Friday, March 31, 2006

Points to Ponder

1) On the tv show "24", now that Jack Bauer has destroyed the cases of cyntax nerve gas and we are left to wonder if her survived (of course Jack survived!), is he going to fake his own death again and the rest of the season is going to be about him exacting revenge on those that caused all of the deaths and problems up to this point?
2) Is it really "OK" to have illegal immigrants in our country when there are other people from their respective countries waiting patiently and trying to get her LEGALLY?
3) Will the Chicago White Sox repeat as World Champs?
4) Can the Cubs break .500 and maybe even have a playoff appearance this season?
5) What movie will do better this weekend: Basic Instinct 2 or Ice Age: The Meltdown?
6) Since last summer had drought conditions here in the Midwest, can we expect a wet summer this year?
7) Do you really care about ANY of the above questions?

Friday, March 24, 2006

News Events

(EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS WAS SUPPOSE TO BE POSTED ON FRIDAY, MARCH 24)

Today's Headlines:
Pope adds news title to specific Cardinals: Princes of the Church.
Minister killed by own wife in Tennessee.
U.S. frees Christian peace activists without incident.
Duke loses in NCAA tournament.

Now for MY personal News events:
Spring has techinically arrived, but it's snowing here in Chicago!
My daughter throws-up in bed last night and poops in the bathtub this morning!!
Must paint wood-work on side of house before May 1st by order of the town of Warrenville.
Headache causes me to take half-day at work today.
Waiting for next Ricky Martin record to come out (my wife and I are closet Ricky Martin fans).

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

X-Men (and Women)

Rarely does a movie series come along where the directors and such make a successful sequel or even a successful third movie. Seeing the trailers recently for the third X-Men movie coming out this movie gets me pumped-up and I can not wait to see this exception to the above premise.
X-Men is about people in our culture with "extra abilities". or "mutants" as they are called in the comic book. Each is born with a genetic mutation that manifests itself as an extraordinary power. Some mutants are good, some join the forces of evil. Even though I have never read one of the comic books, I have become a fan of the movies. Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, and other big name actors make up the cast and with all of the action, not to mention a somewhat believable storyline, I can not help but want to go see it as soon as it comes out.
With that in mind, I have a question to pose to everyone: What kind of a "mutuant" would you want to be if you could become one? For instance, Wolverine, one of the lead characters, has three sharp razors that extend from his hands. Cyclops' eyes can release an energy beam from his eyes. If you were born with a mutation that you could use for a better purpose, what would it be?
Keep in mind that I am assuming that you (we) have a CHOICE in this matter. When we are created, naturally we do not have a choice. But just for fun, think about what you could do to better the world around us.
I think I would want healing hands. If I could put my hands on someone, I could withdraw whatever element is eating at them, such cancer, AIDS, or other life-threatening diseases. My mutation would be that my hands warm-up when they are places on people with an illness, then they magicially suck the cancerous cells, or whatever defect, from the person through the skin and into my body. Upon receive the disease, I would be able to transfer it from my hands to a jar keep it contained so that it could not spread.
Pretty far out there, eh? But it is so much fun to mix reality and fiction sometimes!

Friday, March 17, 2006

Happy St. Patrick's Day

To all my Irish friends, I bid you a Happy St. Patrick's Day!
As we celebrated the greatest ethnic holiday of the year last month, Kasmir Pulaski Day, a day to commerate a great Pole in which Polish Suasage and Sauerkraut are served all the (the equivalent to Corn Beef and Cabbage), I tip my hat to the second greatest ethnic holiday of the year!
Sidenote: I am 50% Polish...but don't hold it against me!!!

