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Archive for June, 2009

Ever since Pastor Wiley Drake declared not once, but three times, on national radio that he was praying for the death of President Obama, he has been trying to clarify.

Yes, he really does want God to smite Obama. No, it’s not a partisan prayer. Yes, it’s in the Bible, he says, and no, he wasn’t kidding. He’s deadly serious.

The former second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention said he’s merely practicing the age-old art of “imprecatory prayer”—a theological term for praying that bad things happen to bad people.

Imprecatory prayer can turn a verse into curse through reciting Scripture aimed at one’s foes. Rather than asking for, say, healing or a win in the big game, these prayers request that God smite one’s enemies with—among other things—plagues, death and eternal damnation.

“That doesn’t mean I spend every waking hour praying for the death of the president,” said Drake, who leads Buena Park Southern Baptist Church, near Anaheim, Calif. “Of our prayers, 98 percent should be good prayers and 2 percent should be imprecatory.”

Though Scripture says Jesus told his followers to love their enemies and pray for them, the Bible also depicts King David pleading with God to vanquish his adversaries. While famed Christian apologist C.S. Lewis found such imprecatory psalms distasteful and “devilish,” even he could not deny their existence.

Derided by some as a bad Judeo-Christian imitation of voodoo, the literal practice of imprecatory prayer has some newfound fans.

Full RNS Article

I wonder how these words from Jesus fits into all of this:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Finding My Goddess

Smart, Sexy, Spiritual Goddess Desired for Awesome Relationship with Extraordinary Man.

One Gentleman’s Quest to Find His Goddess.

Are YOU a Woman Who Has Most of the Extensive Goddess-Qualifications?

Hi. I’m Mark. Thanks for visiting my web site.

I’m looking for a true Goddess for life-long intimate relationship and awesome marriage. She is HIGHLY intelligent, VERY sexy, and DEEPLY spiritual.

Read more about his quest here: www.findingmygoddess.com

This man has a lot to say, I mean the guy wrote quite a bit, but his piece towards the end caught my attention:

May each woman who replies to this ad be PERMANENTLY surrounded by Angels of God and a Shield of Light that admits only Light, Love, Beauty, Joy, Wisdom, Truth, and Divinity into her body, mind, heart and soul, and that reflects back and ABSOLUTELY PROTECTS her from anything that is not of God regardless of how “well intended” or “spiritual” or “common sensical” its source may appear to be.

Seeking spiritual guidance through search engines is so popular these days that a legion of online missionaries is being assembled in Orlando to answer the cyber-prayers.

Global Media Outreach — a ministry of Orlando-based Campus Crusade for Christ International — has formed a partnership with Northland, A Church Distributed, in Longwood to recruit and train 5,000 online missionaries by 2010.

“We are overwhelmed. We don’t have enough online missionaries to handle what we are getting now — which is a wonderful problem,” said the Rev. Allan Beeber, Orlando director of Global Media.

Global Media has more than 90 Web sites aimed at search-engine seekers of God. Type in a query about Jesus, and WhoIsJesus-Re ally.com shows up in the results. Type in a question about God’s existence and Jesus2020.com shows up as a sponsored link. There are religion-based Web sites for teenagers, Marines, soccer players, Boston Red Sox fans, and The DaVinci Code.

At the bottom of each Web site is a feedback form that asks for names, e-mail addresses and a space for comments and questions. About 30,000 people a day fill out that form and press the send button, Beeber said.

Those contacts and comments are forwarded to one of the Global Media’s 2,900 online missionaries trained to answer questions of faith — or refer to someone who can.

Full Article

What I cut and pasted above is actually from two different sections of the article, so it might not read well together, but then again, it might.  Either way, I just wanted to provide you with what I considered the meatiest part of the article.

On second thought, Carolyn from Boston is an avid reader who is a vegetarian, so that comment could be taken the wrong way.  Sorry, Carolyn.

Layers from bottom to top: pancake; cookie dough; pancake; peanut butter and jelly; pancake; chocolate and bananas; pancake; caramel, oreo, marshmallow, sprinkles, M&M’s; pancake; caramel buttercream frosting granished with Trix cereal.

(submitted by Caroline Smith and Tamara Coger)

ThisIsWhyYoureFat.com

Ralph Reed, the Republican operative who built the Christian Coalition into a potent political force in the 1990s by mobilizing evangelicals and other religious conservatives and who did similar work to help George W. Bush win two presidential elections, is quietly launching a group aimed at using the Web to mobilize a new generation of values voters. In addition to targeting the GOP’s traditional faith-based allies—white evangelicals and observant Catholics—the group, called the Faith and Freedom Coalition, will reach out to Democratic-leaning constituencies, including Hispanics, blacks, young people, and women.

