Ray Fowler .org

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Related posts:

• Philosophy Lessons from the Movie Groundhog Day
• Somebody Shoot the Groundhog (one of my crankier posts)

“Once again the eyes of the nation have turned here to this … tiny village in western Pennsylvania. Bla-bla-bla-bla-bla! There is no way … that this winter … is ever going to end … as long as this groundhog keeps seeing his shadow! I dont see any other way out. He’s got to be stopped. And I have to stop him.” (Phil Connors/Bill Murray, “Groundhog Day”)

Update: Wouldn’t you know it? The rascally rodent saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter. Say it isn’t so, Phil!

Michael P. Foley has a great article in Touchstone Magazine exploring some of the philosophical aspects of the movie Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. Ranging from Nietzsche to Machiavelli and Aristotle to Augustine, Foley examines the movie from the vantage point of both philosophy and theology. Here is my favorite excerpt:

Throughout the movie, the groundhog seems to function as Phil’s nonhuman doppelganger. Both are weathermen and they share the same name. Phil suspects a link but wrongly concludes that as long as Phil the groundhog sees his shadow, he will be doomed to relive February 2nd. (This initiates a tragicomic incident in which he kills himself and the groundhog.) But what we eventually come to realize is that it is not Phil the groundhog’s shadow that proves crucial, it is Phil the man’s. As long as Phil wakes up in the morning and sees his shadow, there will be for him more winter, more of the same. But if he awakes without a shadow, he will be given spring, new life.

What is Phil Connors’s “shadow”? It is his vices, his bad habits and sinful ways that detract from and diminish his God-given goodness. The equation of shadow with vice is apposite, since both are, in St. Augustine’s terms, a privation: Shadows are a privation of light, and evil and vice are a privation of the good. Significantly, when one of the townies hears Phil Connors’s name, he teases him with the admonition, “Watch out for your shadow there, pal!” And significantly, the townie’s name is Gus—short, of course, for Augustine.

Great stuff! If you enjoy this movie, definitely check the whole article out.

Related posts:

• Happy Groundhog Day!
• Somebody Shoot the Groundhog (one of my crankier posts)

Hi! Welcome to RayFowler.org and the “Guess the 150th Country” blog contest! It’s easy, it’s fun, and it costs you nothing to enter. While you are here, feel free to browse the Archives Page to get a feel for the site. If you enjoy your visit, be sure to bookmark the site or subscribe by email or feed reader so that you don’t miss any future posts.

The Contest:  I have been keeping track of how many different countries have visited this site since I first started blogging last March. As of today I have had visitors from 149 countries. I ran a similar contest last September when we approached the 100th country mark, so I thought it would be fun to revamp the contest, only this time it is: Guess the 150th country to visit my blog!

The Prize:  a $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate

The Rules:

1. Respond with your best guess in the comments section.
2. One guess allowed per person.
3. The contest closes when the 150th country visits. (One exception: If you are the first visitor from the 150th country, and you are the first person to guess your country, then your guess will be allowed, and you will win!)
4. When a visitor from the 150th country visits the blog, I will check the comments on this post to see who named that country first.
5. I will notify the winner by email and post the winning entry on the blog.

The Tips:

1. Before you guess, be sure to visit the Stats page first to check which countries have already visited.
2. Also before you guess, be sure to check the comments other people have already left to see if someone already guessed a particular country.
3. When you leave your comment, you may want to place a check in the “Subscribe to Comments” box to track the progress of the contest. (When you check this box, future comments from this post will be emailed to you. You can unsubscribe at any time.)

That’s it! I believe there are only about 40 countries remaining, and I don’t know if they all have internet access, so go ahead and guess while you can. You can find a list of all the countries in the world at the Fun Facts link below.

Fun Facts:  How Many Countries In The World?

Now that is a question that’s somewhat difficult to answer, as there is no one right answer. Many sources offer different answers, and depending on the source, there are 189, 191, 192, 193 or 194 independent countries in the world today.

When Steven Spielberg shot the beach scene for Saving Private Ryan, he used 1,000 extras. Watch how these three graphic designers convincingly recreated the storming of Omaha Beach on a shoestring budget in just four days using only themselves as actors and a single carload of basic props.

