Tim Russert

The news sites are filled with notices of the sudden death of Tim Russert, the NBC News journalist, dead at age 58 from an apparent heart attack. I only mention it here because Russert was one of the few television talking heads I enjoyed. He had a blue-collar, Catholic-Irish background -- his dad drove a garbage truck in their hometown of Buffalo, New York.

His principle job, besides being head of NBC's Washington bureau, was as moderator of Sunday morning's Meet the Press. I read this afternoon that most politicians feared appearing on MTP because Russert was such an aggressive questioner, was so thoroughly prepared, and held interviewees accountable for things they had done and said. Yet he always had a smile on his face -- he didn't yell, interrupt, or talk down. "He was tough but very fair," seems to be the universal sentiment.

I think I have always liked him because I have known he was an unashamed man of faith. He was a devoted Catholic and was unafraid to be public about his devotion. He was schooled in his younger years by the Jesuits in Buffalo -- the toughest, most scholarly of the Catholic orders. Some have suggested that training had a great influence on his own journalistic style in later years -- always digging, always questioning, always looking for the truth.

When I heard that he and his wife's only son is named Luke, I wondered if he was named after Luke, the author of the third New Testament Gospel account. Later, I heard a friend of his say that was indeed the case. It doesn't surprise me because Russert himself was a lot like Luke -- an investigator and questioner, always seeking the truth:

Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed. (Luke 1:1-4)

Luke apparently went about investigating the life of Christ and compiling the results the same way Tim Russert prepared for his weekly outing on Meet the Press.

I heard in one interview that Russert and his wife had a saying they used with their son, Luke: "You're always loved, but never entitled." That's the blue-collar work ethic showing through -- I like it. The only advice he gave his son when he left for college was this: "Work hard, laugh a lot, and never lose your honor." I like that, too.

I've also been struck by the number of high profile journalists who have talked about how personal Russert was in their own lives -- a godfather to their children, visiting them in the hospital, remembering the names of wives and children and always inquiring about their well-being -- the kinds of things that let you know you have a friend in that person. Tim Russert apparently was that to many people -- and will apparently be sorely missed because of it.

Two More Good Articles

Two more good articles from Dave today:

"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" talks about the impact technology is having on our ability to think, read, and stay focused, and "Staying Smart in Dumbed-down Times" talks about the overall dumbing-down of American culture. Both are extremely well-written and lengthy -- which will probably keep them from being read by the very people who need to read them!

Feline Singles Bar Scene

Caught this little tete-à-tete going on in the cul-de-sac yesterday. As long as you don't look, you're safe:

The Glory Has Gone

Here's what my beautiful sunflower looked like a week ago:



And here's what it looked like yesterday:



In the bottom right quadrant (above) you can see the few black sunflower seeds that remained as of yesterday. They were gone this morning.

The problem, of course, is squirrels. I caught one yesterday laying down on a supporting leaf stem eating the seeds: Sit up, dig out a seed, lay back and enjoy. I hope he's happy. At least he's healthy from consuming all those raw seeds:

From 107 Minutus to 60 Seconds

Most people won't sit through the entire 107-minute playback of Steve Jobs' WWDC roll-out of the new Apple iPhone. But here's a pretty slick 60-second edit of the entire presentation. (Be sure to play through the credits to the end to see the legendary Jobs hyperbole machine in action.)



The downside of the new 3G iPhones (upon reflection) are that they didn't upgrade the camera -- still a 2 megapixel camera, way behind other leading phones. And the mandatory two-year contract rate was increased from $60 to $70 a month via AT&T. You have to sign up for that contract when you buy a phone which prevents the hacking done on the initial iPhone to use it with less expensive carrier plans. The $10 increase per month in the plan works out to an extra $240 over a 24-month contract period.

SO, the new $199 price for the phone looks great, but realize you'll pay an extra $240 for the privilege over a two-year contract, making the REAL cost of the new 3G phone $200 + $240 = $440 over two years.

Hmmmmm.

Tip 'o the Hat to Dave

My son, Dave (ver. 2.0), sent a link to a hilarious article in The Onion. If you're not familiar with The Onion, it's the funniest pseudo-news source on the Internet. Brilliantly subtle, you think you're reading real news until you find yourself thinking, "What . . . ?"

When The Onion first went online years ago, I laughed and laughed at an article they wrote about a massive airlift of vowels into the former Soviet satellite countries (the "-stan" countries). If this isn't funny to you, look on a map and study the names of these countries for a few minutes.

