I Need to Patent My Ideas

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Somewhere on this blog, I wrote about an idea I had for social justice.  I was lamenting the fact that it was hard to find places to volunteer at the random times I had free – most organizations needed help during the day when I was at work, or needed 3-4 nights a week in a city 5 hours away.  Which I also can’t do.  I was wishing there was a website that could help me find local needs that I could practically help out with.  Without spending weeks searching.

Leave it up to Google.  AllForGood.org is not as robust as I was thinking, but  it is a good start.  Change your location to your city, and then search for categories of things to help with – education, food, health, etc. See their locations on a Google Map.  Share with your friends. Pretty slick.

One idea I have: I would like to see a calendar added to it also, so that you can search by date as well as location and category.  But give it a whirl to see if there is something near you that you can help with.

UPDATE: I found the post that I originally wrote about this:

Social Action For the Common Person

Also, once I got signed up and started poking around, I did see that there is a fuction to look by some dates: “today”, “this week”, etc.  Just not a full calendar to click on upcoming days and times you are free.

The Logical Conclusion Is Violence?

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I noticed this quote today, made in an opinion column by Frank Schaeffer in response to murder of the Dr. George Tiller:

When evangelicals on the right call President Barack Obama a socialist, a racist, anti-American, an abortionist, not a real American – and, echoing the former vice president, someone who is weakening America’s defenses and making us less safe – the logical conclusion is violence.

The logical conclusion?  I am sorry, but that is bogus.  We have to hold individuals responsible for their actions.  We can’t pawn the responsibility for atrocities off on a group just because we don’t like that group.  We have to face reality – every individual out there is responsible for their own actions before God, regardless of how they were influenced.

I agree that influence does play a role.  But you and I are still responsible for how we distort what other people say.  Taking a pro-life message and distorting that into one of violence is wrong.  Do we blame Darwin for the fact that several key Nazi leaders took his ideas and distorted them into the the foundations of the Nazi regime?  Hardly.  Well, some idiots do, but that is their stupidity.  It is sad how many people on the pro-choice side are trying to use this murder to guilt pro-lifers into not speaking out for their beliefs.  Just sad.

Many Muslim extremists take the words of the Qu’ran and use it to blow up as many “infidels” as they can.  So, should we start blaming all Muslims for the actions of the extremists?  No way.  I have read the Qu’ran.  It’s pretty open to interpretation in places.  We have to hold those extremists responsible for their poor interpretation.