the tindog coffeehouse

mental_floss has the story behind the class A Charlie Brown Christmas… and why it almost didn’t air.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the gang, so naturally I make it a point to watch the Charlie Brown specials whenever they’re on, especially the Christmas special, and it’s become a holiday tradition for us and the kids. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without Charlie Brown’s sad little Christmas tree.

I’ve always wondered how they could get away with quoting Scripture in prime time, and I wonder every year if this will be the year ABC will edit it out and replace it with some sort of product placement spiel for Disneyworld. In recent years, they’ve followed the original version with a newer Peanuts Christmas cartoon which is more Santa-oriented. While still good, it definitely lacks the heart and soul that Charles Schulz put into his characters which made the original Christmas special so endearing.

And don’t even get me started on Shrek the Halls.

President Bush is expected to sign the recent energy bill passed by Congress which would require auto makers to increase the fuel efficiency of their cars to 35 mpg by 2020. Sounds good, right?

The AP is reporting how manufacturers will be “getting creative” to meet those figures, rolling out more advanced hybrids, using “cylinder deactivation systems,” and experimenting with lighter materials such as carbon fiber and aluminum. Still sounds good, doesn’t it?

Until you realize what this really means for consumers:

But Merkle noted that all of these alternatives will not come cheaply. Clean diesel and hybrid technology typically adds several thousand dollars to the cost of a vehicle, and more lightweight parts will also carry additional expenses.

When will we learn that economic regulation rarely benefits the consumer? Of course, this energy bill isn’t about benefiting the consumer, is it? This is election-year legislation created by Democrats to appeal to environmentally-conscious voters and those that argue for curbing our dependence on foreign oil. It also goes over well with farmers in the midwest (Iowa, anyone?), who stand to make a killing over the increased demand for corn-based ethanol, which itself drives up prices of food and other manufactured products, straining the budgets of millions of Americans.

I bought a new car about a month and half ago, and one of the primary reasons was to save money. I wanted a more fuel efficient car, but you soon realize that going with a hybrid may actually cost you more money. Compare the Honda Civic Hybrid with the regular Civic. The hybrid is more fuel efficient but costs about $5000 more. So you save money on gas but not enough to offset the higher monthly payments versus the non-hybrid model.

Do we need more fuel efficient cars? Yes. Do we need environmentally cleaner cars? Yes. But these technologies cost more money, and by forcing consumers to pay those higher costs, Congress is ultimately hurting Americans.

This last cold spell started getting me excited about the Fort Worth Stock Show. It’s still early; the stock show isn’t until January.  But it’s one of the few things to really look forward to in late January. (You have to have something to keep you going after the end of college football season.)

On the surface it doesn’t really sound like anything too exciting: looking at a bunch of cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, horses, and various other livestock. But it actually is a lot of fun. We head out there every year with the kids and then go out for barbeque afterwards. (I still don’t think the girls understand where that yummy brisket comes from.) It’s one of those days you feel like you’re reconnecting with what it means to be a Texan. If you’re from Texas, you understand.

There’s a petting zoo and carnival midway, which we don’t bother with. There’s also the rodeo, which is really great but also a bit expensive. We haven’t taken the girls to the rodeo yet since they haven’t been old enough for us to really justify spending the money. Maybe this year, who knows?

I’m just glad to have the opportunity for the girls to see (and smell) these animals up close to get a real appreciation for the role they play in our lives. Agriculture is still a huge part of our economy and our statewide identity, and it’s easy to lose sight of that living in the suburbs and growing up surrounded by a Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Home Depot on every corner. After all, what would Cowtown be without the cows?

Yes, cow patty pens: handcrafted pens made from “flecks of brown suspended in a clear plastic, looking almost like wood from a distance.” (Almost.)

Listening to Lopez describe how he arrived at his production method is like listening to a scientist describe a breakthrough discovery. The cow patties can’t be too dry but they can’t be too fresh, either. Also important is the type of feed the cattle in question are eating.

Eligible patties must be made from pure coastal grass, never grain, Lopez said adamantly, gesturing with both hands otherwise the patty “won’t be natural.”

Once selected and harvested, the winners are ground into a powder, placed in a tray and mixed with a plastic resin. After four days, he can cut the hardened plastic into small blocks for further custom milling. He said it’s the hardest substance he has ever cut because of sand ingested by the cows along with the grass.

The blocks are spun on a wood lathe at 3,900 revolutions per minute, worked into a cylinder, assembled with parts bought from a catalog and polished. The process yields 10 to 15 pens and takes six to eight hours, Lopez said.

(Hey, Mike Rowe, this sounds right up your alley!)

The pens sell for $45. The perfect gift for the senator or congressman in your life!

