Nathaniel launched Difficult Run in November 2012 and ran the website alone until August 2013, when he invited the first Difficult Run Editors to join him in adding content to the site.
Nathaniel has a background in math, systems engineering, and economics, and his day job is in business analytics. His real interests are science fiction, and theology, however. He is an avid runner, but not a very fast one. He is married to fellow DREditor Ro and they have two little children.
In addition to Difficult Run, Nathaniel blogs regularly for Times And Seasons and writes a lot of reviews on Goodreads.
A booze-pilfering drunken feral pig has caused chaos by running amok at an Australian campsite and starting a fight with a cow.
The belligerent porker went on a drunken bender after stealing and drinking three six-packs of beer that had been left out by campers at the DeGrey River campsite in Port Hedland, Australia.
In the predictable series of events that followed the animal went on to ransack rubbish bin bags to find some late-night snacks before starting a fight with an innocent eyewitness cow.
Following the boarish rampage the pig decided to swim out into the middle of a river before collapsing drunk under a tree and falling asleep.
Gadling adds this detail of the fight with the cow:
And just like anyone 18 beers in at a rural dive bar, the pig got big-headed and decided to start a fight with a cow, resulting in the cow chasing the pig around a car.
I have been following the horrific news from Kenya closely, but not too closely. Close enough to know what is happening, but so close that I’m overcome with the sadness and horror of what is going on. I think people should know about the story, however, because I’m not seeing very much coverage yet. The short version is that over a dozen armed terrorists stormed a mall in Kenya, executing non-Muslims (identified by who could answer questions such as “What is the name of the mother of Mohammad?”), and fighting stubbornly against Kenyan attempts to retake the mall. That combined with the relatively low death toll (tragically, 62 deaths so far is low relative to what it could have been) lead many analysts to believe that the primary goal of the attack is to drag it on as long as possible. Since the crisis is now in its fourth day and witnesses report ongoing gunfire and explosions, that aspect of the plan appears to be a success. Individual stories of survivors and victims are now trickling out, including a British ex-marine with a concealed handgun who helped 100 unarmed citizens escape and this heart-rending tale of a 4-year old boy standing up to the terrorist who shot his mother. From The Independent:
After apparently seeing his mother shot in the thigh, young Elliott Prior is said to have confronted the gunman shouting “you’re a bad man, let us leave”. Incredibly the gunman in understood to have taken took pity on Elliott and his six-year-old sister Amelie, giving the pair a Mars bar each and allowing them and their mother to leave the chaotic shopping mall in the middle of the terror attack.
The boy’s mother is a hero, too. She took two more children (besides her own) as she escaped. This contrasts with stories of adults who climbed over frightened children “like animals” to escape the gunfire in the initial attack on a children’s cooking contest held in the mall. The tragedy is still unfolding, and I’ll be praying for the survivors and families of the victims.
I love this short little story from Prodigal Magazine because it gets to the essence of practical, ordinary, every day Christianity. No high-drama or grand spectacle. Just a mundane miracle.
I had a conversation with my mum yesterday where I mentioned this idea of “aspirational obedience” that I’d been thinking about. She said it would make a good post, and I like to do what my momma tells me to do, so today’s post at Times And Seasons is on that topic. I also threw in some related concepts, like the idea that guilt is usually a symptom of pride and the relationship between goal-setting and humility.
Comments are off on this post, but y’all can contribute to the original post at T&S if you feel so inclined.
The Internet was all abuzz this week with news that Pope Francis had announced bold, sweeping changes to Catholic teachings on abortion, gay marriage, and contraception. Except, of course, that he hadn’t. Even a little bit.
This is the second time that Pope Francis has issued statements that amount to basically restating fundamental Christian theology, and has been met with awestruck praise from the mainstream press for revolutionizing the Catholic faith. Don’t get me wrong: I’m pleased (even as a non-Catholic) that everyone seems to love the New Catholicism so much. I’m just scratching my head because it is actually the same as the Old Catholicism.
Of course that’s a bit of an exaggeration: Pope Francis’s tone is markedly different. But that doesn’t actually justify all the “did you hear what the Pope just said!?!?!” coverage that is coming out, because the secular press is just as incapable of understanding the New Catholicism as it was of understanding the Old Catholicism. It hated the one and loves the other, but it understands neither.
Ann Furedi, who argues that English law already allows sex-selective abortion.
