new podcasts online

I just uploaded three new sermon podcasts to the LifePoint podcast blog.

hannah for president, the video

hannah for president

Since President George W. Bush is often referred to as "W", it looks like we may have to call her "G." Hannah decided to run for president of her school so we made posters, printed stickers (one featured Sponge Bob and said "All Krusty Krabs vote for Hannah"), and she had to give a speech on Friday. Well ... drum roll please ... she won! Below are a few pictures and then I'll post the video of her speech.

the retun of lee majors

Remember Lee Majors? He was the actor who became nearly every man's envy in the 1970s when he married Farrah Fawcett. He also starred in the Six Million Dollar Man, as an ex-astronaut with bionic limbs. Well, he's back.

This morning I'm drinking coffee, watching Fox News, and here comes a commercial for "Lee Major's Bionic Hearing Aid." Has it come to this? Former stars getting their own made for TV products and starring in their own informercials?

Do we really think the bionic man would need bionic hearing aids?

it's been a while

One day here, a few weeks there, and I realized this morning I hadn't posted anything since early October. This time of year -- every four years -- tends to grab my attention. Things have been busy at LifePoint and Blue Haven as well. And we still have kids ... and soccer, volleyball, girls scouts, birthday parties.

All said, we're doing very well. Both girls are enjoying their new teachers at Southwestern. Tonya has a good class. And me? I've decided to grow my goatee back in spite of the fact that it now has gray hair in it. I've gone from looking like a professor to a distinguished professor.

the real sarah palin

hope's first volleyball match

lifepoint bike ride

To offset the donuts we have on Sunday mornings, we decided to have a bike ride around Coronado. The weather was beautiful!

jim cramer on the colbert report

the awakening of cnn

company dives into lending poo

Long ago I signed up for Google Alerts, a news aggregating service that Google provides. You create profile of keywords and Google spiders newspapers and other news sources for those keywords. It then sends you an email with a brief synopsis and a link to the full story.

One of the profiles I created is for my day job at Blue Haven Pools and Spas Supplies Direct. Today I got an alert that read, "Company Dives into Lending Pool." It took me to the New Orleans Business News website. Here is a screen shot of the story:


To read my comments in yellow, click the picture to view a larger image. The URL is quite funny (at least I think so). It reads, "company_dives_into_lending_poo.html."

Here's the orginal story.

chivalry

Chivalry lives in San Diego! Of all places, I saw it first-hand on the trolley last Friday night.

It was about 5:30 and the train was filled up. At the City College stop, an older lady got on board and began to grab a handle, having resigned herself to standing up. Two different guys and one gal actually got up and offered her their seat. I felt like giving them a thumbs up.

It’s a sad fact that we’re not surprised much any more by bad behavior. What people do find surprising are the little acts of kindness and courtesy that get extended to them unexpectantly.

Acts 10:38 describes Jesus as someone who “went around doing good.”

May God's people be known as a church community of people who go around doing good. Plus, it’s fun surprising people.

say it ain't so, joe

Just finished watching the vice presidential debate. Two thoughts: 1. Wow! Governor Palin came off as normal, authentic, likeable, and knowledgeable. 2. There will be a clip on YouTube within a few hours of Senator Biden saying, "Bush's, Bush's, Bush's" where every time he said "Bush's" it sounded like bushes, with the last syllable a squeaky higher pitch than the first one.

video you'll only find on youtube

What can we expect from the upcoming vice-presidential debate? This is courtesy of Hot Air.

on the record

I'm watching "On the Record" and Newt Gingrich is the guest. They're talking about when the government bailed out AIG, the troubled insurance company. The only private sector person in the room was the current chairman of Goldman Sachs. Henry Paulson, the Treasury Secretary, is the former chairman of Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs has about a 20 million dollar investment in AIG. No other investors were brought into the discussions.

This "bail out" conversation gets more interesting by the minute.

follow the money

Congress rejected the hastily prepared bail-out bill and the market lost nearly 7 percent of its value. Many people believe that the runaway sub-prime housing bubble has caused the current crisis. Behind that would be those two siblings, Fannie and Freddie. And to whom has Freddie and Fannie given loads of money to in Congress?

Find out.

it would mean no more chunky monkey for me

This just in from Vermont:

VERMONT -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc., urging them to replace cow's milk they use in their ice cream products with human breast milk, according to a statement recently released by a PETA spokeswoman.

Here's the actual letter from PETA to Ben and Jerry's:

September 23, 2008

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Cofounders
Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc.

Dear Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield,

On behalf of PETA and our more than 2 million members and supporters, I'd like to bring your attention to an innovative new idea from Switzerland that would bring a unique twist to Ben and Jerry's.

Storchen restaurant is set to unveil a menu that includes soups, stews, and sauces made with at least 75 percent breast milk procured from human donors who are paid in exchange for their milk. If Ben and Jerry's replaced the cow's milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers-and cows-would reap the benefits.Using cow's milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer's health.

Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America's leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow's milk to children, saying it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease-America's number one cause of death.

Animals will also benefit from the switch to breast milk. Like all mammals, cows only produce milk during and after pregnancy, so to be able to constantly milk them, cows are forcefully impregnated every nine months. After several years of living in filthy conditions and being forced to produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally, their exhausted bodies are turned into hamburgers or ground up for soup.And of course, the veal industry could not survive without the dairy industry.

Because male calves can't produce milk, dairy farmers take them from their mothers immediately after birth and sell them to veal farms, where they endure 14 to 17 weeks of torment chained inside a crate so small that they can't even turn around.

The breast is best! Won't you give cows and their babies a break and our health a boost by switching from cow's milk to breast milk in Ben and Jerry's ice cream?

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tracy Reiman
Executive Vice President

Source

upcoming lifepoint events

All of our San Diego friends are invited to the following LifePoint events. Please note: a few of these actually involve something called "exercise."

LifePoint Bike Ride around Coronado.
Volunteering at the San Diego Food Bank

For more details, visit the LifePoint Church website.

joe biden and the history of television

Katie Couric was interviewing Joe Biden about the recent financial upheavals and this is what he had to say:

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘look, here’s what happened.’”

A few quick observations:

1. Franklin Roosevelt wasn't the President when the stock market crashed in 1929 -- Herbert Hoover was. FDR wasn't elected until 1932.
   
2. Even if FDR had been President in 1929, he couldn't have gone on television and said anything about the stock market crash. NBC didn't begin regular broadcasts until 1939.

And what did Katie Couric say to such an obviously wrong statement? Nothing.

See the video.

feeding the soul

Every day you provide your bodies with good to keep them from failing. In the same way your good works should be the daily nourishment of your hearts. Your bodies are fed with food and your spirits with good works. You aren’t to deny your soul, which is going to live forever, what you grant to your body, which is going to die.

St. Gregory the Great