Is Nothing Sacred

The Boy Scouts have been having problems for several years due to their policy concerning gays but I had no idea how bad things were until I read this article.

When I read the headline on Drudge about scouts inflating membership numbers I wa agast. Why it earth would they do that? The reason of course is money.

The Greater Alabama Council has a strong reputation nationally. In 2002, it received an award for a program that used fishing to bring in new members. The council claimed 10,000 new Scouts that year, and tax forms show it had revenue of $6.5 million, including $100,709 in government grants. In a United Way funding application, the group said it served almost 120,000 youths and adults in 2003.

I was a scout for many years. I was also a scoutmaster for a while and I hope they clean this up because scouting has been to good for too many kids to allow some greedy slobs to ruin it. Especially now when it is under attack they need to clean up their act.

Another One Bites the Dust

A fine blog that I have linked to though never put on my blog roll, The Ville, is packing it up.

It had some fine pictures, posts and some good music.
Sorry to see it go.

Johnny Carson RIP

The king of late night TV has died today.

He really was the king of what he did and launched so many careers that I couldn't even begin to list them.

I had the honor of going to a taping once, I think it was back in the 70's while he was still in NYC.
The main guest was Lesley Gore. Maybe that was the 60's.

He was as better in person than on TV. He continues to live on video tape and if you are too young to remember him get one of those tapes to see a real master at work.

Abraham Lincoln

I was an Emperor

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

A Few of my Favorite Things

I was reading through some other blogs, especially Texas blogs and noticed this one. I thought I has posted a likes and dislikes under the who am I topic but that seems too have gotten lost with the half of my posts that are missing.
I ma going to make an effort to add those back but in the meantime I will give this another shot.

Likes:
Music:
I have listened to, can groove to and like almost anything I have heard but I am a child of the 60's and 70's and my favorites all lie in that era.
My favorite performers are:
The Moody Blues
The Beatles
The Who
Joe Walsh (and any group he has been in)

Favorite All time Concert I went to:
Janis Joplin (Her band was the Full Tilt Boogie at the Time)

Runners Up:
Wings (1977)
Fleetwood Mac (76 or 77 before Rumours and while Stevie still had a voice)

Favorite TV Shows:
Babylon5
Star Trek (the original)
Forever Knight

Reading:
Science Fiction

Movies:
Casablanca
Raider of the Lost Arc
Wizard of OZ

Favorite Car I might ever own:
Corvette

Favorite Car I might never own:
Ferrari

Favorite Drink:
Jack Daniels

As for the title of this post I do like The Sound of Music and have the tape but it is not one of my favorites.

New Ring

I have been a little lax on my housekeeping and since I am feeling a bit more secure in my new job I finally got around to deleting the linnk to unemployed bloggers which I replaced with conservative bloggers.

I also pulled the blogshares link since I have not used it in a while. It was a cute idea when it started but I think it got old quick.

11 Million Paper Clips

I have been guilty of doing one of the things that I blame other people for doing especially in Iraq. I have complained as have others that we only hear the bad news.

I have done the same thing in education. I have always written about the bad things going on because there are so many of them but I have been remiss is talking about the good things and there are many. In this country there many teachers who are educators in the true sense of the word. We don't hear about them because of the same reasons we don't hear about the good news in Iraq.

Therefore when I read this story about something good that has been going on in a school in a small town where kids are really learning about the real world I knew I had to write about it.

Why would kids from a small town in Tennessee—a town without any Jews—decide to create the world’s only children’s Holocaust memorial? How would the world respond? This is the story that Bob Johnson and his group of McLean filmmakers tell in the documentary film Paper Clips.

The story started small but it evolved into a major project spanning several years.

In 1998 Linda Hooper and a group of parents and teachers in Whitwell sat down to talk about what kids were learning in school—and what they weren’t. There was one obvious gap: In a town that’s almost exclusively white and Protestant, Whitwell kids knew very little about other people.

Linda Hooper is a true educator and her community is lucky to have her. I wish there were more like her in america's schools. Thinking outside the box, trying to make a difference, this story has it all. They even attracted some real survivors of the death camps to come visit, read the whole thing and more.

If you get a chance go see the movie, I know I will.

I lost

As I said in a previous post I was thinking of taking on some more responsibilities.
I was running for president of a local group that I am a member of.

I lost. I lost by very few votes.

The guy I was running against did some things I thought were sleezy but that's politics. I took it like a man shook his hand and went on with my life.

I didn't ask for a recount.
I went home and checked my mail.
I poured a pretty stiff shot of Jack Daniels Single barrel, opened a bottle of Anchor Steam and lit a cigar.
I turned on my TV and went to Sirius music channel which is now carried by the Dish Network.

I probably would have done exactly the same if I had won but I would be in a much better mood.

I am sure that in the morning I will find a way to convince myself that it was all for the best and maybe that will prove to be the truth.
Right now however I need another shot of Jack.

Tech Stuff

I have been real busy at work lately getting more into icky things like Complus, Active Directory and transaction isolation levels on SQL Server to name a few.

I am trying to tie up all the loose ends by the ned of this month so I can move onto my next project with promises to be very interesting.

As if that isn't enough I may be taking on a new major outside responsibility that will likely finish off my remaining free time. At least I won't be bored.

Life is too short

I went to this web site following a link from Glenn to this post.

What I found when I looked further was this post.
I have been a Road Warrior and I have lost people close to me my age and younger, it hit home.

As they say you have to stop and take time to smell the roses, of which I bought two today but that is another post.

Update: It looks like some problems with links. I will fix them later. Glenn and Frank both seem to be down at the moment.

Top DVD of the Year

According to Amazon the winner is Return of the King -Platinum Series Special Extended Edition(try saying that 3 times fast), which by a happy coincidence was under the tree with my name on it Christmas morning.

I have been spending this weekend looking through it. Some of the stuff they had to leave out is wonderful and I am not even half way through it. There are 4 separate commentaries by difference groups (actors, directors ect.) and if you add that up it is a lot of movie but it sure looks great on my new TV which was my big present.

The scene in front of Isenguard at the start was one that I knew was obviously missing when I saw it at the theater and Christopher Lee is great in it.

The problem is that now I will have to go out and buy the first two movies in the extended edition also.

Hate Speech at Colleges

Coming on the heals of yesterdays' post we see this today, on a link from Glenn, on the annual PSM hate fest held this year at Duke.

In the annex part of this site you will find a recording of Chamberlain's return from Berlin with a letter promising peace in our time. I cannot for the life of me understand why our University administrators who are supposedly smart people continue to let the seeds of our own destruction be sown on their campuses.

I can only conclude that like Chamberlain they are just blind to how things work in he real world and will continue to ignore the truth until and maybe even after it hits them aside the head like a 2x4.

Ugly World

It is hard to be optomistic about what is going on in the rest of the world when you read about this poll in the Daily Telegraph purporting to show what Britons think about Israel.

As Roger Simon points out:

Of course, they will say that this is not anti-Semitism, but merely dislike for Israel's policies, but that is ludicrous given the recent spread of anti-Semitism seemingly everywhere but the United States.

Roger links to two fine posts by Melanie Phillips, here and here.

I find this all very depressing, especially when you combine it with the efforts of the EU countries to bend over backwards to placate their Islamic minorities.

I predict there will be more "Van Gogh's" murdered before the EU countries wake up, if they ever do.

Seasons Greetings