decision to the facts before it, but instead, it issued a broad ruling that effectively outlaws home education in California. The Court also certified its decision for publication, which means that the decision can now be cited as legal authority by all other courts in California.

Emphasis added. After reading this I googled it and read the actual court ruling, all 18 pages of it and then I read the background of the case, all 47 pages.

Here is the actual Court Ruling [link]

For more info on the family in question read this court record of their previous run in’s with the California legal system [link]

Some facts:

First “homeschooling” technically has never been legal in California.

To homeschool in California you have 3 options HSLDA gives 4 [link]

1. Send your kids to the public school where the teachers have to be certified
2. Send your kids to a private school where the teachers don’t have to be certified (homeschoolers can create their own private schools)
3. Hire a private tutor who has to be certified by the state
4th option go with an umbrella school (which is what the family in question did)

The 4th option is the one that was ruled as not legal. So worst case scenario the umbrella school system in California is threatened. Parents however can still create a private school for their kids.

For more information check out Ned Ryun’s Blog over at the Madison Project, he is the former HSLDA-PAC director and knows his stuff. [link]

Or read the California Education FAQ page here [link]

Also a hat tip to Doc who also has good information on this issue.

Personally I think this furious uproar does two things, 1) it gets the homeschool community all fired up and unified but the 2nd thing it does is create negative marketing for homeschoolers, the uproar basically says that homeschoolers are uneducated and don’t do their homework.

So check the story and ruminate on it before you email all your friends. And if I’m wrong let me know but please quote the actual source.

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I’ll probably end up buying an Apple TV in the next 6 months.

And the iPod changed the game before the game needed changing.

It seems that some people resist change, longing for the old days while few have the vision and the chutzpah to make that vision a reality.

Allow me to share with you a few quotes from macrumors.com in which the first news of the iPod was leaked back in 2001, which cost 399.00 for the 5gb model.

major hat tip to @Aadom

All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field™ is starting to warp Steve’s mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off.

I’d call it the Cube 2.0 as it wont sell, and be killed off in a short time…and it’s not really functional.

I still can’t believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new! I want them to think differently!
Why oh why would they do this?! It’s so wrong! It’s so stupid!

Great just what the world needs, another freaking MP3 player. Go Steve! Where’s the Newton?!

And there are plenty more where those came from

I was reading an article today that said Blockbuster and Netflix is better than purchasing an apple TV because it would cost less.

Netflix and Blockbuster Video have a clear advantage over these services: [apple TV and HD cable

Here is why they are wrong. First they assume you already have a blu-ray player which most people don’t. A good blu-ray player will run you 200-400+ dollars.

But here is why apple TV is better and will take off like the iPod

Blu-ray and renting from blockbuster isn’t different
Blu-ray doesn’t make your life easier, it’s just a fancy DVD player
Most people are perfectly content with their DVD player, some still have VHS players *gasp

listening to music is a shared experience
watching movies is even MORE of a shared experience

when you watch a video on someone else’s apple TV you WILL talk about it. You WILL want to use it and you most likely will buy one when you decide you want HD on your HDTV. It gets to be even more social when you show people your photo collection, listen to music and watch YouTube in your living room instead of huddled around your computer in the other room.

Now us geeks already have cool setups, for example I have an older mac that is my media server and is hooked up to my TV, I can view pictures on it, listen to music and rent movies from iTunes (though not HD) but my setup is “geeky” because you need training to run it. You couldn’t walk into my house and easily figure out how to turn everything on and get it running.

Sure the technology exists to do all this without an iPod or apple TV but it’s not easy, the early mp3 player were complicated, other video streaming hardware is complicated and by complicated I mean my mom couldn’t use any of it.
So in conclusion people like change and they like to be different but people are also lazy and don’t want to work hard at being different.

Apple TV and the iPod make it easy to be different

p.s. Barack Obama is using the same marketing style - it’s easy for regular people who don’t know about the issues to support Barack, people want change but don’t want to work for it. Hence the people who do work for it and make it easy - make the money, get the votes.

The rest of us just blog about it

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Talking to folks afterwards

The talk was sponsored by the Coalition of Homeschoolers Across Lancaster County (CHALC) and the topic was Homeschooling Teens and New Family Dynamics.

My Dad speaking

One of the members of the CHALC board (get it?)
had this to say on her blog…

After Steve Demme spoke his son, Ethan, came up. This guy connected with everyone so well and with such humor. Mikey said afterward he felt like he was watching a stand up comedian. The points that this 25 year old homeschooled, college graduate got across were great!

