Headline Reuters: Mexico Air Force Video Creates UFO Stir

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The Mexican Air Force has released footage of what a UFO expert said were 11 invisible unidentified flying objects picked up by an infrared camera as they whizzed around a surveillance plane.

Actually, it the Mexican Air Force pictures are not that unusual. It is not a well known fact, but most pictures have invisible UFO’s in the background. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to see them since they are, in fact, invisible. I just went through some of my photos, and picked this one out as an example:

On second thought, perhaps this isn’t the best example, since it is hard to see the invisible UFOs in the background through the crowd of Foreign Leaders standing in the foreground indorsing John Kerry for president.

One year after winning the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, the Syracuse Orangemen are no more. They are now officially just the “Orange”. The orange what, no one knows for sure. Perhaps they really are the fruit. <sarcasm>Syracuse New York is world famous for its orange groves.</sarcasm>

Does it have anything to do with getting rid of the awful word “men” and making the nickname more gender inclusive? What would even make such a thing cross your mind? The change is only to not have anything clutter up that pretty color.

“We are the only school in the country that has orange as its primary color. We want to accentuate that fact,” director of athletics Jake Crouthamel said Tuesday at a press conference. He noted that Texas and Tennessee have a substantial amount of white to go with the orange in their uniforms.

But then the article without any irony goes on to point out that it isn’t about being just orange, because their colors are orange and blue, and have been for over a century.

The new logo will incorporate a consistent color palette, using a brighter orange than the current version and a darker blue. The school’s colors have been orange and blue since 1890.

But at least the school colors don’t have a substantial amount of white, because that would disqualify Syracuse from being the only school with orange as its primary color.

And no more of those awful men. At least they didn’t change the name to the Syracuse Passion Fruit

Tonight at my middle daughter’s ball game, the coach asked me to sit in the dugout with the girls to keep order while their team was at bat, since all the coaches were out on the field. When the girls were in the field, I was in the dugout with the two extra girls who were sitting the bench that half inning.

Their team made a nice play, and I shouted, "Good D!"

I looked at the girl sitting next to me and asked her, "Do you know what means? It means she has a good dog."

At this point, the girl moved down the bench further away from me. "She doesn’t have a dog," the girl replied very seriously.

"Oh. Does she have a cat?"

"Yes. She has three."

"Then I guess I should yell, ‘Good C!’"

She moved down the bench even further from me. I asked her, "Haven’t you ever heard anyone yell, ‘Good D’ before?"

"No," she replied.

"Well, I have," I told her. "After they make a good defensive play, people often yell, ‘Good D!’ They mean that the person who made the good defensive play has a good dog."

"No they don’t! They mean good defense!" she informed me. But she did give me a little smile.

At that point, my daughter made a nice defensive play. "Good D!" I called out. "That was a nice defensive play. But she really does have a good dog," I confided to my new found friend in the dugout.

I don’t know if they will invite me back into the dugout next game.

I greatly enjoy reading Victor Davis Hanson’s weekly article in the National Review Online. But this Friday’s had an LOTR allusion that seemed a little out of place to me. I found myself wondering what someone who wasn’t familiar with LOTR would have thought of it.

Recently we were within hours of smashing the resistance in Fallujah once we accepted war anew. But when the mujahedeen, Gollum-like, decided to slither out in the open, then in terror scampered to safety, then remerged on all fours defiant and barking when we stopped firing, our forbearance and fear of global-televised condemnation handed them a victory they did not earn. In short, we should have listened to Sam and strangled the creep on the spot.

But if we had strangled the mujahedeen, they will not bite off our finger at the critical moment and save us from our own grab for power later on…. Or am I reading too much into the allusion?

“Daddy, what’s a memorial?”

Yesterday I was out with my youngest daughter. I got some change after buying some peanuts, and in the change was a shiny, new penny. I gave it to her, because I knew she would be pleased by how shiny it was. We talked about different coins, who’s portrait was on the obverse of each, and what was on the reverse. After talking about the Lincoln and Washington Memorials, she then asked me the question of what a memorial is. We talked about it for a while, and I’ve been thinking more about it since.

A memorial is something that helps us remember. There was a time when people knew how important George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were in the life of our country, and they were concerned that future generations might forget. Therefore, they built a memorial as something that will last through time, causing those who come later to learn about these two great men and their deeds of the past.

Memorials are nothing new to us. One of the most famous memorials in scripture is related in the book of Joshua, as a memorial to God parting the Jordan when the children of Israel entered Canaan.

Joshua 4:1-9

1When all the nation had finished passing over the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, 2″Take twelve men from the people, from each tribe a man, 3and command them, saying, ‘Take twelve stones from here out of the midst of the Jordan, from the very place where the priests’ feet stood firmly, and bring them over with you and lay them down in the place where you lodge tonight.’” 4Then Joshua called the twelve men from the people of Israel, whom he had appointed, a man from each tribe. 5And Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the ark of the LORD your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, 6that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ 7then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.”

8And the people of Israel did just as Joshua commanded and took up twelve stones out of the midst of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, just as the LORD told Joshua. And they carried them over with them to the place where they lodged and laid them down there. 9And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the covenant had stood; and they are there to this day.

What do we learn from our need for memorials?

First, we learn that people quickly forget that which happened in the past. We forget why our forefathers fought for their freedom. We forget those who, having died for their faith, ensured that the faith was handed down to us intact.

But we also forget what has happened in our own lives. As we face crisis after crisis, God brings us through the difficulty, and we move on without realizing or acknowledging what God has done for us. We are not deliberately slighting God. But our unthinking and unappreciative attitude toward His grace and mercy are nothing short of a slight. We naturally forget.

Memorials teach us that we need to stop and think about what has gone before, making a conscience effort to remember and be thankful for those things we are prone to forget. The memorial might be to a president who lived two hundred years ago. But it should remind me that I have not thanked God for his grace to me this morning.

Secondly, we also need to hand down a knowledge of what is important to those who come after us. If we don’t teach them, what we have learned will die with us. We can not allow that to happen to the things we truly believe to be important, for if we allow that to happen, we show that they really were not that important to us in the first place.

I only gave my daughter a penny. That one cent is no lasting treasure. But my prayer is that in sharing some time with her, and in answering her questions about the meaning of words and ideas, I was building a knowledge in her of that which is important. That is what I want to pass on to her. We didn’t build a memorial. But we did build a memory.

Headline AP: Animal Pregnancy Baffles Mo. Zoo Curators

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Headline AP: Who’s to Blame for Global Obesity Woes?

Headline AP: Obesity Becoming Major Global Problem

Q.89. What makes the word effective for salvation?

A. The Spirit of God causes the reading and especially the preaching of the word to convince and convert sinners and to build them up in holiness and comfort through faith to salvation.