The List Universe has posted the Top 10 Facts about Saint Nicholas, the 3rd-century saint who would later come to symbolize the true meaning of our Savior’s birth: early-bird shop-a-thons, 50%-off sales, and an eternal shortage of Nintendo Wiis. (Wikipedia article here, from which the Top 10 list is derived.)

According to legend, Saint Nicholas became famous for his gift-giving ways after anonymously giving a man bags of gold coins to keep his daughters from prostituting themselves. Seems kind of ironic today, doesn’t it?

In honor of Al Gore’s recent Nobel Peace Prize (what did he win that for again?), I’ve decided to reduce my carbon footprint. Next time I step in a pile of carbon, I’ll try and tiptoe.

Thanks, Al! Now I feel all “eco-friendly” and stuff.

Oh, and thanks again for that whole Internet thing, too. That was awfully swell of you.

Our girls are 6 and 4, so every Christmas there’s the question of what to do about Santa Claus. I don’t want to take away the innocence of childhood by telling them that Santa isn’t real; they’ll figure that out soon enough. But I don’t want to emphasize Santa and presents to the point of diminishing what Christmas is really about: the birth of Jesus. It’s humbling to look around at our Christmas decorations and see so many images of Santa but yet next to nothing about Jesus.

Christy’s approach is a little different, suggesting we go ahead and tell them that Santa isn’t real. She makes the very good point that if they find out later that we lied to them about Santa, will they also think that Jesus is a lie, too?

I don’t know if they fully believe in Santa or not, but for now the Santa decorations are still up and the girls will be leaving cookies for him on Christmas Eve. But we’ll also be reading the story of the birth of Jesus in the Bible and will probably have a birthday cake for him too (as we did last year with their cousins).

We’ve started developing our own family Christmas traditions, and thankfully visiting Santa at the mall has never been one of them. I guess that’s one good thing. If nothing else, at least it’s one less thing we have to worry about.

Microsoft has released several documents outlining the Windows Vista updates addressed in the forthcoming SP1 service pack. While perusing a couple of these documents (“Overview_of_Windows_Vista_SP1.doc” and “Notable_Changes_in_Windows_Vista_SP1_Release_Candidate.doc”), several comments stuck out to me:

• “Improves the performance of domain-joined PCs when operating off the domain; in the current release version of Windows Vista, users would experience long delays when opening the File dialog box.” (Overview, p. 11) – As someone who supports corporate users who often work at home on the road, I know how frustrating it can be when working off the network. I can’t imagine the frustration of these users who would have to put up with these additional delays.
• “Improves the logon experience by removing the occasional 10-second delay between pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL and the password prompt displaying.” (Overview, p. 11) – 10 seconds??!! Holy frakkin’ cow!
• “Users who did not opt-in to the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) will be prompted again to join after installing SP1. The experience will remain the same and the default will continue to be opt-out.” (Notable Changes, p. 9) – Because what we really want in a service pack is more prompts!
• “Improves performance over Windows Vista’s current performance across the following scenarios:
  – 25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine
  – 45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system
  – 50% faster when copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system” (Notable Changes, p. 9) – Anyone doubting that the out-of-the-box file copying in Vista is a complete joke can doubt no longer.
• “Improves responsiveness when doing many kinds of file or media manipulations. For example, with Windows Vista today, copying files after deleting a different set of files can make the copy operation take longer than needed. In SP1, the file copy time is the same as if no files were initially deleted.” (Notable Changes, p. 9) – Another example of the ridiculous performance issues that have given Vista a black eye. There are quite a few other performance-related fixes mentioned in the Notable Changes doc, but you get the idea.
• “Addresses a problem that caused a delay of up to 5 minutes after boot with specific ReadyDrive capable hard drives.” (Notable Changes, p. 10) – I guess that 10-second delay doesn’t sound so bad now, right?
• “Improves overall media performance by reducing many glitches.” (Notable Changes, p. 10) – Microsoft’s way of admitting their product has many glitches. The first step is to admit you have a problem.
• “The Windows Vista SP1 install process clears the user-specific data that is used by Windows to optimize performance, which may make the system feel less responsive immediately after install. As the customer uses their SP1 PC, the system will be retrained over the course of a few hours or days and will return to the previous level of responsiveness.” (Notable Changes, p. 10) – Oh yeah, by the way, when you install our service pack, we’re going to delete some of your user data which will only affect the performance of your computer for a few days. You’re not doing anything important for the next few days, are you? Ok, good. But don’t worry; we’ll “retrain” it for you at no extra charge!
• “Enables a standard user to invoke the CompletePC Backup application, provided that user can supply administrator credentials. Previously, only administrators could launch the application.” (Notable Changes, p. 12) – Because non-administrative users can be trusted with performing critical backups of your computer. But hey, I guess if you trust your kid with the administrator password…
• “Updated drivers are delivered primarily via Windows Update and directly from hardware vendors, not as part of a service pack. However, a small number of critical drivers are included as part of Windows Vista (e.g., display drivers, audio drivers) and some of these have been updated.” (Notable Changes, p. 13) – And, oh yeah, not only are we going to delete some of your user data without asking you, we might update some of your drivers for you, too, while we’re at it. You did let your kid make a good backup of your computer beforehand, right? Good.
• “SP1 reduces the number of UAC (User Account Control) prompts from 4 to 1 when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location.” (Notable Changes, p. 16) – How many frakkin’ UAC prompts does it take to do something as simple as rename a folder??!! And no, that’s not the first line of a joke.
• “SP1 modifies the text in the Ultimate Extras Control Panel to describe the Ultimate Extras program in more general terms.” (Notable Changes, p. 16) – Because “Ultimate” was too specific.
• “Users are now required to enter a password hint during the initial setup of Windows Vista SP1. This change was made based on feedback from top PC manufactures that many customers frequently do not remember their password and because the administrator account is turned off by default on Windows Vista, these users do not have a way to access to their PCs. A password hint helps avoid this frustrating scenario.” (Notable Changes, p. 16) – Just ask your kid what the administrator password is, he knows.

