Bug's Bleat - - GCF: Close Enough for Government Work

Volume 6, Issue 50 Friday, December 10, 2004

Hello ALL,

We've almost got our 2005 Bible Reading Plans ready for distribution. Using this plan, you'll read from The Law on Sundays, History on Mondays, Psalms on Tuesdays, Poetry on Wednesday, Prophecy on Thursday, Gospels on Friday and the Epistles on Saturday. It's a WORD document that you can print on front and back of one page. Fold it and it's a handy bookmark to keep in your bible. Just e-mail us at KC5HII@Magnolia-Net.Com, if you'd like a copy

~~~~~

Annette and I love traveling by train. However, you have to be prepared for some differences to life as you know it when you get on a train.

First of all, there is a lot of scenery, but you won’t see much of it between here and San Antonio. That’s mostly a night run. Try a longer trip in the daytime.

Second of all, there’s a difference in how much you pay for your train tickets. Never take the first price AMTRAK quotes you. They’ll usually start out about three times more than their final offer. Keep asking about discounts and specials.

Third of all, there’s a difference between “coach” and “sleeper” class. In coach, you get to visit with all the other passengers on the train. In sleeper, your meals, snacks etc. are usually included (so you don’t have to pay $1.25 for a coke) and they treat you like royalty.

Annette and I usually travel Coach, but have indulged in Sleeper occasionally. Our favorite sleeper rooms are the east coast handicapped rooms. They have built in T.V.s, recliners, a spacious bathroom, etc.

Fourth, always carry your HT (that’s “Ham Speak” for walkie talkie.) Not only can you listen to the crew, you can communicate with each other while exploring the train, going for snacks (i.e. “KC5HXH, they’re out of mounds. How about a Snicker?”) and chatting with local radio enthusiasts (if you’re very quick, since the train travels at 60 mph.)]

~~~~~

Great Headline Gaffes

by David Barton, AF6S

Some of the crazy headline below, each of which actually ran in an American newspaper, suffer from grammar or capitalization errors. Can you spot them?

1. Experts say something went wrong in jet crash.

2. Police begin campaign to run down jayuwalkers.

3. Safety experts say school bus passengers should be belted.

4. Drunk get nine months in violin case.

5. Survior of Siamese twins joins parents

6. Farmer Bill dies in house.

7. Iraqi head seeks arms.

8. Is there a ring of debris around Uranus?

Susan Barton, KA6SEH, contributed the list of headlines to the Jan, ‘96 ARNS Bulletin. She found them on America Online.

~~~~~

Live Nativity, Calvary Baptist Church, Saturday and Sunday, December 11 & 12, 5:30 to 9:00 pm each evening.

~~~~~

Another story from "Da Bleat" archives.

"Ripe Dole"

As some of you know, in a time long long ago, in a city far far away, in a life before the new birth, I worked in an advertising studio. All of our studio jobs answered to an Art Director who was in charge of the ad campaign we were shooting stills or motion picture film for. One of my favorite examples of Art Director insanity occurred when we shot stills to go on magazine and billboard spreads along with a TV commercial for Dole Bananas.

The star of the commercial was a gentleman from Jamaica who was well known to audiences of the early 70s. The still shots showed him sitting in a large rattan chair surrounded by tons of Dole Banana.

So, we painted our large seamless background white. Wally, the studio owner shopped around for just the right chair to put there and we ordered a ton or so of bananas.

On the day of the shoot, the actor arrived with his agent and makeup artist. While he was getting ready, we took the client art director back to see the set up. He loved it but pointed out that the bananas weren't sufficiently ripe for shooting yet.

Wally commented "off the cuff" that this art director only said that to show us how important he was. There was nothing wrong with the bananas.

Anyway, we hoped the art director would approve the bananas by the time the actor was ready. We hoped to shoot just after lunch.

So I was sent over to Ander's food market for a box full of chicken fried steak sandwiches. Eulane spent her lunch hour in a fruitless attempt to find out when the art director thought it would be time to shoot the pictures.

After lunch, the art director decided that the banana weren't ready to photograph yet. So we waited. And waited.

At 6 p.m., they sent me out for Chinese food for everyone. And we waited.

Every hour or so, Wally and Jim would confer with the art director.

Every hour the answer was the same "not ready."

I'd called Annette and told her we were waiting on the Art Director.

She knew it could be hours or days until I came home.

About 10 pm I bedded down on the back stage. I woke up at 2 am to shouts and lights. The art director had declared the banana ready to photograph.

They looked exactly like they had at 10 the previous morning to me.

But I guess that's why I was a minimum wage "grip" and he was an art director.

The star was ready shortly and we'd completed the shoot by 3 am. I took the film and headed to the darkroom. It only took an hour or so to process the first piece of test film.

Jim approve the color balance on the test and I had the whole load of 8" x 10" Ektachrome. film processed, dry and ready for viewing when the client returned at noon.

They loved the shots including the close ups of banana. The art director commented that he was glad he'd waited until the banana were just right before shooting. Especially since the color on the close ups was so much better than it had been earlier.

I didn't see any sense in telling him that the close up he picked for the ad was one we'd shot the morning of the previous day when we first set the shot up.

~~~~~

This Christmas Season, we’re “burning up the road” between Magnolia and Little Rock, visiting Doctors. Week before last, I had to go to Dr. Rushing. Next week, I’ve got to see Dr. Mendelsohm. This weeks trip was to get Annette treatment for a herniated disk in her neck. The previous series of shots, conducted in 2000 did a pretty good job of reducing her pain.

I’m glad I was able to go with her this week. Mike had to take her for the last treatment.

Here’s a story we wrote about these trips four years ago (specifically, the December, 12, 2000 “Bleat”;

We've spent the week between here and Little Rock where Annette is being treated for a ruptured disk in her neck.

The good news is that the treatments for her neck injury look promising.

The bad news is that we have to travel to Little Rock via the "barrel road" (I-30). There are other routes, but "Barrel 30" is the quickest when traffic isn't too heavy. It was very heavy last Sunday night when we headed up. It took us over an hour to travel from Prescott to Gurdon (a distance of about 16 miles.) We followed three bromine trucks off the interstate and used the old US 67 route to Little Rock. It only took 4 & ½ hours vs 2 & ½. normally.

I can't say enough about how swell it is to travel on a highway that's being repaired continuously but not widened to three lanes which it badly needs to be. [Of course, they have now torn up the whole highway between Benton and Little Rock to widen it to three lanes. The problem is that now it needs to be four or five lanes wide.]

Last Monday, we had some more "fun" with Blue Cross/Blue Shield. My own naivety never ceases to amaze me. When we signed up for this HMO plan, I was disappointed that it wouldn't cover any doctors in Shreveport, but I figured that Little Rock had good hospitals and doctors so no real problem.

Big mistake. It was Monday that I discovered that they restrict us to one hospital in Little Rock for many procedures. I was practically raised at St. Vincent's and the doctor that Blue Cross approved has his office at St. Vincent's. Boy were we surprised to find out that Blue Cross wouldn't pay for the doctor to treat Annette at St. Vincent's. As usual, we didn't find this out until we arrived at the hospital for the procedure.

So we had to postpone Annette's treatment till today to give the insurance company and the Doctor time to work out a suitable agreement on where the procedure could be done. I'm sure it saved the insurance company some money. I wonder if it was enough for them to reimburse me for another round trip up "Barrel 30" and another nights hotel stay?

~~~~~

By the way, the staff at Baptist was great. Everyone was very caring for Annette and they let me stay in the surgical recovery area while she was having her spine injected.

Annette and I did get a few laughs while we were waiting her turn. She'd been telling the nurses jokes (i.e. two cannibals are sitting around a cook pot and one says "I hate my mother in law." and the other cannibal says "So just eat the noodles.") and then we heard them discussing how many milligrams were in a cc. It seems the doctor had ordered a cc of medicine for Annette, but their syringes were measured in milligrams and they had the whole nursing unit there trying to convert milligrams to cc.

Annette said that conversations like that really instill confidence in a patient about to have a needle stuck in the back of their neck. Then we started suggesting that we could phone Lou Murphy in Magnolia (our favorite flight nurse) and get her to explain the conversions to the nurses in the surgical suite.

Annette was laughing and cutting up so much that the Doctor asked the nurses if they'd already given Annette the tranquilizer. Just another "McClellan" day at the hospital. Did I ever tell you about the time I ate a thermometer?

~~~~~

Tom has been sharing this with the Good Clean Fun list since in 1997.

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Too many times we tend to forget the members of the military who are serving away from home. As a veteran of the U.S. Navy (65-69), I know what it means to be away from your family and loved ones. Holiday times can become especially lonely. Please see the message at the end of this email. It contains links that can be used to send messages of support to troops overseas.

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The poem has been circulated freely on the Internet, sometimes as "author unknown" but usually attributed to "A Marine stationed in Okinawa, Japan" However, after September 11, 2001 it was attributed sometimes to "A Soldier/Marine stationed in Afghanistan." Sometimes it was attributed to a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. I found that the piece was researched thoroughly by the folks at the Urban Legend website and I believe that their attribution of authorship is correct. That website for the curious is:

http://www.snopes.com/glurge/soldier.htm

The piece is attributed to James M. Schmidt, then a Lance Corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps, stationed in Washington D.C. The piece appeared in "Leatherneck" (Magazine of the Marines) in 1991.

That being said, the message of the piece is still just a powerful, regardless of the authorship. As a former Hospital Corpsman in the U.S. Navy, I have a profound respect for the Marines, and because of that, I have chosen to reproduce the original "Marine" version here. This version differs slightly from the one circulating on the Internet in that is contains some Marine-specific wording.

To all my Marine friends, Semper Fi.

- Tom

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A Soldier's Night Before Christmas

(Original Title is "Merry Christmas, My Friend")

'Twas the night before Christmas, he lived all alone,

In a one-bedroom house made of plaster and stone.

I had come down the chimney, with presents to give

and to see just who in this home did live.

As I looked all about, a strange sight I did see,

no tinsel, no presents, not even a tree.

No stocking by the fire, just boots filled with sand.

On the wall hung pictures of a far distant land.

With medals and badges, awards of all kind,

a sobering thought soon came to my mind.

For this house was different, unlike any I'd seen.

This was the home of a U.S. Marine.

I'd heard stories about them, I had to see more,

so I walked down the hall and pushed open the door.

And there he lay sleeping, silent, alone,

Curled up on the floor in his one-bedroom home.

He seemed so gentle, his face so serene,

Not how I pictured a U.S. Marine.

Was this the hero, of whom I'd just read?

Curled up in his poncho, a floor for his bed?

His head was clean-shaven, his weathered face tan.

I soon understood, this was more than a man.

For I realized the families that I saw that night,

owed their lives to these men, who were willing to fight.

Soon around the Nation, the children would play,

And grown-ups would celebrate on a bright Christmas day.

They all enjoyed freedom, each month and all year,

because of Marines like this one lying here.

I couldn't help wonder how many lay alone,

on a cold Christmas Eve, in a land far from home.

Just the very thought brought a tear to my eye.

I dropped to my knees and I started to cry.

He must have awoken, for I heard a rough voice,

"Santa, don't cry, this life is my choice

I fight for freedom, I don't ask for more.

My life is my God, my country, my Corps."

With that he rolled over, drifted off into sleep,

I couldn't control it, I continued to weep.

I watched him for hours, so silent and still.

I noticed he shivered from the cold night's chill.

So I took off my jacket, the one made of red,

and covered this Marine from his toes to his head.

Then I put on his T-shirt of scarlet and gold,

with an eagle, globe and anchor emblazoned so bold.

And although it barely fit me, I began to swell with pride,

and for one shining moment, I was Marine Corps deep inside.

I didn't want to leave him so quiet in the night,

this guardian of honor so willing to fight.

But half asleep he rolled over, and in a voice clean and pure,

said "Carry on, Santa, it's Christmas Day, all secure." One look at my watch and I knew he was right,

Merry Christmas my friend, Semper Fi and goodnight.

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Messages of Support:

You don't have to look too far to know of someone deployed overseas ... perhaps a member of your own family, or the family of a co-worker or friend. Let's not forget them this holiday season. I know the joy which results by receiving messages from "home". This year is it even easier than taking pen to paper. You can do it on the Internet.

Previously, the Department of Defense has placed a moratorium on mail addressed to "Any Servicemember." In the past, this was a way for people to share their thoughts with and give support to our men and women in the service. These letter-writing campaigns have always been a morale booster, however mail-related attacks (anthrax) have resulted in the cancellation the program. The safety of servicemembers is paramount.

Many independent organizations are ready and willing to help you support the troops via other methods. Although the military services no longer accept "Any Servicemember" mail, the troops can still receive messages from patriotic citizens. It simply means finding an organization to help you get that morale-boosting message to the troops.

With little effort I found two web sites that can help.

The first is Defend America. The web address is: http://www.defendamerica.mil/support-troops.html Listed there are Web sites for several organizations that are sponsoring programs for members of the armed forces overseas. Two examples would be "Hugs From Home" and "Operation Dear Abby."

The second is the AnyServiceMember.Org web site. The address is: http://www.anyservicemember.org/main.html From the main page, there are links on the left side to view or leave general messages to the troops in the various branches of the military. AnyServiceMember.Org was created to fill a void left by the cancellation of the "Any Service Member" mail program due to the Anthrax threat.

Thanks to Thomas S. Ellsworth

~~~~~

Rules to Live By

Johnson’s Law: There is nothing to scratch but the surface.

Williams’s Law: No mechanical problem is so difficult it can’t be solved by brut force and ignorance.

Harding’s Homily: It’s hard to be nostalgic when you can’t remember anything.

Hylton’s Rule: No job is too small to botch.

from the Jan, ‘96 ARNS -- AF6S, Editor

~~~~~

The 2005 Miss Magnolia and Miss Teen Magnolia-America Pageants will be at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Magnolia Junior High School Auditorium.

~~~~~

News from one of our favorite missionaries;

Yesterday was my last day in school and it was wonderful. Sometimes you have that Experience where even through all your shortcomings and flaws the holy Spirit is able to say what he wanted to say and then.... they get it. They Just get it. Those are the days that keep me going.

Merry Christmas

Paul Troquille - Tanzania

~~~~~

Received from a friend;

"Our new corporate s p a m blocking software went live this weekend. The FIRST item blocked was the corporate newsletter..."

You can't make this stuff up.

~~~~~

Brister Baptist Church Cookbooks for Sale

Lots of delicious recipes from local cooks. Brister Baptist Church women are selling these cookbooks just in time for Christmas giving for $10 each. Call or come by to see a copy.

Contact Connie Triplet at 6239 or 547-2907.

~~~~~

The Albemarle 2005 Relay for Life Team Plans five fund raising lunches next year. Total cost of the lunches will be $30 but you can buy advance "Season" tickets for $25. Good idea.

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There's still time to go to; http://tinyurl.com/4o3hm to pick up a great toy or ten.

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Delton Edwards is in Shumpert Hospital for an operation. He maybe over there for awhile.

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Three of my uncles (Williard, Hoot and Bob) were iron workers. They built Schools, Bridges and Factories all over the south. In fact, we always called the bridge on LA 2 over the Red River “Uncle Bob’s Bridge” because it was one he worked on.

There was a movie scene shot off that bridge back in the 60s. A stunt man leaped off the bridge into the Red River.

I think the whole family went to the movies to see a man jump off of Uncle Bob’s Bridge.

