Poll of a Billion Monkeys

Saturday, December 29, 2007

SAR: Please Help

The Exchange - SAR: Please Help

On Sunday, Dec. 23rd we sold a puppy to her new owner, who lives in the Port Wentworth area, near Savannah, Ga.
On Monday, Dec. 24th the new owner tried to put her new puppy on a leash in her yard, and apparently frightened, and it being her first day in the new area, the puppy ran away.


We would very much like to assist in finding this puppy and in helping the new owner recover her puppy, because we bred and helped raise it, and because she had bought it as a Christmas present for her children. But we live some distance from her and cannot directly assist in the physical search.

If anyone living in that area, or any nearby area in Georgia, South Carolina, or Florida should come across this puppy then we, and the new owners, would very much appreciate your help in recovering this puppy. We take great personal pride in the puppies we breed and raise, try our best to assure their welfare, and we do not wish to see any of them lost, or harmed in any way. We want them to thrive, and to be placed in good and loving homes where they belong. Furthermore I never leave anyone or anything behind, be that man, woman, child, or even animal companion. I am doing everything I can think of to help find her safe and sound and to return her to her new owners, but I know that my readers and anyone else who sees this on the internet will greatly multiply our chances of success that she will be found and recovered. I consider this a search and rescue operation, and although I know that at this time of year many other matters are pressing for your attention, and that many greater matters of import are occurring in the world, still I leave no one behind and feel I must do all I can in this case.

Help if you can, and it will be greatly appreciated, by me, and by everyone else involved.

The puppy is four months old, large, weighs about 50 pounds at last sighting, mantle, with brown eyes, of very gentle disposition, a Great Dane-Saint Bernard mix. Her name is Tabitha. She is a good and valuable animal and pet, and very intelligent. Above you will see a recent photograph of her, taken right before she was sold.

Once again, thank you immensely for your help.

Should you find her you may contact me at: occu77@netzero.com


God bless you and Happy New Year.


Jack.


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Links of the Week 12/29/07

The Exchange - Best Links of the Week 12/29/07

Recently I've had very little time, or inclination, to do any blogging. Work, the holidays, life, and many other factors have thankfully conspired to bring my time usage ever more and more back to the real world. And not this virtual world, that to be perfectly honest, is often little else than a wasteful consumption of time best spent in other ways.

However, there are times when the internet is very useful. Such as with the hunt for Tabitha (above), as a means of communication with those who cannot easily be communicated with through any other means, and as both a research tool and a research method.

To that end I am going, in the next year, to post links once a week which previously I had been posting every day, divided by subject matter.

I am avoiding with this post any mention of events in Pakistan. The internet is already, rightfully so, a'fire with such articles. At this time I imagine I can contribute little else of value to that story. Ah hell, why not...


My Best Links of the Past Week

Crave New World

Machine Ghost in the Man

The Pirate Drone - Man, I've really been looking forward to this boat getting underway.

Majidi's Gap

A Cheerful Giver

The Renaissance Warrior

Doubting Mary

Common Word?

The Religion of God - Personally I think this article makes a very good point. And to me it is this. Religion is both a science, and an art. It is an art in developing certain ideals and modes and "characteristics of God" within yourself and your own nature, through grace, through training, through discipline, through faith, through emulation, and by other means. And that is an extraordinary, and extraordinarily beneficial task. And yet a competing, and equally beneficial task, is the science of religion. Which questions what may or may not be real in our expression of that art. That doubt and skepticism serves men and women well at arriving at the real truth, God's truth, and not just those things we assume to be God's truth or want to be God's truth. That is to say, there is a way things really are, and what man can know about that, limited as we are both as individuals and as a species. Anyway I've been reading a book lately which basically deals with the same issues, Reaching for the Invisible God. I've enjoyed it a lot. I recommend it.

Fragilus Expungus?

Renaissance Courseware

The New Muties

Oh, what a tangled Web to weave

Open Source: Yes-No?



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Monday, December 24, 2007

Merry Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS


AND

HAPPY HOLIDAYS



Friday, December 21, 2007

The Road to the Past

The Exchange - The Road to the Past is Paved in the Mind


Tonight, while the wife and kids were away caroling for the shut-ins, and I was waiting on a call bout a case I sat and listened to Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, and then cuts off of Abbey Road and the White Album. Listening like this made me realize some things. 1. If not overplayed, then some rock music is downright artistic. Like in High Art. 2. Some music is seasonal. That is to say, for some reason some music in my mind is associated with certain times of the year. I don't know if it is because the first time I heard a particular piece of music it was a particular time of year, and it stuck in my kraw that way, or if the music really does have a kind of "set" or sound, which psychologically associates itself with a particular time of year. Parsifal is like that to me. Everytime I hear that opera I think of the winter, it is winter music to me. Tonight is one of the first truly cold nights we've had all season, and it is rainy, and although Abbey Road is my favorite album by the Beatles I had a hard time listening to it because to me it is summer music, late in the evening, near sundown kinda music. No. 3, what I like best about some rock music is the sense of melancholy it can engender in me. To me melancholy is one of the most pleasant emotions I can feel, and it doesn't make me pessimistic, but rather wistful about my past, grateful for my present, and sort of anticipatory towards my future. It also makes me feel inspired, in a poetic sense. It reminds me of something I read Keats say once, about being melancholy. "That melancholy is the drug of the muses." I suspect he was right. And 4. I sure do miss vinyl. Records had scratches and pops and features that added character to a recording. It was almost like another shade or layer of the music. Near perfect reproduction and resolution of music sort of reminds me of a supermodel. A little imperfection goes a long way in making a real woman more beautiful, and a good song more truly sweet.



After that, and doing some work I went and watched Bishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN. He gave an absolutely brilliant expositionary talk and analogical comparison between Superman and Christ. The similarities and the differences. Now I have thought long and hard on this subject myself, even writing an extended essay on the Three Supermen of the Twentieth Century, the Nazi Ubermensch, the Stalin (Man of Steel - Communist superman), and the fictional American Superman, who is really a sort of Everyman American analogue of Christ. Our Superman, and our super-power is the only one which has survived by the way, because our Superman is the servant, also analogous to Christ, that is to say, our superman is not a conqueror who feels destined to use his abilities to subjugate others, nor is he a self-absorbed political power reducing everything to his planned and mechanical will, rather he is Truth, Justice, and the American Way. His powers obligate him to serve and his superiority lies not in his strength, but in his willingness to serve others. He is but a secular Christ figure, and by extension, what is best about Christianity gave birth to the American ideal of citizenship; equality, brotherhood, and liberty.

But Sheen in his exposition said some things that I suspect will really make me rewrite that essay, at least in part. He gave a fascinating comparison of Superman moving from weakness in Clark Kent to power in Superman, and of Christ moving from divine power to weakness and humility in the incarnation. But the best thing he said was in comparing superman as an immigrant from another world, to Christ "breaking through time" into our world. that is Superman broke through from his world to ours, but Christ broke through "time" into our world. And of Superman saving the "outer man," and of Christ saving the "inner man." It was a brilliant set of analogies.

When I was much younger I used to love watching Sheen talk (his books were fanatic too), I always thought he was miles ahead of most priests. Seeing him talk again tonight made me remember why I wanted to be a priest when younger, and why I want to be one after I retire. He was more like one of the Saints of old, like a Francis or Patrick than most modern priests. He reminded me a lot of John Paul too in some ways. The Catholic church, and Christianity in general could use a lot more like him. Hell, the whole world could use a lot more like him.

On good thing about modern technology, especially God technology, is this: with it we can sometimes break through time too.
The past can catch us again, if we'll let it.