One of the main points of this inspection is to test your ability to figure out the identity of the plant which produced each of the following (in)edible items:
Lessons for Living
Write It!
If your excuse is poor handwriting, flush that excuse. Or heave it out the window. Or cut it up into little pieces and mix them in with the dog’s food. Do something other than hang on to it!
With e-mail, text messaging, and instant messaging, a handwritten note is getting rarer and therefore more special.
[…]
66 percent of U.S. Internet users said email was their preferred channel for written communications between friends.
Every week, the average person receives 1.5 personal letters.
[…]
There is warmth in a handwritten note — it instantly makes the message more personal, creates a more intimate feeling, and makes the recipient feel more valued.
With e-mail and instant messaging, a handwritten note is getting rarer and therefore more special.
The full article is, well, fuller: A Note of Gratitude.
Wasting Life
“Pride is a waste of life and a loss of opportunity.”
—Mark Roth
—Mark Roth
No Hypocrisy
“We need to be
what it looks to others like we are.”
—Russell Roth
what it looks to others like we are.”
—Russell Roth
(said in his short-but-good talk at church tonight)
Ron Blue and Finances
Have you read any financial books by Ron Blue
Here are some of them:
- Surviving Financial Meltdown
- Your Money After the Big 5-0
- The New Master Your Money
- Faith-Based Family Finances
- Splitting Heirs
- Wealth to Last
- Your Kids Can Master Their Money
- HELP! I’m Drowning in Debt
- Storm Shelter
If you’ve read any of them, what do you make of Mr. Blue and his teaching?
A few years ago I read Master Your Money and was very favorably impressed by it. (Alas, I no longer remember any specifics!)
Right now I’m working my way through The Debt Squeeze.
Handy Pornography!
Way back in 1994, I wrote for our school and church a piece I called Handy Pornography! Here’s an excerpt from early in the article:
Why this increasing freedom of exposure? Well, facts are facts, you know. The news must be reported; stuff must be advertised and sold; anthropological discoveries must be made known; technological advances must be demonstrated. Do any or all or these explain or justify the increasing indecency? Hardly!
Is there news value in having a woman in ice skating attire flinging her leg way up toward the reader? No, the issue is not news. Did Scientific American need to use a picture of Marilyn Monroe with her dress flying up overlaid on a picture of President Abraham Lincoln? No, the issue is not advanced computer technology. Do bikinied women actually make a car or radio controlled airplane more attractive, or a soap more effective? No, the issue is not advertising and commerce. Do pictures of third-world, partially-nude women help us understand their cultures better than simply telling the reader they don’t cover themselves from the waist on up? No, the issue is not anthropology.
Folks, we have been snookered and taken in by a “conspiracy” of the enemy of our souls! Can you see how he is successfully wearing down our resistance to immorality? We still stand against Playboy, but will our children? If we allow in our homes what our grandparents called pornography, will our grandchildren allow in their homes what we call pornography? If we don’t bat an eye about these things which would have jolted our grandparents, will the things that still jolt us have any effect on our children’s children? Remember, what parents excuse in moderation, children justify in excess.
I urge you to read the entire article. Despite the title (Handy Pornography!) and the URL (www.anabaptists.org/writings/softporn.html), it is not pornography. Not even so-called soft porn.
“Are You Virginia?”
The few times we’ve air-traveled post-911 with minors, I’ve been grateful for this loophole:
Loophole allows minors to bypass airport security
When an Oregon teen talked his way onto an airplane bound for Chicago last weekend, he unknowingly revealed a little-known hole in airport security.
Kids don’t have to show photo ID.
That may come as a surprise to many air travelers. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, travelers are accustomed to removing their shoes, not carrying liquids and otherwise coping with strict protocols of airport security.
But when it comes to conducting minors through airports, security and efforts to preserve air passenger convenience intersect in a highly unusual way.
The Transportation Security Administration requires all air travelers 18 and older to show a boarding pass and government-issued photo ID to enter security screening.
But minors generally don’t have government-issued IDs. So security officers don’t expect them to have one, says Dwayne Baird, the TSA’s public information officer for the Northwest.
That makes sense enough. But….