the tindog coffeehouse

So we all learned the story of the first Thanksgiving, right?  A bunch of Pilgrims on-board the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and set up a new colony.  A year later, in 1621, they held a feast with the local Wampanoag tribe to celebrate the first successful harvest.  Then after the feast, the men, in their funny black hats with the gold buckles, watched the Cowboys game while the women, in their bonnets, hurried off to go shopping.  (OK, some of that may not be entirely accurate.)

But seriously, have you ever really thought about that story, about who the Pilgrims were?  Dictionary.com defines a pilgrim as “a person who journeys, esp. a long distance, to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion”, and that’s exactly who the Plymouth settlers were.  They were Puritans, English separatists who believed that the Church of England had become so tainted by politics and man-made doctrine that it was beyond reform.  Many of them had initially fled England for Holland before joining up with another group of Puritans to settle in the New World.

This wasn’t an easy task.  There were no guarantees that any of them would survive, and in fact two of the pilgrims died even before reaching land.  Disease was rampant, food was scarce, the weather was extremely harsh, and there was always the threat of attack from the native tribes in the region.  But they came anyway, not for financial gain — as those who settled in Virginia did — but because of their devotion to God.

And I have to wonder, would I do the same if I were them?

Would I have the courage and faith to put my family onto a ship headed for an almost completely unknown land halfway across the world, knowing that the odds of our survival were overwhelmingly not in our favor?  Leave everything I have, everything I know to start over completely from scratch with virtually nothing on a whole other continent over 3,000 miles away?  And do it all, not for the chance to strike it rich, but because it was what God was instructing me to do.

Honestly, I don’t know if I could.  I don’t know if I could let go of my house, my car, my stuff, my safe and comfortable life and trade it for an uncertain and potentially disastrous future.  And not just me, but choose that path for my wife and daughters, too.

Oh sure, I can serve where I am.  I can give without really having to give up.  But could I — would I — get on that ship if God asked me to?  I’d like to say yes, but I really don’t know.

Many of the separatists didn’t.  Of those who fled England for Holland, only a few dozen made the decision to emigrate to the New World.  Most stayed behind in the relative safety of their new home.  And yet, those who did go, those who did act on their faith would end up establishing one of the most important settlements in modern history.

So today I’m thankful for those who followed their faith, those that chose God over everything else.  And I hope that one day I would have the courage to do the same.

Last month I pointed out how The Dallas Morning News told us that Texas had simultaneously both gained and lost jobs.

Now we get the sequel.

First, we find out that Texas employers hired 41,700 new employees in October (a number almost identical to the jobs lost a month before).  But then in another article (also from the DMN), we find out that Dallas-Fort Worth “lost about 60,000 jobs in October compared to a year earlier.”  Both stats, conveniently, come from the Texas Workforce Commission.

OK, so I guess you could argue that the DFW area lost 60,000 jobs while other parts of Texas gained 101,700.  If so, how do you explain the unemployment rate rising from 8.2 percent in September to 8.3 percent in October?  Something’s not adding up.

Further, the first article states that “Dallas-Fort Worth lost 59,100 jobs between October 2008 and last month”, while the second article (quoting the Dallas Federal Reserve) says that DFW has “lost almost 115,000 jobs this year”.

Huh?

Have we lost 59,000 jobs in the last year or 115,000?  Did we gain 41,000 jobs in October or lose 60,000?  Honestly, I don’t think anyone really knows.

And that’s why our economy is so screwed up.

Previously:
Texas gains jobs, Texas loses jobs
‘Stimulus’ spending could cost Texas 171,900 jobs

According to economists Michael Davis and Ewing Marion, the BCS is statistically fairer than a college football playoff system would be.

No, really.

They’ve invented a metric called the “Fairness Index”, which “measures the average ratio of the champion’s regular season record to its team with the best regular season record.”  By their calculations, the much-maligned Bowl Championship Series, with its convoluted system of computer rankings, human polls, and exclusionary provisions, has a fairness index of 97.2%, while the NFL’s playoff system comes in at a mere 91.6%.

Their argument is this: With a playoff system you allow a certain number of teams into the brackets, which sounds fair on the surface but can result in a team with a lesser regular-season record winning out against a more deserving team.  As an example, they point to the fact that the Arizona Cardinals, which had a regular-season record of 9-7, reached last year’s Super Bowl and almost beat the 12-4 Pittsburgh Steelers.  According to Davis and Marion, had the Cardinals won, that outcome would’ve been less fair.  Plus, they say, the more teams you allow into the playoffs, the more unfair the end results tend to be.

