Forthycause's List: Articles

• that unstructured play and face time with parents produce far greater educational outcomes
• second-hand adverse effects
• The pediatricians warned that the presence of a television in a teenager’s room is associated with higher rates of substance abuse and sexual activity
• there is no such thing as an educational program” for very young children and that what children really need is face time with parents and the experience of hands-on play.
• Christian parents must be concerned, not just with what content children are watching, but how much exposure they really experience.
• Something has gone wrong when the default position of the television is on, rather than off. There is something even more wrong when children and teenagers have televisions and Internet access in their bedrooms.

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• overwhelming the antiquated drainage system,
• Beijing is perched precariously on the edge of the Gobi desert
• weirs

  • A barrier or dam to restrain water, esp. one placed across a river or canal in order to raise or divert the water for driving a mill wheel; also, the body of water retained by this means, a mill-dam; now gen., a dam, of which there are various forms, constructed on the reaches of a canal or navigable river, to retain the water and regulate its flow.
• sluices

  • A structure of wood or masonry, a dam or embankment, for impounding the water of river, canal, etc., provided with an adjustable gate or gates by which the volume of water is regulated or controlled. Also, rarely, the body of water so impounded or controlled.   falling sluice
• Inundations in 1626 and 1890 were especially calamitous.
• Both of those floods came towards the end of dynasties, when corruption, neglect and mismanagement sapped the government’s ability to maintain public works.
• moats

  • A deep and wide ditch surrounding a town, castle, or other building, usually filled with water as a protection against assault
• They only know how to turn on the tap of positive propaganda, not realising that public opinion is the most important drainage system.”
• criticism of the government’s role in the disaster is likely to mount.

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• animus
• animus

  • an·i·mus: Hostility or ill feeling

• When the case was heard by the appellate court, the prosecutor pushed for a lengthier sentence, arguing that Green’s sermon was extreme.

  • ap·pel·late: (typically of a court) Concerned with or dealing with applications for decisions to be reversed
• she saw that registering such relationships would clash with her faith
• Bull were successfully sued by a same-sex couple for refusing to provide a double-bedded room. Since 1986 the Bulls have had a policy that “as Christians we have a deep regard for marriage (being the union of one man to one woman for life to the exclusion of all others). Therefore, although we extend to all a warm welcome to our home, our double-bedded accommodation is not available to unmarried couples—Thank you.”

  • Therefore, although we extend to all a warm welcome to our home, our double-bedded accommodation is not available to unmarried couples—Thank you.”
• forcing them to provide goods or services that contravene their consciences on threat of being hauled before the courts if they don’t.

  • con·tra·vene: Violate the prohibition or order of (a law, treaty, or code of conduct)

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• By “stupid links,” I mean hyperlinks on the Web that do nothing but tap our kneejerk curiosity.
• The allure of the world’s idle curiosities is rooted deep in our ancestry, traced back to the rebellious curiosity of Adam and Eve over one tree in the garden.
• we’re all hardwired with the same “frivolous, avid curiosity”
• It was behind the lewd dancing in the theater.
• The ancient Coliseum was a buffet of vain curiosities, all by design.
• Augustine was a dissenting voice. Curious spectators were participants in the evil, he said, and believers could easily get swept up in the wild passion of the event.
• Vain curiosities are, by definition, dislocated from God and powerless to point us to Christ.
• Worse, these vain hyperlinks gather into a browsing history that can reveal something tragic about the soul’s condition. Wallowing in such “poisonous curiosity,” writes Augustine, reflects “the impulses of a soul that is dead, though not dead in such a way as to be motionless. It dies by forsaking the fountain of life (Jeremiah 2:13).”
• sanctified curiosity
• vain curiosity
• Or, most tragic of all, are the hyperlinks I click on really just a series of pint-size pothole cisterns out of which I hope to slurp up a little gratification for my empty soul?

  • slurp/'slə:p/ audio
    Verb: to eat noisily.

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• If that was true for God’s exiles in Babylon, it would seem to be even more true for Christian exiles in this very “Babylonian” world. What, then, shall we do?
• This does not contaminate you if you do it all for the real King and not just for eye service as men-pleasers.
• This is a remarkable statement of God’s involvement in the way God designed each seed to bring forth its own unique plant (not just species but each individual seed!).
• In fact we will do most good for this world by keeping a steadfast freedom from its beguiling attractions.
• This does not mean we give up our exile orientation.
• But then in a week or a month or a year or ten years, the test comes — a season of no water in the wilderness. A weariness with manna, and subtly a growing craving for the fleeting pleasures of Egypt, as Numbers 11:5–6 says, “We remember the fish which we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic, but now our appetite is gone. There is nothing at all to look at except this manna.”

  • Fleeting pleasure of Egypt: self-serving security which has nothing to do with God
• He cannot imagine, evidently, that any natural process should be conceived without God’s doing it.
• This is a terrifying condition to be in — to find yourself no longer interested in Christ and his Word and prayer and worship and missions and living for the glory of God. And to find all fleeting pleasures of this world more attractive than the things of the Spirit.

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