Michael Savage

My opinions on Michael Savage have slighly changed over time since my last post about him. I still find him pretty harsh, yet I listened to him several times and I must say he is a very intelligent man. He actually sounds like a pretty good guy if you look beyond that harsh surface. I have heard him make some wonderful remarks in terms of family and government. He still has his moments of self-righteous criticism, yet I feel he is bearable to listen to most of the time.

 

Yet another update on the Vernor vs. Autodesk case

http://aecnews.com/news/2008/03/05/3014.aspx

Things are heating up and it looks to be developing into a monumental case. For some reason I find this very exciting…

 

Waiting on Elijah

I just read an article titled “Deterioration of families now a ‘legitimate gov’t concern,’ says activist” and I must say, I find it strange that it was even necessary to conduct such a study. Isn’t it quite obvious to most of us that it would be a concern? Of course I would hesitate to actually say it is a government concern as it appears that the government wants the values we hold in the family relationship to deteriorate. Why else would there be so many laws in place that act as a splinter in the family’s spinal cord?

But we can’t solely blame the government for the mess our country is in as far as the family is concerned. The people of our nation have fallen for the easy way out of most everything. Over the years we have seen men go from working hard in fields growing produce and hunting wild game providing for their family to sitting at desks and relying on corporate farms to provide food. It is more convenient to go to the store and buy prepackaged food than it is to grow it. We have seen women go from cooking, cleaning, and schooling their children to eating out regularly, hiring a maid, and sending their children off to free government child care (aka – the public school system). It is so much more convenient this way is it not?

Our society has become so detached from the idea of family that they have no idea what the word means. We have become a bunch of irresponsible, selfish, spoiled brats who rely on others to provide for us and our children. We have all failed. Parents have failed. Churches have failed. Our government has failed. All in the name of convenience and money.

I eagerly await the Elijah spoken of in Malachi 4:1-6 in hopes for a better day.

For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. ² But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. ³ And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the LORD of hosts. ⁴ Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. ⁵ Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: ⁶ And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

In June my wife and I will be celebrating my 10th anniversary. We have 4 children whom we love dearly. Sure, we have had hard times. We have had our squabbles. It would have been so convenient for us to divorce many times, but we didn’t. We stuck it out and learned to forgive one another for our wrongs. We learned to truly love one another after getting over the infatuation of our courting period. “To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish ‘till death do us part.“

My love for my wife and children grows stronger every day. I could not survive without them. Life would have little meaning. I thank God for blessing me with them.

 

Justice

I know it’s been a while since I blogged and lots of my blogs haven’t really kept with the theme I started out with. Sorry about that. Now I must be on with another rant, even a plea if you will.

I have a friend back home in Mo. who is facing charges of what I believe is molesting his step-daughter. He never really actually told me what the charges are, but it is serious. I’ve never thought of him as the type of guy that would do something like this and I don’t believe he did it. He, of course, maintains his innocence. It is his word against hers basically. There is no proof whatsoever against him and the case was thrown out of court once already due to lack of evidence as well as his step-daughter’s history of making claims of being sexually assaulted, raped, etc. against other males.

This time around though something’s different. He doesn’t know what, but indeed something is. His lawyer who was confident he could win the case in the beginning is now telling him that he doesn’t have a chance and will have to accept a plea bargain which as most of you know requires him to admit guilt and will still have a tremendous impact on his life from here on out. He will have a difficult time finding work, which he already is simply due to the charges. He’ll have a difficult time living life in general and will be on the national list of perpetrators. I’m sure there’s an assortment of other troubles and trials he’ll face as well just due to the label that will be placed on him.

I believe, as does he, that there is some foul play involved at this point. His wife’s parents have never liked him. His step-daughter moved in with them around the time this all started. They’ve tried and tried to get his wife to leave him as I understand, even before all of this came about. They “know people” as it were and I’m not sure, but I believe they are moderately wealthy, at least in terms of small town society. This is all taking place in a small town so you can see how if you start thinking about it and putting pieces together you may become suspicious. He believes they may have paid off his lawyer. No one can be sure without an investigation though.

