12 days of Christman - a better way.

This is probably the first version of the song that I actually liked.

Voices inside my head? Can you hear me now?

Weapons: Death Ray Replaced By The Voice of God: "LRAD can put the 'word of God' into their heads. If God, in the form of a voice that only you can hear, tells you to surrender, or run away, what are you gonna do?"




I want one for Christmas.

Happy Non-specified Holiday to you

Random Thoughts, and a Camera

Thomas Sowell Random Thoughts.

You may scoff at the Tooth Fairy if you like. But the Tooth Fairy's approach has gotten more politicians elected than any economist's analysis.

Now that Congress has violated the First Amendment by restricting free speech with "campaign finance reform" laws, in the name of getting the influence of money out of politics, have you noticed any less influence of money in politics?

The more I learn about "ethics" programs and ethics "experts," the more I think ethics has become a pious word for imposing the arbitrary notions of third parties on others, who are forced to pay the price for whatever has caught the fancy of self-congratulatory elites.

Read the whole thing.


Thanks to Mr. Sowell......

I think I found my new camera. 39mp...YES! Check out the demo images. On the resolution, click on the 39meg and zoom into the knuckle. wow. Bad part is that I would have to mortgage the house just for the camera. Only $5 short of $27,000 on Amazon.

Do you know Roe?

I second guessed myself on the one I got wrong.

I got 11 out of the 12 questions correct for a 91.67%.
That result puts me in the 99^th percentile when compared to everyone who has taken the test.

Test your Roe IQ


HT The Dawn Patrol

That man can FLY! really

Base jumping as a flying squirrel..uh..man.

Throwing caution to the wind.


and another



H/T Doug

Spreading the stealth wealth and winning

It goes to show if you put the money in the right(or wrong) spot, you can accomplish a lot. For good or ill.


"Carroll certainly didn’t catch on until I called him after the election, ...
...I just cannot believe this,” he said, finally. “Who is this guy again?”

"On Election Day, fifty of the seventy targeted candidates were defeated,..."

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200703/tim-gill

Elfing yourself

Okay, having fun with the family

Just having a elfing good time.

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Dogbert Evolution

This is classic. Dilbert and Dogbert debate the theory of evolution.

personally opposed, but...

I have a friend who feels that his son and daughter should not be having pre-marital sex or have contraceptives at the ready.

...BUT....

He feels that it is fine to have the health nurse give them out to schools because, for some kids may not have been raised in a home like his, and they may need them. It may be the only way a kid may not get pregnant.

Isn't that like John Kerry saying he is personally against abortion, but it should remain legal?

rephrased, My daughter should not be using contraceptives, but I hope her boyfriend does.

The crazy point is that many evangelicals/Lutheran/Methodist/Catholics I know feels this way. Why encourage sin?


Update:
Michell Malken has some more info on this subject

Moloch hearts Rudy

The Curt Jester has a link to Moloch showing his reasons for liking Rudy.

I don't normally have to worry about which candidate to endorse – usually it is easy to go with a straight Democratic ticket. This time though it is much more difficult....

Screwtape fans, enjoy.

Are Catholics Constantly Paranoid about Hell?

I was listening to a Protestant interview with Francis Beckwith, the former head of the Evangelical Theological Society. He stepped down a few months ago because he re-entered the Catholic Church.

The questioner basically tried to point out that catholics walk around in fear of their salvation because they might commit a sin and go to hell. Whereas an evangelical who believes in OSAS (once saved always saved) does not have that concern.

Thant got me thinking about an analogy that I think works for the most part.


What about jail? are people concerned everyday that they are going to jail? NO. They know they are living within the law and that does not concern them. There is no fear that the police are going to come pick them up and throw them in jail for 20 years. Ditto on salvation.


If you have a prayerful life and you try your best to follow what Christ has asked of you. You should have an assurance of a supernatural Hope in you and not be concerned about imminent damnation.

