Rapture Letters

Religion, Web Surfin'
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Are you spending any time wondering what your friends will think when the Rapture comes and you’ve been taken up to heaven while they are left behind to pay for their sinful ways with seven years of Hell on Earth? They’ll worry where you went, and wonder why you haven’t called.

Problem solved! Prepare for this eventuality with a visit to RaptureLetters.com, where you can enter the email addresses of your friends and family that you fear will be left behind, and when the Rapture comes, they’ll receive an email from you letting them know you’re with God in heaven. Only people who know they’re going to heaven could be so thoughtful.

How does it work? The site’s creator describes it as a ‘dead man’s switch’. Each week, he resets the program to prevent the Rapture Letters from being sent. When the Rapture comes, and he’s snatched up to heaven, he won’t be there to reset the program and so the letters will be sent. It’s one thing to be sure you’re going to heaven, but won’t it be a hoot when this guy finds himself stuck in traffic, or otherwise incapacitated, and the letters go out… false alarm, no Rapture yet… psych!

It raises a larger issue. Who might maintain such online services after the true believers disapear? On the FAQ of RaptureReady.com they deal with the question of how the site will be maintained after the Rapture occurs. It seems to me that what is really needed is a corps of unholy sys admins… non-believing webmasters who will still be around to keep the email flowing and the web sites humming. With all the spammers and pornographers on the Net, there should be no shortage of skilled techies who will be left behind to keep it up and running.

with thanks to Ed Helm on The Daily Show for his great segment on Rapture Letters

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The Wedding Test

Humor

My girlfriend and I had been dating for over a year when we decided to get married. My parents helped us in every way, and my friends encouraged me.

My girlfriend? She was a dream! There was only one thing bothering me. That one thing was her younger sister. My prospective sister-in-law was twenty years of age, wore tight miniskirts, and low cut blouses. She would regularly bend down when near me, and I got many a pleasant view of her hanging breasts or creeping underwear. It had to be deliberate. She never did it when she was near anyone else. One day little sister calls and asked me to come over to check the wedding invitations. She was alone when I arrived. She whispered to me that soon I was to be married, and she had feelings and desires for me that she could not overcome and did not really want to overcome. She told me that she wanted to make love to me just once before I got married and committed my life to her sister.

I was in total shock and could not say a word. She said, “I’m going upstairs to my bedroom,and if you want to go ahead with it just come up and get me”. I was stunned. I was frozen in shock as I watched her go up the stairs. When she reached the top, she pulled off her tank top up and her panties down and threw both down the stairs at me.

I stood there for a moment, then turned and went straight to the front door. I opened the door and stepped out of the house and walked straight toward my car. My future father-in-law was standing outside. With tears in his eyes he hugged me and said, “We are very happy that you have passed our little test. We could not ask for a better man for our daughter. Welcome to the family!”

The moral of the story: Always keep your condoms in your car.

Thanks to Neal for sharing

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Employer Exhortations

Work

It’s been about three months now since I brought four years of self-employment to an end and accepted an offer to join NGP Software as their Director of Online Campaigns. Job decisions are always tough to make, but this one has really proven to be a good one.

My new boss, recently wrote about some exhortations that he had laid out to guide him as he developed his new company.

OK, look it up…

exhortation

n 1: a communication intended to urge or persuade the recipients to take some action 2: the act of exhorting; an earnest attempt at persuasion [syn: incitement]

That Nathaniel started out by self-exhortating himself like this, and eight years later is still reflective and mindful that each is an ideal goal to be continually strived for, says a lot about him and the company he’s built. I’m glad to be a part of it.

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Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Books, News

Very sad news tonight. Hunter S. Thompson was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 67 years old.

I am a huge fan of Thompson’s work. I can remember my first introduction to it, when my brother read me passages from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That introduction let me to move from one book to the next. You really couldn’t go wrong with any of his books.

Of all of them, I most appreciate his volumes of letters, particularly the first volume, The Proud Highway. A tireless correspondent, the letters introduced me to a young Thompson, who would eagerly engage friends and strangers in thoughtful and funny letters that he carefully maintained copies of, knowing that someday even they would be a worthy read for a larger audience.

Once, while I was at UC Santa Barbara in 1986, Thompson visited our campus for a lecture. The event was a sell-out and I had no ticket, but since my job on campus was as a projectionist, I was able to worm my way into watching from the rear projection booth. With his Dunhill hanging from a cigarette holder, and a glass of Wild Turkey, he gladly entertained questions from students in the packed auditorium. It was great.

Thompson said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro“. He was a pro, and he will be sorely missed.

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Cat Doorman

Friday Cat Blogging

Three cats, two doors. Kitty wants in. Spaz wants out. Figaro wants in. But if you open the door for her in response to a pleading look from the window, she’s suddenly standoffish, too cool to come in. She’ll look back from the front step as if to say, “Oh, you’re coming out? It’s great out here.”, or maybe she’ll bolt, as if she could read my mind and see me punting her from the step. But you can bet that three minutes later Figaro will be pawing at the back door, denying she was the cat who just blew you off in front.

This is Kitty, about two minutes after her desperate morning plea to be let out. Peering through her paw polished pane, wanting back in. I’ll let her in many times today. We are all Cat Doormen in our house.

