Archive for Chronology

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. I made sausage soufflé for breakfast. It was a recipe that I learned from my mother. She made it frequently at Christmas, or on Easter morning — to celebrate the resurrection.  I remember that Mom made a batch of sausage soufflé for breakfast the day that Jane and I got married. My mom died a few years ago, so I try to keep the tradition going. Maybe I’ll make sausage soufflé for breakfast on the morning the girls get married. It’s one of those recipes that you can prepare a day early.

I browned the sausage on Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning I got up early; whipped the eggs, and grated the extra-sharp cheddar cheese. While it baked in the oven, I wrote a short article about Bono.

Priscilla made some fruit salad. We had breakfast a little after 8:00AM. Jane and the girls enjoyed the breakfast.

We got to church early, and the girls practiced Let All Things Now Living on the violin, viola, and cello. (It’s sung to the old Welsh tune of Ash Grove.) Ralph talked about letting the little children come to Jesus, and the blessings of God’s covenant faithfulness.

We had chicken, potatoes and vegies for lunch. Then we watched City of Joy. It’s a great movie about a shanty town in Calcutta — filled with gangsters, slum dwellers, and people with leprosy. (People I could relate to.) Do you know the happiest part of the movie? The wedding celebration.

That was yesterday. It’s only a memory now. Yesterday was also a Beatles’ song. But that was yesterday, and I want to talk about Tomorrow. Smashing Pumpkins wrote a song called Today (which I don’t recommend), so let’s talk about Tomorrow.

My mother grew up in Ogilvie, Minnesota — which is a really small town along highway 23, north of the Twin Cities. Seems like a lot of kids growing up in Ogilvie felt trapped in that tiny town, and could not wait to grow up and get out of that “2 traffic-light town”. There were only a couple stores in Ogilvie, so lot’s of folks went to other towns nearby to do their shopping. To the north-east was a town called Mora, and to the south was a little town called Day. Seems like the town called Day was even smaller than Ogilvie, so maybe they went there just to get away from Ogilvie.

People in Ogilvie had a saying that was kind of funny and really makes you think about yesterday, today, and tomorrow. They would say:

“Today I’m going to Mora, and tomorrow I’m going to Day.”

Bono wrote a song about his mother’s funeral, called Tomorrow. His mom died when he was only 14, and I think that was one of the big events that set a trajectory for his life, and shaped several of his songs.

Tomorrow also talks about Jesus coming back. [ Tomorrow Lyrics - song by Bono/U2]

“Open up to the Lamb of God… To the love of He who made the blind to see … He’s coming back, I believe it, Jesus coming… I’m gonna be there.”

I know the Great Wedding Feast is coming Tomorrow, and I’m gonna be there too. Just wanted to encourage you to think about yesterday, today, and tomorrow, while it’s still today.

It’s always daytime where I’m going. It’s called it the marriage supper of the Lamb. I’m not sure if we’ll eat breakfast since there won’t be any night, but I’m sure there will be joy and feasting. No darkness. No night. Only light. Only day.

Today I’m only talking about Tomorrow, but Tomorrow I’m going to Day.

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You’re Gonna Miss This

If your life is going too fast, maybe you should slow down and listen to this song by Trace Adkins. Or if you wish you could just grow up faster (and you think life is moving too slow) — you should listen to the song, too! You’re Gonna Miss This by Trace Adkins. (This song was playing on my alarm clock this morning, and woke me up.)

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Intelligent Design Debate Continues

Google Trend Chart depicts graphically the impact of Ben Stein Movie

In several recent articles, we talked about the impact of the new documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. (See also: Can I Ask You a Question?) The movie was released about 2 weeks ago. The article I wrote last Saturday, Questions That Aren’t Properly Answered … received a number of interesting comments. It’s obviously too early to tell what the long term impact of the movie will be, and like many movies, it makes a big splash for about 2 weeks, and then disappears off the radar… only showing up in DVD rentals and video sales many months later.

