Mental Musings

Dr. Joel C. Hunter of Northland Community Church in Orlando, Florida tells this story… A teacher in a young children’s class noticed David as soon as he walked into her classroom. David was missing his left arm. The teacher was worried that the other children would say something about David’s missing arm, so she immediately started going around to each of the children in the classroom and asking them to play the old “Here is the Church, Here is the Steeple” hand game with her. The children were so into the game that nobody asked David about his arm or said anything at all about it. By the end of the class, the teacher was thrilled that she had made it without any negative attention being given to David. Just before their closing prayer, she excitedly said, “Let’s everyone hold our hands together and do “Here is the Church.” She realized her mistake immediately when she glanced over at David. But before she could say anything else, one of the little girls in the class put her right arm ...

I am concerned that the only Republican Presidential candidates who held to the Conservative core values have dropped out of the race. We are left with three candidates who claim to be Conservatives, but do not stand for the same values that I believe most Republicans espouse. Areas that the candidates do not agree with me: McCain, Huckabee and Giuliani’s stances on dealing with illegal immigration; Romney and Giuliani’s stance on stem cell research and gun control; Huckabee’s stance on taxes, McCain and Giuliani’s stance on marriage between a man and women, Romney, Huckabee and Giuliani’s stances on energy, and I do not agree with any of them on their education stances. Usually our candidates stand for the core values of the Republican Party, but if any of these candidates get elected these core values are going to change within the party. I am also concerned that we have the third Southern Baptist (Huckabee is an ordained Southern Baptist minister) running for president and he seems ...

O ur twelve year-old is driving us crazy with his computer obsessions. Every time we turn around he is pleading with us to download a new app, virtual OS, emulator, widget, etc. His favorite is Edubuntu, but today he wanted to download a free trial of Windows Vista into a virtual hard drive space. My wife was amused that he wanted to know our business name, because he had to complete that part of the enrollment in order to get his free copy. Once he went through all of the steps, the download link was broken on Microsoft’s site. His response to this was, “Well that’s what I would expect from the people who made Windows Millennium Edition?” This is the same son who at the age of four was constantly changing our desktop settings just to see what would happen. We have been used to our son checking out three inch thick books on Linux, Unix, Ubuntu or hacking his iPod. We thought nothing when he installed Rockbox on his Sansa MP3 and then on his borther’s so that they could dual boot betwee...

Thought I would pass along some information that may be helpful to anybody who uses Paypal for online purchases. I checked my bank account online today and noticed $790 had been transferred to my Paypal account. I had not authorized these, so I checked my Paypal account and saw that they had held these transfers for investigation because so much had been requested within two days. I disputed the charges with my bank account and Paypal and should get all of the money back within a few days. It appears that somebody successfully entered my Paypal account, but since they did not successfully change any account information I was able to block further access. Paypal informed me that they have started offering a "Security Key" which they will send you for $5 to cover shipping it. They are sending me a key for free because of my specific situation. The key is a device which creates a random code once every few minutes. After registering the key, when you log into your account you wi...