Million Dollar Ideas I won't pursue

Occassionally you come up with a million dollar idea. We all do. Much more rarely, you actually do something about it. Here are a couple that actually came from my genius wife...

1. Cherry flavored Niquil sno-cones. Parents drug their kids all the time. When one of our twins was having trouble sleeping at night our doctor actually TOLD us to use sudafed to know him out. This way you could do it without playing the dreaded 'medicine' card. Incidently, I personally think the same idea could be applied to Bon-Bons for adults.
2. A full-body glazer. While watching the doughnuts at Krispy Kreme go through the glaze bath Mandi realized that if you could do that to an actual person, husbands everywhere would be eternally grateful... (Hey, it was her idea! I just wanted a doughnut.)
3. Stimplants. This is basically a twist on the whole shock-collars-for-kids idea. If you're into Star Wars, think of the restraining bolts on droids. The idea is to implant a device under the skin that would enable parents at the touch of a button to give their kids a small jolt of electric discipline. I mean, we're almost at the point now where we're going to implant locator chips so they can't get abducted, so why not just add a little upgrade? (This last one is mine, not Mandi's.)

10 Things I miss about Bloomington, IN

This really isn't meant as a condemnation of Joplin, but there are certain aspects of any community that are special and unique. Having lived for three years in Bloomington, Indiana, we grew especially fond of the culture there in several respects. And, okay, so the list is actually eleven things, not ten. Hey, it could've been thirty!

• Division I sports
• Real soccer leagues (7 NCAA titles by Indiana University has made it a soccer-crazy town)
• The entire culinary scene (especially Opie Taylor's and Snow Lion, but this could be the entire list if you get right down to it. Restaurant Row? AMAZING!)
• Downtown Bloomington (Especially at Christmas when the lights are up)
• The Indiana Daily Student (featuring Get Fuzzy)
• Ice Cream Parlors (NO, Joplin does NOT have a single real ice cream parlor, and YES that includes Shake's and Braum's... okay, Shake's is borderline, but just barely)
• Brown County (It's not Oregon, but it sure beats SW Missouri for natural beauty)
• The friends we made who still live there
• Borders and Barnes and Noble (real bookstores)
• Seeing the Indianapolis Colts play every Sunday
• The performing arts community. (Much livelier than we have here in Joplin. The music school at IU alone is a hue difference. Imagine being able to hear world class musicians anytime you want for free... wouldn't that be nice? Well, in Bloomington that's just normal.)

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving.

An orgy of football and family and food. Today, like most years, we celebrated at the home of Jay and Rex Ann Dareing (Mandi’s mom’s parents). Altogether there were forty-one of us there. Smiths and Trasks and Douthits and Dareings among several more. Forty-one. Everybody. At least, everybody on Mandi’s side of the family tree. Everybody within a hundred miles anyway. The youngest was… well, LeeAnn Wilson is still pregnant with that one. And the oldest would be Jay Dareing, nearly eighty. As usual, before we ate Jay addressed the family in the kitchen, then called upon me to ask the blessing. There are two deacons, a pastor and a director of missions—all ordained—in the family, and every man there has been a Christian for years, and yet it seems like I am always the one who says the blessing. I mean, I’m sure it’s just a misperception on my part, but I’m telling you, Jay calls on me more than any three others put together. Why?! Not that I mind, I just feel a little odd being singled out all the time from among so many who are at least equally qualified. Isn’t it amazing how significant a little thing like a dinner prayer can seem?

After gorging on turkey, ham, mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberry jelly, homemade rolls, green beans, corn, sweet potatoes, deviled eggs, etc., etc., etc., I was too full to head to the dessert table, choosing instead to veg-out on the couch while I tried not to explode. Note to self: sweats were a good choice. The elastic waist band really helps when you’ve chosen gluttony over common sense. Anyway, sans dessert, I cleaned two plates of food and spent the next four hours on the couch watching football. Dallas beat the Jets, and Green Bay beat the Lions. The Colts won today as well, but that one was on the NFL Network, which no one I know has in their cable package. I guess it only comes with the premium premium package. Numbskulls. I wish they’d just drop it completely and leave Thanksgiving to Dallas and Detroit.

