But popular as he was, he was not fond of praise. One day after he had concluded an impressive discourse, his friends pressed round to thank him for his "sweet sermon." "Aye," he bluntly answered, "you need not remind me of that; for the devil told me as much before I left the pulpit."

h/t Nixter

h/t Craig

With Christ our head and cornerstone,
We'll build our Nation's might.
Whose way and truth and light alone
Can guide our path aright.
Our lives, a sacrifice of love
Reflect our Master's care.
With faces turned to heaven above
Advance Australia fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing
Advance Australia fair!

h/t Craig

Then Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and spent the night there, because the sun had set; and he took one of the stones of the place and put it under his head, and lay down in that place. He had a dream, and behold, a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. - Genesis 28:10-12

That stairway represents God's mediation between himself and man. In the very first book of the bible we read of a means by which mankind, condemned to death by his rebellion against God, might once again commune peacefully with his creator.

Now flick forward in history about 2,000 years. Jesus says this to a guy called Nathanael:

"Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man." - John 1:51

What do you make of that then?

I heard about JungleDisk on the Security Now! podcast, Episode 123. I urge you to listen to the podcast, which can be downloaded from the Security Now! archive page on GRC.com.

Getting it off-site

JungleDisk creates a virtual disk drive on your machine, linked to an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) storage bucket. Whatever is saved onto that virtual disk, JungleDisk transparently transfers to Amazon, which charges only US 15 cents per gigabyte per month, plus some similarly-small fees per uploaded gigabyte.

JungleDisk has a built-in backup function, but it can also be used in conjunction with third-party backup programs. I continue to use my trusty SyncBack SE.

Securing the data

Before sending your data to Amazon, JungleDisk encrypts it using a key known only to you. Even Amazon would be unable to decrypt the data.

At only US $20 for a lifetime, multi-machine license, I reckon that JungleDisk is a no-brainer.

If I don't get enough free plastic bags from the grocery store, I buy packs of plastic bags (from the grocery store) to serve the same purpose; and more plastic gets used in the process.

I'm upset. It's not just for the coffee that I pay my $2.80: it's also the relationship. To be recognised, and welcomed, and known, and appreciated by my provider of state-approved chemical stimulant is worth something to me. Apparently the new owners will look after us, but it won't be the same.

Tanya and Thai threw off the shackles of convention when they gave us the superb apple-green trolley that we took for it's premier trundle today, around Birkenhead Point. We packed it full of Christmas presents: Santa's little sack of goodies.

Stopping briefly to review the gift list, we were approached by a friendly septuagenarian:

"That's a nice one."

...she said, and I saw the gleem of envy in her aging eye.

"You can't have it; it's mine."

...I muttered as she turned away and doddled off.

We have a new set of peers, and we're already in the cool group.

"They are simple Christians," a local priest, Father Georgy, told NTV television. "They say: 'The church is doing a bad job, the end of the world is coming soon and we are all saving ourselves.'"

"...and we are all saving ourselves." If not by suicide, then by the amassing of wealth, the pampering of the body, the doing of good deeds, the building of a legacy. Jesus had something to say about that:

"For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." - Matthew 16:25

"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time." - Isaac Asimov

Mr Asimov should have stuck with his first thought. When we set aside reason, when we decide truth on the basis of what we feel, when we invent a universe according to our desires rather than reality, we waste two God-given resources: our brains, and time.

Atheists like to accuse Christians of believing nonsense because it suits them. The bible says that natural man suppresses the truth "in unrighteousness" because the truth is disdainful to him. Poor Mr Asimov is indeed wasting his time, his precious short time, before the reality of his perilous situation is revealed to him in full.