The Peaceful Gnome

The Angry Gnome is moving to Posterous ... a cool site you can update and post to via email or from the web, and it's way easier to use than any other blogging service I've ever tried. Check out my new home in the interwebs The Angry Gnome. If you currently get my posts via email you can subscribe there instead by clicking on the subscribe link below "Get Updates"

I do not know... Posted via email from Larry's posterous

This is way cool! I can post from anywhere I can get on email and it works way better than the Blogger system for email posting. This may well be my new blog location guys. Awesome! Check out what it does if you just attach several photos to an email. See and download the full gallery on posterous Posted via email from Devich Family Blog

From Pastoral Meanderings , on images: The Image of the Unseen I have in my office many, many things on the walls. I have degrees and an ordination certificate and Luther's Sacristy Prayer and some photos... I have organ pipes and personal photos of my family... I have a dozen or so crucifixes (nearly all high quality hand carved wood from Italy and my prized one from Oberammergau)... I have a couple of original paintings (Noah and the ark and one of an American highway scene)... I have several posters (Birgitta and one called Sing Me to Heaven)... I have resin castings (can't afford the real thing) of stone carvings of Mary, of the Risen Jesus, of Jesus as Priest with bread and cup, of Celtic crosses... And I have a ton of icons (okay, well not a ton but lots and lots). One in particular is a sterling silver icon from Romania (the Holy Family, an icon crucifix and traveling icon, and most especially, an icon stitched for me by my colleague (the Asst. Pastor)... Most of t...

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I've got the west covered, need to see some of the south and midwest still... visited 23 states (46%) Create your own visited map of The United States

Hi all, I just wanted to share what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving morning. I thank God for all of these things that He has so graciously provided for me: First, and always at the very top of my list, is Jesus, he came and took on human flesh (John 1:14), lived a perfect life and took on my sins (2 Corinthians 5:21), and died for me (Romans 5:6-8). Second is family, my mom who never gave up on me and kept praying for me even when I was rejecting both her and God. My daughter Lora whom I love dearly and who is so much like me. My granddaughter Serenity who lives life full bore and keeps me going all the time. For my cousin Mike who has been so generous with our expanded family the last several years. And of course my little sister Kari who has such a great way of bringing me down to reality when I wander off in my head sometimes. I'm thankful for Messiah Lutheran Church and our congregation, and especially for Pastor Ledic. I'm thankful for my job, and my employers...

Reason Not to Dehydrate: Man Speaking After 23 Years in Locked-In State Monday, November 23, 2009, 10:57 AM Wesley J. Smith We hear constantly that people diagnosed as being persistently unconscious should be dehydrated to death because they are not “persons,” or are actually “dead”–and so should be available for organ harvesting. We hear that even if the family resists , futile care theory should permit bioethics committees to impose unilateral withdrawal. And we hear this even as repeated studies demonstrate that 40 or more percent of patients diagnosed as PVS really aren’t... Read the whole story here: Reason Not to Dehydrate: Man Speaking After 23 Years in Locked-In State » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog

Last night Mike, Maryann, Topanga, Serenity, Lora and Larry all went on a Commodore City Lights Bay Cruise that Maryann had tickets to. It was pretty fun actually. The dining room was a bit noisy for my taste but once the loud music came on and I didn't have to try and figure out what people were saying it was all good :-) I like loud music but hate loud rooms full of talking people. Go figure. I didn't take my camera but did take a few fuzzy shots with my phone so here you are, enjoy :-)

Thanks Mom :-)

Lora, Serenity and I went and saw this thing yesterday, the biggest warning I can give is this thing is LOOONG! And pretty funny too, especially the alleged "science" they tossed in. It was fun though. As the review says: There is something inherently ridiculous about using a (primarily) paranoia-inspired date and transforming it into a cinematic spectacle. The scientific explanations behind the catastrophes that rip through "2012" are about as believable (and logical) as a book by Dr. Seuss. The 160-minute run time overwhelms before the end credits roll, almost making an after-film Advil a downright necessity. "2012" is, admittedly, a fun ride at times -- albeit a dumb and dizzy one. Pleasanton Weekly : Movie review: 2012

Cool, each phrase in the Nicene Creed is linked to Scripture: Extreme Theology: The Nicene Creed According to the Scriptures

