Quote Worthy

"I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting.
"They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them."

~Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope

Archiving

I'm taking on a new venture of archiving! Cue dramatic archiving music! (...What do you mean there's no dramatic archiving music? Note to self, compose dramatic archiving music!)
Those that have been privy to my ramblings in the pre-blogging days - the days before "Randsanity" was even a word - remember a little thing called The LOL*. Besides the typical "laugh out loud", LOL also stood for "Life of Lisa", "Lisa on Life" or in its more sporadic days "Lisa Online". It was a weekly, then monthly, then semi-annual email out to friends and family that contained my random ponderings on work, life, and everything mundane and observation-worthy around me. And so it is with great effort and joys, I begin the process of converting those old emails (which were saved in my Hotmail LOL folder) to blogs. I'm tagging as I add them to keep them more incorporated with Blogger Arrow, but to view only them there's an added LOL tag. They can also be accessed via the date - check the year 2002 for now, '03 and '04 will be added eventually - this also explains any confusion that may arise from seeing posts of mine from 2002 when my Blogger profile boasts "Member since September 2005". The advantage of this over previous attempts at an LOL archive is that the dates shown reflect the date the message was originally sent, and thus they paint a somewhat adequate picture of my life in my first few years out of college. Not sure if anyone will waste their time reading them but if nothing else there's some landmark moments in my life (my first few months at NU, starting to date Tony, midnight showings of the LotR trilogy, inventing the word Randsanity, etc.) as well as amusing pop culture references from the early 2000's (Pepsi Blue, anyone?). In a way it's like opening my own little time-capsule, without all the dirt and fuss of "Where the heck did I bury that?" and "Why the heck did I put that in there?". Enjoy!

*And those that have been privy to my ramblings for a very VERY long time will even recall the lunch bunch emails that spawned the LOL but unfortunately those have been lost forever to cyberspace and my UIUC email address.

Dylan Hears a Who

For anyone who's ever said to oneself "Self, the only thing that could possibly improve my favorite children's books is if they were put to music by a 60's music legend!":

http://www.dylanhearsawho.com

Music by Bob Dylan*, Lyrics by Dr. Seuss

*Okay so it's not really Bob Dylan but it's a pretty darn good impression.

The Handshake

Okay so there's a really great article that you have to read. Yes, you. In fact, everyone. It was recommended to me by a friend from my college church.

It's called An Honest Handshake.

That's the link. I'll even refrain from talking about it so you can go read it. Yes, now. Come read my drivel later or pop back over here to comment. But I'm serious, go read it. Here's the link again. And again. Get the hint?

That's a lot of burning pj's!

I believe strongly in the potential for every person to be considered smart. Call it the theory of multiple intelligences if you will, but inside all individuals is some degree of knowledge waiting to be applied in a person's life. A person is smart.

People, however, are generally stupid.

Moreover, the unintelligent actions of an individual can generally go unnoticed on a planet of around 6 billion. When stupidity multiplies however, the result is rarely swept under a rug resulting more often than not in rolled eyes and utterances along the lines of "How dumb can you get?" Case in point (from Reuters today):

Candidates for British universities have been caught red-handed copying their applications from the Internet after hundreds mentioned "burning a hole in pajamas at age eight" on their online entrance forms. The phrase, taken from a Web site which provides examples of personal statements used by successful candidates, describes an early encounter with a chemistry set.

Did the potential students think "Gee, I'm the only person who would ever think of copying this!" Or were their plots hatched more with the thought of, "The Internet! Admissions directors will never look there!"? Either way, there's something a little bit hilarious in that not a handful or even dozens but rather "hundreds" used the same story. I have to wonder if a few tried to alter the example claiming to burn their bed sheets or perhaps tried to look advance by citing the incidence at age 6 instead.

I remember all too well the agonizing pressure of writing a personal statement for college admissions and mine centered around slime, rubber chicken bones and other lessons from science camp that influenced my pursuit into studying biological sciences (yes, my veins of nerd-dom run deep). It never occurred to me to try - or even to want - to lie about my story. But at the same time this type of thing probably happens quite frequently and sadly, is only noticed when the perpetrators are caught.

Analogy Time...

It's time to play the analogy game! For those that need a refresher course,

dog : bark :: cat : meow

Dog is to Bark as Cat is to Meow, because Bark is the sound that Dogs make and Meow is the sound that Cats make get it? Okay here's the real test, see the comment section for the answer.

Mexican : Taco Bell :: Irish : ___________

(*And yes this analogy did arrive because it's almost St. Patrick's Day and this red-haired green-eyed freckle-faced Irish girl got hitched to a spicy fiesta-minded south-of-the-border man.)

Recent Reading Regarding Racial Reconciliation

I haven't said much recently about what I've been reading lately, but earlier this week I finished a lesser known blog-worthy book. Edward Gilbreath's Reconciliation Blues: A Black Evangelical's Inside View of White Christianity isn't the type of book I'd normally tear off the shelf and breeze through in a day and a half but I found myself riveted by the no-nonsense semi-biographical analysis of race relations in the modern Christian church. Gilbreath, a writer for the magazine Christianity Today, takes historical, political and even skeptical approaches to the subject of racial reconciliation. He finds a great strength in including Latino, Asian and Native American voices in his book and avoids the problem of limiting his discussion to - quite literally - black and white issues. I checked this book out of the New Release section at my local library but I find myself hunting for it at nearby bookstores so that I can have my own copy to highlight, underline and (as soon as possible) share with others. I can't say I'd recommend this book to everyone simply because I don't know that it's the kind of topic many people are truly ready for but it should be a must read for anyone attempting to answer the questions of "Do we need multicultural churches?"; "Are multicultural churches possible?" and "How do you make multicultural churches work?".