ANYWAY…

The kids had a good time. Nate had a great time wrestling with the other boys (Isaac and Kyle). He said its funner than wrestling Daddy because they’re the same size he is. Honestly, I’m not sure what the girls did, they stayed in the kitchen most of the time.

We went home early. Before dinner. Mandi and I are recovering from colds and Alyssa and Anna are just coming down with it. All in all it was a great day. Tomorrow, we shop. Not sure how I feel about that yet. Thanks, God, for giving our family such a wonderful experience… again.

HuckChuckFacts

Oh, yeah! Dem's mah boys!

NCAA football: a sport without a champion

So last night the Ducks lost Dennis Dixon to injury and along with him, the chance to play for the BCS title. At this point, as much as I hate to say it, I think we'll be lucky to win another game. Still, considering we were picked to finish 6th in the PAC-10 at the start of the season, we've had a great ride, garnered national attention, and might still leverage that into a stronger recruiting class. My hope now is that Hawaii finishes the year unbeaten, Kansas loses once, and we wind up with a one-loss "Champion" and an unbeaten "Also-ran." Why is this so important? Because the BCS is a sick joke perpetrated upon college football fans everywhere. They've been tinkering with the system since 1995 (when Penn State finished 12-0 without a title to show for it) and they haven't got it right yet. How far off are they? Consider this: Beginning in the 2007 season, they changed their language from D-I and D-2 to 'Football Bowl Series' and 'Football Championship Series' to more adequately reflect that D-I programs do not compete for an NCAA-recognized title. Yes, that's right, there is no such thing as an NCAA Championship in D-I football. Why? It would require a playoff. Why i$n't there a champion$hip for D-I football? I'll give you two gue$$e$, but you'll only need one... Which is ridiculous. The sooner they surrender to a playoff system, the better off the sport will be. That the NCAA doesn't correct this situation is pathetic. Consider the following list of BCS 'Losers', none of whom was beaten on the gridiron...

2010 Texas Christian University (13-0)

2009 Boise State University (14-0)
2008 University of Utah (13-0)
2006 Boise State University (13-0)

2004 University of Utah (12-0)

2004 Auburn University (13-0)
1999 Marshall University (13-0)
1998 Tulane University (12-0)
1997 University of Michigan (12-0)

Get Fuzzy

I don't care who you are, that's funny. One of the clue I look for that tell me whether a newpaper is run by people of intelligence is whether or not they include Get Fuzzy in their daily comics. Unfortunately, The Chart and The Globe fail this test, thus forcing me to the internet to find true humor.

On parenting...

So the other day, around lunch time, I'm buying a 44-oz. diet coke at the Conoco next door to the BSU, and in front of me is this girl, very thin, early 20's I'd guess, about six or seven months pregnant, and all she's buying is a pack of cigarettes and a Red Bull energy drink. What do you say to someone like that? I just watched in stunned silence. You need a license to drive a car, but any idiot can be a parent.

Memories from Childhood: Go-Kart!