~~~~~

Don't forget ... "Da Bleat" is now on the web. Just go to http://bugsbleat.blogspot.com

~~~~~

In this instance, we are publishing yet another from our series of firehouse recipes from our resident "chef," Doug Cincurak. With your taste buds in mind, this month's selection from Doug is Italian Meatloaf.

Doug is currently a lieutenant with the City of Green (Ohio) Division of Fire, where he has served for 19 years as a firefighter/paramedic. Among his many services to the fire-rescue industry, he also is a Contributing Editor to National Fire & Rescue magazine and a firehouse chef for his department. For this and other recipes, keep checking in with NF&R at www.nfrmag.com, or you can contact Doug by e-mail at dcincurak@sbcglobal.net.

Firehouse Italian Meatloaf - Feeds Eight Hungry Firemen

Ingredients

6 lbs Lean Ground Beef

6 cups bread crumbs

1 cups of onions finely chopped

1 cups of green pepper finely chopped

2 cups of Parmesan cheese

6 large cloves of garlic chopped

1/4 cup of oregano

1/4 cup of basil

1 tablespoon of salt

1 tablespoon of pepper

6 eggs beaten

2 28 oz cans of Italian Sauce

6 cups of shredded Mozzarella Cheese

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees

1. Combine all of the above ingredients in a large bowl.

2. Split the combined ingredients into three separate balls

Form the three balls into meat loafs

By splitting them up you decrease the cook time needed

3. Bake the meat loafs for 30 minutes

4. Remove the meat loafs and pour the Italian sauce over all of the loafs

then return them to the oven for another 15 minutes

5. Remove the loafs and sprinkle the mozzarella cheese on them. Return the

to the oven until the cheese is melted

6. Remove and serve with side dishes.

Side Dishes Ideas

A good starter is a tossed salad and Corn is also a good side dish with this recipe

My favorite side dish with this recipe is mashed potatoes. Often, I’ll make garlic mashed potatoes of cheddar cheese mashed potatoes. The other guys on my shift prefer either of these as opposed to regular mashed potatoes

Mashed Potatoes

5 - 7 lbs of potatoes

½ lb of butter

2 to 3 cups of milk

5 cloves of garlic ( for garlic mashed potatoes)

2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese ( for cheddar mashed potatoes)

Salt and pepper to taste

Peel the potatoes or if you want more nutrients, leave the skins on and make "Dirty Potatoes"

1. Boil the potatoes until fork tender

2. Drain and mash the potatoes

3. Add the milk, salt, pepper and butter and mash the potatoes

4. Add the garlic (for garlic potatoes) or the cheese (for cheddar mashed)

and stir until well blended.

Now you can call everyone in for dinner and enjoy !!

~~~~~

BREAKPOINT Commentaries

by Chuck Colson. - Prison Fellowship

Angelic Intervention

Prison Fellowship's Angel Tree Program

December 9, 2004

Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.

When your dad is in prison, and your mom has abandoned you, you don't expect a lot from life. Certainly, Tommy and David didn't. The boys, eight and nine years old, lived with their grandmother Lucy in San Antonio , Texas. But then they found out how God can use strangers to demonstrate His love for them.

Tommy and David were good kids. They did well in school and helped take care of their baby sister, who had been born addicted to crack cocaine. And they were sensible when it came to Christmas: All they asked for was clothing.

But their grandmother knew what Tommy and David really wanted for Christmas, and it broke her heart that they weren't going to get it. Nevertheless, when she met with Prison Fellowship's local Angel Tree church coordinator, a volunteer named Dianne, Lucy put aside her pride. She knew bicycles were too expensive, she said. But that was all the boys really wanted.

Driving to church that Sunday, Dianne told her husband, "I really want to find those boys bikes." Her husband promised to visit a used bike store, but they both had their doubts. They knew how expensive even a used bike could be, and two? Perhaps impossible.

But they had reckoned without God. That very morning at church a woman approached Dianne. "My children have outgrown their bikes," she said, "and I was wondering if you might have any use for them?" Dianne and her husband were speechless. They hadn't mentioned their request to anyone, yet God had provided bicycles just the right size for Tommy and David and they'd scarcely been used. With joyful hearts, Dianne and her husband presented the wonderful surprise to the boys that Christmas.

How often God works this way! Dianne, an Angel Tree volunteer for more than sixteen years, has learned never to turn down any donation. "God always has someone waiting for it," she says, "like the avocado green stove, oven, and refrigerator that one church member asked if I could use." Though Dianne couldn't think of an Angel Tree family who needed it, she said she'd take it.

Ninety minutes later, a recently released prisoner called. He explained that though he had some furniture, he didn't have any appliances. Once again avocado green or not God's gifts arrived just in time.

But the fact that this man would call Dianne at all illustrates why Angel Tree is so much more than simply a gift at Christmas. This ex-prisoner had always resisted any talk about God. But as he heard about Dianne's church caring for his family at Christmas through Angel Tree and throughout the year, his heart started to soften. He began attending Prison Fellowship Bible studies while incarcerated and finally gave his life to Christ.

This Christmas here at Prison Fellowship, we'll be working with churches and volunteers across the United States to give gifts to over half a million children of prisoners gifts that are given on behalf of parents behind bars. We still have 60,000 Angel Tree children who will not receive gifts unless someone steps in to help. If you want to send a gift and God's love to a prisoner's child this year, please call us at 1-800-55-ANGEL.

It's a chance to brighten the hearts of children like Tommy and David and, through God's grace, to soften the heart of a parent in prison.

*Out of respect for privacy, names of children and grandmother have been changed.

For further reading and information:

Please help support the ministry of Angel Tree . Donate online or call 1-800-55-ANGEL. We're also still looking for volunteer churches and community groups to deliver gifts and the Gospel to prisoners' children this Christmas.

Sign up today for the free daily Angel Tree Advent e-mail newsletter and don't miss another edition. Read past stories here.

Charles Colson and Mark Earley, Six Million Angels (Servant, 2003).

Ryota Dei, " Sailor finds new life through Angel Tree ," Pacific Daily News, 26 November 2004.

Rebekah Montgomery, " The Miracle of the Paper Angels ," Crosswalk.com, 7 December 2004.

Robert Malone, " Program collects toys for children ," Clarion-Ledger (Miss.), 7 December 2004.

"Lawyers Leave Presents ," Week.com, 4 December 2004.

"Many Children's Names Still Haven't Been Selected from Angel Trees ," WKYT (Ky.), 7 December 2004.

Melodie Wright, " Poulsbo woman coordinates Angel Tree Christmas ," The Sun (Wash.), 6 December 2004.

Linda Owen, " Heaven's Angels Deliver Bicycles to Local Children ," saWorship.com, 24 November 2004.

Stacy Hawkins Adams, " Bringing love to children of inmates ," Richmond Times-Dispatch (Va.), 16 November 2004.

"Christmas Angels work tirelessly to give gifts to kids ," Arizona Republic, 13 November 2004.

Angela Patterson, " Gathering together: Church projects bring meaning to spirit of holiday giving ," Knoxville News Sentinel, 1 December 2004.

BreakPoint Commentary No. 031031, " Nothing Is Impossible: An Angel Tree Story ."

BreakPoint Commentary No. 031030, " Unforgotten: An Angel Tree Story ."

Copyright 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BREAKPOINT with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries. Prison Fellowship Ministries may withdraw or modify this grant of permission at any time. To receive "BREAKPOINT" commentaries daily, you can subscribe for free at http://www. breakpoint. org/.

~~~~~

From the Four States Skywarn Network

Hope everyone is doing well. I have been compiling e-mail lists this fall so I can communicate with everyone more efficiently. One of my goals has been to establish some kind of forum where we can exchange questions, comments, and ideas with each other. The fruit of this is to better serve our public through greater understanding of our role in warning the public, best practices, etc.

The e-mail list that I've compiled is by no means complete. I wanted to get started with the folks I have met that take a lead in their respective skywarn groups. If you think I need to add someone from your group, i.e. assistant skywarn leader, please let me know their name and e-mail address.

We are nearing completion of an online skywarn class complete with test and certificate. The online class will not replace us coming to your location, but rather supplement for those who can not attend the class or want to review a few months down the road. I will let you know when we are ready to go online so you can preview it.

We are making some modifications to the current class structure. We'll offer the main class (previously called Basic) and have a more advance section that will piggy back the main class. The advance material will take about 30 to 35 minutes to cover and the main class about 1 ½ hours. This way you can have all the material in one night which will be easier for people to attend. Changes will be made to our web page to reflect the upcoming class structure. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask.

Thanks,

Mark Frazier Mark.Frazier@noaa.gov

NWS Shreveport

~~~~~

Words of the Week:

malversation: misconduct in public office.

cadre: a core or nucleus of trained or otherwise qualified personnel around which an organization is formed.

exhort: to urge strongly.

genuflect: to bend the knee, as in worship; also, to grovel.

demur: to object; also, to delay.

perfervid: ardent; impassioned.

solecism: a nonstandard usage or grammatical construction.

extemporaneous: composed, performed, or uttered on the spur of the moment.

from Dictionary.Com

~~~~~

Albemarle hourly employees at the Magnolia Plants will be receiving a general wage increase of 3% effective December 20, 2004. This increase is possible due to a number of factors including company performance, plant performance and the wage and benefit survey recently conducted. We have had a great year and have many challenges ahead of us in the weeks and months coming. I am confident that our past performance is a true indicator of our future performance and successes. Let's keep up the great work.

Joe Bossier

~~~~~

www.aaa.com Regular Mid Premium Diesel

Current Avg. $1.880 $1.996 $2.069 $2.104

http://www.fuelgaugereport.com/

~~~~~

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats

"There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning and yearning." - Christopher Morley

"Not to decide is to decide." - Havery Cox

"The great use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it." - James Truslow Adams

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or to be the mirror that reflects it." - Edith Newbold Wharton

"There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship." - Iris Murdoch

"To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him." - Honore de Balzac

"It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them." - Alfred Adler

"Enthusiasm is the best protection in any situation. Wholeheartedness is contagious. Give yourself, if you wish to get others." - David Seabury

~~~~~

FLASH CARD "Writers, let us make no mistake, are swine." (Joseph Epstein)

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FLASH CARD "I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." (Frank Lloyd Wright)

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FLASH CARD "As long as algebra is taught in school, there will be prayer in school. " (Cokie Roberts)

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FLASH CARD "Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me." (Anatole France)

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FLASH CARD "The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery." (Anais Nin)

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"Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. (W. H. Auden)

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"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." (A. A. Milne)

*******

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." (Pablo Picasso)

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"A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights." (Napoleon Bonaparte)

*******

"No, no!" said the Queen. "Sentence first -- verdict afterwards." (Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland")

*******

"All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height."(Casey Stengel)

*******

"For myself I am an optimist-it does not seem to be much use being anything else." (Winston Churchill)

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"We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read." (Mark Twain)

*******

"The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun." (R. Buckminster Fuller)

*******

"Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours." (Yogi Berra)

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GCF: Close Enough for Government Work

Found at The Shark Tank (Computerworld) -Tom

http://www.computerworld.com/news/2004/story/0,11280,97646,00.html

If this was forwarded to you, please consider your own subscription to Good Clean Fun. It's free! A smile will enhance the quality of your life. Just send an email to: good-clean-fun-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or visit the Good Clean Fun web site http://www.slonet.org/~tellswor/ UNSUBSCRIBE INFO for Good Clean Fun is at the end of this email. This email was scanned by Norton AntiVirus 2004 before it was sent.

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This insurance company's contract with a government agency has just expired, and a technician fields the call from an agency bureaucrat reminding him that he needs to destroy the agency-provided software.

"I agreed that we would delete the software from the mainframe computer," says the tech.

The reply? "That's not good enough -- the software must be destroyed."

"How do you destroy software?" tech asks. But the agency guy can't give specifics. "He just kept insisting that deleting the software was not enough – we must destroy the software!"

The tech finally suggested that we copy the software onto a tape cartridge, have a steamroller roll over it and send the flattened tape cartridge to the agency.

The steamroller was on site because a company was repaving the parking lot. The tech suggested the idea because of frustration with the construction in the parking lot -- and frustration with the government employee who did not seem to have a clue about the nature of software.

We put the flattened cartridge, at least all the pieces worth picking up, and the crushed tape into a padded envelop and mailed it to the government agency, to his attention.

We received a sincere thank you from the agency.

- ------------------- -

GCF: Got Cable?

Emailed to me from another humor list (Cascade Express E-zine) -Tom To subscribe to Cascade Express E-zine, send a blank email to: Cascade-Express-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

-------------------------------

In my job as an electronics salesman, I've seen the rise in popularity of sport-utility vehicles and mini-vans. This has created a market for rear-seat entertainment. Monitors that keep passengers occupied with movies and television have been selling like crazy.

One day, as I was showing a young couple how a monitor could play videos, DVD's, and even pick up local TV stations, the husband asked matter-of-factly, "Does it get cable?"

- ------------------- -

GCF: Little Brother?

Emailed to me from another humor list (Cascade Express E-zine) -Tom To subscribe to Cascade Express E-zine, send a blank email to: Cascade-Express-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

---------------------------------

A mother asked her small son what he would like for his birthday. "I'd like a little brother," the boy said.

"Oh my, that's such a big wish," said the mother. "Why do you want a little brother?"

"Well," said the boy, "there's only so much I can blame on the dog."

- ------------------ -

GCF: Gift Suggestions

Emailed to me by a friend (Thanks, Howard) -Tom

---------------------------------

I you have an "Automotive Minded" Person in you life, these gift suggestions should be considered.

1. Tire Air Change Kit. This kit comes with everything you need to change the air in your tires. This highly recommended but often overlooked maintenance item is much easier now. Remember to change your air every 3000 miles or twice a year. $25

2. Blinker Fluid. You knew it existed but, WOW, is this stuff hard to find. 4oz bottle. $12

3. Synthetic Blinker Fluid. Better yet! 4oz bottle. $24

4. Light Bulb Filaments. Why throw away a perfectly good turn signal or stop light bulb when you can just install a new filament? Premium Filaments, made in the USA! $1 ea.

5. Manifold Heat. Yes, your exhaust manifold should be HOT. If it's not, you may need this item. Sold by the pound. $3.50

6. Steering Wheel Gaskets. All SIZES available! Email for specific application. From $9.99

7. Tie Rod Tensioner. Is your tie rod limp? Tension it with T-50! $14.99

8. Alternator Batteries. (4 required, replace them all!) From $2.99

9. Fan Belt Buckles. Specify brass or chrome. Gold available special order. $14.99

10. Muffler Bearing Manual. Print version $59.95

11. Muffler Bearing Manual. CD version $49.99

12. Universal Muffler Bearing Tool Kit $105.59

13. Muffler Bearing Hi Temp Synthetic Lube (the only kind we sell!) $40.24

14. Muffler Bearings From $19.95

15. Muffler Bearing Gasket Kits From $9.99

16. Momentum (required for tackling some off road obstacles). Sold by the lb-ft/sec $0.50

17. Microsoft Windows Eliminator. If your car or truck begins to run poorly, (long time to start, frequent crashes, etc.), it's computer, (ecm, ecu, black box, etc.), may have become infected with this nasty computer virus. This product will safely remove the virus. $199

18. Mirror Image Flipper Film. Did you know that the image you see in your rear view mirrors are reversed! This is a manufacturing flaw that the auto companies have kept secret for years as the recall would cost BILLIONS!

This film can be cut and placed over any mirror to correct the image. Now you'll be able to read signs in the rear view mirror! $5 per square ft.

- -------------------- -

GCF: Longer Days

Emailed to me from another humor list (The Funnies) -Tom To subscribe to The Funnies, send a blank email to: andychaps-the-funnies-subscribe@egroups.com

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I was working in a scrap yard in Southern England during summer vacation at an engineering university. I used to work repairing construction equipment.

One afternoon, I was taking apart a piling hammer that had some very large bolts holding it together. One of the nuts had corroded on to the bolt; to free it, I started heating the nut with an oxy-acetylene torch.

As I was doing this, one of the dimmest apprentices I have ever known came along. He asked me what I was doing. I patiently explained that if I heated the nut, it would grow larger and release its grip on the bolt so I could then remove it.

"So things get larger when they get hot, do they?" he asked.

Suddenly, an idea flashed into my mind (I know not from where.)

"Yes," I said, "that's why days are longer in summer and shorter in winter."

There was a long pause, then his face cleared.

"You know, I always wondered about that," he said.

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\\\\ \-/ / \ \-/ ////

\ / Why does the sun on the \ /

\ -/ Raisin Bran cereal box \- /

/ / wear sunglasses? \ \

\ -/ \- /

\\\\ \-/ / "The most terrifying words in \ \-/ ////

\ / the English language are: \ /

\ -/ I'm from the government and \- /

/ / I'm here to help." \ \

-Ronald Reagan

\ -/ \- /

\\\\ \-/ / "How long have you \ \-/ ////

\ / been working here?" \ /

\ -/ \- /

/ / "Since they threatened to fire me." \ \

\\\\ \-/ / \ \-/ ///// / \ \

\\\\ \-/ / Imagine what the world would \ \-/ ////

\ / sound like if the inventor of \ /

\ -/ the telephone had been \- /

/ / Alexander Graham Siren. \ \

\\\\ \-/ / \ \-/ ///// / \ \

\\\\ \-/ / Some people try to turn back \ \-/ ////

\ / their odometers. Not me, \ /

\ -/I want people to know "why" I look \- /

/ / this way. I've traveled a long way \ \

and some of the roads weren't paved.