If you go slightly over the speed limit, and then slow back down when you noticed it, you are not breaking the law on purpose and God knows that. [but you might get a little reminder if you don't slow down soon enough :-)] However, if you decide to go rob a bank, then you have made a conscious decision to break the law and you will get nailed. You will get sent to jail for hard time. (Many years ago a bank manager told me 90+ % of bank robbers are caught.)

In Christianity, you can throw yourself on the mercy of the court (Confession and true repentance), or you can do Hard Time Eternal.

October - A time to kill....

...babies that is.

First up, Susan G Komen "Race for the Cure"
If you donate, remember...

"Komen sponsored grants totaled over $475,000 to Planned Parenthood last year."

....When Komen stated they would not stop providing grants to Planned Parenthood, CURVES, the fitness franchise owned by Gary Heavin (who is strongly pro-life), stopped supporting Komen events. For their part, Komen has defended the grants as part of their community outreach, stating that Planned Parenthood has a good infrastructure to disseminate valuable breast cancer detection information. They express no regret for nor intent to change the grant funding to Planned Parenthood.

Interestingly, the Komen organization provides no information about the reported link between post-abortive women and breast cancer risk. This seeming conflict of interest has cost Komen some staff too.
(read it here)

Next up, Good Bad ol' UNICEF

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has joined with the sponsors of a new drive to promote legal abortion, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-Fam) reports.
from CWN

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I am a "Cool HIGH Nerd"

Confirmed.

Click on picture to see if you are one. [Frank, you can skip this one :-) ]

Lord Jesus we jus......look an e-mail!

During the week I get so busy that I never find the time to be alone with God. So I've decided to dedicate this Sunday afternoon to prayer, solitude and study.

But before I get started I should check my e-mail so that I won't have any unwanted distractions. Thirty-two new messages? My inbox was already overflowing so I should probably reply to at least a few of these right now. Six e-mails — no, wait, I really need to answer that one too — OK, seven e-mails down. Ah, I just got some invitations from Facebook. Those are easy to clear out so let me click through to accept those and I'm, hmm, I didn't realize I had more notifications. Looks like Stacy finally launched a blog; I'll just click through really quickly to check it out. A lot of posts on here already, some great stuff. I really should add her blog to my RSS reader before I forget. I don't know how I ever read blogs before Google Reader came along and, what, "More than 100+ items?" Didn’t I just check this yesterday? I know this is prayer time, but I should really whittle these down a bit before it gets worse.
...
Ironically, we consider it peculiar that followers of Islam stop their activities five times a day to offer prayers to Allah yet we stop what we do five times an hour to pay homage to our e-mail. "One of the most basic biblical insights," says theologian J.I. Packer, "is that whatever controls and shapes one's life is in effect the god one worships." For many of us, the one true god to whom we give our devotion is the deity known as IT: information technology.

Go read the whole thing




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Why is church attendance down?

So what is the cause? Protestant church attendance went down by about 5-10% in the last 40 years, Catholics are down by over 60%.

So are the Catholics doing something wrong? or something right?

BBC and the Father of Lies

Gerald at Closed Cafeteria has a quick post about BBC reporting on a series of events that he participated in as a press photographer. What type of reporters are they using at the BBC? I did not know that Wormwood of The Screwtape Letters was a reporter now.

A lot of media reports say that there weren't many people welcoming the pope - BBC said there weren't throngs along the streets. Of course there hadn't been any plans or possibilities for such throngs and the streets were blocked by police, even the highway was lined by police. Every venue had a set number of tickets to give out, and all the venues were packed, despite the truly horrible weather. One could barely pass through the masses. BBC also wrote that only a few came to Mariazell on their own and somewhat snidely remarked that Church buses had brought in people. Yeah BECAUSE IT WAS CLOSED TO PRIVATE TRAFFIC ! One could only get in by train or bus. So yeah, the BBC is full of crap - and you can add all kinds of other news outlets. Either they don't do their homework or they are deliberately lying. People stood in rain, cold and wind for hours, the venues were all jam packed. And if anyone tells you about the anti-pope demonstrators - six boomers with banners, and two banners affixed to houses, that was it. The one 'we are church' banner said "peace and hope, sorrow and fear". Oh yeah and there was some weird woman handing out flyers saying Christians don't need a church - and ironically trying to recruit people for the "Free Christians" community.