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Editing Jefferson

News, Politics

Thomas Jefferson saw them coming, the editors who would follow. And he and the other founders recognized that changing times would require the ability to modify the framework of our government (see: Article V).

In 1786 the Virginia General Assembly passed Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the authorship of which was one of the three accomplishments that he put in his own epitaph (Writing the Declaration of Independence and founding UVA being the other two). Virginia thereby became the first state to disestablish religion.

In the Statute, Jefferson included a warning to future Virginia Assemblies that while they may be able to change the law, doing so would fly in the face of the natural rights on which the Statue was premised.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

And though we well know that this assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act to be irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act shall be an infringement of natural right.

Well TJ, that succeeding assembly you predicted is here. The House of Delegates has passed House Joint Resolution 537 which would tear down the wall between church and state in Virginia to explicitly protect an individual’s right to pray in public places, including schools. The resolution’s sponsors claim that Jefferson’s intent has been misinterpreted these last 219 years, and that the faithful are being oppressed in a way the founders never foresaw. Opponents see it as a step toward returning prayer to the classroom.

Alexandria writer Mary Clay Berry recently wrote in the Post about her experience with the coercive influence of mixing school and religion growing up in Virginia in the 40s as a cautionary tale of more recent effort by Conservative Legislators to bring religion back into our public classrooms.

Virginia’s pride in his efforts to prevent it not withstanding, Jefferson saw it coming. The small minded legislators who would follow him, and the Theocracy that they’d one day try to bring to America.

Maybe by then there will be a Democracy in Iraq we can flee to.

for further reading:

Va. Proposal Would Make Prayer a Right
The Washington Post, 2/17, 2005

What the Bible Shouldn’t Rule
By Mary Clay Berry, The Washington Post
Sunday, 2/13/05; Page B07

God and Darwin
The Washington Post, 1/25/2005

Constitution of Virginia, Section 16
Free exercise of religion; no establishment of religion.

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Meet the Ads

Diversions

OK, so I’m experimenting now with Google Ads. I have zero expectations that my blog can generate any meaningful income for me, but I’m certainly willing to give it a try. You’ll find them in the banner of many of the pages on this site now, and it’s kind of interesting to see what comes up. On the main page, I’m seeing ads about blogging and web hosting. On others there is Cubs memorabilia and invitations to meet Democratic singles. We’ll see how it goes.

Ads are everywhere, and it does me no good to try and avoid that reality here on my own blog. If you can’t beat them, join them, right? Keep in mind, I don’t determine the content of these ads, the Google Gods do that. So an ads appearance here on my site does not equate to an endorsement or recommendation of that product by me. But feel free to click on it anyway, you may put some coin in my pocket by doing so.

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Google Maps

Technology

For a long time I have preferred using Yahoo! Maps over MapQuest. It just seemed to me that Yahoo’s offering provided more features and often found locations that MapQuest could not. But move over boys, there’s a new kid on the block.

Google has launched a beta version of a new service called Google Maps. My early review is that it leaves the others in it’s dust. As with Google’s other resources, the interface is much cleaner than both Yahoo and Mapquest, not cluttered with advertisements. Some may appreciate the direct links for finding things such as ATMs or WiFi hotspots on Yahoo and Mapquest, but Google Maps takes a more Google’ish approach. Looking for something in particular? Type it into the ‘Local Search’ box and see what you get.

I used a well-known address in an experiment to compare results among these three services; 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, better known as The White House (find each map yourself here: <a href=”http://us.rd.yahoo.com/maps//maps/extmap/%2A-http://maps.yahoo.com//maps_result?csz=Washington%2C+DC+20502-0001&state=…“>Yahoo, Mapquest, and Google). Of the three, only Google accurately places it’s marker for this address (maybe I’m nitpicking, Yahoo’s star lands on the entrance gate, but Mapquest lands on the wrong street, providing a back yard view of the White House from the Ellipse).

There are still a few things to be sorted out. Don’t look for a ‘bar’ near the White House, unless it’s a Bar Association you’re after. Maybe a ‘pub’? That will get you to Pueblo Memorial Airport in Colorado, no matter what your starting point. Try ‘tavern’ for better luck. And for Mac users, Google admits it’s not quite working yet in Apple’s Safari browser (my default), but that they’re working on it.

Yesterday Google Map’s directions helped us navigation our way to a high-school in Faquier County, about 45 miles away, without few hitches. The printed map didn’t highlight the route like the on-screen one, and the directions came on page 2, requiring a run back into the house from the driveway to grab them. Minor bumps. All in all, I’m eager to see how Google Maps develops. It’s off to a promising start.

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Megan & Michael’s Travelblog

Travel, Web Surfin'

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Imagine you were going to go on a trip around the world. You are going to spend a whole year traveling, and so you have to keep your costs under control, so maybe you’d do some meaningful volunteer work along the way, and oh yeah… it’s you’re honeymoon.

Michael Phillips is a first-rate designer and web builder who I have done work with for the last few years. His new wife Megan is a teacher. But this year, they’re globetrotters. Oddly, it was a snail mail note that Michael sent me from South Africa that pointed me to their online travelogue and photo album.

It’s a great read and an amazing journey they are on. You will suffer great travel envy, but at the same time, reading their updates and looking at their pictures is truly the next best thing to being along on the trip with them.

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