I never realized that Advent was a season of fasting before reading this from Weedon's Blog : On Keeping Holy Advent For us Western Christians, the Advent fast is fast approaching (our Eastern fellow Christians already have begun it). But how shall we approach this holy time so that it produces spiritual benefit for us? First, it requires time. Here's where the busyness of our lives does us such a great disservice. We hurry ourselves to the grave. Don't think of the extra services in Church as "one more thing" added to your already insanely busy schedule. Instead, see them for what they are: oases of peace that will allow you time for prayer and reflection on the coming of our Savior into the flesh, His coming in the Sacrament, and His coming in glory. Make every effort not to miss a single one of the Sunday or Wednesday liturgies. We were not made for busyness; we were made for communion with the Blessed Trinity! Click here for the rest .

Heh, two ways to cut down to just one per day.

Philippians 4:8-9 (ESV) 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society. So, it should have been obvious to me but it wasn't. When struggling with sins it doesn't actually pay off to be dwelling on the sins. Constantly thinking "Oh why did I do that again?" and trying to figure out how to stop doing whatever the particular sin I'm worried about just seems to make things worse. It keeps that thing I am trying to avoid at the front of my mind. If it wasn't something I wanted to do it would not be a temptation now would it? So thinking about something that I actually want...

Last night, after having spent all day at Perpetual Recess, Serenity came excitedly to my room and dragged me to the computer she was "playing" at. There she was listening to, and singing along with, a Japanese cartoon video. I thought she would have no idea what they were saying but there was an English version she had listened to as well. She said " at first it sounded like gibberish but then I could understand it! " Heh, fun stuff, none of it was intended to be "educational" but there she was learning some Japanese words ;-)

I received this as an email but thought it worthy of inclusion here: New Direction for any war: Send Service Vets over 60! I am over 60 and the Armed Forces thinks I'm too old to track down terrorists. You can't be older than 42 to join the military. They've got the whole thing ass-backwards. Instead of sending 18-year olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn't be able to join a military unit until you're at least 35. For starters: Researchers say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy. Young guys haven't lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. 'My back hurts! I can't sleep, I'm tired and hungry' We are impatient and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make us feel better and shut us up for a while. ...

Please Join me today in honoring our Veterans by donating generously to Disabled American Veterans by clicking on the link below, thank you

So, I was listening to Slacker radio today and I glanced at the screen and saw that the California Employment Development Department (aka Unemployment) had an add there so you could "click your unemployment benefits into place." I thought it was funny. I guess I'm easily amused. :-) Screen shot is to the left, click to embigenate it.

Not long ago, on October 14th, I posted about the LHC being sabotaged from the future , well look here :-) Large Hadron Collider stalled again... thanks to chunk of baguette - Times Online

I think this has potential, I'll forward links to the following posts when they come out, if they live up to my anticipation: Science and an Incarnational Approach to the Bible - Science and the Sacred

Anyone who really wants to make me happy for Christmas will find Trans Siberian Orchestra DVDs :-) ooh, ah...

Thanks to Trans Siberian Orchestra I'm in the Holiday Spirit a little early this year :-) Here is the Christmas Canon

Christmas in Sarajevo

There are some amazing music services out on the interwebs these days :-) There is Pandora , which I'm listening to at the moment, Up Around the Bend by Credence Clearwater Revival was playing when I started this post. Pandora plays a customized blend of tunes on stations you make for yourself so you tend to get music you like most all of the time, and it turns you on to music you might not have known about that is similar to what you have been marking with a thumbs up as you go along. There are occasional ads that play but not nearly as many as on over-air radio. You can listen for 40 hours per month for free, if you happen to use up those hours in a month you can pay 99 cents and listen as much as you like for the rest of that month, which is pretty reasonable I'd say. I have never yet used up my 40 hours though. Another cool thing about Pandora is that I can listen to it on my Blackberry, which makes walks and bike rides and commutes a pleasure, though you have to hav...

Here is a link to a great interview with Sandra Dodd about unschooling. We met Sandra at the Good Vibrations Conference in San Diego back in September. She has a way with words and is fun to listen to. If you ever wondered about how unschooling could possibly work this is a short discussion to get you started. Unschooling

Like the risk of "Terrorist" attacks in America the risk of Halloween candy poisoning is pretty close to ZERO. Even so, we can't be too paranoid, eternal vigilance, even if it sucks all the joy from life , is the price we must pay to eliminate even the slightest risk from our lives! That way we will all live forever, right?

