I am currently reviewing Rare Jewel Magazine. I have been very impressed with them so far. They are a magazine that produces up-to-date articles addressing a large array of moral issues that face Christians today. I have not found a single heresy (from my point of view, of course) so far, which is quite impressive! I will continue later with some more in-depth reviews, but in the meantime, go check them out:
“I was commenting on the tour that we recently finished…and the ways in which music affects people…in summary of the tour we (the chorus) had something of a cast party (at an absolutely magnificent house with astounding acoustical presence) where we started to sing some of our repertoire just for fun the sheer pleasure in the music and bringing glory to God…this resulted in us in an impromptu method singing virtually all of our songs…without prescribed order/direction…without conduction and without audience…the consequential phenomena was one of the more powerful musical experiences of my life…and in some ways completely singular as it composed a plurality of individuals and concurrent effect…though one cannot accurately replicate or communicate the phenom in written prose (no matter how eloquent) it was a sublime experience…quite mystical in nature… centered in the love of music…the joys of our song…the freedom of performance enabled by practice and rehearsal…all overshadowed by the worship of God…the encouraging of the saints…the expressions of hope…the strength of faith…the mysteriousness of death…and the power of divine, agape love…the gladness of heart…the gladness of heart…the gladness of heart…the gladness of heart as when one goes with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord…the desire for God…Come to us O Lord in splendor bright, Fill our hearts with everlasting light…”
-Joshua B. Good, regarding the party at our house after Tapestry’s last program
Wow!
Hat tip: Ten Cents’ Worth
It seems I’ve started a couple of trends. At least, it’s attractive for my ego to think so. Being a trendsetter is such a hip thing, at least, I think that’s what I’m supposed to think.
I wrote recently about investments. Apparently that inspired the worthy ITF editor to write a series (Part 1, Part 2) of profound posts upon credit cards and all the wonderful benefits (including 80% discounts) they engender. The commment crowd went wild over his postings. I’m sure you will find the advice most sage. Or you also might not and think that he’s writing a parody. It’s up to you. atthecrux which writes a blog called Around the Crux which is located at atthecrux.com (most confusing!) also bravely followed my lead and posted a post about finances. atthecrux wrote a tome about insurance. Go read it. atthecrux has been working toward his degree as a financial advisor and is quite savvy financially. (On the other hand, don’t give a second thought to that silly stuff that Tom (at ITF) is spouting. *grin*)
Update #2: atthecrux has written another post on finances regarding mutual funds. Check it out.
I recently wrote about Mrs. ITF which prompted my evil twin to write about the mysterious and unknown Mrs. Hans Mast. I posted on it as well. All these Missus posts were apparently only an inspiration and precursor to By’s announcement that he is dating the lovely Amy! (Update: That guy gave all sorts of hints! Last Saturday he said, “For the record, today was a good day. Maybe sometime I’ll tell you why.” Then in a post on Monday, one would do well to look at the first letters of each of his paragraphs.) I take all the credit for the inspiration thereof*. A great big congratulations to both Byran and Amy! Two great people!
So you see, people, I really am quite an eminent trendsetter.
* NOTTTTT!!
Disclaimer: Anything that sounded like bragging in this post wasn’t bragging; it was just me making fun of myself and being absurd.
I saw this quote on techguy.org:
There’s no such thing as a stupid question,
but they’re the easiest to answer!
It’s actually not always true, because with the stupid questions, you have to figure out the underlying misconceptions that prompted the stupid question and address that in addition to the answering to the stupid question itself.
Two discussions going on that I thought I’d bring to your attention:
The first is right here at the The (not so) Daily Me. I issued a challenge for evidence to the evolutionists in the discussion, especially Waldo and wes, and I have received Zip, Zilch, Nada. That request for evidence stopped the conversation cold.
The second is over Commonwealth Conservative (if y’all didn’t know, John Behan of Commonwealth Conservative is the king of the Virginia Blogosphere) regarding abortion, especially abortion when the mother’s life is in danger or the baby will be brain dead. It’s a very interesting discussion!
Big Tapestry update: More pictures, more journal-like updates, and some video clips.
Out of Hanwell has announced the release of JavaScript Lint. It’s a development tool that validates JavaScript code for best coding practices. It is derived from Mozilla’s SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine. This tool can be integrated into VisualStudio or used standalone.
From the website:
Many JavaScript implementations do not warn against questionable coding practices. Yes, that’s nice for the site that “works best with Internet Explorer” (designed with templates, scripted with snippets copied from forums). But it’s a nightmare when you actually want to write quality, maintainable code.
That’s where JavaScript Lint comes in. With JavaScript Lint, you can check all your JavaScript source code for common mistakes without actually running the script or opening the web page.
The Times of London had a reporter infiltrate a homegrown terror cell a few months before the 7/7 attacks. He remained on the outer edges and learned little beyond the indoctrination and recruiting mechanisms used. His experience was, however, quite revealing.