Thank you, Microsoft. You candidness is refreshing. Even when your products aren’t.

Wired has a rather scathing review of The Golden Compass, the movie based on atheist Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy of books about “killing God.”

Wired’s problems with the movie have nothing to do with the toned-down anti-Christian message of the movie but rather with the poor special effects, lack of character development, and the “Hollywood-saccharine” ending.

I have to confess that I’m rooting for this film to fail, and it’s definitely not looking good for the film financially so far. It’s one thing to create a fantasy story for kids (Harry Potter notwithstanding), but it’s quite another to be specifically “trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief” (as quoted by Snopes).

This is not meant to be political blog, although with the political season heating up, I’m sure there will be some more political posts in the future. But I did want to put my $0.02 in regarding the recent discussions of the faiths of presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney.

The question comes down to this: (1) to what extent should a candidate’s personal beliefs and convictions be considered by voters when they are deciding whom to vote for, and (2) to what extent will that candidate’s personal beliefs and convictions shape how that candidate will govern should they win?

Republicans won control of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections in part as a reaction to Bill Clinton’s liberal policies–policies driven by a liberal ideology–but the “Republican Revolution” backfired two years later when voters chose to overlook “traditional family values” in favor of economic policy when they reelected Clinton to the White House.

I disagree with this approach. I believe that a candidate’s personal beliefs and convictions (not just his religious faith, but also his set of core values) should be considered, especially when voting for a presidential candidate, precisely because I believe that those core set of beliefs directly determine how he will govern. It’s not enough to ask where the candidate stands on the war in Iraq or the subprime mortgage meltdown or illegal immigration. While those are certainly important issues, how the candidate thinks and what he believes will ultimately shape how he deals with those issues: what kind of legislation he will propose, which bills he’ll sign or veto, what kind of Cabinet he’ll put together, which judges and Supreme Court justices he will nominate.

Mitt Romney stated in a speech on December 6th that he wouldn’t let his Mormon faith get in the way of his presidency, saying he would “put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law.” He compared the scrutiny of his faith to the scrutiny of John F. Kennedy’s in 1960, obviously sending the message that we should disregard his religious affiliation and only focus on where he stands on the issues.

I can’t do that.

There is a difference between Kennedy and Romney. Kennedy was a Catholic, Romney is a Mormon. That’s a big difference. Mormonism is not Christianity. While Mormons may acknowledge that Jesus is the son of God (a spirit child of God, along with Satan), they don’t believe that Jesus was God or that God is the only god. Mormons believe that God became a god over time and the we, too, can all become a god ourselves and have our own spirit children. They believe that after our death, we will all end up in one of three different kingdoms: the celestial kingdom, the terrestrial kingdom, or the telestial kingdom. (See here and here for a good summary of their beliefs.)

The Mormon faith is in direct conflict with what I believe and what the Bible says about who God is and who Jesus is.

Therefore I cannot, in good conscience, vote for a Mormon for President of the United States, despite where he may stand on the various political and economic issues. Would I vote for him for governor or senator or congressman? I don’t know. Being governor is a lot different than being president, so I honestly don’t know how I would vote in that situation. But in terms of the presidency, I just don’t think I could do it.

So what about Mike Huckabee? Certainly in terms of faith, his Baptist faith is in line with what I believe. Some conservatives have begun to criticize Huckabee for having a less-than-conservative record while governor of Arkansas, chiding him for raising taxes and being too lax on illegal immigration. Of course voters will have to decide how important those issues are to them and how his past governing would reflect his future governing.

