Friday, July 09, 2010

Hither and thither 7/9/10

Good morning! We made it to Friday! Hope the weekend looks bright to you. Me, I'm dreading jury duty next week. This whole Responsible Voting Citizen thing can be a drag. Ah, well. Now to our collection of varied variouses (there will almost certainly be many unnoted updates, until noon PT).
  • Another serious public health service announcement as we enter summerdrowning does not look like drowning. This was a real eye-opener to me. Rang true, as well. The toddler I rescued once was quietly floating out towards the deep end, only the top of his head above the water. Read and heed.
  • Next, an important cautionary announcement of another kind.
  • Horrible title, but imparts a bitterly golden observationWomen Who Force Their Husbands to Cheat. You scoff. "No woman has ever forced her husband to cheat." Totally agree. The article is actually about Japanese women who hire professional seducers, to lure husbands whom they want to divorce into an affair, so they can get a financially better settlement. The sagacious observation? It comes from one of the professional seducers, herself. Listen up: "You don't need brains to be a professional seducer," she laments. "All you need is for the man's brains to be in his pants, and nine times out of 10 they are." I don't know if there's a corollary for women; but brothers, read that one again.
  • Okay now, let's lighten up for a bit.
  • Reader jmb found a way to make climbing stairs fun.
  • An experience only for Star Wars supergeeks: detailed plans for the Death Star.
  • Staying with the theme, reader Matt Gumm found some Victorian-style Star Wars illustrations.

  • Courtesy of reader Joel Griffith, here's one Star Wars action figure I'm pretty confident our boys won't want for birthday, Christmas, or any other happy occasion.
  • Sci-fi, fantasy and horror characters drawn on Etch-a-Sketch.
  • We enjoy Bear Grylls around Casa Phillips, insanely watching him eat rotting meat and larva, and getting (and ingesting) water by unspeakable methods, during our dinnertime. Read long ago that Grylls was a Christian, so have been bit dismayed as he seemingly uses God's name in vain, "Hell" casually, and refers to rocks that are millions of years old. Nonetheless, here is a warm but nonspecific profile of Grylls' faith.
  • Want to see what a $790K bath tub carved from a single crystal looks like? Sure you do.
  • And now we find our Title of the Week in these sage words: Never Slaughter a Chicken in Front of a Monkey. Now, you remember that, hear?
  • Michelle Malkin is an articulate, forceful, conservative commentator. She's also a pretty little Filipino lady. I say all that to say this: I am not linking to her post in which she (not for the first time) prints some of the hate mail she received, this time after appearing on TV to speak in favor of Arizona's border-securing law. You simply cannot — or I hope you cannot — imagine the foul, vile, obscene, hate-dripping language of the emails (which Michelle delightfully reprints with the senders' names and email addresses).  LaShawn Barber could equal Michelle's tales.My points are three. First: when liberals call us "haters" because we disagree with, say, Obama's policies, they don't know what "hate" is.  Two: this is another current to which the MSM is blind, or there'd be features and series on liberal racism. Three: the T-shirt I saw on an off-duty teacher who told stories to kids at Borders, which said "Love is what separates us from the Republicans," was a delusional lie.
  • It's... it's a... well —
  • Professed Christians who voted for Obama must accept blame for yet another pro-abort extremist (like Obama) sidling her way towards a lifetime Supreme Court appointment.
  • On a similar theme, Lloyd Marcus, who calls himself "a black tea party patriot" and a "proud unhyphenated American," writes movingly of his beloved elderly father who, in spite of being a Christian pastor, supports a president who opposes his values — because of their shared skin-color. Because of his deep respect for his dad's character, experience and life, he hasn't tried to dissuade his father from the false messiah, but now he feels burdened to try.
  • So, you're the Administrator for NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Do you count, as one of your main goals to " reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering"? Huh? Well, you do if you're appointed and charged by this president. See now, I would have gotten that wrong. I thought the job was to explore space and stuff. Silly me. (HT reader Neil Shay.)
  • Reader Bryan Morgette overhead the Red Shirt pep-talk...
  • "Furious" and "fuming" wouldn't begin to describe what my dear wife and I might feel in a situation like this. Yet another dark and insane fruit of our darkened and insane culture.
  • Reader Berry Davis found a new meaning to the term "Bacon Burger."
  • Yikes. This hominid's parents apparently did not tell him what we've told our boys. Or if they did, they didn't mean it.
  • You've heard of M. C. Escher, famed artist of the impossible? I suppose it was inevitable that ambitious souls would try to reproduce his art in Lego.

