The proverbial wisdom of Dilbert

"Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue." -- Proverbs 17:28 (NIV)

Buy my e-book: The Easy Budget

It's time for resolutions, and one of of the best is wise money management. My new e-book, "The Easy Budget: How to Always Have the Money You Need" teaches you how to allot your income into various categories so that you always have funds when you need them.

There's a Food budget, a Clothing budget, Entertainment and more. You never spend too much on clothing and then don't have enough for food.

The 10 page e-book can be downloaded onto your computer or handheld reader, such as a Kindle or Nook. It costs only $3.50 -- and that's easy on your budget.

Resume for writer, copy editor, photographer Greg Richter

Objective
To find a position using my writing, editing and/or photography skills in a creative environment that will benefit the company and my own growth.

Contact
Greg Richter
grichter64 (at) yahoo (dot) com
734-6960 (area code is 256)

Work Experience
Copy editor
12/1995 - Present The Birmingham News, Birmingham, Alabama

• Go-to guy on tight deadline stories. Edit, write captivating headline and get it to the page designer super-fast. Create enticing headlines in increasingly skinnier column widths that sell the story in the print edition, and write Search Engine Optimization (SEO) heads for the online edition that bring in Google hits from outside our normal coverage area.

• Write feature stories and do a weekly compilation of what publications outside the state are saying about Alabama. Using eye-catching copy, this column has grown in popularity. Feature story on the worldwide popularity of the song “Sweet Home Alabama” is now supported by a blog, which brings in readers worldwide.

• Sweet Home Alabama blog: www.al.com/sweet-home-alabama

• Like It or Not, Now You’re Everywhere On the Web: http://blog.al.com/techcetera/2009/05/like_it_or_not_now_youre_every.html

• Outside Looking In: (Google “outside looking in” and “birmingham news” for recent examples.

Freelance writer, editor, photographer

• Wrote e-book on how to maintain a budget and live within your means under pseudonym Owen Tew. “The Easy Budget: How to Always Have the Money You Need”: www.lulu.com/content/e-book/the-easy-budget-how-to-always-have-the-money-you-need/8098563

• “Jesus in Alabama – And Everywhere Else: Images of the Name”: A photo blog on images of the name Jesus painted on the sides of businesses, as graffiti on roads, etc. (Also under pseudonym Owen Tew). http://jesusinalabama.blogspot.com/

• Edited copy on signs for Birmingham Civil Rights Trail.

• Photography can be seen at http://gregrichter.smugmug.com/

Copy editor, Page designer
10/1991 - 12/1995 The Decatur Daily, Decatur, Alabama

Reporter, Photographer
8/1988 - 10/1991 Daily Mountain Eagle, Jasper, Alabama

Reporter, Wire editor
5/1986 - 8/1988 The Cullman Times, Cullman, Alabama

Education
University of Alabama at Birmingham/Journalism, Birmingham, Alabama

• President's List

Southeastern Bible College/Biblical Studies, Birmingham, Alabama

Additional Info

• Multiple statewide writing awards from The Associated Press and the Alabama Press Association, including for deadline news, feature writing and headline writing. Won best headline of the year at The Birmingham News three times and best headline of the month numerous times. Received management training from current employer. Placed on a team assigned to find ways to cut costs, and many of our ideas were implemented.

• Board of directors for The Cullman County Historical Society. Started a blog for the group, which previously had no Internet presence, and have played a character in the Cemetery Tour for the past three years during Oktoberfest. Chairman of Bus Tour Committee. Member of Finance and Budget Committee and Cemetery Tour Committee.

References
I will be happy to furnish references upon request.

Website takes prayer requests, reminds you to pray

Wereprayingforyou.com, an Ozark, Alabama-based website, offers prayers for those who sign up. It also encouranges you pray for other members' requests.

The site is envisioned as a Facebook for prayer warriors, which sounds like a capital idea. But then there are the cheesy bracelets sold on the site. They're hooked to pagers and vibrate when someone you've agreed to pray for needs. it.

Emblazoned with "AGAPE," the Greek word for brotherly love, they come in Buzzing Black© , Royal Blue© and Perfect Purple© and are "designed to be worn by anyone, young or old, male or female, using a stylish, adjustable band."

Although the site charges $49.95 for a charm bracelet and $79.95 for the plastic vibrating pager bracelets, CEO Sam Pitts tells The Birmingham News, "You don't have to buy anything for the prayer. ... It's no different from publishers making money from printing Bibles. Nobody complains about that. How can a church operate if nobody gave?"

Well, OK. Just be forewarned that Pitts once owned National Credit Savers and National Credit Center, which The Birmingham News reports were cited as the subject of federal injunctions in the 1993 annual report of the Federal Trade Commission. Pitts paid $300,000 to settle allegations his companies deceptively marketed credit cards through direct mail and 900 telephone numbers, the newspaper quotes an FTC report.

Of course, all of us have things in our past we're ashamed of, but you should make your purchases with open eyes. You can close them as you pray if you wish.

We might want to pass along a note to the webmaster, too, about that pop-up video you watch when the site first loads. That first speaker's hand goes to an inappropriate place a few times vis-a-vis the photo of the praying young woman on the left. Perhaps they could scoot that guy down a bit.

And if you don't want your left hand to know what your right is doing, order one for each wrist.

Praying for Obama Bible verses

“Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” --Psalm 109:8

That's the Bible verse being used on bumper stickers and T-shirts as a jab at President Barack Obama. It's meant to be funny, but not everyone is laughing, partly because the next verse reads, “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”

People sporting it on cars, torsos and in e-mails say either they were unaware of the next verse or that they purposely didn't say 109:8-9 because they didn't mean for Obama to die, just leave office.