But ya know if Planned Parenthood Death Inc. had 5 people at a rally, the BBC would have said throngs of supporters showed up.

Game of the week

I decided to try this game called Bloxorz the other day. Well I just had to finish all 33 levels.
I also saved most of the codes to skip levels if any of you have any that you just can't get past.

Give it a try.

Bad Answer and the Great Communicator

1) Nominee - Worst answer to a pageant question....EVER!! Miss South Carolina
How the MC did not just bust out laughing is a credit to him.

2) Speaking of Maps... Statetris would have helped her. Nah, Miss S.C. was doomed from the start.

3) Now something from the Great Communicator.
"If history teaches anything, it teaches that self delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly."
-- Ronald Reagan




Hat tips
1&2 EO
3 Jihad Watch

Battery trick, unwrap the buttons

Here is a Handy hack when you need some 1.5v button batteries.

When the next kid toy needs one of these, I know what I am doing.
You can still get them cheaper on ebay, but this still pretty cheap and fast.

h/t EO again

Update:
I had a spare one of these A23 batteries around the house and tried it. Yep, just like the video. Cool. :-)

Meditation on the life of Christ

This is an eight minute video on the life of Christ that you can meditate on. This is for someone who already knows the the life of Christ and it should affect you if you do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5crbtwXYc1U

Best Buy for Babes? Big Boys Betrayed?

Hugh Hewitt has brought to my attention that Best Buy will be courting women with a line of Liz Claiborne accessory bags and cases. His updated portion is quite funny.

The news that Best Buy is courting the female demographic with a line of Liz Claiborne products is deeply disconcerting. It has been practically impossible to get my wife into such a store in the past, with the happy result that my buying impulses are wholly unsupervised. On the show tonight, the male callers were overwhelmingly against this innovation, primarily as they saw their gadget haul crumbling before their eyes, and the dreams of a big screen receding.

UPDATE: Please let the record show that it was Radioblogger, not me, who commented on tonight's show that "the Liz Claiborne section will be like day care --just drop your wife there."

Hugh's post

The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord


99. Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.

Not sure how many youngsters will get #99. It made me laugh considering all the pain this exact thing had caused me pain in the past.

70. When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.


Make sure you check out the extended lists as well.

This post was written with Dan in mind and who will definitely be coming up with his own.

h/t EO

Funny Folk

Flight of the Conchords.

Remember... No touching monkeys.

The German Coast Guard

This is just too funny.

The German Coast Guard.

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Changing Fish but not Enviromentalist

This is old news to me but it is not known by most people because this issue gets buried by both the Left and the Right.....even by many in the religious communities. It appears that hormones from "the pill" and the patch are causing fish to be mostly female and causing some hermaphrodite type fish at greater numbers.

“If you’re killing mosquitoes to save people from the West Nile virus, you can count on secular environmentalists to lay down in front of the vapor truck, claiming some potential side effect that might result from the spray,” Harden said. “But if birth control deforms fish – backed by the proof of an EPA study – and threatens the drinking supply, mum will be the word.”

“It’s going to start looking funny,” Harden said. “The radical environmentalist won’t eat a corn chip if the corn contacted a pesticide. But they view it a sacred right and obligation to consume synthetic chemicals that alter a woman’s natural biological functions, even if this practice threatens innocent aquatic life downstream.”

Remember not just a child deformed fish, but a wanted child deformed fish.

. h/t Curt Jester

See where it happened in the bible

Do you want to know where things happened in the bible? Check this site out. Using Google Earth, you can see where it happened.

On the link above, scroll down and click on the "preview" link to view individual books of the bible. It will show you red dots of each location. You can zoom into them, or you can just float your mouse over it to get the name to pop up. I really wanted to see 1 Maccabees, but sadly, they do not have it.