  • And finally these:



















23 comments:

lee n. field said...

I'm seeing some missing linkeys, which I assume you'll fix later.

""Love us what separates us from the Republicans," was a delusional lie."

Ain't it the truth. There's a scene in Perelandra, where Ransom is finally in physical combat with the possessed Weston. He reflects in the battle that now he knows what hate is for.

What we do that they call "hate", isn't. It's more a justified distaste.

DJP said...

Yes; once someone thoughtfully emails me about any bad links, I usually get right on it.

threegirldad said...

Me, I'm dreading jury duty next week.

Perhaps it will be as "uneventful" as my last go-round (in which I was not only chosen for a trial, but also elected as foreman). ;-)

Re: your "Furious" and "fuming" item -- we have officially left behind Public Education as of this fall. Elementary School was perfectly adequate (which is not to say "pefect" by any stretch). The difference between Elementary School and Middle School was...frightening. One year of that was more than enough.

A ten-strip bacon burger?! To quote someone famous: "Nom-nom-nom!"

Three cheers for that "The Truth" poster!

Adam Pohlman said...

The link to the Lloyd Marcus story goes to the Elena Kagan abortion article.

DJP said...

Thanks. Fixed.

Herding Grasshoppers said...

Hear hear about the "Drowning does not look like drowning" tips.

And love that piano on the stairs. That whole "making things fun leads to people making better decisions" has a lot to do with learning, too :D

Julie

SolaMommy said...

Enjoyed the Lloyd Marcus post.

I think the "It's a Frap" pic is a re-run :-(

Still trying to get over the fact that you linked to "Relevant Magazine"...

I want that tub :-)

Aaron said...

It amazes me how many people don't teach their kids to swim much less to survive in water. Especially in Houston, a coastal area, where every other house (I'm exxagerating a bit) has a swimming pool. I have a pool and my firstborn went to ISR class (Infant swim rescue) as soon as she could walk. Now she can fall into a pool fully clothed and survive. My second child will likely go to class before she's a year old.

Before I was saved, I followed the usual college promiscuous lifestyle where a young man trains himself to look lustfully upon a woman as a prequalifier to any relationship. Of course, that has turned into a real struggle in my Christian walk. Fortunately, the good Lord has gracefully kept me from any great temptation. That and memorizing Proverbs 7.

@DJP: My wife and I watch Grylls and often wonder why he has to eat everything raw. Other times I wonder...you've got a whole forest and the best you can do is to eat some uncooked bug?

Some here in Houston believe that Obama hates Houston. The drilling ban is going to cost thousands of jobs (somewhere between 60K and 100K jobs) and many people are leaving NASA.

JMJ said...

More star wars:

http://topcultured.com/millennium-falcon-built-for-kid-by-make-a-wish/

Summary: Make a wish builds a kid a millenium falcon.

disclaimer: Site often has links to "questionable sites" on the bottom. this was forwarded to me at work, so I don't have time to find a cleaner version. Enjoy.

Sonja said...

Hooray for H&T!

Can I add an item?

Apparently Glenn Beck announced that he's starting an online university, which led a columnist for the WSJ to wonder what sort of universities could be established by other celebrities. This one is priceless:

"The Richard Dawkins Theological Institute.

A rather ordinary modern seminary in that none of the students believes in God. Most popular course: Horology 201—Intermediate watch-making with an emphasis on blindfolded manufacturing techniques. The class will be graded on a Darwinian curve."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111704575354752300974096.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Bwaahaha!

Just looking at that bacon burger makes my tummy hurt. :)

lee n. field said...

"The father, on the other hand, had learned what drowning looks like by watching television."

Ummm, yeah.

Just Because You Saw It On TeeVee Doesn't Make It True.

Truth Unites... and Divides said...

DJP: "Professed Christians who voted for Obama must accept blame for yet another pro-abort extremist (like Obama) sidling her way towards a lifetime Supreme Court appointment."

My favorite sentence in today's blogpost.

I suppose there may be a few professed Christians who've expressed genuine regret for having voted for Obama, but I don't remember seeing any on the web.