At any rate, I believe he is innocent. I’ve known child molesters. He really doesn’t fit that bill. Unfortunately, he cannot afford another lawyer as he’s out of work and the lawyers he’s consulted with all want money up front. If there happens to be a lawyer licensed in the state of Missouri who has a heart and is willing to do any pro-bono work I would urge you to contact me at the following email: thelaymansjournal at gmail.com

Please be in touch soon as time is running out fast.

 

Timothy S. Vernor vs. Autodesk update

Timothy S. Vernor has refiled his complaint with the aid of a new “high profile” lawyer by the name of Michael Withey. See the news here.

 

How about a little Civil 3D?

This past year or two I had really wanted to begin implementing Civil 3D in our projects. I had planned to use a subdivision as the “pilot project”, but the engineer on that project shot me down. He was an old timer and wanted to do things the old timer way, his way. I did end up using that project data to practice with, but that’s all I got out of it.

Later that engineer left the company and I had another one to work with. We had a project where a new subdivision was having issues with some flooding. Another engineer (from a different company) had apparently graded it too low or had some miscalculations in his drainage system. Perhaps the contractor goofed. Who knows. Either way we were stuck with fixing the error.

We went through several alternate designs, one of them being a ditch that crawled along the back of the subdivision which backed up to wetlands. Our discharge point was a ditch behind the wetlands so we had to get our drainage from one side of the wetlands to the other. Previous attempts to design a ditch and/or pipe system through the wetlands were immediately flagged so we needed a different option.

I think we ended up piping the water along the path that our ditch took in the final design, but I kept the file with the ditch for my own file. Well, I had kept it. I had saved it on my local computer which was stolen during a break-in one evening after hours. Fortunately I had saved a file on the network which at least had my surfaces and x-sections. At any rate here’s what the plan looked like:

 

The Golden Compass

A day or two ago my wife had said something about a new movie with Nicole Kidman that is supposed to be an anti-God movie something in the style of “The Chronicles of Narnia”. She had received an email about it with a link to the snopes.com page which confirmed that it’s a true rumor.

This morning I got the email from a co-worker. I immediately went to the official site to watch the trailer and even “met” my dæmon which ended up being a mouse named Mayra; solitary, spontaneous, responsible, clever, and modest. I guess that’s more or less what I’m like. Not sure about the clever part, but I suppose I have my moments of wit.

Of course most Christians are making a big roohaha about the movie because it’s based on a book written by an athiest, Philip Pullman, who has indeed set out to destroy God according to the snopes.com report.

Funny, I don’t remember athiests staging a protest or raising a big fuss over the Christian based movies that have been released in recent years;  “The Chronicles of Narnia”, “Left Behind”, or even “Evan Almighty” which I covered in this blog a couple days ago. I haven’t heard of any Christians raising a fuss over the biblical inaccuracies of any of these films either. I guess it’s OK to misrepresent the Bible, but it’s not OK to speak against it or offer a differing point of view? It’s OK for Christians to release movies that glorify their religion, but not OK for an athiest to release a movie that belittles it?

I’m a Christian. I plan to watch the movie. I look forward to it in fact. Doesn’t mean I’ll agree with the message, but I like to hear other ideas even if they’re different from mine; even if they are wrong or inaccurate. Maybe that’s not the way I should be. The fact of the matter is that athiests likely wouldn’t be so anti-Christian if not for the behavior of the Christians by and large. Come to think about it, many athiests may have been turned away from Christianity in the first place due to the behavior of Christians. Not all Christians behave improperly mind you, but the vast majority of them do seem to have a problem speaking and/or acting with the maturity that is expected.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

 

Evan Almighty

My wife and I watched “Evan Almighty” last night. We enjoyed the movie. I thought it was great in comparison with most other movies being released as of late. There was one biblical inaccuracy with the movie that seems to be common in mainstream Christian belief though, aside from the idea that all of the O.T. men had long hair and beards.

