Jim's Fields of Observation

Happy Reformation Day!

Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences by Dr. Martin Luther (1517)
Published in: Works of Martin Luther: Adolph Spaeth, L.D. Reed, Henry Eyster Jacobs, et Al., Trans. & Eds. (Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1915), Vol.1, pp. 29-38.

Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and Lecturer in Ordinary on the same at that place. Wherefore he requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us, may do so by letter.

In the Name our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.
2. This word cannot be understood to mean sacramental penance, i.e., confession and satisfaction, which is administered by the priests.
3. Yet it means not inward repentance only; nay, there is no inward repentance which does not outwardly work divers mortifications of the flesh.
4. The penalty [of sin], therefore, continues so long as hatred of self continues; for this is the true inward repentance, and continues until our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.
5. The pope does not intend to remit, and cannot remit any penalties other than those which he has imposed either by his own authority or by that of the Canons.
6. The pope cannot remit any guilt, except by declaring that it has been remitted by God and by assenting to God’s remission; though, to be sure, he may grant remission in cases reserved to his judgment. If his right to grant remission in such cases were despised, the guilt would remain entirely unforgiven.
7. God remits guilt to no one whom He does not, at the same time, humble in all things and bring into subjection to His vicar, the priest.
8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and, according to them, nothing should be imposed on the dying.
9. Therefore the Holy Spirit in the pope is kind to us, because in his decrees he always makes exception of the article of death and of necessity.
10. Ignorant and wicked are the doings of those priests who, in the case of the dying, reserve canonical penances for purgatory.
11. This changing of the canonical penalty to the penalty of purgatory is quite evidently one of the tares that were sown while the bishops slept.
12. In former times the canonical penalties were imposed not after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition.
13. The dying are freed by death from all penalties; they are already dead to canonical rules, and have a right to be released from them.
14. The imperfect health [of soul], that is to say, the imperfect love, of the dying brings with it, of necessity, great fear; and the smaller the love, the greater is the fear.
15. This fear and horror is sufficient of itself alone (to say nothing of other things) to constitute the penalty of purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair.

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Image via Wikipedia

Android fans recently marked the second anniversary of the release of the first Android phone: T-Mobile’s G1 (HTC Dream). The phones and the operating system (OS) have come a long way in those two years, and Gartner Research recently released their findings that Android will be the second most popular mobile OS in the world by the end of 2010.

Since there are so many new Android users all the time, I want to take this opportunity to share some apps I use regularly that I believe users new to this OS would benefit from.

1. Barcode Scanner

Simple yet very handy app. There are several good ones currently on the market; the link is to the one by Zxing Team and is great for the QR codes featured here and many other places. (I also used their Web site to generate the QR codes in this post.)

Market link (These links will only work if accessed on your Android device with the Market working.)

2. Ringdroid

Before my first smartphone I paid more than I remember (and would care to admit) on ringtones: I just wasn’t satisfied with the generic ones that come with phones. Download Ringdroid and never pay for a ringtone again! Not only do you get to use whatever song you have an mp3 of, you also get to choose how long the clip is and and which section it comes from.

This really works best with an app called Rings Extended. With this small app installed Android will ask you if you want to choose a ringtone from the stock Android choices or through Ringdroid.

[Bonus: if you really want to have control over your contact’s ringtones, download Ringo Lite. You can choose both a call as well as a SMS ringtone for each contact you have.]

Ringdroid Market Link  
Rings Extended Market Link  
Ringo Lite Market Link

3. Handcent

If you are not satisfied with the SMS app that came installed on the phone, give Handcent SMS a try. This robust app gives so many controls over how you send and receive texts, from fonts (packages are separate installs) to LED color to vibration pattern. I haven’t used the stock text app for a long time.

Market Link

4. Google Voice

This is one app that helps set Android above iPhone since Apple keeps rejecting the app. Google Voice is a free service from Google that lets you give out one free number to whomever you wish and calls to that number are routed to any phone(s) you wish. For example during regular business hours my Google number forwards to my work phone in addition to always forwarding to my cell. Google also transcribes voicemail messages - not perfectly, but usually well enough to get the gist - so I don’t use T-Mobile’s voice mail anymore.

The other main features of this app is the ability to call from your Google Voice number and the ability to send a Google Voice call to voicemail and still listen in and interrupt as the caller leaves the message.

Market Link

More after the jump.

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The following excerpt is reblogged from irisblasi.

Then, reading along just now in Nicholas Carr’s fantastic The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, I came across yet another example of this kind of paranoia:

[J]ournalism will be the whole press—the whole human thought. Thought will spread across the world with the rapidity of light, instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood. It will blanket the earth from one pole to the other—sudden, instantaneous, burning with the fervor of the soul from which it burst forth. This will be the reign of the human word in all its plenitude. Thought will not have time to ripen, to accumulate into the form of a book—the book will arrive too late. The only book possible from today is a newspaper.

It was written by French poet and politician Alphonse de Lamartine. 

In 1831.

Change is coming— that much is sure, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone to disagree with that. But I urge you not to forget: Books are resilient, and time of death has been called before.

What do you think? Is the book on its way out for real this time?