Um, no

No.

Pray at the Pump

I don’t have much time to post this since Belle is clamoring for another round of “Farm Animal Friends” so my commentary will be left to a minimum.  We all know gas prices are high right now and it’s hit some of us more than others.  We’re reacting in different ways – some of us by cutting down on “unnecessary” driving (because all our driving is so necessary) or riding bikes more or whatever else.  Apparently one group is responding through prayer.  I encourage you to go read the post from Jesus Shaped Spirituality (a blog I am greatly enjoying), but here’s a taste:

“For example, one evangelical has taken his particular view of rising gas prices and started a movement called “Pray at the Pump.” Somehow, the rise of gas prices is a sign of the end times and praying at the pump for God to lower prices will apparently prove that he’s in charge.

Of course, one wonders if it ever occurred to anyone that the inconvenience to the American lifestyle of mobility and affluence isn’t really something that God would respond to as an act of mercy…So somewhere a homeless man or a family struggling to put food on the table will see a group of middle class suburban Christians gathered around a gas pump, praying that God will have mercy and get things back to where we can all go on about our business. 

I don’t have to spend much time asking if Jesus would join such a prayer meeting.”

Police kill man seen beating child to death

Police kill man seen beating child to death - Crime & courts- msnbc.com

According to this news story people saw a man beating a toddler up on some country road in Turlock.  Apparently people "tried to intervene" but the man brushed off their efforts and "went back to it."  I'm not sure I understand what "try to intervene" means, and I understand the whole concept of diffused responsibility, but the fact that anybody could watch a man do this to a child is beyond my ability to understand.  Even the elderly couple could have made themselves enough of a nuisance to force the guy to stop.  Tragic.

Correlation between names and crime

A recent study has shown a relationship between weird names and crime.  Apparently the more unusual your name, the more likely you're involved in criminal activity.  Michael is the most popular name, which means those named Michael are least likely to be criminals.

 

Of course we all know correlation does not equal causation, but I figured Michael would appreciate it.

Owwwww

Being the old man that I now am with a job and a baby and all that, I hit the sack around 8:30ish tonight.  I woke up around 10:40 with a pretty severe toothache.  After sitting in bed for a while I got up and took some painkillers, something I've had to do a few times today.  I tried to lay back down but the pain was too severe...hopefully the meds will kick in soon and I'll be able to get back to sleep for school tomorrow.  It feels like I may have to get a root canal on this tooth that I had work done on last Wednesday.  That would make three...but a root canal would be a welcome sweet release from this pain.  Good Lord.  It's pretty lousy timing...my dentist is closed Mondays.

I highly recommend everybody go to the dentist every six months, brush and floss twice daily.  You'll save yourself a lot of pain and money.

Pictures up!

This morning I uploaded some pictures you should enjoy.

 

First, a set from the trip we took to Marine World (Six Flags) in May.

 

Second, a set from Mother's Day Weekend of this year.

 

 

Finally - yesterday our neighbors invited us over with Belle to pick some very fresh (and very awesome) berries in their backyard. We got some great pictures there too.

Enjoy - there are some great ones there.  We got a new camera so we're able to capture Belle more clearly and in action than ever before.

'Uncontacted tribe' sighted in Amazon

'Uncontacted tribe' sighted in Amazon - CNN.com

No that's not a Diablo 2 screenshot.  Apparently a plane did a couple of flyovers to take pictures of this tribe of people in the Amazon that have not had contact with the outside world.  Some anthropologists believe there may be up to 100 tribes worldwide that remain 'uncontacted.'  Neato.

Read my post on history

I put up a post up at The Noob Teacher about teaching history.  I'd be interested in the perspective some of you have on it.  So hop over, read the post, and leave a comment.  Pretty please?

I don't want to be a paragraph (Part 2)

Yes it's three weeks later.  No I don't care.  This is a continuation of the previous post by the same name, so read that first if you want the full context.  In that post I mentioned the fact that as I study history I realize there are so many people who seemed so significant but at best they end up being a paragraph in a history book that students don't care to read.  So many of us want to be significant and live meaningful lives.  But how do we do that? 

I'm not sure exactly what the secret is but I know what it is not.  The secret is not worrying about what other people think and striving for significance in the eyes of others.  I am a huge sports fan and I love both baseball and football.  I pay attention to the sports more than 95% of the population.  But I'd have a hard time telling you who won the Super Bowl four years ago.  (It was probably the stupid Patriots.)  In the moment those guys winning the Super Bowl was the biggest thing - it was all over the news, they went to Disneyland and on talk shows - and then, nothing.  Nobody cares anymore and a new season begins.  When the king dies and five, ten, twenty years go by he is nothing but a memory.  A hundred years go by and he's a paragraph in a textbook.

I don't want that to happen to me!