Baconbetter_160by600_1 , originally uploaded by ldevich . God Whisperers had a special bacon edition that I listened to this morning and then this showed up next to my face book page, coincidence? I don't think so!

Pheasant escaped from Chinatown , originally uploaded by ldevich . This pheasant landed outside of our front door at 3:00 am, security called Animal Control and they picked him up. The tail was tied with a rubber band so I'm pretty sure it escaped from a couple of blocks up Washington in one of those shops up in Chinatown where they sell live birds for dinner. I'm assuming they will release it in the wild :-) Don't bother telling me otherwise, I don't want to know... la la la la... I can't hear you...

Sadly "Mr. David Norman" does not seem to have a telephone, nor is he capable of writing English well enough to pass for an actual Englishman, so I guess this Nigerian will have to try his scam on someone else. Mr.David Norman, Knights quarter, 14 st. john's lane, London, ec1m 4aj England Email [Deleted] Sir, Compliments of the day! I got your contact on my private search for a reliable and trusted person to handle a transaction of this nature. I know that the contents of this mail might sound so strange, but I want to assure you that every word of it is true. I am Mr.David Norman a financial consultant to a deceased immigrant Mr. Andreas Devich, property magnate who was based in the U.K., who happens to be my client. on the month of July 2000, my client, his wife Maria, their daughter andrea each, her husband Christian, and their children katharina and maximilian all died in the air France concord plane crash bound for new York in their plan for a world cruise, since the...

Gee Whiz, I called Obama a "corporate whore" before he was elected. I called him that because it accurately describes him, and nearly every other politician. Everyone knows "whore" has a wider meaning than just low level sex workers, it also includes really offensive people like politicians & lobbyists. If you want to know where the power is in America just follow the money, when you do that you'll realize that "whores" describes pretty much the entire legislative, judicial and most especially executive branches of the DC Mafia. Heck, PJ O'Rourke called them that years ago and got a best seller out of it! Now we have hypocritical right wing spew condemning the use of the word just because it was uttered by a Democrat. A new low even by these dweebs. Pathetic losers all. Media “Whoring” over Alan Grayson Reveals Hypocrisy at Zeal For Truth Source: zealfortruth.org You would think in a country where people swear, cuss, deride others, gossip, ...

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Serenity "met" her Great-great-great Grandmother and Grandfather Hans & Bella Gilbertsen (Pearson) Also said hello to Hans and Anna Sletten while we were there :-) We were on our way just over the hill to Sophia's birthday party. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Pirate party Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

About a million useless, parasitical Sacramento drones will keep pushing paper around in the capitol, but the parks will close... as I've said before, it's time for some major civil disobedience, just hop the fence and use OUR parks anyway. California State Parks cutbacks widespread Larry Devich Here is a photo of the new California State Parks Pass, only $19.97 plus tax. Only good on weekdays, on weekends you might have to use money. Oh well. Husky 24 In. Bolt Cutters - 9003H at The Home Depot Source: www.homedepot.com All Husky hand tools are backed by a lifetime warranty-the best in the industry. In the unlikely event that a Husky tool breaks, we'll replace it free of charge. See product packaging for details.

Speaking of airborne assassins patrolling the skies... US Drone Attacks Bajaur, Killing 27 -- News from Antiwar.com

Still the best talk radio around, Christian or not: Issue Etc.

An old friend, of a somewhat "conservative" bent, sent me this today. I thought I'd share it here, along with my own reply which I have appended at the end: While I've little interest in getting in the middle of the Obama birth issue,Paul Hollrah over at UTFSM (What the hell is that anyway?) did so yesterday and believes the issue can be resolved by Obama answering one simple question: What passport did he use when he was shuttling between New York , Jakarta ,and Karachi? So how did a young man who arrived in New York in early June 1981, without the price of a hotel room in his pocket, suddenly come up with the price of a round-the-world trip just a month later? And once he was on a plane, shuttling between New York , Jakarta , and Karachi , what passport was he offering when he passed throughCustoms and Immigration? The American people not only deserve to have answers to these questions,they must have answers. It makes the debate over Obama's citizenship a ...

