The Vanishing Pastor

Autumn begins

"Well the frost is on the pumpkin, and the hay is in the barn. . ." James Taylor is almost right, the pumpkins will be frosted by morning.  When the cold front blew through last night, it decided it was time to finish up the harvest.  Winds took down the corn and knocked over the citrus trees (gotta put them in tonight) and had to re-pot them.  It's only gotten up to 50 today, but last night, as the front came through, it was warm, 69, at 2 am and I stood outside and let the powerful wind blow through me.  It reminded me of the night breeze from our trip to the keys last winter.  Indian summer aside, there will be few of those breezes left before the cold begins to take hold for winters turn at us. 

The other great sign of Fall is the new TV Lineup!  Cable has wrapped up some seasons with SG-1, SG Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica.  All very good, the last was exceptional.  I have also gotten interested in Firefly, a series from the creator of Buffy and Angel.  SciFi has been running the series as a promotion for the upcoming Serentiy movie, and it's worked in my case.  Rome is great and still on going on HBO, Showtime has Weeds, a couple good moments, but pretty dissapointing overall.  As for what's new, it has been a pretty interesting season so far.  Still trying to find some of my shows that have moved around and there are quite a few times when there is more than one thing on I would like to watch.  That hasn't happened in a long time.  So, what I have caught and like so far this season is, LOST, CSI Miami, CSI, NCIS (see a trend here?) Law & Order, all flavors, Boston Legal, House M.D., West Wing, Family Guy. And the best remake this season is the Science Channel running Carl Sagan's Cosmos, with updates, new images and computer graphics.  I am adding it to my video library. 

So what are you watching this fall? 

For your reading pleasure. . .

I thought it would be amusing to share some of the things I have been reading lately.  The list includes links to some articles I have read recently and others to websites I visit regularly.  Some you might be able to predict, others might surprise you. Let me know your thoughts. These are listed in no particular order.

Articles:

God Names Next “Chosen People”; It’s Jews Again

Kurt Vonnegut entry at Wikipedia (best online encyclopedia, IMHO)

Understand: a novelette by Ted Chiang

An Interview with David Bohm, physicist

Websites:

Drudge Report

Captain’s Blog

Camp Blog

Aurora Activity

Dictionary of Theology

Earth Observatory – Image of the Day Archive

The Wittenburg Door – The World’s Pretty Much Only Religious Satire Magazine

Leoville – Home of technology guy, Leo Laporte

Think Geek – all the toys I’d really like to have

Coming soon: Articles – Part 2 and Rev. Bob’s Best of the Web. Stay tuned, boys and girls. 

 

Imagining the Unimaginable

The explanation for the slow response of the evacuation of New Orleans seems to focus on how they had foreseen and had plans for the disaster of a hurricane and in the event a levy gave way and flooded the city. What was unimaginable and therefore unplanned for to this point was what if both of them happened at the same time?

Just moments ago it was announced that Chief Justice Rehnquist has died. My dear friend, Hank Wesley Kissenger and I were discussing the new vacancy. I would be very interested to see retired Senator Fred Thompson get the nod. With the retirement of Justice O’Connor, there were no remaining justices that have held any political office. The week leading up to the Roberts nomination I read a lot of speculation and armchair recommendations, and one thing I saw a lot of constitutional scholars agreed upon were the benefits of having a political voice on the bench. Hank suggested a real outsider, someone with no experience whatsoever, a real judge of the people. He of course nominated himself. This began me thinking along the lines of the unimaginable. Although it definitely would be considered a disaster of imense proportions if that happened, it is still something that could be planned for, but, so as not to be caught like the poor citizens of New Orleans, we have to be able to prepare for the unimaginable.

Just try to unimagine this:

Karl Rove, in a dream is anointed Pope by the ghosts of Richard Nixon and Ronald Regan. Upon his awaking he puts to work his power of infallibility. He convinces W that the best way to move the Roberts nomination through AND to keep Hillary out of the White House is to nominate Bubba Clinton as the new chief justice of the Supreme Court. Both nominations sail through the Senate. Karl knows the country will never let one couple control two branches of government. His plan backfires 2 weeks before the 2008 November election when Jeb comes out of the closet and Hillary wins by a landslide. The Billary duo is so successful, the democrats win back the house and the senate in 2010 and in an unprecedented move, house democrats elect junior representative Chelsea Clinton speaker of the house. The American hattrick. The United States of America has it’s first royal family. Hee Haw meets American Idol. Don’t say you weren’t warned!