Timothy's Thoughts

Y ou don’t really think about the power of words unto you consider how the meaning of one word can influence our understanding of big important concepts. Let’s look at the word church . This word is interesting because we throw it around so loosely and most people don’t give much thought to what it means or where it comes from. We go to church . We meet in a church . We are members of a church . Three different sentences and the word has three different meanings, but there are more than three. When we consider that the Bible used the word church many times, we might start to realize that our whole concept of what a church is may be very different based on which definition we use. If you say, “I went to church on Sunday,” you probably mean that you went to a worship service of some sort. There’s nothing particularly wrong with using church in that way, since it gets the point across. The problem is that if we use that definition when we reader where Jesus says, “Upon this rock I wil...

O n more than one occasion, I’ve been asked to give an opinion of Tate Publishing (legally, Tate Publishing and Enterprises, LLC). When I was originally asked, I had very little basis to form an opinion, other than from what I could find online and that left a bad taste in my mouth. According to their website, Tate Publishing claims to be a traditional publisher. This is interesting because authors who have used them mention a $4,000 fee. By definition, that fee makes them a subsidy press rather than a traditional publisher. I don’t like it when companies hide stuff. I began to understand them a little better when I had the opportunity to look at the contract they ask their authors to sign. The $4,000 fee is actually a $3,990 fee that they classify as a publicist setup fee. Essentially, they require their authors to have a professional publicist. If they don’t, Tate Publishing will charge them $3,990 to use one of theirs. They claim that the publicist is valued at $20,000 per year, b...

I ’ve read that 53% of the world lives on less than $2 a day. In the USA, poverty is defined as a family of four with an annual income of less than $22,350 or $10,890 for an individual. That works out to be $30 a day for an individual. That is about 15 times what most people in the world are living on. Only 15% of Americans fall below that line. It is no wonder that so much of the world sees us a rich. It also explains why so many people come to America in order to work and send money back home to their families. Imagine if there were a place where you could go and even the lowest paying jobs would earn you $150,000 a year. If you were struggling here, would it not be attractive to leave your family for a while to earn some money to pay off your debts? That is how much of the world looks at us. But what does it really mean? The thing is, though we are rich, $2 in the USA doesn’t go as far as it does in some parts of the world. In areas where they are living on $2 a day, you can hire ...

I ’m concerned. I look around and I see a decline in good male role models. I don’t just mean in the world. I don’t expect the world to provide much in the way of role models. The world is so confused that they don’t know which way is up; you can’t expect them to know how men ought to act. No, my concern is male role models among the saints. We still have a few good male role models, but I’m concerned about some of the things I’m seeing. One thing I’m concerned about is men going to church because their wives want them to go to church. There’s nothing wrong with these men going to church, but their role is messed up. In everything the Bible has to say about the relationship between men and women, it makes it very clear that the men are to lead. Ideally, it should be the case that a family gets up on Sunday morning and they know they are going to go to church because that’s what they always do on Sunday. But let’s suppose that isn’t the case. It should be the man who turns to his wife...

I thought I'd given up on book videos, but then I came up with this one. The main reason I put this video together is because some of the examples in Extending Art of Illusion can't be fully appreciated without seeing them in action. I had a lot of fun developing the Tracker plugin. I spent more time than I care to admit just setting up trackers and moving a sphere around the scene with my mouse so that I could watch the pointers follow it through the scene. You can see some of that in this video.

B y now, you’ve probably heard of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). On January 18, 2012, several of the popular websites including Wikipedia and Google protested the act, bringing it into the public awareness. But you may have also noticed that the news organizations who were reported about the event, such as CBS and CNN, included statements in their reports saying that their parent companies were in support of SOPA. So what’s going on here? We know that the news organizations are liberal, so is this just a liberal versus conservative thing? No, I don’t think so. This is about money. What else would it be about? The divide between those who support SOPA and those who oppose it is generally the same line that exists between those who make money by creating content and those who make money by using content. The goal of SOPA is to shut down websites that are using pirated information. In concept, if a copyright owner finds a website that is using his intellectual property without permissio...

W hat is love? Let’s not confuse the issue too much. Let’s focus on agape . The others are fairly clear. The KJV translates it as charity . It gets interesting when we look at 1 Corinthians 13:3. “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor…and have not charity, it profited me nothing.” It is interesting because we are commanded to have charity. In reference to the love a man has for a woman, it is intentional love. But here, it appears that we can give our goods to the poor and still not have it. Fortunately, Paul defines it for us. “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” It is still intentional. You have the choice of being long-suffering or not. You have the choice to be kind or not. ...