The Literal Translation

the iPad and me

2010-02-09T08:23:00.000-08:00

Things I need on the iPad before I buy it... well before I feel good about buying it, becuase let's be honest- I am going to buy it.

1. Camera- augmented reality much, batman? Google Goggles? Video Conferencing?
2. iLife- (sans iDVD)a stripped down iMovie, iPhoto (with the ability to better configure your slideshows)
3. Microsoft Office - I know I know, but numbers is not an easy adjustment from excel IMHO and although Keynote > PPT, a lot of presos are in PPT
4. Multitasking - no more need be said.
5. Not on AT&T - Duh.
6. The ability to share internet connectivity from the iPhone. Biggest no brainer ever- I already pay for my iPhone's internet access, don't want to add $60 for another device -- This is, IMHO, the biggest gap.
7. Support for flash- 1ghz processor- excuses be damned. I hate Adobe, but they are right about missing a lot of key web content (Hulu, fancast, etc)
8. HDMI out for unified audio/video
9. Don't make me use app store for all apps.... would like to be able to install a-la the macbook air.
10. port my phone over- let me take call from it via bluetooth connectivity w/ iphone
11. video in would be AWESOME- I get that it doesn't have it due to all the additional programming required on this light os, but imagine this... plugging it in as a go-between your source and the set? push record and boom, or as Steve Jobs would say, BOOM.
12. Garageband (via line in)- I know I am dreaming here.
13. Wacom tablet capabilities.
14. Did I mention no AT&T?

Those are my 14 thoughts, what are yours?

THE JOB - URINE TEST

2009-11-30T08:23:00.000-08:00

THE JOB - URINE TEST
Thanks to Peter for sending this along.

Like most folks in this country, I have a job.. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to get that paycheck in my case, I am required to pass a random urine test (with which I have no problem). What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test.
So, here is my Question: Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them?

Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their ass - doing drugs, while I work. . . . Can you imagine how much money each state
would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?

I guess we could title that program, 'Urine or You're Out'.
Pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don't. Hope you all will pass it along, though. Something has to change in this country -- and soon!!!!!!!

When Life Gives You Lemmons, Ask Life How it Became Self-Aware and Developed Solid Matter.

2009-10-15T12:29:00.000-07:00

I willingly admit the title doesn't help point you in the direction I plan on taking this.

Have you ever hit your goals to find that life after goals is not as good as you thought it would be?

I think part of my DNA is to be busy. I almost think its part of my identity. I cannot rest.

I feel like I can't keep going at this pace and that by perpetuating this pace, I am short-changing the relationships I care the most about. I think its time to get off the merry-go-round and be more intentional about doing a few things really well instead of a many things poorly.

No Matter How Accomplished You Are...

2009-09-28T23:17:00.001-07:00

If there is one thing in the world that I hate, it is celebrity worship. I hate it so much.

I hate that TMZ exists. I hate that we spend more time talking about what an actor or actress is wearing on a colored carpet more than we do thinking about pain around the world, or how we can make a difference. For a moment, however, I am going to set aside my severe, overwhelming, all-encompassing dislike for celebrity worship and talk about something that I dislike just about as much. Long have I told celebrities like Madonna, George Clooney, Warren Beatty, etc that their status doesn't make them qualified to speak about political issues, but I want to hold off on that rant to start a completely new one.

I will entitle this rant, "No Matter How Great Your Music or Art, You Don't Get to Molest or Rape Children."

Shall we start?

I don't know if you heard or not, but Michael Jackson died.

He was sick. He was sick in a lot of ways and was pedophile, HOWEVER, when he died, it seems like everyone became huge fans. Ask any of them and they get REALLY defensive and will say things like, "I was a fan all along" or "I am a huge MJ fan."

However, do some digging, and you will find that their profiles didn't have Michael Jackson in their "faves" until about oh say 90 days ago.

So these "fans" are willing to completely overlook his pedophilia because he was a "genius."

Here is how a conversation might go.

John: Seriously, there is more to life than his music? He screwed around with kids.

"fan:" yeah, but he was a musical genius who

John (interrupting) He screwed around with kids.

"fan:" you are being really narrow-minded here. His legacy is his music.

John: Not the kids he screwed up.

"fan:" you have a one track m..

John (interrupting) Did I mention he screwed around with kids.

Sweet freaking Moses- how easily we overlook that because we like his music.... Do you have to hate his music because of the person he was? No. Is there forgiveness of sins? Yes.

But it is a disservices to the severity of the offense to gloss over it because you like Billie Jean.

Now we come to Roman Polanski

He molested/raped a girl who was 13. He admitted it. Its a fact. He was 44 and she was 13.

He gets arrested and people have a problem with it because of how long ago the crime was. However, shall we not forget that the reason it was so long ago was because he RAN before sentencing. So he gets appropriately "re-arrested" and is now fighting extradition.

HE RAPED A 13 YEAR OLD GIRL. Seriously, people are supporting him? How is that possible. What the hell is wrong with people?

So let me get this strait, he rapes a 13 year old, then runs away from sentencing, and because he makes great films and it was so long ago, we aren't supposed to prosecute him?

Listen, the statue of limitations on that should be forever and ever.

What message are you sending if you do nothing? You are telling people a couple things.

1. The crime is not so severe that time can't make it go away.

2. Famous people get to break the laws as long as their art is "important."

3. Running is a good way to avoid jail.

4. Raping a 13 year old is not that big a deal.

5. "Artistic" people have an excuse because they are "different."

Here is my message to both of you that will read this.

Even if it takes time, we should either jail (or shoot) people who sleep with 13 year olds... no matter how long ago it was or how great their "art" is.

Forgiveness is for individuals, justice is for institutions.

I hope that the 13 year old girl can find forgiveness in her heart and be redeemed by Jesus and I hope that Roman can make restitution and find forgiveness with Jesus, but the state needs to administer justice or it creates an inequity that hurts everyone.

Justice is a Dish Best Served Luke Warm.

2009-06-22T16:06:00.000-07:00

***Minor Content Warning in the Videos***

Friday night we were driving home from seeing The Proposal.... because I am a good husband- that’s why. When we turned on the street close to our house, we saw two punk kids walking and they looked like they were up to no good.... started making trouble in my neighborhood.

As we drove by I heard a THUD and saw something hit the front of my wife's car. I slammed on the breaks and turned around to see them looking back and laughing. My first instinct? I can take them both. I put the car in reverse ready to take both of them on, but my wife insists that I let it go. She is concerned that they might be holding a gun or something. And thus ends my "Bruce Willis in Last Man Standing" moment.

We call the cops and I want to circle back, and find them, but my wife wants to go back home and check the car. We go home. So no sweet fights and no sweet recon work…. *sigh.

With disappointment in my voice, we call the police and give a description of the two blokes, but its late (like midnight), dark, and they two guys are not exactly standing in the light so we can get a good look. What we do notice we relay to the police.

I drop my wife off, clean off the car, look for damage, and hop in my other car (in case I do see them again I want the element of surprise) and head back to the scene to see if I can find those punks. I am driving around looking for these guys and as I am on route, my phone rings. It’s a police officer. The officer says they have two people matching the description I gave and they are holding them, but they need me to better describe the punks to positively ID them. The police had the right people. Of course I “just so happened” to be out and about at this time, so I offer to pop by and say howdy to the boys.

I have already given up on my “sweet tales of glory as I beat up 2 guys all by myself” and I have already given up on my “locate and recon” dreams, but I have one plan left. I am desperately hoping for that "Police officer conveniently takes a phone call out of ear shot and line of sight” scenario.

When I got there I was very happy to see the two punks in handcuffs....

"Is that them?" asked the officer.

"Oh yeah.” I replied. “That is them"

There was an awkward pause as I waited for the officer to ask if I wanted to teach them a lesson or introduce them to our friend "Billy the Club." I mean, I didn't want to be the one to suggest it, but I think officer knew where I was coming from.

"Ok, we will arrest them" the officer said.

"Do you need me to do anything else?" I asked (hinting that I could probably make the two a lot less "mouthy" if given the opportunity)

"No, we are all set, but you will want to look at your car for damage. If there is damage you can press charges." The officer replied.

Disappointed, I told the officer I would.

I got home a told my wife what had happened. At this point she was ready for bed and practically falling asleep. I wondered how she could sleep while something so exciting was happening all around us, but she was very capable. You know I honestly think she had already forgiven them!?

My phone rang again and the officer asked if we wanted to press charges. There was a scratch near where the egg had hit, but I couldn't in good conscience say authoritatively that they had caused it. Also, it probably could have been buffed out with some wax. I asked what would happen if we did or didn't press charges. The office said that if we did, they could be charged with a felony. If we didn't they would still be charged on breaking curfew and would still get in a lot of trouble.

From the sounds of it, the office didn't think we should press charges- especially if we didn't have any major damage. My wife and I discussed and we didn't press charges.

In my mind I am more a fan of vigilante justice.... the kinds where I get to perform an arm bar or triangle choke. Upon reflection, however, I should probably learn how to do them before I attempt them live with my wellbeing on the line.

So the punks got arrested, but didn't get felony charges.

At the end of the day, they were just punks, but they should be grateful my wife was in the car with me because she has the crazy thing called common sense.

She promised to keep sharing it with me as apparently I have none.

The BASEMENT PT 1 of "only God knows"

2009-06-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

So we bought our house and it had "never leaked" in the basement in the 6 years they had owned it. Of course its leaked 3 times in 2 years for us.

One to waterproofing.

Quote 1 12k

Quote 2 9k

I talked him down to 7k if we move everything out of our basement....

I have a kidney on eBay if anyone is interested and the buy it now price is right around 7k.

We are shooting to have that done next month, but we have to do something with the space after its waterproofed or it will look like black bubble wrap completely enclosing you. Apparently that is not the most friendly look know to man, so we have started the process of redesigning our basement. I will upload some of our highly technical drawings and feel free to give us some thoughts.

Letter to an Agent

2009-06-18T09:05:00.001-07:00

I wrote this for a friend who is not getting treated well by her agent.
She is tired of dealing with insurance and I am sure they rely on that get quick settlements, but it seems to me that you have to be the squeaky wheel.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

After our last conversation I am worried I left you with the wrong impression. After talking to my father, friends, and my lawyer I want to make sure you understand where I am coming from. I told you that I just want this to be over, but I am realizing that I am really no closer to resolving this than when we started. If anything, we are further apart. You see, I can't accept any of the blame for this.

I know you deal with complex situations quite often. The good news is that this is a very simple case.

1. I was in a cross walk
2. the cross walk said walk when I stepped into the crosswalk.
3. the car broke the law, went into the cross walk and hit me.

I am worried that you think I neither have the will nor the patience to endure, but let me assure you that I have both the resolve to make sure I am made whole and the resolve to let this case run its full course in settlement or suit.

Let me be perfectly clear. I have been very reasonable and only asked for medical expenses. I have not tried to get anything for pain and suffering. That doesn't mean I wasn't in pain and it doesn't mean I wasn't suffering. Have you ever broken a rib? Have you ever been hit by a car while riding a bike? I can assure you that pain and suffering always follow. I think that is pretty common sense. I have also missed work, incurred costs, been extremely inconvenienced, and already consulted a lawyer, but to date I have not asked for anything for those major inconveniences.

Against my lawyers wishes and advice I attempted to work with you to try and get this resolved, but the offer you have come back with is wholly unacceptable and with each passing day I become more inclined to take my lawyers advice and go after not only all my medical bills, but all my legal fees, pain and suffering, missed work, expenses incurred, and everything else.

I promise you this- I have both the will and the time to see this through to conclusion. Don't mistake my fatigue for lack of resolve and don't mistake my kindness for weakness. I will not let myself be taken advantage of by a systems who wants nothing more than an inexpensive and expedient resolution. If this goes to court it will be both high cost and slow turning. I don't want this, but it is a preferable alternative to the options you have presented to date.

Update

2009-06-18T08:55:00.000-07:00

I have been doing a lot more micro media than formal writing for two reasons.
1. faster
2. easier to put content in.

I am going to be syncing up all these resources here through my facebook account.

In the short term, let me give you the cliff notes of life to date.

1. Life/Wife is good.
2. Work is challenging, but good.
3. MBA is done[
4. Getting ready for our trip to Israel.

Crappy Day

2009-03-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

It has been a crappy week and I can't wait for it to be over. All I want to do now is simply kick-back and watch a bit'o the madness.

watch the madness with me

Great , Nonpartisan Credit Crisis Explanation

2009-03-03T11:13:00.000-08:00

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

My Favorite Video of Superbowl Sunday

2009-02-02T00:16:00.001-08:00

Monster.com - Moose @ Yahoo! Video

I loved this one.

Hope and Change We Can Die For.

2009-01-23T09:35:00.000-08:00

Hey Obama- so far... You suck. When people die do to your insane policies, the media will blame Bush, but deep down in- we will all know it was you.

When the bombs go off and thousands die... it will be your fault.

Bush didn't release terrorist.
Bush didn't want them to get tried as enemy combatants.
Bush put them in a safe place. You, sir, are a fool for closing down Gitmo.

Your Change so far has been 1. Changing your stance on Iran and 2. Effing the military and national security.

Just the change we needed- thanks a lot.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/01/former-rehabilitated-gitmo-detainee.html

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/23/freed-gitmo-terrorist-now-network-leader/

Rhama-llama-ding-dong

2009-01-21T08:59:00.000-08:00

Wow. Thanks Machine-Politics Rahm. Small Dead Animals has the goods... amazing.

January 21, 2009

Juxtapose!

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.

taken directly from http://smalldeadanimals.com/

Best Weekend Ever

2009-01-19T10:30:00.001-08:00

We went to Movin' Out - I am a HUGE billy joel fan and this performance was AMAZING.

This guy was the piano guy... listen to Scenes From an Italian Restaurant. Sick- the guy is sick.

It was simply awesome.

Then we went to my company party here.

Spent the night there.

Then we had a part at our place on Sunday and after it I watched 24.

I can die now.

Hard Work

2009-01-19T10:18:00.000-08:00

Some people hate it. I like it about 5 days in a row, but then I need a break.

This last weekend was the break.

2008-12-23T14:02:00.000-08:00

Media Research Center's Quote of the Year.

Runners up here.
http://www.mediaresearch.org/notablequotables/bestof/2008/welcome.asp

Media Bias? NO... no way. I think Chris Matthews had a moment. He will give you a topic:

Rhode Island is neither an Road nor an Island..... discuss.

So Electing Obama DIDN'T Stop Terrorism?

2008-12-01T12:21:00.000-08:00

Dumb Person of the Day Award Goes too

(drum roll please)

ALEX WITT

Wow.

They are truly stupid people. For the love.....go grow a brain.

This just in. Cancer not cured, People still not reconciling with their families, and the world has canceled the global "Hold-Hands-And-Sing-Songs-of-Peace" conference too.

Unity Through Hatred

2008-12-01T09:29:00.000-08:00

I have said it before and I will say it again....

If there is one thing that brings everyone I disagree with together, it is hating the Jews.

Look at the people Obama has supporting him. True there are some Hollywood and New Yorkers that are Jewish, but true friends of Israel (4 out of 5 absentee ballots of people living IN Israel with American citizenship) voted against Obama. Now look at his supporters.

Louis Farrakhan
http://www.adl.org/special_reports/farrakhan_own_words2/farrakhan_own_words.asp

Jesse Jackson
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/jackson.htm

Al Sharpton
"if the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house."
http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200312030840.asp

The Nation of Islam - and the extreme
http://www.adl.org/main_Nation_of_Islam/jew_hatred_as_history.htm

Iran - I won't insult you.

