Rainbow continued

For a better explanation of the rainbow I talked about in the previous post about camp, follow the "Mitchum" link on the right.

Movie Review: Fletch

This movie is from 1985. We rented it on Memorial Day. It was on my list of movies to watch.

It was funny. Hey, I kind of have to leave, and go to camp, so sorry for the bad review! This was good to watch for pop culture's sake. But it we weren't really rolling with laugther. There are two scenes which were particularly funny. Where he is a patient and then dresses up as a doctor and when he dresses up as a airplane technician.

Camp adventures

Camp is definitely a different lifestyle. I've driven about 4 hours the past two days, rather than my usual under 1 hour. I had breakfast with teenagers this morning. And I ate sausages and fruit instead of cereal. All of my stuff fits into a travel bag. Every day I ponder the question "Should I go down or stay here?"

We dedicated the prayer chapel at YouthFront Camp South. It was kind of a long "service" which explained the background of the chapel, but at the end it was raining and the sun shone out at the same time. Then the sun shone specifically on the prayer chapel. Then a rainbow appeared over the chapel. It was really amazing.

June Newsletter

Courtney's June newsletter is available if you follow the link on the right...

Flagpole dedication

This Sunday after church, we all gathered in the parking lot to dedicate our new flag poles. One of our members wore a flag shirt, similar to the one on the left, and he sang "I'm Proud to be an American" to a music track. As he sang, some veterans raised the American, Kansan, and the Christian flag. Then some youth read the names of all of our veterans. My dad was listed. Then some trumpet players played taps. Then there was a potluck, which I opted out of.

Courtney got back from camp, and asked me who the flagpoles were dedicated to. I said I wasn't sure, but I guessed America. We also discussed how much we don't care for/about the Christian flag.

Grissom "our" cat

Here is our neighbors cat, who we would be willing adopt. He comes over to us for attention, and he gets it! We call him "Wussum", because he startles very easily.


Photo by BJ Anderson

Forming my one-man band

It's 9:30 AM Saturday, and I've already spent significant time playing all of my 3 instruments

1. On bass, I played through Rob Thomas' "These small hours" - click here for the vid.
2. On keyboard I spent time learning Oscar Peterson's "The strut". That was way fun. The OP book was from Courtney on my birthday
3. On guitar I learned Shane & Shane's "Name's Sake". The Evening With Shane & Shane DVD has an instructional area where Shane B teaches the songs. This song required a short cut capo, which Courtney got me for my birthday. The DVD was from a previous birthday from Courtney!

So definite thanks to Courtney for enabling me to make the tour-de-instruments with birthday presents. Not to mention the keyboard was given to Courtney a long time ago for lessons, so I got that too.

Camp

Camp is back!! I was separated from Courtney Tuesday night, because I had some things to take care of in town. Tonight, I am going down there to spend the night. Please pray for a great summer for all!

Why is there baldness...or anything bad?

Last week as we were sitting around the dinner table discussing my upcoming baldness, I pondered "Why did God create baldness?" But then, I realized if that is a question, why did God create Turner's Syndrome, or cancer, or lupus, or thyroid disease? That is a short list of things that have bothered my loved ones. And then I wondered if God created these or if they are just "a result of the Fall of Man".

Then I realized how much I don't trust the "theological catch-all" of the Fall of Man. It seems that anything that can be disruptive in health, or natural disasters, or evil acts are due to the Fall of Man. If it is such a catch-all, is it mentioned anywhere in the Old Testament other than Genesis and Job? Does Jesus ever mention it?

But if the Fall of Man is not the answer to sickness (or baldness), then it poses the question, of why did God create them, or allow Satan to create them? Is Fall of Man the cop-out for answering this tough question, or is it the valid "catch-all" for sicknesses and natural disasters?

Restaurant Review: Aloha Chopstix

This was another hole-in-the-wall Chinese place. It is on Rainbow Road near Courtney's work and near KU Med.

Gluten-free items: For a tiny buffet it had many non-breaded items. Yeah!

Environment: It is always awkward in these places when the waitress is YELLING things to the kitchen in Chinese.

Price: CHEAP! I don't see how they make it.

One last thing....I wonder how the word Aloha got chosen.

Movie Review: You Can't Take It With You

Famous names: Frank Capra, director. James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore

Best Picture 1938

This movie was about the richest man in town trying to buy a large area for development. Except one good man and his eccentric family are holding out, and not taking any sum of money. Then the rich man's son wants to marry a "lower class" girl ( memories of "It Happened One Night"), and the girl happens to be from the strange family. This is a recipe for really funny situations, and the lesson is that being rich and greedy is really an unfulfilled life.