The longer I study biology and science in general, as a rank amateur of course, the more undecided I become on the debate between evolution and creation. I don't have any doubt at all about the fact that God initially created all that is. The Big Bang seems pretty conclusive evidence of that to me. When it comes to the origins and development of life though, I find myself simultaneously agreeing with about a half dozen contradictory theories, and this just doesn't quite work for me :-) I mean, I can easily believe two or three contradictory things at once but I start to lose my balance when I attempt to juggle a half dozen. So, I either need to get better at mental gymnastics or keep on studying and reading and pondering and praying. Which, since I find the subject of origins so fascinating, is undoubtedly what I will continue to do. I find much to agree with in the Reasons to Believe model, but it starts to seem a lot like the old God of the Gaps take on things and that j...

We live in a world where there are actual fleets of robot assassins patrolling the skies. At some point there, we left the present and entered the future.

A small bit of common sense from Obama. Now if we can just get rid of brain dead dweebs like Lamar Smith who think that killing people because they take drugs he doesn't like is a good idea, things will be even better. END PROHIBITION NOW! Idiot politicians... Medical-pot backers react to new Obama policy

Now there is even less justification for murdering babies to harvest stem cells: BBC NEWS | Health | 'Ethical' stem cell crop boosted Shared via AddThis

The fact that the poor kid vomited twice when being interviewed makes me want to just slap the crap out of his dad. Forcing a child to lie, when obviously he really did not want to, is just plain evil. It's child abuse. In fact, that should be one of the charges as far as I'm concerned. As to punishment, I think a week in the stocks in the public square would be about right, humiliate the jerk and allow the community to tell him (and the mother I suppose, if she was really in on it from the start as well) what they think of his stunt. Prison and fines, that would be a waste of resources. Stocks are cheaper, just lock him in and let the family or friends (if he has any left now) feed and water him for the week. Sheriff Calls Balloon Chase a Hoax - NYTimes.com Shared via AddThis

William Grigg nails it again. Our "government" is just like every government that has ever existed anywhere. It is nothing more than a pack of violent thieving thugs out for personal gain, either money or personal power or, usually, both. Pro Libertate: How "Justice" Operates Under A Criminal Regime Shared via AddThis

...Simon Conway-Morris, the renowned paleontologist at Cambridge University, is just one scientist who argues that religion and science are completely compatible. The British professor believes evolution isn't as accidental or random as one might suspect. In his opinion, if evolution began all over again, human intelligence would develop pretty much in the same way as it has. Conway-Morris emphasizes that developments happen as a result of pre-existing conditions, such as the need for blood cells to have hemoglobin in order to transport oxygen. Evolution, therefore, works only because it plays out within a certain set of rules. Evolution "is after all only a mechanism, but if evolution is predictive, indeed possesses a logic, then evidently it is being governed by deeper principles," he recently wrote. "Come to think about it so are all sciences; why should Darwinism be any exception...?" ...the proportion of Christians among the science faculty in certain depar...

Sagan - Hawking remixed "A Glorious Dawn..." Lyrics: [Sagan] If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch You must first invent the universe Space is filled with a network of wormholes You might emerge somewhere else in space Some when-else in time The sky calls to us If we do not destroy ourselves We will one day venture to the stars A still more glorious dawn awaits Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise A morning filled with 400 billion suns The rising of the milky way The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths Of exquisite interrelationships Of the awesome machinery of nature I believe our future depends powerfully On how well we understand this cosmos In which we float like a mote of dust In the morning sky But the brain does much more than just recollect It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes it generates abstractions The simplest thought like the concept of the number one Has an elaborate logical underpinning The brain has it's own language For testing ...

Is a particle from the future coming back in time to destroy the Large Hadron Collider? How cool would that be? :-) A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather. Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, put this idea forward in a series of papers with titles like Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal and Search for Future Influence From LHC, posted on the physics Web site arXiv.org in the last year and a half. According to the so-called Standard Model that rules almost all physics, the Higgs is responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass. I...

So yesterday we had record rainfall followed in the evening by our house jumping around for about 4 seconds, just to make sure we were all paying attention to the fact that nature is still bigger than we are ;-) God is in control, not us. Pleasanton Weekly : Earthquakes reported just south of Pleasanton Shared via AddThis

From Jimmy Eat World - The Middle

From the blog "Imperial Twilight" Imperial Twilight: More Government School Child Abuse This time the victim is 6-year-old Zachary Christie : Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school. Yep, j ust another day in the mind-squashing, soul-killing, "zero-tolerance" prison that is the Delaware state school system. The good news is that Zachary's mother is home schooling him now. The bad news, it seems, is that she only intends to keep this up until her son's punishment is overturned or he goes into the kiddie lockup. After that, presumably, it's back to the regular "schoolag" for another 12 years of mandatory idiocy and degradation. Let...