/ / \ \

/ / \ \

\\\\ \-/ / \ \-/ ///// / \ \

/ )| Thomas S. Ellsworth |( \

/ / | tellswor@slonet.org | \ \

-( (- | http://www. slonet.org/~tellswor | -) )-

(((\ \>|-/ )---------------------( \-|

*** Good Clean Fun ***

Stop for a visit, leave with a smile! To join Good Clean Fun, email: good-clean-fun-subscribe@yahoogroups.Com To leave Good Clean Fun, email: good-clean-fun-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.Com Or visit the Good Clean Fun web site at http://www. slonet.org/~tellswor/

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[GCFL.net] Family Movie

On a recent evening my family sat in a darkened theater waiting to see the latest hit movie. As the screen lit up with a flashy ad for the theater's concession stand, we noticed the sound was missing. The unexpected silence continued for several moments.

Then, out of the darkness, an irritated voice in the crowd demanded, "Okay, who's got the remote?"

Received from Bob Savage.

-=+=-

Smartest Dog

Four men were bragging about how smart their dogs were.

One man was an engineer, the second man was an accountant, the third man was a chemist, and the fourth was a government worker.

To show off, the engineer called to his dog. "T-square, do your stuff." T-square trotted over to a desk, took out some paper and a pen, and promptly drew a circle, a square, and a triangle.

Everyone agreed that that was pretty smart.

The accountant said that his dog could do better. He called to his dog and said, "Spreadsheet, do your stuff." Spreadsheet went out into the kitchen and returned with a dozen cookies. He divided them into four equal piles of three cookies each.

Everyone agreed that that was good.

The chemist said that his dog could do better still. He called to his dog and said, "Measure, do your stuff." Measure got up, walked over to the fridge, took out a quart of milk, got a ten-ounce glass from the cupboard, and poured exactly eight ounces without spilling a drop.

Everyone agreed that that was pretty impressive.

Then the three men turned to the government worker and said, "What can your dog do?"

The government worker called to his dog and said, "Coffee Break, do your stuff." Coffee Break jumped to his feet, ate the cookies, drank the milk, claimed he had injured his back while doing so, filed a grievance report for unsafe working conditions, put in for workers' compensation, and went home for the rest of the day on sick leave.

They all agreed that that was brilliant!

Received from Bob Savage.

-=+=-

Ten Marriage Quips

Quip 1: Marriages are made in heaven, but so again are thunder and lightning.

Quip 2: If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say, talk in your sleep.

Quip 3: Marriage is grand -- and divorce is at least 100 grand!

Quip 4: Married life is very frustrating. In the first year of marriage, the man speaks and the woman listens. In the second year, the woman speaks and the man listens. In the third year, they both speak and the neighbors listen.

Quip 5: When a man opens the door of his car for his wife, you can be sure of one thing: Either the car is new or the wife is.

Quip 6: Marriage is when a man and woman become as one; the trouble starts when they try to decide which one.

Quip 7: Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said. After marriage, he will fall asleep before you finish.

Quip 8: Every man wants a wife who is beautiful, understanding, economical, and is a good cook, but the law allows only one wife.

Quip 9: Every woman wants a man who is handsome, understanding, economical and a considerate lover, but again, the law allows only one husband.

Quip 10: Man is incomplete until he marries. After that, he is finished.

Received from FramCMT2.

-=+=-

GM's Annual Report

My company had a successful year, and at the annual meeting, employees eagerly awaited the general manager's report on the performance of our branch.

"You are the role models of our company," he proudly announced. "I can tell you that whenever the owners talk about you and your office, they use nothing but expletives." A stunned silence followed.

Then the manager blushed, cleared his throat, and added,

"I meant superlatives."

Received from Bob Savage.

-=+=-

Stumpy Legged Pink Dog

A guy walks into a bar with his dog on a leash, and the barman says, "Geez, that's a weird dog: he's stumpy-legged, pink, and doesn't have a tail, but I bet my Rottweiler would beat the heck out of it." Fifty bucks is laid down. Out in the yard, the Rottweiler gets mauled to pieces.

Another drinker says his Pit Bull will win, but the bet is 100 bucks.

Another trip to the yard and, when it's all over, there are bits of Pit Bull Terrier all over the place. The drinker pays up and says, "Say, what breed is that anyway?"

The owner says, "Until I cut his tail off and painted it pink, it was the same breed as every other alligator."

Received from Doug Taylor.

-=+=-

Brought to you by GCFL.net: The Good, Clean Funnies List "A cheerful heart is good medicine!" (Prov 17:22a) Remember when the funniest jokes were the clean ones? They still are! GCFL.net: The Good, Clean Funnies List: Good, clean funnies five times a week, for free . . .AND NO ADS! The latest GCFL funny can always be found on the web at http://gcfl.net/archive/latest.php

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'Prodigal Son' Tongue Twister 11.6

From: SMILE A WHILE

From Pat Tucker and Connie Weaver.

-------------------------

Have fun reading.........it's especially fun when you mimic Sylvester, the cat, from the Tweety Bird cartoons.........

Feeling footloose and frisky, a featherbrained fellow forced his fond father to fork over his farthings. He flew far to foreign fields and frittered his fortune, feasting fabulously with faithless friends.

Finally facing famine and fleeced by his fellows-in-folly, he found himself a feed flinger in a filthy farmyard. Fairly famished, he fain would have filled his frame with foraged food from the fodder fragments.

"Fooey! My father's flunkies fare far fancier," the frazzled fugitive fumed feverishly, frankly facing facts.

Frustrated by failure and filled with foreboding, he fled forthwith to his family. Falling at his father's feet, he floundered forlornly, "Father, I have flunked and fruitlessly forfeited family favor." But the faithful father, forestalling further flinching, franticallly flagged the flunkies to fetch for the finest fatling and fix a feast.

The fugitive's fraternal faultfinder frowned on the fickle forgiveness of former folderol. His fury flashed, but fussing was futile.

The farsighted father figured, "Such filial fidelity is fine, but what forbids fervent festivity for the fugitive is found? Unfurl the flags with flaring, let fun and frolic freely flow. Former failure is forgotten, folly forsaken. Forgiveness forms the foundation for future fortune.

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One day in the Garden of Eden, Eve called out to God.

"Lord, I have a problem!"

"What's the problem, Eve?"

"Lord, I know you created me and provided this beautiful garden and all of these wonderful animals and that hilarious comedic snake, but I'm just not happy."

"Why is that, Eve?" came the reply from above.

"Lord, I am lonely, and I'm sick to death of apples."

"Well, Eve, in that case, I have a solution. I shall create a man for you."

"What's a man, Lord?"

"This man will be a flawed creature, with many bad traits. He'll lie, cheat, and be vain. All in all, he'll give you a hard time. But he'll be bigger, faster, and will like to hunt and kill things. He will be witless and will revel in childish things like fighting and kicking a ball about. He won't be too smart, so he'll also need your advice to think properly."

"Sounds great." said Eve, with an ironically raised eyebrow.

What's the catch, Lord?"

"Well... you can have him on one condition."

"What's that, Lord?"

"As I said, he'll be proud, arrogant, and self-admiring... So you'll have to let him believe that I made him first. Just remember, it's our little secret...

"You know, woman to woman."

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SIGNS YOU'RE OVERDOING THANKSGIVING........

* Hundreds of volunteers have started to stack sandbags around you.

* Doctor tells you your weight would be perfect for a man 17 feet tall.

*. You are responsible for a slight but measurable shift in the earth's axis.

* You spill more food on you than the local soup kitchen dispenses

* Paramedics bring in the Jaws of Life to pry you out of the EZ-Boy

* Your after dinner moans are loud enough to signal Dr. Kevorkian

* The "Gravy Boat" your wife set out was a real 12' boat!

* The potatoes you used set off another famine in Ireland

* Your "Big Elvis Super-Belt" won't even go around your waist

* You receive a Sumo Wrestler application in your e-mail

* You set off 3 earthquake seismographs on your morning jog Friday

* Pricking your finger for cholesterol screening only yielded gravy

* You have 5 TV sets side-by-side to catch all the football games

* That rash on your stomach turns out to be steering wheel burn

* Your wife wears a life jacket at night in your water bed

* Representatives from the Butterball Hall of Fame called twice

* You consider gluttony as your pat

* It looks like the leftovers are gonna last until Christmas

* Your arms are too short to reach the keyboard & delete this

* A guest quotes a Biblical passage from "The Feeding of the 5000"

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OK OK ..... let's see how many I can offend with this one! LOL Pastor Roy :-)

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Two men were shipwrecked on an island. After weeks without eating, one man said, "Why are we starving? Let's go over to the bacon tree and get some bacon."

The second man said, "There's no such thing as a bacon tree."

"Oh, yes there is," insisted the first fellow. He proceeded to march over to the other side of the island to the bacon tree.

He came back, hours later, with his body full of arrows.

"You were right," he gasped to his friend. "That wasn't a bacon tree. It was a ham bush."

Submitted by David Berenguer to the Christian Humor Site (Fishers of Grin)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another "groaner" from one of my bestest seminary roommates back at ol' Blue Devil U. (Duke University). Thanks, "Nephew!" From: Rick Moser

------------------------------

This psychiatrist is doing his rounds of his asylum with a couple of students. They look in on one patient and the psychiatrist says to his students, "Sometimes this fellow thinks he's a temptress in a Bizet opera, but today, as you can see from his goose stepping, he thinks he's the World War II head of the Luftwaffe. What condition do you think he's suffering from?" The first student replies, "Is he a paranoid schizophrenic with a multiple personality disorder?" The second student says, "No, surely he just doesn't know whether he's Carmen or Goerring."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Check out more humor on the Christian Humor site: GILLIGAN'S ISLAND AND THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS and you thought it was just a brainless TV show. Plus how to be a good Democrat/Republican, the time machine, why lawyers don't go to heaven and Cross Circuit cartoons -- all in today's selected links from A Whole Month of Jokes! http://christianhumor.about.com/library/dj/bl.1116.htm

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An appropriate "psalm" for the week after Thanksgiving! Roy :-)

----------------------

MY APPETITE IS MY SHEPHERD (POUND 23)

My appetite is my shepherd; I always want.

It maketh me sit down and stuff myself.

It leadeth me to my refrigerator repeatedly.

It leadeth me in the path of Burger King for a Whopper.

It destroyeth my shape.

Yea, though I knoweth I gaineth, I will not stop eating

For the food tasteth so good.

The ice cream and the cookies, they comfort me.

When the table is spread before me, it exciteth me

For I knoweth that I sooneth shall dig in.

As I filleth my plate continuously,

My clothes runneth smaller.

Surely bulges and pudgies shall follow me all the days of my life

And I shall be "pleasingly plump" forever.

--------------------

From: Mikey's Funnies

To: Mikey's Funnies

From: Dean Maggard

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I rec'd this directly from "Sermon Fodder" (to which I subscribe), but it also came to me from Carole Martin on this SMILEAWHILE List. At least two of us thought it worthwhile! Thank you, Carole!

:-) Pastor Roy

A Preacher was doing his "Children's Church" sermon where all the youngsters come down front and hear a story. The pastor was discussing the story of Jonah. He quoted the scriptures from Jonah 1 and 2.

"And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying 'I called to the Lord our of my distress and He answered me.' ... and the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land." (Jonah 1:17 -- 2:2, 10)

When the Pastor finished the scripture quotation, he started trying to solicit input from the youngsters to help him complete his mini-sermon. He asked thoughtfully, "What does the fish vomiting Jonah out on dry land indicate to us today.

One of the youngsters spoke with great enthusiasm for the entire congregation to hear, "It proves, even a fish can't stomach a bad preacher!"

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==================================

This post is brought your way by Sermon Fodder. To subscribe drop a note to Sermon-Fodder-subscribe@onelist.com. Please leave this attached if you forward this to friends.

==================================

The Pope dies and goes to meet St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter escorts him in, and shows him to his mansion. The Mansion is huge, with angels circling the outside, and a massive deck at the rear where the Pope can watch the heavens in his robe and relax in his golden lounge chair.

St. Peter says, "Just make yourself at home, I have some errands to attend to and I'll be back to see that you're settled in.". The Pope eases into his golden lounge chair, and a small angel brings him a cool glass of water to sip, at which point a golden table appears out of nowhere, in just the right spot for the Pope to put down the glass between sips. The Pope is amazed further to find that the glass is always full when he picks it up, never running dry.

As he sits relaxing, the Pope watches other mansions float by on their clouds, and while finding them beautiful, he also observes that his is larger than any of them, as befits a Pope. Then from a distance, the Pope hears this amazing music; He looks to his left, and far away he sees a mansion ten times the size of his. Angels, cherubim, and seraphim are circling it, and then there's that wonderful music.....

As the mansion draws close, the music gets louder, and louder, and as it passes by, the Pope has to cover his ears, because of the sheer volume.

Later, St. Peter returns. The Pope says, "This is really wonderful. I have seen God's own mansion float by! There were angels, cherubim, seraphim, and this wonderful music...". "Wait a minute," say St. Peter. "Was the music really loud?" "Yes", said the Pope.

"That wasn't God's mansion, that was Jimi Hendrix' place." "Jimi Hendrix???!!!" said the Pope. "Why does he have a mansion ten times the size of mine? I was the leader of the Catholic Church!"

"Settle down!" said St. Peter. "We get you Popes in here all the time. We don't get many musicians."

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A preacher went to his church office on Monday morning and discovered a dead mule in the church yard. He called the police. Since there did not appear to be any foul play, the police referred the preacher to the health department. They said since there was no health threat that he should call the sanitation department. The sanitation manager said he could not pick up the mule without authorization from the mayor.

Now the preacher knew the mayor and was not to eager to call him. The mayor had a bad temper and was generally hard to deal with, but the preacher called him anyway. The mayor did not disappoint. He immediately began to rant and rave at the pastor and finally said, "Why did you call me anyway? Isn't it your job to bury the dead?" The preacher paused for a brief prayer and asked the Lord to direct his response. He was led to say, "Yes, Mayor, it is my job to bury the dead, but I always like to notify the next of kin first!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SMILEAWHILE is a hobby of Dr. Roy Knight, pastor of the Epworth-Lauckport UMC in Parkersburg, WV. SMILEAWHILE is not intended to offend or ridicule anyone's religious tradition or faith. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this list, one must do so by contacting smileawhile3@juno.com. Remember Proverbs 17:22 - "A cheerful disposition is good for your health; gloom and doom leave you bone-tired!"

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Santa Safety

From: Joe Tudor

A LETTER TO SANTA

To: Mr. Santa CIaus, North Pole

From: Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Washington, D.C.

Subject: Violations of OSHA Codes

Dear Sir,

1. Our inspectors have just completed a study of working conditions at your toy factory at the North Pole and find you in violation of Section C, Paragraph B of Regulation 1098, Article Seven, Division Four of Safety Factor 3-H and Rule 105, Registration No. 90087, Appendix Three of Safety and Health Regulations (See Items 54, 56, 69 in OSHA Code Book 361), in regard to manufacture of toys and other harmful objects.

2. To be more specific, our inspectors have discovered that your wife, who helps you make toys, does not have her own bathroom facilities. Under Section Five of Code 345: "A male and female bathroom must be provided on the ground floor of a house engaged in the production of stuffed animals. The bathrooms must each have their own sinks, hot water as well as shower, and must be 43 feet apart from each other with signs clearly marking what they are being used for."

3. Our inspectors have also discovered that you were opening mail with a scissors. OSHA Regulation 763 specifically says that all business mail must be opened by a mail opener nine inches long and no more than an inch and a half wide. You can get a waiver of this rule by filling out Form 987 A, but since it must be made at least 90 days before inspection it would not apply in your case, and you must pay a fine of $100 per 50 letters not opened in the manner as described in Code Book 19 B.

4. I also regret to inform you that we have received a very negative report from Inspector X in regard to the space allotted to your reindeer. Under Section C of Article Four each reindeer must be tethered in his own stall of ten feet by eight feet covered with 1.6 feet of hay. In the case of Donner and Blitzen their stalls were only nine feet long and our Inspector measured 1.4 inches of hay in Donner's stall and 1.3 inches in Blitzen's stall in contravention of Reindeer Regulation 43.

You can appeal this charge by filling out OSHA Form 2356 in triplicate and posting it to our branch office in Anchorage. A hearing will be held at which time you will be given an opportunity to explain the shortage of hay in the stall. If the board finds you in error you can further appeal to our office in Seattle, but you may not have the use of Donner and Blitzen until a ruling in writing is handed down from the Seattle office and signed by our Chief Inspector in Los Angeles.