Between the two speakers here are the highlights:
1. The Love of God for us and then the Love within the family.
2. Children are to obey their parents.
3. Parents are responsible for the instruction of their children.
4. Fathers are reminded not to provoke their children to the point of anger.
5. That parents should not be hypocrites. Our children know us better than we know ourselves.
6. The importance of the company we keep.
7. How important it is to understand the learning style and personality of each child. It matters!
8. That we are raising these children to be adults so there is a time that is hard for all involved as changes happen and we let go more and more…
9. God has no grandchildren and so the spiritual walk of the child will be different from ours. We are not making clones of ourselves, spiritually.
10. Teaching kindness and compassion for others.

Read the full post here

I think I may just have to try that stand up comedian thing sometime

If you missed out and would like to see my dad and I speak, we will be doing a full family seminar Feb 22-23 and Feb 29-Mar1st.

Check out my dad’s website TheFamilyThatStaysTogether.com for more details and to sign up.

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I won’t bother going into the whole HSLDA-PAC i.e. Michael Farris’ endorsement of Mike Huckabee. If you really want the DL on that fiasco read Ned Ryun’s blog (former HSLDA-PAC director) especially this post on the HSLDA and Huckabee. I just recently discovered Ned’s blog and I have to admit his Political blogging is top notch. If you are interested he also has a great post on McCain.

Foremost in the “movement” are the Harris twins, writers of the rebelution, who have also helped found HucksArmy. Oh and they emailed Chuck Norris and helped persaude him to endorse Huckabee. If you wan the full scoop on this check out David All’s post at TechRepublican.

So why all the buzz about a mere 2+ million homeschoolers? Here are a few thoughts on the matter. Voter turnout and campaign involvement. Let’s face it, a significant percentage of homeschoolers will brave the cold wet weather today in South Carolina to get out and vote. If you just taught you kids about civics and doing your duty as an American citizen how can you face your kids and say “it was too cold to vote today jimmy.” I remember going into the voting booth every election with my dad so “I could learn how to vote.”

Also homeschoolers are great at organizing and spreading the word. As marketing director for Math-U-See (a homeschool math curriculum) I see this every day. I read several hundred homeschooling mom’s blogs every day and there are quite a few vocal Huckabee supporters along with a bunch of vocal Ron Paul supporters. I have yet to see any really vocal support for any other candidates. Yes their are a few Obama, Edwards, Hillary, and Thompson supporters but the majority of the “vocal” support lies in the Huckabee and Paul camps. Homeschoolers like Ron Paul because he, like them, is anti establishment and advocates people (read parents) making their own decisions. Homeschoolers like Huckabee because he has gotten a lot of “Free homeschool press” i.e. HSLDA.

But am seeing a trend among younger homeschoolers, aged 18-29, to make up their own mind. (I’ll start adding “we” to the equation since I am in that age group) We next generation homeschoolers are making our own decisions about this election and often disagree with the “party line (read HSLDA).” And this is a good thing. For years our parents, debate teachers, worldview leaders have been teaching critical thinking, how to analyze arguments etc. When you’ve been teaching a generation to think critically don’t be surprised when they disagree with you. In fact such disagreement is the fruit that teachers/parents should strive for.

In summary, homeschoolers are much more active politically than their neighbors but the next generation is looking much different, politically, than their parents. I know quite a few fellow homeschool alumni who will be voting for Barack Obama and not for Mike Huckabee this coming election.

Thus endeth my ramblings about homeschoolers and politics, please leave feedback in the comments section.

Full Disclosure: I am a homeschool Alumnus as well as a political blogger at TechRepublican and MyMcCainBlog.com

p.s. what’s a political post with out a prediction. My prediction for South Carolina, Huckabee will win with McCain coming in close second. Oh and Romney will take Nevada

Comments?

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drum roll…..

Facebook.com - A place for friends

Over the past year I have been able to keep up with friends, get a glimpse of what is going on in their lives and be able to participate (to some extent) in their joys and sorrows. Facebook also allows me the opportunity to strengthen new friendships and discover facets of people that I can then use in real world conversation.

Facebook has also enabled me to meet people who’s blogs I regularly read. All in all facebook has been a blast, my mom and grandmother have even joined. My prediction for 2008 Facebook is only going to get bigger and better.

If you are on facebook (and you should be) add me as a friend.

TED.com - Technology, Entertainment and Design. Ideas worth spreading.

The website describes itself as “Inspired talks by the worlds greatest thinkers and doers.” Basically it is a grand buffet of the coolest and most interesting speakers talking about the big ideas that will shape our world. Cost to go to a TED talk… 6,000+ (after you get an invitation). Cost to watch the same talk on your computer… FREE!

Seth Godin talks about Sliced Bread and Marketing…

Check it out, subscribe to the podcast, and prepare to learn something.

Bonus round

Top two technologies of 2007

RSS feeds and Twitter - I’m a geek, I read over 250 blogs every day and because they information still doesn’t come fast enough I use Twitter to read the microblogs of the people who’s blogs I read. If you understood that then follow me on twitter

What were your two favorite websites of 2007?

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