The article Dave referenced today is a brilliant jab at the fact that many people (in this article, many young people) have never read an actual book. Thanks, Dave.

Close Encounter

My son, Stephen (ver. 3.0), sent me an email that he received from some animal rights friends containing this amazing series of photos. Conventional wisdom says that an encounter with a polar bear means lights out for man or beast. Apparently not always. There is so much we don't understand about the ways of these Edenic companions (Genesis 2:19-20).

Here's the copy that accompanied the pictures -- I can't verify its accuracy, but the pictures have an Isaiah 11:6-9 ring to them: "Stuart Brown describes Norbert Rosing's striking images of a wild polar bear coming upon tethered sled dogs in the wilds of Canada's Hudson Bay. . . . The Polar Bear returned every night that week to play with the dogs."

Gallons and Gallons

We had another HUGE storm late this afternoon -- it's still pouring right now. I pulled the spout out of the rain barrel to get this picture. 'Course, the barrel is full from all the rain last night. I could have filled up scores of barrels of water just off my roof if I had them:

"We Don't Need No Stinkin' Beef"

Dateline Seoul -- June 10-11, 2008: This crowd of 80-100,000 South Koreans in Seoul are not happy campers . What are they so upset about? Their government's decision to resume importing beef from America! They believe their government is playing Russian roulette with their health because of the threat of Mad Cow Disease in older American beef cattle -- which is what the agreement allows. And they want no part of it because of the fear of MCD in American beef.

I love it! Smart people. I saw on a health DVD recently where studies on the brains of some people who supposedly died of Alzheimer's disease didn't die from Alzheimer's at all -- but from Mad Cow Disease -- as many as 15%! The early symptoms of MCD are not unlike that of Alzheimer's but the people died before MCD became full-blown in its symptoms so it appeared they died from Alzheimer's.

If you want to see how serious this demonstration was, and read the full report, check this slide show at Yahoo.news. These people are serious about not wanting to be guinea pigs in the name of import-export profit. If you're still eating feedlot-grown and slaughterhouse-rendered beef, you ought to have your head examined -- literally. (Photo above from Xinhua/Reuters.)

Rain Barrel Update

Here's a shot of the water in the rain barrel this morning in the daylight to compare with the "dark" water taken last night. Two differences: the picture last night was reflecting the darkness of the night; the picture this morning shows the water reflecting the light so it looks a bit less murky. Plus, some of the sediment settled overnight.



In both these pictures you can see the "filter" I'm using (for lack of something better at the moment) to keep leaves and "junk" from the gutters from flowing into the barrel. It's a nylon mesh "bag" that is about 12+" long, open at the top with an elastic band around the top. It's real use is as a paint filter. If you have a gallon can of old paint that has partly solidified and you want to filter out the "junk" in the paint, you push one of these mesh bags down into an empty paint can and fold the elastic band down around the outside of the can. Pour the gallon of old paint into the new can (and into the mesh bag). When it's filled, gather the top of the bag and lift it slowly out of the new can. The paint filters through the mesh and leaves the "junk" caught in the bag which can they be discarded.

Same principle here: I stuck the downspout down inside the mesh bag, then stuck the whole thing through the top of the rain barrel. When the water flows into the barrel it goes through the bag which catches the debris. Last night after the big rain I emptied the bag which had a lot of leaves and junk in it -- so it looks pretty empty now. In the picture above you can see the bag and the down spout from under the lid. In the following picture you can see the bag sticking out around the downspout on the outside of the lid. If anybody has a better filter mechanism, let me know. This is all I've come up with so far.

A Varied Night

I noticed the last couple of days that my beautiful "Hydra" (many-headed -- not its official name) sunflower was being torn apart by something. The yellow petals were littering the ground below and the face of the flower had been torn apart. See for yourself:





I should have thought of this, but it never crossed my mind. When the guys were over for supper tonight one of them looked out the window and saw this:







How did that squirrel know there are sunflower seeds buried in the face of that flower? They look awfully cute when they're eating seeds on the front porch. Not so cute when they're eating the seeds I hoped would become feed for the birds:



Great supper meeting with the guys tonight: fresh veggie juice, big salad, veggie-burgers w/ trimmings, Mediterranean rice, and watermelon for dessert. Great discussion and prayer on lots of issues -- health, vocations, vision, etc., plus some insights from Paul (not the apostle) Stack on a study he did on the Ten Commandments -- the interchange of words in the semantic range of worship/serve/honor. Good stuff.