5. It has been brought to our attention that on the evening of December 24th you intend to deliver the toys manufactured in your plant by reindeer sled, climbing on roofs and houses and sliding down chimneys. Our safety co-ordinator advises me that if you indeed go ahead with this form of delivery you will commit several infractions that would subject you to fine and possible imprisonment. The first is that if you arrive on any roof with a clatter you will be violating our regulation regarding noise. Any clatter over 1.9 decibels cannot be permitted. (See Index Three, Page 14)

6. The manner of entering and leaving a house by chimney is of utmost concern to us. You may descend a chimney providing you are not carrying any type of bag with you, and providing the inside of the chimney has steps one foot apart with a safety railing along the side. Once in the house you may not leave any packages that could be tripped over or broken. The packages must be neatly piled with 1.9 feet between them. Filling of stockings is permitted providing they have the strength to hang from the chimney of four pounds per stockings, or twice the weight of the articles to be deposited.

Our inspectors will be out on the night of December 24th and any infractions of the rules will be dealt with severely.

We hope you accept this letter in the spirit it was written, and let me take this opportunity to wish you and Mrs. Claus a very Merry Christmas.

Sincerely yours,

E. Scrooge

Director, Xmas OSHA

*********************

From: Martha Mueller Dong

Subject: Re: A LETTER TO SANTA

4. I also regret to inform you that we have received a very negative report from Inspector X in regard to the space allotted to your reindeer. Under Section C of Article Four each reindeer must be tethered in his own stall of ten feet by eight feet covered with 1.6 feet of hay. In the case of Donner and Blitzen their stalls were only nine feet long and our Inspector measured 1.4 inches of hay in Donner's stall and 1.3 inches in Blitzen's stall in contravention of Reindeer Regulation 43.

Hate to be too picky, but the regulations must have an error (or "Inspector X" did not grow up on a farm! )

Hay is food and from the note it appears that the inspector is referring to bedding material (which is straw) because only depth is cited. I am sure food would be referred to in weight or cubic feet.

The Society for Protection of Animals or the Society to Prevent Waste (or someone else) will surely protest the use of hay as bedding! (If food is used as bedding, I think even non-farmers can see that the dirt from hooves and waste products contaminating the food would cause further citations!)

Martha Dong, RN

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An Arkansas Christmas

While you're mind is on Christmas, remember (and tell others) the real gift of Jesus - his life for yours.

Now, y'all be sure and enjoy yourselves, and buckle up.

Joe Bob

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AN ARKANSAS CHRISTMAS

'Twas the night before Christmas,

and all through the shack,

not a darn thing was a movin',

from the front to the back.

The kids were in bed,

We had nine at the time,

The wife in her curlers,

was lookin' real fine.

A cold wind was blowin',

up the holler it moaned,

All ten dogs on the porch

howled and groaned.

The boys were all dreamin'

of weapons and guns,

for killin' God's creatures,

there's no better fun!

The girls in their feminine dreams

were attuned,

to getting those gallons

of Wal-Mart perfume.

The wife wanted jewelry,

like rings with big rocks,

I just wanted my Chevy

down off the blocks.

Then out in the yard,

such a noise did commence,

like something was caught

in our new bob-war fence.

I ran to the window,

and saw pretty quick,

the man makin' that racket,

was Good Ol' St. Nick.

You may think of Santa

in your own mind's eye,

dressed in a red and white suit,

But I've got a surprise.

That old boy's an Arkie,

from up near Mt. Gaylor;

He married his cousin,

and they live in a trailer.

On Christmas, of course,

a sleigh for his rig,

He hooks the thing up

to a Razorback pig!

He climbed on the roof,

with his bag full of goodies,

He backed down the fireplace,

all dirty and sooty.

Fat legs in his britches,

chubby hands in his mittens,

I must admit from the back,

he looked lots like Bill Clinton.

He turned toward the tree,

His eyes all aglow,

He was an Arkansas

boy from his head to his toe.

His neck was a red one,

His shirt said "Lite Beer",

he had no red hat on,

but his cap read "John Deere".

He left all the presents,

with an air of delight,

Then it was back to the chimney,

and into the night.

He ran into the yard,

threw his bag in the sleigh,

Then he yelled at the dogs,

"Get outta my way!"

I ran out to ask him

Why he brought such good cheer;

But instead he just asked me

"You get you a deer?"

Then I heard him exclaim,

as those pigs took to flight,

Merry Christmas to all

I need a Bud Lite!"

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Real Science papers written by kids

One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second.

You can listen to thunder after lightning and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don't hear it, you got hit, so never mind.

Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change into a sun in the daytime.

Many dead animals of the past changed to fossils, others preferred to become oil.

Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they are there.

I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing.

Isotherms and isobars are even more important than their names sound.

It is so hot in some parts of the world that the people there have to live in other places.

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Now you know everything!!!!

The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma.

No piece of paper can be folded in half more than seven (7) times.

Donkeys kill more people annually than airplane crashes.

You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.

Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty (50) years of age or older.

The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.

The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.

American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one (1) olive from each salad served in first-class.

Venus

is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

Apples,

not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning

Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.

The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer.

So did the first "MarlboroMan."

Walt Disney was afraid of mice.

Pearls melt in vinegar.

The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.

It is possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.

A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.

Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least six (6) feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush. (I keep my toothbrush in the living room now!)

Richard Millhouse Nixon was the first U.S. president whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal."

The second?

William Jefferson Clinton.

(Please don't tell me you're SURPRISED!?!!)

And the best for last.....

Turtles can breathe through their -----. (Anyone know the answer?)

(I know some people like that; don't YOU?)

Now you know everything there is to know

Thanks to Trina Montgomery

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Crosswalk - You Make Me Laugh:

Web Addiction Holiday Sing Along! (Sung to the tune of "Winter Wonderland")

Doorbell rings, I'm not list'nin',

>From my mouth, drool is glist'nin',

I'm happy -- although

My boss let me go --

Happily addicted to the Web.

All night long, I sit clicking,

Unaware time is ticking,

There's beard on my cheek,

Same clothes for a week,

Happily addicted to the Web!

Friends come by; they shake me, Saying, "Yo, man!

Don't you know tonight's the senior prom?"

With a listless shrug, I mutter; I say "No, man; I just discovered laugh-a-lot-dot-com!"

I don't phone, don't send faxes,

Don't go out, don't pay taxes,

Who cares if someday

They drag me away?

I'm happily addicted to the Web!

Happ-ilyyyyy, ad-dict-eeeed to the Weeeeeb!!! (Yeah!)

*Thanks to Pastor Tim for this joke!*

http://www.cybersalt.org/cleanlaugh

I Know About Santa

I figured that at age seven it was inevitable for my son to begin having doubts about Santa Claus. Sure enough, one day he said, "Mom, I know something about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy."

Taking a deep breath, I asked him, "What is that?"

He replied, "They're all nocturnal."

*Thanks to Pastor Tim for this joke!*

http://www.cybersalt.org/cleanlaugh

Sweat Her Choice

My mother once gave me two sweaters for Christmas. The next time we visited, I made sure to wear one.

As we entered her home, instead of the expected smile, she said,

"What's the matter? You didn't like the other one?"

*Thanks to Pastor Tim for this joke!*

http://www.cybersalt.org/cleanlaugh

Social Showdown

Two older women, Coleen and Melinda, who were rivals in a social circle met at a Christmas party at their country club.

"My dear," said Melinda, "Are those real pearls?"

"They are," replied Coleen.

"Of course the only way I could tell would be for me to bite them," smiled Melinda.

Coleen responded, "Yes, but for that you would need real teeth."

*Thanks to Pastor Tim for this joke!*

http://www.cybersalt.org/cleanlaugh

Sermon Interpretation

One Sunday after church Mom asked her very young daughter what the lesson was about.

Her daughter answered, "Don't be scared, you'll get your quilts." Needless to say, Mom was perplexed.

Later in the day, the Pastor stopped by for tea. Mom asked him what that morning's Sunday school lesson was about.

He said, "Be not afraid, Thy comforter is coming."

*Thanks to Pastor Tim for this joke!*

http://www.cybersalt.org/cleanlaugh

Translated Golf

An American was golfing at the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland. He slices his opening drive out of bounds onto the beach, so he tees another one up and smacks it right down the middle.

The golfer turns to his old Scottish caddy and tells him that in America that is called a

"Mulligan" and asks him if there is a name for it in Scotland.

The caddy replies, "AYE, we call it a three."

*Thanks to Pastor Tim for this joke!*

http://www.cybersalt.org/cleanlaugh

*Eye Laugh*

"Puppy Rest"

http://www.cybersalt.org/go.php?id=cw580

"Crooked Tree"

http://www.cybersalt.org/go.php?id=cw346

"Peanut Cat"

http://www.cybersalt.org/go.php?id=cw579

"Football Storage"

http://www.cybersalt.org/go.php?id=cw581

"Humble Beginnings"

http://www.cybersalt.org/go.php?id=cw582

"Emergency Visit"

http://www.cybersalt.org/go.php?id=cw584

Crosswalk

Daily devotionals are available at http://link.Crosswalk.Com/UM/T.asp?A1. 39. 17757. 1. 494611 You can access more information on Crosswalk's Fun page http://www.Crosswalk.Com/fun/! Crosswalk gives credit to the author of a joke when author is known. Feel free to send notification to admin@cybersalt.org in cases where credit has not been given to the author! -SUBSCRIPTION INFO- * Copyright2002 Crosswalk.Com, Inc. and its Content Providers. All rights reserved. Introducing www.Crossguide.Com Where Christians find Products, Services & Ministries.

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"Don't strive for recognition, but work for achievement." -- Vanessa Malone

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Madeleine Begun Kane Latest Columns - - officeparty.html - - Office Party Follies "There are few "fun" activities quite so vexing as the Office Christmas Party; that obligatory gathering of bosses and subordinates, cronies and rivals, back-stabbers and back-stabbees. Plus a horde of husbands and wives who spend the entire night planning their escape..."

Madeleine Begun Kane, Humor Columnist

http://www.madkane.com

http://www.madkane.com/notable.html (Notables Weblog)

http://www.madkane.com/bush.html (Dubya's Dayly Diary)

Subscribe to MadKane Humor Newsletter (weekly) here:

http://www.madkane.com/email.html

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The Health Consequences of Smoking: A 2004 Report of the Surgeon General - - http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/sgr/sgr-2004/index.htm - - The Centers for Disease Control issued this new comprehensive report on smoking and health, revealing for the first time that smoking causes diseases in nearly every organ of the body. Published 40 years after the surgeon generalís first report on smoking - which concluded that smoking was a definite cause of three serious diseases - this newest report finds that cigarette smoking is conclusively linked to diseases such as leukemia, cataracts, pneumonia and cancers of the cervix, kidney, pancreas and stomach.

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"Patients checking into hospitals and clients meeting with their lawyers often are advised to take a simple step toward planning for the future: fill out a living will. But the reality is, too often, they don't really work. The concept is straightforward: outline your wishes while you're healthy to guide doctors and family members who might have to make life-or-death decisions for you later on. Would you want to linger in a vegetative state if it were unlikely you'd ever wake up? Or would you rather be allowed to die? But end-of-life medical questions often involve much more complicated medical and moral questions. Many living wills are so vague as to be useless. 'We've tried to take very complicated, difficult, painful, wrenching decisions and make them a simple yes or no. These are never easy decisions and they're never black-and-white,' said Sean Morrison, a geriatrician at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York."

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Email Abuse - - http://www.emailabuse.org/ - - What is Email abuse? The use of electronic mail to advertise unethically, harass, annoy, or cause harm to the email recipient. Abuse can take the form of bulk email, threatening email, email sent with the intent to slow productivity of, or cause damage to, the recipient's system. It is a world wide problem and anyone with an email address is vulnerable. This site is dedicated to informing users of this potential abuse and providing them with the tools to avoid becoming a victim and to fight back at Email abusers.

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"During the holiday season, when gatherings and even shopping trips are often centered on food, weight gain can seem unavoidable. But watching portion sizes can help prevent those extra pounds. New additions to the Portion Distortion Interactive Quiz section of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Instituteís Web Site show the difference in size and calories between portions offered 20 years ago and what is often a standard serving today. 'This site not only teaches people how portion sizes have changed and calories have increased, but also the amount of physical activity one has to do to burn up those extra calories,' said Karen Donato, S.M., R.D., coordinator of NHLBIís Obesity Education Initiative."

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Your Access to Free Credit Reports http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/freereports.htm Soon you will be able to get your credit report for free. A recent amendment to the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies to provide you with a free copy of your credit report, at your request, once every 12 months. The FCRA promotes the accuracy and privacy of information in the files of the nationís consumer reporting companies. The Federal Trade Commission, the nationís consumer protection agency, enforces the FCRA with respect to consumer reporting companies.

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"All humans are capable of committing torture and other 'acts of great evil.' That is the unhappy conclusion drawn from an analysis of psychological studies. Over 25,000 psychological studies involving eight million participants support this finding, say Susan Fiske and colleagues at Princeton University. The researchers considered the circumstances surrounding how individuals committed seemingly inexplicable acts of abuse in the midst of the US militaryíís torture of Iraqi inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 and 2004. 'Could any average 18-year-old have tortured these prisoners? I would have to answer: ëëYes, just about anyone could have,' Fiske says. Many forms of behaviour, including acts of cruelty, are influenced as much by authority figures, peer pressure and other social interactions as by the psychology of the individual, she says."

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Obituaries 101 - - http://www.big101.com/OBITUARIES101.htm - - This site contains listings and links to all the obituary notices supplied online by all the newspapers in the United States. The states are arranged alphabetically with their newspapers listed by name and city. The site also lists prominent deaths for the date, as well as those reported in the Associated Press.

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"In a portrait of perfect composition, Saturn's moon Tethys has been captured hanging suspended in space just below the planet's horizon. This latest image in Saturn's family album was captured on 18 October at a distance of 3.9 million kilometres from Saturn by the Cassini spacecraft. It clearly shows the Ithaca Chasma, a vast trench about 65 kilometres (40 miles) wide, on the surface of Tethys. The icy moon - the ninth of Saturníís 33 daughters - was first discovered by astronomer Giovanni Cassini in 1684 and named after the youngest of three mythological titans. It is thought that the fissure in its surface arose when Tethys was a cooling sphere of liquid; its crust hardened before cracking as the interior solidified. The pioneering Cassini-Huygens mission blasted off in 1997 and entered orbit around Saturn in June 2004 to begin its four-year tour of the solar system's 'most beautiful planet' and its moons. The probe has snapped many never-before-seen images of Saturn's signature rings and challenged astronomersíí theories that its largest moon, Titan, has a watery surface."

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Guidelines For Good Nutrition - - http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm?objectid=03653D0C-535A-4173-B87C8C3E1C28133B - - The most recent recommendations come from the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine. These guidelines are significantly different from those of the past, particularly in regard to carbohydrates and fat. More fat is allowed, and carbohydrates have a lower minimum percentage - from 55 percent to 45 percent. This is due to research indicating that people with a certain body type and metabolic profile may benefit from fewer carbohydrates and more monounsaturated fat. Related site: Menus For Heart-healthy Eating. - - http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm?objectid=99860380-8C24-4F33-AD573E7DEB9C9A0E

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"Cigarettes may cost smokers more then they believe. A study by a team of health economists finds the combined price paid by their families and society is about $40 per pack of cigarettes. The figure is based on lifetime costs for a 24-year-old smoker over 60 years for cigarettes, taxes, life and property insurance, medical care and lost earnings because of smoking-related disabilities, researchers said. 'It will be necessary for persons aged 24 and younger to face the fact that the decision to smoke is a very costly one - one of the most costly decisions they make,' the study's authors concluded. Smokers pay about $33 of the cost, their families absorb $5.44 and others pay $1.44, according to health economists from Duke University and a professor from the University of South Florida. The study drew on data including Social Security earnings histories dating to 1951."

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The WWW Virtual Library - - http://www.vlib.org/ - - The Virtual Library is the oldest catalog of the web, started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of html and the web itself. Unlike commercial catalogs, it is run by a loose confederation of volunteers, who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are expert; even though it isn't the biggest index of the web, the VL pages are widely recognised as being amongst the highest-quality guides to particular sections of the web.

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"The notion that community college students arrive fresh out of high school, study for two years and move up to a four-year college is quietly dissolving, a survey suggests. Instead, the experience for millions of students now involves spending four or more years piecing together an education at several colleges, and many never even earn an associate's degree. Two-thirds of community college students attend only part time, and a handful try out several colleges or enroll in two simultaneously, according to the Community College Survey of Student Engagement. Meanwhile, nearly one in six students already have a bachelor's degree. 'People just don't go to college like they used to,' says Kay McClenney, the survey's director and an adjunct professor at the University of Texas-Austin, which sponsors the survey."

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Lost at Sea: The Search for Longitude - - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/longitude/ - - This site is a companion to a PBS NOVA program. Based on the bestselling book Longitude by Dava Sobel, the program tells the story of how an unknown genius, John Harrison, discovered the key to navigating on the open seas and thus solved one of the thorniest problems of the 1700s.

