Thirsty

There is nothing I can give you which you, have not; But there is much, very much, that while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant. Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow, Behind it, yet within reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see, and to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look. Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy, or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there; the gift is here, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys too: be not conte...

mental note: don't give yourself a haircut when you've just returned from a track workout, are really tired, and may forget to attach the length adjustor properly...

Friends seen/hung out with in the past two three weeks: Eric came with his fam to my sister's wedding, we drank together and I have a priceless voicemail from him pleading for my help from a broken elevator. Noah & Maria at Minnetrista before the fireworks... great to see them so happy. Randomly saw Paul there too, only spoke for a couple minutes. Susan and her fiance, um.. :-/ forget his name... were at the fireworks at Minnetrista as well, caught up with them afterwards. They just built a house in Valpo and she's looking for marketing work. Friday the 9th, Calvin, Jillian, Sean, Joe-John, and I met for lunch. Friday after work went to Joe-John's, picked up Sean, drove down to Don's, got some pizza for suppa. Saturday we all drove down to Sarah's @ Indy to meet her, Lisa, Jackie, and Theresa. Hung out the rest of the day and into the evening. Crazy group. They abuse me. Sunday, Sean, JJ, and I stopped for gas in Rensselaer and accidentally got k...

This is the heart of the strategy : to portray opposition to abortion as peculiarly Catholic -- not a fundamental right founded in natural law , but a sectarian discipline, essentially no different from Catholics abstaining from meat on Fridays, or Jews keeping kosher, or Baptists refraining from dancing. Reference

To deny driving licenses to the blind does not assume that they do not deserve equal respect and consideration as persons, but that they are different from other persons in respects relevant to driving. - R.M.T. Schmid

What amazing creatures we are. Once again I'm disappointed in myself, but lifted up by those who care for me. This time it climaxed with a phone call. Saturday night I had planned to return from road tripping to Indy , so that I could meet with a family friend, Jim Collins for a Spanish Mass at St. Procopius parish in Chicago, and then for brunch afterwards. It's been years since I've seen Jim. Saturday night I was, we were, having such a fun time @ Sarah's that I made a last-minute decision at 10:30pm to just stay the night. I didn't call Jim that evening, or that day, or the next day, or the day after. For some reason I was just reluctant to call him... some unknown combination of childish pride and shame. Sure, sounds weird to you folks, even sounded weird to him when I just now called him I'm sure. But not weird to me, and definitely natural. The frustrating thing, too, is that connecting with him and getting involved in the type of service t...

I am reminded of Chesterton's remark in Heresies that the only difference between those that mock religious rituals and those that practice them is that the former don't realize they are actually the latter. The most modern, tailored suit is itself but a form of tribal dress. Every jot and tittle of civilized dining etitquette is but an act of civil religious piety. ( Reference ) [...] To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man; but, nevertheless, it might be possible to effect some valid distinction between one kind of idealist and another. One possible distinction, for instance, could be effected by saying that humanity is divided into conscious idealists and unconscious idealists. In a similar way, humanity is divided into conscious ritualists and unconscious ritualists. The curious thing is, in that example as in others, that it is the conscious ritualism which is comparatively simple, the unconscious ritual which is really heavy and complicat...

Something we often forget about is the spreading of HIV throughout the world, particularly but not limited to third-world countries. One of my sister's "job requirements" with the Peace Corps is to promote AIDS awareness, which is an awesome thing she got very involved with at Namibia. One of the controversial directions this goes is in sexual education. A common teaching point is the "ABC's" of HIV and any sexually transmitted disease: A bstinence, B e faithful, and C ondoms. I just came across a British Medical Journal entitled Partner reduction is crucial for balanced "ABC" approach to HIV prevention , which is encouraging to me in my belief of the wholesomeness and healthy quality of monogamy. This is not a strong enough response to stand independently against proponents of contraception and pre-marital sex, but it is a rare dose of scientific evidence amidst a sea of moral and religious arguments. While most of the often polarised di...