“This is not your daddy’s Christian Coalition,” Reed said in an interview Monday. “It’s got to be more brown, more black, more female, and younger. It’s critical that we open the door wide and let them know if they share our values and believe in the principles of faith and marriage and family, they’re welcome.”

“There’s a whole rising generation of young leaders in the faith community, and rather than nab the publicity I did at Christian Coalition, I want to cultivate and train that rising generation,” Reed said. “One question is, who is our future Barack Obama, doing local organizing just like he was in the 1990s?”

Full USNews.com Post

I was a little fascinated with this part:

The Faith and Freedom Coalition has been quietly active for a few weeks but has attracted no news media notice so far. Reed said that was intentional: “We’re less focused on the pyrotechnics than on being a strong grass-roots presence all the way down to the precinct level, which has always been my emphasis.”

The timing worked out well for not attracting a lot of attention, with the events of the South Carolina governor and all.

More than 400 nominated taglines and jingles were sent to 100 advertising, marketing, and branding professionals on both the client and agency side.

The survey was restricted to taglines and jingles created after 1948 (the advent of commercial broadcast TV).

Informants were asked to rank their top 10 taglines and top 3 jingles based on the following branding criteria:

* Longevity: Have they endured the test of time?
* Equity: Have they become synonymous with a company or product?
* Portability & Memorability: Have they exercised an influence on our culture, media, and language?
* Originality: Have they broken new ground in the advertising industry?

Nominated taglines and jingles were given a weighted ranking based on the number of votes they received and the rank they were assigned.

Link

Here’s the bottom five:

96. Did somebody say McDonald’s? (1997)
McDonald’s
97. Ring around the collar. (1968)
Wisk Laundry Detergent
98. It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile… (1980s)
Oldsmobile
99. The toughest job you’ll ever love. (1970s)
U.S. Peace Corps
100. Share moments. Share life. (1990s)
Kodak