Bill Ayers - look up his quotes on jews - ouch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmBF7yAdAew

Jeremiah Wright

" The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for almost 40 years now. It took a divestment campaign to wake the business community up concerning the South Africa issue. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community up and to wake Americans up concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism."

and

Once this history came to light, Obama started publicly distancing himself from his spiritual mentor, disinviting Wright from various Obama campaign events. Wright rationalized his current persona non grata status by stating that otherwise

"a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell"

Ali Abunimah's quote on his conversation with Barack.

"Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"

Nicholas Kristof - need I say more?

I could go on and on because there are countless more.

So what about those I disagree with is the uniting agent? Hating the Jews. You know who else hated the jews?

http://tinyurl.com/6frj3y

Yeah- they did.

Why is it that all those who hate America for who we are also hate the jews?

Question- do you think things will get better or worse for Israel in the next 4 years? Why do you think they sent an airstrike the day of the election?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/126609

Scary, but at least they know where our leadership stands.

I call BS

2008-11-07T08:01:00.000-08:00

I am 100% sure that Barrack Obama is going to dissapoint.

I was told that I don't have to worry about paying my mortgage or putting gas in my car.

Guess what- I just filled up and the auto-draft took my money.

Obama has made promises he cannot keep. I am writing down the people who are so outspoken for him and in 4 years, I will check my list like Santa Clause.

I won't rub it in their faces and I won't make mention of it, but to quote the great IowaHawk he said,
"Dr. King said 'I have a dream that one day my children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.' Let us now take pride that Tuesday we Americans proved that neither thing matters anymore."

BINGO.

That being said, I will not be like the libs and the msm and give you the "not my President" crap either. I don't respect the man, but I do respect the position. He gets a chance to prove me wrong, but since his whole campaign was based on discouraging hard work and success, he really really started off on the wrong foot for me- the guy who is working full time, running a business part time, working on rental properties, leading a home group, and finishing his MBA.

I am trying to get ahead, but now it seems less appealing.

The fundamental reason I despise the redistribution is that I want to give my money to people it will help and the government has basically NO checks to make sure people are using my money to get help.

Obama's mouth has written checks his administration can't cash. It will be interesting to see what he does over the next years, but I predict he will spend 3 of the 4 years blaming Bush- becuase that is all he has shown us that he is good at besides reading a teleprompter.

Even the most ardent BDSer will have trouble with that 2 years after the fact.

A little real "hope."

2008-10-20T08:34:00.000-07:00

Ann Coulter has some timely observations- what a shock. Hey to all you media types, if it is random chance why does is it ALWAYS bad for the republicans?

Seriously. Trying to defend the media is like to trying to defend the dog with the Thanksgiving turkey on its breath while chewing on the wishbone.

Reviewing the polls printed in The New York Times and The Washington Post in the last month of every presidential election since 1976, I found the polls were never wrong in a friendly way to Republicans. When the polls were wrong, which was often, they overestimated support for the Democrat, usually by about 6 to 10 points.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter narrowly beat Gerald Ford 50.1 percent to 48 percent. And yet, on Sept. 1, Carter led Ford by 15 points. Just weeks before the election, on Oct. 16, 1976, Carter led Ford in the Gallup Poll by 6 percentage points -- down from his 33-point Gallup Poll lead in August.

Reading newspaper coverage of presidential elections in 1980 and 1984, I found myself paralyzed by the fear that Reagan was going to lose.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan beat Carter by nearly 10 points, 51 percent to 41 percent. In a Gallup Poll released days before the election on Oct. 27, it was Carter who led Reagan 45 percent to 42 percent.

In 1984, Reagan walloped Walter Mondale 58.8 percent to 40 percent, -- the largest electoral landslide in U.S. history. But on Oct. 15, The New York Daily News published a poll showing Mondale with only a 4-point deficit to Reagan, 45 percent to 41 percent. A Harris Poll about the same time showed Reagan with only a 9-point lead. The Oct. 19 New York Times/CBS News Poll had Mr. Reagan ahead of Mondale by 13 points. All these polls underestimated Reagan's actual margin of victory by 6 to 15 points.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis by a whopping 53.4 percent to 45.6 percent. A New York Times/CBS News Poll on Oct. 5 had Bush leading the Greek homunculus by a statistically insignificant 2 points -- 45 percent to 43 percent. (For the kids out there: Before it became a clearinghouse for anti-Bush conspiracy theories, CBS News was considered a credible journalistic entity.)

A week later -- or one tank ride later, depending on who's telling the story -- on Oct. 13, Bush was leading Dukakis in The New York Times Poll by a mere 5 points.

Admittedly, a 3- to 6-point error is not as crazily wrong as the 6- to 15-point error in 1984. But it's striking that even small "margin of error" mistakes never seem to benefit Republicans.

In 1992, Bill Clinton beat the first President Bush 43 percent to 37.7 percent. (Ross Perot got 18.9 percent of Bush's voters that year.) On Oct. 18, a Newsweek Poll had Clinton winning 46 percent to 31 percent, and a CBS News Poll showed Clinton winning 47 percent to 35 percent.

So in 1992, the polls had Clinton 12 to 15 points ahead, but he won by only 5.3 points.

In 1996, Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole 49 percent to 40 percent. And yet on Oct. 22, 1996, The New York Times/CBS News Poll showed Clinton leading by a massive 22 points, 55 percent to 33 percent.

In 2000, which I seem to recall as being fairly close, the October polls accurately described the election as a virtual tie, with either Bush or Al Gore 1 or 2 points ahead in various polls. But in one of the latest polls to give either candidate a clear advantage, The New York Times/CBS News Poll on Oct. 3, 2000, showed Gore winning by 45 percent to 39 percent.

In the last presidential election the polls were surprisingly accurate -- not including the massively inaccurate Election Day exit poll. In the end, Bush beat John Kerry 50.7 percent to 48.3 percent in 2004. Most of the October polls showed the candidates in a dead-heat, with Bush 1 to 3 points ahead. So either pollsters got a whole lot better starting in 2004, or Democrats stole more votes in that election than we even realized.

Becuase You Are So Close to Heaven, That's Why.

2008-10-17T08:27:00.001-07:00

Space smells of steak, say Nasa.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1820985.ece

OUTER space smells of fried steak, scientists revealed yesterday.

The universe also has an aroma of hot metal and motorbike welding, Nasa experts said.

Astronauts reported the bizarre scents on their suits when they returned from space walks.

The space agency has commissioned Steven Pearce of British fragrance firm Omega Ingredients to recreate the smells to help train spacemen.

He said: “When astronauts were de-suiting and taking off helmets, they all reported quite particular odours.

“We have already produced the smell of fried steak, but hot metal is more difficult.

“We think it’s a high energy vibration in the molecule and that’s what we’re trying to add to it now.”

Mr Pearce told pupils at Moorside High School, Manchester, he hoped the smells would be ready this year.

NEWSFLASH* WE DON'T CARE!

2008-10-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081007172729.q0klgd6h&show_article=1
http://www.entertainmentwise.com/news/45086/madonna-sarah-palin-isnt-welcome-on-tour

OK. Let me get 1 thing strait. Palin doesn't want to see Madonna and she doesn't care about has-been actresses- especially the French.

Oh, so Sarah is not welcome to see your show Madonna? Do you think she WANTS to see you show? Maybe she has something a tiny bit more important to do that watch a washed-up lipsync or a woman who defines the term "for her age."

And Bardot... for real. We don't care.

I have actually used too many words telling you how much we don't care. It actually hints that we do care, which we don't. So let me back up.

~~I have actually used too many words telling you how much we don't care. It actually hints that we do care, which we don't. So let me back up.~~

Powerful Video

2008-10-01T12:34:00.001-07:00

WOW- Please read this.

2008-09-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

I spend too much time in my life writing and reading articles, but I want to be informed.

You NEED to read this.

Exclusive: Obama: The Company He Kept

Rita Kramer

Ever since the rantings of Sen. McCarthy it has been a cardinal sin to suggest what has come to be called “guilt by association.” But if we drop the word “guilt” it should be a matter of common sense that who an individual chooses to associate with gives some indication of his interests, tastes and values.

So it might not be amiss to take a look at some of the chosen associates in the life of a man who is a contender for the position of President of the United States and Commander in Chief of its Armed Forces.

We all know by now the story of the Black Liberation theologian Reverend Wright and the anti-white and anti-American ravings that Obama, with his wife and two small children, sat through without demurral until it became politic to distance himself from his former spiritual leader.

There are at least two other figures in Obama’s past whose lives make interesting reading and raise questions about Obama’s social and political views. The first of these had been dead for over a decade when the young Obama entered the sphere of his influence, but that influence was still very much alive.

Saul Alinsky has been called the father of grass roots community organizing. In the 1940s he set out to investigate the gangs of the Chicago slums. He concluded that the causes of criminal behavior were poverty and a sense of powerlessness. He made common cause with local union and religious leaders and set about organizing neighborhood residents, like many a demagogue before and after him, by convincing them they had a common enemy - political, business and institutional entities - and arming them with the means to confront them. As always, there was some justice in Alinsky’s cause. Corruption was rife in Chicago machine politics at the time and jobs were hard to come by for the poor and uneducated. And as always, what began as a laudable venture morphed gradually into its own form of unintended consequences.

Just as “affirmative action,” a euphemism for racial preferences, segued into racial quotas, and just as desegregation became legislated integration with forced busing and concomitant white flight, marooning the disadvantaged in the inner city slums, so Alinsky’s technique of demonstrating for legitimate needs became demands for special privileges. The distance between the community organizer and the rabble-rouser lessened. Demands concerning housing and hiring were shouted in the streets and it was there that policy issues were decided.

I was a student at the University of Chicago when Alinsky defined the University as the enemy and its efforts to expand across the Midway into the Woodlawn neighborhood became the battleground. Demonstrators threatening to lie down in front of bulldozers defeated the University and created a sense of menace around the campus it would have taken Draconian measures to deal with in any way other than to accede to the protestors’ demands. A crowd can easily be turned into a mob.

Alinsky’s philosophy and his methods were at their height in the sixties. Among the many young people drawn to them was the young Hillary Clinton, whose senior thesis at Wellesley dealt with the community activism pioneered by Alinsky.

He himself was proudest of his contribution to what he considered “social justice.” It could be described as agitating for redistributive egalitarianism. In his two books, Reveille for Radicals (1946) and Rules for Radicals (1969), he described his program for training organizers like the young Obama to “rub raw the sores of discontent.”

Barack Obama was just 24 and, according to his own account, searching to define himself as a black man, when he took a job with the Developing Communities Project, built on the Alinsky model on Chicago’s South Side. As he makes clear in his memoir, being black meant identifying with the oppressed. As an organizer for the DCP, Obama’s job was to engage the project’s constituency following the rules set forth by Alinsky as a guide. Make them aware of their misery, lead them to blame government and corporations for everything wanting in their lives, and bring them together in a group to demand redress by whatever means will make it a matter of self-preservation for government and business to meet their demands.

Obama has been quoted as saying that his four years as a community organizer were the best education he ever got anywhere. That is admittedly an ambiguous statement, leaving it unclear just what it was that Obama felt he had learned in those years. Was it the usefulness of radical agitation for social/economic goals or its limitations? Did he move on to more mainstream attitudes and actions only, as with his former spiritual guru, when it became politically prudent to do so? And how would we know?

If Obama still believes in the values and methods of the world of Saul Alinsky, he would hardly seem to be the man most Americans would choose to lead the country. If he does not, it would behoove him to explain his transformation, not just announce it, lest he appear to be an unprincipled opportunist who moves as the wind blows.
* * * * * * *

It’s hard to say how many Americans still hew to the radical world view of the sixties. It is a safer bet that few outside of the tenured radicals of the colleges and universities would be comfortable knowing their elected leader associated comfortably with an unrepentant terrorist.

It was a beautiful bright morning of a crisp fall day when I unfolded my New York Times to see an article on the front page about a man whose history I knew well and whose rehabilitation by the newspaper of record I found unsettling. I picked up the phone and dialed a friend and fellow critic of the educational scene but when she answered it was only to cut me off abruptly to say, “Turn on your TV” and hang up. The date was September 11, 2001.

I forgot about William Ayers along with many other relatively trivial matters and only much later went back to read the Times article about him.
The occasion of the article was the publication of Mr. Ayers’ memoir Fugitive Days, an account of his life in the 1970s on the run from federal authorities as a former leader of the Weather Underground. The Weathermen, as they came to be called, claimed responsibility for bombing the Capitol, the Pentagon, the State Department building and banks, courthouses and police stations. He and his wife, fellow Weatherperson Bernardine Dohrn, were indicted in 1970 for inciting to riot and conspiracy to bomb government buildings, but charges were dropped in 1974 because of technicalities involving illegal surveillance. Dohrn had been on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List and both remained in hiding. When they surfaced in 1980 Dohrn received three years probation and a fine of $1,500. With the Federal charges dropped they faced no further penalties until Dorhn, once referred to as “la Pasionara of the Lunatic Left,” refused to cooperate with prosecutors in the trial of another bomber and was jailed for seven months.

The Times story was headed NO REGRETS… and began, “’I don’t regret setting bombs,’ Bill Ayers said. ‘I feel we didn’t do enough.’”

The real shocker in this sorry story is that William Ayers was at the time of his book’s publication, and remains today, Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The mind reels at the thought of an unrepentant terrorist as a respected faculty member of an institution of higher learning, and of the training of future classroom teachers at that. But wait, as they say on television, that’s not all. His wife and fellow former terrorist is an Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University and Director of its Children and Family Justice Center. The word “justice” in such contexts can usually be connected with the view of this country as mired in racist oppression crying out to be undone.

The story of the Radical Leftist orientation of American campuses is well known. The relevance of the Ayers saga today has to do with the relationship between the Ayers and Barack Obama. No one can claim they were ever bosom buddies, but their relationship certainly goes beyond the merely casual. Neighbors in the Hyde Park neighborhood around the University of Chicago, they had what Obama’s spokesman David Axelrod calls “a friendly relationship.” Casual, not intimate. Well, it doesn’t necessarily imply intimacy but one may surmise a certain kindred spirit in the fact that a fundraiser for Obama in the early stages of his political career was held at the Ayers/Dorn house. In the years since, Ayers and Obama have appeared together on several panels, some of them organized by Michelle Obama.
And then there’s the matter of the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit foundation on which Ayers and Obama served together as paid members of its board of directors. During the time (1999 to 2002) that Obama was a director, the Woods Fund made generous contributions to an Arab group founded by Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, a supporter of the PLO while it was labeled by the U.S. State Department as a terror group, and another host of an Obama fundraiser. The group in question, the Arab American Action Network, subscribes to the idea that the establishment of the state of Israel is a Nakba, a catastrophe.

Now there are Americans - the faculty at Northwestern University and many of the Obamas’ and Ayers’ Hyde Park neighbors among them - who look upon William Ayers’ past as youthful indiscretion, and an admirable one at that, begging the question of how political decisions should be made in a democracy - by means of ballots or bombs.

Many others would be reluctant to elect a commander in chief perceived to have an outlook and values that reflect strongly radical sympathies. So far, little has been made in the mainstream media of this aspect of Obama’s background but it may well surface as the campaign goes on. It would be a shame if Obama’s loss of the election were to be ascribed to racism. It may just be that Americans reject him not because of the color of his skin but the content of his character.