War for fun and PROFIT. If you had any doubts as to why the US is in Iraq and Afghanistan, this should clear things up for you. On the Democratic side we have DiFi and on the Republican side we had Cheney and Halliburton. It's all about bloody money! They can all go to hell, as I'm pretty sure they will, but sadly they are taking America with them. News & Culture in CA | Dianne Feinstein: A Question of Ethics Shared via AddThis

It's not just the Nobel, BO is getting a whole slew of awards :

So I got up this morning and looked out the window and saw low clouds and fog here in Pleasanton and ditched the idea of going to see the Blue Angels. Later in the day when it was really nice and sunny and warm I was feeling like maybe I ought to have gone... but nope, I made the right call after all. The Blue Angels were forced to cut short their program - the highlight of Saturday's Fleet Week air show - when heavy fog rolled in and made flying unsafe, said a spokesman for the Navy's elite demonstration team. Fog forces Blue Angels to abandon their show Shared via AddThis

Cool, you can continue slaughtering people in countries around the world, drive the world economy into the ground, do absolutely nothing different from your hated predecessor in fact, yet because you are "Black" you win the big prize. The Nobel Prize, now fully committed to "Affirmative Action" We do live in Bizarro World now, don't we? In Surprise, Nobel Peace Prize to Obama for Diplomacy WASHINGTON — President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” a stunning honor that came less than nine months after he made United States history by becoming the country’s first African-American president. The award, announced in Oslo by the Nobel Committee while much of official Washington — including the president — was still asleep, cited in particular the president’s efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons . “He has created a new internatio...

It is all I can do to keep from ranting and screaming. This is appalling and borders on idolatry (worship of the state) in my opinion. Click through to the blog post by McCain, and read the comments. Then go on through to the actual painting's web site here and read the explanations this clueless git writes about history and America. Cyberbrethren: One Nation Under God Shared via AddThis

A few days... er... weeks ago, we went to the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. That day Serenity had colored everyone's hair, except mom who said no thanks... here is what we looked like when we went :-)

It's Fleet Week in San Francisco again. I love watching the Blue Angles and checking out the ships that come in to port. I plan to go to the city on Saturday along with whoever is willing to come with me. San Francisco Fleet Week 2009 Shared via AddThis

Debunked yet again, for the umpteen thousandth time. But don't let that stop you from believing in it! I'm sure the aliens who picked up Elvis will come back and explain everything any day now... Italian group claims to debunk Shroud of Turin Shared via AddThis

From the Blog Science and the Sacred : We don't want our children to grow up misinformed about creation. We want our children to know about the truthfulness of evolution, but we also realize we are in the minority in our churches. Because our position is the minority view, books, videos and websites abound which teach children that biology, at its very roots, is wrong. Curricula teach children things we parents and grandparents know to be untrue. Our concern is that as our children come to independence, as they learn the earth really is billions of years old and life has been evolving from the beginning, they will discard the faith of their youth. If that faith is interwoven with anti-scientism it will be nearly impossible for some of our young people to rebuild the fabric, when they find that many of the threads within the fabric have to be removed. Augustine, 1600 years ago, said it best. In reading the following, simply substitute the word "child" for his word "in...

Over 100 Hollywood moguls and insiders, including Woody Allen, Martin Scorcese, David Lynch, and Harvey Weinstein have signed petitions urging the release of child rapist Roman Polanski, who has been arrested after fleeing a plea bargain 30 years ago. The gulf between the entertainment world and America ? Cranach: The Blog of Veith Shared via AddThis

I argued with this one for a while, even when I clicked on the "to verify this click here" link. But if you cover everything except the 2 linked squares on that page it proves it to be true. Just goes to show that just because you saw something it does not mean it was really there. APOD: 2009 October 4 - The Same Color Illusion Shared via AddThis

Peter Gray's latest post, not directly on unschooling or anything but on how our assumptions that school = normal distort reality: How Developmental Psychology?s Marriage to the School System Distorts Our Understanding of Children | Psychology Today Shared via AddThis

This movement should create a situation in which authorities will control empty stores, but not the market; the employment of workers, but not their livelihood; the official media, but not the circulation of information; printing plants, but not the publishing movement; the mail and telephones, but not communications; and the school system, but not education. Kulerski's words appear in a fine article published by The Freeman, "A Tribute to the Polish People". It's a fascinating study of how to beat a modern police state without resorting to violence, which is a game the state usually wins. Significantly, the Poles were able to outmaneuever and undercut their oppressors even though they had no cell phones or Internet. Of the six points Kulerski enumerates, the American state is already retreating in the fields of information, publishing, communications, and education. Imperial Twilight: State Secession versus Counter-Economics: Which Is the Better Strategy? Shared via ...

