Easter is possibly the greatest holiday of the year for me. While almost everyone knows the outline of events (Sunday School Lessons), it’s the metaphors they represent that mean so much. They embody facing terrible dark times, making impossible choices, the struggle to find faith thru it all, and ultimately being reborn.

This year it is especially significant since Richelle’s 30th birthday takes place on it. How awesome is that? I find it very fitting. She helped me see past my terrible dark times and she’s helped me become a better man for them.

Update: It was Angus Young’s birthday back in 2002. Tony Pierce took the opportunity to use Angus to teach some lessons (great link!).

…The supermarket is a great place to study human behavior, Trinkaus says. In a 1993 report, he described 75 visits in which he watched the same checkout lane for 15-minute stints.

…”all my studies point in the same direction?that things are changing for the worse” in terms of courtesy and civility. “We?re seeing more selfish behavior, more people looking out for themselves,” he notes. He suspects that Americans? infatuation with technology?cell phones, MP3 players and the Internet?has led to a lack of communication. “People interact less with one another these days and more with machines. That can be isolating, possibly contributing to antisocial behavior.”

Read the rest in Scientific American.

…there is indeed a clear link.
… a teenager who thinks his or her complaints are not being taken seriously by the parent loses some self esteem, and loss of self esteem has been shown in many other studies to be related to drug and alcohol abuse.

So when a father laughs off a request from a son who wants to date more, as one father did during the study, the teenager is left diminished in his own eyes. In this case, as in many others, the teenager whose request was not taken seriously admitted using alcohol and drugs.

…Teenagers who thought their parent wasn’t listening, or taking his or her concerns seriously, were far more likely to turn to dangerous substances. The parental plea that they not do so was not taken seriously by the teen.

“I think what happens is if the parents show the teenagers that when an issue comes up, it’s OK to withdraw and not really talk about it, teenagers pick up on that and they see that as a legitimate way to deal with an issue,” Caughlin says. “They will turn around and do the same thing to the parents.”

… If a parent doesn’t listen to a teenager who wants to talk about a complaint, no matter how trivial, it’s unlikely the teenager will listen to the parent when it comes to life or death issues.

Read the rest in this ABCNews article.

The more television children watch between the ages of 1 and 3, the greater their risk of having attention problems at age 7, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

… They found that each hour of television that preschoolers watched per day increased the risk of attention problems such as attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, by almost 10 percent later on.

Read the rest at Yahoo!.

Pay attention. Listen. Don’t use the TV to replace person to person time.

There is too much usage of these persuasive argument techniques to keep track of.

We use these outside the media and outside of politics. We use them in family arguments, in social settings, and at work. Is it that the same culture, which tells us an argument is for winning instead of finding the truth, which pervades our politics, has crept into our personal lives? I’ve used quite a few of these instinctively. How about you?

Congratulations Bill on finding your new job! And on three years of weblogging too. But that kinda pales in comparison doesn’t it? 🙂

The HistoryChannel has a great site on it’s origins.

What a wonderful and terrible story (Newsday). It’s some kind of miracle. Let’s pray for the family that all turns out well.

Don’t be a hypocrite. Know someday you will die. Be brave enough face up to what you’ve done and reconcile. Do it with heart.

Matthew 6

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Take care not to perform righteous deeds
in order that people may see them;
otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father.
When you give alms,
do not blow a trumpet before you,
as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets
to win the praise of others.
Amen, I say to you,
they have received their reward.
But when you give alms,
do not let your left hand know what your right is doing,
so that your almsgiving may be secret.
And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

“When you pray,
do not be like the hypocrites,
who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners
so that others may see them.
Amen, I say to you,
they have received their reward.
But when you pray, go to your inner room,
close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.
And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

“When you fast,
do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.
They neglect their appearance,
so that they may appear to others to be fasting.
Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you fast,
anoint your head and wash your face,
so that you may not appear to be fasting,
except to your Father who is hidden.
And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”

— God bless.

Yes I’m still here! I hope to catch up on my posting later tonight. Till then – I hope you have a good one.