Courtney said it may rank as one of her favorite movies of all time. It had a lot of laugh-out-loud and smile-really-big moments. And it will definitely be towards the top of my Oscar Best Picture rankings (which are not public until we've seen them all!)

sit out the vote?

Dr. Dopson recently said if Rudy Guiliani was the Republican nominee for President in 2008, he would sit out and vote neither Republican nor Democrat.

Read this blog for the excellent discussion surrounding this idea.

I have thought about this, and it is a difficult decision. However, I will go against the idea. I think when it comes down to the general election, I need to vote, and to vote to win.

Book Review: Men In Black - How the Supreme Court is Destroying America

This is the best book I've ever read about the Constitution and the Supreme Court. (and the only one). But really, it teaches you a lot of things that you didn't have time to learn in history class. You have to be a logical thinker to read the book, because it is really just a series of arguments about how the Supreme Court has misused their powers on various issues. Whether you are left or right wing, it is worth a read.


Here are my book notes with basic ideas. Read them if you wish. But read the book to get the complete picture.

1. Several Supreme Court justices in the past had serious mental illnesses and refused to step down before they died.
2. Many founding fathers expressed dismay about how the Supreme Court justices were able to declare laws unconstitutional. It appears to be a mistake how they made the Supreme Court justices unaccountable in every way.
3. Instead of protecting the First Amendment, justices have taken freedoms away. An example is prayer in school. the right to "not feel uncomfortable or offended" was given priority over the right of people to have clergy give a prayer at a school event. Even thought the right to not feel uncomfortable is not in the constitution.
4. The right to privacy is also not in the Constitution. Instead of using the Constitution to decide cases, justices gave their opinion and said that women can have abortions. There is almost no legal language in the decision.
5. The right to "do what you want in the privacy of your home" is not in the Constitution, but the logic was used by the Supreme Court to make anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional. Drug deals can also be done in privacy by 2 consenting adults, but it does not make anti-drug laws unconstitutional. Also the logic of "we can't legislate morality" was used, but what laws are not based on morality? And why should 7 justices decide what is moral, instead of every citizen using the democratic process?
6. The Supreme Court upheld affirmative action in universities. This essentially is reverse race discrimination, which is prohibited in the Constitution. But justices used the argument that "attaining a diverse student body is at the heart of the Law School's proper institutional mission".
   
7. In the Constitution it is clear in Article I, Section 8 that Congress shall have the power "to establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization". However, the Supreme Court has forced states to use taxpayer money to teach illegal immigrant children. It also denied government agencies the right to fire employees on the basis of not being citizens (they need to be legal immigrants though).
8. The President has the right, as Commander in Chief, to do what is necessary to win wars. Our current President has been mild in the treating of detainees, compared to Lincoln and FDR. However, the Supreme Court has forced our system to hear appeals from war time enemy combatants.
9. The Commerce Clause in the Constitution allows the federal government to regulate inter-state commerce, but not intra-state commerce. The Court upheld a federal law that imposed agricultural limits on a farmer who only traded within his own state. The list of federal commerce rules is 75,606 pages long, imposing billions of dollars of costs for compliance.
10. The First Amendment simply says "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech". However, the McCain-Feingold Act prohibits groups from running advertisements about a candidate's position thirty days before a primary election and sixty days before a general election.
    
11. In the 2000 Presidential Election, the Florida Supreme Court ignored election laws and created their own rules about counting ballots and about ballot deadlines. The Supreme Court overruled them, but in the future this may lead to constant lawsuits regarding elections, which were never meant to be guarded by the judiciary.
12. Democrats used an unprecedented and unconstitutional filibuster to stop qualified judicial nominees from being confirmed
    
13. The author gave some ideas about how to reign in the judiciary, which include periodical Congressional reviews of justices, a 2/3 majority "veto" of judicial decisions, and increased impeachment hearings on judges who manipulate the Constitution

Book Review: The Cat Who Went Underground

This book was really slow, but the ending was good. It took us a month and a half to read it. Not our favorite.



Quote from Amazon:
"In the 9th book in The Cat Who...series, James Qwilleran aka "Qwill", is feeling despondent over the recent absence of Polly Duncan, and decides he needs a change. He moves his two beautiful Siamese cats (KoKo and Yum Yum) into his lakefront cottage in Mooseville for the summer, and quickly learns that country living is not for him. He has to call for plumbing repairs almost daily, and with the small size of the cottage, he quickly decides to build an addition to create more room for himself and the cats. Finding a reputable builder during the summer season is a daunting task, however, as all of the builders are booked for months in advance. Qwill finds himself a builder with a stellar reputation and feels smug for his ingenuity. This all comes to a screeching halt when the man goes missing, and Qwill must find himself an "underground" builder to finish the job. When the carpenter is discovered dead on Qwills property, he becomes a suspect."

brownback 2008

I added a link to my current favorite Presidential candidate - Sam Brownback. If I hear one more time "he went to Bible study at Grandma and Grandpa's", I'm going to explode. Also, if I hear "he's not popular enough to win", I will not like it. Because I don't want to endorse the most popular candidate, but who I'd like most in the White House.