Ya gotta love your kids when they speak

A few years ago we were eating ice cream outside of a dairy. The outside area was very crowded with several people standing with no place to sit. We were lucky enough to have a our family at a picnic table. As we proceeded to eat our ice cream, a very well fed man walks out with his ice cream in hand. My son, Cole, says something out loud that I could barely hear but was able to understand. My wife did not and asked him to repeat what he said. Before I could stop him, my very dutiful son made sure that my wife and everyone within a block could hear. "THAT GUY IS HHHUUUUUGGGEEEEE"

The picnic table was quickly freed up for those standing and we enjoyed our ice cream on the way home.

living by faith

Living by Faith (maybe)

Imagine this: a poor peasant in El Salvador is born in the 1960s. Let's call her Anita. She was baptized. She was lucky. She went to school until third grade, and then....


And then there is this on Superstition

My Evangelical friend David comments that a missionary friend of his went to Brazil and was dismayed to find Catholics there bound by superstition.....

Bloody Olive

I have no idea where he gets his stuff, but a hat tip to Evangelical outpost for this one.
In 10 minutes this short film has as many twists and turns as an airplane movie has gags.

Downsizing to a smaller house

There may be a reason this guy is single.

Check out the pictures of the place. I think it would be a neat place as a getaway.

Should we all switch to Fluorescent bulbs?

The environmentalist are clamoring for everyone to change to fluorescent bulbs. But apparently the cleanup of a broken compact fluorescent bulb appears to be a small natural disaster. Don't clean it up with a dustbuster. This does not appear to be the clean alternative that is being pushed by the environmentalists.

Then there the consideration that these things needs to be recycled. Have any of you EVER recycled a fluorescent bulb? who knew? Where would you? Is it a secret government building? Apparently because I have never seen anyone advertise it.

I think I am going to get in trouble with this book

Instapundit has been talking about it a lot lately and I figured what better way to get in trouble than to go buy The Dangerous Book for Boys. The Amazon page has a little video on it.

You should read the interview with the author.

What you believe

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe but yourself.

St. Augustine

h/t happy catholic

And this one made me laugh...

Miss O'Neill was dumpy, moonfaced, sallow, colorless, and we hated her. We hated her as only a pack of West Side barbarians could hate a teacher of arithmetic. She did not teach arithmetic — but that is how much we hated her.

by Leo Rosten

a few thoughts

1) Where can I get this job to test the minikeg. h/t instapundit

------

2 ) This is laughable. I went to this site to see if it would give negative numbers and it said my blog was worth...
Your site is valued at: $34,884,606

I double checked and there is no minus sign in the front. I'll now start the bidding at a measly 3 million. It must be based on Russian Rubles circa 1990. I know it is only keying on the blogspot portion of my address, but if your value generator is that screwed up, who would every trust you. I tried replacing blogspot with google and got 174 million, pepsi knocked me down to 14 K.

This site has bugs

Do you have a bug that you want to know what it is? whatsthatbug.com is a good starter point.

Check out this photo. Make sure you view it full size. (if bugs freak you out, maybe you shouldn't.....yeah you should)

Dad protects daughter?

Catholic Dads posts a news article about a dad that tackles a guy taking pictures of his daughter at a festival. The picture taker was an off duty police officer and the dad was able to get the gun away from him.

The dad just happens to be the son of former congressman Bob Dornan. No surprise, I could easily see Bob doing the same thing.

Do you need Help with Soccer

This is a great commercial. 50 seconds.
This is definitely a combination of Cole and Noah.




Dan C. This one is all YOU!

Amy Welborn was talking to her son on his way to work at VA Tech.

....He spoke of one of his co-worker's relations, a police officer early on the scene, who was still not sleeping because of what he saw. And he told me this:

As the securing and examination of the crime scenes began in the afternoon and went on late into the night, one sound resounded through the heavy sad silence of the classrooms.

Cell phones.

Cell phones ringing, sounding, echoing against the walls. But cell phones that could not be answered because it was still a crime scene and nothing could be moved quite yet, nothing could be touched. And on the other end of those rings, parents and friends, dialing again and again, fearful, hearts slowly breaking, dialing one more time. Into silence.
....snip...
You know, when I was younger - actually not much younger - the life of a contemplative was unimaginable to me. How, I wondered, could anyone pray all day? What could keep you down on your knees so much? How could you think of enough to pray for?