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Quick Joke

A man was very interested in his health and heard about a seminar on nutrition that a local Jr. College was putting on, so he signed-up for it.
When he showed-up, there were all kinds of people there: young, old, males, females, different ethinic groups, etc. He was trully amazed at how many people had taken such an interest in this particular topic.
The speaker got up and began to speak about different foods and what they contribute to our everyday health. After a few minutes, he posed a question to the audience.
"What is the one food that has worst, long-term effects on young people's overall health?"
Several people raised their hands, giving out answers. One lady stood-up and said "French Fries", another said "Oreos", and a gentleman said "Any Fast Food".
When is had appeared that he had got all the answers he was looking for, a hand went-up slowly from the back of the room. The speaker called on the hand and 95 year-old man with a cane stood-up. Barely able to stand on his own, the man belted out "I should know after all these years.... it's Wedding Cake!"

Friday, March 10, 2006

Fast Food and Eating Habits

Lately, I have found myself eating more fast food than normal. I bring lunch to work 1-2 days a week, then but lunch out the other days. I try to eat healthy most days and every once in awhile I slip something a little less healthy in.
I will give you a for instance: On Monday, I brought my lunch and on Tuesday I ate Taco Bell. Wednesday I went to Dominick's and had a salad and yesterday I had a Roast Beef sandwich with soup from Subway. See how I mix the bad with the good?If it is not my lunch choices, I will eat crap in-between meals like crackers, chips, or candy after a meal.
I am actually in fairly good shape and do not LOOK too bad. I have developed a little gut, like everyone else on this planet, but it does not stand-out. The most noticeable area where people can tell that I have gained weight is in my face. It balloons and makes me look a lot bigger than I am.
So back to this whole fast food thing. A lot of fast food places have some decent healthier alternatives. For instance, McDonald's a year or two ago came out with some great salads that are not only healthy, but tast good too. My preference is the California Cobb salad with Crispy Chicken (only 9 points if you are on the Weight Watchers Diet). A Boston Market 1/4 Chicken with steamed veggies, corn bread, and diet pop is only 8 points....that is a lot of food for only 8 points! Subway is really a dieters paradise because one has so many options. You can get a sandwich, a salad, soup, etc. If you get a sandwich, you can get no condiments or lots of condiments. Load-up on veggies and not only do you feel full, but you are eating healthy foods that will help nourish and rebuild your body.
The problem with all of this: even healthy, good tasting food can get boring, at least as far as my taste buds are concerned. I can only eat Subway so often and I can not eat a McDonald's California Cobb Salad everyday. Yes, I do allow myself a cheat day in which I don't care what I eat or how much I eat. However, my cheat days are turning into cheat moments or cheat meals on a more consistent basis. Throw in the fact that I am a compulsive person and you can see where my dilemna occurs.
I trully believe in the adage that we should "eat to live" and not "live to eat". It always helps me get motivated when family and friends tell me that they are dieting and have lost weight. They are good influences on me. Ultimately, I am responsible for my own actions, but being around others who act the way I want to act only encourages good behavior. I have admit that a good part of my struggle comes from my feelings and emotions. That is why my being a compulsive person does not help matters.
Once I address this and change my character defects that are allowing me to make bad food choices, I know that I will eat better and live happier.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Recent E-mail about David Horowitz

Today, I got the e-mail below about a gentleman name David Horowitz who is challenging the views of our college educators in a book he wrote, "The Professors - The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America."
Those of you who know me know that I tend to lean towards the Right when it comes to politics, but I also agree with a few concepts on the Lefts agenda. I do not believe Republicans have 100% of the answers to our society's problems and also do not always go along with everything President George W. Bush does. At the same time, I found this e-mail intriguing and a little different from most political discussions I have been engaged in. Read and enjoy...

Dangerous Professors Threaten Young Minds
Breaking from NewsMax.com
Time magazine once called author David Horowitz "a clear and ruthless thinker. What he says has an indignant sanity about it."
Horowitz lives up to that description in his latest blockbuster book -- "The Professors - The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America." [Editor's Note: Check out our FREE offer for this book -- Click Here Now.]
In it he offers "indignant sanity" as he draws blazing portraits of some of the worst leftist propagandists now infesting America's colleges and universities.

