Social Baggage

If you missed the Saddleback Civil Forum on Saturday night, you need to to watch. Barack Obama and John McCain each sat down with Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life) for one hour and were asked an identical set of questions.

Then something amazing happened. He actually let them answer. No arguments. No bickering. No loony internet smear campaigns. Just tell us where you stand.

This was an extremely refreshing and informative approach. I learned a great deal about both men and their positions without feeling anger or resentment toward either.

Trevin Max (some guy I never heard of before today) was kind enough to post the entire forum in segments on his blog. Click here to view.

Whether you think you’ve already decided or not, I encourage you to watch this. You will learn something.

Also check out the Saddleback Civil Forum official website.

Someone I know failed in a very public way this week. The story is a headline on national news right now and will probably be in the morning paper.

I fail every day. I lose my temper. I try to make people think I’m better than I really am. I look twice at forbidden fruit. So do you.

The fact that I’m not a celebrity doesn’t make me any better.

It’s only by grace - a reward given by a merciful God that we could never, ever begin to earn - that any of us make it into His family. We confess our sin. He forgives us. That’s how it works. Not because He has to, but because He loves us.

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
- 1 John 4:11

For most of us, confessing our sin would be the end of it. We did wrong, we find forgiveness and maybe suffer a small consequence, but we move on.

My friend has to sit in church tomorrow.. wondering who among us has seen the news.

I’m praying for you.

Rinspeed has made what might be the coolest car ever! It actually drives under water. Dude, what else do I have to say? Just watch the video.

Go to Rinspeed.com for more info, photos and hi-rez downloads.

So what was Alicia Silverstone doing nude in a PETA ad they knew would never get to air? Creating a buzz, that’s what.

After reaching the pinnacle of her acting abilities in Batman & Robin, Alicia’s career came to a screeching halt. Now she’s 30 and off the radar. What’s a girl to do? Get in shape and do a controversial advertisement that no one would air but everyone will watch. The fact that going veg helped create her amazingly hot body doesn’t hurt either. Almost makes me want to stop eating tasty animals.. but not quite.

This is the marketing genius behind PETA, Hardees and MoveOn.org. Create something that will get conservatives all hot and bothered. Air it a few times (or not at all) and do some press releases about Paris Hilton washing a car, teachers doing a pole dance or Alicia Silverstone taking a swim. Some horny nerd puts it on YouTube, O’Reilly starts yapping and bam! You get buzz for millions of dollars less than actually running the ad.

What about outrage? What about decent people standing up for what is right? Where’s the voice of the common man in all this?

You know as well as I do that the common man is busy Googling “alicia silverstone peta ad” so he can catch a glimpse of her naked behind.  Viral marketing succeeds again.

Cheers to Danica McKellar, who played Winnie on The Wonder Years, for her new book, Math Doesn’t Suck. The 32 year old Danica told Newsweek that when girls see the antics of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, they think that being fun and glamorous also means being dumb and irresponsible. “I want to show them that being smart is cool,” she said. “Being good at math is cool. And not only that, it can help them get what they want out of life.”

The book includes tips to avoid mistakes on homework, ways to overcome test-day anxiety and profiles of three beautiful mathematicians.

Danica said that she wrote the book “to tell girls that cute and dumb isn’t as good as cute and smart.”

It’s a noble effort. We need more positive examples for our kids to follow. My only concern is that the type of people who want to act like Lindsay and Brittney aren’t the type of girls to pick up a book on their own.

It would be nice to see Danica in the supermarket checkout replacing the Weekly World News, which has called it quits for print circulation. I’m sure the spandex-laden Stuff-mart shoppers will find some other brand of 6th-grade-reading-level pop-tart mag to fill the void.

Much like the upcoming Superman sequel, Social Baggage returns.. again.

After two months of dealing with mail injection attacks and hacked servers, we are now on an all-new server with an all-new company. Our scripts have been bulletproofed. Vulnerable code has been removed. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to have fun writing posts instead of struggling to keep the site up.

BTW, I removed the Wordtube plugin as it turned out to be a vulnerable spot that hackers could exploit. I’ll try to get a new video plugin up soon so I can share some of the video goodness my friends and co-workers have been sending me lately.

Check out the all new Social Baggage News Feeds in the spiffy blue and yellow table below. [Note: The news feeds now have their own page located here.]? I thought it might be nice to have current content that automatically updates itself so you won’t get bored waiting for my words of wisdom.

My take on the world leans decidedly right. My news sources do as well. Get over it. I’m not going to “balance” this site with liberal viewpoints for the sake of polical correctness. If you want to listen to people who are wrong, turn on NPR.

BTW: The 2005 State of the Union Address is Here