Sarah Ditum writes for The Guardian “as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter why any woman wants to end her pregnancy. If it’s to select for sex, that’s her choice.”
That’s a radical enough opinion that most people will be repulsed by it without further comment, but further comment is warranted to really explore the tragic, schizophrenic, unscientific, and ultimately misogynistic logic behind it. First: there’s the routine set of mental contortions necessary to deny that abortion is, in fact, the killing of a living human being. No matter how much Ditum may talk about ending pregnancy or refer to the unborn human being as “what’s growing inside you,” the reality is that the sex of your unborn child is determined at conception. It does not “end up as a man or a woman.” He or she (not it) starts out that way. It couldn’t very well be a sex-selective abortion if the gender-fairy didn’t arrive until birth, now could it?
Secondly, Ditum admits that sex-selective abortion couldn’t really be covered by current English law because ostensibly abortions are for the sake of the mother, and the specific sex of the unborn human being shouldn’t have any impact one way or the other on the mother’s health. Then she considers the global perspective:
But what about when a pregnant woman lives in a society that gives her real and considerable reason to fear having a girl? The kind of society where dowry systems mean an inconveniently gendered child could bankrupt a family, or one where a livid patriarch deprived of a male heir could turn his fury on both mother and daughter? In those situations, a woman wouldn’t just be justified in seeking sex selective abortion; she’d be thoroughly rational to do so.
This is a micro-version of the entire feminism/abortion debate, and it illustrates perfectly this plain, simple, uncontestable fact: elective abortion is acquiescence to patriarchy. What does Ditum think you should do in an oppressive society that denigrates the value of women? Clearly the solution, as Ditum states quite frankly, is not to stand up for women’s rights and dignity, but rather itis to enable that oppression. Go along to get along, that’s Ditum’s motto when confronted with rank oppression.
It’s really hard for me to tell the difference between what Ditum calls feminism and what any reasonable person would call collaboration. Rather than stand up for women in need, why not just kill them so as not to rock the patriarchal boat? Apparently feminism really is just code for “concerns of upper-middle class white women” these days, and when it comes to the entrenched power interests of the patriarchy goes, the old saying applies: “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
Scientists sent a balloon up into the stratosphere to take samples between 22km and 27km above the Earth, where no large particles from the surface should be able to reach. (Short of a major volcanic eruption, of which there were none within 3 years of the experiment.) When the balloon returned, they found “small biological organisms which they believe can only have originated from space.”
I try very hard to do two things in my day to day life:
1. Be on time.
2. Protect my kids’ childhood by not constantly rushing them from Appointment A to Appointment B.
As you can imagine, these two goals are often in conflict. My general approach is to build in lots of extra time. I try to get to my kids’ school with enough time before gymnastics class that when Caleb wants to check out all the dandelions or Sophie wants to finish her drawing, I can say “yes”. Better still: I can stand back, smile, and just watch my children being children. I treasure those moments, and there are never enough of them.
Sometimes it doesn’t work.
We were on track for an 8:20 departure this morning despite the kids deciding to have breakfast twice. They have weirdly erratic appetites, and sometimes I can’t get them to eat a single bowl of cereal in the morning. Even if it has marshmallows. Today, they had an entire bowl of cereal, said they were done, and then decided they needed oatmeal as well. They ate all the oatmeal, too, so I’m glad we had the time. (Hungry kids = unhappy, poorly behaved kids.)
Anyway, 8:30 is the real deadline if I want to be sure they get to school on time, but heading to the car at 8:20 means that I have time to calmly mediate any disputes about who gets to sit on which side of the car, that I have time for them to buckle themselves in at young-child pace, and that I don’t have to worry about getting stuck behind a school bus or something. But just before I say “Let’s get in the car,” Caleb decides he needs to go to the bathroom right now. No big deal, I think, but then it ends up being one of those #2s where he just sort of hangs out on the toilet indefinitely. Even with all the gentle cajoling I can muster while keeping a smile on my face it’s a full 10 minutes before he’s finally ready to go again.
But when we get downstairs, Sophie is nowhere to be found. “Where’s Sophie?” I ask. “I’m in the bathroom,” she responds. It’s 8:27, and she has also decided that right before we leave for school is the optimal time for a #2.
How do you plan for synchronized poo? You don’t. There is no planning for synchronized poo.