But I think these guys are missing the point.  Most of the complaints with the BCS are not with the computers or the polls.  Much of the problem lies with the exclusionary nature of the system.  Some conferences (the six BCS conferences, such as the Big 12 and SEC) are given preferential treatment over others (the non-BCS conferences, such as the Mountain West), often resulting in a higher ranked non-BCS team with a better record getting shut out of the process while a lower-ranked BCS team with a worse record gets an automatic invitation.  Or a high-ranked BCS team getting shut out to make room for a lower-ranked team from another conference.  It’s like the football equivalent of No Child Left Behind.

True, the eventual national champion is typically the most deserving team, but that’s because the No. 1 and 2 teams automatically play in the National Championship game.  In that case, you would expect the “Fairness Index” to be extremely high because it only looks at the ultimate winner.  But if you look at who plays in the other BCS bowls (the Orange, Rose, Fiesta, and Sugar Bowls), it’s hardly fair at all.

Previously:
Yes, the BCS is flawed. What’s your point?
The BCS: ‘Communistic’ or not?
The problem with fairness

It’s hard to believe, but it was 10 years ago this week that I first went to work at Microsoft, the ink on my new MCSE certification still fresh.  To this day, I’m still not sure how I made it through the rigorous interview process, but somehow I made it on as a “blue-badge” (a full-time Microsoft employee, as opposed to the “orange-badge” contractors that mostly walked through the door), hired to provide professional server support from the still-under-construction Las Colinas campus in Irving, Texas.

I arrived just as Windows 2000 was being released to manufacturing and just in time for Y2K.  It was also right before the dot-com bubble burst in early 2000.  Indeed, in the two years I worked there, I saw the glory days of the late ’90s — a time when working at Microsoft meant swimming in lucrative company stock options and bonuses and work was something you did between foosball tournaments — give way to the harsh realities of the falling stock market, before regaining a sense of hopeful optimism with the impending release of Windows XP.

It was from my cubicle that I watched the presidential debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore in which Gore touted his infamous “lockbox” and where I watched the ugliness of the 2000 election drag on with all its “hanging chads”.  And it was from my cubicle where I witnessed the horror of September 11th.  But it was also a place where I made numerous friendships and countless memories.

It was a stressful job, and I can’t say I fully miss it.  But I learned more there than I have at any other job I’ve ever had.  It provided invaluable experience that I’ve taken with me in the years since leaving, and I’m grateful for the time I was given there.

According to Texas governor Rick Perry, Kay Bailey Hutchison’s decision to not resign from the Senate was his idea:

“If there was ever a time to have full-time representation in the United States Senate, it would be right now,” Perry said during a visit to Emmett J. Conrad High School in Dallas. “So I really appreciate her taking my advice and staying on the job full time.”

Never mind that Hutchison has been decisively indecisive throughout the campaign and has seemed determined to hedge her bets as long as possible.  I guess she just needed some helpful guidance from Governor Rick.

Also Perry’s idea?

• The Interstate Highway system (followed later by the invention of toll roads)
• Sliced bread
• Penicillin
• The Roman aqueducts
• Rocky IV
• Cherry Garcia ice cream
• Mega-strength hairspray

I’m pretty sure he also single-handedly planted thousands of acres of apples throughout the upper Midwest in the early 1800s and once had a giant blue ox named Babe.

Previously:
When will Kay Bailey Hutchison resign?
Race for Texas governor on …sorta
Why are the Internets turning on Kay Bailey Hutchison?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about John Chapter 6, about how thousands of people had begun to follow Jesus, not because of who He was or what He had to offer them, but because all they saw was some guy who could heal their diseases and give them food.

Many of those people didn’t hang around for long.

Jesus told the crowd that instead of seeking another meal, which would just leave them hungry again later, they should choose the “bread of life” (v. 35).  He told them to eat His flesh and drink His blood, which would lead to eternal life (vv. 53-58).  Naturally, these cryptic commands only confused His followers, and almost all of them left.

I know how I would’ve felt to see everyone desert me.  I would’ve felt like a complete failure, worthless and rejected.  I would’ve wondered, “What did I do wrong?  How can I get them back?  Maybe give them some more food, heal some more people, do some awesome magic tricks?”  Because that’s our human nature.  We want to be loved, we want to be accepted, we want to be respected and adored.  And had I been Jesus, I would’ve done anything at that moment to keep those people from walking out on me.  Anything.

