Ed Stoffel

Some are complaining about Christians in the military, particularly those at the Pentagon who openly express their faith on the job. Funny how these complainers don't express the same outrage about actual religious extremists who want to kill us all...

The Defense Department is looking into how access was granted a year ago to an evangelical Christian group that shot a promotional video inside the Pentagon. It included active duty military officers speaking on the group's behalf while in uniform. A Pentagon spokesman said Monday the Defense Department had received a letter from a religious freedom watchdog group raising questions about whether the access granted to the Christian Embassy violated the Constitution or regulations prohibiting military endorsement of any one religion or religious organization. Christian Embassy Executive Director Robert Varney said his organization was granted permission by the Defense Department... Maj. Stewart Upton emphasized several points about Defense Department policy, including that it does not endorse any one religion or religious organization; it provides free access of religion for all members of the military services...

 Inspector General Looking Into Christian Group's Film Taped at Pentagon, Fox News

 Pentagon Pentagon Evangelism Called 'National Security Threat', CNS News

In a time when the most bizarre student groups are recognized, colleges and universities continue to fight the existence of Christian groups on campus. Brown University is one example of this, suspending Reformed University Fellowship, a Presbyterian Church in America student group from meeting on campus. Brown now says the group may be reinstated with certain conditions, though it is unclear whether these terms and conditions apply equally to all student groups:

[Brown University's Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life] OCRL derecognized RUF in September under dubious pretenses. First, OCRL claimed that Trinity Presbyterian Church had withdrawn its support for RUF; this was patently false and Trinity senior pastor David Sherwood immediately e-mailed OCRL to assert the church’s support for RUF. Then OCRL claimed that RUF had not been a recognized student organization since the previous year because RUF’s then-adviser had failed to punctually submit the proper paperwork (even though RUF’s current adviser had turned in this year’s paperwork in a timely manner). OCRL also claimed that RUF’s leadership had created a “culture of contempt and dishonesty,” but never responded to RUF’s request for specific examples of contemptuous and dishonest conduct.

 Continue Reading: Brown University Agrees to Reinstate Suspended Religious Organization, But Concerns Remain, The Torch

Pig starts out thinking big...

...but rat convinces him to think small. I'm wondering how often it's that way with God and prayer. Do we pray for big things or is God just in charge of things like yo-yos?

Does faith emasculate men? Christian Evangelist Brad Stine says so, in an article written by Jenny Jarvie and Stephanie Simon of the LA Times:

"Thank you, Lord, for our testosterone!" It's an apt anthem for a contrarian movement gaining momentum on the fringes of Christianity. In daybreak fraternity meetings and weekend paintball wars, in wilderness retreats and X-rated chats about lust, thousands of Christian men are reaching for more forceful, more rugged expressions of their faith. Stine's daylong revival meeting, which he calls "GodMen," is cruder than most. But it's built around the same theory as the other experimental forums: Traditional church worship is emasculating. ..."for heaven's sakes, don't ask the guys to take the hand of the guys next to them. That scares them to death."

 Continue Reading: Manliness is next to godliness, Los Angeles Times

I got file sharing working on my desktop computer finally... by formatting the drive and reinstalling WinXP SP2. Otherwise, how many days was I going to spend trying to solve the problem? As I reinstall all my applications, I'll be watching closely to be sure nothing turns file sharing back off. My shared documents appear on other machine's "network places" and I'm now able to ping the desktop machine, even from itself.

As I continue to search for the answer to my file-sharing troubles, I came across the article Establish the correct file-sharing permissions in Windows XP. It seems that there's a difference between network permission and file access permission, and this article explains the difference. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that file access is my problem.

I did try adding another protocol - View Network Connections | Local Area Connection | Properties | General tab | Install. I added the "NWLink IPX/SPX/Netbios Compatible Transport Protocol" and now my machine name appears on my own network neighborhood as well as my laptop computer. But the laptop still cannot browse my desktop computer, and I still can't ping my desktop machine from itself or any other machine. Could it be the ethernet hardware adapter itself?