The Best Website - Ever- Done, Finished, Forever, Amen.

2008-09-26T13:57:00.001-07:00

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org

Do it and look up your favorite Liberals. You WILL be amazed.

My heated exchange

2008-09-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

Greetings readers. As we head into this political season it is impossible for me to get through this without feeling the need to correct what can only be referred to as pure stupidity. Just because someone disagrees with me doesn't mean they are stupid at all, in fact, many of my debates are with people brighter than myself. Fortunately I have reality firmly on my side, and it tends to be right.

Here is an exchange I had with some people on facebook.

Here is what I want you to notice- PLEASE PAY ATTENTION - they bring up issues and then will not discuss, they use phrases that they cannot defend, and they take cheap shots with out substantiation. I am happy to debate an issue, but here I am fighting two of them with half my brain tied behind my back. Please note, some of the names have been changed to actually be accurate.

Here is my exchange with someone on facebook who shared a video with me.

This video is like the Sesame Street of Political discourse.

Obama Good - McCain Bad... see children.

Source: vimeo.com
I'm not a very political person but lately I've just been sickened by the relentless republican effort to make this great man out to be less than the inspirational leader he truly is. I simply could not sit back and do nothing about it as it is deeply offensive to me. ...

Add a comment| 8 comments

COMMENT 1 - ME - John Today at 9:02am

Name 1 thing he has led other than his campaign?

PS - that video is worthless propoganda. I am going to show a video with a bunch of babies left to die that were born through abortions and then flash Obama's picture right after... common. This is more than yellow, its steps beyond.

COMMENT 2 - HIM - Sean Today at 9:37am
If anti abortion is your main issue Palin/McCain is your ticket. And as a bonus you get creationism in the schools...

So in classs we can confuse our kids and tell them that science is not real. Are dinosaurs real? No little Johnny they are not... REALLY. come on if that is the best the GOP can do they deserve the loss they are about to get.

COMMENT 3 - ME - John Today at 10:30am
the premise for you video is leadership- obama has led NOTHING, ZERO, ZIP, ZILCH. Plus the video is absolutely stupid- not because I disagree, but because of the inferences.

I am not talking about Abortion- I am talking about babies that SURVIVE and Obama opposed giving them medical treatment. Think about it- even if you are pro-choice, than the WHOLE argument is based upon whats good for the mother. The baby is out... it has no ramifications on the mother. It is simply murder. Hell, even Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer voted to protect the child! Obama was the only one who spoke out against it.

Mother Teresa-
"What is taking place in America is a war against the child. And if we accept that the mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another."

He lacks the moral fortitude to stand up for LIVING, BREATHING, ALIVE, BABIES (I am not talking fetuses or unborn children).... they are born.

Besides- creationism in the class room is a court issue. You should know that Sean, you are a bright guy. The President doesn't set curriculum for the schools, much less the VP.

But, if I had to pick, I would take creationism in the classroom over Nazism in the hospitals any day of the week.

COMMENT 4 - HIM - Sean Today at 10:38am
Forget a failed economy, forget an illegal war that is poorly run, forget Bin Laden, forget health care, forget all the important thinsg and make a baby in a trash can your argument for a canidate.?

That is how desperate the GOP is, they dont have any new ideas for real positive change and instead have to resort to baseless accusations like Obama wants premature aborted babies denied treatment...

weak! Try talking about issues.

COMMENT 5 - ME - John Today at 10:48am

Failed Economy- Raising taxes on business and those who create the jobs? WRONG - econ 101.

Illegal War that was poorly run? Who has the experience to actually win and get us out? McCain- Not OBAMA. Especially when the troops don't respect someone who votes not to fund body armor for our troops? WRONG AGAIN

Health Care? Socialist Health Care? REALLY have you ever had to wait 6 months for a prostate exam because the allotment was used up? WRONG AGAIN. Why are the most lucrative clinics in the world the ones near the Canadian border that only take cash- you do the math.

How about having leadership experience in dangerous times? Obama = 0.

How about executive experience?

How about talking to rogue nations? PAGING NIGEL, NIGEL CHAMBERLAIN?

Any issues you want.... Obama has no experience and will make things worse. PERIOD. There are your issues.

COMMENT 6 - IDIOT - Tom Today at 12:56pm
Thanks for posting this Sean. Many people are afraid of change. Like the frog in the slowly boiling water, they cling to what has seemed to work for them in the past. Clearly, some of the more reactionary among us are afraid of Obama, perhaps because he's black, perhaps because they drank the coolaid of the smear machine. Even people like Newt Gingrich recognize that someone like McCain represents a dangerous continuation of failed policies.
My opinion is that when you get shrill comments to a post like this, you're dealing with someone who is angry and afraid. Best ignore it.

COMMENT 7 - ME KICKING IDIOT IN HEAD WITH WORDS -John Today at 1:10pm
Hey Tom- thanks for your keen insights. Thanks for calling me a racist subtly. By extension your illogical argument makes you sexist because you don't like McCain's running mate.

You don't know me, you don't know if I am angry or afraid. You, sir, are VERY closed minded for assuming without asking. That is something Obama would chide you for.

I actually agree that McCain is not that great, believe it or not. But compared to THE MOST liberal Senator and LEAST qualified person to ever run for President, I will take him.

It must be nice knowing that you can rely on glib comments rather than facts. Those of us who actually invest time learning about this can't rely on half-baked propaganda like this video.

Obama is Indefensible

2008-09-16T10:11:00.000-07:00

Obama just released his "believers for Barrack" site. I have 2 questions.

1. Believers in what?
2. You have to question how someone can be for killing alive infants.

Shouldn't it be this?

its called getting owned

2008-09-03T21:03:00.000-07:00

Dear God,

2008-08-25T07:25:00.000-07:00

Dear God,

I was hoping you would reconsider your stance on abortion. I know that you are the sovereign Lord, but hey- I am OBAMA. The one the only. There are lots of "gods," but there has never been another me. Perhaps with this new evidence, you will see the reason for finally becoming pro-choice- specifically for "murder" or as we have taken to calling it, After-Birth-Abortion.

Amen.

Of Course They Were- Is Bill Speaking?

2008-08-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

Well they would have to... Billy-Boy is speaking.

Its ok though - he won't inhale. Gawsh- can you imagine saying that with a strait face. I drank the water, but I didn't swallow it.

Had a beer, but I didn't drink it.

Sure I like gum- I just don't chew it.

Ouch- Reeeezko, Reeeezko, Reeezko

2008-08-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

What A Crook.

Paid for by the Republican National Committee.
310 First Street SE - Washington, D.C. 20003 - (202) 863-8500 - www.gop.com
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
OBAMA’S HOUSING PROBLEM
Brought To You By Convicted Felon Tony Rezko
___________________________________________________________
Obama Engaged In Deal With Convicted Felon To Get Deal On House That Had Four Fireplaces And A Wine Cellar:
Obama Paid $300,000 Less Than The Asking Price For His Mansion, While Tony Rezko’s Wife Paid Full Price For A
Vacant Lot Next Door On The Very Same Day. “Two years ago, Obama bought a mansion on the South Side, in the
Kenwood neighborhood, from a doctor. On the same day, [Antoin ‘Tony’] Rezko’s wife, Rita Rezko, bought the vacant lot next
door from the same seller. The doctor had listed the properties for sale together. He sold the house to Obama for $300,000
below the asking price. The doctor got his asking price on the lot from Rezko’s wife.” (Tim Novak, “Obama And His Rezko Ties,”
Chicago Sun-Times, 4/23/07)
• The Seller Of Obama’s Home “Wanted To Sell Both Properties At The Same Time.” “On the same day Obama
closed on his house, Rezko’s wife bought the adjacent empty lot, meeting the condition of the seller who wanted to sell
both properties at the same time.” (Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz, “The Rezko Connection,” ABC News’ “The Blotter” Blog,
abcnews.go.com, 1/10/08)
Obama Later Purchased A Portion Of Rezko’s Land For $104,500; It Was Valued At $40,500. “Later, the Obamas bought
a 10-foot-by-150-foot piece of the lot for $104,500. An appraisal put the value of the strip at $40,500, a spokesman said, but
Obama considered it fair to pay one-sixth of the original price for one-sixth of the lot.” (Peter Slevin, “Obama Says He Regrets Land
Deal With Fundraiser,” The Washington Post, 12/17/06)
Rezko Was Convicted Of Wire And Mail Fraud, Money Laundering, And Aiding And Abetting Bribery. “A federal jury
today convicted developer Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko of corruption charges for trading on his clout as a top adviser and fundraiser to
Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Rezko's guilty verdict on 16 of 24 corruption counts could have broad repercussions for Blagojevich,
who made Rezko a central player in his kitchen cabinet. It could also prove a political liability for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, who
once counted Rezko as a friend and fundraiser, as the likely Democratic presidential nominee heads into the general election
campaign against Republican John McCain. … The jury convicted Rezko of wire and mail fraud, money laundering and aiding
and abetting bribery. He was acquitted of attempted extortion.” (Bob Secter and Jeff Coen, “Rezko Convicted Of Corruption,” Chicago
Tribune, 6/4/08)
NOTE: The 3 Story House Has Four Fireplaces And A Wine Cellar. “When Obama and his wife, Michelle, a hospital
executive, decided to move with their two young girls from their Hyde Park condominium, they chose a spacious three-story
Georgian revival home on a tree-lined street in the Kenwood neighborhood, not far from the University of Chicago. The owner
had listed the house -- nearly 100 years old, with four fireplaces and a wine cellar -- and an adjacent lot as separate parcels.”
(Peter Slevin, “Obama Says He Regrets Land Deal With Fundraiser,” The Washington Post, 12/17/06)
Obama Provided Political Favors To Tony Rezko, Including Writing Letters On His Behalf:
“As A State Senator, Barack Obama Wrote Letters To City And State Officials Supporting His Political Patron Tony
Rezko’s Successful Bid To Get More Than $14 Million From Taxpayers To Build Apartments For Senior Citizens.” (Tim
Novak, “Obama’s Letters For Rezko,” Chicago Sun-Times, 6/13/07)
The Letters Show That Obama Did Do A Political Favor For Rezko. “Obama’s letters, written nearly nine years ago, for the
first time show the Democratic presidential hopeful did a political favor for Rezko – a longtime friend, campaign fund-raiser and
client of the law firm where Obama worked – who was indicted last fall on federal charges that accuse him of demanding
kickbacks from companies seeking state business under Gov. Blagojevich.” (Tim Novak, “Obama’s Letters For Rezko,” Chicago Sun-
Times, 6/13/07)
Paid for by the Republican National Committee.
310 First Street SE - Washington, D.C. 20003 - (202) 863-8500 - www.gop.com
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
2
• FLASHBACK: In December Of 2006, Obama Said He Had “Never Done Any Favors For Him.” “The letters appear
to contradict a statement last December from Obama, who told the Chicago Tribune that, in all the years he’s known
Rezko, ‘I’ve never done any favors for him.’” (Tim Novak, “Obama’s Letters For Rezko,” Chicago Sun-Times, 6/13/07)
Rezko Offered Obama A Job After Law School And The Two Have Been Friends Ever Since:
Rezko Offered Obama A Job When He Was A Harvard Law Student And The Two Have Stayed In Touch Ever Since.
“One of them was Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who was offered a job by Rezko in the early 1990s while a top student at
Harvard Law School. Obama did not take it, but over the years, the two men stayed in touch…” (Peter Slevin, “Obama Says He
Regrets Land Deal With Fundraiser,” The Washington Post, 12/17/06)
Rezko Was One Of Obama’s Biggest Fundraisers, Raising $250,000 For His Campaigns:
Rezko Was “One Of The Biggest Fundraisers” For Obama. “‘This was discussed a lot. They wanted to have a good
showing,’ said a source familiar with the fund-raiser [Rezko held for Obama], speaking on condition of anonymity. ‘Tony was
one of the biggest fund-raisers.’” (Chris Fusco and Tim Novak, “Rezko Cash Triple What Obama Says,” Chicago Sun-Times, 6/18/07)
• Obama Has Admitted To $250,000 Worth Of Campaign Funding Provided By Tony Rezko. “For the first time, Sen.
Barack Obama put a figure Friday to the amount of campaign contributions that indicted political fund-raiser Tony
Rezko raised for the senator’s campaigns, and the number -- about $250,000 -- was far more than he previously
acknowledged.” (Tim Novak, Chris Fusco, Dave McKinney and Carol Marin, “More Rezko Dough Found,” Chicago Sun-Times, 3/15/08)
Obama And Rezko’s Socializing Included Their Wives And A Trip To Rezko’s Lake House:
Obama And Rezko Socialized Over Lunch Or Breakfast And Discussed Politics And Family. Obama: “We’d [Obama and
Rezko] continue to have lunches or breakfasts. We’d talk about politics. We’d talk about family.” (Sen. Barack Obama, Interview With
Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago, IL, 3/15/08)
Obama And Rezko Would Also Socialize With Their Wives Over Dinner. Obama: “In terms of other than lunch or breakfast
he and I had, socially, Michelle and I probably had a couple of dinners, or two or three dinners with [Rezko] and his wife during
the course of this six or seven or eight years.” (Sen. Barack Obama, Interview With Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago, IL, 3/15/08)
The Obamas And Rezkos Took A Trip Together To Rezko’s Home At Lake Geneva, WI. Obama: “[Barack And Michelle
Obama] Visited their home in Lake Geneva once for the day.” (Sen. Barack Obama, Interview With Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago, IL,
3/15/08)

Pat Throws it Down

2008-08-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

I am not always a huge PB fan. Sometimes I think he, although well intentioned, hurts the cause of the conservative movement. This article, however, is dynamite.

A Catholic Case Against Barack 08/12/2008

In the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama rolled up more than 90 percent of the African-American vote. Among Catholics, he lost by 40 points. The cool liberal Harvard Law grad was not a good fit for the socially conservative ethnics of Altoona, Aliquippa and Johnstown.

But if Barack had a problem with Catholics then, he has a far higher hurdle to surmount in the fall, with those millions of Catholics who still take their faith and moral code seriously.

For not only is Barack the most pro-abortion member of the Senate, with his straight A+ report card from the National Abortion Rights Action League and Planned Parenthood. He supports the late-term procedure known as partial-birth abortion, where the baby's skull is stabbed with scissors in the birth canal and the brains are sucked out to end its life swiftly and ease passage of the corpse into the pan.
Partial-birth abortion, said the late Sen. Pat Moynihan, "comes as close to infanticide as anything I have seen in our judiciary."

Yet, when Congress was voting to ban this terrible form of death for a mature fetus, Michelle Obama was signing fundraising letters pledging that, if elected, Barack would be "tireless" in keeping legal this "legitimate medical procedure."

And Barack did not let the militants down. When the Supreme Court upheld the congressional ban on this barbaric procedure, Barack denounced the court for denying "equal rights for women."

As David Freddoso reports in his new best-seller, "The Case Against Barack Obama," the Illinois senator goes further than any U.S. senator has dared go in defending what John Paul II called the "culture of death."

Thrice in the Illinois legislature, Obama helped block a bill that was designed solely to protect the life of infants already born, and outside the womb, who had miraculously survived the attempt to kill them during an abortion. Thrice, Obama voted to let doctors and nurses allow these tiny human beings die of neglect and be tossed out with the medical waste.

How can a man who purports to be a Christian justify this?