More pics

• I mentioned yesterday that I booked a dental appointment because of the offer of four free teeth whitening sessions with a regular appointment while I was at the health fair at work.  Normally I don’t do these sort of things, but since I need a dental checkup and I really don’t like my dentist all that much, I decided what the heck since their office wasn’t that far from where I work.  Well, I decided to do a little research.
• The dental office is one of those contemporary eco-friendly places.  No paper is used in the office, everything is kept digitally, and everything is energy efficient from light bulbs to computers.  Oh, and toothbrushes are made from recycled yogurt containers.
• They offer free Wi-Fi, which doesn’t really wow me, but each patient chair or whatever you call them, or maybe it’s each room, comes with an iPod dock and a customizable play list.  This makes me want to find out what kind of music the dentist can’t stand and select all those songs, but on second thought, she has the ability to inflict pain, so I better be careful.
• A Mac bar is located in the lobby and Snuggies are provided if you get cold.
• Snacks are organic and locally grown.  I never been much for eating right before a dentist, because Mom always told me to brush my teeth before going there.  Now that I think about it, that doesn’t really make a lot of sense, they are going to clean my teeth anyways.
• And the place looks ultra-modern, which is going to leave this bubba from Mineral Wells feeling a little out of place.  Feel free to read a little more about it here.
• My sister called from Vietnam while I was at work.  Isn’t it just amazing, when you really think about it, that someone on the opposite end of the Earth can have a real time conversation with you using a device about the size of a deck of cards you carry around in your pocket?  When you think about how far we have come regarding technology, it’s funny how often we complain.
• I think Obama was smart to hold comment regarding the Iranian election.  Ahmadinejad yesterday  states that the the U.S. should not interfere with their elections.  When all the protests started and were growing in number, it all happened with no comment from Obama, and the Iranian leaders couldn’t blame any outsiders for rallying the protesters since it all started from within – so the revolt is a direct cause of their own people, not some outsider.  By Obama has now since made a statement about the election, and now the Iranian leadership is diverting attention to us rather than the protests.
• Bill Nye Explains: The iPhone 3GS’s Oleophobic Screen
• Kayak.com and Bing.com sure do look similar
• The other day WifeGeeding and I checked out one of those The Art of Shaving stores in the mall just for the heck of it and learned a few new things.  For instance, a straight edge razor will last a man for a lifetime.  And the cheapest disposable razor to use is a safety razor since the replacement blades are cheapest.
• But the safety razor doesn’t really look that safe.
• Normally when I shave, I fill the bottom of the sink up with hot water to rinse off my razor.  Some people just rinse the razor off under a running faucet, but that never really gets all the hair out when I try it.  I told the store representative that I rinse my razor out with warm water, and he said I should rinse it out with cold water to maximize the sharpness of the blade.  That is, when the blade is cold, molecules are closer together and the blade is sharper.  When the blade is warm, the metal is expanded and is not as sharp.  But of course, use warm water to wet your face.
• I caught a Texas Country Reporter episode recently, haven’t seen an episode in years.  It really is a great show that features the best of Texas.  Little known fact, but the host of the show was on the very first Southwest Airlines flight.
• In 1998 they just didn’t have the heart to break it to Elivs Grbac:  The Sad, Hilarious Tale Of Elvis Grbac, 1998’s “Sexiest Athlete Alive”
• This is the only picture I have seen of Kenny Baker inside R2D2.  I never really thought of it before, but after looking at that picture I perfectly understand some of the movements of that droid.
• I have to give T.O. credit for showing up at his football camp in the area even though he no longer plays or lives here.
• Letterman had Johnny Depp and Megan Fox on his show last night – I wonder if any show has had a sexier male and female guest on a show.
• The Michael Jackson death was a surprise, but not shocking, if that makes any sense.  The way he was living his life and just the way that he looked, well, everyone knew he wasn’t going to be an old man.
• I always thought of him as a cross between Elvis and Howard Hughes in terms of talent and personality.
• Yes, he had his problems, many of them, but as an artist he was extremely gifted and talented.
• One crazy thing about him that sticks out for me regarding him is the Super Bowl.  Fox didn’t have the NFL, and one year decided to have an IN Living Color special air during the Super Bowl halftime with a countdown clock so no one would miss the game.  This was a time when the Super Bowl half time show were getting pretty lame.  The NFL didn’t want to have any of that happen again and miss out on any advertising dollars, so the very next year they brought in the biggest name they could think of, Michael Jackson.  I do believe that was the Super Bowl at the Rose Bowl when the Cowboys routed the Bills.
• You know Elizabeth Taylor isn’t taking the news well.
• I visited his website about twice an hour for several hours just to see if there was going to be an update.  Most of the time it just had tour and ticket information, and later there was just a red background with an image of him with his name and the title of King of Pop.
• Yes, I was a big fan of his growing up.  He and U2 are probably the biggest voices of my generation.
• MTV actually started to play music videos again.  After his death was announced I turned over to the channel and noticed it was nothing but Michael Jackson videos for several hours.  That’s a fitting tribute.  I’m sure the teens and tweens didn’t understand why the heck MTV was playing so many videos, while us adults can remember a day when that’s just about all they did.  I actually watched for a while, and man, the guy was a visionary.
• The dude from MTV News that was announcing the death was not very good at reading from a teleprompter.  As a matter of fact, it was almost comical.  He’s no Kurt Loder.  I wonder how many of you actually know who Kurt Loder is.
• The same announcement aired after every video and commercial break.
• TMZ was the first to announce his death.  You know they have hospital employees in all the area LA/Hollywood hospitals on their payroll just so they can the inside scoop on things.
• Most of the major news networks didn’t want to get the story wrong and withheld making the official death announcement.  You really can’t blame them for that.
• What is crazier is that someone made the decision to have an hour long special put together to air that night.  But you know that all the news agencies have something already put together for all the major celebrities.
• It was crazy that before the evening news started his death was speculated/announced just about twenty minutes before and the news leading with the story and then having to put Farrah Fawcett’s death aside.  Wow, two icons.
• It was interesting to see that at 6:30 PM Central time when all the gossip shows such as Entertainment Tonight and Extra come on and none of them have up to date information.  I always knew they filmed those things earlier in the day.
• The Jackson family seemed to have bitter feelings towards each other for a long time, but I think they were able to get things in order before Michael’s death.
• I bet the Fawcett camp is saddened by the death of Jackson, but will benefit from his death by not being as intensly covered.
• I feel sorry for the patients and family for those at the UCLA Medical Center.  The crowd and media that gathered there was just insane.
• His death caused many sites to respond slow because of traffic.
• The authorities were smart to move his body by helicopter, no telling what the crowd outside would have done.
• Last night Jimmy Kimmel started his monologue with the news of Jackson’s death, and then actually made jokes about the man and his actual death and even had the audacity of asking if it was too soon to do such a thing.   Kimmel is usually a funny guy, but that was just crass.
• The first ever luau occurred at The White House last night, and I hear inflatable sharks were put in the fountain.  But I doubt we see much coverage of the event due to Jackson’s death.
• Speaking of not being covered, Walter Cronkite’s family has put out a statement stating that he is not expected to recuperate.
• Grace.

All of this comes from a great technology blog call The Raw Feed.

