It is time for some year-end meditations. I’m not sure they do any good but at least it gets me to thinking on a higher level once a year. I will start out with a very short list of things I regret about 2011. (There is no use in dwelling on the negative.) I regret the apparent hold the radical right has gained in … Continue reading About 2011….
Here is an extended quote from the second chapter of James for our discussion today: You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless ? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made … Continue reading Fire Insurance???
via Will bank branches wither away? – USATODAY.com. In the past year, the number of bank customers who prefer to bank online has jumped sharply, according to a survey conducted in August by the American Bankers Association. Sixty-two percent of bank customers said they prefer banking online to all other methods, up from 36% in 2010. Only 20% of customers said they preferred using a … Continue reading Will bank branches wither away?
Source: Ford’s Theatre, citing errors, refuses to carry Bill O’Reilly’s ‘Killing Lincoln’ – CSMonitor.com. Just because you write a book doesn’t mean you are an expert in something. Fox New’s Bill O’Reilly I’m sure has a large following on his news show. I know he rants and raves just like most do on that network. He often mentions that he is a self-proclaimed expert on Lincoln … Continue reading Just Because You Write a Book…
Source: Cosmic Log – Faster-than-light neutrinos confirmed. Goodbye E=m² !!! It looks like scientists have discovered that matter can travel faster than the speed of light. One of Einstein’s simplest and most dramatic theories postulated that this was impossible. According to the theory when matter approaches the speed of light it turns into pure energy. He also postulated that matter no bigger than an eraser could … Continue reading Say It Isn't So….
I will get right to it here. As the title implies I just don’t seem to have any patience for wordy writing or speaking anymore. Maybe I have never had that patience but now I am now old enough and bold enough to finally come out and say it. I read so many things lately and my mind is screaming “Come to the point!” Why … Continue reading I Don't Have Patience for Blah, Blah, Blah….
Source: NBC Politics – Congress prepares for year-end spending and tax cut bazaar. Complain if you will about congressional gridlock, but right before the holidays is often when the gridlock eases because everyone is focused on getting out of town and back to their families. The extension of at least some of the 53 tax credits and preferences which Congress created or preserved last December. The … Continue reading Congress prepares for year-end spending and tax cut bazaar
Merry Christmas Everyone . Talk to you again on Monday Continue reading Merry Christmas…
Source: Obama Strikes Populist Chord With Speech in Heartland – NYTimes.com. The most recent proposal by Senate Democrats calls for reducing the share of Social Security payroll tax paid by employees to 3.1 percent from the already reduced level of 4.2 percent. If Congress takes no action, the tax is to revert to 6.2 percent next month. The cut, under the proposal, would be offset by … Continue reading Taking Money Out of Social Security
The banker, the lawyer, and the politician are still our best bets for a laugh. Audiences haven’t changed at all, and neither has the three above professions. -August 11, 1935 Will Rogers As Will said almost eighty years ago I probably get my best laughs from posts about these three groups. I personally have fairly intimately known at least one person from each of these … Continue reading Bankers, Lawyers, and Politicians….
I have always wondered who the party faithfuls are. 🙂 Continue reading I Have Wondered Who They Are??
Cosmic Log – Bam! How comics teach science. The source article above doesn’t have much to do with this post other than invoking some buried thoughts from my childhood. The comics they talk about in no way resemble the ones I read when I was a kid. I haven’t been around comic books in years so I don’t know what the general contexts are now. … Continue reading Comic Books Made Me Who I Am???
Thank you my Quaker brothers and sisters for being the conscience of Christ where so many others won’t. Continue reading The Power of Love
Dear R.J., “Jim, Christianity has nothing to do with racism.” That’s what my church elder told me when I was a 15-year-old boy. Can you believe that? “That’s political, and our faith is personal,” he said. That’s the night I left my church. This kind of story is all too common. So that’s exactly why we founded Sojourners 40 years ago – to call Christians … Continue reading Not as Much as We Would Like to Believe…
“Wounding and healing are not opposites. They’re part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to to find other people or to even know they’re alone with an illness. I think I … Continue reading In Service To Others…..
The Republican candidates for President, via their debates, are in a race to the bottom… but that is where their base is. I can’t give you a name to go with this quote but it is a poignant one. The Republican base makes up about 20% of the total electorate. It seems like it will be a very difficult job to turn around the rhetoric … Continue reading A Race to the Bottom…
“We do not strive for spectacular actions. What counts is the gift of yourself, the degree of love you put into each of your deeds.” – Mother Teresa, from The Love of Christ Almighty God, tear down the walls that divide us. Remove whatever infects our eyes, that we may see the stranger not as different but as a brother or a sister. Amen. This voice and … Continue reading Each of Our Deeds…
Here is another of my favorite Cardinal Winter pictures. It was taken in early 2011 during an ice storm. I broke a rib falling on the ice later that day!! Continue reading Iced In….
You gotta love all the spin masters on Wall Street these days. I noticed these headline here several times this year. BIGGEST ONE DAY GAIN!!! But what they don’t talk about is that the day before was the biggest one day loss so all that the gain did was put us back to where we were the day before yesterday. These guys will do just … Continue reading Biggest One Day Gain!!!
