Incredibly Useful Free Microsoft Apps

Via Business Insider:

…a collection of useful free Microsoft apps for all sorts of devices — not just Windows PCs, but also Macs, iPhones, and even Android devices.

These apps will help you take photos, share them, give you access to your documents, notes, organize your travel and more.

Incredibly Useful Free Microsoft Apps - Business Insider

These really do look useful.

Novels Written By Computers

Via Business Insider:

…in a play on a human literary contest, around a hundred people are writing computer programs that will write texts for them, the Verge says. It's a response to November's National Novel Writing Month, an annual challenge that gets people to finish a 50,000-word book on a deadline.

Novels Written By Computers - Business Insider

We used to say technology can cut out the middle man. Now the middle man strikes back – technology to eliminate the producers. In this case, traditional publishers may be interested in eliminating authors.

World’s Gone Right

Via Reason.com:

…the world is getting better in spite of governments, not because of them.

World’s Gone Right - Reason.com

Points:

• “…rapid advances in technology have made it more difficult for governments to run the kinds of campaigns that ran up the death toll in World War II—the diffusion of weapons technology contributed to asymmetrical warfare, which may, in the information age, create the perception of increased chaos and conflict but in reality limits the ability of governments to wage big wars.”
• “Technology has had a similar effect elsewhere: either preventing centralization through tools that make challenging authority easier, or making centralization irrelevant through tools that simplify the task of bypassing authority entirely.”
• “The advance of technology and concomitant increase in access and decrease in prices has facilitated all kinds of other improvements in the human condition too, in ways government solutions have not been able to.”

What do you think? Getting better overall?

What To Pack In A Carry-On

Via Business Insider:

…do everything you can to make it go smoothly — like, for instance, packing the perfect carry-on.

Even if your luggage isn't lost (fingers crossed), you'll no doubt be glad to have a fully-stocked bag on hand at all times. 

At the very least, it will spare you the expense of having to buy temporary replacements while your sweater/snacks/toothbrush idle in the bowels of an airplane.

What To Pack In A Carry-On - Business Insider

Useful advice. CPAP machines, however, make a bag like that more problematic.

Why seminary is important, especially for women

Via Christianity Today:

…a common mindset in evangelical churches: seminary, many believe, isn’t practical.

Some evangelical churches are ambivalent about seminary; they could take it or leave it. Others are downright skeptical of seminary.

Click the link to see more: What Post-Seminary Evangelicalism is Missing: A guest post by Sharon Hodde Miller | The Exchange | A Blog by Ed Stetzer

Points:

• “…learning about the successes—and more importantly, the failures—of Christians past.”
• “…neglecting church history isolates us from the larger Body of Christ.”
• “Not all church leaders should attend seminary, but it is surely unwise to discourage emerging leaders from this path.”

Retire Already! Are 70+ year old professors a drag?

Via Arts and Letters Daily and The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Professors approaching 70 who are still enamored with hanging out with students and colleagues, or even fretting about money, have an ethical obligation to step back and think seriously about quitting.

Click the link to see more: Retire Already! - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Points:

• “…three-quarters of professors between 49 and 67 say they will either delay retirement past age 65 or—gasp!—never retire at all.”
• “…faculty who delay retirement harm students, who in most cases would benefit from being taught by someone younger than 70, even younger than 65.”
• “Septuagenarian faculty members also cost colleges more than younger faculty—in the form of higher salaries, higher health-care costs, and higher employer-matched retirement contributions.”
• “…their presence stifles change.”
• “By delaying retirement, older faculty members, in effect, tell the younger generation of wannabe professors to table their aspirations to teach full time, or maybe even to give them up entirely.”
• “…older faculty, by hogging an unfair share of the budget devoted to faculty salaries, exemplify the tragedy playing out in the larger social and economic arenas of all industrialized nations, where older members of a society, compared with younger groups, now possess a disproportionate share of a country’s wealth.”

Horns of a dilemma for which there should be a better resolution than to run these people off.

The servant attitude: Exalt Him who purchased you

Just how does love become visible as servanthood? Paul gave his Philippian readers an anatomy of love as servanthood in the second chapter of his letter to them. Trying to explain why he wanted his readers to regard each other in love, he pointed them to Jesus as their example, describing how Jesus left His high station in heaven for death on a cross (Philippians 2:5–9). Paul didn’t dwell much on Jesus’ intentions or feelings but on Jesus’ actions as evidence of His intent.

The acronym SERVE helps explain how that attitude inspires action. The results of processes explained in this book develop servant characteristics. They are:

• Subordinate your priorities

• Empty your pride

• Redirect your potential

• Vacate your position

• Exalt Him who purchased you

In other words, God designs everything you experience to bring you to this point. Here’s what all that means.

Subordinate your priorities. Subordinating your priorities begins your experience as a servant after you begin seeing from God’s perspective. Paul wants his readers to make the same transition, directing them to “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). From the moment you became God’s friend, everything has been a lesson in setting your priorities aside and taking up God’s priorities.

Empty your pride. Pride is your regard for your own capabilities and can be a powerful driving force. The ancient Greeks called it hubris, an attitude of overreaching we see in the serpent’s challenge to Eve that eating the fruit would make her like God. Well, Jesus wasn’t just like God, He was God. But “although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself” (Philippians 2:6-7a). So the only reaching out and grasping you do is in dependency on God Himself because He brings you to a realization nothing else you grab is secure.

Redirect your potential. When you have a regard for your capabilities, you develop a vision of where those capabilities can take you. That vision is your potential. Think of the old saw, “You can do anything if you put your mind to it.” You may also be familiar with other motivational sayings meant to inspire people to keep striving for the brass ring. But for Jesus, it meant “taking the form of a bond-servant” (Philippians 2:7b). A bond-servant was a slave. After emptying your pride, you also give up regard for your own capabilities to do things and depend on God’s capabilities.

Vacate your position. You may already be at the point you want to be, or you may still be striving for what you think you deserve. For Jesus, however, it meant giving up the sovereign kingship due Him because “Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). Jesus’ example points you away from achieving your goals and toward letting God achieve His goals through you.

Exalt Him who purchased you. Jesus’ actions exalted God, so “For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9). His actions exalted God because they directed attention to God. Likewise, your actions can do the same.