(Video length: 4:02)

This scene was created for the TIMEWATCH program “Bloody Omaha” shown on BBC.

HT: Evangelical Outpost

It’s tax time! Check out this list of the 13 Most Overlooked Tax Deductions at Yahoo! Finance.

Tax time is a dangerous time. It’s all too easy to miss a trick and overpay Uncle Sam. (If you turned 65 in 2007, don’t forget you deserve a bigger standard deduction than younger folks.)

Years ago, the head of the IRS told Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine that he figured millions of taxpayers overpaid their taxes every year by overlooking just one of the money-savers listed below. Claim them if you deserve them … and cut your tax bill to the bone.

• State sales taxes
• College tuition
• Out-of-pocket charitable contributions
• Child care credit
• Refinancing points
• Reinvested dividends
• Jury pay paid to employer
• … and more!

HT: Get Rich Slowly

This was a promotion by a new radio station in Glasgow City Centre, Scotland.

Link: directdaily

Christianity, culture, creativity and the arts — this has been an area of interest and study for me ever since my days as a student at Berklee College of Music. Here are some of the best books I have read on the subject over the years. Some of these are hard to find, so if you find a good price online, grab them while you can! Here they are, alphabetically by author.

1. The Making of a Christian Mind: A Christian World View & the Academic Enterprise, edited by Arthur Holmes

There are other good books on Christian world view out there, but I have always liked this one. Holmes draws together five concise essays on Christian world view, history, science, psychology and the creative arts.

2. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, by Madeleine L’Engle

You may be familiar with Madeleine L’Engle through her Wrinkle in Time series. Walking on Water is a wide-ranging book exploring the implications of the incarnation for human creativity and the arts.

3. Consider the Lilies: A Plea for Creational Theology, by T. M. Moore

Not sure what creational theology means? This book is a great place to start. Moore lays the biblical foundation for many of the ideas about creativity found in the other books on this page.

4. Art Needs No Justification, by H. R. Rookmaaker

This one is my absolute favorite. Although Rookmaaker deals primarily with the visual arts, his observations are appropriate to all fields of creative work. And it’s only 60 pages long!

5. The Creative Gift: Essays on Art and the Christian Life, by H. R. Rookmaaker

Another great book by Rookmaaker. This one is longer, and Rookmaaker is able to go into much greater detail.

6. The Christian Imagination: Essays on Literature and the Arts, compiled by Leland Ryken

My sister, Bethany, gave this to me on my 22nd birthday. This is a wonderful collection of essays with contributions from C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, Thomas Howard, Flannery O’Connor, Leland Ryken and others. (Note: Some of these essays, but not all of them, appear in Ryken’s more recent book: The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing)

7. Culture in Christian Perspective: A Door to Understanding & Enjoying the Arts, by Leland Ryken

Part of the Multnomah Critical Concern series in the 1980’s, Ryken’s book examines literature, art and music in relation to the Christian faith.

8. Rainbows for the Fallen World: Aesthetic Life and Artistic Task, by Calvin Seerveld

Seerveld wrote this book while a senior member at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. Seerveld’s unbridled enthusiasm for God, Scripture and the arts literally leaps off the pages of this book as Seerveld sets forth a biblical charter for artistic activity.

*Bonus: Here is one that I haven’t read yet, but it looks good. Art for God’s Sake: A Call to Recover the Arts, by Philip Graham Ryken.

So, how about you? Do you have any favorite books on Christianity, culture, creativity and the arts to add to the list?

Related post: God’s Good Creation Series

Tim Challies completed a great two-part interview today with Devin Brown, author of the new book, Inside Prince Caspian.

In the interview, Brown discusses the following questions:

• why he finds C.S. Lewis so interesting
• why the Narnia books have such a wide appeal
• how the Narnia books compare to Harry Potter
• how literary analysis can enhance your understanding of the books
• why you should read the books in their original order
• why you should not read the Narnia books as allegory
• how Lewis compares to Tolkien
• how the first book and film version compare

Here are the links to the interview:

• An Interview with Devin Brown (Part 1)
• An Interview with Devin Brown (Part 2)

Click here for more Narnia and Caspian related posts.
Click here for Narnia sermon series.