Still, it's not very Christian. Even if you disagree with everything Obama stands for, using Bible verses to either make fun of spew hatred toward him is, well, unbiblical.

Feel free to criticise his policies. If you believe they are extremely harmful, say so. If you want to be clever equate him with Stalin, Mao or even Hitler. If you think he's the Antichrist, you can say that, too. But to use a verse that was used in the New Testament to refer to Judas, who killed himself, is deplorable.

"Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God," the Apostle Paul notes in Romans 13:1. That doesn't mean we aren't to criticise our leaders when they are wrong -- especially since God has placed us in a free society in which we are given the right -- and duty -- to vote.

"In 1 Tim 2:1-2, it says to pray for those in authority. Paul the apostle was not talking about a believer in authority," a person purporting to be John Piper notes in the comments section of The Christian Science Monitor story.

The comments section also naturally draws people critical of Christians "exposing themselves for what they really are: mean-spirited, self-righteous hypocrites."

That's true of some. The non-mean-spirited Christians aren't jumping on the Psalm 109 bandwagon.

And, as Jesus noted, not everyone who says to him "Lord, Lord" will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Some of them are, as Kierkegaard noted, merely a "Christian of a sort."

So the thing to do, if you believe Obama is evil, is to pray for his salvation.

Will anti-gay stance be fall of Scientology?

Film director Paul Haggis ("Crash"), announced he is quitting the Church of Scientology because it opposes gay marriage.

A spokesman for the religion says that the church does not oppose California's Propostion 8, which would ban same-sex marriages, but that Haggis may have misunderstood a local congregation's announcement.

Comments on the Los Angeles Times site indicate that Haggis may be right, though.

Haggis is correct.
Hubbabard (sic) himself had this to say:
"In any event, any person from 2.0 down on the Tone Scale should not have, in any thinking society, any civil rights of any kind, because by abusing those rights he brings into being arduous and strenuous laws which are oppressive to those who need no such restraints."
L Ron Hubbard
Science of Survival
Yes, gay people are considered to be below 2.0 on the Scientology Tone Scale, so
are people with black, yellow or brown skin.

Guillermo

I believe Haggis' letter already states that he understands that the San Diego chapter didn't represent ALL of Scientology.

His issue was that the "church" had not done enough to discipline the SD chapter, or clearly state that the "church" was not in favor of discrimination. He requested that the "church" do this and waited a long time for the "church" to act.

I think he did a brave thing.

AnonLA

If celebs start to find conflicts in their trendy religion will they dump it?

Conservative Bible might be a liberal translation

Lots of conservative Christians have gotten upset in recent years over attempts to "liberal up" the Bible. Now they've got something else they should be upset about: a Conservative Bible.

The New International Version, which has usurped the King James Version in popularity for at least the past two decades, attempted to put more gender-inclusive language in the text a few years ago. It didn't go over well.

Already words such as "brothers" had been translated "brothers and sisters" and "men" were called "people" when it was clear that both sexes were being represented.

But now the group that brought you Conservapedia as an antidote to Wikipedia is undertaking to translate the Bible with all the liberalism taken out. (They're doing this on the Conservapedia site at http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project.)

Much like with Wikipedia, men, women, boys and girls can log in, and, if they feel confident in their ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin and Koine Greek, can offer conservative translations of the text.

While I'm biblically conservative myself, I was skeptical of a project to purposefully translate the Bible in a conservative context. I've read several opinion pieces lambasting the idea, usually from people more liberal than myself. Leonard Pitts throws in the ad hominem that Conservapedia intends to "remake Jesus of Nazareth in the image of Dick Cheney." That's unnecessary. There's enough to attack this effort on, even from a conservative point of view, without resorting to cheap shots.

First, why set out to translate the Bible from a conservative point of view? Theological conservatives are typically biblical literalists, so if you truly believe modern translations have been corrupted from a liberal mindset, then you should correct it from the viewpoint of accuracy, not conservatism. (Of course, whether you be conservative, liberal or whatever, you consider your own viewpoint to be The Truth. Problem is, if you are biblically conservative, you also believe yourself to be "sinful," a Greek archery term for "missing the mark." So you're probably wrong about something, hence your need to pray regularly and seek God's guidance.)

But no, the Conservative Bible Project intends to reduce "liberal wordiness" and nine other such principals, a good many of them anti-liberal/pro-conservative rather than anti-error/pro-truth.

They've caught flak from liberals for wanting to get rid of the passage from John about the woman caught in adultery. They have good arguments for deleting it: It isn't in the oldest available manuscripts, and liberals themselves agree on this point. But the conservative Bible project wants it for that reason and because "liberals commonly put their own spin on" it.

Dudes, liberals can put their own spin on anything. And so can conservatives--which is exactly what you are trying to do with this project. The best translators try to overcome bias by using teams that include various points of view, thus reducing the chance of getting a conservative or liberal Bible, but one that is as close to the original texts as possible. The Conservative Bible Project is using only conservatives for it's project, and in fact, is trying to speed the process by having a single person translate each section -- not a team.

I hate to break it to Andrew Schlafly and the rest of the crew at the Conservative Bible Project, but "conservative" means not changing, while "liberal" means advocating some type of change. So, essentially, their Conservative Bible is theological liberalism.

Photo courtesy:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/notjake13/ / CC BY 2.0