I have the entire post copied below, but without embedded links that was with the original article.  Of course if you visit the original post, which I encourage you to do, you can visit the links that were originally included.

How fake Michael Jackson news scooped everyone

Shortly after news reports surfaced that pop star Michael Jackson was taken to the hospital with cardiac arrest, someone posted a fake news story that he had died. (Here’s a screen capture of that story.) The story was created on a Web site called “Fake a Wish – Celeb Fake News Generator.” The fake news story appeared to have been published by a Global Associated News, which doesn’t actually exist. Twitter tweets linking to the fake story were exceeding 10 per second for more than a half hour. At some point, the site TMZ reported an un-sourced story that Jackson had died. My working thesis is that they fell for the Global Associated News prank. But then Drudge Report and other major sites linked to the TMZ story, and reported Jackson’s death as fact. All that happened before the actual scoop, which was this blog post by The Los Angeles Times. Well after the L.A. Times story, the original TMZ piece was updated and made respectable with sources specified.

I can’t prove it, but I think TMZ fell for the hoax, hundreds or thousands of news organizations all over the world linked to the TMZ story, but then the fake story became real when Jackson died nearly an hour later.

The remaining question for TMZ was: Was their story based on the fake news report? If not, they should tell everyone what it was based on.

Very, very interesting.

But I have a feeling that TMZ has hospital employees of all the local LA hospitals on their payroll to get the scoop on things.

Scan reveals Egyptian mummy thought to be a woman is a man

NEW YORK — A scan performed at a suburban New York City hospital shows an ancient Egyptian mummy thought for centuries to be a woman is a man.

But then again, it’s not like the mummy peed in his pants or anything.

Or . . . did he?

Or maybe the mummy died while swimming and had a Costanza moment.

The Family Research Council organizes the Values Voters Summit.  Below are the listed of confirmed and invited speakers as it appears on their website as of right now.

But if use the Google Cache and look at their website as of June 19, 2009, you will see that South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was originally included (second to last row, third column).

Maybe they should have kept him on the list, to hear a remorseful man looking for redemption?

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 26, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI would prefer to distribute communion on the tongue and to people who are kneeling, according to the master of papal liturgical ceremonies.

Full Article

Ever heard of the jaguarundi? Neither have we.

Perhaps that’s because this unique type of cat that lives along the Texas border with Mexico is endangered. Perhaps it’s because nobody really cares. We’re guessing it’s a bit of both, but that doesn’t mean every animal shouldn’t have some human in their corner pulling for them.

WildEarth Guardian, a non-profit environmental organization, recently waged war in the form of a lawsuit in Houston federal court against Ken Salazar, Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, demanding that he put a conservation and survival plan together for the animal. After all, the organization argues, the cat has been listed as endangered since 1976, plenty of time to create such a plan as required under the Endangered Species Act.

Two types of the endangered species call south Texas their home, the Gulf Coast jaguarundi and the Sinaloan jaguarundi. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, they are larger than a domestic cat and have small ears, long, narrow bodies with short legs and flattened heads and tails. They generally look more like an otter or a weasel than a cat. They make their homes, according to the lawsuit, in the “dense thorny mesquite, cacti and cat claw thickets of southern Texas.”

Full Article

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German court ruled Tuesday that schoolchildren may rate their teachers online, rejecting the case of a woman who argued her rights had been infringed by pupils who gave her bad grades on a popular website.

The Federal Court of Justice found that the rights of the woman, a teacher of German and religion, had not been compromised by the ratings and that pupils had a right to offer an opinion as long as they did not hinder her professionally.

