Well, here's a break for a little personal life update (my blogs are in "sink mode" at the moment anyhoo)... We're together as a family for the weekend, respiting at the Ronald McDonald house (again, an incredible organization, I highly recommend it). My wife has been doing well with labor, I've been off and on with sleep (what with shuttling the girls back and forth to sitters for the last week and a half). My little "mouse", though, has been rather fussy, as it has been very hard for he...

After reading another blogger's thread on the disparity in salary among college level educators, I have to take a serious look at things. Sure, critics can say all they want, but isn't the point of those statistics to take a look at whether we truly have become an egalitarian society? In my life, I can honestly say I have not once seen a case of sex discrimination, and only once seen a clearcut case of racial discrimination (I applied for a job, and was hired; a hispanic man that applied a...

I was recently sniped by an anonymous user who said they had never seen anything so venomous and misguided as my post. The post was one on Michael Moore, and I went back and took an objective look at it to examine if the allegations were, indeed, true. They weren't. I would say that my position (the worst I called Moore was a "muppet"), while definitely one sided, fairly presented the argument I was trying to advance, that Moore's endorsement of Kerry might ultimately help Bush more than i...

The year was 1930, and in an era where very few women had any college education, Olive walked across the stage and received her master's in divinity. She had worked hard for this moment, and had dreams of working full time as a minister. Life, however, set her on a different course, as she fell in love with a veteran and settled down with him in rural Indiana to raise a family. A year later, their first child, a daughter, was born, and they would have four more in the span of the next 13 y...

He was born on August 2, 1981, and would have been aborted had it not been for the persuasive arguments of his siblings. He grew up with four older siblings that he knew and 3 stepsiblings that he never knew. He was sanity in an insane world; he saw the light when we walked in darkness. He was "the seed that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose". He was a joyful young boy in an angry world. He left this world way too soon, or heaven got an angel way too late. He was my ...

OK, bloggers, time to fess up. I do not know about the women, but I know every man in the world had a whole list of favorite makeout songs that would pop up on the stereo whenever he got a female into the room. Let's hear 'em. My personal favorite makeout songs were kinda weird. One of my alltime favorite songs is "under the milky way tonight" by the church (it kind of established me as a dark, brooding personality).. My other two principal mainstays were "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel" (...

His name was Enos. On the night he was born, the doctor advised his mother and father to make plans to bury him. He was a sickly child, and not expected to make it through the night, as rural Ohio had very limited medical facilities in June of 1900. He made it, and grew up with very limited education as his parents, unable to care for their children through what we consider "adulthood", sent him to town to make his own way at the age of 12. He found work in the mills, and supported himself wi...

Allow me to introduce you to my wife. She works at least 80 hours a week, is a business woman, an educator, and does a good deal of work in the health care field. She is, however, highly frowned upon in the world of "professional" women. I say this because my wife is a stay at home mom. The trend towards equality between men and women is a very good thing; personally, I feel that women should be able to achieve anything in life that they desire, just as men should. They should be abl...

On a recent blog, a respondent used the standard retort that my position was invalid because the other's was just as bad. This is interesting, as I've never pretended to give equal time to the opposition in most of my blogs. I cannot decide whether it is sheer laziness or ignorance that drives people to expect me to post the positions of the opposing argument on my blogs; at any rate, it annoys me that they can't be bothered to assemble their own facts on the case. Would it be reasonable f...

The recent JU drama has brought out the cynic in many bloggers, myself included. While I have been quite busy, I quickly was drawn in by allusions to the drama, then backtracked until I found out what it was all about. It will not be rehashed here. This is not what this blog is about. The whole thing set me to thinking about the nature of prayer requests. If we send out a prayer request and the object of our prayers turns out to be fictional, what have we lost? It's not as though we have a...

Having five females in the house (one wife, four daughters), has led me to the conclusion that there are some food differences that us males with the "Y" chromosome just don't have. Of particular instance to me is my two year old, who, I have recently discpvered, can actually hear a slice of cheese being unwrapped from two rooms away (I'm actually not kidding here!). The thing that really stands out about the five females in my house is: the whole stereotype about women and chocolate...is ...

I am a road trip afficianado. Even having children hasn't decreased my yen to hit the road, if anything it has INCREASED, because now I have a whole carful of little acolytes to proselytize to the joy that is the open road. I would have to say, however, that the coolest road trip I ever took was in June, 2001, to a bluegrass festival known as Smilefest in western North Carolina. We loaded up our kids, hitched up the popup camper, and hit the open road. About halfway through Indiana, we ...

I have been meaning to write a blog on penal reform for a long time. This article will only touch on some of my feelings, and I will write more in depth later. One of the key problems with our penal system in America is that it is largely revenge based, rather than rehabilitation based. We think that, by removing the criminal from society, by executing them or demeaning them, we are somehow "dealing with" the crime problem in this country. The fact is, that is just not the case. We are "de...

Well, sorry for another blog complaining about the heat, but it darn near kicked my rear end today. And the heat advisory now has been continued through tomorrow, which means AT LEAST another day in this miserable, wretched (but at least it's a DRY HEAT!) climate. I went through my 3.25 gallons of water by 1:00 (I work until two), and had to make a run for an emergency powerade supply. Before I hit the sack, I will drink another 3-4 gallons of water; it seems impossible to drink enough. ...

I have always appreciated intellectual discussion. It is truly enjoyable to see what our minds can conceive when we bounce ideas, suggestions, and questions off of one another. The great minds throughout history always had contemporaries who helped formulate and create their ideas; they didn't exist in a vaccuum. But intelligence can, in the wrong context, be a liability. It's not just the age old argument about the fine line between genius and insanity at play here; intelligence can be...