Monday, August 29, 2005

Survey Says...

If you've read Luke's Audible Mind blog, perhaps discovering it from my site, he'd like to know about it.

Kentucky Blogging, Part 2 - The Nectar of the gods

Ale-8-1 (A late one) is probably not new to most of my readers. It's a great ginger ale from Winchester, Kentucky. You can find it in stores in surrounding states, and Dallas has a great store that stocks just about every regional soft-drink they can find, but it's really expensive there as you might imagine.

There was nothing like knocking back an Ale-8-1 after mowing the lawn. I miss that now, and have to settle for beer, but it's not the same. So I was glad to be in KY and taste the love once again. Unfortunately, I was unable to take any home with me, since I was flying.

There seems to be some disagreement as to the proper way to spell Ale-8-1. To settle the matter, I will post some pictures of the bottle.



It's a Doggy Dog World

I'd like to first acknowledge that I know the proper phrase is "dog eat dog world", but there are people that exist that believe that the title of my post is the correct incarnation. Perhaps you are one of them.

Anyway, the point of the post is to welcome my friend and occasional commenter, Lupmo, to the blogging world. He's started a blog and company, Lupmo Technologies. Be sure to check his site and welcome him. I believe we're going to see some very exciting things come from his company.

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Kentucky Blogging, Part 1

Last week, I was in Lexington, Kentucky for several days. It was a nice visit that reminded me of what I liked about living there (scenery, horse farms, unique restaurants), and what I hated about living there (traffic, traffic, and traffic). Most people look at me funny. When I tell them that the traffic in Dallas is better than the traffic in Lex. (My, that was a poorly placed period.) But if you hit a light in Lex, you could easily read a chapter of "Mere Christianity" before you'd need to move again.

Anyway, I took some nice pictures that I'll share here in the next few posts. Some will be to taunt others (Ale-8-1 photos), and some will be to share the beauty and history of my home for 8 years, (and the place of my birth).

Friday, August 26, 2005

Irony

So I'm actually in Saratoga Springs, New York this week, visiting a client. His wife is the daughter of the CEO and Chairman of Reader's Digest. They have a great old home, and I happen to be staying with them. Well, as often happens, I received a call from nature, and used the facilities here. Imagine my shock when I discovered that there were no copies of Reader's Digest in the bathroom. There was no reading material of any kind, in fact.

The Reader's Digest was a staple of bathroom reading as I was growing up. We used to fight over who would read the joke sections first. The occasion of the arrival of the new Reader's Digest was much heralded each month. So I thought for sure that such an atmosphere would exist in your home when your father is the CEO. I was wrong, and I think it says something about our culture. I don't know what, but something.

Hello.

OK, since my adoring public has grown increasingly impatient, I will post once again. When I started this blog a couple of months ago, things were at a lull in my business. The last few weeks have been extraordinarily busy, which is good, but the silent victim has been my online publishing.

So I now will make a few posts, if for no other reason than to give "anonymous" more fodder for his criticisms.

Monday, August 15, 2005

Friday, August 12, 2005

Friday's Featured Foto

This was a church in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Actually, it still is a church.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

A Scientific Conceit

This is the coolest story of the week. It's short. Go read it and come back. I'll wait.

`Scholars have said that there wasn't a Pool of Siloam and that John was using a religious conceit'' to illustrate a point, said New Testament scholar James H. Charlesworth of the Princeton Theological Seminary. ``Now we have found the Pool of Siloam . . . exactly where John said it was.''

A Gospel that was thought to be ``pure theology is now shown to be grounded in history,'' he said.
The last line is a bit of hyperbole, I think. There have been plenty of findings over the years to prove the truth and accuracy of the Bible, and as Christians, we don't really need these discoveries, because by faith we believed them already. (Well, most of us.) But it's still nice to see the "scholars" disproven while the Bible is proved accurate. By the way, I have no problem with scholars. The pursuit of knowledge is a good thing, and a Biblical principle to boot. But it's always good to remember that "scholars" are just people, and we should not blindly accept what they say simply because they've read a little more about it.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Young Geniuses

Today marks the release date of a new album from one of the best groups in existence, Nickel Creek. Their album, Why Should the Fire Die? hit the streets after months of anticipation. It doesn't disappoint. These kids write and play some amazing music. Their debut album, released in 2000, was an instant classic, essentially creating a new genre, "New Grass". Now I never liked country growing up, and I still mostly despise the twangy, mournful steel guitar sound, but these guys are making me appreciate the mandolin and fiddle. Their second album, This Side, solidified them as the real thing. They write most of their own music and infuse it with a depth of intelligence and emotion that belies their youth.