Full Article

• Star Wars humor – It’s a trap!
• I read an article about how the FAFSA forms will be easier to fill out.  The part that caught my attention was how the Dept of Education and the IRS will form a partnership so families can automatically download their tax data int online FAFSA forms.  It always bugs me that related organizations don’t share information.  I’ve seen first hand how different departments within the same company will require the customer to fill out additional paperwork, when the actually information being requested is actually on hand, but just in a different department.  The efficiency of sharing data is not only more customer friendly, but a cost and time saving efficiency.
• I also think the medical community would benefit from sharing information.  When my mother was sick and we had to visit one doctor one day and another doctor the next day, she would have to go through the same x-rays and blood tests.  I know a person’s health can change from one day to the next and that the numbers could look different from day to day, but depending on what they are looking for, it could also be a time and cost saving efficiency.
• Filling out forms at the doctors office can be a pain, especially when you have to list your name and address on about five different forms.  One time I saw a lady simply apply address labels in those sections.  I thought it was a good idea, but I wonder if the clerk accepted them.  Sometimes they can be picky requiring that is all must be hand filled or something.
• I saw Sandra Day O’Connor on Letterman the other night.  She jovially mention something about the highest court of the land being a basketball court that is a floor above the Supreme Court chamber.  I had no idea there was an actually basketball court above the Supreme Court, and that actually sounds a bit silly, but I researched it and it’s true.
• But before you play on days when the court is in session, you need permission.  Check out this sign outside the basketball court.
• I can just imagine court being in session over some kind of very emotional and tense case, and Chief Justice Robert’s kids are shooting hoops above and the justices and lawyers can’t concentrate because of the bouncing balls.
• In that interview, O’Connor also stated that before they enter each court session, all the justices shake hands before entering the chamber.  Interesting.
• She also mentioned that even though she’s retired, she still has to work in a lower level court or something.
• One thing I’ll always remember about Ed McMahon is his socks, they were always thin, looked like pantyhose, and looked so tight that they were cutting off circulation.  See for yourself.
• Quite possibly the cutest picture you will see all day.
• There was a health fair at work yesterday.  Someone from my high school was actually there as a chiropractor.  We had nothing to say other than the typical small talk.  I didn’t even recognize the guy until I read his name tag.
• At the health fair a dental office was giving away four free teeth whitening visits if I scheduled an appointment.  Since I really didn’t care for my dentist, I decided to give this lady a try.
• I hear female dentist can maneuver around better because their hands are more slender.
• It seems the GOP is having a hard time rebuilding its image as of late, with Senator Ensign’s affair and South Carolina’s governor taking a hike with no one knowing his whereabouts but then was really cheating on his wife in another country.  Oh, and that racist email.
• Regarding that governor, you would think he could cover his tracks better, and of all times to skip the country and cheat on your wife and kids . . . on Fathers Day weekend.
• And I’m sure Fox News decided to spin the story with a bunch of empathy of human frailty and make it completely different than the Clinton, Spitzer, and Edwards affair.
• George Stephanopoulos had an interesting analysis of the event.  He stated that Gov Sanford’s press conference appeared to full of raw emotion, that you usually see the person in this situation have his wife by his side and looking almost defiant, but not so in this case.
• Families are at stake here, pray for all parties involved, including the governor.
• But the governor should resign, not for the affair, but as head of his state, he was missing for about five days and didn’t delegate any authority in case something were to happen.
• I tried to visit his webpage last night just to see what it might say due to the current events, but the server was too busy.   Give it a try yourself:  www.scgovernor.com
• If you are interested, here are some emails between Gov Sanford and the his mistress.
• The race to be the next Texas governor is going to be interesting with Tom Schieffer entering the race along with Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchinson.  Tom is the brother of Bob, the host of Face the Nation on CBS.  I wonder how Bob feels about it, and wonder if there is any concern about his brother being a Democrat and Bob’s coverage, that it can be seen as liberal biased.  And yes, I’ll go ahead and say it for some of you even if I don’t agree with you, Bob has been part of the liberal media years.
• But Tom Schieffer did serve as a diplomat in George W. Bush’s administration.
• The one thing that has really gotten my attention about the protests in Iran is that a lot of the signs held by protesters are in English.
• Those protests are going to die down quickly unless that losing candidate appears in public.  I know he fears for his life, but these protesters are fighting for a cause bigger than he is.
• I don’t like the Oscars increasing Best Picture nominations from five to ten.  I felt the same way when Texas UIL allowed the second place team in each district to make the playoffs, if that makes any sense.
• iPhone 3G or Palm Pre?
• I like the idea of ABC showing a special edition of Primetime with Obama in a town hall setting, but I can understand why the Republicans feel it’s an infomercial.  I think if Bush did something similar during primetime television, I wouldn’t have had a problem with it.  I like the idea, maybe it’s just the perception, that the President is accessible to public questions.  If anything, it puts the issue out there for public debate, and if anyone after watching the program is really against the idea, then they can certain contact their congressional representative or the president about their concerns.  I wish stuff like this would happen more often with all the networks and different representatives of government, getting big issues on the table and actually discussing them – democracy at its best.
• I never liked the idea of naming the championship of baseball the World Series.  It’s a tag that doesn’t fit for MLB or college, but oddly enough, it works for the youth league.
• I bet being the son of Michael Jordan has its perks, but I also bet it has its drawbacks such as everyone’s expectations regarding his basketball skills.
• Just about every news website allows comments on stories.  I rarely ever read those comments, and when I do, I’m usually shaking my head in disgust.
• I tried Wendy’s new Sweet and Spicy Asian Chicken last night – I highly recommend it, and recommend it with rice.
• Grace