Shameless Broadcasting of Personal Info

It took far longer than we expected, but once again I'm a daddy. Holy cow is it amazing. Liam Nathaniel was born Wednesday evening... a healthy 9 lbs, 3.4 oz. Judi's doing great. Those who know us may remember that Jenna's birth was pretty rough, but this one went fine.

They held Liam an extra day because he had a heart murmur and he failed his hearing check. Both cleared up by the following day, so they released us this morning.

God is so good. Thanks a ton to all of our friends who supported us (or just offered to). We were well-covered this time because my parents and Judi's parents were both in town to help with Jenna-care.

Jenna's first look at Liam.



The three most important people in my life.


I love you all (well, most of you) and look forward to introducing you to my son!

The blog post where I briefly rant

Let's take it as a given that none of us will ever buy GM ever again. That's a given, right? We're all on a lifelong boycott? I mean, any company who flat-out admits that they're too incompetent to design a car that people will buy is one you don't want to buy from.

Add in the fact that the incompetent company decided NOT to spend all of its assets on trying to build better cars, and instead spent that money lobbying Congress and begging from taxpayers is a company I really don't want to have any part of. But to have the chutzpah to come back to the trough THREE TIMES? How poorly-run do you need to be to come back begging THREE TIMES?

I hate the fact that my tax money bought this commercial. And it's not even a good commercial. So seeing it 4 times in 30 minutes tends to make me snippy.



"You know what America needs?" Better car companies, apparently.

We're not gonna have that around here.

Hilarious.

A very dangerous game

Planarity.

http://www.planarity.net/game.php?size=small

The entire game is just untangling a knot. But it gets much harder as you go up in levels. Give the link a click, if you have an hour to kill.

Well, that gets rid of a ton of the stuff I've had sitting in my queue. I'll put some more out tomorrow.

Hitchens and Craig go head-to-head

Haven't read it yet, won't get a chance to read it until this weekend. But a brief skim looks promising! Enjoy!

http://www.tothesource.org/4_8_2009/4_8_2009.htm

Primates on Facebook

I logged into Facebook yesterday and said to Judi "Do I really have this many friends?" I don't pursue anybody on Facebook... it's been a long time since I've initiated a friend request. Do I really even know this many people?

So it was fun to read this recent article in the Economist, which argues that no matter how many FaceBookFriends we have, our actual capacity for human interaction has remained relatively stable.

What also struck Dr Marlow, however, was that the number of people on an individual’s friend list with whom he (or she) frequently interacts is remarkably small and stable. The more “active” or intimate the interaction, the smaller and more stable the group.

Thus an average man—one with 120 friends—generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or “wall”. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13176775

Crazy... it's almost as if a core relational group does best with around 7 to 10 members. Now where have I heard that before...

I blame the young people!

They are the cause of the downfall of America!

Or not.

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2009/04/the_wrong_booge_1.html

I tend to feel like Skye buys into too much hype, but in this case he does a great job of picking apart a stupid argument.

From reading Mohler's numerous posts about singleness and delayed marriage, he appears to be saying that if immature, selfish, and lazy young adults (and many of us are) would just get married and have kids they’d be forced to “grow up.” Unfortunately, my experience has proven the opposite. I’ve seen too many young families torn apart (both Christian and non) because a husband or wife proved to lack the maturity required for a stable marriage. Simply walking the aisle, saying the vows, and sharing a bed and bank account did not magically bring maturity. If marriage really is the prescribed avenue for maturity, as some have been promoting, then shouldn't the church be advocating more teen marriages?

Well worth reading. You'll thank me later.

"The methods change but the message stays the same"

VERY interesting. I'd been pretty skeptical of the new book "Flickering Pixels" but this interview with the author is making me reconsider.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6QiyElRG3c

Clearing out my queue...

I have a ton of stuff that I've meant to sit down and process rationally, but I haven't had time. And since our son is due any day, I'm not likely to have time in the future. Thus, today's onslaught of interesting things with little commentary.

Off we go!

In defense of work

This was fun... especially fun to read after I spent the morning digging out stumps in my backyard.



http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/477