ahhh Baseball season is about to begin

We have suffered through another tedious summer, watching teams start fast, finish early (team motto for the hometown Texas Rangers), collapse in August (can you say Bah-stin?) when they are exposed for having no heart, hang on for dear life (good thing Tigers have sharp claws) and have Christmas arrive early for the Cards.
Of course, it helps to have former Rangers playing in the game for your opponent, especially one that masquerades as a closer.
John Daniels nutted up this summer and traded Francisco Cordero to the Brewers. Good for him. I just watched Cordero give up a bases clearing bases loaded double in the bottom of the eigth as the Brewers tried to protect a 2 run lead. I thought, "Wow, this looks really familar."
Now if the Rangers can only sign Carlos Lee to a deal after the season they will have scored far more than shipping a heartbreak north to an unsuspecting city. Hey, at least Milwaukee has beer and Harleys.

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid, too.
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe tuo fo 100 anc.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.

FRT!!

It's Friday Random Ten time...
Thanks to the input I am getting from bloggers and others. I really enjoy listening to and learning about new sources of music. There is a group discussion on another site I read that talks about "what music does to you." All I can ask is, isn't it a great gift that we have been given?
Here's my list for today -
1)Aerosmith - Hoodoo/Voodoo Medicine Man
2)The Radiators - Howling For My Darlin'
3)The Grateful Dead - Cumberland Blues
4)The Grateful Dead - Mama Tried
5)The Cowboy Junkies - To Lay Me Down
6)Bob Marley - War
7)Sure Juror - Sleeping Pill (what to do the morning after)
8)Agents of Good Roots - Step to the Street
9)Death Cab For Cutie - Company Calls Epilogue
10)Holy Moses and the High Rollers - Expressway To Your Heart
Please add yours.

God, a barber and perception

A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things
and various subjects.

When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said: "I don't believe that God exists."

"Why do you say that?" asked the customer.

"Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn't exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can't imagine a loving a God who
would allow all of these things."

The customer thought for a moment, but didn't respond because he didn't want to start an argument. The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop. Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed
beard. He looked dirty and un-kept.

The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the barber: "You know what? Barbers do not exist."

"How can you say that?" asked the surprised barber. "I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!"

"No!" the customer exclaimed. "Barbers don't exist because if they did, there would be no
people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside."

"Ah, but barbers DO exist! What happens is, people do not come to me."

"Exactly!"- affirmed the customer. "That's the point! God, too, DOES exist! What happens, is, people don't go to Him and do not look for Him. That's why there's so much pain and suffering in the world."

Iftar...yeah, i been to one of those.

The Dallas Chapter of the Institute for Interfaith Dialog hosted its fourth annual Iftar. An iftar is the Muslim evening meal that breaks the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan. Members of our church, along with many others in the area were invited to attend. It was held in one of the ballrooms of a quite nice hotel in North Dallas (Addison, really).
IID's goal is to provide mechanisms for people from various religions to convene and find common ground to share existences on the planet.
Much of the talks given by the prestigeous speakers focused on this idea of being able to eat together, meet together, talk together and perhaps cry together. From that commonality will come understanding and tolerance for all of the children of God.
An interesting quote I heard this evening was "tolerance does not mean being influenced by others or joining them necessarily."
I am intrigued by this event and this group. I mean, what a concept. Getting along with others...

THE CHOICE: Longer life or more stuff

So, whose responsibility is it to pay for health care? Is health care something that an individual should be expected to pay for just like they pay for their car? Or is it something that we are all entitled to, and the cost should be paid for by our taxes. Right now we have a system that tries to say both these things at the same time, and to keep them mutually exclusive.

Higher education makes the same claims, that both the individual and society should bear the costs of higher education because both the individual and society benefit from an educated citizenry. And thus we recognize the need for the costs to be shared.

In the campaigns this Fall I don't hear that when it comes to health care. It's either universal care (meaning society bears the full cost), or let market forces bring down prices (individual responsibility). Isn't there a creative thinking politician (I know, I know, that's an oxymoron), who can speak to our shared responsibility. And acknowledge that health care today costs more in real dollars because it has a much greater value. Check out this op-ed to read about that.

Blue is Red

Sometimes I get a kick out of letting elitist liberals from this part of the world go on rants about how racist, or sexist, or, and this is the most common, how ignorant and uneducated folks are in the South, especially Texas. Usually the ones doing the ranting have never lived in the South, and have a view of anything south and west of Fairfax, VA taken from old news accounts from a half century ago. They may have traveled the world, but the only thing they know of the majority of our nation is newswire photos of cops with dogs attacking marchers in Selma, or a governor in a school house door. (They conveniently forget the shot of the white anti-bussing protester in Boston stabbing a black man with an American flag. A picture taken nearly a decade after Selma!)

So for all you folks who are tired of listening to blue states tell you how red states don't get it, and are backward and ignorant, check out this NYT article and tell me which state is backward, lawless, racist, and sexist.

The Night They Drove ol' Dixie Down

This description of a DEMOCRATIC candidate sounds like the REPUBLICAN candidate for congress in my district. Is the South gonna rise again through political subterfuge? To Northeastern ears, this guy's not a Democrat. Well, actually he does. Sounds like what the Democratic party was like before my generation screwed it up!