If, as its advocates contend, abortion has to remain legal to protect the life and health, mental and physical, of the mother, how is a mother's life or health in the least threatened by a baby no longer inside her -- but lying on a table or in a pan fighting for life and breath?

How is it essential for the life or health of a woman that her baby, who somehow survived the horrible ordeal of abortion, be left to die or put to death? Yet, that is what Obama voted for, thrice, in the Illinois Senate.

When a bill almost identical to the one Barack fought in Illinois, the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, came to the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2001, the vote was 98 to 0 in favor. Barbara Boxer, the most pro-abortion member of the Senate before Barack came, spoke out on its behalf:

"Of course, we believe everyone should deserve the protection of this bill. ... Who could be more vulnerable than a newborn baby? So, of course, we agree with that. ... We join with an 'aye' vote on this. I hope it will, in fact, be unanimous."

Obama says he opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act because he feared it might imperil Roe v. Wade. But if Roe v. Wade did allow infanticide or murder, which is what letting a tiny baby die of neglect or killing it outright amounts to, why would he not want that court decision reviewed and amended to outlaw infanticide?

Is the right to an abortion so sacrosanct to Obama that killing by neglect or snuffing out of the life of tiny babies outside the womb must be protected if necessary to preserve that right?
Obama is an abortion absolutist. "I could find no instance in his entire career," writes Freddoso, "in which he voted for any regulation or restriction on the practice of abortion."

In 2007, Barack pledged that, in his first act as president, he will sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would cancel every federal, state or local regulation or restriction on abortion. The National Organization for Women says it would abolish all restrictions on government funding of abortion.

What we once called God's Country would become the nation on earth most zealously committed to an unrestricted right of abortion from conception to birth.

Before any devout Catholic, Evangelical Christian or Orthodox Jew votes for Obama, he or she might spend 15 minutes in Chapter 10 of Freddoso's "Case Against Barack." For if, as Catholics believe, abortion is the killing of an unborn child, and participation in an abortion entails automatic excommunication, how can a good Catholic support a candidate who will appoint justices to make Roe v. Wade eternal and eliminate all restrictions on a practice Catholics legislators have fought for three decades to curtail?

And which Catholic priests and prelates will it be who give invocations at Obama rallies, even as Mother Church fights to save the lives of unborn children whom Obama believes have no right to life and no rights at all?

30 minutes you will thank me for

2008-07-31T23:45:00.000-07:00

The Green Machine

2008-07-25T07:45:00.000-07:00

Being green today is the equivalent of being patriotic in the 80s.
I am completely tired of hearing about everything green. In my MBA we have spent more time on how to run a business without a negative environmental impact than we have on how to meet payroll, or manage workplace conflicts.

When my class graduates, we will have a lot of people who are eager to run a environmentally sustainable business with no idea how to sustain a payroll.

But isn't this what the liberals want? They want a group of people sold out to "hope," but completely reliant on the powers that be to supply for all their needs.

There was a stupid hippie show when I was growing up called Captain Planet. It was about a smurf-looking hippie that could undue pollution.

The villains were the "industry men" who polluted for no other reason, but the pure joy of starting a forest fire, or the unparalleled pleasure of hunting for a snow owl.

That is how the hippies view everyone who doesn't share their point of view. Well guess what, I don't. When we take corn from tables and use it as fuel, the price goes up and people around the world starve. Why should more people starve so you can ride around in your Prius feeling better than everyone?

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/cartoons.aspx#cartoon301706294118428

news stories + commentary

2008-07-24T10:01:00.000-07:00

There is a new feature of the blog...

news stories + commentary

Its my usually sarcastic and largely political comments on recent news articles that catch my eye.

Lately I have been focusing on ~~the second coming of~~ I mean the media's coverage of "teh Obamassiah"

Gay Marriage- My Thoughts And Your Reactions

2008-07-03T01:10:00.000-07:00

So here are my thoughts...

I am not a scholar. I have to go on what I read and the opinions of those I trust.

Paul claims to be the chief of sinners, but I would lay claim to second in line and argue for number one. With that in mind I write this with a spirit of humility, knowing that I could not save myself and it took God coming into human history to save me. I have nothing to be proud of in and of myself, but when it comes to calling a sin a sin, someone is going to be offended. One option offend the person in sin by telling them that what they are doing is sin because God has called it sin. The other option is to offend God by somehow distorting his teachings or denying his truth to be liked by those who would oppose his truth. Given the choices, I am not going to be the one to tell God that He got it wrong and he needs to be more tolerant of alternative lifestyles.

Let me define my premise for my argument against gay marriage as it relates to the church.

The church espouse the Bible as our compass by practicing the methodology of Sola Scriptura.

( The Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura does not mean that only Scripture is meaningful, truthful, or useful for believers. It means that Scripture is the final arbiter, or final court of appeal, for spiritual truth claims, and that anyone making spiritual truth claims, no matter how highly s/he ranks as a leader, is ultimately accountable to the authority of the Bible.)

This means that the Bible may not give instruction on how to change your oil, so you would have to use a different informational source. Its ok to use other books, but on any issues of moral, spiritual, ethical, etc dispute, the supreme court is the Bible. Its not a pastor, its not a different book, or a sermon- its the Bible.

So then we have to look at what the Bible says about homosexuality and marriage.

Homosexuality
Jude 1:7 (English Standard Version)

just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 (English Standard Version)

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

(Let me take a quick digression here. It is important to note that all the things mentioned above are equally wrong in God's eyes)

1 Timothy 1:9-10 (English Standard Version)

understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine

Ok One More.

Romans 1:26-27 (English Standard Version)

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Marriage

Genesis 2:18-24 (English Standard Version)

Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

"This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man."

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Ephesians 5:23-32 (English Standard Version)

For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church

1 Peter 3:1-7 (English Standard Version)

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.
Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

1 Corinthians 7:1-2 (English Standard Version)

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: "It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman." But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

I saved that one for the end because I think to me it makes the best point. It says that the way to release your desires is within marriage between a man and a woman.

My Thoughts

If the church doesn't accept the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, than it is probably not a Christian Church because it doesn't hold the Bible as the highest authority.

The bible is clear that homosexuality is a sin. Its not the only sin, but it is a sin. The bible is also clear that marriage is for a man and a woman- even being used by Christ to describe his relationship to the church. We are NOT dual-heads of the church, Christ is the sole head of the church.

Lifting a quote from http://www.christiananswers.net/

These references indicate that homosexual passions and acts are unnatural, shameful, contrary to sound doctrine and deny entrance to the Kingdom of God. This being so they cannot be the basis of a Christian marriage sanctioned by God's Church. The Church exists to save people, not to bless the means of their damnation. No marriage can be sanctioned by the Church if the very basis of the marriage involves acts that put the couple outside of eternal salvation. No matter what our society may legislate, the law of God is clear - that a marriage is not a godly marriage if it is a same sex union.

Thats how I feel too. I equate this to a question like, "if two people rob a house would God have them split the earnings equally?" The answer is not as simple as a "Yes" or "No" becuase as a Christian we cannot accept the premise of the question. The answer is that God doesn't want them to rob the house.

This is how I met my wife

2008-07-03T00:27:00.000-07:00

I think that D should teach some lessons. Make sure you listen to the whole thing.

is the ground getting hot?

2008-06-15T00:23:00.000-07:00

I was unable to sleep so I was reading the drudgereport and I found this.

I am convinced that gay marriage will be completely and totally accepted by the time I am 30.

My thoughts are below the article.

Male priests marry in Anglican church's first gay 'wedding'
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:10AM BST 15/06/2008
An Anglican church has held a homosexual "wedding" for the first time in a move that will deepen the rift between liberals and traditionalists, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.

Two male priests exchanged vows and rings in a ceremony that was conducted using one of the church's most traditional wedding rites – a decision seen as blasphemous by conservatives.

The ceremony broke Church of England guidelines and was carried out last month in defiance of the Bishop of London, in whose diocese it took place. News of the "wedding" emerged days before a crucial summit of the Anglican Church's conservative bishops and archbishops, who are threatening to split the worldwide Church over the issue of homosexual clergy.

Although some liberal clergy have carried out "blessing ceremonies" for homosexual couples in the past, this is the first time a vicar has performed a "wedding ceremony", using a traditional marriage liturgy, with readings, hymns and a Eucharist.

Article continues
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Both the conservative and liberal wings of the Anglican communion expressed shock last night.

The Most Rev Henry Orombi, the Archbishop of Uganda, said that the ceremony was "blasphemous." He called on Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to take decisive action if the Anglican Church were not to "disintegrate". Archbishop Orombi added: "What really shocks me is that this is happening in the Church of England that first brought the Gospel to us.

"The leadership tried to deny that this would happen, but now the truth is out. Our respect for the Church of England will erode unless we see a return to traditional teaching."

The Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, the Bishop of Winchester – a powerful conservative figure – said that the service represented a wedding "in all but name". He said: "Strictly speaking it is not a marriage, but the language is clearly modelled on the marriage service and the occasion is modelled on the marriage service. This clearly flouts Church guidelines and will exacerbate divisions within the Anglican Communion."

The bishop said that it was up to the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, to act, adding that it would become a high-profile test case of Church authority.

"Can we stand for the clear teaching of the Church of England or are we powerless in the face of these actions, which I regret enormously have taken place," he said.

The service was held at St Bartholomew the Great in London – one of England's oldest churches, which featured in Four Weddings and a Funeral – and was conducted by the parish rector, the Rev Martin Dudley.

The couple, the Rev Peter Cowell, who is a cleric at one of the Queen's churches, and the Rev Dr David Lord, had registered their civil partnership before the ceremony.

Mr Dudley opened the service by saying: "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God to join these men in a holy covenant of love and fidelity. Such a covenant shows us the mystery of the union between God and God's people and between Christ and the Church." In the vows, Mr Cowell and Dr Lord pledged to "hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part".

Mr Dudley blessed the union with the words: "As David and Jonathan's souls were knit together, so these men may surely perform and keep the vow and covenant betwixt them made."

Leading church figures expressed astonishment at the language and grandeur of the service, claiming that it was a highly provocative act. Although, the use of such a traditional ceremony does not constitute a marriage in the eyes of the law, Church figures on all sides said the event went further than any gay blessing ceremonies that had gone before.

The "marriage" will revive the war over homosexual clergy that has engulfed the Church since 2003 when Gene Robinson was made Bishop of New Hampshire and Jeffrey John, another gay cleric, who was about to become Bishop of Reading, was made to step down.

It is likely to embolden liberal clergy who have been reluctant to offer a full "wedding service" and will open the floodgates to other homosexuals who want a traditional ceremony.

Mr Dudley agreed to conduct the service despite Bishop Chartres warning that Church guidelines – drawn up when the Civil Partnerships Act was introduced – do not allow formal blessings of gay relationships. He argued that it was not a wedding but a blessing and that he was not "offering" blessing services, but responding to personal requests from friends. "I believe that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, but I see nothing wrong with blessing a couple who want to make a life-long commitment to one another."

A Church of England spokesman said: "Where clergy are approached by people asking for prayer in relation to entering into a civil partnership they should respond pastorally and sensitively in the light of the circumstances. But the House of Bishops affirmed that clergy should not provide services of blessing for those who register a civil partnership."

Marriage is 1 man 1 woman. In a church where we sent the wrong message there is special kind of problem. This is why I think the most dangerous attacks are from the inside of the church, not the outside. There is a higher standard for leaders of churches. I gotta crunch how I want to respond to this, but I will update this post as I can think about it more. Right now, I am just worried that people are going to miss the problems that allowing this will present. More on this soon.

drool drool

2008-06-09T12:08:00.001-07:00

can you say 3g iphone with GPS.

Holy Cow- now THAT is a sweet phone.

iPhone 3G
iPhone
See available colors: black | white
Phone, iPod, and Internet in one fast 3G device.

Introducing iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS, support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more amazing features in your hands. And just like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one —a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device.

Get more details about iPhone 3G
Where to buy:

iPhone will be available in 8GB (black) and 16GB (black or white) models1 at Apple Retail Stores and AT&T Stores.

Find a store

What's new on iPhone 3G
3G Speed
3G Speed

3G gives you fast access to the Internet and email over your cellular network. And 3G makes it easier to multitask: When connected via 3G, you can surf the web even while you’re on a call.
iPhone in Enterprise
iPhone in Enterprise

With support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, iPhone delivers push email, calendar, and contacts right to your pocket.
Built-in GPS
Maps with GPS

GPS adds a new dimension to mobile phone mapping. Find your location, get directions, and track your progress along a route.
The App Store
The App Store

The App Store lets you browse applications and download them directly to your iPhone. Some applications are even free.
Phone, iPod, Internet, and more.
Revolutionary Mobile Phone.
Revolutionary Mobile Phone

iPhone redefines what you can do on a mobile phone. Tap a number to make a call. Listen to voicemail in any order with Visual Voicemail.
Great Widescreen iPod.
Great Widescreen iPod

iPhone is an equally brilliant iPod. Enjoy music, videos, and more on the 3.5-inch color display and browse by album artwork with Cover Flow.
Internet in your pocket.
Internet in Your Pocket.

iPhone features rich HTML email, Maps with GPS, and Safari — the most advanced web browser ever on a portable device.
What's in the Box

* iPhone 3G
* Stereo headset with mic
* USB power adapter
* Dock Connector to USB cable
* Documentation
* Cleaning/polishing cloth
* SIM ejector tool

What's in the box
Specifications

Screen size
3.5 inches (diagonal)
Screen resolution
480 by 320 pixels (163 ppi)
Input method
Multi-Touch
Storage
8GB and 16GB1
Cellular
UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz)
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
Wireless data
Wi-Fi (802.11b/g)
UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz)
EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR

GPS
Assisted-GPS
Camera
2.0 megapixels
Battery2
Talk time: Up to 5 hours on 3G;
up to 10 hours on 2G
Standby time: Up to 300 hours
Internet use: Up to 5 hours on 3G;
up to 6 hours on Wi-Fi
Video playback: Up to 7 hours
Audio playback: Up to 24 hours
Dimensions
4.5 by 2.4 by 0.48 inches
(115.5 by 62.1 by 12.3 mm)
Weight3
4.7 ounces (133 grams)

AppleCare Protection Plan
Buy your iPhone with complete confidence
The iPhone warranty

iPhone comes with up to two years of technical support during the time your wireless agreement with your carrier remains active. In addition, your iPhone, its rechargeable battery, and all included accessories are covered against defects for a full year from the purchase date by a limited hardware warranty.
AppleCare Protection Plan

Enjoy peace of mind with the award-winning AppleCare Protection Plan. For up to two years from the original purchase date of your iPhone, you get repair coverage for your iPhone, battery, iPhone Bluetooth Headset, and included accessories — all for just $69. We recommend that you purchase the AppleCare Protection Plan with your new iPhone to take maximum advantage of its benefits.
AppleCare Protection Plan
Requirements

* Mac
* PC

* USB 2.0 port
* Mac OS X
v10.4.10 or later
* iTunes 7.7
or later
* Internet connection
(broadband recommended; fees may apply)
* AT&T service
(minimum two-year agreement)
* Free iTunes Store account
(valid credit card required)

* USB 2.0 port
* Windows XP Home or Professional (SP2), or Windows Vista
* iTunes 7.7
or later
* Internet connection
(broadband recommended; fees may apply)
* AT&T service
(minimum two-year agreement)
* Free iTunes Store account
(valid credit card required)

1. *Based on 3G and EDGE testing. Actual speeds vary by site conditions. Based on iPhone 3G (8GB) and first-generation iPhone (8GB) purchases. Requires new 2-year AT&T rate plan, sold separately.
2. (1) 1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.
3. (2) All battery claims depend on network configuration and many other factors; actual results will vary. Battery has limited recharge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced by Apple service provider. Battery life and charge cycles vary by use and settings. See http://www.apple.com/batteries and http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html for more information.
4. (3) Actual weight varies by configuration and manufacturing process.

