And I Quote . . .

After my first post on this blog, a friend teased me on Facebook: "I hope you're not trying to compete with Jen's blog." Every day since then, I've been waiting for the opportunity to record the very first thought I had after reading that: Never! Never would I believe I would bring the fresh perspectives, challenging thoughts, and laugh-out-loud humor to my blog that Jen regularly demonstrates in hers.
This is not false humility on my part. I was leafing through a previous year's bound volume of Christian Standard today. I was looking for something else, but I quickly got distracted by, OK I'll admit it, my editorials in each issue. And gratefully, I wasn't ashamed of them! So, yeah, I can write 400 words that are better than OK.
But these daily ramblings don't aspire to the quality of Jen's weekly entries. And I'm not sure I have her insight and self-confidence, and I know I don't have the voice that she has. Most anyone who's reading this blog is probably reading hers too. But if you missed yesterday's post, read it now, and you'll see what I mean.
She discusses Portia de Rossi's autobiography, Unbearable Lightness, "a brutal book about her struggles with anorexia." And then she applies the story to her own life (and, I suspect, the lives of many young women:

While it made for engrossing reading, I couldn’t relate to most of it on a personal level. However, I was shocked to find myself resonating with her confession that her weight directly affected her mood. Like de Rossi, when I’m thin I don’t just feel thin; I feel more competent, confident, more “together.” When the number on the scale or the profile in the mirror or the “skinny jeans” give me the opposite message I feel lazy, ugly and less-than.

 And yesterday, I read something else worth sharing, an article by William Happer, a professor physics at Princeton, whose piece on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal caught my eye.
Let me hasten to say that I am neither an advocate nor a debunker of global warming theory. I don't quite trust Al Gore, but on the other hand, I've never understood the knee-jerk vehemence against the climate change idea expressed by many evangelicals. I'm not a student of the subject, but I'm certainly interested in it.
One brief quote from his piece.

CO2 is not a pollutant. Life on earh flourished for hundreds of millions of years at much higher CO2 levels than we see today. Increasing CO2 levels will be a net benefit because cultivated plants grow better and are more resistant to drought at higher CO2 levels, and because warming and other supposedly harmful effects of CO2 have been greatly exaggerated. Nations with affordable energy from fossil fuels are more prosperous and healthy than those without. 

Professor Happer's piece seemed objective and thought-provoking, and I thought as I read it, "I'd like some others to read this." Maybe some of you will.