Paula Bolyard said...

Wait, nothing about His-Lebron-ship? What's up with that? Single biggest story in the universe and DJP misses it. Go figure.

Barbara said...

Drowning article - very helpful, very good to know. I didn't know this and it seems to be too important not to know. Thank you.

Professional seducers - not surprising, and the money quote is surely common knowledge. But you gave me another flashback to my heathen days in the Michelle Malkin emails - I used to spend a fair amount of time online on yahoo IM and the people who would pop up from out of nowhere (you can randomly search for people online and IM them, or you used to be able to) with a "hi" and then start making some very inappropriate demands, then go off half-cocked when I wouldn't come through with what they were wanting....it was such a common occurrence that I wound up just completely retreating away from the world altogether for the most part, just to hide. It is just that bad out there. People are just that crazy, and they often live right next door or work in the next cubicle or bag our groceries.... We are really just that depraved when left to our own selves, when common grace is pulled back. Those kinds of emails and things are a good reminder of how horrible Hell must be, how hopeless life is apart from the grace of God, and how desperately we all need Christ.

Seriously.

Rupert said...

James May of the British television program 'Top Gear' (very funny) recently had a series where he made HUGE projects of childrens popular toys.
He made a toy train track which went for miles, a meccano bridge across a canal and ..... a full size, two story house out of lego - right down to the furniture and bathroom facilities!

trogdor said...

I think the Death Star plans (as well as the AT-AT and X-wing) are from the Incredible Cross Sections series of books. They're worth a gander if you're nerd enough.

Speaking of which, if you want to go beyond nerdy with that, here is one of my favorite sci-fi nerd sites: an analysis of the comparative technologies, tactics, etc in Wars vs Trek. Estimating the power of the Death Star superlaser by calculating the energy required to accelerate all of Alderaan's matter past escape velocity? Sign me up!

As for the bacon burger, I thought it would be something more like this. I've not been bold enough to try one of those yet, nor have I gotten around to making a bacon explosion, but that may happen soon.

Oh, I just came across this little tidbit - you know how scienticians know everything and are to be followed unquestioningly? Turns out that sometimes they're occasionally wrong about basic, fundamental stuff. Not to worry, though, they're really omniscient about everything else that ever is, was, or will be.

DJP said...

That baconociousness — hokey smokes!

Kay said...

The drowning article made my blood run cold.

The Squirrel said...

How did I not comment on the H&T yesterday?

I'm slipping... I'm definitely slipping...

Squirrel

Ron (aka RealityCheck) said...

Notice that one of those senators who oppose Kagan over abortion is John McCain. I point this out because I remember telling “Christians” that they should vote for McCain on the abortion/Supreme Court issue alone (as if there weren’t plenty of other reasons for a Christian not to vote for Obama), and they would try and convince me that McCain wasn’t a sure bet for a pro-life Supreme Court Justice. Well… Sotomayor and now Kagan… and McCain was/is against both of em’… nice job!

Aaron said...

All parents should consider ISR if their kids are younger than 6.

@DJP. Always need good jurors. The justice system just doesn't work without it. Remember OJ? Speaking of court, I may be testifying this week.

Ron (aka RealityCheck) said...

“I thought the job was to explore space and stuff”

Dan,

You got the NASA/Muslim thing wrong because you apparently don’t understand that the reason some Muslims fly planes into buildings is because their contributions to science haven’t been appreciated. Thankfully we now have a president (a Christian one at that) that is going to straighten this all out. Soon, if you’re on a plane and some guy comes running at you with a box cutter yelling, “glory be to Allah”, you can just tell him how much you appreciate all the things Muslims have done for the world and he’ll just go back to his seat.

Halcyon said...

An Obama Jedi figure? Seriously? Are we going to have a Cheney Dark Lord of the Sith figure next?

Uh oh...I just have to:

Somewhere in America, the year 2000:

Darth Bush: "The Democratic caucus is sparsely populated. If Gore gets the nomination, I should win easily."

Dark Lord Cheney: "Move against McCain first. Then you should have no trouble dealing with Gore."

Darth Bush: "At last we will reveal ourselves to the Democrats. At last we shall have revenge."

Dark Lord Cheney: "You have been well trained my young apprentice. They will be no match for you."

At least that's how Keith Olbermann dreamed it happened.