Thank God I’m not Jesus.

Verse 64 says that Jesus knew from the beginning who would stay and who would go, and it’s pretty obvious that these people were never in it for the long haul.  They didn’t care about who Jesus was.  They didn’t really care whether or not He was the prophesied Messiah, the Son of God, the One who would in a short time willingly give up His life for their sins.  No.  All they cared about was their own immediate needs and wants, and when the food ran out, when the going got tougher, when the cost of following Jesus became greater, they were out of there.

So my question to you is simple: Will you stay, or will you go?  If you’re already a Christian, you’ve already made the decision to give your life to Jesus Christ, and you’ve asked forgiveness for your sins and asked Him to be your Lord and Savior, will you continue to stick with Him, even when it’s tough and even when you don’t know where He’s leading you?

And if you’re not a Christian, if you’re wondering if this Jesus guy is who He says He is, will you keep seeking answers?  Or will you walk away because it just looks too hard?

As I read back over this passage, I wondered whatever happened to the people that left.  Did any of them ever return, or did they walk away from Jesus forever?  I’ll never know.  But I know that at least for me, I can choose to stay.

Previously:
In the beginning…
Who are you following?

Historian John Steele Gordon (author of the excellent An Empire of Wealth, which I’ve quoted from a couple of times) has a great op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, explaining the (flawed) Liberal mindset in American politics:

[T]he liberal paradigm divides the American body politic into sheep, wolves, and would-be shepherds. The shepherds must defeat the efforts of the wolves. …

Not only does the liberal paradigm not even come close to agreeing with the social and economic reality on the ground today, worse, it has largely congealed into a political religion, especially in the nearly 30 years since Ronald Reagan shifted the nation’s political center of gravity, just as FDR had done 48 years earlier. Since liberals care about the sheep, all who disagree with liberalism must not, making them morally inferior if not downright immoral. Thus the nastiness in American politics is largely on the left. Whatever you think of Sarah Palin, her treatment in the liberal press was ugliness personified. …

But in a world where a majority of Americans work at white-collar jobs, have high-school and college degrees, own their own homes, and hold financial securities in their own right, the so-called wolves are now a majority. If liberals don’t begin to take that fact into account in formulating policy, the Obama administration will not only be an unsuccessful liberal administration, it may well be the last liberal administration.

Previously:
Lucy Van Pelt, Liberal
The problem with fairness

The city of Arlington and Jerry Jones kicked a bunch of people out of their homes to build the $1.15 billion monument to ego known as Cowboys Stadium.  The city (with the approval of voters) also raised the sales tax a half percent to help pay for it.  So you’d think that Arlington high schools (particularly Lamar, whose students were those that lost their homes to Jerryworld) would be the first in line to play their football playoff games there.

Wrong.

At least initially, only bidistrict games between the 5-5A and 6-5A districts will be played there.  That includes schools such as Euless Trinity, Colleyville Heritage, Grapevine, and Southlake Carroll.  District 4-5A, which includes Arlington Lamar, Arlington Bowie, and Arlington High, is out of luck.  At least part of the reason, it seems, is because it’s too expensive.  (Naturally.)

As an alumnus of Lamar, this really ticks me off.  When I was in high school, we went to the playoffs every year, playing ten games at the old Texas Stadium over the course of the three years I was there.  I remember being in the marching band and marching out of the tunnel for the first time into what was the biggest stadium I had ever been in (which of course is nothing compared to the monstrosity that replaced it).  I remember catching a glimpse of Troy Aikman on the sidelines one game and feeling honored to stand where the heroes of my childhood once played and coached:  Roger Staubach, Tony Dorsett, Drew Pearson, and of course Tom Landry.

The current generation of Arlington students should have the opportunity to make the same memories.  Instead, they’ll be on the outside looking in while their wealthier neighbors are given preference.

Honestly, I’ve never had much respect for Jerry Jones, but now I have even less.

Update, 11/10/09:
Well, it looks like I was totally wrong (although in all fairness the Dallas Morning News article was horribly misleading).  Arlington high schools will, in fact, be playing at Cowboys Stadium.  Arlington Martin and Arlington Bowie have games there on Thursday night, and Arlington and Arlington Lamar have games on Friday night.  Full schedule here, and UIL brackets can be downloaded here.

