I am Yoda. I am a bit disappointed. I have Gandalf envy. I do have a killer good Yoda impression though.

Steve

Well,

According to the survey I am …drum roll…spock! I could change it to Gandalf by just changing one answer. But I can live with being Spock. “That is … illogical…”

Seth

Well According to this scientific survey I am:
GANDALF

YES!!

Here is Tim Challies chart of how smart he was on Wednesday. Reading his post had the same effect on me. (JK) Its actually quite funny. The question I have is . . . Which is preferable, the tattooed slackers or the overzealous East Indians?

Scott

I know this kid. A senior in High School. He is a great kid. He’s athletic, super nice and very down to earth. As part of a college application to a music school, he made some recordings of music he’s written.

So tonight I check these songs out on the web and the only thing I am wondering is whether he will remember the little people when he is rich and famous.

Check it out.

Scott

I like to say that it took me a long time to “repent” of going to seminary. Maybe longer. What I mean by that is it took that long for God to begin to break me of the intellectual pride that accompanied the knowledge I gained.

But he He did begin that process 15 years ago today. I was in my final year of a “reformed” and presbyterian seminary in California. I was supporting the family by working as a waiter at a golf club when I wasn’t studying. My wife was pregnant with our first child.

That evening, a few weeks before my wife’s due date, I was working a party at the golf club, pouring champagne for a hole-in-one. (more…)

It is strange how seemingly insignificant events lead to momentous occasions. As these events occur, we are usually unaware of their significance. This happens just about every day to just about every person. Occasionally the outcomes are momentous because the end results are catastrophic, such as a seemingly minor bodily irritation transforming through doctor visits, skewed lab results, specialist review, and biopsies into an extremely disturbing pathology report that transform a life forever. Often, though, the occasions are opportunity for great joy.

I met Jean Spark Schuman at church. A mutual friend (a woman I was dating at the time) introduced us. The event was not particularly memorable and would have fallen from my mind forever if events had not transpired as they did. (more…)

1st Annual Fat Triplets Pumpkin Carving Contest

How to enter the contest and upload your picture to the rating site:

Click on the Upload Your Photo link located in the bar at the top of the ratings site. You will be presented with a Sign Up page. You must register and the registration requires email validation. (Note: The email validation requirement has been turned off to make it as easy as possible for people to participate.) We need a valid email address in case we need to contact you. If you are concerned about your privacy please read our privacy statement below.

Once you have registered and signed-on, go to the My Photos page under the My account bar on the left of the screen. Either add a URL to your photo (which is the web address for a photo that you have already posted on the internet) or browse to a picture on your computer that you would like to download to our website. Important: Pictures must be no larger than 400×400 pixels. For this reason, all pictures will have to be approved by the FT’s before they can be uploaded to the web. It will be easier on us all if you would send us a photo that is the right size.

Giving you step by step instructions on how to lower the resolution of your photos is beyond the scope of these instructions. However,an easy way to ensure that your picture is the correct size is to download Picasa, Google’s free photo editing software (it’s great software anyway). Once you install it email it to yourself using the tool at the bottom of the Picassa software page and the software will automatically shrink it to the correct resolution for posting to the web. Then follow the instructions above for downloading your picture.

I have been following a blog for months called The Eldest Child(Make sure to read in order from first to last). I have not posted about it here because I wanted her to get far enough along in her story (to the good part) and she is a fairly infrequent poster. When I read something like this, I am struck how “redemptive” the gospel is. She had a horrible upbringing, including years of sexual abuse at the hand of her step-father and others. And yet through Christ she has found healing and forgiveness. She writes poignantly and yet can be funny and sad in the same paragraph.

Check it out here. From there make sure you use the archives to start back at her very first post from August 13th and then read in order from her first to her last post or you won’t get the flow of the story. She thinks nobody is reading her story so I would encourage you to leave a comment.

Scott

I am currently reading an excellent book on economics for the common man called Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science by Charles Wheelan. Although he is a bit more of an interventionist than I prefer, it is chock full of good economics. The forward is written by Burton Malkiel, a Princeton economics professor. Malkiel has possibly the best description of the economics way of thinking that I have ever come across:

Thinking like an economist involves chains of deductive reasoning in conjuntion with simplified models such as supply and demand. It involves identifying tradeoffs in the context of constraints. It measures the cost of one choice in terms of the foregone benefits of another. It involves the goal of efficiency- that is, getting the most out of limited resources. It takes a marginalist or incremental approach. It asks how much extra benefit can be acheived by incurring some extra costs. It recognizes that resources have many diverse uses and that substitutions can be made among different resources to achieve desired results. Finally, the economist has a predilection to believe that welfare is increased by allowing individuals to make their own choices and to argue that competitive markets are a particularly efficient mechanism for giving expression to individual choices. And while all economic problems involve normative issues (views about what should be), thinking like an economist involves an analytical approach that usually abstracts from or at least downplays “value” issues.

I will write a full review after I am finished reading it.

Steve

WARNING FOR THE SENSITIVE- The kid uses the “P” word (male body part).

Just click here

HT to Jeremy Huggins

Russ Roberts has written a funny, satirical “article” about Bush’s appointment of his personal accountant to the position of Fed Chair. The last paragraph:

One staffer who refused to be identified said he expected an easy confirmation. “It’s not like the Miers nomination to the Supreme Court,” he explained. “We had to teach her all those Latin phrases.”

1st Annual Fat Triplets Pumpkin Carving Contest

Contest Categories
We will be giving awards based on:

• ORIGINAL ART (a carving done from the artists imagination that does not use a premade Template).
• UNORIGINAL ART (A Carving done with a template that has been purchased or downloaded).
• We will also do categories based on age and may do some others such as spookiest, funniest, etc.

We will not use your email address unless we need to contact you to tell you something related to your submission, such as “You’ve won!”, or “Are you sure you want to submit this?” or “The resolution of your picture is too high. Please resubmit”. We will not use your email for any other purpose. Ever. Period. Nor will we ever give away or sell your email addresses to other parties. Ever. Period. Even if we are attacked by wild rhinoceri we wouldn’t use, sell or give away your email address. Even if we were tied to a post and made to watch old episodes of Green Acres we wouldn’t. Really.

1st Annual Fat Triplets Pumpkin Carving Contest

1. Contest Rules, Fine Print, Disclaimers and All that Jazz
• The contest begins at 11:59 PM, Sunday Night, October 23rd and will end at 11:59 on Monday, Halloween night, October 31st. If you register and upload pictures prior to the start time, your registration account and pictures will be deleted.
• Only 3 entrants per person
• Only one vote per person per pumpkin
• Pictures must be limited to 400×400 pixel resolution
• This is a G-rated site (okay occasionally PG). Keep all submission clean and fun.
• Comments must also be kept appropriate for a G-rated audience.
• DISCLAIMER: We don’t know what the heck we’re doing.
• The final decision as to the winner of the contest will be up to the sole discretion of the Fat Triplets. Although the judgement of voters will weigh very heavily on the final choice, we may need to override that choice if we suspect anyone of cheating and not following the rules.