Slowly, I'm beginning to figure it out. And now I think there are not enough hours in the day or night. Not nearly enough. Trusting that the prayers rise out of the grief, making their way, not into the air where they cannot be answered, but into the waiting embrace of Life and Love Eternal.

Undercover at Murder Inc, and baby names

Michelle has an article about Lila Rose going undercover at a planned parenthood center.
I can believe that this is getting no MSM coverage.

Rose is an 18-year-old student journalist at UCLA. Like McSwane and his breed of undercover reporters, she surreptitiously infiltrated a massive organization that enlists young people. Like McSwane and his breed of undercover reporters, Rose exposed deceptive practices. Rose posed as a 15-year-old seeking the services and advice of her target. Like McSwane and his breed of undercover reporters, she caught her targets urging her to lie and evade the law in order to sign her up.

But Rose’s target was the Left’s beloved Planned Parenthood, not the military. And that has made all the difference in the nonexistent national coverage of her undercover journalism.

We should all pray for her.
Our Father..... Amen.


====
In a more positive baby story, check out the popularity of you name starting with 1880 onward. And your kids names as well. Just type in the name and it will show you the rank and how many babies per million had that name. Drag over the chart to have it automatically update you.

Life just ain’t fair

Lesson reinforced at Shape of Days.

I guess it was "the Road" less traveled.

You've heard of carbon Credits. How aboute Debits?

Are you concerned about AlGore and all his Carbon Credits?
NO fear, you can offset him with your own Carbon Debits! :-)

Don't forget the T-shirt.

it's sexy to save the world

Passion is not good science. Environmentalist apparently know their stuff when it comes to knowing what is and is not good for you.




After viewing the video, you may want to go here to get all the info.

Ten Deadly Trappings

The Evangelical Outpost writes an interesting post called,
Fads and Fixtures: Ten Deadly Trappings of Evangelism

Some will get nit picked, # 2, 3, 6
Some you may consider interesting #8
Some you may agree completely #10, 4

Number #8 is interesting to me.

#8 Protestant Prayers -- Last week one of my fellow coworkers, a young Catholic man, was asked to open our meeting with a prayer. Without hesitation he began reciting the "Lord's prayer." Afterward I joked that, having come up with such a fine prayer, he might want to write it down for future use. What I didn't say what how his recitation of the prayer made me uncomfortable.

First, I'm not used to hearing prayers that don't contain the word "just" (as in "We just want to thank you Lord…") so it had an odd ring to it. Second, it seemed to violate the accepted standards for public prayer. I had always assumed that praying in public required being able to interlace some just-want-to's in with some Lord-thank-you-for's and be- with-us-as-we's in a coherent fashion before toppping it all with an Amen. Third, I thought that prayers are supposed to be spontaneous--from the heart, off the top of the head--emanations, rather than prepackaged recitations. If it ain't original, it ain't prayer, right? Can I get an amen?

But where did this idea come from? We have entire books to teach us how to pray yet Jesus managed to wrap up the lesson in less than forty words. Why isn't that prayer good enough for evangelicals to use? Why do our prayers sound nothing like His example? (And if you are wondering what prayer is doing on a list of evangelistic fixtures then we are really in trouble.)

Don't get me wrong, prayer is wonderful and if you doing it, please add a few for me :-).

Catholics get a bad rap on repeating prayers. If something is theologically sound and it helps you to focus on God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), why is that a bad thing?

Are hymns prayers? Yes they are. So why do many congregations sing the same songs over and over, but you never hear them say the Lord's Prayer (Our Father if you're Catholic). Jesus taught it to us, why not say it while you are trying to live it? How many times do people listen to their favorite "praise and worship" song over and over, but say we should not be repetitious in our prayers?