1. Google, the Google logo, and Google Maps are trademarks of Google Inc. © 2008 TeleAtlas. All rights reserved.

David Lee Roth Tries out for American Idol

2008-06-05T12:09:00.000-07:00

Ummm yeah... amazing.

this post goes to 11

2008-05-26T01:57:00.001-07:00

Words of Wisdom From Spinal Tap - Watch more free videos

whats new

2008-04-11T22:23:00.000-07:00

We decided to host some kids from Uganda this weekend. We took them out to a restaurant for the first time (for some 2nd for others) tonight and it was awesome. They like fries so we took them to the dirty bird- Red Robin.

They were so grateful. It was amazing to me that we have so much and are often not grateful. They have so little and are SO grateful.

1 member of the group was a chaperon and she told us the story of how she became a Christian and in her family of 12 siblings, was the first to accept Christ. It was powerful to hear her talk about how she felt called to Christ and how she clung to her faith in the midst of serious adversity.

She reminded my wife and I about Irene.

These giants of the faith don't struggle with the complacency that I do, nor do they take any credit. They follow the Mother Theresa model of letting your actions supply the power for your words.

Video goodness

2008-04-08T01:42:00.000-07:00

Watch the Whole Video

2008-03-23T20:51:00.001-07:00

I know most of the readers who come are ready for instant hillarity.... but you gotta wait for this one. Its like compounding interest... worth the wait.

Good Friday

2008-03-21T08:46:00.000-07:00

Good Friday - It Wasn't Good For Him

Whats New

2008-03-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day of the semester. (thankyouJesus)

And so I am hoping to get more into writing and less into simply posting videos (even though they are highly-intelligent and deeply profound reflections of the society in which we exist as a whole and are funny).

I have been really struck by how incomplete my view of God's grace is.

My wife and I go for walks and we discuss what we are reading in the Bible, what we heard on the radio, etc.

We both listened to this (part 1 & part 2)

Its the story of a woman who was sexually, physically, spiritually, and emotionally abused by her father and others who were supposed to care for her- including the doctor who was supposed to protect her after she escaped from her father.

My reaction? I want to hunt down the doctor and break his legs. (he is probably dead or 90)

I am enraged by his actions and I have a really hard time separating a person from their actions. What is worse is that I want him to go to hell. That makes me borderline evil considering that God says in his word that He will is that none should perish. So who the heck am I?

Why gives me the nerve.... the audacity... the stupid pride to speak like this?

The truth is that I must have an incomplete view of Christ's blood- like its only good enough to cover my level of sins and less.

It can cover my pride, selfishness, arrogance, (long list here).... but those child rapists are screwed because in my weird, warped mind God's grace isn't big enough for them.

Its always a bad realization that I am being heretical. God forgive me for limiting your grace, not wanting what You want, and not embracing and knowing the fullness of your love.

I am still working on this, but at the end of the day I guess I want those people to repent and be forgiven. I feel like the the guy that owed the 50, not the 500.-
Ironically, I think its more accurate to say that if Paul claimed the "chief of sinners" I am #2- even though I would argue with Paul that I'm probably #1)

You know who else was like me? The people that murdered Jesus. God forgive me.

Phil Wickham

2008-03-18T15:10:00.000-07:00

I have do admit I have come full circle on this guy. I don't typically like his fans because of their emo-hipness and his voice used to grind me, but the more I listen, the more I like him- especially this song.

Amazing Video- Mars Hill Church Seattle = Best Church Ever

2008-03-14T00:46:00.001-07:00

Watch this video.

http://www.marshillchurch.org/special/goodfriday08/default.aspx#

You will be grateful.

its not country- its bluegrass

2008-03-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed this song.

Alison's voice is so pure.

Let me know what you think?

Best Way To Defeat A Lib? Let Them Speak

2008-03-12T15:07:00.000-07:00

My FAVORITE video ever-- I mean EVER- from the daily show. I am surprised they didn't manage to slam Bush. No matter the topic, that usually gets in there, but this time there was none of it... Just this.

best line #1 we don't have to worry about marine's rights- its not an equal relationship.

best line #2- if only there was an organization dedicated to protecting your right to free speech.

Are we the Baddies?

2008-03-10T23:03:00.000-07:00

Busy Busy Busy

2008-02-28T11:13:00.000-08:00

I have been slammed at work. The new job is still great. They just fired my boss- yes the one who hired me,- but the new guy is great.

Its a good team and good place to work. I already feel like I am making an impact.

The personal biz is going great too. I just landed what could be the most important deal to date.

Masters is going well 1 year left!! (thankyoujesus)

I have also been leading a home church for our church. That is going well also.

I am finding it hard to find time to write anything substantive because my head is so scattered. For now, please be happy with my stream of conscience.

Why Higher Education is Getting Lower

2008-02-08T11:43:00.000-08:00

wow- lets see...
Let me sum up my Portland State University Class
Quotes

"in the beginning was energy"
"nature is the model not economics"
"All this Adam Smith stuff is BS caused by Newtonian Login and Not the True Order of Nature"

"(When manufacturing) No minimizing unit cost, but continuous flow linked to meeting customer demand."

And why the heck not- it works for 1 company in 1 isolated field, in 1 specific vertical.

So I have a died-in-the-wool Marxist professor who is telling us how Supply and Demand is a social construct and has no actually proof (you know- like gravity) and then at lunch time the school raises tuition. And WHY do they raise tuition you ask? Because Education is getting more expensive... but without supply and demand, how could they know that?

Breeding pinkos while raising the price on them... I want to get into education.

My Video of the Day

2008-01-16T23:59:00.000-08:00

I cruise the net all day long to ensure that only the most "fit-to-show" appear on my site.

Here is one that I think you will find quite appealing - that is if you are evil and/or have the same sense of humor as me and/or like flight on the conchords (cuz they sound the same)

yahoooooooooooooossssss got a new job?

2008-01-16T23:50:00.000-08:00

Its the starting of a brand new day - but not in a weird french/canadian way like Celine

New Job!
New Company!
Same God who has it all in his hands.

I am grateful for his faithfulness and I am grateful for the lesson he has taught me.

Tomorrow I am going to my new employer (webtrends) to sign some papers and get the heck out of Y!

I have many thoughts about Y! some good and well.... other too, but I have already learned that this crazy invention called the internet can sneak up on you and nothing- I mean nothing- ever goes away. Especially since blogger is owned by google who tracks everything and never deletes it. Yes they are logging your thoughts.

But I digress

I want to say 3 things I really like about Yahoo!
1. Some of the people- I never felt like my managers were intentionally mistreating me. My coworkers were all my friends.
2. Ping-pong - got me through many a day
3. The training staff - best in the biz. IMHO - the strength of the organization.

Yaaaahooooooooooooooooooooooooos got a new job? (me)

Something New on the Horizon

2008-01-08T22:47:00.000-08:00

I was all set to buy this shirt.

But then like shipwrecked sailors floating at sea seeing a ship on the horizon, hope came by.

And I don't mean to be dramatic, but it feels pretty good to have a glimmer of hope for change.

In an election where everyone is self-proclaimed candidate of chance, the truth is that the only change I can control is my atttitude. And God holds the hearts of the rules in his hands. The older I get the more I realize that God really has control and I really really don't.

Making sense of that can be tricky and I don't think I understand it yet (or every will), but it can also be reassuring- that the Creator God, who made far beyond what Satelites can pretend to see with the highest level of magnification hasn't forgotten about you or me.

Top 10 Christmas Carols for those of us w/ Mental Health Problems

2007-12-21T07:34:00.000-08:00

Holidaze

2007-12-18T08:57:00.001-08:00

There is nothing more enjoyable than watching children who don't know any better react to a present they don't really want. As the parents watch with horror they turn to their aunt/grandmother and say, "I don't want this."

and the parents jump in "Sure you do sweetie! You love it.... Go ahead and say and 'thank you.'"

And of the child replies "thanks? why should I say thanks? I don't want it!"

Ahhhh yes.... priceless.

Tis the season for one and all to realize that we give gifts that we really would have wanted. Every year I get clothes from my wife and she gets electronics for me. For a while I would have preferred we just give each other a cash amount to go buy something for ourselves, but then I had a realization. With Christmas, you can get gifts that you would never buy for yourself.

Additionally, you find out pretty quickly that you don't really know what you want. In fact, I was learning about how to market new products and how sometimes the consumer doesn't really know what they want.

In fashion, this is readily apparent. There is a company called Zara. They are "hyper-responsive." 23 days after seeing a piece of clothing somewhere, it will be on their store shelves. Incredible. They react quickly to the "fashonistas." (which I think is Spanish for "People I Hate")

Looking at traditional models, we find larger companies spending thousands of dollars on telling you what is "in style" rather than reacting to what is in style. Why? Because you are too stupid to know what looks good on you.

Much like a clothing consumer, I often don't know what I want. If someone knows you well, they are able to find just the right fit.

Its definately fun to find the right fit for others... and that is what I am looking forward to this Christmas.

Oh how true it is.

2007-12-17T10:48:00.000-08:00

Vista named #1 biggest tech disappointment of 2007 -- by PC World

Posted Dec 17th 2007 1:56AM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

First PC World gets all up on the soapbox that (until a certain date) the MacBook Pro is the fastest PC the mag had tested, but consider the next step taken: PC World has boldly declared Vista #1 with a bullet in in their Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007. Ok, sure, we get that it's "disappointments" and not "crappy products" -- the two imply very different things, and it's hard not to be somewhat disappointed by any product that took the better part of a decade to come out -- but if PC World harshing on Vista this bad doesn't smack at all of linkbait, well, we don't know what does. Oh, and here's that link.

misogyny - appartenly not a type of wood

2007-12-17T10:43:00.000-08:00

I was walking into the coffee bar at work today and I heard the song "girls" by the Beastie Boys. Besides being transported back to my Jr. High days, I also realized that I like songs back then that would get me beaten like a rented mule today.

I guess progress is a good thing.

Interview

2007-12-13T09:11:00.000-08:00

Had a GREAT interview yesterday.
Stay tuned, but my days at the "who" (yahoo) may be ending with the close of the year.

My new years resolution is to make sure I'm not doing what I am doing now very soon.

Just Plain Stuck

2007-12-03T01:00:00.000-08:00

I don't know if its common to feel like you are not going to go anywhere in life.
I don't know if its common to feel like you are stuck.
I don't know if its common to feel like anything thats good in your life is in spite of you and not because of you, but I have really been feeling like that lately.

I am not going to turn this into a whine about my job blog, but I do want to focus on one thing.

I have been at Yahoo! for 2 years. I have been tops or near tops in sales for the small business division. I have really enjoyed certain parts of my job, but for the most part, I don't like what I do. On my 2 year anniversary do you know what Yahoo! did for me? Nothing. Why? Because I am completely worthless there.

My managers buy lunch on Y!'s dime everyday, but on my 2 year did I get the offer for a luch? Did my manager even stop by my desk and say anything? Nope.

Why? Because everyone is interested in themselves and making themselves look good. I tried really hard to be someone who helps others. I picked up lots of additional responsibilities, lots of managerial tasks to lighten the load, and more.

So here is what it boils down to.

Everyone I know who is successful is either completely self-driven, incredibly networked, or has something above and beyond everyone else.

I am now spending my time figuring out how to make one of the above three part of my day-to-day life.

This isn't a poor me thread - this is a "something-has-to-change" thread.

I cannot wait to change, but in the mean time- I am trying to figure out how to have a good attitude- which is really the hard part.

Awesome

2007-11-26T00:06:00.000-08:00

Wow.

I think this guy has a real future in being made fun of and swirleees.

What a Voice

2007-11-08T19:39:00.000-08:00

I am not a big country fan- especially not old Pasty Cline, but I actually really thought this guy was good, so I though I would post it.

24

2007-11-08T08:20:00.000-08:00

The 7th Season of 24 was suspended due to the writers strike.

Ok, people. Time to solve this. It is now out of hand. This is bigger than any of us... its Bauer big. How about this. Everyone else strike away, but the 24 writers need to start working again (since they took season 6 off completely other than the "say hi to your brother") scene.

now you see it- now you don't

2007-11-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

Army tests James Bond style tank that is 'invisible'
Last updated at 11:56am on 30th October 2007

Comments Comments (7)
New technology that can make tanks invisible has been unveiled by the Ministry of Defence.

In secret trials last week, the Army said it had made a vehicle completely disappear and predicted that an invisible tank would be ready for service by 2012.

The new technology uses cameras and projectors to beam images of the surrounding landscape onto a tank.

Scroll down for more...

Now you see it: How the tank might look with background images beamed onto the side

The result is that anyone looking in the direction of the vehicle only sees what is beyond it and not the tank itself.

A soldier, who was at the trials, said: "This technology is incredible. If I hadn't been present I wouldn't have believed it. I looked across the fields and just saw grass and trees - but in reality I was staring down the barrel of a tank gun."

Breakthrough: The MoD's 'Q', Professor Sir John Pendry

How the technology works in a combat situation is very sensitive, but the MoD is believed to be testing a military jacket that works on the same principles.

It is the type of innovation normally associated with James Bond, and the brains behind the latest technology is the MoD's very own "Q" - Professor Sir John Pendry, of Imperial College London.

He said the only drawback was the reliability of the cameras and projectors.

But he added: "The next stage is to make the tank invisible without them - which is intricate and complicated, but possible."

worship without walls

2007-10-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

Flying in from Tokyo to Manila I sat next to 2 very nice people. His name is Apollo and he is from the Philippines. Her name is Betitina.

Soon after chatting I found out they were missionaries and they were returning to the Philippines to continue their mission work.

After more conversing, they invited me to their church. It was an amazing experience. What a hospitable and kind church. The people were warm an inviting even though they did not know me. I was immediately brother John. Bettine and Apollo were at church and they took me out to some local treats. We enjoyed Sago Gulaman.

It was a great time. We had dinner together tonight and I am just blessed to have met them and found some Godly people in this place. They are going to be following the Lord's leading and relocating to a different part of the Philippines. If you can please include them in your prayers. Pray for God to direct their path and their relationships as they follow His lead.

Its like taking candy from a baby

2007-10-12T08:28:00.001-07:00

High Five

2007-10-12T06:49:00.000-07:00

October 9, 1967 - A Capitalist Holiday

2007-10-08T12:28:00.000-07:00

Today marks the 40th anniversary of an important day. The day Che Guevara was executed by the Bolivians. I would like to take a moment on behalf of all 9 college students who know that he was a communist tyrant who was merciless, brutal, and evil to thank Bolivia.

Che serves as a reminder that as long as you look good doing it, liberals are ok with you committing mass killings, torture, and executions of people that disagree with you... just look pretty for the tee-shirt, ok?

but if somehow you are planning on running for president and you need to extract information about other terrorists, don't use non-lethal methods on the current ones-- that is cruel. Now lets off to the safe-haven of human rights and civil liberties known as Cuba shall we?

http://www.chesucks.com/ - buy the tee shirt.
http://www.thoseshirts.com/noche.html

My 2 favorite teams in college football 1. standford, 2 whoever beats USC

2007-10-07T16:16:00.001-07:00

I guess I only had 1 this week.

linked-video-magic

2007-10-05T05:48:00.000-07:00

One of my friends sent this to me and I didn't figure out why until about 1 min into the song.

maybe its just me, but Andrew WK knows how to make me laugh.