One very interesting component of his reporting was the “two stories” strategy that terrorists have repeatedly deployed: They say one thing to their loyal constituents and another thing to the Western press. This has happened for years in the Israel/Palestine conflict. They release one press release in Arabic and one in English. The content of the press releases are polar opposites. They cry “Peace, peace” in English and “Allah Akbar! Kill the Infidels! Death to the Jews!” in Arabic.
Hat tip to Mark Tapscott of Tapscott’s Copy Desk
Recently (about two months ago) I invested a year’s wages in Fidelity Mutual Funds. This is a good time for me to do this for a number of reasons:
I studied the energy situation and saw a lot of potential as energy prices continue to sky-rocket. 23.6% of my investment went into Fidelity Select Energy Service. It has risen 15.32% since my purchase. My entire portfolio has risen 7.59% since purchase.
Here is a breakdown (fund, percent of investment put into fund, percent return since purchase):
First, I went into Select Energy only about a week ago. That explains the discrepancy in numbers (23.6% and 20.5%) between the two mentions of percentage of portfolio that Energy Service comprises. The higher percentage is as a percentage of my initial investment. The lower percentage is a percentage of my current portfolio. The also explains the relatively “anemic” (snort! 3% in a week…) return of Energy beside Energy Service.
Second, above results aren’t typical. I got lucky (Ok, I did a bunch of research, but I still got lucky) on energy. That helped a lot. Past performance is never a guarantee of future gain.
Third, I am not a professional and don’t sue me if you lose money.
Fourth, I would like to greatly encourage young people to invest their money. Don’t spend it on junk that dosen’t last. That money that you’ll forget what you spent it on in a week could be a stable financial future 5-10 years down the road. It could be a house bought and paid for.
My Dad has always put the maximum allowable under law each year into an IRA (a tax-deferred investment account) retirement account since he was 21. Get a jump on him! Start earlier!
Fifth, I would discourage anyone from investing in a short-term way. If you are going to invest it, look at the long term. If you try to time the market, you will usually just catch the wrong end of the market swings. Unless you know what you are doing (unlike myself), the best thing to do is to invest in mutual funds and let professionals manage it. You can choose what sectors you think will do well, but definitely spread your risk by diversifying.
Without any ado:
Thanks!
Here’s a comment by Jake in response to my post:
Hey Hans, yeah that’s a lot of “second hand information” *GRIN*
I’ll leave most of it as it is but there are a few things I would like to correct.
#1 My Passenger is being released from the hospital to day and is doing really well! (PTL!) His mind is clear and his body is healing. He is still doing a lot of rehab and has to relearn somethings he already know but it looks like he will make a full recovery.
Now #1, I DO have a “modern” GPS cell phone. I DID tell the sheriff that and they DID attempt to locate me with it. The only reason you didn’t find out is because the chopper pilot was faster. I lay down on my back on an old log because I was about to pass out from loss of blood and played “Hot and Cold” with the chopper till he found the tarp I had laid out. Some times modern technology is just too cumbersome and slow. (Sorry to dampen your sales pitch)
#2 Another thing, I did not say I was AT Roman Nose. That happened to be the nearest land mark I knew of for sure. So I told them I was NORTH of Roman nose. I was actually a couple of miles north but in a chopper or a plane the difference is a couple of minutes…
Any way, I do appreciate all your prayers. I never realized just how many friends I had before.
Oh, and don’t feel bad about any errors. You got it a LOT straighter than any of the local news papers.
If you would like to see some pictures of the crash you can take a look here: http://nathhan.org/Jake/Plane-Crash.htm
Jake
Especially be sure to check out the pics. Amazing…
Update: “You got it a LOT straighter than any of the local news papers.” Isn’t citizen journalism great?
More pics and even an exciting story…
My evil-twin/anti-me/not-so-me over at The Daily (not so) Me has just let me know I am married! Such an amazing surprise to find out that you are married when you didn’t even know about it! Now I’m really curious… who am I married to? “Mrs. Hans Mast” is an extremely uninformative nomenclature.
You know what… We could turn this into something really cool: All those who would like to apply for the position of Mrs. Hans Mast could submit their resumes (and pictures, of course) over at http://mrshansmast.blogspot.com/. That would make my job a lot easier!
The tapestry site has been updated with some new pictures, a rehearsal montage, and some journal-type updates.
A number of the programs will be recorded live. The best recordings will be picked out and a selection of the songs will be placed on the website. If the decision is made to not produce an album, the remaining tracks will be made freely available on the website. Otherwise, provision will be made to let you order a CD. In the meantime, you can check out Tapestry ’03’s recordings.
More stuff (pictures, updates) coming soon!
The editor (as he likes to call himself in an exaggerated/faux pompous way) of Iced Tea Forever’s wife has started blogging as… Mrs. Iced Tea Forever! Go give her a big welcome to the blogosphere!
