Dec 31 2007
…and a New Years Poem
Ham’s substantial, Ham is fat
Ham is firm and sound.
Ham is what God was getting at,
when he made pigs so round.
(Courtesy of Night Writer )
Dec 31 2007
A Prayer for the New Year
Holy Father, God of our yesterdays, our today, and our tomorrows.
We praise You for Your unequaled greatness.
Thank You for the year behind us and for the year ahead.
Help us in Your new year, Father, to fret less and laugh more.
To teach our children to laugh by laughing with them.
To teach others to love by loving them.
Knowing, when Love came to the stable in Bethlehem, He came for us.
So that Love could be with us, and we could know You.
That we could share Love with others.
Help us, Father, to hear Your love song in every sunrise,
in the chirping of sparrows in our backyards,
in the stories of our old folks, and the fantasies of our children.
Help us to stop and listen to Your love songs, so that we may know You better and better.
We rejoice in the world You loved into being.
Thank You for another new year and for new chances every day.
We pray for peace, for light, and for hope, that we might spread them to others.
Forgive us for falling short this past year.
We leave the irreparable past in your hands,
and step out into the unknown new year knowing You will go with us.
We accept Your gift of a new year and we rejoice in what’s ahead,
depending on You to help us do exactly what You want..
I say it again, we rejoice!
Amen.
Dec 31 2007
Things are Weird in Washington State
Man blames car wreck on prehistoric winged reptile
WENATCHEE — A 29-year-old Wenatchee man told police a pterodactyl caused him to drive his car into a light pole about 11:30 p.m. Thursday.
Wenatchee police cited the man with first-degree negligent driving. A breathalyzer test showed “a minimal amount of alcohol,” said Wenatchee police Sgt. Cherie Smith.
Witnesses told police the man was northbound on Wenatchee Avenue and drifted into a southbound lane for less than a block. Oncoming traffic stopped and waited for the man to pass, Smith said.
He then totaled his car on a light pole, Smith said.
When police asked the man what caused the accident, his one-word answer was “pterodactyl,” Smith said. A pterodactyl was a giant winged reptile that lived more than 65 million years ago.
The man was treated and released at Central Washington Hospital, hospital officials said.
In other news, police are stepping up drunk driving roadblocks…
Dec 28 2007
Review: National Treasure 2
I can’t remember a movie that our family has more eagerly anticipated than National Treasure: Book of Secrets, or one that was more of a let-down. The movie was mildly entertaining, but all the best scenes were included in the trailer, so if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the movie. There’s a treasure, a secret book, John Wilkes Booth, bad guys who want the treasure, yadda yadda yadda.
Nicolas Cage is a fine actor, as is Jon Voight, but neither is given much to work with. Voight’s greatest accomplishment is that he learns to say, “Yes, dear” to his estranged wife, Dame Helen Mirren.
It wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen - I’ll reserve that honor for Millenium and Event Horizon .
I give it a rating of 1 out of several stars. Catch it on DVD, but don’t pay full price.
Dec 26 2007
Secular Fundamentalists
Tim, who desperately needs his own blog, passes along this excerpt from Cal Thomas’ piece at Townhall.com . It captures the essence of the man-induced global warmening business and advises us to follow the old axiom ‘follow the money.’ The piece also cuts to the essential point that climate change has clearly become it’s own evangelical/fundamentalist religion, albeit one that is desperate for a savior.
You don’t have to be religious to qualify as a fundamentalist. You can be Al Gore, the messiah figure for the global warming cult, whose followers truly believe their gospel of imminent extermination in a Noah-like flood, if we don’t immediately change our carbon polluting ways.
One of the traits of a cult is its refusal to consider any evidence that might disprove the faith. And so it is doubtful the global warming cultists will be moved by 400 scientists, many of whom, according to the Washington Times, “are current or former members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore for publicizing a climate crisis.” In a report by Republican staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, these scientists cast doubt on a “scientific consensus” that global warming caused by humans endangers the planet.
The pro-global warming cultists enjoy a huge money advantage. Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter, who has testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, noted in an EPW report how much money has been spent researching and promoting climate fears and so-called solutions: “ In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than $50 billion (US) on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one ,” he wrote on June 18, 2007. The $19 million spent on research that debunks the global warming faith pales in comparison.
Dec 24 2007
Iraqi Streets Still Plagued by Luting
(HT: Caption This . Caution - site frequently NSFW )
Dec 21 2007
A Whale of a Big Gulp
This is pretty amazing - and it shows that God makes cool critters. Researchers from UC Berkeley and the University of British Columbia have created a picture of how some whales eat. From
this article
:
It turns out that a fin whale dives very deep for food. It plunges more than 600 feet below the sea surface, most likely in search of giant swarms of krill. What the whale does next came as a complete surprise to the scientists. “It was still swimming, but it was slowing down really fast,” Mr. Goldbogen said. Even as the whale pumps its powerful tail, it comes to a compete stop in three seconds.
The whale grinds to a halt, the scientists concluded, by opening its mouth. Water floods in, pushing its giant lower jaws back until they hang perpendicularly from its body. Suddenly the whale is producing colossal amounts of drag. “The whales are beautifully streamlined so they can swim fast and efficiently, and then they’re throwing it all out the window,” Mr. Goldbogen said.
In fact, a fin whale’s body turns out to be exquisitely adapted for increasing its drag. The underside of its mouth is made up of a unique set of pleats that can stretch to four times their normal size. By continuing to beat its tail, the whale forces more water in, causing its mouth to expand like a parachute. And just as race car drivers use parachutes to slow them down, the whale’s inflated mouth brings it to a dead stop.
Mr. Goldbogen and his colleagues calculate that in just three seconds, the mouth of a 60-foot fin whale fills with more than 18,000 gallons of water. That’s the same volume as a school bus, and weighs more than the whale itself.
Dec 21 2007
Whatcha Reading?
A month or so ago, AP released the results of a poll regarding America’s reading habits. Some of the results are in the graphic to the right. I did a bit of digging and came up with the following detail from an article in the December 2007 issue of the Writer . (Unfortunately, the article content is not available online.)
According to [the poll], 27 percent of adults read no books in the last year. The group of nonreaders consists of a quarter of women and and a third of men. On the flip side, here’s what the poll uncovered about those who did read:
- Southerners read more romance novels and religious books than those from other regions.
- Popular fiction, histories, biographies and mysteries are the most popular categories.
- Churchgoers read half as much as non-churchgoers did. [Way to enforce the stereotype of illiterate Christian yahoos!]
- Democrats read slightly more books than Republicans.
- The average number of books read in the last year is seven. [See below for my results.]
- People 50 and older read more than younger readers.
- Those who have college degrees read the most.
All that said, I posted a poll on this site asking how many books people read in the past year. Of fourteen respondents, eight had read more than 10 books, four had read 6-10 books, and two had read 4-5 books. No one answered that they had read less than 4 books. Results were definitely skewed to the high end. (If you haven’t already taken the reader poll in the sidebar, please do!)
Can I infer that bloggers - or blog readers - read more than the rest of the population?
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