They are not a "Christian band", although they are Christians, often performing hymns as part of their concerts. At one of their shows, the encore was "Be Thou My Vision", every verse, without amplification. Everyone pushed to the front of the room, and it took awhile for the ears to get used to the low volume, but everyone was literally holding their breath as they sang in 3 part harmony. It was more moving than any altar call I've heard at any "Christian" concert. Did I mention they're kids?

I actually heard them the first time on "Prairie Home Companion" back in 2000. I guess Garrison Keillor is good for something after all.

Music for a Muser

My regular guests will catch the humor of the title. I used to listen to music quite a bit. A lot, in fact. Not just the type of listening where you turn on the radio while getting ready. I'm talking about active listening, where one sits in a room perfectly positioned between 2 very good speakers, turns the volume up beyond a level where conversation is possible, let the wall of sound flood the consciousness, and listen, paying attention to all the layers of the piece. Children cut into that type of leisure for awhile, followed by the political season where talk-radio and reading took my spare time. I'm now cycling back to a stage where I really crave good music, and want to play more. I still know enough piano to tinker with some songs, and I'm attempting to learn guitar. But I'm mainly starting to listen to music again.

Active music listening is much like a fine wine tasting. Various influencing factors can "color" the sound your ears hear, and while you might not be able to pick out with the naked ear that something was amiss, if the cleaner sound were introduced, even an untrained ear would be able to tell the difference. I was fortunate to find, some years back, a pair of really good speakers on clearance at Circuit City, and music has never been the same since. I was suddenly able to hear layers of sound that I never knew existed before on many of my favorite CD's. I was hearing music the way the producer heard it in the studio. I pulled out CD's I hadn't listened to in years, and it was like I was listening to a brand new album. If you're going to take up music listening as a hobby, I highly recommend a decent receiver and excellent speakers. The receiver does matter a great deal. Yamaha makes the cleanest, affordable amp that won't color your music. Now, if the budget won't allow such an expenditure on speakers, don't let it stop you from this exercise. Music is meant to be processed, just like other artforms. You stare at a painting to discover the beauty and to interpret the artists intent. You dissect complicated paragraphs of history's greatest philosophers and thinkers to try to understand what they're conveying. You talk about films and what the director meant by using this color of that Tupperware®. The great musicians of this and previous generations deserve no less.

So I intend to add a good deal more music discussion to my upcoming posts, primarily because it's what I'm interested in right now. In the days to come, I'll talk about many artists and albums that I believe are underappreciated/undiscovered. Feel free to chime in with some of your favorites that I may not know about.

I've previously talked about my upbringing a little bit. One of the forbidden fruits of my youth was "SECULAR MUSIC"!! (cue forboding music-dom dom dom) I don't mean to demean my parents in any way here either, they were doing what they believed was best for us. But the idea was that all music that didn't talk specifically about God was secular. Now, there were some very fine christian artists, but not really a lot of world-class musicians. I really wasn't exposed to the musical greats during my formative years, which is a bit of a surprise considering how important music was in my family. (My dad's a songwriter/recording artist, all of us play some instrument) So college was really my first opportunity to discover the genius of guys like Stevie Wonder and Wang Chung, and I would say my real formative years started there. So I'm still discovering some of the greats, and I'm excited to introduce you to some of them.

So join in and let me know who your favorite artists/albums are.

