Stephen Tong criticized heavily Josh McDowell's book: Evidence That Demands a Verdict (铁证待判) - evidential apologetics vs. presuppositional apologetics. Same kind of criticism by all Pressup folks like Sye Ten Bruggencate, Van Til, etc. God judges you, you don't judge God (whether he exists or not):
Tong: Great book, but totally wrong in apologetics methodology: Lots of great content, but these student ministry folks think that they did well in their ministries without deep training in God's Word against culture, without clarity of the ground and battle they stepped into.
3/21/2024 NYC perverted law: If squatters lived for 30 days in a house, they are legal residence of the house, the owner who reported them gets herself arrested:
3/20/2024 Receiving Godaddy's Hosting Renewal email reminder $119.88/year for Web Hosting Economy plan, caused me to consider a cheaper alternative. IONOS seems to be a good candidate with only $1/month. At least some think so. The only concern I have is the transition process. Once the move is figured out, I really don't mind going for $12/year instead of $120/year. I may not have time to do it this year, due to the Detroit trip, so I'll look into this hopefully next year.
3/18/2024Fun take against very interesting interview of Elon Musk on the Don Lemon's Show, regarding Censorship of Free Speech vs. Ethics. My responses were #1. Theoretical. #2. by examples. #1. Theoretical: Both Musk and Lemon are seriously flawed on this. Ethics on Musk's part (祭司功能的堕落): If it's unethical but legal, it's okay? Definitions on Lemon's part (先知功能的堕落): Why can't definitions of things be challenged?
#2. Example: To Mask: So if child-porn is legal, you wouldn't take it down? To Lemonade: Why should I take down hate speech if I could easily destroy it?
3/16/2024toysbynature.com While Nadia is away in Indonesia the 2nd time by herself, I went and bought a $3 mini flytrap plant (Venus fly trap: Dionaea muscipula) from Hobby Lobby on Rt. 35. Along with other science "toys" (Galileo Thermometer, Spin drops, Color Mix drop, Hand boiler, black light LED flashlight), all averaging around $5. The flytrap plant came with like 3 seeds, origin allegedly from bogs and swamps of North & South Carolina, seeder method is basically under Sun in enclosed greenhouse moist environment. Hope to see result in 1-3 months as promised by label.
Also, I bought 2 Betta fish (Male & Female Veiltail) from Pet Smart which was next to Hobby Lobby.
3/14/2024 Did my first wisdom tooth #32 cutting (not extraction, unfortunately). 10:30am at Doctor Ray Cheng's clinic at Chatham Square in Chinatown. Excellent work by this doctor, at least my impression was he's truly professional, dealing with my difficult case. He told me I should have done wisdom tooth extraction at around 15-20, because it's tough now with the roots going in too close to the nerves at the bottom of the jaw. Thus, it took longer than expected: 4 hours instead of 30 mins. Because careful decision was needed to determine if he should do it all in one shot or sew it half way now and continue later in a week. Doc chose the former and had to unsew what he thought would continue next week. After all, this would also avoid infection if waited.
Was given curved tip dental syringe for cleaning with salt water. I'm surprised with the efficiency of this tool...lots of filth came out with it. I regret that I forgot to bring it for use on my weekend trip to Detroit.
After Detroit, returned 3/26 (Tues) for doctor's check up. All tested fine and quickly.
3/13/2024 Looks like this is hot now in Queens, Roosevelt Ave. between between 82nd and 103rd Streets, selling fake Green Card and SSN. If I could get these for mere $80-$200, I could use them for security (let the thieves steal my fake ones).
Interesting thing to learn about Tokyo from Taiwanese's aspect:
3/12/2024 Because of this TikTok vs. U.S. battle, I've decided to invest some of Nadia's IRA into stocks that depended on TikTok (since TokTok has no IPO): i.e. KKR. I should start looking into some stocks now that the election is coming. I'm turning into this area of investment after my mother reminded me about the recent rise of Bitcoin at $70+k.
I just realized that I could save $15 from T-Mobile autopay if I pay with a bank account or debit card. I think I may have used a debit card before but I've forgotten this discount deal and switched it to a credit card. Now back to DC.
This seems to be a very popular framework of REACT, which is not really a framework but a JS library. To learn NEXTJS, one also must come across node.js.
So we have this NYGC Salesforce weekly sessions/trainings that are recorded, but it's published on a site that doesn't offer download option and I do not want to rely on the online streaming platform to reference these videos. So I have to download.
Open Firefox (or the browser of your choice) and load the SharePoint page with the video that you want to download, then open the page inspector (Ctrl + Shift + C). Click on the Network tab. Type videomanifest where it says "Filter URLs". Press F5 to refresh the page. When the page reloads, copy the file URL. Use ffmpeg to download the video by pasting the URL from above:
We received tons of spams from ValPak envelope from time to time. But I always go through them. After all, I did get Nadia and myself a $20 coupon from it for a diner meal.
This time, coming across this ValPak ad called Larry Janesky's Quality 1st Basement Systems at offering free estimate (888-357-3383) at www.basementpak.com with a $400 off, expiring 4/30/24. There are great reviews and some bad ones for them. So I don't know about relying on them.
However, this does provide me terminologies I could learn from:
Winterizing crawl space
Basement Waterproofing
I can now use these terms to look up properly what I need to fix our basement problem.
3/8/2024 What a bummer that I didn't care about the stock market for a while. NVIDIA went from $60 in 2020 to $900 at the beginning of this month. That's about 15 times bullish increase. It's all because of this AI hype, I think. Should have been more alert. The rest of the stocks that I have are either failing or being stagnant.
I just realized I bought the wrong size Solar Filter (Solar Filter Baader Film Metal Cover for Astro Telescope 110-132mm) from ebay a year ago (3/30/2023) on Ebay for my telescopes. Not sure what I was thinking. It was obviously too big for my Meade ETX-80, and too small for my Celestron OMNI XLT 150. Perhaps it was meant for the EVScope, which was supposed to be 4.5" = 114mm in aperture, but true aperture is really about 120mm and with the scope's wall, the whole tube is 142mm in diameter. The OMNI XLT 150 would need a filter that's at least 180mm = 7" because its wall is thick. The ETX-80 would need the solar filter the diameter of at least 95mm.
3/7/2024 Today marks the 2nd week I am not going to the Thursday Bible Study because Nadia's has been working these last two Thursdays. Don't get me wrong, these Bible studies are great as people are encouraged to talk. The only downside is that it is somewhat less challenging than the Sunday School. They are doing the Sermon on the Mount right now in Matthew 5. The one I missed last week, was around Matthew 5:17. Because there's less challenges or that the pastor did not challenge bad input, I am less inclined to go. So this part is on him. But a bigger part is on me, because I've already been doing Chinese Bible Study with the Seattle folks remotely on Fridays, and once a month Saturday Men's fellowship, and the same pastor's Sunday School is the best of the best so far, of all churches I've been, not counting special lectures by the likes of Stephen Tong, etc.
But if Nadia's going, I'm going for sure. I do want to encourage her to love this, dwell deep in God's word in a challenging way. For I have this prayer now as Moses in Exo 32:32 and Paul in Romans 9:3, that I may be accursed from Christ and my name be blotted out from the book, for Nadia, my dear wife's sake. Help me, be gracious and merciful, my Savior!
上山下乡运动Down to the Countryside Movement: A solution to the liberal-Democrat immigration/economic crisis in the United States (particularly in the Blue States). 老尤 brought this up. I think it's not a bad idea, just probably not practical to enforce it (due to Western political ideals) as it was done by Chairman Mao in China between mid-1950s and 1978.