Tranportation Issues

2007-10-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

There have been some issues getting to a from the hotel to the office.... fortunately I have enlisted some help.

(click on them for full-screen-goodness)

interesting facts

2007-10-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

interesting

A mole can dig a tunnel 300 feet long in just one night!
A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off - it dies from starvation!
A crocodile always grows new teeth to replace the old teeth!
A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein!
A hard working adult sweats up to 4 gallons per day. Most of the sweat evaporates before a person realizes it’s there, though!
A hedgehog’s heart beats 300 times a minute on average!
A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall child inside!
A hummingbird weighs less than a penny!
A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second!
A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court!
A quarter has 119 grooves on its edge, a dime has one less groove!
After eating, a housefly regurgitates its food and then eats it again!
Apples are more efficient than caffeine in keeping people awake in the mornings!
Bulls are colorblind, therefore will usually charge at a matador’s waving cape no matter what color it is — be it red or neon yellow!
Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand!

Cat urine glows under a black-light!
Dogs and cats, like humans, are either right or left handed… or is that paws?!
Every time you lick a stamp, you’re consuming 1/10 of a calorie!
Human teeth are almost as hard as rocks!
Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete!
If you counted 24 hours a day, it would take 31,688 years to reach one trillion!
Most lipstick contains fish scales!
No piece of square dry paper can be folded more than 7 times in half!
Nose prints are used to identify dogs, just like humans use fingerprints!
One ragweed plant can release as many as one billion grains of pollen!
Over 10,000 birds a year die from smashing into windows!
Over 2500 left handed people a year are killed from using products made for right handed people!
Porcupines float in water!
Skepticisms is the longest word that alternates hands when typing!
Smelling bananas and/or green apples (smelling, not eating) can help you lose weight!
The average ice berg weighs 20,000,000 tons!
The average life span of a major league baseball is 5-7 pitches!
The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year!
The Earth weighs around 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons!
The electric chair was invented by a dentist!
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds!
The most used letter in the English alphabet is ‘E’, and ‘Q’ is the least used!
The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven!
The original name for the butterfly was ‘flutterby’!
The placement of a donkey’s eyes in its head enables it to see all four feet at all times!
The poison-arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people!
The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.” uses every letter of the alphabet!
The sloth (a mammal) moves so slowly that green algae can grow undisturbed on its fur!
The state of Florida is bigger than England!
The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth!
The world’s termites outweigh the world’s humans 10 to 1!
There are more than 10 million bricks in the Empire State Building!
Thomas Edison, lightbulb inventor, was afraid of the dark!
Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland!
Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day!
You’re born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206!
101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan are the only two Disney cartoon features with both parents that are present and don’t die throughout the movie.
142857 is a cyclic number, the numbers of which always appear in the same order but rotated around when multiplied by any number from 1 to 6. 142857 * 2 = 285714 142857 * 3 = 428571 142857 * 4 = 571428 142857 * 5 = 714285 142857 * 6 = 857142
A dragonfly has a lifespan of twenty-four hours.
A duck’s quack doesn’t echo. No one knows why.
A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
A flush toilet exists that dates back to 2000 BC.
A fully loaded supertanker traveling at normal speed takes a least twenty minutes to stop.
A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
A lion’s roar can be heard from five miles away.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
A rhinoceros’ horn is made of compacted hair.
A species of earthworm in Australia grows up to 10 feet in length.
A ten-gallon hat holds three-quarters of a gallon.
A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking in the background — when they say “walla-walla” it looks like they are actually talking.
According to Genesis 1:20-22 the chicken came before the egg.
Actor Tommy Lee Jones and vice-president Al Gore were freshman roommates at Harvard.
After human death, post-mortem rigidity starts in the head and travels to the feet, and leaves the same way it came — head to toe.
Albert Brooks’s real name is Albert Einstein.
Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never phoned his wife or his mother. They were both deaf.
Alexander the Great was an epileptic.
Alfred Hitchcock didn’t have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.
All of the officers in the Confederate army were given copies of Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, to carry with them at all times. Robert E. Lee, among others, believed that the book symbolized their cause. Both revolts were defeated.
An ostrich’s eye is bigger than it’s brain.
Ancient drinkers warded off the devil by clinking their cups.
Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the deaths of their cats.
Anteaters prefer termites to ants.
Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.
Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
Babies are born without kneecaps. They don’t appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
Barbie’s full name is Barbra Millicent Roberts.
Bela Lugosi died during the filming of “PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE”. Director Edward D. Wood Jr. used a taller relative who held a cape in front of his face so the audience wouldn’t know the difference so he could complete filming.
Bingo is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box.
Blonde beards grow faster than darker beards.
Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.
Bob Dylan’s real name is Robert Zimmerman.
Bob May played the Robot on “Lost In Space” (1965-68) and Dick Tufeld was the voice.
Boris Karloff is the narrator of the seasonal television special “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
Both Hitler and Napoleon were missing one testicle.
Boys who have unusual first names are more likely to have mental problems than boys with conventional names. Girls don’t seem to have this problem.
Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.
Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to SLOW a film down so you could see his moves. That’s the opposite of the norm.
By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can’t sink in quicksand.
Casey Kasem is the voice of Shaggy on “Scooby-Doo.”
Cat urine glows under a black light.
Catgut comes from sheep not cats.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
Cheryl Ladd (of Charlie’s Angels fame) played the voice, both talking and singing, of Josie in the 70s Saturday morning cartoon “Josie and the Pussycats.”
Chop-suey is not a native Chinese dish, it was created in California by Chinese immigrants.
Chrysler built B-29’s that bombed Japan. Mitsubishi built the Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in a joint plant call Diamond Star.
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down — hence the statement “to get fired.”
Clark Gable used to shower more than 4 times a day.
Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, the reverse of how a record works.
Crickets hear through their knees.
Crocodiles swallow stones to help them dive deeper.
Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps.
Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.
Despite the hump, a camel’s spine is straight.
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth, and whose shame created the statement for ignominy, “His name is Mudd.”
Dr. Seuss and Kurt Vonnegut went to college together. They were even in the same fraternity, where Seuss decorated the fraternity house walls with drawings of his characters.
Due to gravitational effects, you weigh slightly less when the moon is directly overhead.
During the chariot scene in ‘Ben Hur’ a small red car can be seen in the distance.
During World War II, W.C. Fields kept US $50,000 in Germany ‘in case the little bastard wins’.
Earth is the only planet not named after a God.
Elvis had a twin brother named Jesse Garon, who died at birth, which is why Elvis’ middle name was spelled Aron; in honor of his brother.
Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation was taken by Harold Edgerton.
Every Swiss citizen is required by law to have a bomb shelter or access to a bomb shelter.
Evian (the bottled water) spelled backwards is “naive.”
February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
Flying from London to New York by Concord, due to the time zones crossed, you can arrive 2 hours before you leave.
Former US President Ulysses S. Grant had the boyhood nickname ‘Useless’.
Four people played Darth Vader: David Prowse was his body, James Earl Jones did the voice, Sebastian Shaw was his face and a fourth person did the breathing.
From the age of thirty, humans gradually begin to shrink in size.
George Washington grew marijuana in his garden.
Gerald Ford pardoned Robert E. Lee posthumously of all crimes of treason.
Gilligan of Gilligan’s Island had a first name that was only used once, on the never-aired pilot show. His first name was Willy. The skipper’s real name on Gilligan’s Island is Jonas Grumby. It was mentioned once in the first episode on the radio newscast about the wreck. The Professor’s real name was Roy Hinkley, Mary Ann’s last name was Summers and Mrs. Howell’s maiden name was Wentworth.
Halloween took place in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois but almost all the cars in the film had California license plates.
Hara kiri is an impolite way of saying the Japanese word “seppuku” which means, literally, “belly splitting.”
Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by Bayer.
Hershey’s Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it’s kissing the conveyor belt.
Hindu men believe(d) it to be unluckily to marry a third time. They could avoid misfortune by marrying a tree first. The tree ( his third wife ) was then burnt, freeing him to marry again.
Human birth control pills work on gorillas.
Human hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after death.
Hummingbirds can’t walk.
If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
If a surgeon in Ancient Egypt lost a patient while performing an operation, his hands were cut off.
If the population of the Earth continued to increase at its present rate indefinitely, by 3530 A.D. the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass of the Earth. By 6826 A.D. it would equal the mass of the known universe.
If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning before you will die of oxygen deprivation.
If you can see a rainbow you must have your back to the sun. If you don’t, you can’t see it.
If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer, its stomach will explode.
If you multiply 526,315,789,473,684,210 with any number you will always find the original number in the result!
If you pause “Saturday Night Fever” at the “How Deep Is Your Love” rehearsal scene, you will see the camera crew reflected in the dance hall mirror.
If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
In Ancient Peru, when a woman found an ‘ugly’ potato, it was the custom for her to push it into the face of the nearest man.
In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said “Play it again, Sam.” Sherlock Holmes never said “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Captain Kirk never said “Beam me up, Scotty,” but he did say, “Beam me up, Mr. Scott.”
In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
In most watch advertisements the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch (and make it look like it’s smiling.)
In the 40’s, the Bich pen was changed to Bic for fear that Americans would pronounce it ‘Bitch.’
In the Andes, time is often measured by how long it takes to smoke a cigarette.
In the film ‘Star Trek : First Contact’, when Picard shows Lilly she is orbiting Earth, Australia and Papa New Guinea are clearly visible .. but New Zealand is missing.
It is a criminal offence to drive around in a dirty car in Russia.
It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear.
It takes 8.5 minutes for light to get from the sun to earth.
It was illegal to sell ET dolls in France because there is a law against selling dolls without human faces.
It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
It’s rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a breath-alyzer to read 0.
Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been over mixing the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since.
Jacques Cousteau invented scuba gear while in the French resistance during World War II.
James Doohan, who plays Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott on Star Trek, is missing the entire middle finger of his right hand.
Jean-Claude Van Damme was the alien in the original “PREDATOR” in almost all the jumping and climbing scenes.
Jet lag was once called boat lag, back before jets existed.
John Larroquette of “Night Court” and “The John Larroquette Show” was the narrator of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and was found in a warehouse. Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and was found in a theatre.
John Wilkes Booth’s brother once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln’s son.
June Foray, the voice of Talking Tina from the classic Twilight Zone episode “Living Doll”, was also the voice of Rocky the talking squirrel from “Rocky & Bullwinkle”.
Kathleen Turner was the voice of Jessica Rabbit, and Amy Irving was her singing voice.
King Kong is the only movie to have its sequel (Son of Kong) released the same year (1933).
Lady Astor once told Winston Churchill ‘if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee’. His reply ‘ if you were my wife, I would drink it!’
Leonardo De Vinci invented the scissors.
Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son.
Liquid paper was invented by Mike Nesmith’s (of the Monkees) mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, in 1951.
Lizzie Borden was acquitted.
Look at the number four on a clock face that uses Roman numerals. If the clock is made correctly then the Roman numeral four is wrong. The standard and correct way to write the Roman numeral four is “IV,” but the traditional way to show it on a clock face is “IIII.” Legend has it that a clock was made for a British king. When he saw the clock he mis- informedly corrected the clock maker who re-did the clock face to show a “IIII” instead of an “IV” thus not risking offending the king. Other clock makers followed suit so as not to embarrass the king. Now it is the traditional way to make clocks.
Lynyrd Skynard was the name of the gym teacher of the boys who went on to form that band. He once told them, “You boys ain’t never gonna amount to nothin’.”
Melanie Griffith’s mother is actress Tippi Hendren, best known for her lead role in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
Men leave their hotel rooms cleaner than women do.
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a “Friday the 13th.”
Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds.
More money is printed daily for the Monopoly game than by the U.S. Treasury.
More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.
Most Americans’ car horns beep in the key of F.
Mozart was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave.
Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
Nine pennies weigh exactly one ounce.
Ninety eight per cent of the weight of water is made up from oxygen.
No animal, once frozen solid (i.e., water solidifies and turns to ice) survives when thawed, because the ice crystals formed inside cells would break open the cell membranes. However there are certain frogs that can survive the experience of being frozen. These frogs make special proteins, which prevent the formation of ice (or at least keep the crystals from becoming very large), so that they actually never freeze even though their body temperature is below zero Celsius. The water in them remains liquid: a phenomenon known as ’supercooling.’ If you disturb one of these frogs (just touching them even), the water in them quickly freezes solid and they die.
No matter its size or thickness, no piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.
Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
Oak trees do not have acorns until they are fifty years old or older.
Of the six men who made up the Three Stooges, three of them were real brothers (Moe, Curly and Shemp.)
On 15 April 1912 the SS Titanic sunk on her maiden voyage and over 1,500 people died. Fourteen years earlier a novel was published by Morgan Robertson which seemed to foretell the disaster. The book described a ship the same size as the Titanic which crashes into an iceberg on its maiden voyage on a misty April night. The name of Robertson’s fictional ship was the Titan.
On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand corner of the “1″ encased in the “shield” and a spider hidden in the front upper right-hand corner.
On the new one hundred dollar bill the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10.
One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers — they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.
Only female mosquitoes bite.
Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark’s stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
Other than humans, black lemurs are the only primates that have blue eyes.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
Pamela Lee-Anderson is Canada’s Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada’s independence.
Panama hats come from Ecuador not Panama.
Peanuts are used in the production of dynamite.
Pearls melt in vinegar.
Pinocchio is Italian for “pine eyes.”
Pogonophobia is the fear of beards.
Polar bear fur is not white, it’s clear.
Race car is a palindrome.
Ralph Lauren’s original name was Ralph Lifshitz.
Revolvers cannot be silenced, due to all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel.
Rhythm and “syzygy” are the longest English words without vowels.
Robert E. Lee, of the Confederate Army, remains the only person, to date, to have graduated from the West Point military academy without a single demerit.
Roosters can’t crow if they can’t fully extend their necks.
Russians generally answer the phone by saying, ‘I’m listening.’
S.O.S. doesn’t stand for “Save Our Ship” or “Save Our Souls” — It was chosen by an 1908 international conference on Morse Code because the letters S and O were easy to remember and just about anyone could key it and read it, S = dot dot dot, O = dash dash dash.
Samuel Clemens’s pseudonym “Mark Twain” was the nickname of a riverboat pilot about whom Clemens wrote a needless nasty satirical piece. Apparently, Clemens felt guilty later and adopted the nom de plume as some sort of expiation. The phrase “mark twain” from which the river pilot got his name does not mean two fathoms (twelve feet.)
Sharon Stone was the first “Star Search” spokes model.
Smithee is a pseudonym that filmmakers use when they don’t want their names to appear in the credits.
Snails can sleep for 3 years without eating.
Soda water does not contain soda.
Some Eskimos have been known to use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing.
Soweto in South Africa was derived from SOuth WEst TOwnship.
Spain literally means ‘the land of rabbits.’
Speak of the Devil is short for “Speak of the Devil and he shall come”. It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract his attention and he would appear.
St. Bernards, famous for their role as alpine rescue dogs, do NOT wear casks of brandy around their necks.
Steve Young, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, is the great-great-grandson of Mormon leader Brigham Young.
Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.
Talk show host Montel Williams had a nose job.
Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music.
The “Grinch” singer and voice of Tony the Tiger is a man named Thurl Ravenscroft.
The “save” icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
The allele for six fingers and toes is dominant in humans.
The Andy Griffth Show was the first spin-off in TV history. It was spun-off from the Danny Thomas Show.
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
The average scalp has 100,000 hairs. Redheads have the least at 80,000; brown and black haired persons have about 100,000; and blondes have the most at 120,000. (That is more than a thousand hairs in each square inch!)
The band “Duran Duran” got their name from an astronaut in the 1968 Jane Fonda movie “Barbarella.”
The bat on the Bacardi symbol is there because the soil where the sugar cane grows is fertile from the excessive guano (bat droppings.)
The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.
The bubbles in Guiness Beer sink to the bottom rather than float to the top like all other beers. No one knows why.
The car in the foreground on the back of a $10 bill is a 1925 Huptmobile.
The car manufacturer Henry Ford was awarded Hitler’s Supreme Order of the German Eagle.
The childrens’ nursery rhyme ‘Ring-a-Round-The-Rosies’ actually refers to the Black Death which killed about 30 million people in the fourteenth-century.
The Chinese ideogram for ‘trouble’ depicts two women living under one roof’.
The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
The correct response to the Irish greeting, “Top of the morning to you,” is “and the rest of the day to yourself.”
The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
The dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home, conceals a billiards room. In Jefferson’s day, billiards were illegal in Virginia.
The dunce cap of schoolhouse fame originates from a paper cone that was placed on the heads of accused witches during the Middle Ages. When Joan of Arc was martyred, she was wearing one of them.
The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one-mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
The famous split-fingered Vulcan salute is actually intended to represent the first letter (”shin,” pronounced “sheen”) of the word “shalom.” As a small boy, Leonard Nimoy observed his rabbi using it in a benediction and never forgot it; eventually he was able to add it to “Star Trek” lore.
The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.
The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
The first inter-racial kiss on TV was in an original “STAR TREK” episode entitled “Plato’s Stepchildren”. The kiss was between Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner.
The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.
The first safety razor was not actually invented by King Gillette himself but by a man named William Nickerson who was Kings partner. They believed that the label bearing Nickersons name would be bad for business, plus it was Kings idea anyway.
The first time the word “hell” was spoken on TV was in an original “STAR TREK” episode entitled “City on the Edge of Forever”. The exact quote was “…let’s get the hell out of here…”, spoken by William Shatner.
The first toilet ever seen on television was on “Leave It To Beaver”.
The ‘Hundred Years War’ lasted 116 years.
The largest eggs in the world are laid by a shark.
The launching mechanism of a carrier ship that helps planes to take off could throw a pickup truck over a mile.
The lead singer of The Knack, famous for “My Sharona,” and Jack Kevorkian’s lead defense attorney are brothers, Doug & Jeffrey Feiger.
The Les Nessman character on the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati wore a band-aid in every episode. Either on himself, his glasses, or his clothing.
The lifespan of a tastebud is ten days.
The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called ‘mantles’) are radioactive–so much so that they will set of an alarm at a nuclear reactor.
The longest U.S. highway is route 6 starting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts going through 14 states, and ending in Bishop, California.
The magic word “Abracadabra” was originally intended for the specific purpose of curing hay fever.
The mask used by Michael Myers in the original “Halloween” was actually a Captain Kirk mask painted white.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
The name for Oz in the “Wizard of Oz” was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence “Oz.”
The name of the Vulcan’s heaven is Sha Ka Ree, this is a play on the name Sean Connery who was considered for the part of Sarek, Spock’s father.
The name Wendy was made up for the book “Peter Pan.”
The names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru: See no evil, Mikazaru: Hear no evil, and Mazaru: Speak no evil.
The national flag of Italy was designed by Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence - he invented dynamite.
The numbers ‘172′ can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
The NY phone book had 22 Hitlers before WWII. The NY phone book had 0 Hitlers after WWII.
The only member of the band ZZ Top without a beard has the last name Beard.
The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is lost. The copy in Washington D.C. is what is referred to as a holograph. That is a term for a handmade copy of a document and is not the same as a laser produced hologram.
The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
The pet ferret (Mustela putorias furo) was domesticated more than 500 years before the house cat.
The Phillips-head screwdriver was invented in Oregon.
The phrase ‘ The 3 R’s ‘ ( standing for ‘reading, writing and arithmetic’ ) was created by Sir William Curtis, who was illiterate.
The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
The placement of a donkey’s eyes in its’ heads enables it to see all four feet at all times.
The province of Alberta in Canada has been completely free of rats since 1905.
The screwdriver was invented before the screw.
The ‘Screwdriver’ was invented by oilmen, who used the tool to stir the drink.
The slogan on New Hampshire license plates is ‘Live Free or Die’. These license plates are manufactured by prisoners in the state prison in Concord.
The spaceship ‘Valley Forge’ from “Silent Running” (1971) actually got it’s name from the location used to film some of its interiors; a decommissioned aircraft carrier named the U.S.S. Valley Forge.
The term “devil’s advocate” comes from the Roman Catholic church. When deciding if someone should be sainted, a devil’s advocate is always appointed to give an alternative view.
The term “Mayday” is used for signaling for help. It comes from the French term “M’aidez” which is pronounced “MayDay” and means, “Help Me.”
The turkey was wrongly named after what was thought to be it’s country of origin.
The two-foot long bird called a Kea that lives in New Zealand likes to eat the strips of rubber around car windows!
The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY.
There are four cars and eleven light posts on the back of a ten-dollar bill.
There are more beetles than any other kind of creature in the world.
There are more nutrients in the cornflake package itself than there are in the actual cornflakes.
There are more than 50,000 earthquakes throughout the world every year!
There are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos.
There are no rivers in Saudi Arabia.
There are only three cities that are named exactly after the state they are located in: Maine, ME; New York, NY; and Wyoming, WY.
There is a city called Rome on every continent.
There is a town in Texas called ‘Ding Dong.’
There is about 200 times more gold in the world’s oceans, than has been mined in our entire history.
There is no mention of Adam and Eve eating an apple in the Bible.
There were no squirrels on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts until 1989.
Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
Tomb robbers believed that knocking Egyptian sarcophagi’s noses off would forestall curses.
Turkey’s often look up at the sky during a rainstorm. Unfortunately some have been known to drown as a result.
U.S. Interstates which go north-south are numbered sequentially starting from the west with odd numbers, and Interstates which go east-west are numbered sequentially starting from the south with even numbers.
Until 1967, LSD was legal in California.
Video Killed the Radio Star was the very first video ever played on MTV.
Walt Disney named Mickey Mouse after Mickey Rooney, whose mother he dated for some time.
Walt Disney’s autograph bears no resemblance to the famous Disney logo.
Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.
When opossums are playing opossum, they are not “playing.” They actually pass out from sheer terror.
When young and impoverished, Pablo Picasso kept warm by burning his own paintings.
While at Havard University, Edward Kennedy was suspended for cheating on a Spanish exam.
While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes wore a fake beard.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan carries the designation M-1, named so because it was the first paved road anywhere.