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"Parents of overweight and obese kids often don't realize that their children are carrying excess pounds, new research shows. A survey of parents of nearly 300 children showed that only one-quarter of parents of overweight children recognized that their children had a weight problem. And even when kids were obese, around one-third of mothers and more than one-half of fathers said they thought their children's weight was 'about right.' Moreover, only one-quarter of parents said they were at least a 'little worried' about their overweight children, according to the report in the British Medical Journal. Not surprisingly, most parents who did not realize their children were overweight were unconcerned about their children's weight."

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Our Church, Magnolia Christian Center, has the following mission statement. Our purpose is to build a great church for the glory of God through the great commission and the great commandment. MCC' Vision - That MCC will be a place hopping with children, energized with teenagers, balanced with diversity and transformed by the power of God! We want to turn uninterested people into interested people and win the lost to make fully devoted followers of Christ.

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I knelt to pray but not for long,

I had too much to do.

I had to hurry and get to work

For bills would soon be due.

So I knelt and said a hurried prayer,

And jumped up off my knees.

My Christian duty was now done

My soul could rest at ease.....

All day long I had no time

To spread a word of cheer

No time to speak of Christ to friends,

They'd laugh at me I'd fear.

No time, no time, too much to do,

That was my constant cry,

No time to give to souls in need

But at last the time, the time to die.

I went before the Lord,

I came, I stood with downcast eyes.

For in his h ands God held a book;

It was the book of life.

God looked into his book and said

"Your name I cannot find.

I once was going to write it down...

But never found the time"

Thanks to Norma Kay

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I AM A CHRISTIAN

By Maya Angelou

When I say... "I am a Christian"

I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin."

I'm whispering "I was lost,"

Now I'm found and forgiven.

When I say..."I am a Christian"

I don't speak of this with pride.

I'm confessing that I stumble

and need CHRIST to be my guide.

When I say... "I am a Christian"

I'm not trying to be strong.

I'm professing that I'm weak

and need HIS strength to carry on.

When I say... "I am a Christian"

I'm not bragging of success.

I'm admitting I have failed

and need God to clean my mess.

When I say... "I am a Christian"

I'm not claiming to ! be perfect,

My flaws are far too visible

but, God believes I am worth it.

When I say... "I am a Christian"

I still feel the sting of pain,

I have my share of heartaches!

So I call upon His name.

When I say... "I am a Christian"

I'm not holier than thou,

I'm just a simple sinner

who received God's good grace, somehow.

Author ~Maya Angelou~

Share this with somebody who already has this understanding, as reinforcement. But more importantly, share this with those who do not have a clear understanding of what it means to be a Christian, so that the myth that Christians think they are "perfect" or "better than others" can be dispelled.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;! You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over."

Thanks to Trina Montgomery

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Excerpted from the 12/08/2000 “Bleat.” Thanks to Kenny for originally sharing these thoughts.

There is, an election of far greater importance (though if you watch CNN 24 hours a day, you may have trouble believing that). On the great Day of Judgment, we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Those who are God's elect will enter into everlasting life. All others will suffer eternal punishment. There will be no "recount" and there will be no lawyers to argue your case. That day will serve as the "deadline" and it will not be extended. There will be many people, though, who will not be pleased with the verdict.

"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'" (Matthew 7:21-23).

God has elected that all those who do His will receive the reward prepared for them. I pray that you will be among that number.

Have a great day!

Thanks to Kenny Kendrick

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Claiborne's students send him some pretty good stuff from time to time. This is an oldie but a goodie.

"make room for the strangers"

From: "Claiborne Sharp Jr."

From one of my students

----- Original Message -----

From: Jena Martino

Ruth went to her mail box and there was only one letter. She picked it up and looked at it before opening, but then she looked at the envelope again.

There was no stamp, no postmark, only her name and address. She read the letter:

Dear Ruth:

I'm going to be in your neighborhood Saturday afternoon and I would like to visit.

Love Always,

Jesus.

Her hands were shaking as she placed the letter on the table. "Why would the Lord want to visit me? I'm nobody special. I don't have anything to offer." With that thought, Ruth remembered her empty kitchen cabinets. "Oh my goodness, I really don't have anything to offer. I'll have to run down to the store and buy something for dinner." She reached for her purse and counted out it's contents. Five dollars and forty cents. "Well, I can get some bread and cold cuts, at least."

She threw on her coat and hurried out the door. A loaf of French bread, a half-pound of sliced turkey, and a carton of milk...leaving Ruth with grand total of twelve cents to last her until Monday.

Nonetheless, she felt good as she headed home, her meager offerings tucked under her arm. "Hey lady, can you help us, lady?"

Ruth had been so absorbed in her dinner plans, she hadn't even noticed two figures huddled in the alleyway. A man and a woman, both of them dressed in little more than rags. "Look lady, I ain't got a job, ya know, and my wife and I have been living out here on the street, and, well, now it's getting cold and we're getting kinda hungry and, well, if you could help us, lady, we'd really appreciate it."

Ruth looked at them both. They were dirty, they smelled bad and frankly, she was certain that they could get some kind of work if they really wanted to.

"Sir, I'd like to help you, but I'm a poor woman myself. All I have is a few cold cuts and some bread, and I'm having an important guest for dinner tonight and I was planning on serving that to Him." "Yeah, well, okay lady, I understand. Thanks anyway."

The man put his arm around the woman's shoulders, turned and he headed back into the alley. As she watched them leave, Ruth felt a familiar twinge in her heart. "Sir, wait!" The couple stopped and turned as she ran down the alley after them. "Look, why don't you take this food. I'll figure out something else to serve my guest." She handed the man her grocery bag.

"Thank you lady. Thank you very much!" "Yes, thank you!" It was the man's wife, and Ruth could see now that she was shivering.

"You know, I've got another coat at home. Here, why don't you take this one." Ruth unbuttoned her jacket and slipped it over the woman's shoulders. Then smiling, she turned and walked back to the street... without her coat and with nothing to serve her guest. "Thank you lady! Thank you very much!"

Ruth was chilled by the time she reached her front door, and worried too. The Lord was coming to visit and she didn't have anything to offer Him.

She fumbled through her purse for the door key. But as she did, she noticed another envelope in her mailbox.

"That's odd. The mailman doesn't usually come twice in one day." She took the envelope out of the box and opened it.

Dear Ruth:

It was so good to see you again. Thank you for the lovely meal. And thank you, too, for the beautiful coat.

Love Always,

Jesus

The air was still cold, but even without her coat, Ruth no longer noticed.

--- Jena Martino

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The "W" in Christmas

Each December, I vowed to make Christmas a calm and peaceful experience.

I had cut back on nonessential obligations - extensive card writing,endless baking, decorating, and even overspending.

Yet still, I found myself exhausted, unable to appreciate the precious family moments, and of course, the true meaning of Christmas.

My son, Nicholas, was in kindergarten that year. It was an exciting season for a six year old.

For weeks, he'd been memorizing songs for his school's "Winter Pageant."

I didn't have the heart to tell him I'd be working the night of the production. Unwilling to miss his shining moment, I spoke with his teacher. She assured me there'd be a dress rehearsal the morning of the presentation.

All parents unable to attend that evening were welcome to come then. Fortunately, Nicholas seemed happy with the compromise.

So, the morning of the dress rehearsal, I filed in ten minutes early, found a spot on the cafeteria floor and sat down. Around the room, I saw several other parents quietly scampering to their seats. As I waited, the students were led into the room. Each class, accompanied by their teacher, sat cross-legged on the floor. Then, each group, one by one, rose to perform their song.

Because the public school system had long stopped referring to the holiday as "Christmas," I didn't expect anything other than fun, commercial entertainment - songs of reindeer, Santa Claus, snowflakes and good cheer.

So, when my son's class rose to sing, "Christmas Love," I was slightly taken aback by its bold title.

Nicholas was aglow, as were all of his classmates, adorned in fuzzy mittens, red sweaters, and bright snowcaps upon their heads.

Those in the front row- center stage - held up large letters, one by one, to spell out the title of the song.

As the class would sing "C is for Christmas," a child would hold up the letter C. Then, "H is for Happy," and on and on, until each child holding up his portion had presented the complete message, "Christmas Love."

The performance was going smoothly, until suddenly, we noticed her; a small, quiet, girl in the front row holding the letter "M" upside down - totally unaware her letter "M" appeared as a "W".

The audience of 1st through 6th graders snickered at! this little one's mistake. But she had no idea they were laughing at her, so she stood tall, proudly holding her "W".

Although many teachers tried to shush the children, the laughter continued until the last letter was raised, and we all saw it together.

A hush came over the audience and eyes began to widen.

In that instant, we understood the reason we were there, why we celebrated the holiday in the first place, why even in the chaos, there was a purpose for our festivities.

For when the last letter was held high, the message read loud and clear:

"C H R I S T W A S L O V E"

And, I believe, He still is.

Amazed in His presence...

..humbled by His love.

Thanks to Trina Montgomery

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Amen To This

In case we find ourselves starting to believe all the anti-American sentiment and negativity about our government and its policies, we should remember England's Prime Minister Tony Blair's words to his own people.

During a recent interview, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain was asked by one of his parliament members as to why he believes so much in America and its President. And does he think America is on the right track?

Blair's reply -- "A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in ... and how many want out."

IN GOD WE TRUST

Thanks to Trina Montgomery

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Operator, Can ya help me place this call?

-------------------------------------------

Internet telephony (also called VoIP or Voice Over Internet Protocol) connects your phone to the Internet via your high-speed cable or DSL modem. Instead of plugging into your local phone company's wall jack, you plug your phone line into a telephony adapter. The adapter plugs into the modem and converts the signal from your phone into data that travels over the Internet. You still use your phone the same way.

Related News - http://www.tourbus.com/internet-phone-news.html

Why would you want to make the switch to Internet telephony? Saving money is the primary reason. Generally VoIP services cost only $20 to $30 per month, and that includes unlimited local and long distance calling. Some providers even include international calls for free.

The quality of the calls is generally excellent, but depends on the reliability of your Internet connection. If your cable/DSL service tends to be flaky, you may not want to use VoIP. You may also have choppy voice quality if you're using your Internet connection to download a large file during a conversation.

And of course, if there's a power outage, your phone won't work. If you have a cell phone as backup that may not be a big deal, but it's something to consider.

Related News - http://www.tourbus.com/cell-phone-news.html

If you're interested in trying out Internet telephone service, contact your Internet provider to see if they offer it. You may save money if you get it bundled with your current Internet service. You can also check into AT&T CallVantage [ http://www.callvantage.com ], Vonage [ http://vonage.com ], or Lingo [ http://lingo.com ].

Another option is Skype [ http://www.skype.com ] which gives you the option of truly free Internet calling. This is computer to computer calling, so you'll be making your calls using the microphone and speakers attached to your computer. They do offer Skype-to-phone calling, but that's a fee-based service. Skype works on Windows, Mac and Linux systems.

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British archaeologist discovers 'John the Baptist' cave near Jerusalem

Sun Dec 5, 2:10 PM ET Science - AFP

KIBBUTZ TSUBA, Israel (AFP) - A British archaeologist has uncovered a cave in the mountains near Jerusalem which he believes conclusively proves that the Biblical figure of John the Baptist existed.

"The first concrete evidence of the existence of John the Baptist has been found on site," 46-year-old Shimon Gibson told AFP.

Gibson, who holds a degree from University College London and has written several works on Biblical archaeology, believes the discovery to be "the first archaeological proof of the historical veracity of the Gospels".

Other archaeologists, however, believe Gibson's conclusions go too far, and that the discovery of an ancient place of worship linked to John the Baptist does not prove that he actually existed.

According to the New Testament, John the Baptist was a prophet and fiery preacher who lived in the mountains between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. A contemporary of Jesus, John called on people to repent of their sins, after which he would baptize them in the Jordan River.

The cave, which is located on the grounds of Kibbutz Tsuba just outside Jerusalem, is "about an hour's donkey ride from Ein Kerem, the village where Christian tradition says John was born," Gibson says.

It is also on the edge of the Judean desert, where John was known to hold spiritual retreats.

The cave is located on the side of a mountain in an area covered in pine forests, close to a riverbed in a steepsided valley where the kibbutz maintains an olive grove.

It was the kibbutzniks themselves who in 1999 first alerted Gibson to the existence of the cave, which had been hidden behind a mass of vegetation for years.

A field archaeologist with an air of Indiana Jones about him, Gibson crawled through a hole into the cave, which was filled with rocks and earth.

He decided to start excavating after discovering a crudely-drawn picture of John the Baptist carved into the limestone walls "dressed in camel hair robes" as described in the Gospel of Matthew.

Several crosses and a rough drawing of a severed head were also carved into the walls, illustrating John's death by beheading at the hands of Herod Antipas, ruler of the northern Galilee region at the time.

Underneath the picture of John is a small niche "designed for a relic", Gibson explains.

"These drawings are the work of Byzantine monks who used to gather in the cave to tell the history of John the Baptist," he said, pointing out an area around the eyes where vandals, or iconoclasts, had tried to destroy the pictures.

Excavations, which took place between 2000 and 2003 in conjunction with a team from the University of North Carolina, revealed a space some 24 metres (yards) long, 4.5 metres wide and four metres high, with 18 huge steps leading down to a large rectangular pool.

"Its use for baptism rituals dates back to the Iron Age, the era of the kings of Judea," he said.

"We discovered tens of thousands of shards from clay pitchers with one handle, each about 30 centimetres tall, which dated back to the era of John the Baptist," he said.

"Unlike the baptism rituals practised in the Jewish religion, which were individual and dealt with the purification of the body, those practised by the disciples of John were collective and dealt with the purification of the heart," he said.

Just outside the entrance, further excavations revealed several huge pools for collecting rainwater which fed the main pool inside -- only water "from heaven" being suitable for the sacred baptism ritual.

"Once the disciple came out of the ritual bath, he would place his right foot in a notch cut out of the rock, where they would pour oil on it, a ritual which sanctified his taking a new path," Gibson explains.

John the Baptist's cave, which has been restored by Kibbutz Tsuba, will be opened to the public early next year.

Thanks to Sean Hyman

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Revolution 4

From: jimmy malone

" I can't believe it all ended this way, " Cleopas muttered to his friend. The two followers of Jesus walked solemnly down the Emmaus road away from the turmoil that was Jerusalem.

" There is no way that trial was legal," Simeon replied bitterly. "They tried Him in the middle of the night! And I've heard ten different reasons why He was condemned...speaking evil of the temple, subverting the Law of Moses, treason against Ceasar, claiming to be the Son of God....I mean, what was their justification?"

"Jealousy, power, fear...you know how the scribes and Pharisees are, Simeon. They love to be seen and respected. This Man Jesus was TOO good. He made them look bad."

"He showed them to be what they were!" Simeon retorted. " ' White washed tombs', He called them. Pretty on the outside but dead on the inside. They say they serve God, but they desecrate our holiest holiday by staging a crucifixion on the eve of the Passover feast. The city was full of families coming from all over Judea to celebrate with their children, only to arrive to see Roman dogs executing three men outside of town. And one of them a Prophet of Yahweh!"

Cleopas shook his head slightly. " More than a prophet, I thought...I saw Him heal the lame, and cast out demons with a word...and the things he taught! He talked about God as if He knew him. He didn't theorize like all the scribes in the synagogues. He spoke with authority."

"There never was a man who spoke like He did," Simeon added. " I, too, felt that there was more to Him...I really thought..."

"That He was the Messiah?"

"Yea," he looked a Cleopas sadly.

"Me , too."

" What do you think about all the commotion with Mary this morning?" Simeon asked pointedly.

Cleopas winced. "Her devotion and her hysteria are working together, I think."

" But what if it's true?" Simeon's voice rose slightly."What if He is alive? We've seen this Man do so many impossible things...And Peter had to admit that His body was gone, but that the linen burial strips that the women wrapped Him in lay there."

" The pharissees,or the zealots, or someone out to start a riot moved His body..."

"But why? And if the pharissees took him, why let this ressurection story fill the city?" Simeon pressed.

"But if He were the Messiah, if this Jesus of Nazareth was Israel's king, the Son of David, how could He just be killed. What good would it do for Him to be tortured by the Gentiles and condemned by the rulers of the Jews, publicly humiliated, stripped and executed, and THEN top it off by coming back to life to appear to a former prostitute in a garden, only to disappear afterwards?"

" I don't know," Simeon looked down as he kicked a rock from the road. " I'm so mixed up right now...I had so much hope, then to see our dreams of salvation die..and now hope again..."

" What are you guys talking about?" a man came beside them." Why are you so sad?"

"Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem?" Cleopas answered. " Don't you know the things that have gone on around here lately?"

" What things?" the man asked.

" The things that have happened with Jesus of Nazareth." Cleopas explained. "He was a prophet who did miracles and spoke boldly in front of God and everybody. The chief priests and our rulers sentenced Him to death and had Him crucified...But we were hoping that He was the One who was to bring freedom to Israel. It's been three days since all this happened."

"Yea," Simeon interjected, "and some women who were with us came back from His tomb this morning and shocked us all. They went to the grave and couldn't find His body, and came back saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said He was alive! Some of the disciples went to check it out. They found the tomb empty, but didn't see any sign of Jesus."

The stranger answered by saying," You are foolish. Your hearts are so slow to believe the words of the prophets! Shouldn't the Messiah have suffered all these things before He came into His glory?"

He then began to teach the scriptures,starting with Moses, all the way through the prophets. He talked about the Messiah, and how Moses wrote in Genesis that the serpent would bruise His heel. He spoke of how David prophesied that Messiah would be killed by the Gentiles, with his hands and feet pierced, and how Isaiah said He would die as a sacrifice for sins. The prophets foretold that He would be born in Bethlehem of the lineage of David, come out of Egypt, and be from Nazareth. Jesus did all three. Jonah's three days in the belly of a fish were referred to as death and the grave in scripture. Had not Jesus promised that He would give the Pharisees nothing but the sign of the prophet Jonah? Three days and then ressurected. This traveler revealed the scriptures as the two disciples walked mesmerized.

Looking up, Simeon interrupted to say," This is our destination."

"I'll go on a ways," the stranger replied.

"No, no."Cleopas pleaded. "Stay with us. It's almost dark and the daylight won't last much longer."

"Alright," smiled the traveler, "I'll turn in here."

Moments later they were sitting at a table to end a long day with a meal together.

The teacher took the loaf of bread in his hands and prayed,"Father God, thank you for this bread. Bless it to this company." Then he broke the bread to serve it.

Suddenly recognition overcame the two disciples. "Jesus!" they gasped.

At that moment, He vanished from the table....

Read the actual account of this story in Luke Chapter 24.

God bless.

jhmj

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He told me, "I was just thinking about Pop and a story he had once told me." Of course, because it had to do with his Pop I wanted to know the story, so I asked him to share it with me.

He said, "When I was about 8 years old, Pop and I were out fishing and that's when he told me that the Pine trees know when it is Easter."

I had no idea what he meant by that, so I pressed him for more information. He continued on... "The Pine trees start their new growth in the weeks before Easter -- if you look at the tops of the Pine trees two weeks before, you will see the yellow shoots. As the days get closer to Easter Sunday, the tallest shoot will branch off and form a cross. By the time Easter Sunday comes around, you will see that most of the Pine trees will have small yellow crosses on all of the tallest shoots."

I turned to look out the window and I couldn't believe my eyes. It was a week before Easter, and you could see all of the trees with the tall yellow shoots stretching to Heaven. The tallest ones shone in the sunlight like rows of tiny golden crosses.

Click on the link below to see a picture of The Pine Tree Crosses

http://grassroots.ithium.net/pinetreecrosses.jpg

Thanks to Trina Montgomery

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TGIF-Today God Is First

Hungering for God

Friday, December 10, 2004

by Os Hillman

God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. ~ Psalms 53:2

"Are you coming to the conference?" I asked my friend.

"I really don't understand why I should come to this. How can I really benefit?" was his response. At that moment, I realized that I was wasting my time with this man on whom I had invested much throughout his Christian walk. He was often like a roller coaster-up one minute, down the next.

"You simply aren't hungry enough," I commented to my friend.

Whenever someone must always rationalize and examine whether the things of God are beneficial to them, you know that they are not hungry enough for God. I recall one time when I was in a difficult place. I received an audiotape from a man who gave me some insights into my problem. I was hungry enough to book a flight to a city 500 miles away just to meet him and find out more. My finances were at a very low point, so it took some real faith to do this. That meeting turned out to be a divine appointment and became a turning point in my life.

God is looking for men and women who hunger to know Him. When we believe that we know all we need to know, we are in a dangerous place. God has placed men and women in the Body of Christ who have had different experiences and gifts that can be helpful in our own spiritual pilgrimages. It requires humility of heart to realize that we can learn from others. We can easily rationalize our business pressures and time commitments to discount such opportunities.

Os Hillman Copyright 2004

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NewsScan Daily, 2004 ("Above The Fold")

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NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization making significant and sustained contributions to the effective management and appropriate use of information technology. NSD is written by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas, editors@NewsScan.Com.

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BELLSOUTH ANNOUNCES BROADBAND PUSH

BellSouth announced plans to spend $2 billion over the next two to three years to roll out high-speed Internet access to about 80% of its households in its nine-state territory. Like its fellow Baby Bells, BellSouth sees its DSL services as a major counterweight to cable companies' broadband cable services, enabling the telcos to compete on multiple communications services, including video and wireless. BellSouth says it will pursue the strategy of laying fiber to within 5,000 feet of consumers, similar to the strategy that SBC is employing to boost its DSL subscriber numbers. Fiber-to-the-curb enables data transmission speeds of more than 100 megabits per second; regular dialup Internet access runs at about 64 kilobits per second. (Wall Street Journal 6 Dec 2004) (sub req'd)

ARTISTS LOVE THE WEB, HATE MUSIC PIRACY

In the first large-scale survey of artists (i.e., filmmakers, writers and digital artists), musicians and the general public, the Pew Internet and American Life Project has found that only about half of the artists polled thought that sharing unauthorized copies of music and movies online should be illegal. Nearly two-thirds of those said file-sharing services such as Kazaa and Grokster should be held responsible for illegal file-swapping, while only 15% thought it was a good idea to go after individual users. Among musicians, 37% said the file-sharing services and users should share the blame for illegal file-swapping, while 17% singled out the services as the guilty parties. The survey results indicate that while file-swapping is an ongoing irritant to artists and musicians who see their work distributed for free on the Net, they also value the wide-scale exposure that the Internet makes possible. "The overall picture is that the musician-artistic community has a much wider range of views and experiences than folks who watch the Washington debate about copyright might imagine," says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet Project. (New York Times 6 Dec 2004)

NAPSTER FOUNDER SINGING A NEW TUNE

Shawn Fanning, of Napster fame, is launching a new venture called Snocap that offers technology to identify songs as they are moved around on the Net and prompt users for payment before they listen. The idea is to transform peer-to-peer music sharing into a profit-making venture for the artists and record labels through a comprehensive content registry and "fingerprinting" technology. "We're trying to build something that facilitates a high-quality service. Respecting rights holders is important, but it's all working under the assumption that everyone is trying to make as much content available as possible. The business is built on the premise that a peer-to-peer service ought to be able to launch a successful authorized system and have the breadth of content that they had available previously, or close to that," says Fanning, who adds that his technology could also be used to police file-sharing of video games, software, movies and other P2P network content. "The fingerprint technology is music specific, but fingerprinting can apply to video, etc. The rule-sets are specific to music, but those are also very easily adaptable. So our system in a general sense is very extensible, and we believe that once the music space begins to adopt the Snocap system, there will be a demand for this kind of architecture to provide content in other forms." (ZDNet 6 Dec 2004)

WATERMARK TECHNOLOGY SEEKS TO STAMP OUT FILM THIEVERY

Scientists at Sarnoff Labs have developed a "watermarking" technology called iTrace aimed at reducing video piracy perpetrated by moviegoers who secretly tape new films with handheld video cameras in the movie theater. Sarnoff's Jeffrey Lubin used his background in perceptual psychology to devise a watermark that not only would be invisible to the movie viewer, but would also survive several generations of crude copying. "The Holy Grail example is someone takes a camcorder into a movie theater and pirates a movie, and then compresses it on a digital file and puts it on the Internet," says Lubin. The iTrace watermark emerges gradually, over a 5-second interval, to exploit the tendency of human vision to compensate and ignore images that change slowly, he says. The watermark is actually a sequence of shifting blobs that get either lighter or darker and endure throughout the film. Each copy has its own unique watermark that enables studios to track the origin of a pirated copy. "The applications for watermarking are not just for the final result, but it also gives us freedom to move images around during production so that if they get into the wrong hands, they can be traced back to the last rightful owner," says Larry Birstock, executive VP of postproduction firm Post Logic Studios. (AP/USA Today 3 Dec 2004)

THE INTERNET GENERATION GROWS UP

The first generation of kids to grow up with the Internet as an integral part of their lives is now reaching young adulthood, and their notions of community, work, entertainment and personal relationships are very different from their predecessors', according to observers. "Students are continuously connected to other students and friends and family in ways that older generations never would have imagined," says Steve Jones, U. of Illinois communications department chair and a senior research fellow at the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Students find their research and learning activities coordinated around the Internet, and workers use the Net to increase their job proficiency and efficiency, or to find another position. "Nowadays, a person employed at one company can be coordinating interviews via Hotmail during lunch and literally finding a new job without even leaving their desk," says a young PR agency employee who landed her job on the Net. Meanwhile, young people are also wary of the Net's downside -- its potential for fraud, stalking and the everyday threat of rumor-mongering. Still, most see the Internet as a powerful force for good, says Jones: "There is a real power there, a kind of technological power. But also I think there's a kind of intellectual power that can be harnessed. They are so curious about using these technologies, And I'd really like to be able to regularly marshal that curiosity." (AP/SiliconValley.com 5 Dec 2004)

ELECTRONIC PAYMENTS HAVE OVERTAKEN CHECKS

In 2003, Americans made 44.5 billion payments via electronic transactions, compared to only 36.7 billion payments by paper checks. The trend toward electronic purchases has been accelerated by strong growth in the popularity of debit cards, which can now be used to buy almost anything. Jean Ann Fox of the Consumer Federation of America says, "They're quick and easy. You don't stand there and hold up everybody in line behind you. Plus, folks are moving toward electronic banking and paying bills electronically." But she warns: "It's getting very confusing for consumers, and companies have not upgraded their protections." (Washington Post 6 Dec 2004)

GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN YOUR HANDHELD

Cellphones are becoming the new venue for compact culture: micro-lit phone soap operas and made-for-mobile dramas. With most cellphones now having color screens and the ability to receive picture messages, entrepreneur David Harper of Wireless Ink remarks: "Are people going to read 'War and Peace' on their telephones? The answer is probably no. Right now the content on mobile devices is almost like early television. What they did then was to sit down and do a radio broadcast for the television screen." British mobile-phone company Vodafone and 20th Century Fox have developed a made-for-cellphone video series based on the TV series "24." Will cellphones have an impact on book publishing? Kate Tentler of Simon & Schuster Online says: "It would be crazy not to look at this. Smart phones are everywhere and it's the fastest-growing device."(New York Times 7 Dec 2004)

NEW DISC FOR NEXT-GENERATION DVD PLAYERS

Two Japanese companies, Toshiba and Memory-Tech, say they've developed the world's first DVD that can be played on both standard and high-definition DVD players, using the HD-DVD format. HD-DVD has the backing of the DVD Forum, an international association of electronics makers and movie studios, while its competitor, Blu-Ray, is backed by Sony, its Hollywood studio and News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group. Blu-Ray has more digital programming storage space but HD-DVD is expected to be cheaper to make. (AP/San Jose Mercury News 7 Dec 2004)

ZIPPING THROUGH BORDER CHECKPOINTS

Foreigners entering the U.S. at some border crossings are now being processed by a new digital screening program that quickly scans photos of the traveler's face and index finger and matches them against federal agencies' criminal databases. Vistor Adolfo Moroyoqui Felix, traveling between Mexico and Phoenix, says: "It's much faster this way. They had to fill out paperwork before. It's more effective this way." Other travelers seem to agree. (AP/USA Today 7 Dec 2004)

MEDICAL RECORDS-SHARING IN MASSACHUSETTS

If a new Massachusetts "eHealth" pilot project is successful, physicians in that state will be able to access patients' records from any hospital or clinic by computer. Gov. Mitt Romney says that switching from paper records to easily shared electronic records could save the state millions of dollars while improving patient safety and quality of care. He has given assurances that the system will have strict controls to allow patients to control who sees their records. (AP/Los Angeles times 7 Dec 2004)

GROUP URGES GOVERNMENT TO FOCUS ON CYBERSECURITY

The Cyber Security Industry Alliance is calling on the Bush administration to beef up its cybersecurity operations, starting with elevating the position of national cybersecurity director to assistant secretary level. "There is not enough attention on cybersecurity within the administration. The executive branch must exert more leadership," says Alliance director Paul B. Kurtz, who's a former senior cybersecurity official in the Bush administration. Kurtz was joined by Amit Yoran, the former director of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division who resigned in September. Meanwhile, a provision in the recently passed intelligence overhaul bill that would have raised cybersecurity's profile in the Homeland Security Department was stripped out before passage. The Alliance's recommendations mirror those outlined in a report issued Monday by the House subcommittee on cybersecurity, which also calls for the administration to consider tax breaks and other incentives for businesses that make computer security a top priority. In addition, both groups are urging the Homeland Security Department to take the lead in creating a disaster recovery and response plan, should the U.S. suffer debilitating digital sabotage. (Washington Post 8 Dec 2004)

IT'S OFFICIAL: IBM STRIKES DEAL TO SELL PC DIVISION

IBM is selling its PC business to Chinese computer giant Lenovo Group for $1.25 billion in cash and stock. As part of the deal, IBM will own an 18.9% stake in Lenovo, which will be allowed to use the IBM brand for five years, as well as other trademarks on PCs and notebook computers. The sale vaults Lenovo to a solid No. 3 slot in the global PC market, behind Dell and Hewlett-Packard. In a message to IBM workers, chairman Sam Palmisano (who once headed the PC business) said the move was part of the company's strategy to focus on making products for large government and industry customers. "The PC business is rapidly taking on characteristics of the home and consumer electronic industry, which favors economies of scale, pricing power and a focus on individual users and buyers," wrote Palmisano. (Wall Street Journal 8 Dec 2004) (sub req'd)

THE HALO EFFECT: NETWORK GRIDLOCK

The November 9 launch of Microsoft's Halo 2 Xbox game sparked an Internet traffic explosion that has continued into December and could herald chronic network congestion problems for Internet service providers, warns network monitoring firm Sandvine. "The explosion in Xbox Live traffic attributed to Halo 2 should be seen as a clarion call. ISPs need to enhance the broadband experience for these high-end users by prioritizing or reserving bandwidth for games," says Sandvine CTO Marc Morin. One of the main factors that can disrupt online gaming is "lag," in which there is a noticeable delay between the player's action and the game's response time. Installing software that makes networks more "intelligent" will be key to ISPs' ability to accommodate bandwidth-hungry gamers, says a Yankee Group analyst: "In the competitive broadband environment, operators need to differentiate the way they offer access to services like live-play gaming." (BBC News 8 Dec 2004)

STUDENTS IN NYC, NEW DELHI MAKE BEAUTIFUL MUSIC TOGETHER

Some 450 New York City public school students participated in a distance learning project as part of Carnegie Hall's annual Global Encounter series, listening to music, dancing and chatting with 200 counterparts in New Delhi, India. The gathering was made possible through the use of a giant 22-foot-wide screen linked to a high-end broadband videoconferencing system. The students in both countries had prepped for the event by learning about each other's music, dance and history for several weeks, so the Americans knew they were listening to southern Indian music when 13-year-old violinist Ambi Subramanian performed for them and recognized the northern Indian giddha dance performed by New Delhi dancers. Likewise, Indian students were primed for the four-piece bluegrass band that took the stage in New York for a demonstration of Appalachian music and a New Orleans brass band that filled the aisles with soaring jazz. In a grand finale, all the musicians jammed their way through an international version of "Sweet Georgia Brown" while the dancers twirled their way through the refrain. (New York Times 8 Dec 2004)

NTT DEMOS THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS

Japanese telecom giant NTT is testing a new service that sends out aromas according to data received over the Internet. Users attach a device to their laptops that resembles a crystal ball with a nozzle. The device receives data from a central server and dispenses the appropriate smell, concocted from a combination of 36 scents -- from eucalyptus to lavender to sweet basil. NTT is considering marketing the system as a commercial product for aromatherapy, testing incense or just for fun. For its demonstration, NTT linked scents to astrological signs -- Pisceans get a concoction of lavender, sage and lemongrass, while Cancers are wafted with chamomile, lavender and vetiver oils. The device and software were developed by Japan's Mirapro Co. (AP 8 Dec 2004)

SCORE ONE FOR TECHNOLOGY CUSTOMERS

With corporate technology spending projected to grow only slightly in the next few years, Silicon Valley is feeling the pinch. Gartner industry analyst Martin Reynolds says, "They're all fighting for a pie that isn't increasing as fast as they'd like to tell their shareholders. Everyone is aggressively trying to cut costs. You've got to fight for every penny." But bad news for the Valley is good news for a Fortune 500 company like FedEx, which is now able to dictate the terms of technology agreements, and which has managed to maintain a stable budget level for several years now. According to CIO magazine publisher Gary Beach: "In the first 20 or so years of the technology age, the vendors held all the cards. But now, the fulcrum of power is not with the vendors or consultants. It's with the customers." (San Jose Mercury News 9 Dec 2004

SIMULATING WAR

A company called Will Interactive is one of a number of Washington, D.C.-area firms prospering by selling interactive training and simulation technologies to the military. Some of the other companies in that category are BreakAway and Sensics. Aerospace and defense analyst Juliette Salvati explains, "The type of warfare that we are fighting now is very different than what it used to be... The tools that are used to train for this are very different, and one of those tools is simulation... It is a fairly young market, but it is maturing fairly quickly. And over the next couple years, I think the market is going to become very much more crowded." Will Interactive's Chief Creative Officer, Jeffrey Hall, says that what the military wanted to simulate were "relationships under pressure, morale issues, what it feels like to drive around with sewage in the streets and no one appreciates you." And David S. Henderson at Fort Sill says: "It's difficult to put a student in a training environment where you're able to teach them how to think, not what to think, and that there are consequences to the decisions that are being made." (Washington Post 8 Dec 2004)

AN END TO PHISHING?