When you look at the chart above (thanks to Google Trends), you can see where interest (”search volume”) in the Expelled movie (green line) and Ben Stein (red line) peaked around April 18th, 2008. It’s a 30 day view of the data. The bottom part of the chart above (labeled “News reference volume”) indicates a ripple effect in news articles with reference to “Intelligent Design” (blue line) slightly after the movie release.

The chart below takes a longer view of the data (showing 2004 - 2008), and indicates that most of the debate, public interest in Intelligent Design, and news articles about Intelligent Design took place in 2005. I was surprised by this — and had forgotten about the 2005 broohaahaa over ID.

Intelligent Design Mind Share, Debate, Google Chart, All years

The blue line indicates interest in Intelligent Design, both in search volume, and news articles. The red line shows a peak in queries about Ben Stein occurring at the time of his movie release. On the original Google Trend chart that I reviewed, item C (above) indicates a news item: “Schools Should Teach ‘Intelligent Design,’ Bush Says”. Item D was a news item: “Intelligent Design Debate to Take Center Stage”. Item E was most interesting - a news item: “Pennsylvania voters oust school board that backed intelligent design”. So there was a whole PA school board that was expelled. Finally, the big blue spike flagged as item F was tagged with news item “Judge rules in intelligent design lawsuit”.

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Bring Your Child To Work Day

I called it BYCTWD (because computer geeks tend to create silly acronyms for everything), and some people call it Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day — but today (24-Aug-2008) is the official celebration in the USA. People will take their kids to work, and show them, and try explaining to them what they do at work all day. So today PJ (my 13 year old daughter) will follow me around at work and we will snap a few photos. I’ve been doing this with my five children for several years — whenever we had an official BYCTWD.

PJ going to work on Bring Your Child to Work Day

Here’s a photo of PJ going to work with me.

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Blue Beanie Day

Show your support for web standards and accessibility. Please join us on Monday, November 26, 2007 in celebrating Blue Beanie Day.

Monday, November 26, 2007 is the day thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content.

It’s easy to show your support for web design done right. Don a Blue Beanie and snap a photo. Then on November 26, switch your profile picture in Facebook and post your photo to the Blue Beanie Day photo pool on Flickr.

Doug Wearing a Blue Beanie

Next Steps:

  1. Make a personal commitment to fight Web Standards Apathy. Show solidarity with the Standardistas on November 26th, 2007.
  2. Buy, beg, or borrow a Blue Beanie (blue hat or cap, even a black or grey one will do in a pinch.)
  3. Take a photo of yourself wearing the Blue Beanie. Or take a cool group photo of you and your friends wearing Blue Beanies.
  4. Post your photo, or photos to Facebook, Flickr, and other social networks on November 26th, 2007. Remember to switch your Facebook profile photo that day. While you’re at it, switch all your social network profile photos. Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, iLike, Pownce, you name it.
  5. Promote Blue Beanie Day in your blog or wiki starting today, and tell all your friends to get ready for Blue Beanie Day. Start by inviting all your Facebook friends to this event.

Check the Blue Beanie Day event notification on Facebook to see more Blue Beanie heads and to make a comment or ask questions.

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Ruby Compiler is complete!

It is a glorious day in JRuby-land, for the compiler is now complete.

For the first time ever, there is a complete, fully-functional Ruby 1.8 compiler.

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BlogPulse Charts and Graphs

Have you tried BlogPulse charts and graphs to track and analyze what’s behind the buzzwords?

Here is an example showing the keywords python, ruby, and wordpress (time-line is the past 6 months). Looks like the WordPress spike is beginning to fade, and I wonder what that means?
20070423060847jjugjo8fdt8lr4iizp5t.png

Here is another BlogPulse trend chart showing what everyone was talking about last week. Keywords/Phrases : Virginia Tech, Cho, gun control.

20070423070543vatech_cho_gun_control.png

Now that we are on this topic, let me say that my deepest sympathy goes out to all the families affected by this horrific tragedy (mass murder, suicide); my prayers for peace and love continue unto God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, and I recommend that everyone read and meditate on Psalm 4 and Psalm 23 this week.

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