Source: Start-ups cue up for mobile video-sharing – USATODAY.com. Texting is so old school according to the latest trends. Video is where it is at today. Here is a quote from the referenced article: The meteoric rise of camera-equipped smartphones has popularized personal videos. And several new companies are rushing to develop mobile apps to help consumers capture, edit and share those videos across Facebook, … Continue reading About Video Sharing….
I got my hands on a Kindle Touch yesterday so I want to tell you a little about it and why you may want one. No, I’m not getting paid anything from Amazon but I am a regular customer of theirs. As the header shows here I am targeting this review toward seniors. When I talk about e-books to some seniors I often get a … Continue reading E-Book Readers
Source: Wolfram Blog : Stock Market Returns by Presidential Party. The New York Times recently published an “Op-Chart” by Tommy McCall on its Opinion page showing what your returns would have been had you started with $10,000 in 1929 and invested it in the stock market, but only during the administrations of either Democratic or Republican presidents. His calculations showed that if you had invested only … Continue reading An Investment Strategy No One Talks About….
There is nothing as easy as denouncing. . . . It don’t take much to see that something is wrong, but it does take some eyesight to see what will put it right again. -July 28, 1935 Will Rogers It seems most of our political leaders need a serious eye exam. Continue reading Will Rogers Quote for the Day
Here is an interesting article from the blog quakerquaker.org that I thought worth putting here. He has quite a few valid arguments but I’m sure most will ignore them due to him coming to the “wrong” conclusion. The Progressive Gospel (according to me) Posted by Dave Salyers on 12th mo. 8, 2011 at 11:00am Send Message View Blog The essence of the Good News of the Gospel as … Continue reading Salvation According to a Progressive Quaker
I get a daily email from Sojourners.net containing a verse from the Christian Bible as well as a corresponding quote from someone in today’s world. Here is one I got recently: “My father . . . used to say, ‘I need my anger. It obliges me to take action.’ I think my father was partly right. Anger arises, naturally, to signal disturbing situations … Continue reading My Anger Obliges Me to Take Action…
Here is an anonymous quote I ran across a little while ago. If you give a man a fire, he will be warm for the night. If you set a man on fire, he will be warm the rest of his life Very off-the-wall but humorous in a macabre sort of way. And here is another one that is even more insane Guns Save Lives.. … Continue reading Way Off The Top…
I ran across an old saying the other day that goes something like this Your first wife is just practice for the real thing Being that I am now over 65 and have been married to my first wife for more than twenty-five years I don’t much buy into that logic but it did get me to thinking about things being “just practice”. What if … Continue reading Just Practice
Ten men in our country could buy the World, and ten million can’t buy enough to eat. -August 16, 1931 Will Rogers Sometimes it is almost eerie to see the similarities between the depth of the Great Depression and today. The last time we were not able to break the grip of our aristocracy’s absolute control of wealth. Maybe we will this time around? After … Continue reading Getting Enough to Eat….
The Republicans are constantly harping about how ineffective it is to have businesses run by political processes. In most cases I agree with them in that regard. Just look at the many military contractors and their infamous $10,000 toilet seats to see an example of that. Every person in congress has his hand out when it comes to our bloated military budgets. Things run by … Continue reading Putting the Political Process into Business Decisions….
I am going to take a break from the Bible book of James to bring over a post from one of my now inactive blogs at RedLetterLiving.net . It is about another one of my heroes. This list has proven to be a cornerstone on my beliefs of non-violence and man’s humanity. I know that Gandhi was not a Christian but many of his … Continue reading The Seven Deadly Sins (Ghandi version)
Source: QR codes 101: What those squiggles do – CSMonitor.com. You have seen those splotching things everywhere now days but what do they do? First of all they are called Quick Response codes or QR for short and they do many many things. Just scan one with your smart phone and it will among other things bring up a website download a coupon that can be … Continue reading What those squiggles do…
The official bird for Indiana is the Cardinal and we certainly have a lot of them around my homestead. Here is another picture of them visiting our feeder. We go through about 100 pounds of seed a month but well worth the price of seeing our feathered friends, especially in the winter months Continue reading Our Feathered Friends….
source: Obama Strikes Populist Chord With Speech in Heartland – NYTimes.com. Mr. Roosevelt called the conflict between “the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess” central to progress. The men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess I know this isn’t exactly a campaign … Continue reading Another Campaign Slogan…
Here I am about a month into my revived Mac experience and one thing that is obviously different is that I no longer get the “Virus Update Available” message anymore! With the PC this was usually a twice a week experience. I most often stopped whatever I was doing when the screen popped up telling me to download the latest protection. After all even though … Continue reading "Virus Update Available…"
Success: Senate Supports Quicker Afghanistan Withdrawal Good news! For the first time, the Senate has approved legislation calling for an end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan and your support was a big factor in this success. Last week, the Senate added the amendment, offered by Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley (OR) and Republican Senator Mike Lee (UT), to the military authorization bill. The near-unanimous approval of this … Continue reading Some Good News on the War Front…
RJ's Corner 