The Obsessed Programmer

My girlfriend, Liliana, is from Peru.  Her family lives in the city that was recently leveled by a 7.9-magnitude earthquake followed by 18 (!) aftershocks of at least magnitude 5.0.  Miraculously, all of her family survived, even though their house collapsed and the school her siblings attend was destroyed.  Although they are all alive, they are sleeping in the streets in wintertime, and they face the additional danger of rampant looting.

Please, please pray for Liliana Puma and her family.

It makes me sick to my stomach that the American people require a Supreme Court ruling to tell them that partial-birth abortions are an abomination. Consider this short, unemotional description of the procedure:

The procedure at issue involves partially removing the fetus intact from a woman’s uterus, then crushing or cutting its skull to complete the abortion.

Read that one more time.

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I just watched the most deeply depressing movie every conceived–Deepa Mehta’s Water.  But as depressing as the feature film was itself, the DVD special features only made things worse. (more…)

This weekend, I went to Lisa Pilzer’s 30th birthday party in Las Vegas, NV. The main event was in the Caramel lounge in the Bellagio. The food was fantastic, the company was illustrious, and Lisa was as beautiful and charismatic as ever.

Getting Children to Love You
Adults are okay, but kids are great.

I served a two-year ecclesiastical mission in Las Vegas, NV a few years ago. Rather than fly to Vegas and stay in an expensive hotel, I made arrangements with an old missionary companion to drive down for the weekend and stay with an old friend of his. We arrived at their house around 6:00 PM on Saturday, and I set about using the following highly effective and repeatable steps to make their children love me. (more…)

In the 1950s, NPR ran a radio series called This I Believe. Journalist Edward R. Murrow invited Americans of every description to write a synopsis of their beliefs in 500 words or less and send it in for public airing. Those who were selected were brought on the show to read their essay on national radio for about three minutes. All essays submitted were saved and submitted to the Library of Congress as a snapshot of what one American considered his bedrock beliefs at that time in history.

Before the show began, the concept was widely criticized and was considered a certain flop by others in the radio biz. Instead, it was a smash hit. Millions of Americans listened each week to hear the beliefs of their fellow Americans, and the published collection of the essays rocketed to the #2 best-selling book in America, second only to the Bible.

Dan Gediman and Jay Allison have revived the show.

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