From wikipedia: Herod's tomb found

Every archaeological find from Jesus' day is exciting to me.

Reported tomb discovery

Aerial photo of Herodium from the south west

This section documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.

The location of Herod's tomb is documented by Roman historian Flavius Josephus, he writes: "[A]nd the body was carried two hundred furlongs, to Herodium, where he had given order to be buried." ^[14]

Flavius Josephus provides more clues about Herod's tomb which he calls Herod's monuments: "So they threw down all the hedges and walls which the inhabitants had made about their gardens and groves of trees, and cut down all the fruit trees that lay between them and the wall of the city, and filled up all the hollow places and the chasms, and demolished the rocky precipices with iron instruments; and thereby made all the place level from Scopus to Herod's monuments, which adjoined to the pool called the Serpent's Pool." ^[15]

Ehud Netzer, an archaeologist from Hebrew University, read the writings of Josephus and focused his search on the vicinity of the pool and its surroundings at the Winter Palace of Herod in the Judean desert - a part of the West Bank occupied by Israel. An article of the New York Times states: "Lower Herodium consists of the remains of a large palace, a race track, service quarters, and a monumental building whose function is still a mystery. Perhaps, says Ehud Netzer, who excavated the site, it is Herod's mausoleum. Next to it is a pool, almost twice as large as modern Olympic-size pools."^[16]

It took 35 years for Netzer to identify the exact location but on May 7, 2007, an Israeli team of archaeologists of the Hebrew University led by Netzer, announced they had discovered the tomb. ^{[17][18][19][20][21]} The site is located at the exact location given by Flavius Josephus, atop of tunnels and water pools, at a flattened desert site, halfway up the hill to Herodium, 12 kilometers south of Jerusalem.^[22]

US Postage Rate Increase to 41 cents

From http://www.usps.com/ratecase/ratecase_faqs.htm

Why are rates going up again?
The costs of doing business — for things like fuel, transportation, utilities, and health care benefits — have continued to increase. Without an increase to keep up with rising costs, we face significant losses. Many people do not know that postal operations are not subsidized by tax dollars. We rely on the sale of postal products and services to cover our operating costs.

The USPS raised prices January 8, 2006 - why another increase so soon?
The January 8, 2006 across-the-board price increase was to meet an escrow payment mandated by Public Law (PL) 108-18. This is the first time since January 2001 that we have restructured our prices. A lot has happened since then. As part of our Strategic Transformation Plan, we’ve made extensive changes to our operations and increased our efficiency. And the market has changed too – we’re using this opportunity to reflect changes in operations, and respond to market changes. We’ve done that by re-aligning our classifications (product descriptions), and their prices. We must ensure our prices for our products cover their costs.

Dave Ramsey Live Event

Aside from the panic of parking and traffic near Municipal, we enjoyed the Dave Ramsey Live Event. My favorite part was screaming "Show me the money!" ala the movie "Jerry Maguire" with the 10,000 person crowd, while Dave Ramsey jumped around and yelled"you work too hard your whole life to just be broke". It also helped Courtney and I to be on the same page. I plan to make a huge payment on the college debt, and make a few other adjustments, so that that debt goes away by Fall, instead of 3 years from now.

My favorite Dave Ramsey quote was "Men on average speak 30,000 to 50,000 words per day, and women speak 80,000 to 100,000 words per day, with gusts up to 125,000".

Saturday was also big trash day, so on Friday night we cleaned out the sheds in the backyard. There had been things in there for decades, since we estimate the husband died in the 70s. No one had ever completely cleaned out his stuff.

We also ordered that counter top from Lowe's. And Sunday I played bass, and the leader said that I have really improved and have been playing very well the last month.

Movie Review: The Life of Emile Zola

This was another Oscar Best Picture winner, courtesy of the Johnson County Library. It was a biographical sketch of Emile Zola, spending the bulk of the time on how he tried to take down French Army generals for falsely sentencing a Jewish captain, and then covering their mistake up when they found out they were wrong.

Overall this was a "yawner". I may like to read an Emile Zola book someday (oh, I failed to mention he was a famous French author).

Best of April

Best Movie That I Saw for the First Time: It Happened One Night
Best New-To-Me Restaurant: Zaxby's
Best Life Happening: South Carolina trip