Former White House Web security chief Howard Schmidt, is predicting that "at this time next year" technology companies and law enforcement agencies will have forced an end to most kinds of Internet "phishing" scams that trick people into revealing their personal and financial information. Schmidt, who has worked with the group that created Digital PhishNet, promises that the major technology companies "are all working together to get the sites shut down as quickly as possible so they won't be around to collect your information." (Reuters/USA Today 9 Dec 2004)

GET UNPLUGGED

Enough is enough, say experts who think young people need to get a life beyond the Internet. Psychologists Michelle Weill and Larry Rosen write, "It's like being lost in space. You get lost in the world of the Internet, games or multiple instant-message chats." Dave Greenfield, another psychologist specializing in high-tech issues argues: "Until technology gets 'stupid simple,' equivalent to turning on a light or a television set, it's going to eat time and energy. Do I have the right adapter? Or the right battery? Or cable?" Noting that many people buy the latest high-tech gizmos whether they need them or not, Greenfield says: "It points to a larger theme in our culture -- that new things are good and better, and that more is better, and faster is better. And that's not always the case." He's the author of a book called "Virtual Addiction." (AP/Los Angeles Times 9 Dec 2004)

DISSIN' CHINA

Law enforcement authorities in China have banned the new British computer game "Football Manager 2005" because it refers to Taiwan as a separate country, contrary to the mainland government's insistence that Taiwan belongs to China. The government is searching for the game online and in computer software markets, cybercafes, and places that sell pirated software. A spokesman for the game's developer, Sports Interactive, says it's working on a Chinese version for release in China that will comply with local requirements: "We will follow the correct submission and approval process within China and look forward to feedback from the Chinese authorities on any modifications that may be required." Last week China also banned a Nike television commercial it says is disrespectful and blasphemous toward Chinese culture. The ad features NBA star LeBron James in a mock video with a kung fu master, two women in traditional Chinese attire, and a pair of dragons. (AP/9 Nov 2004)

CELL PHONES ALOFT?

The Federal Communications Commission next week is expected to approve a measure that would begin the regulatory process of considering whether there are technical solutions to some of the obstacles blocking cell phone use aboard aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing have both supported the FCC's current ban on such use, arguing that cell phones can interfere with navigation systems. But some of the major airlines quietly have begun their own tests to determine whether cell phone use can be made feasible. Last July, American Airlines conducted a test of a system that requires passengers to pay to use special cell phones provided by the airlines that routed signals through a picocell -- a miniature cell tower the size of a pizza box -- inside the airline. The signals were then sent to a small satellite dish perched atop the airliner, which beamed them up to a satellite, where they bounced back down to special cell stations linked to phone networks on earth. The system has the advantage of funneling all calls through a single communications path, making it easier for the airlines and carriers to track and bill the calls. However, experts say there likely will be no action taken on changing the rules for at least two years. Meanwhile, some frequent fliers are cringing at the thought of a liberated cell phone policy. "The last thing I want is a bunch of jabbering business geeks," says futurist Paul Saffo, who travels 200,000 miles a year. "The only quiet time I get is when I fly. It's my meditation time." (New York Times 10 Dec 2004)

MOBILE PHONES TO OUTNUMBER LAND LINES

Cell phones are expected to generate more revenue this year than traditional land line phones in Africa, Asia and Latin America, according to a new report by the International Telecommunication Union. Just four years ago, fixed-line phone revenue was nearly double that of wireless, but mobile phone use is growing rapidly, especially in developing countries where wireless networks are much cheaper to install than traditional terrestrial ones. "Virtually all the global growth in the telecoms service sector over the last decade has come from the mobile sector, broadband and other data services," says Susan Schorr, one of the authors of the study. "Taken together, the value of mobile and other non-voice services is now greater than that of the traditional fixed-line telephone service, which had been the mainstay of public telecommunication operators since the late 19th century." Since 2000, four-fifths of all growth in mobile phone sales took place in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the former Soviet Union. "The developing world is. where most of the potential for future growth resides," says Schorr, who adds that broadband is catching on in those countries as well, with China expected to overtake the U.S. this year as the world's biggest broadband market. (AP 10 Dec 2004)

AMAZON GETS INTO THE DVD RENTAL BUSINESS

Amazon is launching a DVD rental-by-mail business in the U.K., in a test to see whether the business offers a viable new revenue stream for the e-commerce giant. The U.K. is a fairly safe proving ground because the entire country can be serviced from just one warehouse, which Amazon already operates on the outskirts of London, says Reed Hastings, CEO of market leader Netflix. He notes that in the U.S., Netflix has a network of 30 warehouses near metropolitan areas in order to provide overnight delivery to most of its customers, while Amazon operates only six warehouses, mostly in rural areas. Meanwhile, Netflix, which plans to have 2.5 million subscribers by the end of the year, has shelved its plans to expand to the U.K. market and has reduced the price on its most popular rental plan in the U.S. from $21.99 to $17.99 after learning of Amazon's plans to enter the market. (Wall Street Journal 10 Dec 2004) (sub req'd)

YAHOO LOOKS FOR SUCCESS IN DESKTOP SEARCH

Yahoo is introducing a new tool for searching through e-mails and computer files on Windows-based PCs. Unlike Google's desktop search tool, Yahoo's won't operate within a browser, which means that desktop searches won't be co-mingled with online searches conducted on its Web site. Yahoo is licensing its desktop search product from startup X1 Technologies, which has established itself as a pioneer in desktop search since its inception three years ago. "Some people may pooh pooh this because Yahoo didn't build it on their own, but this is going to give consumers some really good choices," says Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li. Yahoo says its desktop search tool can sift through more than 225 different data types, including many formats that Google's search product can't index yet. "The ultimate vision is to create a dashboard to help people manage their digital lives," says Yahoo search division head Jeff Weiner. (AP/USA Today 10 Dec 2004)

GOOGLE TESTS POWER OF SUGGESTION

Google has quietly unveiled a new feature on its Labs site called Google Suggest, a drop-down menu that prompts users to select a word based on the first couple of letters they type in. For instance, typing in "Mi" generates a list starting with "Microsoft," followed by "miniclip," "Michael Moore," and "miserable failure," among others. The company regularly launches new features in its Labs section, which is reserved for ideas that "aren't quite ready for prime time," according to a message on its site. (CNet News.com 10 Dec 2004)

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HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: JEAN ANTOINE WATTEAU

Today's Honorary Subscriber is the early 18th century French painter and draftsman Jean Antoine Watteau, whose art is valued for depicting with grace and charm the life enjoyed by the elegant society of his time.

Always socially ill at ease, Watteau was not himself a participant in society so much as a spectator and creative recorder of what he saw. So distinctive was the coloring and style of Watteau's rococo paintings that today his name is used to describe women's dresses and hats that resemble those worn by his subjects. Watteau was widely admired by his contemporaries, both in France and in England, who avidly collected his "fetes galantes" -- his romantic and idealized scenes depicting elaborately costumed ladies and gentlemen at play in fanciful outdoor settings.

Watteau's reputation diminished after his death, due probably to the fact that the emerging Age of Reason favored artists whose work was less fanciful and more in tune with the social disturbances of the period. During the French Revolution, critics actually accused Watteau of "having infected the dwellings of his time with bad taste."

Critical interest in Watteau sprung up again in the 19th century, especially in England and among such French poets as Victor Hugo and Baudelaire who placed him among the "beacons" of mankind in his famous poem, "Les Phares." The Goncourt brothers compared him to Rubens, Marcel Proust recognized him as one of France's great painters. Eventually esteem for Watteau enjoyed in the circle of art lovers, poets, and novelists extended to the broad public.

Watteau was born the son of a roof tiler in Valenciennes, France in 1684. At age 18 he went to Paris, where he supported himself by turning out religious pictures and copying the works of popular Dutch artists He also began making countless sketches from life, which were to supply him with a lifetime of thematic inspiration. His career in painting truly began in 1704 when he started studying with Claude Gillot, who designed and executed scenery for the stage, and infused Watteau with a love of the Italian theater and the characters from the commedia dell'arte.

He enjoyed a busy life as a painter, working both in France and England. For much of the time he chose to live in relative seclusion. In 1712, Watteau was named a provisional member of the Academie Royale; later elected a full member in 1717. Sometime around 1719 Watteau came down with tuberculosis. He traveled to London to see a noted physician, Richard Mead. In 1720 he returned to Paris and stayed with his art dealer friend E.F. Gersaint. While there he painted 'Enseigne de Gersaint', an image of the interior of Gersaint's shop originally intended to be outdoor shop sign advertising a two-week exhibition. Today it is treasured as one of Watteau's best paintings. When Watteau's health failed to improve, he moved to Nogent-sur-Marne just east of Paris, where he died on July 18, 1721.

***

[For a library copy of "Watteau," visit RLG's RedLightGreen.com: -- or to purchase a copy go to:

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: BOOK COLLECTING IN ALEXANDRIA

In his book on Fermat's Last Theorem, science writer Simon Singh recounts this interesting sidelight on the building of the great library of Alexandria:

"In 332 B.C., having conquered Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, Alexander the Great decided that he would build a capital city that would be the most magnificent in the world. Alexandria was indeed a spectacular metropolis but not immediately a center of learning. It was only when Alexander died and Ptolemy I ascended the throne of Egypt that Alexandria became home to the world's first-ever university. Mathematicians and other intellectuals flocked to Ptolemy's city of culture, and although they were certainly drawn by the reputation of the university, the main attraction was the Alexandrian library.

"The Library was the idea of Demetrius Phalaerus, an unpopular orator who had been forced to flee Athens, and who eventually found sanctuary in Alexandria. He persuaded Ptolemy to gather together all the great books, assuring him that the great minds would follow. Once the tomes of Egypt and Greece had been installed, agents scoured Europe and Asia Minor in search of further volumes of knowledge. Even tourists to Alexandria could not escape the voracious appetite of the library. Upon entering the city, their books were confiscated and taken to the scribes. The books were copied so that while the original was donated to the library, a duplicate could graciously be given to the original owner. This meticulous replication service for ancient travelers gives today's historians some hope that a copy of a great lost text will one day turn up in an attic somewhere in the world. In 1906 T. L. Heilberg discovered in Constantinople just such a manuscript The Method, which contained some of Archimedes' original writings.

"Ptolemy's dream of building a treasure house of knowledge lived on after his death, and by the time a few more Ptolemys ascended the throne the library contained over 600,000 books."

***

[For a library copy of Simon Singh's "Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem," visit RLG's RedLightGreen.com: -- or to purchase a copy go to:

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: SOPHIE GERMAIN

Today's Honorary Subscriber is the French mathematician Sophie Germain (1776-1831), who has been acclaimed as France's greatest female mathematician.

In Germain's time, it was almost unheard of for a woman to pursue studies in mathematics. Her contemporaries tended to regard her as a phenomenon more than a serious mathematician. Today historians of mathematics view her as a highly talented mathematician who was denied the thorough training that would have allowed her to reach her full potential. Her accomplishments, however, were more than sufficient to gain her an honored place in the history of mathematics.

She is best remembered for her work in connection with Fermat's "last theorem" in which he posited that that the equation xn + yn = zn has no positive integral solutions if n is an integer greater than 2. Germain proved that Fermat's conjecture is true if x, y and z are prime to one another and to n, if n is any prime less than 100. She sent her findings for verification to the eminent mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, with whom she had been corresponding under the pseudonym M. Leblanc. Unfortunately, Gauss had just become professor of astronomy at the University of Göttingen and did not respond. As a result Germain's theorem remained largely unknown for many years, although it turned out to be the most important result related to Fermat's last theorem until the work of E.E. Kummer in 1840. It was not until 1995 that the English mathematician Andrew Wiles published the full proof of Fermat's last theorem.

Germain was born into a liberal, educated, merchant family. With no real interest in the money-making and political pursuits of her family, Germain spent her time in the family's library, teaching herself mathematics, much to the distress of her parents. Germain ultimately overcame their objections and was allowed to continue her mathematical studies. During the two years of the French Revolution's Terror (1793-4) she succeeded in teaching herself differential calculus, but in 1795 she was refused admission to the newly opened École Polytechnique because of her sex. Undaunted, she obtained notes for many of the courses, including analysis given by Lagrange, and submitted work to him under the pseudonym she also used to correspond with Gauss.

In 1809 Napoleon urged the First Class of the Institut de France to establish a prix extraordinaire for anyone who could devise a theory that explained E.F.F. Chladni's experiments on the vibration patterns of elastic plates. There were no outright winners, though Germain was awarded the prize for the excellence of her submission.

Beginning in 1820 Germain began to be known and accepted in her own right by the Parisian scientific society. Despite being a woman, she was allowed to attend the sessions of the Académie des Sciences, the first woman accorded the privilege. In 1830 Gauss petitioned the University of Göttingen to award her an honorary doctorate, but she died before the degree could be awarded. Perhaps the fact that she never received academia's highest honors makes her remarkable achievements in acoustics, elasticity and the theory of numbers all the more memorable.

***

[For a library copy of a biography of Germain by N. Dworsky et al., visit RLG's RedLightGreen.com -- or to purchase a copy go to: Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

MAILBAG: THE WORLD AS WE FIND IT

MALWARE EVERYWHERE

Re:

I foresee problems for PC makers for a very different reason. Increasingly, I hear of people who are simply getting fed up with the cost (in dollars and time) of defending against, and dealing with the consequences of, malware. (Mike Yohe)

NOT A TRILOGY

Re:

Regarding your item on J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Lord of the Rings" is not a trilogy. See (Mark J. Bliese)

TOLKIEN THE SCHOLAR

Re:

I enjoyed the "Honorary Subscriber: J.R.R. Tolkien" but thought perhaps if you had included his scholarly work in which he translated "Sir Gawain and the Blue Knight" might have given further insight into his academic and perhaps spiritual side. (George Myers)

OUTSOURCING NOTES

Re:

Let's do the math: On average, 27.5 million jobs are lost each year, and 29.5 million are created, for a net gain of 2 million jobs per year, or 10 million over five years. Three million lost to outsourcing over the next 5 years, above the normal rate of job loss and creation, reduces that 10 million to 7 million, or almost 1 in every 3 jobs that would have been created. Some nothing. (Andersen perhaps might argue that his job loss/creation numbers already include outsourcing, but this has to be incorrect. He is citing allegedly historically rates of job loss/creation, and outsourcing has been very small until very recently.)

Of course, the U.S. has NOT been gaining 2 million jobs a year in recent years -- since 2000, many jobs have been lost and only recently has job creation started up partially. If low or no job growth continues, then outsourcing will be painful indeed to several millions.

