I heard a great story yesterday on This American Life that was apparently a repeat, but I hadn’t heard it before so it was new to me. I only caught the first act, but it was a hilarious true story of a kid named Alex who got shipwrecked on a desert island in the middle of New York City. The island he got stuck on is Ruffle Bar which is situated in the middle of Jamaica Bay to the Southeast of New York City, within two miles of civilization on all sides. The story involves drinking and some generally irresponsible behavior which I should say I don’t condone. What makes this story so entertaining is the irony that someone could get stuck on a deserted island so close to civilization.
I can’t link straight to the episode because This American Life has a horrible archiving system (no permalinks!), but if you want to find it (to order a CD or whatnot), go to This American Life, click the 2006 archive on the left sidebar, and look for the episode that originally aired February 3 titled “In the Shadow of the City”. What I can provide a link to, though, is the streaming audio feed for this particular episode: Listen. Enjoy! 
Tagged: alex, city, desert, island, miscellany, new-york, new-york-city, npr, ruffle-bar, shadow, shipwrecked, stranded, this-american-life
If you’re a Latter-day Saint, please read this and consider posting a comment. There are a few questions for you and I’d like to get as many responses as possible. Thanks.
I’m starting a personal in-depth study of the book of Galatians and I have a few observations to make and questions to ask.
I’ve noticed that many Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals employ Galatians 1:6-9 when preaching against or defending themselves from each other. Even if you don’t recognize the zip code, you’re probably familiar with the passage:
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.
It’s clear to me from our mutual use of this passage against each other that Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals preach different and incompatible gospels—either one of us or the other is correct, or we are both wrong, but we cannot both be right. When considering a passage like this, whether we are LDS or Evangelical, it’s natural for us to assume we’re the ones with the true gospel and they’re the ones with the false gospel. But how many of us simply jump to that conclusion without reading through the rest of the epistle to see if Paul further expounds upon the gospel he advocates? This is the aim of my present study. I want to get to the bottom of this, not to prove my own beliefs, but to better understand the gospel Paul is really trying to preach here.
Continue reading “Galatians” →
I hear a lot of interesting stories on NPR, so I’m going to start highlighting a few of them from time to time on my blog. Tonight I heard a couple great stories on All Things Considered that I’d like to share.
The first story is about a bizarre problem that’s killing commercial bees all over the U.S. called Colony Collapse Disorder. This is a big deal because a lot of the crops we consume are pollinated by these bees. Here’s the story: “Disease Hits Bees, and Vital Crops Suffer” (Listen).
The second story is about one the best Iranian food chefs in Washington, D.C. The kicker is that he’s not even from Iran. Instead, he’s from El Salvador. He started as a bus boy in an Iranian restaurant and worked his way into the kitchen. Now he owns his own restaurant and flies all over the world to cook for special events. My favorite part of this story is the part about the deeply religious people who are shocked to find out that a Christian Latino had prepared their Islamic Halal dinner (they calm down when they learn he does everything by the book). Here’s the story: “In D.C., Top Iranian Chef Hails From El Salvador” (Listen).
Tagged: all-things-considered, bees, chef, christian, colony-collapse-disorder, crops, el-salvador, environment, food, halal, iranian, islamic, johnny, johnnys-kabob, latino, miscellany, News, npr, pollination, radio, washington-d.c.