One year, I must've been about eleven or twelve, my dad gave me a go-kart for Christmas. It was kind of a mud cart, as opposed to a street cart. Designed for dirt roads, it had knobby tires, a two inch ground clearance, and a 4.5 horsepower Briggs & Stratton engine. Oh yeah! That was a kick. I rode that thing around our house, around the pasture, down the dirt lanes and back roads that ran behind the house. It was AMAZING! One year I even rode it in the Coburg Golden Years Parade. Jason Dull (who was my same age and went to school with me at Coburg Elementary, Cal Young Middle School and Henry D. Sheldon High School) had a street cart and we rode side by side in the procession. His cart was faster, but it was made for street racing, so it gripped turns on asphalt. I, on the other hand, could take mine anywhere and slid around gravel corners like a pro. In fact, one year, on Christmas, I took it to my cousin Scott's house (he's a year older and much wealthier now than I) and we raced. He had a little Yamaha motorcycle and we'd race around this makeshift track he had at his house on their farm, which was in Springfield, about 15 miles away. (I say ‘track,’ when in fact most of it was only a muddy road that circled the strawberry field in front of their house.) I always had to go around the jumps so I lost about every time, except the one time I just decided to win-no-matter-what. I jumped the jumps, which was hard on the frame, and I went right through the enormous puddle (more like a small pond) that straddled the course at one point. I won, but I was soaked and muddy which is not a good combination on Christmas morning when you're visiting relatives 20 minutes from the nearest change of clothes. Oh well. It was worth it.

I can’t tell you how many hours I spent with that cart, I can only say that it was amazing fun. It also gave me something to do with my dad. Dad was a total gearhead. Still is. I think the go-kart was his way of trying to connect with me. Although I never developed his love of all things mechanical, I loved working with him on the kart. There wasn’t much to do really; change the oil once in a while, clean the spark plug from time to time, gas it up and let her fly! But once in a while I’d need his help to set the mix in the carburetor, or weld a crack in the frame… Once I let a friend, Andy Gutowski, drive it and he wrecked it into our fence. Tore the carburetor right off the engine. What a mess. Dad was pissed. We eventually got it fixed though.

The last real memory I have of it is the day we destroyed the engine. We set the rear axle up on blocks and were trying to adjust the throttle when it suddenly threw a rod. It blasted through the engine block, missed my leg by about six inches and hammered into the fence about thirty feet behind us. Oil everywhere. Needless to say, that was the end of that. We were both just happy to be in one piece. I have to say that as disappointing as it was to lose the motor like that, it was awesome to watch. Dad eventually replaced the motor, but it was never the same.

Memories from Childhood: BB Guns!

I remember when I was a kid growing up in Oregon how much I loved to play outside on the farm where we lived. [31334 Coburg Bottom Loop Road] Of course, I call it a farm, but it wasn't really a farm. I mean, we had a horse and a few sheep and a couple of goats, a handful of chickens and ducks (mallards) and even a pair of geese, but we didn't actually work the land we lived on. It was a 24 acre parcel in Coburg, Oregon (population: 650) and we lived on 4 acres and leased out the rest to real farmers who actually raised crops and harvested and stuff. We just kept the animals around because they were fun and kept the grass in the pasture down to a reasonable height.

Our property was bordered on two sides by roads. One was a typical country road, the other was a typical gravel farm road. It was the latter which was lined with blackberry vines all along the property we hadn't leased. The tangle of ever-growing thorns was the source of much joy and much pain for me over the years that we lived there. Of course, I loved the berries. Who doesn't? And my mother makes the greatest cobbler on God's green earth, but during the summer, when the vines would grow over our fence and threaten to engulf the driveway, it was my responsibility to chop them back. Sometimes I'd use 'nippers' and other times I'd just flail at them with a machete. Either way, I usually wound up with blisters and it seemed like they'd grow back every week. And when the berries were in season, it always took longer since I couldn't bring myself to waste such fruity goodness without at least trying to harvest as much as I could.

One summer my dad gave me a BB gun. Actually, I had about three or four BB guns, and I used them all. My dad, in fact, gave me my first BB gun when I was about 8. We hadn't move to the farm yet. We lived at 831 South 71st Street in Springfield, Oregon. It was a house my dad built. His dad was a farmer, he was a real estate developer, I'm a minister. So much for the whole 'family business' thing. Anyway, dad gave me this BB gun and about the only thing I remember was shooting at everything I could think of. The BBs came out of the barrel slow enough for me to track them with my eyes, so I was able to adjust my aim pretty quickly at a given target. Of course the only target I remember from that time was a giant rock that sat in the ditch on the opposite side of the street from us. And I probably wouldn't even remember that if it weren't for Danielle. My sister Danielle, decided that she wanted to play near the rock. I decided I didn't care where she played, I just wanted to hit the rock with a few BBs. Yeah, you guessed it, she got popped. No big deal. Its not as if I really hurt her, she just got whapped in the butt by a ricochete. No permanent damage, not even a band-aid worthy wound, but I still got in major trouble for it. That's all I remember about my first BB gun experience.