I'm not arguing against (or for) outsourcing, but I am adamantly opposed to excessively rosy (or gloomy) claims about outsourcing. (John M. Astell)

I SEE THE MOON AND THE MOON SEES ME

Re:

Another interesting and deserving Honorary Subscriber! Even though the Ptolemaic system has been long disproved, the writings of Ptolemy on astronomy are still fascinating and absorbing to read. Did you know, for example, that he was one of the earliest commentators on the "moon illusion"? (He sought to explain why the horizon moon appears larger than the zenith moon). (John McNulty, Halifax, Canada)

COMPUTERS AND KIDS

Re:

You'll recall the spirited debate that arose a couple of months ago from one of your pieces entitled Computers and Kids. I thought you might be interested in taking a look at a provocative policy paper released by the Alliance for Childhood, entitled "Tech Tonic". It has already caused a stink with the Consortium for School Networking, an organization which counts among its members many of the blue chip technology suppliers and offers these members "significant benefits in terms of their own professional development as well as exposure for their company. These benefits include access to key technology decision makers in schools, districts and states; networking opportunities with industry peers; visibility and branding opportunities within the education technology community; and timely and relevant information about the issues that most affect their businesses."

The Alliance's web site is: and you can find the paper there. (Dan Hamilton)

VARIETIES OF LITERACY BELIEFS

Re:

I find it interesting that an online publication printed a story about encroaching illiteracy. Something I have begun to consider is that we should define exactly at what point someone is truly illiterate in the new, electronic world. My daughter communicates with several friends who can barely read newspapers but do just fine with the abbreviated language in chat rooms and text messaging. I find their conversations incomprehensible, yet I write for a living and read vast quantities of intellectual journals, newspapers, and mysteries. In today s world, who is the illiterate?

Thank you so much for NewsScan! Even when I'm short of time, I hoard my few moments of reading your wonderful, thought-provoking publication. Keep up the good work; you are truly a bright spot in many a grueling day! (Sherilyn Dunn)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: IS WRITING OLD-FASHIONED?

Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, worries about the survival of literature in a post-literate media culture:

"We are currently living in the midst of a massive culture revolution. For the first time since the development of movable type in the late fifteenth century, print has lost its primacy in communication. The proliferation of electronic technology has gone far beyond providing a new means for the communication, storage, and retrieval of information: the new media have gradually changed not only the way we perceive language and ideas but also the world and ourselves. The shift in the modes of communication has had an extraordinary impact on every aspect of contemporary life, but literature, an imaginative enterprise created entirely from words, has been profoundly affected in ways that we are still in the process of comprehending.

"Many experts also feel that illiteracy is on the rise in America. According to a 1986 United State Bureau of Census study, 13 percent of Americans over the age of twenty are illiterate.

"For years many intellectuals and academics have observed these trends with a mixture of disappointment and detachment. While lamenting the sorry state of literacy among the public, they remained confident in the power of a print culture among educated Americans. That confidence now seems misplaced. Books, magazines, and newspapers are not disappearing, but their position in the culture has changed significantly over the past few decades, even among the educated. We are now seeing the first generation of young intellectuals who are not willing to immerse themselves in the world of books. They are not against reading, but they see it as only one of the many options for information. As the poet-critic Jack Foley has said, 'At the current moment writing is beginning to seem 'old-fashioned.'"

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[From Dana Gioia's "Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture"; to find a library copy of his "Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture," visit RLG's RedLightGreen.com: -- or to purchase a copy go to:

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: PTOLEMY

Today's Honorary Subscriber is the ancient astronomer Ptolemy (100-170), whose name has become synonymous with the long-abandoned geocentric, or earth-centered, view of the universe.

Ptolemy's name in Latin was Claudius Ptolemaeus, given to him because of his probable birthplace, Ptolemais Hermii, and not because of any relationship with the royal family that ruled Egypt earlier in the century of his birth. Little beyond that is known about his life, except that he received a Greek education, if not in Greece itself, then most likely in Alexandria, a city with Hellenic cultural roots. In his astronomical activities Ptolemy drew heavily upon the earlier work of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus. Although Hipparchus did pioneer work in describing the paths followed by the planets and other heavenly bodies as they supposedly circled the Earth, the geocentric system became known as the Ptolemaic system because the writings of Hipparchus were not preserved.

The Ptolemaic system was able to track the positions of the heavenly bodies visible to the naked eye with sufficient accuracy to have it accepted by the scholarly community. It also had the virtue of being in tune with the teachings of Aristotle and biblical history. It awaited the invention of the telescope fourteen centuries later before the Ptolemaic system would be replaced with great intellectual upheaval by the heliocentric system of Copernicus.

Ptolemy incorporated his extensive astronomical observations and measurements into a massive book, which became known as The Mathematical Collection. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the book was called Megas Astronomos, Greek for "The Great Astronomer." Later in the 9th century, Arab astronomers gave the book the title Al Megiste, reintroducing the work to the West where it became known as the Almagest, the name still used today.

The Almagest is divided into 13 books, each of which deals with astronomical concepts pertaining to stars and to other objects in the solar system. The encyclopedic nature of the work presented later astronomers with the findings of both Hipparchus and Ptolemy, and the measuring instruments they used. Hipparchus had compiled the first star catalog, which contained 850 stars, and which Ptolemy expanded to a catalog of 1,022 stars. Ptolemy also describes the geocentric system and presents arguments that the Earth must be immovable in its position at the center of the universe, one argument being that since all bodies fall to the center of the universe, the Earth must be fixed there at the center, otherwise falling objects would not be seen to drop toward the center of the Earth. Ptolemy was also an accomplished geometrician and made an early attempt to map the known world, listed latitudes and longitudes of important locations, with accompanying maps and a description of techniques of mapmaking. Despite its understandable inaccuracies, Ptolemy's Geography remained popular up to the time of the Renaissance.

[To find a library copy of "Ptolemy's Geographia," visit RLG's RedLightGreen.com: -- or to purchase a copy go to:

[Note: We donate all revenue from our book and media recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

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Activities and Events of Interest

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MCC New York City Mission Trip December 14 - 18

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Friday, December 24, at 6 pm. The World Championship Rotary Tiller Race from Downtown

Emerson Arkansas, is scheduled to air on the Discovery Channel Monster Nation

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January 10 El Dorado 7:30 p.m. In Honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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February 5 El Dorado 7:30 p.m. Krystle Maczka, Piano

February 6 Magnolia 2:00 p.m. "

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March 5 Camden 7:30 p.m. Premier String Quartet

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April 3 El Dorado 3:00 p.m. Xiang Gao, Violin

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MCC Tanzania, Africa Mission Trip, July 2005. Get you7r passport!

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"September 11 WDYTJWD" W. P. Florence

Justice first, then peace."

"September 11" Never forget.--Tony Moses

"ONE NATION UNDER GOD ...the only way"--Phillip Story

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Keeping my head down but face toward Heaven" - - Jody Eldred, ABC News Cameraman in Kuwait

"Remember Pearl Harbor? Remember 9/11!" --"Bug"

Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity. - - George Carlin

"Stop telling God how big your storm is. Instead, tell the storm how big your God is!" - - Queen E. Watson

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NEVER FORGET! We're listing the names of our soldiers killed weekly. These records can be found at http://www.defenselink. mil/releases/ This posting covers the last two weeks.

01. Cpl. Bryan S. Wilson, 22, of Otterbein, Ind., died Dec. 1 as result of a non-hostile vehicle incident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

02. Pfc. George D. Harrison, 22, of Knoxville, Tenn., died December 2 in Mosul, Iraq, when his HMMWV was attacked by enemy forces using small arms fire. Harrison was assigned to the 293rd Military Police Company, 3rd Military Police Battalion (Provisional), 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga.

The Department of Defense announced the death of two Marines who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

03. Cpl. Binh N. Le, 20, of Alexandria, Va.

04. Cpl. Matthew A. Wyatt, 21, of Millstadt, Ill.

Both Marines died Dec. 3 from injuries received as result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. They were assigned to 5th Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

05. Spc. David P. Mahlenbrock, 20, of Maple Shade, N.J., died Dec. 3 in Kirkuk, Iraq, when he was clearing a route and an improvised explosive device detonated. Mahlenbrock was assigned to the 65th Engineer Battalion, 25th Infantry Division (Light), Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.

The Department of Defense announced the death of two soldiers supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died Dec. 4 in Mosul, Iraq, when their Stryker military vehicle received enemy fire during convoy operations. Both were assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), Fort Lewis, Washington. Killed were:

06. Staff Sgt. Salamo J. Tuialuuluu, 23, of Pago Pago, American Samoa.

07. Sgt. David A. Mitts, 24, of Hammond, Ore.

08. Sgt. Michael L. Boatright, 24, of Whitesboro, Texas died Dec. 4 in Baghdad, Iraq, when he was struck by an improvised explosive device. Boatright was assigned to the 20th Engineer Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

09. Staff Sgt. Henry E. Irizarry, 38, of Bronx, New York, died Dec. 3 in Taji, Iraq, when his unit was on patrol and an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV. Irizarry was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry Regiment, New York, N.Y.

10. Sgt. Cari A. Gasiewicz, 28, of Depew, N.Y., died Dec. 4 in Baqubah, Iraq, when two improvised explosive devices detonated near her convoy. Gasiewicz was assigned to the 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion, 513th Military Intelligence Brigade, Fort Gordon, Ga.

11. Staff Sgt. Kyle A. Eggers, 27, of Euless, Texas, died Dec. 5 in Habbaniyah, Iraq, when his vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device. Eggers was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 2d Infantry Division, Camp Greaves, Korea.

12. Cpl. Joseph O. Behnke, 45, of Brooklyn, New York, died Dec. 4 in Baghdad, Iraq, when he was in a vehicle accident. Behnke was assigned to the Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 258th Field Artillery Regiment, Brooklyn, New York.

13. Pfc. Andrew M. Ward, 25, of Kirkland, Wash., died Dec. 5 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, when his unit was attacked by enemy forces using small arms fire. Ward was assigned to the 44th Engineer Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division, Camp Howze, Korea.

14. Cpl. In C. Kim, 23, of Warren, Mich., died Dec. 7 as result of a non-hostile vehicle incident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to 9th Communications Battalion, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

15. Sgt. 1st Class Todd C. Gibbs, 37, of Angelina, Texas, died Dec. 7 in Khalidiyah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated while his unit was on a dismounted patrol. Gibbs was assigned to 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 2d Infantry Division, Camp Greaves, Korea.

16. Capt. Mark N. Stubenhofer, 30, of Springfield, Va., died Dec. 7 in Baghdad, Iraq, when his unit was conducting dismounted operations and was attacked by small arms fire. Stubenhofer was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Division, Fort Riley, Kan.

17. Sgt. Arthur C. Williams, IV, 31, of Edgewater, Fla., died Dec. 8 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, when his unit was conducting a dismounted patrol and was attacked by small arms fire. Williams was assigned to the 44th Engineer Battalion, 2d Infantry Division, Camp Howze, Korea.

18. Cpl. Kyle J. Renehan, 21, of Oxford, Pa., died Dec. 9 in Kaiserslautern, Germany, from injuries received on Nov. 29 as result of enemy action in Babil Province, Iraq. He was assigned to Marine Air Control Squadron 2, Marine Air Control Group 28, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C.

19. Pfc. Christopher S. Adlesperger, 20, of Albuquerque, N.M. died Dec. 9 as result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Adlesperger was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif.

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Remember that for every soldier killed in modern war, 10 are wounded. Don't forget to pray for them and their families.

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Join the Delta Diamondbacks 24-hour prayer team sponsored by First Baptist Church of McNeill by calling Debi Scott at 695-3403.

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War Prayer list for those in harms way.(10/10)

Remember to pray for the American soldiers stationed everywhere around the globe and especially in Iraq. Times have been and are very tough and it would be nice if you would all just say a prayer for their safety and for their families. Our own Delta Diamond Backs, local national guard personnel are now patrolling Bagdad. They are part of the 1st Cavalry Division's, 39th Infantry Brigade.

Please update us when you know of someone who comes home (or is activated for service.)

Major William Anderson - U.S. Air Force - Bagdad

Command Sergeant Major Tom Broom - U.S. Army - Kuwait

Kyle Burleston - U.S. Marines - Iraq

Jim Carrol - U.S. Navy Intelligence

Greg Davis - U.S. Army - Bagdad - Mark Davis's oldest son. Greg has two children; Jhett,

12 and Baily 3

Lang Doster - National Guard - Iraq - Angel Cranston's Brother

Sgt. Douglas E. Chappel - Kuwait

Alaina Downey - USAF - Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri - Steve Downey's daughter

Michael Drake - U.S. Navy - Persian Gulf

Lisa Dyson - U.S. Army Intelligence - Johnny Dyson's daughter

Jeremy Lee Eades U.S. Army - Roger and Jerri Eades son.

John Ford - U.S. Army Korea - Steve and Sharon Ford's son

Dickie Hartsfield's son - U.S. Army - In Bagdad

Warren Haynie from Lewisville - Serving in Iraq

Matthew Johnson - Marines

Robby Johnson - USAF C-130 Crew Chief

Brennan Jones - U S Marines - Iraq

James A.Jones - US Navy

Pat Keister - USMC -

Terris Lyons - National Guard - Back home in Minden

Mick McDaniel - U.S. Air Force, unknown location - Richard Matherne's son-in-law

David Mitchell - U.S. Army - In Bagdad

Opheline Moore - USArmy -

Brian Morgan - US Navy - in the Gulf somewhere

C.H. Osman - CAPT USN - Pentagon

Andrew Paladino - US Army SRA - Don and Ronda Paladino's Boy

Nick Paladino - US Army Ssgt - Don and Ronda Paladino's Boy

Bob Polk - Kuwait

Todd Raymond - USAF - Germany - Another MCC young man.

Bryan Ross - Wayne Specie Roy and Loretta Specie's

Jason Varner Deployed to an unknown Location Roy and Loretta Specie's

Lloyd Young - USMC - North Carolina - Cindy Martin's son

Please let us know of any updates to this list. James F.McClellan -

KC5HII@Magnolia-Net.Com Also, at kvma.Com they have a list of people over seas.

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Scheduled Activities

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Alcoholics Anonymous meets at 8 p.m.Monday - Friday.At noon on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and at 7 p.m.Sunday at 914 N. Vine

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Columbia County Amateur Radio Club meets Every second Thursday @ 7:00 p.m.Union Street Station.And YOU'RE invited.Net is every Sunday at 20:30 on 147.105.

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Columbia County Diabetes Support Group - Every third Monday, 7:00 p.m. room 222, Magnolia Hospital

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"Focus on the Family" with Dr. James Dobson weekday afternoons at 1 PM on KVMA am 630 it's a great show!

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MCC - Abraham Prayer - Sunday at 5:00 p.m and Wednesday from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm

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MCC - Early Morning Prayer - Monday - Friday, From 6:30 am to 8:00 am

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MCC - "Beth Moore" Video Class - Thursday nights at 5:45 pm

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MCC - "Faith Builders" Small group meets at 1051 Columbia 36 the second and fourth Tuesdays, 6:30 pm to 7:45 pm.

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MCC - Firm Foundations Class, Sunday 9:30 to 10:15 a.m

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MCC - Meadow Brook Nursing Home Ministry Tuesday from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m

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MCC - Mom's Day Out - Every Tuesday and Thursday from 9 to 2.$10 for the first child, $5 for the second.Call 234-3225 for reservations.

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MCC - Nursing Home Ministry - Meadowbrook Every Tuesday from 10 to 11 am. Taylor, the last Thursday each month.

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MCC - Over comers: Fridays @ 7:00 p.m- Director, Traci Foster invites you to a 12 step Christian support program.For anyone with a life controlling problem. Child care is provided.

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Men's Prayer Breakfast held every Tuesday morning at 6 AM in Miller's Cafeteria. If you aren't a regular participant at the Men's Prayer Breakfast, you're missing some great food, fellowship and inspired teaching of the Word. Hope to see you there.

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Emergency Phone Number 911

(Fire, Police, Ambulance, Sheriff, etc. )

Central Dispatch 234-5655

(Non - Emergency Number)

Direct Numbers

Ambulance - 234-7371 (24 Hour)

Jail - 234-5331 (24 Hour)

Poison Control - 800-222-1222 (24 Hour)

http://www. aapcc. org/

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"Fight till you win!" - - Mark Brazee

"Bring 'em on!" - -President George W. Bush

"There is not enough darkness in the world to put out the light of one candle."

"Laugh whenever you can and cry if you need to." -- "Bug"

"I read the end of the book. We win!" -- "Bug"

"We may not be able to cure the world, but we don't have to make it sicker." -- "Bug"

"There just ain't enough fingers for all the holes in the dike." - - "Bug"

"If you can read this e-mail, thank a teacher. - - If you read it in English, thank a serviceman."

"A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in ... and how many want out." - - Tony Blair

~~~~~

Hope you enjoy the newsletter.

Again, thanks to all our contributors this week.

God bless and GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!

Psa 33:16-19 Psa 12:6-7 Mat 5:11-12 Titus 2:1-3 Jer 3:21-22

God is Good and Faithful CU 73 IC JFM CSP NREMT-I KC5HII

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