Someone once said, “We don’t raise kids anymore. We finance them!” So just how expensive is it to raise a child in the U.S. nowadays? MoneyCentral has an interesting table showing the costs of raising children from birth to age 17/18.

The table … shows the estimated annual costs of raising a child, based on a survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The table shows costs based on a family with two children on a per-child basis. The data comes from the Consumer Expenditure Survey by the U.S. Department of Labor, conducted from 1990-92. The figures have been updated to 2001 dollars using the Consumer Price Index.

The table breaks the figures down into age groups so you can see how much you are spending at the different stages of your child’s life. It also breaks it down into categories for you, so you can see how much you are spending on housing, food, transportation, clothing, health, child care/education, and miscellaneous expenses.

Let’s see, after adjusting the figures for having three or more kids, according to this table each of my children will cost me about $131,254.20 to raise for a grand total of $393,762.60. (Almost $70,000 of that is for food alone!) And that doesn’t even include college! But you know what? They are worth every penny — or dollar!

“Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.” (Psalm 127:3-5)

8/3/2009 update: “A family earning less than $56,870 per year can expect to spend a total of $159,870 (in 2008 dollars) on a child from birth through high school. Similarly, parents with an income between $56,870 and $98,470 can expect to spend $221,190; and a family earning more than $98,470 can expect to spend $366,660. In 1960, a middle-income family could have expected to spend $25,230 ($183,509 in 2008 dollars) to raise a child through age seventeen.” (USDA News Release)

HT: Semper Reformanda

Here is an interesting fact about the 2008 Presidential Elections:

2008 is the first time since 1952 that neither political party has a presidential candidate who is either an incumbent or a sitting vice president.

And here is a list of all the incumbents and/or sitting vice presidents who ran for office in each of the presidential elections since 1952:

Continue Reading »

I just recently finished preaching through a series of messages on God’s Good Creation.   Here are some of the questions we addressed in the series:

    1) What does it mean that God created all things good?
    2) What is our place in this world?
    3) How do the fall and mankind’s sin affect creation?
    4) As Christians, how should we view environmental concerns?
    5) How can we know God better though his creation?
    6) How can we use our creative gifts for God’s glory?

These are all questions relating to creational theology, which is an important part of God’s teaching to us in the Bible. Here are the links to the messages if you would like to explore any of these questions further.

God’s Good Creation Series

1. God’s Good Creation – Genesis 1
       (or click here for a summary)
2. Our Place in God’s Creation – Psalm 8
       (or click here for a summary)
3. Knowing God through His Creation – Psalm 19
       (or click here for a summary)
4. God’s Good Gift of Creativity – Exodus 31
       (or click here for a summary)

Note: Books by Ray Fowler (click on the book images to view on Amazon):

Click here for more books in the Understanding God’s Word series.
 
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“Danger, danger, Will Robinson!” Oh, how I loved this show when I was a kid! It sparked my imagination and gave me a taste for science fiction, adventure, space and fantasy that I still enjoy today. We have all three seasons on DVD, and I enjoyed re-watching them with my boys when they were younger.

Of course, the Lost in Space Robot was one of the main attractions of the show, along with the adventurous Will and the villainous Dr. Smith. My boys still have a toy version of the Robot, but now B9Creations has announced the production and sale of Full Size, Limited Edition, Fully Licensed Replicas of the famous Lost in Space Robot.

They have really gone all out to make these as authentic-looking as possible. The parts are all based on the original molds. You can activate the Robot by remote control. Functions include turning the Robot’s torso left/right, directing the Robot’s voice to respond “Affirmative/Negative” and activating the Robot’s soil sampling sequence. The Robot also comes with over 500 voice tracks by Richard Tufeld, the voice of the original Robot. And here is a neat feature: it has a functional power pack. Pulling the Robot’s “power pack” will shut down the Robot with the “Aaghhhhhh…” sound, just as it did in the TV series.

However, with a price tag of $24,500 I won’t be buying one of these anytime soon. At least the price includes shipping!

HT: Instapundit