On the farm my aim got much better. I would set up cans and bottles and practice until I ran out of ammo. It was great fun. Eventually though, cans and bottles got to be a bit boring. After all, guns are for hunting, not target practice. So, I hunted. I hunted anything that would move. Of particular interest to me were the myriad varieties of songbirds and starlings that flocked to the trees and pasture around our house. Countless hours were spent stalking sparrows and finches and anything else with feathers that dared show itself on our property. Not that I was very successful, I wasn't, but it was the quintissential boyhood experience. Once I even clipped one in mid-air. I was stalking starlings in the pasture when my dad had the audacity to inform me that I'd never be successful because they would always see me coming and you can't shoot them in the air with a BB gun. Sure enough, the next flock that came over, I shot at-and hit-one of the birds. I know I hit it because if faltered for a second and dropped a feather. That was the only time I would ever hit a bird on the wing with a BB gun. Now shotguns are a different story...

There was a boy who lived across the street from us, a year younge than me, named Lee Winship. Lee drowned in a boating accident during his sophomore year in high school. I was deeply grieved by that since I had every opportunity to tell him about Jesus for several years, and I didn't do it. A lesson hard won, and a hard one to handle. Anyway, Lee and I were good friends, not the kind of intimate friends that everyone desires, but more like play mates. We goofed off together almost every day, even though we never really got along. It made sense to make peace instead of feuding with each other since there was no one else within half a mile to play with and Those kids (Troy and David Frost) hated both of us. Troy was a year older and just plain mean. David was my age and a total brainiac. Brilliant. He wanted to be a congressman one day. I wonder if he ever made it. He was a smart nerd. I was only a nerd, and he and his brother were pretty good at letting me know that. By the time we were all finished with high school, we all managed to get along, but in junior high and early in high school, we were mortal enemies. And since Lee was in the same boat, we were allies of necessity.

Of course, being boys, it was natural for Lee and I to discover war games; cowboys and indians, laser tag, and yes, BB gun wars. BB gun wars. Now THAT was great fun. Especially since we weren't truly friends. It felt good to shoot at one another and know that a hit would sting. So, every so often, we would hunt one another. And yes, it sometimes stung. But what a rush! Occassionally we would just set up a shooting gallery wherein we would take turns running back and forth across the open pasture while the other one shot at us. In hindsight, its one of things that make you just shake your head and say, "kids do the dumbest things." But if I was thirteen again, I can't say I wouldn't do it. It was just good clean fun. Working now with college students, I'm pretty sure if some of them read this, they'd be out doing the very same thing this weekend.

I think the scariest moment I ever had with a BB gun was also the finest. I was riding the bus to school one day, and as usual, the kids around me were being dirt bags, which is what their parents were training them for apparently, because they were really good at it. Anyway, this time they decided to pretend I wasn't there. They talked aroud me as if I didn't exist and even went so far as to plan a TP party for my house. BIG MISTAKE. I might have been the biggest nerd in the long sad history of nerds, but I wasn't about to let them come over and TP my house without a fight, and since they were arrogant enought to plan the raid right there in front of me, I decided to take action. So, on the night they were to come, at the appointed hour, I went outside with a couple of trusty BB guns and hid behind the lattice fence in our front yard. Within minutes I heard them coming, four or five of them. I could hear them talking and laughing as they came down the road toward me. It wasn't long before one of them lobbed a roll of toilet paper over the fence near my position. That was all I needed. I stood up pointed my most powerful BB gun at the one nearest to me and said in my best Arnold Shwartzenegger voice, "Bad move, Asshole!" I apologize for the language, but that's what I said. Then as he (his name was Jeff) turned around, I fired at him from only about 15 feet away. He screamed. He jumped. He ran like a jackrabbit down the road! His cronies followed at maximum speed. I fired a couple more rounds down the road for effect, but it was dark and they were running away from me.