I know many people that prefer the "free form" style of prayer exclusively. But they repeat the same thing over and over. One day they say a prayer and two days later they say almost the same thing. In many of these settings, "Jesus" or "Lord" temporarily replaces "ahs" and "umms" in their speech. Is it more reverent to use Jesus as a filler, or repeat something solid that you can meditate on?

Let me know what you think.

The First Book

You will not have to scroll down for this one.

The First Book

I think it will be funny to anyone, but if you are a techie you will understand on another level.
Let's just say it involves a USER.

h/t Pontifications

The Gift of Life

Hat tip to The Dawn Patrol

This is just so beautiful. 6 Minutes long and worth every second.

I am so blessed so much and I still complain.

Accidental Watch

This is an interesting cartoon

You should "watch" it if you have some "time". You may find it "handy" to show to someone else.

You may even watch it a second time

(sheesh enough already...ed)

Listen....err...ignore the beauty incognito.

Wow, you have to check out this link from the Washington post! The premise is that they had one of the best violinist in the world play one of the greatest violins ever made........
...in the metro during the morning commute for 45 minutes, incognito.

There is plenty of video and a great story line. A few of the video's show what happened in the previous text.

I would have to admit (shamefully) that I would have enjoyed hearing it, but would have moved on rather quickly if I was on a morning commute…..then kicking myself after reading about it in the paper :-).

If you want to listen to the complete audio, you can check it out here.

HT Bill Cork

Via Dolorosa

A Presbyterian Minister discovers.......

... In 2003, millions of people became familiar with the traditional Stations of the Cross without even knowing it.

He explains it a little bit more, then goes on to show the Traditional 14 stations juxtaposed with 14 stations with Scriptural references instituted by Pope John Paul II.
Now stop protesting and use the 100% Scripture based version if you feel uncomfortable with the Scripture and Tradition version :-)
Mark states:

Last year some folks at my church decided to offer The Stations of the Cross as a devotional experience for Holy Week. For obvious reasons, we opted for the Pope's biblically-based version. My wife Linda offered to paint fourteen watercolor pictures that illustrated the passages upon which the revised stations are based....We're going to do the same thing this year....So, for those who can't come to our church, I'm going to do an online Stations of the Cross. Beginning tomorrow, I'll "walk" through the stations with you, one station per day (not including the weekends, usually). At this pace we'll complete the fourteen stations on Holy Saturday (which will feature the last of the stations). I'll include the Scripture passages for each station, some personal reflections and prayers, and my wife's paintings. My hope is that this online version of The Way of the Cross will enable you to enter into a deeper understanding and experience of the passion of Jesus, so that you might be ready to celebrate Easter with new joy and freedom.

It will help your spiritual focus this Easter...and the rest of the year.

Who has your vote?

La Shawn posted a question about who has your vote.

For me McCain = DOA. Giuliani is really the best Democrat. Romney needs to provide some clearer direction on some of his recent political changes.

I did visit Duncan Hunter's site and you can download his position paper to see what he has to say on key topics. He is solid in the Pro-life arena. He starts off with this:

I would amend the U.S. Constitution and provide blanket protection to all unborn children from the moment of conception by prohibiting any state or federal law that denies the personhood of the unborn.

That is a good start for me. I was going to quote a lot more, but I think you should spend the two seconds to download it and the couple of minutes that it takes to read it. You may not agree with it, but how many candidates come out this clear in their stances.


......AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERNT.
I will survive like you have never seen it before.
And, Rachmaninov had big Hands

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The Church has been Pro-life for a while now

I have always found the "baby turnstiles" interesting and wonderful.

Check it out over at the Holy Whapping.

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Rocking badminton...no seriously

Early in ESPN's growing years I got to watch the world championship of badminton and was very impressed. I probably watched it between the Mesquite Rodeo bull riding and Australian Rules football. I had no idea that it could be played with that much action. Think back to your junior high gym class or your attempt at it during a family reunion. You probably gained weight playing it, if you didn't fall asleep during the game.

Anyway via EO, I present to you one amazing Badminton point.

All I can say is WOW, is that really badminton?

Uncomfortable Questions that you can not dismiss.