Go, Vikes!

John Hinderaker at PowerLine makes a great point about how under Nancy Pelosi’s health care bill (full 1,990-page PDF here), private health insurance is technically really no longer insurance:

Under the House bill private health insurance companies will still exist, but to what end? They will be legally prohibited from competing in any meaningful sense. They will be required to issue substantially the same coverages at substantially the same rates, changes in which must be justified to the government. They will be prohibited from underwriting insurance risks in any rational way: they must pay all bills resulting from preexisting conditions, and they will be prohibited from charging lower-risk customers lower rates.

As I wrote here, you can force insurance companies to “cover” preexisting conditions, but the resulting product is not insurance. You cannot insure against something that has already happened. It is merely a bill-paying mechanism. …

Under the House bill, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that health insurance companies are no longer in the insurance business. They can’t rate and underwrite risks, which is the essence of insurance. That’s illegal. They can’t decide to whom they will issue policies; that’s illegal, too. They can’t offer novel or innovative coverages; their coverages are dictated by law. To a limited extent they can make decisions on paying claims, but under the watchful eye of government regulators. Meaningful competition among insurance companies will be, in effect, illegal.

I’m not saying insurance reforms aren’t needed, but regulating any industry to this extent simply can’t be good.

It was 40 years ago yesterday, on October 29, 1969, that the first message was sent across ARPANET (which would evolve into today’s modern Internet).  The message? “LO”.  Yeah, it was supposed to be “LOGIN”, but the thing crashed after the “O”.

And thus was the born the inspiration for AT&T’s wireless network.  The End.

Previously:
Vanity Fair’s history of the Internet

…was including Internet Explorer 8 with it.

Hear me out.

Windows 7 has gotten a lot of praise for its improvements over Vista, both under-the-hood changes to the core OS as well as more visible changes such as a revamped taskbar and the introduction of features like Jump Lists and Libraries.  It’s not a major upgrade of Vista and certainly not perfect, but most of my complaints are minor.  For example, why is there still so much fluff (desktop gadgets, Wordpad, Sticky Notes, etc.)?  Why all the boring and/or confusing “Microsoft-isms” (Home Groups, User Account Control, Windows Live Essentials, Windows Easy Transfer, BitLocker, Aero Peek, Aero Shake)?  And why is Steve Ballmer still around?

But again, with the possible exception of the Ballmer question, those are minor annoyances.  Where I think Microsoft really missed a huge opportunity was in not killing off Internet Explorer.  I mean, let’s face it, IE is a disaster.  Sure IE8 is better than previous versions, but it doesn’t even begin to compare to Firefox, Chrome, or Safari.  It’s slower, consumes a huge amount of memory when using multiple tabs, and miserably fails the industry-standard Acid3 test.

Microsoft needs to completely ditch IE and replace it with a brand new browser built to support web standards, not worry about backwards compatibility.  Maybe even build it with Webkit like Chrome and Safari.  It would go a long way in restoring the image of Microsoft and would show that they can effectively compete with Google and Apple.  They’ve made strides with Bing, now they need to follow it up with a modern, standards-compliant web browser.

To me, Windows 7 would’ve been the perfect showcase for such a browser.  Instead, Microsoft seems to be content with the status quo, and that’s a big disappointment.

Previously:
Internet Explorer 8: Faster but no Firefox
Microsoft: Internet Explorer 8 perfect for porn addicts
Windows 7 Beta 1: Initial thoughts
Windows 7 Beta 1: The other stuff

A new report claims that the $700,000,000,000 bailout rescue plan known as TARP may have saved the economy (debatable), but it also severely damaged the credibility of the federal government:

The mixed and blunt assessment by Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general in charge of oversight for the bailout fund, appears in a quarterly report scheduled for release Wednesday. Barofsky said the Troubled Asset Relief Program has come at great cost to taxpayers, to the integrity of the financial system and to the public’s perception of the federal government.

“Despite the aspects of TARP that could reasonably be viewed as a substantial success,” he wrote, “Treasury’s actions in this regard have contributed to damage the credibility of the program and of the government itself, and the anger, cynicism and distrust created must be chalked up as one of the substantial, albeit unnecessary, costs of TARP.”

Of course, the report assumes that Americans had any faith in the government in the first place, which is questionable.

There’s a reason our currency says “In God We Trust”.

Previously:
‘Dude, where’s my $700 billion?’
TARP is the financial equivalent of the Vietnam War