Looking death in the face can be a terrifying thing.  I'm on this planet for a short time and then I'm gone.  What will be left of me?  I know this sounds lame, but all that will really be left of me are the memories the people I love and that loved me have.  The only things that will really last forever that I did on this earth will have to do with the people I spent time with and the relationships I developed.  Time I spend pursuing goals outside of people will be essentially wasted time. 

So I don't want to be a paragraph.  I want to be a husband, father, friend, disciple of Jesus, teacher, mentor, coach, etc.  I want to fight against the constant desire to be admired or looked up to or whatever else it is I want by other other.  As long as that is the goal of my life I'm going to be disappointed.  This isn't anything terribly profound but it is something that's hit home to me more lately.  Having a daughter and thinking about her future, thinking about the fact that the day will come when I'm not there, makes me consider how much more precious life is.

As my favorite radio show hosts have said, "you never walk away from a dinner saying to yourself 'man I wish I had some more of that pie!'"  Well I'm fairly confident I will not reach the end of my life saying "I wish I'd had that better gaming rig" or "I wish I'd had that award" or whatever else.  All my regrets are probably going to have something to do with people.  So I'd better do what I can to focus on people and avoid the fate of becoming a paragraph.

You know, this whole two-post thing was a lot more eloquent in my head at 5am when I first came up with it three weeks ago.

The Noob Teacher

 The Noob Teacher is a new blog I'm doing to try to focus my writing a little more.  Of course you will probably laugh, considering my total inability to regularly post here, but this other blog will be a place for me to put down things that will hopefully be helpful to me and other teachers and/or anybody interested in my adventures as a new teacher (or this summer, as someone looking for a teaching job).

I will post the other part of that paragraph post thingy this week, too.  Sorry.  Hah.

Bill Pullman = The Man

Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. “Mankind.” That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it’s fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom… Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution… but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: “We will not go quietly into the night!” We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!
[crowd cheers]

 

This has nothing to do with anything, but I wanted to share it with you because:

1) It is awesome.

2) I don't have the mental energy to post anything original.

3) I want to post something.

4) It is so awesome.

I don't want to be a paragraph (Part 1)

This morning I was spending some time studying for the CSET, a big test I'm taking on May 17th.  It's one step along the way towards becoming a teacher.  I have to take this series of three subtests to prove I know my stuff.  The first test is on World History and Geography, the second is U.S. History and Geography, and the third is Economics/Government/California History and Geography.  I'm taking them all May 17th and expect them to be a headache but I also expect to pass them.

Anyway, as I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, this morning while studying for the CSET I was once again struck by a thought that has occurred to me a number of times.  As I read through the history of American Imperialism in the late 1800's and early 1900's, the struggle for Mexican independence, Russia's slow climb (descent?) into Bolshevism, China and Japan's eventual acceptance of foreign influence, and so on, I came across lots and lots of names.  Benito Juarez, Santa Anna, Pancho Villa, Porfirio Diaz, Marie Curie, Alexander Graham Bell, Otto von Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm, Emperor Mutsuhito, The Dowager Empress Cixi, and so many more.

Each of these people was incredibly important in their time.  Some accomplished much good, others much bad, most a bit of both.  People knew who they were, they had power, they had influence, they had the kinds of things that supposedly make one's life worth living.  I was struck by the finality of the words in this textbook as I read.  These peoples' lives and accomplishments were boiled down into a sentence or two, or if they were particularly important they got a paragraph or a sidebar with a few paragraphs and some bullet points.  They're gone, and I suppose the world is different for their having been here, but to most people they're simply a paragraph on a page.  No matter what you accomplish - whether it's opening your nation to Western influence and beginning the process of modernization (like Emperor Mutsuhito) or being a soldier in a war where millions died over Nationalistic sentiments or being one of the 20 million who succumbed to the Influenza Epidemic in the early 20th century - that's it for your life.  You're done, and at best you're a paragraph in a history book that very few people find interesting and fewer care about.  

I don't usually read posts longer than this if I didn't write them or if they're really interesting, so I'm going to stop here and complete this thought in a separate entry, to be posted soon.

Harden scratched due to shoulder strain

Hahahahaha. I have to laugh. Seriously, what in the world.

C.S. Lewis on Faith

I love this quote from Mere Christianity.  I'd add some sort of commentary but really believe it speaks for itself:

Faith seems to be used by Christians in two sense or on two levels....In the first sense it means simply Believe - accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity.  That is fairly simple.  But what does puzzle people - at least it used to puzzle me - is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue.  I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue - what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements?...What I did not see then - and a good many people do not see still - was this.  I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a things as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up.  In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason.  But that is not so....

Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.  For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes.  I know that by experience.  Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which Christianity looks very improbably; but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.  This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway.  That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue:  unless you teach your moods "where they get off," you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.  Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.