It was my finest hour.

The next morning, however, Jeff didn't get on the bus to school with the restof his gang. I was immediately terrified. Had I killed him? Was he in the hospital missing an eye? Was he unconscious in the ditch on the other side of the road? All manner of evil thoughts assailed me, and all I could think of all day was that the police were going to come any minute, haul me out of class and arrest me. It was my worst hour.

I survived though, and the next day I caught up with Jeff in the caffeteria where he explained to me that I'd hit him in the thigh and it hurt like Hell, but that the reason he wasn't on the bus was that he'd had a funeral to attend for some distant relative. We actually got along rather well after that day. Once I stood up for myself, he and the rest of his gang treated me with a measure of respect I'd not previously known. I still wasn't exactly an equal, but I was pretty much left alone. It was my finest hour.

Consumer Science (continued)

So, I'm not really sure I got my point across last time. Maybe this will help. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that 'science' is a good thing, but is just as susceptible to corruption as anything else in this world. It is often abused, mistreated, corrupted and falsified by people who ought to know better, i.e., the scientists themselves. It is also horribly abused by pastors and popular media, politicians and professors, but while I'd like to forgive them because they're mostly just ignorant, I can't do so without also holding them accountable for the pathetic mess they're making out of it, science, that is. I mean, everyone has their own agenda, which exists not because of scientific evidence, but mostly human desire (a.k.a. 'lust'), and yet they use science as a tool to justify it. And if the science is bad, wrong, incorrect or just plain contradicts what they have to say, they just say it louder and louder until someone listens, preferably a 'bitter and unsuccessful' scientist.

So, to review, science in and of itself is GOOD. (If it weren't for science, there are a thousand reasons you wouldn't be reading this!) People who twist it around to justify a personal or political agenda are BAD.

Science is the pursuit of facts, not truth, but truth is what people live by. That's why I get frustrated watching/listening/reading bilge produced by guys like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris, who are so concerned about their version of the truth that they will co-opt and undermine the scientific process until it produces the facts they desire. Then they sell those facts to the world wholesale. Consumer science: science redesigned to meet the needs of the materialist philosophers waging war on ultimate truth.

Consumer Science

You know, I really do love science. I mean science has given us light bulbs and lap tops, nylon and satellite images of earth, not to mention antibiotics and the internet. If it weren't for science, you wouldn't be reading this right now. Science can be good, very good.

Having said that, it is also true that science can be bad, very bad. How so? Great question. Basically, science is bad whenever it leaves its mother-root of reason and instead pursues an agenda of other value. The best exampls of this are probably found in the pharmaceutical industry where billions are spent researching new drugs that will save human lives, then marketed relentlessly until someone wakes up to the fact that the latest miracle cure actually causes liver cancer, or severe rectal leakage... That isn't "science" anymore, its "commercial science." Another example of science awry can be found in the stream of materialist philosophy. What? Materialist philosophy; atheism; humanism; naturalism, whatever you want to call it. What I mean is that there is a great deal of 'science' out there being hijacked by a materialist agenda. Facts are twisted, or worse, denied outright in an effort to prove a non-science point. Usually what happens is that a scientist or group of scientists, starting with a personal bias or agenda, bends the rules to produce the result they desire, then calls every media outlet they can find. And if that fails, they just say the same thing louder and with more frequency until every gullible mark has been fooled. (Occasionally, they'll alert the media first, then perform their 'science,' which is even MORE unsettling.) Examples of this might include the "God helmet" touted so highly by Michael Persinger at Laurentian Univeristy (Canada), the Jesus Seminar, and meme theory (touted by the renowned atheist Richard Dawkins).

Gotta go, I'll finish this later...