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Those unfamiliar with the extent to which the nation's campuses are being held captive by left-wing radicals will find his revelations shocking. He goes about the task of unmasking the most virulent of academic terrorists who brook no dissent from their student victims.
Horowitz is well suited for the job. He knows the left, its tactics and its goals because he is a child of the extreme left, a background he detailed in his classic books, "Radical Son" and the more recent "Left Illusions."
A lifelong champion of civil rights, he shifted from his parents' vigorous communism - a vigor he shared - to battling his former comrades on the left, paying special attention to their continuing assault on America's institutions of higher education.
In the 1990s Horowitz created the Individual Rights Foundation to combat the epidemic of so-called speech codes being used by colleges to stifle free speech. In 1998 he created the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, his vehicle for fighting the culture wars raging on campuses.
He has visited hundreds of campuses and has been frequently attacked - sometimes physically - by students egged on by bigoted academics who despise any opinions but their own Marxist creed. Now in his mid-60s and recovered from a bout with prostate cancer, he's still at it. Says radio hostess Laura Ingraham: "Beware the unhinged, leftist academic when David Horowitz hits campus."
Florida State Rep. Dennis K. Baxley, chairman of the Education Council of the Florida Legislature, says, "David Horowitz has done more than anyone I know to throw light on the political abuse of our college and university classrooms by activist professors who have been enabled to do so because of the incestuous self-selection process for faculty recruitment and tenure."
In "The Professors" Horowitz traces the advent of leftist domination of the campus to "an academic generation that came of age as the anti-war radicals in the Vietnam era." He notes that many of these activists stayed in school to avoid the military draft and earned Ph.D.s, "taking their political activism with them when they became tenured-track professors in the 1970s."
David Horowitz
Horowitz reveals in detail the extent of professorial radicalism being imposed on students.
He cites federal government statistics showing that the total number of college and university professors is a staggering 617,000. Of that number, he estimates there are between 25,000 and 30,000 radical academics on America's campuses.
The number of students annually passing through their classrooms, he estimates, would be on the order of 3 million potential brainwashees.
Writes Horowitz: "This is a figure that ought to trouble every educator who is concerned about the quality of higher education and every American who cares about the country's future."
Profiled in the book are some of the most radical academics in the United States, representing every form of Marxism, radical Islamicism and sexual deviancy imaginable. He explores a political and cultural loony bin whose inmates are determined to warp the minds of every student they "teach":
At the University of Oregon, professor John Bellamy Foster, editor of the Marxist magazine "Monthly Review," considers the collapse of the Soviet empire to be a setback for human progress.
University of Texas (Arlington) professor Jose Angel Gutierrez says: "We have to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to worst, we have got to kill them."
Columbia University professor Victor Navasky has somehow convinced himself that the traitor Alger Hiss and the Rosenberg spies who betrayed our atomic secrets to the Soviets were as pure as the driven snow.
University of Michigan professor Gayle Rubin, a fan of pedophilia, argues that the government's crackdown on child molesters is a "savage and undeserved witch hunt."
Rutgers University professor Michael Warner advocates public homosexual encounters with strangers.
There are 96 other academics covered in this excursion into the madness of campus extremism. None subscribed to the description of teachers' duties offered by distinguished leftist professor Stanley Fish, who wrote: "Teachers should teach their subjects. They should not teach peace or war or freedom or diversity or uniformity or nationalism or anti-nationalism or any other agenda that might properly be taught by a political leader or talk-show host."
If the examples cited above are not frightening enough, what Horowitz wrote at the conclusion of "The Professors" should scare the wits out of any parent whose child is enrolled in an American college or university: "More than 90 percent of the professors profiled in this text have attained tenure rank, an indication that their academic work is approved by their peers ... within their department and university and nationally."
Their tenure, he notes, makes them eligible to vote on who will be hired in the future in their departments and who will be promoted to tenured rank. He goes on to warn that "the problems revealed in this text - the explicit introduction of political agendas into the classroom, the lack of professionalism in conduct and the decline in professional standards - appear to be increasingly widespread throughout the academic profession and at virtually every type of institution of higher learning."
Editor's Note: Check out our FREE offer for this book -- Click Here Now.