My favorite part of this article:

"Brown, a former Louisiana secretary of state and state senator, was the third consecutive Louisiana insurance commission to go to federal prison."

Boggles my mind.

Maybe I'm the onl yone who finds a periodic table of rejected elements funny.

Had my first successful googlewhack today: zygotic eschatology.

Well waddayaknow? Americas favorite libertarian columnist now has his own blog. Like I don't have enough to read now already.

I want to be the first at something, so how about this: a Joel Garver pool. When do you think he'll start blogging again. We could have one guess for next new entry on his blog site, and one for next comment on a theological/philosophical discussion on someone else's blog (so obviously this one doesn't count). If people sent in money and I sent him half the proceeds, maybe the financial inducement would be too much for his silence to bear? Or maybe he'll continue holding out to see how high the total will go? Who knows what the future holds? Place your wagers NOW, while it's still hot and the best dates are still open.

This is for Scott Cunningham. All others read at your own peril.

I've got a book on my shelf by Donald N McClosky. After I was married, my wife looked at it somewhat surprisedly and said, "why do you have a book by her?" Of course I had no idea what she was talking about, and I'm sure the rest of you don't either.

This probably isn't worth blogging about, but today I had my first job working for undergrads. I have no idea haw many gals were living in this house, but they said there were four pastors daughters living there. Quite impressive, no? They were very nice to me, and someone's boyfriend came over and recognized me from church and shook my hand. For me the best part of the house was the foosball table in the living room. Wish we had one of those. Brought back a lot of those college memories. Playing foosball every day after lunch, and sometimes after dinner. The piano itself was quite flat, and I would be surprised if they came up with the money to actually get it up to standard pitch. You never know though.

Don't know that there's too mmuch to talk about lately. Our cat set his tail on fire, even after I warned him verbally about using candles in the house. Kidneys aren't really causing ny pain, though I'm a bit anxious about getting that resolved. Great church service yesterday. About once a month I think about how fortunate I am to have such a great to (not to rub it in for any of you who are struggling with your own church in some way). Our pastor preached yet again another great sermon. And our SS class on what old folk...excuse me, what the more mature in our congregation have to teach us whippersnappers was very good again.

We also had our first team meeting about our upcoming Ukraine trip. We are very fortunate to have John Hamilton, who has planned about a million of these trips, both working with us and going with us. Most likely itinerary at this point is to go to Kiev for a week of teaching English (using the bible as a text) in June, with a couple of days for sight seeing somewhere else in Europe either before or after.

We spent some time on the net yesterday pricing flights to various cities. Looks like London is the cheapest way to go, but for just a bit more we can spend a couple of days in Stockholm. It'll be a group vote, but I think we may be able to convince the rest that Sweden in June is something to see.

Blog ate my homework. I seem to remember writing/posting something yesterday and don't know why it isn't here. In any even, I had a short interview Mon evening with the man who manages the largest piano store in the area, and he wants me to take over the tuning of thier newly sold pianos. This should mean a big jump in business for me, and therefore an answer to many people's prayers.

Today, on the other hand, I found out a have yet another kidney stone. Going to see a urologist tomorrow to see what we'll do about it.

Today we had one of the best Sunday school classes I can remember attending. The format was simply to have several older members of the church sit in a panel and talk about what they had learned and what they remembered about being in their thirties (My ss class is pretty much people from ages 29-36). The seven panelists each had very interesting things to say. The most surprising moment came when a member of our class asked then panel how they dealt with balancing their Christian obligations with work obligations. "Not very well" was the immediate response from someone who is very successful in the medical profession. We all had a laugh at that, though he apparently meant it quite seriously.

I would heartily recommend seeing if you can arrange a class in this format in your church, whether you are a pastor or layperson.

This will probably come as shocking news to all, but here it is. Microsoft sucks (spam).

Could we somehow incorporate this into the war on terror?

Just pulled this off The Corner (who got it from somewhere else, etc.:
Reasons Why Homeschooling Is Like Owning A Pet Rat:

1. Most people would never consider doing it.
2. To many people, it just doesn't seem right somehow.
3. Well, that's OK for your family, but we could never do it....
4. Is that legal?
5. You must be weird.
6. People hope you don't bring it up in conversation.
7. There are stereotypical images of both:
Rats smell, bite, are creepy; homeschoolers are
fundamentalists who stay home all day and shelter
their children from the world.
8. Everyone has a horror story to share:
Rats as big as cats attacking people; children held against
their will and abused by fanatic parents.
9. There is a suspicion you are irresponsible:
Aren't you afraid they will escape/bite/attract wild rodents?
Aren't you afraid they won't learn to socialize/read/function?
10. Family members will forward articles about:
how animals make people sick; how homeschooling is
anti-American and undemocratic.
11. You will be given gifts of workbooks/Lysol.
12. No matter how much you love spending time with your
homeschooled child/pet rat, you will never convince anyone
to try it themselves.
13. Friends and family will talk about you behind your back

I was just thinking some more about the film, The Sweet Hereafter. This is one Lenise rented because she thought it look weird and therefore might appeal to me. Of all the poignant drama films I've seen, I think that this one is the one I've thought about the most. While I enjoyed, say, Schindler's List, and found it very powerful, it was not very morally complex. TSH draws you into a tragedy and then lets you think about it from quite a number of angles. I just looked over some of the reviews at amazon. One guy said, "if I could give it 10 stars, I would." While I didn't have that reaction immediately, over time it's grown on me. Maybe I should watch it again. Any of you dear readers seen it??

I gave my first haircut last night. To my wife. It was her first haircut since our honeymoon (if I remember correctly). She's donating the hair to some outfit that makes wigs for post-surgical kids. Hope she's not getting laughed at too much at the office today.

Maybe those parties (all of tomorrow's) interested already know, but William Gibson just started a blog.

I'm finding now that you get a lot more bang for your buck when you buy or rent DVD's, at least some of the time. We watched the first four episodes of 24 tonight. Somehow they worked it so the bigget cliffhanger so far was at the end of episode 4. Good drama, but kinda violent. Last night we watched Spinal Tap. Lenise hadn't seen it yet, so she really enjoyed it. part of the "extra" features on the DVD were the outtakes. This was about 90 minutes of unused scenes, most of which were almost as good as the ones they put in. There were a number of scenes in a hot tub that were pretty good, but the actors looked kinda funny with the lighting shining off their wet faces. the best part was at the zoo. They were discussing how gorillas were a bread eating race ("I think they're more of a genus than a race."), who ironically had never developed baking technology. It got a bit too late to watch the whole thing again with the audio commentary.

Top (relatively recent) films which didn't make Seth's list.

Last Days of Disco

Metropolitan

Barcelona

You Can Count on Me

The Sweet Hereafter

Repo Man

At least those are the ones that come to mind. If anyone can remember what my favorite movies are, maybe you should remind me.