Friday, August 05, 2005

Respect for Life...Even unto Death

I was encouraged to find this blog that challenges my assumptions about abortion clinics. All this time I've been under the mis-guided idea that these clinics have no respect for human life, and just want to see as many women have abortions as possible as part of their agenda. I'm glad to see I was wrong. Here's a key paragraph:

Our clinic is the kind of place where women can ask, as one did today, if we would bless and baptise her baby. i was able to do that for her. honoring her pregnancy as she herself chooses is part of what we hope to do for each woman. using water (she had planned to bring holy water with her but had at the last minute forgotten it) and saying the words i know from my catholic upbringing, i did as she asked. she had a name in mind for the baby, one that could work for either gender and i gave it that name.

we want to be a clinic that respects life, that honors women's choices. the two are compatible. believe me!
Listen, baptizing a baby you just slaughtered is not respect for life. In your case it's just good old-fashioned customer service. What gymnastics must the mind go through to come up with reasoning like this? I hope this is a parody site, ala "Screwtape Letters" to demonstrate how morally bankrupt this industry is, and to try to show the truth about abortion in stark terms. But I don't think it is.

Words fail.

Hat Tip: The Corner

Human Nature

This may make me the world's worst father for posting this on the internet, but it's such a telling commentary I'm going to do it, if only for a short time. Abraham started toilet training this week, and I snapped this picture 2 days into the process. He already knows what to do.

Note that he's not reading some Thomas the Train shlock. It's a Guitar Center catalog, and he's checking out the high-end microphones. That's my boy.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

No Guarantees

Twenty years ago today, William Mayberry of the Dallas area was driving home from his work as an auto mechanic. The sky was cloudy, and storms were forecast. Texas has legendary summer storms that can come out of nowhere, wreak havoc for a few moments, and then be gone. But the only evidence so far were white puffy clouds. Hidden inside those benign-looking clouds, a ferocious storm was brewing, a localized weather catastrophe waiting to happen. It's called a microburst. A microburst creates tornado-like winds blowing straight down to the ground, and is not easy to predict or to even see the symptoms. This one happened to be located right in the landing path of Runway 17L at one of the busiest airports in the world, Dallas/Fort Worth International.

Delta Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 with 163 passengers on board was cleared for landing, and was on final approach. The pilots, seasoned professionals, saw nothing out of the ordinary. All the planes that landed ahead of them mentioned no problems. As a microburst forms and produces a downdraft of up to 160 mph, an updraft is obviously created on the perimeter. (An explanatory graphic can be viewed here.) As flight 191 entered the microburst, and updraft increased the aircraft's speed past the acceptable level for landing. To compensate, the 1st Officer pulled back the throttle. The Captain immediately recognized the first effects of wind shear and cautioned the 1st Officer that the updraft was going to go away. It did, almost as soon as he said it. The pilot started to push the throttle back up, the crew yelling "Way up! Way up!" The throttle was wide open as the plane entered the core of the microburst, but the force of the downward pointing wind kept the plane from recovering. There was not enough airspeed to push through it.

The airplane hit the ground in an empty field a half-mile short of the runway. It bounced in the air, crossing over highway 114, a six-lane freeway on the north side of the airport, and finally crashed in a field just short of the runway. It slammed into two 4-million gallon water tanks, filling the field with knee-deep water and jet fuel. 137 people were killed, one of the most deadly in US aviation history. One of the victims was William Mayberry, the auto mechanic.

He was driving in his Honda on highway 114, and never saw flight 191 dropping from the sky. The plane crushed his car, an engine cowling slicing through his body as it skimmed the surface of the highway. He was 28 and left behind a 26 year old wife and two young kids.

I'm normally a (what I believe to be) healthily cynical person, and the lessons I take from funerals about living each day to the fullest, as if it were my last, seem to be quickly forgotten, and I'm cynical because I know how easily I forget once the emotion of the moment goes away, and my perfect life resumes. William Mayberry is a constant reminder to me. I think of him every time I drive by the two 4 million gallon water tanks that still stand on highway 114, a short ten-minute drive from my house, a landmark that I pass weekly.

William Mayberry never saw it coming, he didn't see his life flash before his eyes. One moment he was here, the next he was facing his maker. His tragic ending is a tangible example that I'm not guaranteed another day to do the things that God requires, and its a reminder we need much more frequently than the rare funerals we attend of people who went too soon.