the thrilla in manila

2007-09-30T23:48:00.000-07:00

Getting in touch with my inner Don King... I guess when you are either the leader of the Rainbow Push Coalition or a boxing promoter famous for bad hair and catchy phrases, you have to have everything rhyme or at least "rap-rhyme" - thats when it doesn't rhyme but you force it. ... been spending most our lives living in a gansta's paradise.... however, when it comes to the worst rhyme in the entire history of music, I have to give the award to Bon Jovi.

I want to lay you down in a bed of roses
For tonight I sleep on a bed of nails
I want to be just as close as the Holy Ghost is
And lay you down on a bed of roses

and streeeeeeeetch it- yes thats right- "bed of roses" and "Holy Ghost is"

So anyhow- how does this apply to my time in Manila you might as yourself. Fair question. It doesn't, but that is a bad bad bad rhyme.

trip update- yesterday we went to

which is the biggest mall in Asia. And yes it is big.

It was so big that you could easily fit 4 of your local malls inside of it and then move on to a second story and do it again.

So how about the prices? I mean after all this is the Philippines, its not Paris, London, or New York. I would not use the term "good" to describe the prices, more like "insane." They had a Nike store there and the same Tiger Woods golf shirt that is $80 in Oregon was $160 (yes after conversion) there. So I got 1 thing there. It starts with an "M" and ends in "oheetow." Yes the drinks are cheap at least, but the everything else is crazy.

We are going to go shopping with our students next weekend so we can find the places they sell the goods that the normal residents of the Philippines buy. I should come back wearing nothing but fake Versatchi. I will dub myself the "faux-rolla." Pics at 11.... back to you.

Manila Update

2007-09-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

Here is a hotel room and the legendary, epic, amazing buffet.

Here are my students in training.- they are hard workers and I am really enjoying getting to know them.

where I have been

2007-09-23T22:03:00.000-07:00

Hey- long time no post.
Well that is about the change.

2 big things in the last month

1. We bought a new house.

and

2. I am here.

this is my room

our lobby lounge.

and our pool

So I am in Manila and I am going to take lots of pics.
Weird... 2 trips to Asia in the last 90 days.

So check back for more postings-
I am going to dedicate a whole day to posting about the buffet- complete with pictures.

As long as you promise not to hate me for showing the grub ;)

Take care to everyone who reads this!

Serious Issue

2007-08-27T23:08:00.000-07:00

I want to talk with you about an issue that is hurting people all over this nation. Its not crime, its not pollution, corruption, the deterioration of the nuclear family, or the busyness of life....

It is much more grave, and much more important.

3 out of every 5 children grows up in a home without a map.

That and there is stereotype (fair or not) that people who do beauty padgents are stupid.

So... what is the deal with corn nuts.

2007-08-26T23:19:00.000-07:00

Boaz

2007-08-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

Men today are shirking responsibilities.

The new American dream is not to work hard and find your way through the rocks, clouds, and danger to the top of the mountain, but instead it is to avoid work and responsibility at all costs.

This looks like the guy who is 23, still lives at home and is working towards exactly nothing... except being uber leet at World of Warcraft, or xbox live. He still lives at home and works hard at not working. Now there are people who have problems and need care, there are people who are working towards something and had a temporary setback, and there are people who are at home for life-stage transitional reasons.... and I am not talking about them.

BUT I am talking about the kid who thinks that his parents should support him and his lifestyle while he lives at home, works part time at starbucks, buys the iphone, and wears disel jeans. What is wrong with our men today?

We try everything we can to extend adolescence into adult hood. Let me clue you in if this is you. Women find a house you have or are currently fixing up WAY sexier than either the guild you belong to in WoW or how many frags you have on xbox live, or even your jeans. Now little girls might like your jeans more than your job, but relationships are for men not boys and women not girls.

What I find so comical is that so many of the activities that little boys (who are 23) do are trying to show how manly they are on some level. I am a warrior who has killed many evil men... or I have progressed on this journey towards skill, or I work hard at a good job so I can definitely afford these expensive jeans...

All of these things are activities that pay homage to manhood, but yet like so many things in life, its the people who are trying to appear one way that are in fact, the other way. Its like the guy with the nice house, nice car, and modern everything is usually the guy who is the most in debt, yet the world looks at him and says "wow he is rich."

I think our definition of manhood has changed and might be completely broken.

Men need to be like Boaz. Get your crap together, find a job- (I know Starbucks gives benefits, but if you are not moving towards leadership or management, it is a quick-fix not solution) and start worshiping God with your resources.... like capabilities and accomplishments.

then you can grow your mustache and not feel like you are fooling everyone.

WOW

2007-08-14T15:25:00.001-07:00

2007-08-08T14:17:00.000-07:00

I didn't know that Bruce Willis was really on Nasa's payroll, but apparently Armageddon is really being prepared to. (soundtrack by Aerosmith)

NASA draws up plans for nuke-packing asteroid interceptor
Posted Aug 8th 2007 4:54PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
NASA has (thankfully) been working on various asteroid diverting measures for some time now, but the agency apparently still isn't satisfied with its options, and it's now showing off its newest bit of potential world-saving technology. Designed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, this latest system would consist of six missile-like interceptor vehicles that would launch aboard an Ares V cargo launch vehicle, each carrying with them a 1.2-megaton B83 nuclear warhead. That, NASA says, should be enough to deflect an asteroid the size of the Apophis asteroid that's expected to pass within the orbit of the Earth and the Moon in April of 2029. So as not to make the problem even worse, the warheads apparently wouldn't actually strike the asteroid directly, but instead detonate at a distance of one-third of its diameter, generating a force that would (theoretically) deflect the asteroid out of the Earth's path.

Mother and Father- Since You Won't Let Me Drive the 6 Series, I am going Goth

2007-08-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

Guest Writer- Raven "the sorrowful shadow" Deathfist

A sorrowful hello to all of my underlings from the dark depths of Lake Oswego,

Today I take the first steps towards the long spiraling staircase towards the gloomy bliss known to those in the goth community as "the stairway to heaven" -which, of course, is hell.

How does a young Lake Oswego suburbanite discover his hollow 6'4' 80 pound frame was really a rigid cage for a tormented soul? How did he discover that he is well acquainted with the sadness, sorrow, and even gloom?

It all started one gloomy afternoon (in late july). My father, who is a lawyer in downtown PDX, came home with his new shiny 6 series BMW. I knew that since I had worked no less that 12 hours a week at Starbucks for 3 months (a LONG TIME) I should probably have at least one of those. So I informed my father he should drive my 05 acura and I should drive the 6 series.

He disagreed and so I conjured up all the pain and sorrow of my 16 years of horse camps, private schooling, and gardening and announced "Since you won't let me drive the 6 Series, I am going Goth."

I threw out all of my 50 Cent Albums (he speaks to my people- the people in Lake Oswego), stored all of my sweet urban outfitters gear- beacause what is more urban that a location at Bridgeport Village...
and started my clothes collection at Spencer's and Hot Topic

BTW- Check out my sweet hat.

So appartenly my parents think $150/month allowance, unlimited data package and iphone, 05 acura, all the food I can eat and drink, the 3000 sq ft house on the lake, and undying love and affection will quench my thirst for darkness, but they are wrong....

WRONG MOM AND DAD- I AM GOING GOTH

To choose your favorite goth name check out this link...

Check out the Blog from India

2007-07-08T02:51:00.000-07:00

I have taken a temporary break from the literal translation to blog with my wife in India.

We are blogging here.

I will take a "K"- as in Kstupid.

2007-06-21T01:21:00.000-07:00

We all have bad moments, but not all of ours are caught on tv.

Sermon on Alcohol

2007-06-20T17:19:00.000-07:00

Brave - not NYT Style, but really brave

2007-06-19T17:29:00.000-07:00

Ummm... this lady is freaking hardcore. This got sent to me and I am sharing it with you.

I am so freaking tired of people calling Madonner brave because she can crucify herself on stage on a disco cross.... That is not brave. Madonna is not brave (or talented- or a good singer- or anything with a positive connotation)

Do you know what would be brave? Do a puppet show of Muhammed performing the can-can.
That would be hardcore- kinda like this lady.

Arab Woman Takes On Muslim Cleric

Marching to the Beat

2007-06-17T18:56:00.000-07:00

My brother just had a baby so that makes me a uncle for the first time.
her name is Cadence and she a cute baby.

2 things are especially striking to me.

