Echoes in Eternity

2011 was also the year that this blog died.  Tomorrow marks the 5th anniversary of the start of this blog, so it is appropriate that I wrap it up today 880 posts later.  The blog evolved a lot over the years, but recently my interest in keeping it going has waned (in case you hadn't noticed), along with the time required to invest in it.  Three kids can tend to do that.  It was fun while it lasted.  I got to give out a bunch of books via March Madness bracket competitions, and post Best of the Year movie awards, and highlight good articles and columns by Mark Steyn, Doug Wilson, Theodore Dalrymple, among many others.

The top 5 most viewed pages:
1. Pay No Attention to that Burning Ball of Gas!
2. Babies and Abortion, Part II
3. Wilson on Twilight, Cartoon Porn, and Domestic Abuse (the traffic for this post was largely due to the word "porn" in the title)
4. I See Old People
5. A Good Sign

The most commented on post was easily this one ("Mike" and I went back and forth for awhile about the ethics of killing in defense of an innocent).

For those still reading, thanks for joining me for at least some of this five-year journey and for the occasional comment.  Adios.

Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity. - Maximus in "Gladatior"

The Paul Harvey of the TV world passed away today.

This is sad news. Columbo is one of my favorite shows of all-time and I just recently began to watch a few of the old ones on Netflix. Columbo always got his man but not before convincing everyone that he was an absent-minded bumbling fool. He would always figure out the crime but due to the lack of any corroborating evidence, he'd set the suspect up in such a way as to show his guilt. Peter Falk played him perfectly, and actually some of his work as Columbo was complete improv on his part.

"Just one more thing."

In memory of just a few of the many who lost their lives from tornadoes here in the Midwest this past week...




A father and his two little ones shopping at Home Depot...

And my 100 year old great grandpa Chester...


To dust they all returned...

As many people know by now, Elizabeth Edwards, wife of one-time senator and full-time scoundrel John Edwards, passed away this week from cancer. I hope she finds in the next life the faithful Husband that she never found in this life. Unfortunately, this interview doesn't give much hope that she knew Christ as her savior. In it, she says that she decided that God wasn't one who intervenes but one that "promises salvation and enlightenment." Now that last part is true (though what she meant by that is anyone's guess), but the first part shows that she had a confused understanding of God, probably stemming from a Prosperity Gospel-ish view of Him. If God doesn't heal you when you ask, then it must mean that He is either unable to heal you or that you don't have enough faith. The Prosperity Gospel never bothers to ask if perhaps it is not His will to heal you. This is a sad example of wrong theology leading to wasted suffering. Praise God for those who don't lose faith in the God that intervenes when they suffer.

RIP, Coach.

A lot of things could be said in response to the ill tidings that the health care monstrosity has been all but passed, but suffice it to say that this is one of the worst days in the history of American politics in many decades. Probably the only worse day in the last 50 years is the day Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. Some will say that up until this point we were a capitalistic country who largely had free markets and this suddenly has ended all that. They would be wrong; we've been a socialist-lite economy since Roosevelt (and later Johnson) corrupted it with his New Deal. What today marks is the day our freedom was euthanized after decades of life support.

I sense a rebellion growing... a groundswell of outrage that will not soon be quenched. Channeling Pandora, Obama has opened a box that cannot be closed.

After one commenter on my Ave Atque Vale post mentioned that remembering that the ultimate end of all people, celebrities included, is death can be the best available lead-in to the Gospel, I thought a follow-up post with a few pictures of their graves might further drive home that very point.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1,370,000 aborted babies, which in pennies stacks 1 1/4 miles high.