Day of Prayer quotes

Here’s some interesting information on the National Day of Prayer:
In the National Day of Prayer School Events Guide available on the National Day of Prayer Task Force’s website, they argue for the constitutionality and need for a National Day of Prayer, claiming that the “Founding Fathers did not mean for our government to be separated from our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”.
Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers seems to disagree. In 1808 in response to national days of prayer, Jefferson wrote “Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the time for these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and right can never be safer than in their hands, where the Constitution has deposited it.”
In 1813, president James Madison proclaimed a day of prayer; but he later decided that National Days of Prayer were inappropriate, because “they seem[ed] to imply and certainly nourish the erroneous idea of a national religion”.
– From Wikipedia

National Day of Prayer


So today is the National Day of Prayer.
They held an event at the courthouse in Waxahachie today and several local pastors and a few county employees gave prayers for various groups of people.
The media is normally one of the specific groups that are recommended to be prayed for, but we only got a line or so today.
It was interesting, “We pray for the media. They are the spokesperson’s of our day. I pray that they communicate the truth and not criticism and debate.”
Now don’t get me wrong, as a member of the media I appreciate any prayers we can get. But I’ve always thought the role of the media is to be critical. That doesn’t mean hateful. That doesn’t mean slanderous. But I feel we should be critical. What do you think? Should the media just stand by and only report what we’re told? Or should we be leary of everything and examine everything and look for every side of every story to reveal the truth?
Shouldn’t a healthy media spur and encourage debate?
If there was no debate, that would mean the media is simply feeding one side of a story and everyone is accepting it.
Or is that just me?

Spyware removal


Atariboy and Geeklimit.com have some good tips on removing Spyware and other mal-ware.

As an iT Geek, I quite often get asked to look at peoples machines outside work. The majority of the faults are related to spyware or virus activity making the PC slow, flaky or just unusable.
As each machine has a different configuration, a different set of software (usually) and often a different connection method to the internet, I have come to rely on ridding the PCs of some of the viruses and spyware by hand.
“Why?” I hear you cry. “When there all all those great, free utilities such as Ad-Aware and AVG?”.