During supper a serious rain storm blew by -- rained hard for about 15 minutes. We haven't had any rain since I got the rain barrel rigged up so I was anxious to check it out when the meeting broke up. I noticed immediately the concrete on the front porch was wet meaning the barrel had overflowed! Sure enough -- 50+ gallons (not sure of the exact volume of the barrel) of rainwater accumulated from that storm. Actually, way more than that since a lot of overflow was evident.

The water looks dark -- obviously there is sediment from the roof and gutters, but that will settle to the bottom of the barrel:



I turned on the faucet to see what kind of flow I got out of the 50 foot hose -- perfect! Notice how clear the water is compared to how it looks in the barrel:



So -- good progress on the barrel. I probably could have captured twice this amount of rainwater if I'd had another barrel daisy-chained to this one.

Good food, good fellowship with friends, and good first-run on the rain barrel!

Watch the Apple Presentation of the New iPhone

The video replay of the Apple WWDC (WorldWide Developers Conference) presentation today is on the Apple web site. The entire presentation was based on the next iteration of the iPhone: a 2.0 software upgrade for existing iPhones and the new 3G iPhone coming July 11. The new 3G iPhone will now access the much faster 3G (wireless/Internet) network at twice the speed and sell for half the price of the original phone!

The WWDC conference is for the 5,200 software developers who came to learn how to write third-party applications for the new iPhone -- and see an introduction (not included on this video) to the next iteration of OS X called Snow Leopard. So, some of this gets a bit technical but there are two reasons it is still worth watching:

1. In explaining to the software developers the features of the new iPhone and 2.0 software you get to see what the phone will do.

2. You get to marvel at the way Apple does business. These presentations that Apple does at WWCD and the MacWorld conference every year are legendary for their polish and presentation. Just amazing. For anyone who has to present information to others, Apple is the Gold Standard.

Apple has made a huge push into what's called the "Enterprise" market -- seeking to get huge corporations to consider buying iPhones instead of Blackberries or other smart phones for their employees. The original iPhone was not equipped to do that because it wouldn't link with the existing network systems used in corporate America. The new version is corporate-ready. Thirty-five percent of the Fortune 500 companies have been testing the new iPhone for corporate/network use and the results have been uniformly positive.

The 2.0 software and the new 3G phone are really amazing. You can see the video here.

If You Eat Animal Products, Watch This DVD

A few days ago I posted a note on a DVD titled Healing Cancer from Inside Out produced and narrated by Mike Anderson, developer of the RAVE Diet.

I ordered his book—The RAVE Diet & Lifestyle: The Natural Foods Diet with Meals that Heal—and it came with a copy of the DVD I want to talk about in this post: Eating (2nd ed.). The RAVE Diet is basically a vegan diet, but Anderson uses the RAVE acronym to be specific about what a plant-based diet that is truly healthy consists of. That is, teenage (or adult) vegans could live on soda and junk snacks and still call themselves vegan. So the RAVE acronym stands for:

R = No Refined foods
A = No Animal foods
V = No Vegetable oils
E = No Exceptions plus Exercise

It's a helpful, different way to think about the elements of a plant-based diet. The book is helpful and entertaining and has lots of recipes and meal suggestions.

But it's the DVD I want to recommend. It's an hour and 50 minutes long, divided into two sections. First is an exposé of how animal-based foods are the cause of all major modern diseases—especially heart disease and cancer—and how a plant-based diet is the only diet that prevents these diseases.

The second section of the DVD details the political-industrial connections to the animal-based food industry in America. For example, close to 80 percent of the entire agriculture production system in America (land, water, food grown, etc.) is to feed animals that are slaughtered for human consumption. Approximately half the acreage of the entire United States is dedicated to that same end-use. There are plenty of behind-the-scenes clips (most of which I've never seen before) of the horrors of the animal slaughter industry in America -- and on and on and on.

The most compelling statement I remember that summarizes the illogical way the animal food system runs in this country is this: "Humans have to be the dumbest animals on the planet." We are not, of course, but to continue to run a food-production system that dominates our environment while killing us at the same time defies logic.

If you eat animal products (of any kind) you ought to watch this video and see if that practice makes sense. If you know someone who is battling a serious disease, both DVD's would be worth the investment as a gift. They might save a life.

The book and both DVDs are available from the RAVE Diet web site.

Preview of Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference Today