Check out the video at the end of this post, it's fantastic. We must teach the controversy! We need to hear both sides of the issue! Heh, this parody is wonderful. I mention that it is parody for those of you out there who might actually think this is serious. It is a joke. Intelligent Design vs. Alien Intervention - Science and the Sacred Shared via AddThis

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We are here in SF after going to the Gulf of the Farallones Visitor center where we learned about plankton and other cool stuff. When we leave here we will ve going to the symphony. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I walked and biked to school when I was in elementary school. This sort of over controlling BS makes me just a bit crazy. Obviously the folks who make these rules would not be very comfortable with the concept of un schooling ;-) School district could backpedal on policy -- Page 1 -- Times Union - Albany NY:2997: Source: www.timesunion.com Saratoga Springs board to consider modifying ban on riding bikes to schools

I have always loved Gregorian Chant, Issues Etc. talked about it on Monday, take a listen:

Here we go again , more of the same old BS only now instead of Bush it's Obama spewing lies. I said it before the election and I'll say it again, Obama is nothing but another corporate whore, just like Bush. The only "Change" he ...brought was the amount of melanin in the oval office. Another War in the Works by Paul Craig Roberts Shared via AddThis

My mom has been with us all month and this was my last few days off before she flies back to Arizona on Wednesday. So we crammed a lot into a few days, which we do even when she's not here actually ;-) On Wednesday Serenity and I went to Shadow Cliffs where we met up with some unschooling friends and spent much of the afternoon keeping cool in the lake. On Thursday Serenity and I went to the library in the early afternoon and got several books to read. Later in the day mom and I were off to San Francisco where we had dinner at CPK and took in a set of Mahler at the SF Symphony . It was not your normal performance, it was being recorded for a TV/DVD thing and the soloist was out sick... nice anyway though. On Friday we all, Lora, Serenity, mom and me, went to the Winchester Mystery House . Now that is a very strange house :-/ On Saturday I went with Serenity and mom to Mt. Diablo for stargazing with the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society . I saw more things in the night sky that...

Here is another bone headed idea brought to you by Govco, your full service killer of dreams: More government indoctrination, more bullying, more drudgery, less playing, less real life learning. Yep, sounds like a plan to me. More school: Obama would curtail summer vacation - Yahoo! News Source: news.yahoo.com Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way.

Here is a no brainer, ending prohibition is the only way to go, IMO. I do like the comments from the narc, his job is threatened by this law so he tries weak, very weak, scare tactics. "Marijuana smokers will wreak havoc on the streets driving stoned!" Huh, yeah, right, just like beer drink ers do. It's a separate issue from legalization though. BBC NEWS | Americas | California mulls legalising marijuana Source: news.bbc.co.uk In 1996, voters in California approved a referendum that made it legal for the first time in decades in the US for people to consume cannabis for medicinal purposes.

Earth in Genesis does not refer to the planet but to dry land. Now that makes excellent sense to me. Understanding Earth - Science and the Sacred Shared via AddThis

Great post about entropy, decadence and the end times... Father Hollywood: Are things getting worse? Posted using ShareThis

I usually listen to Radio Paradise when I want to listen to an eclectic selection of rock music, but sometimes they are just to "serious". So I was looking for something else to listen to when I came upon Planet Pootwaddle . It is now my favorite rock music station on the net! From the "What it Be" section of the site: Planet Pootwaddle is an extensive collection of both familiar and eclectic music coupled with a healthy dose of 12 year old boy humor and all seamlessly bound together with our unique blend of production, or as we like to call it "jingle magic"

I just got tickets to the San Francisco Symphony for Thursday night. It's a night of Mahler conducted by MTT, should be awesome! The baritone soloist is Thomas Hampson: Find more videos like this on San Francisco Symphony Social Network Here is some other guy singing part one of Songs of a Wayfarer that will be on Thursday's program: