Between Posts

I don't know if this is eerie, funny, interesting or boring . All of the above? None of the above? But I'm sure it's a rare, one in a million (billion?) response from AI, in which AI reveals its "thought" process in addition to the response to my actual prompt: "How many elections has Lina Hidalgo won for Harris County Texas Judge?"  I'm sure you can pick out the portions where Gemini AI is thinking about how, and if, it should respond. Some of it is funny. Some is scary and disturbing. All (to me) is intriguing. If nothing else, the "Reply only..." Instructions are an intriguing peek into the wokeness and censorship programmed into AI. The Gemini Conversation, in its entirety (AI "thoughts and mental musings highlighted): My Prompt:  How many elections has Lina Hidalgo won for Harris County Texas Judge? Gemini's Response (process (thinking) in italics ): Let me get the specific dates and facts right. Lina Hidalgo was elected in 20...

  If you have ever suffered from what the Reformers and Puritans called "melancholy" (the closest modern terminology is "clinical depression"), you might consider perusing the attached. Start at User Prompt 3 (or at the beginning if you prefer). Melancholy, I have come to understand, is rooted deeply in the DNA of my ancestors on my father's side of the Family Tree, and in their progeny. Not so much endemic as recurring. Reformed Christianity generally, and the Puritans specifically, dealt with Melancholy under the umbrella of Christian Ethics and Morality, or how we OUGHT to live compared to how we ACTUALLY live. As a result, there are many great works on what melancholy is, and how Christians should approach it. Timothy Rogers' "Trouble of Mind, and the Disease of Melancholy" is on my bookshelf, and is a constant source of comfort for me. Reading through Rogers' book with your Bible at hand doesn't always obliterate the melancholy, but it...

Mainstream Media refused to cover this speech . Isn't it strange...but in no way funny...that most people in the country are hungry for the declassification of UFO files, but those same people scoff at the idea of corruption in our elections; or, maybe they just don't care about the latter. Satan is roaming Western Civilization to see whom he might devour. The mainstream press and Democrat party are hanging out "Eat at Joe and Barack's Diner" banners. On the menu: Boiled frog, aka U.S. citizens. Read the Election Integrity papers.

  There has been an outpouring of liberal gobbledygook and unbiblical misrepresentation from unbelievers in relation to the recent decision of the Southern Baptist Convention to officially restrict the role of pastor to men. The word "officially" is crucial here. Because what the SBC did was not to create new doctrine, as some charge, but to affirm what the word of God says. For me, the issue was put to bed when the charge was first made, which really means that it was never an issue among Sola Fide, reformed Christians to begin with. For those few self-proclaiming Christians who still cannot quite bring themselves to submit to the entirety of God's word, I offer this final bit of godly agreement with the SBC's decision. I pray that you will be convinced and convicted. If not, then I will shake the dust off my feet and leave your house.

I NEITHER ENDORSE OR OPPOSE THIS GROUP. I just liked this post on Facebook.

Because I was (am) concerned about the likelihood of any sustainable, new "secular" government in Iran, I posed the following question to Gemini AI. I found the answer quite interesting, and thought to share it with the world. 

VALENTINE'S DAY IS COMING UP...

There used to be (and still is, as far as I know), an old saying: "The only companies with Unions are those that deserve them." It seems to me that the equivalent in today's organizations would be this: "The only companies that still have DEI programs and initiatives, are those that need them."

  DEAR PROGRESSIVE, LIBERAL, SOCIALIST DEMOCRATS: Please Read the Following, then try to connect this story to your personal political rendition of "keeping the law." "In the late 1920's the Texas Rangers and the Texas National Guard were deployed to Borger, Texas. The Texas Rangers acted as a paramilitary police force, raiding gambling halls, destroying stills, and arresting fugitives, but they could not fully uproot the entrenched corruption in the local government and police force. When the violence climaxed with the assassination of District Attorney John A. Holmes on September 18, 1929, Governor Dan Moody escalated the response by sending in what has been described as a "full military occupation force," consisting mostly of the Texas National Guard. Martial Law was declared. Under martial law, the National Guard effectively took over the town. They disarmed local deputies, forced the resignation of the corrupt mayor and police chief, and established a ...

THIS ONE HITS CLOSE TO HOME. I was relieved to discover that given the opportunity to steal $450 million of federal taxpayer dollars, the Houston-Galveston Area Council (HGAC) decided to steal "only" $25 million to purchase new busses for the city of The Woodlands. And only then because the HGAC slush fund might be in jeopardy if they did not do something—anything!—with some of the slush-fund money. So, the HGAC has accumulated unspent Federal funds to the tune of nearly 1/2 of a BILLION dollars, and their biggest worry is how to hold on to it, because they obviously don't really need it, but they will not, or cannot, give it back. Now, this is just one slush fund from one Federal agency in one American City. Multiply that by slush funds for dozens of other government agencies and programs and it all adds up to a tidy sum of Swamp-bucks. Altogether, these DOT slush funds alone across the country must add up to tens of billions of dollars (probably more). Where is DOGE whe...

During Donald Trump's 2019 State of the Union address, he made the following statement: "Here in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence, not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country." I voted for Mr. Trump twice, both times with reservations. The second time I voted for him, I had no reservation greater than the one that resulted from the quote above. Was President Trump's declaration of the United States as a socialist-free (or socialist-resistant) nation the result of someone who was completely ignorant of history; or someone who was incapable of contrasting and comparing the present-day government to the government of the founding fathers; or someone who was merely a wishful thinker? I believe it was a combination of "all of the above." I think M...

  And you will find yourself reacting with "that's not what I meant" or "Stupid AI!" All kinds of training course offers on "AI for everyday people" are popping up all over the Internet. But here's the problem: Many of the people who sign up for those courses are either functionally illiterate or semi-literate. One of the critical keys to using AI is the user's ability to form grammatically-correct questions. I liken an AI inquiry to a spreadsheet formula. If all you are capable of doing is forming a simple spreadsheet formula, you aren't nearly as productive as someone who can form a complex formula. If you are not capable of forming a complex question using impeccable grammar, you are going to get in return a bunch of "I don't understand" or "Did you mean..." or "I cannot return an answer because..." results.  I remember sometime back in the 1980's or '90's reading an article about a new techn...

  The greatest existential threat to any nation is NEVER,  The Opposition Political Party. Climate Change. Natural Disasters. Food and Water Shortages. Disease. War with Other Nations. Civil War. The Education System. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Religious Division. Crime. The Internet. Social Media. Artificial Intelligence. The greatest existential threat to any and all nations is ALWAYS, un-Godliness.

 Without commentary, sharing this resourc e from Ligonier Ministries. Blessings.

Some 322 years ago a 28-year-old Scot by the name of Henry Scougal lost his life to disease. Scougal shared many personal attributes and accomplishments with Charlie Kirk. He took on significant roles at an unheard of age, such as teaching Philosophy at a college when he was 20. His subsequent ministry was spent primarily as a Professor on university campuses. When Scougal was nearing death in his 28th year, he wrote a treatise called "The Life of God in the Soul of Man." The treatise was a private letter to a personal friend, not intended to be published more broadly. "…but  Bishop Burnet,  seeing  it,  appreciated  it  so  highly that  he hastened  to  give  it  to  the  world with the  most  generous  and earnest  commendation.  "It  was written," he says, "by a pious and learned countryman of mine, for the private use of a noble friend of the author's, without the least design of...

Christians, I am one of those niggling Reformed Christians who believe that the office of Apostle has ceased. In that regard, I do not consider Charlie Kirk to have been an apostle. I also don’t consider you an apostle. And I don’t esteem myself an apostle.  But I do believe that Jesus certainly intended for us to follow the examples of the Apostles, and to experience the same kind of reactions to our Christian lives lived in obedience; and I would be surprised if Charlie Kirk did not agree. There are many passages in the Bible that we can cite in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Perhaps none are more appropriate, comforting and necessary than the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.  I won’t reproduce Matthew 10 here, as you have (or should have) your Bible to consult. I will only say, that for those in the media and otherwise in the public eye, who are trying to make sense of it all, and who are asking questions about how we ought respond to not just Ch...

  The Assistant Director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently posted the article: 8 Barbaric Criminal Illegal Aliens Finally Deported to South Sudan After Weeks of Delays by Activist Judges One of the questions that the article does not address—and something that came to my mind immediately—was this: Why would anybody who has even a semblance of fear and dread left in his otherwise completely seared conscience want to risk getting deported to South Sudan?  As the article pointed out, these criminals are so heinously bad that their countries of origin won't take them back. That leaves them with few options other than being deported to some human hell-hole of a nation like South Sudan. First, they can just take their chances and hope they will never get caught and deported from the United States. With recent SCOTUS decisions making that much less unlikely, and with no notable decrease in the Trump Administration's campaign to remove these worst-of-the-worst ille...

  The Point of Singularity (The Big Bang), and Darwinian macro-evolution: Such an extravagant fancy as this can only possess the thoughts of a disordered brain . "2. The production of the world could not be by chance. It was indeed the extravagant fancy of some ancient philosophers, that the origin of the world was from a fortuitous concourse of atoms, which were in perpetual motion in an immense space, till at last a sufficient number of them met in such a happy conjunction as formed the universe in the beautiful order in which we now behold it. But it is amazingly strange how such a wild opinion, which can never be reconciled with reason, could ever find any entertainment in a human mind. Can any man rationally conceive, that a confused rout of atoms, of diverse natures and forms, and some so far distant from others, should ever meet in such a fortunate manner, as to form an entire world, so vast in the bigness, so distinct in the order, so united in the diversities of natures,...

WikiMedia Commons As I pondered the recent Democratic primary in which Zohran Mamdani, a Communist, Socialist, Marxist Muslim, I was led to the following passage (and many others) from Vol 1 of "The Works of Thomas Boston." Communism, Socialism and Marxism are, by definition and choice, atheistic philosophies. And atheism is the foundation that makes all these socio-political movements (Communism, Socialism and Marxism) devastating not only to cities and nations, but to the human soul. Without the God of the Bible, there is nothing but destruction and hopelessness. We should not want that for NYC or any other city. We should not want that for the United States, or any other country. We should not want that for our families, or for our own souls. I urge you to read, digest and meditate on the following. I urge you to share this post. "Atheism is of pernicious consequence both to others and to the atheist himself. To others: for (1.) It would root out the foundation of gov...