But in another sense, they’re inspiring stories, because in them, you see the triumph of the human spirit. They’re inspiring because you see what people are capable of and what true toughness and grit looks like. (more…)
The Turkish government has released American pastor Andrew Brunson after more than two years in custody.
Brunson was arrested in the aftermath of a failed coup on the Turkish government and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Brunson had nothing to do with the coup. At the time, he had been in the country for over 20 years serving as a pastor and was taken as a political prisoner.
There had been several times over the past year where Brunson’s release seemed possible, but the Turkish government and courts were resistant. In July, Brunson was allowed to go on house arrest.
Today, he was convicted of terrorism charges but allowed to be released based on time served. The 50 year old pastor had faced 35 years in prison.
Brunson’s release will allow him to leave Turkey and head back to the United States.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe!
Roseanne Barr made an offensive comment about former Obama Administration official Valerie Jarrett. Shortly after, ABC announced they have cancelled the show Roseanne.
That the show was canceled is not shocking. People don’t like offensive and racially charged comments (nor should we).
It’s interesting reading Tweets and comments about the cancellation. Many draw a parallel between Barr’s comments and how some will defend her and say the show shouldn’t be canceled. But some of those same people are fine with the NFL banning players kneeling during the National Anthem. This is pointed to as being hypocritical.
The irony is that the hypocrisy can run on both sides. To think that the players should be able to kneel without consequences yet to think Roseanne should be cancelled is also somewhat hypocritical.
Because in both instances, it shows us that we cannot always say or do whatever we want without that having ramifications on our professional lives.
As a society, there are things we don’t like. We don’t like racist comments. We don’t generally like unpatriotic behaviors. People can say whatever they want. People can take whatever political stance they want to make. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ever consequences.
Neither ABC nor the NFL owes it to Roseanne Barr or the players to promote ideals that go against what they stand for.
Some will disagree with that. “It’s not the same. Players are making a reasonable protest and Roseanne make a comment that can’t be defended.” While we should all be able to agree that what Roseanne said was wrong, millions of people find kneeling during the national anthem just as offensive (if not more offensive) than one woman’s comment.
Roseanne already had a target on her for various other political comments and comments seen as being racially insensitive. It was wrong to make the comment that she made about Jarrett. It’s not shocking that ABC cancelled the show.
But it is an unfortunate situation. It’s unfortunate that in a politically charged country where division is high, we had a throwback sitcom that people of various views enjoyed from a time when there were not such heightened political sensitivities. The new Roseanne had the goal of a show where a family who was divided politically and who was navigating the 21st century could still come together in love. That’s a message that we don’t often hear in the media. Because of an unnecessary comment, it’s a voice that will now go silent.
And the political divide widens.
But I want to take our attention back to the double standards we so often have. If we are ok with either Roseanne being cancelled or with NFL players being forbidden from kneeling, than we must also accept the other can happen too. Because both are examples that freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences of that speech.
We must all remember the power of our words and actions. The Apostle James said: “The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!” (James 3:5). We’re blessed to live in a nation with the First Amendment. It’s a wonderful thing. But let us not assume that words are free of consequences, or that they don’t matter greatly.
Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.
In an era when so many churches are rocked by sin and scandal, Billy Graham was respected by both Christians and non-christians for his integrity.
In an era where sexual harassment is rampant in seemingly every sphere of life, Billy Graham vowed to never spend time alone with a woman who was not his wife, mother, or daughter.
In an era where many of our most famous pastors live in mansions, Billy Graham vowed to not live lavishly. (more…)
Skype, the popular person to person video communication site went down globally today. This is the first time since 2007 that this has occurred. In a blog post at around 4:00 est, Skype addressed the issue and stated that engineers are working to fix the problem but that it may take several hours to be completely resolved.
For some, Skype is already working, but if there is someone with whom you wish to Skype, he or she might not currently have access to the service. Again, it could be several hours before everything is working properly.
In the vast majority of instances, the site is still not working propperly as of 8:48pm e.s.t.
Why is Skype down?
The Skype blog post attempted to explain it:
“Skype isn’t a network like a conventional phone or IM network – instead, it relies on millions of individual connections between computers and phones to keep things up and running. Some of these computers are what we call ‘supernodes’ – they act a bit like phone directories for Skype.”
What does that mean? The response is a bit complicated to understand, so let me try to explain what I think is happening.
If two people are communicating on Skype and the peer to peer relationship has been established across the network (according to “An experimental study of the Skype peer to peer VoIP system). Skype has various fail safes in case the initial connection between one or multiple parties is blocked (by something like a firewall).
A supernode is created when nodes are in areas with extra bandwidth and that are public (according to the same peer to peer study).
If you connect with someone on a regular basis and the two of you typically use the same computers, you are connecting by nodes. Supernodes are what finds the person when the node doesn’t work to immediately locate them, according to the Skype post.
The Skype post continues:
“Under normal circumstances, there are a large number of supernodes available. Unfortunately, today, many of them were taken offline by a problem affecting some versions of Skype.”
Skype did not say why the supernodes are uncharacteristically failing today. To me, that’s the most interesting aspect of the entire situation! It is possibly too early to tell what has caused the problem.
Ironically, Twitter also was temporarily slow this afternoon on the east coast and the slow down could have partially been a result of increased traffic from people who were not using Skype (many of whom undoubtedly using Twitter for the purposes of complaining about Skype not working).
Click here for the official Skype blog post on today’s slowdown:
For the really cool study I cited on how Skype’s person to person VoIP works, click here: http://bit.ly/giOpUW
jrb
questions or comments? Tweet me @bennernotes or email benner.joshua@gmail.com