But voters will also have to decide whether to vote according to their own set of core beliefs or vote for whom they believe can beat the opposition. I would prefer to vote for a candidate who was more closely aligned with my faith and my convictions, not strictly voting for a candidate because I think he’s “electable,” even if it meant that Hillary Clinton eventually won the election. That’s how important my faith is to me.

So, then, would I vote for a candidate strictly because of his religious affiliation? After all, Bill Clinton is also a Baptist like Mike Huckabee. No, not necessarily. As I said, you have to consider multiple things when considering whom to vote for. So I would say that a person’s faith isn’t necessarily a qualifier but may very well be a disqualifier, as I believe to be the case with Romney.

I know there are a lot of politically conservative Christians that would disagree with me on this point. That’s fine. But I just don’t believe in compromising my faith for the sake of winning an election. I just hope there are others out there who feel the same way.

Let me first preface this by saying I don’t have a Facebook profile, nor do I have a MySpace page, nor am I on Twitter. Or any other social network for that matter. I understand the idea behind them and see the potential value in them for some people, but for me personally, no.

Recently there’s been a lot of controversy floating around about Facebook’s Beacon system. Essentially, it works like this. You have a Facebook account and shop online at a company who is participating in the Beacon system, such as Overstock.com or eBay. Regardless of whether you’re logged into Facebook at the time, if you buy something from one of these companies, all of your Facebook friends are automatically notified of what you bought. Huh? Yeah.

The main controversy is not the system itself but the fact that Facebook rolled this out without notifying anyone beforehand, and now that it got caught with its hand in the cookie jar, it’s allowing people to opt out of the program.

So there’s a couple of things going on here. First, there’s the obvious “opt-in vs. opt-out” debate. Users should never be automatically be opted into anything like a mailing list or whatever. It just shouldn’t happen. Give them the opportunity to voluntarily sign up for the service if they want to, but don’t turn it on by default.

Then there’s the larger argument about privacy. If I buy something online, I don’t necessarily want all my “friends” to know.

But it really goes further than that. What is the point of Facebook anyway, or any social network for that matter? By definition, a “social network” is a network of friends and/or acquaintances, in this case communicating through the medium of the Internet. Your Facebook “friends” may or may not be your real friends, but regardless you’ve allowed them to be a part of your network. So anything you choose to make public within your social network or any social network you participate in is fair game, like it or not.

Beacon, although a stupid idea, is not the problem. The problem is with the willingness of so many people to share so much information about themselves willingly on the Internet for all to see, including friends, family, your current employer, and your future potential employers. How many people have lost their jobs because of something they foolishly posted on a blog or didn’t get a job because of an embarrassing photo that was hastily posted on their “private” MySpace page? To point out the obvious: Don’t ever put anything on the Internet that you would be embarrassed about or that would put your relationships or your job in jeopardy, even if you think no one else will ever see it. And don’t assume that because it’s password-protected that you’re safe; if the data exist on someone else’s server, you don’t have ultimate control over how it’s used.

Which brings up the issue of this blog, and something I’ve been wrestling with since I started it a few days ago. This is a personal blog, one of countless thousands of such blogs out there. I don’t really have a definitive identity for this blog as of yet, but I do want to have the freedom to say whatever is on my mind–good, bad, or ugly. But obviously, it is also a publicly viewable blog, and even if I mark it private, I have to assume that it will be viewed by someone at some point. So certain topics, while important to me and a big part of my life, are automatically off limits. Even though I may feel like blogging about certain things going on in my life, it’s not always a good idea to do so. Discretion, as Shakespeare wrote, is the better part of valor.

Coincidentally, Jacquielynn Floyd wrote about Facebook and the subject of privacy in her Dallas Morning News column today, summing it up this way:

But for a culture that purports, at a philosophical level, to cherish individual privacy, we certainly seem to be in a hurry to throw it away.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Our 4-year-old daughter Erin is 110% personality, a perfect blend of sweetness and sass.  She’ll give a you look–a quick glance out of the corner of her eye with a huge smile–that just melts your heart.  Or she’ll say something that to her is no big deal, but to us is one of those “priceless” moments you want to remember forever.

She likes to say the blessing before dinner and usually rattles off the standard “God is great, God is good” prayer, and last night was no exception.  But then she ended it with, “God, I love you.  I love you because you make the best mommies and daddies in the whole world.”  Well, of course Christy and I just looked at each other and almost burst into tears!

Then later we were watching one of those animated “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” shows from the 70s, and it was all about how the baby Santa was raised by elves to grow up to be Santa Claus.  Erin looks up at me and says, “There’s a song in Mommy’s car about the baby Santa!”  I was confused for a moment until I realized she was right.  The song, of course, is the old Eartha Kitt song “Santa Baby.”