Send your stuff to space

Can't afford $200,000 for a trip to space. With prices starting at $50, you could at least afford to send your stuff!

But you better keep goot track of your stuff or mad scientists building cloacking devices will render it invisible!

Movies, ocean surface temperatures, political agendas

Check out this parody movie trailer of the horror movie The Shining, with scenes strung together to make it look like it's a heart-warming film about a boy who finds a new father in Jack Nicholson.

Speaking of movies, Mrs. Ross and I stayed up late last night watching Gone With the Wind. It was good enough at storytelling that it successfully kept us up until 3am or so. That Rhett, what a rogue! And black-hearted Scarlett, what pride! I don't think I've ever seen a Civil War movie from the South's point of view. Then again, maybe I haven't seen that many Civil War movies.

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I recently learned about 'mashups', websites where you mix info from two sites, such as gas prices and Google maps, to get, wa-la!, Map Gas Prices.

Jessica and I would like a site which gives the beach water temperature throughout the world, either actual or a historic average. Suppose you want to go plan a vacation to a place where the water temperature at the beach is warm in December. Typing 'ocean surface temperature' into Google doesn't exactly find the most user-friendly websites.

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It's come to my attention recently that the National Association of Evangelicals, which supposedly represents me and 30 million other Evangelical Americans, issued a statement “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility” (available here).

The document calls for a broader approach to public policy issues and lists seven guidelines for political engagement by Christians:

• To guard religious liberty and freedom of conscience.
  
• To promote family life and defend children.
  
• To uphold the sanctity of human life.
  
• To gain justice and compassion for the poor and vulnerable.
  
• To safeguard human rights.
  
• To work for peace and the restraint of violence.
  
• To protect creation.
  

Signers include Jack Hayford, president of my international Foursquare Church. Why wasn't I notified? While evangelicals don't exactly recognize the absolute authority of any contemporary organization, be it in Rome or Washington, it may be a good idea to look at a document that others will believe sets my political agenda.

What's on my political agenda for today? Not much. I'm just hoping to make a contribution to apolitical science.

Our new place in Virginia

Here are pictures of our new place in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Jessica and I'll move in late July or early August.

About two weeks ago, we saw a brand new duplex that we liked and fit our needs. We chose this place over houses with 5+ bedrooms (that were the same price as a Pasadena 1 bedroom apartment!) because those places were just too big!

Our new place has hardwood floors, three bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms. That's an excessive number of bathrooms for two people!

The place is three stories. The middle story opens on to the street and is one big room. The bottom story has two bedrooms and opens on to the paved parking area behind. The top story is the master suite.

One of the extra bedrooms will be an office and the other a guest bedroom. So you'll have to come visit! There's a big hilly town park a block away and I could probably walk or ride a bike to work.

Pasadena Foursquare on NPR

Here's a radio clip from an NPR interview of Jessica and I made after church at Pasadena Foursquare. It was made a couple weeks ago as part of a Speaking of Faith program on the Azusa Revival 100th anniversary and the impact of Pentecostalism.

Online you can view a little audio gallery of "Foursquare Stories" and the website of info for the Pentecostalism broadcast. In the audio gallery, look for people like Ralph, Pam, Nate, Jeremy, Monica, ...