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Hi. I'm Jeff Noble. I'm a pastor in Blacksburg, Virginia. This is my newsletter/blog designed to inform, inspire, aggravate and innovate. We'll talk about Jesus, technology, coffee, culture, fantasy football and politics. Welcome to the trail.

Nuff Said: Suicide rates and cellphones / Obama a narcissist? / Back to school tips for Christian students / Best Twitter Practices from 2014 / Dangers of cannabis

Jeff Noble

Aug 31, 2023

For those of you new to Notes from the Trail, “Nuff Said” is a recurring feature that highlights posts/articles from around the web that have drawn my attention

A most-important 15-minute podcast on suicide rates and cellphone use

Do yourself a favor and listen to this 15-minute podcast from the DailyWire. There are two deeply important (and I think connected) stories in it:

Suicide rates are at all all-time high. They were already climbing before the pandemic, but in the past two years alone, they’ve climbed 8%. Some think it reveals a greater pandemic - of loneliness. The year 2006 is targeted as the most recent date when the rate starting its climb. The iPhone came out in 2007. In the few years before that, Palm Trees and Blackberries became standard fare. Think about that.
Pushback on smartphones for kids and teens. There’s a growing movement to set an age limit for kids to have smartphones. Some say 8th grade. I’d recommend no earlier than high school (9th grade), with that first year of use being highly monitored and restricted. Watch your teen’s attitudes, social engagement and help them process self-discipline. This also means you as a parent must exercise how you use your smartphone (and especially how often) in front of your children.

Give it a listen now:

Back to school

10 years ago, Marshall Segal wrote an article offering five tips to Christian students heading back to school. It’s worth a read and worth passing on - especially to the freshmen in your life. He concludes with this:

By God’s merciful, student-loving grace, this year could be a breakthrough in your personal passion for him, your ministry to others on campus, and your readiness for a long life lived with and for Jesus.
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Best Twitter practices from the past

This is my second throw-back to 10 years ago. How many of these “best practices” are still relevant?

Obama a narcissist?

Back in September 2014, the late Charles Krauthammer told Hugh Hewitt:

“Obama is clearly a narcissist in the non-scientific use of the word… He is so self-involved, you see it from his rise… A) because he’s an amateur, he doesn’t know very much, and B) because he’s a narcissist, he doesn’t listen… This is all because, I mean, count the number of times he uses the word I in any speech, and compare that to any other president…”

I can think of at least two presidents since Obama who have rivaled or exceeded his use of the word “I” in speeches and may qualify as narcissists.

However, recent revelations about David Garrow’s six-year old biography of Obama have lent deeper credence to Krauthammer’s observations 10 years ago:

Based on years of careful record-searching and patient interviewing, Rising Star highlights a remarkable lack of curiosity on the part of mainstream reporters and institutions about a man who almost instantaneously was treated less like a politician and more like the idol of an inter-elite cult.
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Garrow opened up with writer David Samuel in an interview for Tablet Magazine:

I think even the fanboy journalists would acknowledge, under a little bit of pressure, that it ended up being an underwhelming, disappointing presidency. It will, in the long run, be seen as a failed presidency because of the international failures.
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Samuel’s interview recounts Garrow’s discovery of Obama’s long letter to a girlfriend about his fantasies of having sex with men. How was this not more widely known?

Mark Hemingway followed up the Tablet interview with a bold article titled Obama’s Fraudulent Legacy Is Being Exposed, And It’s On The Wrong Side Of History. It’s also worth the read for those who, starry-eyed, still believe the Obama shine.

He’s also obsessed with celebrity and not very loyal to the people who helped him along the way. In other words, he’s pretty much the guy his critics on the right said he was all along.
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10 years ago we knew cannabis was addictive… what happened?

In a “new” study published in 2014, it was found that cannabis was deeply addictive.

“If cannabis is not addictive then neither is heroin or alcohol.”
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In my Nuff Said entry back in June 2022, I covered the reality that “Cannabis causes psychosis. Psychosis causes violence.” After the Uvalde Shooting, one report surfaced the use of cannabis by the shooter. Alex Berenson wrote an expose on the supposed innocent use of marijuana. His book’s release was overshadowed by the pandemic.

Finally.. this is amazing:

billionairephase

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