1. Its amazing too see a new father hold his daughter.

I think in life certain moments remind of us heaven. I have to think that God views us like that. We are all poop-smelling puke covered people who, left to our own devices, would not make it.... but with a fathers love, everything is ok. We can make it. There is no reason to worry because we are going to be taken care of. I imagine God looks down on us and smiles as he thinkg we are so self-sufficient, but really... we aren't. To watch a new father hold his daughter is like an eden moment, Its pure and good. There should be a better word than good, but its not just that its good, its like there is a complete absense of bad and the remainder is just goodness.

2. Babies are really cute, but very scary. My brother is mature and going to be an amazing father, but I realized that I need to grow-the-hell-up before I am anywhere close enough to become a father.

to see some pics, go to this website.

Great Article

2007-06-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

I found this scary smart- Prager can hurt you with his mind- read below to find out.

Why People Believe Conspiracies
By Dennis Prager
Vincent Bugliosi's remarkable 20-year work on who killed John F. Kennedy has just been published. Containing about a million and a half words and thousands of footnotes, Reclaiming History is probably the most detailed examination of one moment in time ever written. It reconfirms that a man named Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the American president.

As one who never doubted the original U.S. government report that Oswald acted alone, I am deeply grateful to Bugliosi for the service he has rendered our country. But I also regret that he had to.

Why did he have to? Because it was necessary to definitively refute all those who believe, despite bipartisan government reports and excellent books such as Gerald Posner's Case Closed, that there was some conspiracy to kill President Kennedy and that Oswald was not the only shooter.

There is not a shred of evidence that there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy, but that is entirely irrelevant to those who choose to believe that there was one. The lack of evidence only reinforces their belief that a conspiracy has been hidden.

One would think that someone would have come forward in the last 44 years to tell the world about the conspiracy. He or she would become a major figure in history, not to mention the likelihood of becoming very wealthy. But somehow, despite the fact that the government can rarely hide for months even what it wishes to hide, both Democratic and Republican administrations acting in cooperation with each other have hidden these facts.

As Bugliosi pointed out to me, it would in fact have had to be a double conspiracy -- first, the plot to assassinate, and then the plot by a much larger group, including many honorable people involved in the investigation, to cover up the original conspiracy.

Likewise, given the vast amount of planning and implementation -- and the large number of people -- that would have been involved in arranging the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center towers and part of the Pentagon, not one person has come forward -- not one American or foreigner, not one leftist or rightist -- to reveal a U.S. government plot to murder thousands of Americans and bring down two of the tallest buildings in the world.

Why, then, do people believe in these and other conspiracies? (Of course, there are known conspiracies -- Osama bin Laden and others conspired in the 9/11 plot -- but there are no successful hidden conspiracies. I cannot think of one in my lifetime.) There are at least six major reasons:

1. Many people find it impossible to believe that a few utterly unimpressive individuals can do so much damage. Lee Harvey Oswald, a man who can best be described as simply a loser, could change history all by himself? It doesn't seem to make sense.

2. Many people want to blame those they loathe for as much of what they do not like as possible. Just about everyone who believes in hidden conspiracies attributes those conspiracies to those they hate. People who hate President George W. Bush blame him and his administration for 9/11. Egyptians who hate Israel have blamed AIDS on Israeli prostitutes. Indeed, attributing to Jews hidden conspiracies -- the "world Jewish conspiracy," the Protocols of the Elders of Zion -- is the oldest and most common belief in a hidden conspiracy.

3. One should never underestimate the power of boredom -- and the subsequent yearning for excitement -- to affect people's thinking and behavior. Belief in a hidden conspiracy is far more exciting than accepting prosaic truths. Figuring out the "mystery" of who killed JFK is a much bigger thrill than accepting that one jerk was responsible. Deciphering who was "really" responsible for 9/11 is a lot more interesting than accepting that 19 Arabs with box cutters did it.

4. People who feel powerless over their own lives are far more likely to believe that some invisible force controls their fate than people who believe that they are the masters of their lives.

5. There is, apparently, a great yearning among many people to believe that there is hidden knowledge and that they have access to it. It makes them feel special, perhaps even superior to the rest of us who do not have access to this hidden knowledge.

6. In Western societies, it appears that secular people are more likely to believe in hidden conspiracies than the more religious. It may be that the religious already believe in an invisible power that governs the universe -- God -- and therefore seem to have much less of a psychological or emotional need to believe in invisible powers on earth.

Whichever reason or reasons apply, the bottom line about those who believe in hidden conspiracies is this: They choose to believe in them. Their psyche, their emotions, and/or their political agenda bring them to their belief in a hidden conspiracy. Never the facts.

A Bad Idea - Now in Tattoo form.

2007-06-12T00:02:00.000-07:00

Now I see where the Simpsons got their inspiration for this guy

Hey awesome Zune tattoo-do you mind if I as you a quick question?

"Who lied?" Who is the evil person that lied to you and said "yes, this is a good idea and you should get that tattoo?"

I am going to run a contest. Worst tattoo on the internet wins.

If you find it and it is voted worst by the readers, I will pay for you to get it.

Look at the large group of Non-Comformists

2007-06-11T07:44:00.000-07:00

Here is the Portland question.

When does non-conforming become conforming? When do rebels who are rebelling in all their rebellious ways start becoming the ones that other are rebelling against?
Like watching Rage against the machine perform at Coachella... which is sponsored by little companies called Virgin Atlantic or AT&T. Thats right...fight the system by being a large spoke in the wheel of corporate America... Why do they suck so much? How can a group of anarchists form a musical group and play the same chords- shouldn't they at least each be playing their own songs.

How can you have a group of anarchists? Isn't that a oxymoron.

Hi, I am Stomper and this is Chuck, Biff, and MeatHead- and we are all anarchists...

oh really? All 3 of you are anarchists - and you formed some sort of group? Is that a bit anti-climatic for an anarchist to be part of a group. That is like a swinger site for nuns.

That is like the scene in Air Heads where the disc jockey has a confused look on his face and asks the band how they named their name, The Lone Rangers. He says

"How you can you be the lone rangers...your not exactly lone-- there are three of you."

A different angle...

How many of theses

can you see before its not longer shocking or self-expressive but rather the norm.

How many freaking bike messenger jobs are there? Is there some secret agency I don't know about on the east side of Portland employing thousands of these guys.

And when did self-expression become the most important thing? Just because I can make my legs look like this

doesn't mean I should.

I think despair.com sums it up perfectly.

Find a Green Chair and Try Not To Die

2007-06-05T23:34:00.002-07:00

So the wife and I were getting our shots for India...

People came out 1 by 1 after their shots to make sure they didn't have any sort of allergic reaction, faint, etc.

The whole room was full of these 70s green chairs, you know the kind your grandmother had in her house.

Every time someone would come out I would lean over to the wife- and say in my very best nurse's voice "find a green chair, and try not to die"

My Kinda Bar

2007-06-05T07:47:00.000-07:00

So I tell you what I want, what I reallly really want..

so tell me what you want want you really really want

I tell you what I want, what I reallly really want..

so tell me what you want want you really really want

I wanna Hah I wannah Hah I wanna BANG

Man shot dead for bad singing in Philippine karaoke bar

Thu May 31, 4:21 AM ET

MANILA (AFP) - A man was shot dead by a security guard for singing out of tune in a Philippine karaoke bar, police said Thursday.

Romy Baligula, 29, was halfway through his song on Tuesday night in a bar in San Mateo town, east of Manila, when 43-year-old security guard Robilito Ortega yelled that he was out of tune.

As Baligula ignored his comments and continued singing, Ortega pulled out his revolver and shot him in the chest.

Senior Superintendent Felipe Rojas said Baligula died instantly.

The security guard was detained by an off-duty policeman shortly after the shooting.

Deaths and violence are not uncommon in Philippine karaoke bars.

The popular Frank Sinatra song "My Way" has been taken off many karaoke bars in Manila after it was found to be the cause of fights and even deaths when patrons sang out of tune.

File photo shows a salesman in Manila singing to promote a karaoke system on sale in a shopping center. A jobless man was shot dead by a security guard for singing out of tune in a Philippine karaoke bar, police said Thursday. Romy Baligula, 29, was halfway through his song on Tuesday night in a bar in San Mateo town, east of Manila, when 43-year-old security guard Robilito Ortega yelled that he was out of tune.(AFP/File/Romeo Gacad)

India - like the music only less unhappy

2007-06-04T23:04:00.000-07:00

T and I are going to go to India, specifically Shimoga

We are going to be working at Happy Home for the Handicapped.

It is going to be great.

Do you ever feel like you are a little too comfortable? Well I am convinced that I am a huge contradiction...

Its important for me to get away from here to discover that its not really all about me... so it would be good for me not to think about me.... so to not think about me I am going to go somewhere to change me- and if I am planning this out... I am thinking about me..

I just feel like my life is too much me and not enough Jesus.

So let me rephrase.

I suck- too much of my time is spent trying to figure out me and my crap and blah blah frickin blah.... Instead I want to focus on being like Jesus.

So maybe the first step is to get beyond myself.

the camera loves ya-- you're a tigah your a tigah (please note the british accent)

2007-05-30T12:04:00.000-07:00

The best blog entry ever

2007-05-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

LINK

I am dying. I literally and crying.

This is pure gold.

Amnesty International: It's as if a million voices...suddenly silenced.

So, Bryan over at Hot Air makes an interesting catch I thought I'd share with you.

Essentially, Amnesty International is asking its readers to vote on who had/has the worst human rights record.

The candidates for this dubious acheivement? Darth Vader, Hobgoblin or Dick Cheney.

Interestingly, Spider-Man's foe Hobgoblin is currently leading the pack with 73% of the vote. Vice President Cheney comes in third with only 4%.

Like any red-blooded American, I was at first appalled that Cheney wasn't scoring better! What good is having a Republican Vice President who won't go scurrying around the world to abuse impoverished brown people as a leisure activity, after all? Did I waste yet another vote?

And then I noticed something interesting in the poll question.

Here is how Amnesty International summarizes the Hobgoblin's atrocities:

Attacks on Spiderman, gassing civilian populations, using innocents as human shields.

Here is how Amnesty characterizes VP Cheney:

Torture, black sites, "disappearances," kangaroo courts, indefinite detention, and more!

Let's see...Attacks on Spiderman. Gassing civilian populations. Using innocents as human shields. Does that remind you of anyone?

Because, with the exception of placing a fatwa on Peter Parker, it would appear to me that gassing civilian populations (like the Kurds) and using innocents as human shields were the hallmarks of a different villian.

Saddam Hussein, anyone?

So, I want to take this opportunity to thank Amnesty International for finally recognizing the evil that was Hussein's Iraq, and I congratulate the voters in their poll for belatedly recognizing the importance of the American Military's legal intervention and overthrown of the Hussein regime.

I also want to thank them for their poll for one more reason. By comparing Cheney's alleged "atrocities" to those of two fictional characters, does that not underscore just how unserious the charges against the VP actually are?

I think so. So kudos to you, Amnesty International! Before you know it you'll be with us on the need for Jack Bauer-esque torture techniques.

Which might mean you were actually useful. For once.

OMG

2007-05-28T09:14:00.001-07:00

Wait a minute.
Are you saying that just because A. You released a couple musical numbers and primarily earn your income from performing and sales of music or B. you are an actor (who more than likely flies on their own private jet to the concert) and for a living you act as other people you- you are not necessarily qualified to lecture me on global warming, pollitics, DDT, etc?

http://www.nme.com/news/pet-shop-boys/28571

Wow- of course they are still performing, but at least "She Drives Me Crazy" will still be able to brighten the day of countless people who drove there, and be part of a concert that produces more pollution than anyone could do in a hundred lifetimes.

That is like curing cancer by smoking-- Hey I am raising awareness... I am raising awareness about lung cancer by smoking.

The problem is that nobody really cares. Everyone is about self promotion and when it comes to personal sacrifices for the environment, nobody who is part of the show is willing to make them. How do I know? THEY ARE HAVING AND EARTH-HATING CARBON PRODUCING CONCERT TO RAISE AWARENESS ABOUT POLLUTION!! Look at Leo D. He makes the 11th hour and flies a private jet all over creation.... I have a suggestion... Shut up. Pull your liberal, pretty-boy lips, over you head and swallow. Freaking liberals- so full of crap. Its my job to give the message of earth protection not to protect it. Stick to looking pretty because you are 5 pounds of stupid in a 4 pound bag. Just like Rosie's handguns... "Well of course my security people carry them, I'm important- its YOU who shouldn't carry them.... you don't need to be safe, but I do."

I think what I might do is only read daily kos... That way whenever I feel down, I can be lifted up by this guy

My Niece

2007-05-28T08:55:00.001-07:00

This is the blog of my future niece.

Can you tell we are related... she is still in the womb and already has a blog up and running. My kinda gal. My bro and his wife are in the countdown stages and it is quite possibly the coolest thing ever to see.

basketball

2007-05-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else find it a bit strange that the one of the heroes for the Utah Jazz is named boozer? If there is one thing the Mormons love its a good stiff drink.

They are thinking of drafting Johnny McCaffinated next year too.

My Job

2007-05-22T13:55:00.000-07:00

The Literal Translation

the iPad and me

THE JOB - URINE TEST

When Life Gives You Lemmons, Ask Life How it Became Self-Aware and Developed Solid Matter.

No Matter How Accomplished You Are...

Justice is a Dish Best Served Luke Warm.

The BASEMENT PT 1 of "only God knows"

Letter to an Agent

Update

Crappy Day

Great , Nonpartisan Credit Crisis Explanation

My Favorite Video of Superbowl Sunday

Hope and Change We Can Die For.

Rhama-llama-ding-dong

Juxtapose!

Best Weekend Ever

Hard Work

So Electing Obama DIDN'T Stop Terrorism?

Unity Through Hatred

I call BS

A little real "hope."

Becuase You Are So Close to Heaven, That's Why.

**NEWSFLASH*** WE DON'T CARE!

Powerful Video

WOW- Please read this.

The Best Website - Ever- Done, Finished, Forever, Amen.

My heated exchange

Obama is Indefensible

its called getting owned

Dear God,

Of Course They Were- Is Bill Speaking?

Ouch- Reeeezko, Reeeezko, Reeezko

Pat Throws it Down

30 minutes you will thank me for

The Green Machine

news stories + commentary

news stories + commentary

Gay Marriage- My Thoughts And Your Reactions

This is how I met my wife

is the ground getting hot?

drool drool

David Lee Roth Tries out for American Idol

this post goes to 11

whats new

Video goodness

Watch the Whole Video

Good Friday

Whats New

Phil Wickham

Amazing Video- Mars Hill Church Seattle = Best Church Ever

its not country- its bluegrass

Best Way To Defeat A Lib? Let Them Speak

Are we the Baddies?

Busy Busy Busy

Why Higher Education is Getting Lower

My Video of the Day

yahoooooooooooooossssss got a new job?

Something New on the Horizon

Top 10 Christmas Carols for those of us w/ Mental Health Problems

Holidaze

Oh how true it is.

misogyny - appartenly not a type of wood

Interview

Just Plain Stuck

Awesome

What a Voice

24

now you see it- now you don't

worship without walls

Its like taking candy from a baby

High Five

October 9, 1967 - A Capitalist Holiday

My 2 favorite teams in college football 1. standford, 2 whoever beats USC

linked-video-magic

Tranportation Issues

interesting facts

the thrilla in manila

Manila Update

where I have been

Serious Issue

NEWSFLASH* WE DON'T CARE!