Anytime you see a Bible storybook or a kids Bible with illustrations in it covering the story of Noah and the Ark it shows the animals all in pairs. Two of every animal. Now you might be thinking, “But I thought that’s what the Bible says about the animals; that Noah took them on the Ark two by two.” It is true that the animals were taken in pairs, male and female, so that their seed would be saved and they could multiply after the flood, however, it wasn’t only two of each animal. The clean animals (beasts) and fowls of the air were actually taken by sevens.

Genesis 7:2-3
Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that [are] not clean by two, the male and his female.
Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. (KJV)

Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate;
and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive upon the face of all the earth. (RSV)

Am I reading this wrong or has mainstream Christianity really overlooked this all these years? How could something so simple, so obvious, miss the attention of so very many people?

At any rate, the movie was enjoyable even so.  Steve Carell was hilarious and as usual Morgan Freeman (one of my personal favorites) turned out another fabulous performance. If you haven’t seen Evan Almighty yet I highly recommend it.

 

Feeling the Squeeze?

I recently watched a clip of Ron Paul on youtube where he had discussed the economy and stated that we are in a recession right now. He explained that the lower and middle class are feeling the recession fully while the upper classes are not really aware of it because of the transfer of money from the lower/middle class to the upper class.

The fact is that right now the lower and middle classes are struggling to stay afloat given the state of our economy. Many of us are making it, but just barely. Others aren’t and are being foreclosed on losing homes they’ve lived in for several years. I would agree with Mr. Paul that we are indeed in a recession and I personally feel it may become a depression very soon. The financial institutions have overextended their services to folks who honestly cannot keep up with their debt. Of course it is the people who suffer most in these situations and it could have been prevented had the banks not handed out loans to people who couldn’t handle the payments.

 

Note to the Britney Spears Bashers

I’m sorry but I really have to rant about the folks across the country who are bashing Britney Spears with every breath they take. We’ve now come to the point where there are even ads depicting her holding a baby over her head. Those members of the press, web marketers, and bloggers who continue to persecute this poor girl please listen…

People, you’ve gone way too far. It isn’t just Ms. Spears that you ridicule, point fingers and condemn to hell, but she has certainly taken the brunt of it in recent years. Are you really so insecure that you must keep on with this childish notion that you are perfect and she is not? What are the motives behind your words and actions? Do you realize how utterly immature you are acting? It would appear not.

I’m no fan of Britney Spears myself, yet I have become quite weary of seeing and hearing all of this anti-Britney nonsense. There are much more important things that you people can spend your time, airspace, webspace, adspace, or newspaper space on, but instead you throw insults at this person who is obviously going through some rough times in her life. Where is the compassion?

Even more sickening is that many of the rude comments I’ve heard are coming from people who would call themselves a Christian. Folks, there is no room in Christianity for self-righteousness. If you must say anything at all to or about Ms. Spears perhaps you should consider saying something encouraging to her. Something that might actually help her out of her troubles.

How many of you crude people actually spend a good deal of your time with your children training them to grow into positive and productive adults? I’m sure many of you sit on your rear blogging about what a bad parent Ms. Spears is while your kids are sitting in their room playing with dolls, video games, or even talking on their Disney cell phone with friends. And who knows what else they might be doing. Maybe you should pay attention to your kids and quit harping on other people for their parental imperfections.

We live in a country that is “free”. We can pretty much say what we want and do what we want so long as it’s within the law. Most make a big deal about this country being founded on the principals of the Bible even to the point of whining when someone wants “In God We Trust” removed from our money. It’s a shame you people cry about every little bit of your perceived persecution, but then you turn around and speak hate towards others. I see very little evidence that you believe in God at all, at least in the God of the Bible. Maybe you should think about what God you truly are serving, particularly if you are so worried about “In God We Trust” being printed on your money.

In conclusion, leave this girl alone. Reach out your hand and throw her some encouragement instead of insults. Maybe she’ll straighten up then and be able to live a better life and it just might help you to live a better life too.