I received this from mrfrankz conspiracy aficionado :-)

Was the Death Star attack really an inside job? You'll have to go check it out for yourself. I scoff at conspiracies, but I think this guy might be on to something.

I am sure a certain Pittsburgh native would have to agree.

Vortex Juggling

I would love to try this..... Cone Juggling.
For some reason my wife would probably rather park the car in the garage :-)

A very funny movie line

Bob Hope has great line in this 24 second clip :-)

Audio Witness

This is pretty funny. A man witnesses an accident while leaving a message.
Wait for the mother goose line :-)

The death of OSAS

The final nail in the coffin was driven in for me today for OSAS (once saved, always saved). Yes, I thought I did that a long time ago, but maybe the coffin is now encased in the middle of the Hoover Dam.

To hear a pastor lament to an OSAS believing group of Christians about how many Christians have "no sense of sin" and that they treat "sin as no big deal", caused me to ponder the statements.

Let me say first that I thank God many times for my friends that happen to believe OSAS to be true and they do try to live for Jesus the best they can.

I feel this issue is a dangerous natural outcome of OSAS and I have seen it brought to light many times. Saved Christians that feel no need for corporate worship on Sundays with a church...ever. Some that I know have a particular sin that they continue to live in because "Jesus died for ALL of their sins, past, present, future" and so they give in constantly to this one sin because they are prone to it with no regard for its consequences . Didn't Jesus already forgave them for it? On one occasion I tried to point a sin out, in a loving manner, to someone and they indicated that it did not matter if it was sinful or not because they had been forgiven. So, in essence, you can never sin again if you were once forgiven?

I think you can sin and that it could still count against you. When I wake up every morning, I still believe that I am married to my wife. Is that belief going to cut it? No, I need to recommit to her every day. By doing nothing, or by doing something that is contrary to our vows, I cause harm to our relationship.
To an even greater extent, the same holds true for Jesus. By doing nothing, or doing something that breaks his commandments, I cause harm to our relationship. Only through repentance and the Grace of Jesus does the relationship get restored.

Romans 11:17-22
17If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, 18do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. 19You will say then, "Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in." 20Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. 21For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. 22Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off.

Luke 8-13
13Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away.

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Insights from Gollum and Mary

I came across two interesting reflections today that I think really need to be read. They are both short and easy to understand for minds like mine :-)

The first one is a quick reflection on man and his sinful nature. It is called Gollum-- the mirror of man.
It only takes about 90 seconds to read....so go read it.

The Anchoress will not be blogging this week and she is posting a sort of " best of" posts for the week while she is working on something else. The post called Mary and the Crucifix is an excellent reflection. It starts out talking about the loss of a friend and also family members. Then it reflects on some of the pain and suffering that Jesus and Mary went through.

The following line will make more sense when you are done reading her post.
"It’s hard to remember all that. The Crucifix is the reminder."

Go read them both and you will have your mental workout for the day.

March for Life

Did you see any news articles for the March for Life? I didn't think so... at least not from a secular station. Sometimes the biggest lies are the things that are ignored. The sins of omission are greater than the sins of commission.
so what am I going to do about it? My family is going to pray. We will teach our children why the "culture of death" is wrong. We can also donate things/money to the local pregnancy centers. We may not change the whole world but I hope we influence a small part of it.

does Pat Robertson speak for you

okay, quick question, does Pat Robertson speak for any of you out there?
Here's a quick link to his predictions for this year.

to type or not to type

Most of you reading this blog already know that I have a neck injury and typing or using a mouse to surf the Internet causes more pain than I would like it to in my right arm and hand. Last Friday I received an e-mail from buy.com and it was offering a $40 rebate on Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.0. So, I figured I would give it a try and it is working out very well. I still need to learn some of the commands that I need to use to move around without using a keyboard but is definitely typing faster than I can with a keyboard and with a whole lot less pain. I'm currently typing this particular blog post using this voice recognition software instead of the keyboard. The software says you can dictate about 150 -- 160 words per minute, but currently with the medication I don't think I can think that fast.