All posts in Random Thoughts

Follower Ratio Idiocy Will Kill Twitter

Yeah, maybe I’m stating that title a little strongly.  Maybe so.  But if it doesn’t kill Twitter, it is certainly going to decrease it’s value to the social web world.  This much I am sure of.

If you’ve been happily living unaware of what a “follower ratio” is, allow me to briefly explain.  Many people in the twitterverse these days proclaim that if your ratio of people following you vs. people you are following is really far apart then this says some bad things about you.  At the very least, it’s bad form, bad manners, and communicates that you do not care about listening to others and only care about others listening to you.  You are a broadcaster, not a social media participant.  You are an irresponsible netizen.

Hogwash.

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Bobby McFerrin and Richard Bona Improvisation

Many don’t know that there’s a lot more to Bobby McFerrin than “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”.  A lot.  Not only can he sing well, he uses his voice like an instrument (lots of them, sometimes playing all at one time).  This is skat singing x 100.  This is true, live, improv.  Awesome.

And, of course, Richard Bona is incredible as well.  Enjoy.

The audio and video is a little out of sync, sorry… I didn’t make the video.

Islam Will Not Be Pacified

What Do You Think?  Are Westerners Still Naive? While I don’t think we should be suprised by these comments, I find it disturbing that (in my perception) most of my neighbors and certainly much of our political system seems to think that Islam just needs to be pacified, coddled, and sweet-talked.  Does this guy sound like he wants to cuddle to you?

From the video’s description: “this is not a Jihadists from Iran but a professor from Kuwait – a country with every reason to be grateful to the USA for liberating it from the tyranny of Saddam Husseins invasion.”

Link to video

Bring on the comments!

Random Thoughts

i haven’t done a “random thoughts” post in a long time. My thoughts are always pretty random, but I can usually wrangle some of them into a cohesive post. Not so today. It’s my day off and while I blissfully ignore the ringing phone and a stacked inbox, I’m going to hit you with the unfiltered madness of my disorganized mind.

  • What’s the deal with social networking? Why do I not care? Am I not post-modern enough or something? I don’t do Twitter, and don’t have any desire to add another “social” networking annoyance to my life. I have a MySpace profile and never look at it. I have a Facebook profile, and while I enjoy getting “poked” as much as the next guy, I never poke back. I’m not even sure I understand Facebook. Everything seems so disorganized on the page. It just makes me feel old, so I avoid it. Am I the only one?
  • My “Why I’m Mad at Miley Cyrus” post got a lot of heat. I’m thinking I should do a few more like it. Why I’m Mad at Josh Groban. Why I’m Mad at Wayne Newton. Why I’m Mad at The Geico Caveman and the Green Smart Alick Gecko. If you are mad at someone and would like me to rant in your place, let me know.
  • I finally finished Tim Keller’s new book The Reason for God. Great book. I think his tone in the book was as instructive as the content. He really succeeded in laying out some uncompromising arguments while at the same time not alienating readers that are not coming from a Christian context. So many apologetics books that I have come across have an adversarial tone. They put unbelievers and doubters on the “other team” and try to out argue them like a lawyer in a court. Dr. Keller’s book avoids this nicely.
  • Heather was out of town for two days this week and took the girls with her. That left me with my 1 year old son and no girls. We watched Dirty Jobs, ate pizza on the floor in our sweatpants, wrestled ( I let him win), made silly faces, and made “man noises”. It was awesome.
  • My wife saved my hide again this week. Thursday there was a prayer service outside the town hall here. I didn’t have any responsibility in the service and I figured there would be a lot of people there. So, I was about to leave the house in a t-shirt and some old pants. My plan was to go, stand in the back and then leave. Heather stopped me before leaving and asked “Are you going to wear that?” I’m not an idiot. I know how to respond to that question. I said, “No, no, no. Of course not. What do YOU think I should wear. I can’t decide.” She dressed me properly. I show up at the town hall, I end up on stage praying at the last minute. That gets recorded by the local news and broadcast that night. And I matched. Thanks, Heather!

Weekend Thoughts

After some last minute haggling over flooring this week, we are going forward with the sale of our house. We close on Feb. 11 and move on the 9th. Not much time to pack!

Here are some randomly collected thoughts and links to get your weekend started.

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Free At Last

I don’t have much time to post today because we are trying to get ready for the inspection Monday, finish a sermon and start packing. I thought I would show you this image I came across this week.

I think it’s pretty awesome. (Click the pic to enlarge)

Have you ever felt this way?

Have a Great Weekend!

Weekend Thoughts

It looks like we may get some snow this weekend! It seems like the Raleigh, NC forecasters always get it wrong, but this time it looks like they may be right.

  • Some important MySpace news you may not be aware of. There is a backdoor vulnerability that allows anyone to use a specially constructed URL to access the photo gallery of private profiles on MySpace. Underage users are being specifically targetted (yuck…). If you have an underage user (under the age of 16) with photos in their gallery, I advise you to shut down the profile until MySpace fixes the problem. At least remove the pictures. The story from Wired News says that there are sites popping up right now that allow anyone to enter a MySpace user id number and then view their gallery. Creepy. Stay informed, parents!
  • I discovered a cool blog this week. If you are at all involved in maintaining your church’s website, I strongly suggest checking out “Heal Your Church’s Website“. He gives good practical advice with a sense of humor. He also regularly takes a look at particularly bad church sites and does (respectful) reviews of them with comments open. Cool stuff.

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