Our culture is burning the genocidal candle at both ends: away with the fetal, off with the oppressed, down with the geriatric. Too much drooling and pooping and incompetence in every case. That filth might get into the jacuzzi. - Elliot Bougis ( Reference )

So Rebecca left on Tuesday to begin her trek towards The Gambia . This is her second stint with the Peace Corps , her first was in Namibia , Africa. She will be sorely missed! I'm hoping to sometime visit her, maybe to use my first chunk of vacation days that I get, to make a trip there, or else later. I'm very jealous of her experiences there, but we all have the work we feel we're called to. Someday I will either learn to live with that yearning, or I'll have succumbed to it and be there!

Testing... will this work? Mom & Dad all done up nice and purty, at Anna & Brian's wedding!

A worthy explanation of why I've been shifting away from alcohol, and why "I'll take your word for it" that marijuana is the bomb.

Vanity of vanities! I came across a Personality Profile at Mike Roesch 's blog/website. I decided to have a go at it, because it looked pretty in-depth and professional. It's the Jung-Myers-Briggs Typology Test , free to take online, and here's what I came out with: Your Type is INFJ Introverted(56%) Intuitive(56%) Feeling(22%) Judging(44%) INFJ type description by D.Keirsey INFJ type description by J. Butt and M.M. Heiss Qualitative analysis of your type formula You are: moderately expressed introvert moderately expressed intuitive personality slightly expressed feeling personality moderately expressed judging personality I guess I find it to be relatively accurate (according to the type descriptions linked to), and I'm very curious to read other people's "type". So delay your rest, take the test , post your name below, and the 4 letters they claim to know , or go to your own journal, and tell that world the kernel...

I guess I'm stooping down a bit to post this, but I just really feel the urge to use this to encourage people to check sources , and to be an optimistical cynic. Don't let someone else fashion your opinion for you, fashion it for yourself, taking into account your own values. BoingBoing brought together this information here . They quoted John Nichols of the Capital Times, Madison, WI. It was a pretty discouraging synopsis of Bush's interview. They also linked to a RealAudio streaming audio link, noting that special software is required and you had to wait 20 minutes to get to the actual interview. If you didn't want to take the extra effort, it seems you were left to rely on Nichols' "summary". Towards the end of the post, somebody got an MP3 version of the interview. I encourage you to first read Nichols' article and see what he has to say, and then listen to the MP3, comparing the two. BoingBoing does a good job of adding new in...

Calvin is my hero.

Just discovered something quite amusing. Go to google, and deliberately search for a website that you know has Google Ad-words embedded in it. When you get to that site's "result", click on the link to view the cached version. Look at the Google Ad-words. (how to find a site like this? search for *.blogspot.com and any result whose snippet begins with blog*spot has ad-words. or just search for justinw.blogspot.com) I guess not surprising. Google folks think of everything, or at least their superhuman linux cluster-brain does.

Please don't kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted, and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child, and be loved by the child. From our children's home in Calcutta alone, we have saved over 3,000 children from abortions. These children have brought such love and joy to their adopting parents, and have grown up so full of love and joy! - Blessed Mother Teresa

The scenario I have a couple of work email accounts that I receive a relatively large amount of email to. I also have Gmail , which gives me a gigabyte to work with, and some nice search/browsing functionality. The wishes The fewer times I change my distributed email address in my lifetime, the easier more people will have it in communicating with me, and the fewer times somebody will fall out of contact with me. Gmail from a browser, Thunderbird from work, and Mail from my Apple Powerbook. I never want to miss an email, but I want to be able to pick and choose my mail client at a whim. Each has it's own features and flaws. I have no idea how long my current work address will work... could be anywhere between weeks and decades. I also have no idea what my monthly budget will look like through the years, given my eclectic interests. For all I know I could be a bum, I can't expect to be able to pay a monthly hosting bill. The superheros HotPOP : Early in ...

A 58-page document, with tons of citations properly referenced, this growing-in-infamy thesis paper popped onto my reading list. Can be downloaded from the link below. My strong interest in the activities of population control advocates grew during my first visit to the United Nations headquarters in New York during March of 2000. I was fortunate enough on that visit to work with the World Youth Alliance as a lobbyist at a conference on population and development. During this visit I learned much about the efforts of the world’s powerful to control the world’s population. I was particularly struck by the comments of other lobbyists who noticed that it often seemed that population control activities were aimed at minority populations. I began to wonder if this was mere coincidence or something more. ... Chapter I The History of Population Control The Industrial Revolution and the Enclosure Acts Malthus’ Final Solution for the Industrial Poor The Birth of “Scienti...