Podcast updated

Two new sermons up at the podcast.

Oh, brother...

Just in time for the anagram-happy but ill-reviewed Da Vinci Code movie comes this revelation, courtesy the New York Times:

In 1999, there were only eight newborn American girls named Nevaeh. Last year, it was the 70th-most-popular name for baby girls, ahead of Sara, Vanessa and Amanda.

The spectacular rise of Nevaeh (commonly pronounced nah-VAY-uh) has little precedent, name experts say. They watched it break into the top 1,000 of girls' names in 2001 at No. 266, the third-highest debut ever. Four years later it cracked the top 100 with 4,457 newborn Nevaehs, having made the fastest climb among all names in more than a century, the entire period for which the Social Security Administration has such records.

Strange name, you say? Ethnic, perhaps? Maybe out of the Bible or classical mythology? Solve the mystery for yourself by trying it out at the link above... or just highlight the space between the two brackets below:

["Nevaeh" is nothing more than "Heaven" spelled backwards. Woo-hoo. Apparently some Christian rocker named his kid that back in '00, and everyone and her sister thought it was sooooooo very clever! Dan Brown, calling Dan Brown!]

Hope you're as inspired as I am. ;)

How do you spell "baccalaureate?"

I've done it enough times this week that it's no problem anymore. =) FLC hosted the Litchville-Marion community baccalaureate service yesterday, and as the host pastor I was in charge of planning the service and preaching.

Since we had a guest preacher yesterday morning at our normal Sunday services, there's no new sermon on the podcast for that, but I've posted the baccalaureate sermon for your edification.

Be a bluesman... you know you want to!

It's absolutely terrifying how much time it's possible to waste with this simple little page. (Hint: Be sure to turn the radio on for best results.)

"...creator of Heaven and Earth"

Need something to inspire a little awe deep down in your soul? Look up into the heavens, and take in more than 10,000 unique galaxies, in all their strange colors and shapes, many of them billions (with a B) of lightyears away...

Arrrrgh!

Having just recently wiped out my entire professional expenses budget to replace my old laptop (which died rather inconveniently on a Saturday night a few months back), I'm banging my head on the wall over the new release of a major upgrade to the Logos Bible Software. I've got thousands of dollars invested in this application and its resources, and the upgrade looks wonderful. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there's an inexpensive way into it, like there was last time around - as far as I can tell, the only way to get v. 3 is to buy a collection, which is great if you need the books, but not so great if you're mainly after the new features. Did I mention, arrrrgh!!!? *doing math*

Keep your phone records private

Concerned about the revelation that US spy agency the NSA is keeping track of every phone call you make? While you should certainly contact your congressional delegation, it might be quicker and more effective to simply lean on the telephone companies themselves. Let them know you're not pleased with this breach of your privacy (even if you aren't a customer of theirs, it's a sure thing you've received calls from their customers, and thus have been logged), and that you expect them to show some spine and protect your personal information.

Podcast update

I've done some tinkering, and now the easiest way to get to my podcasted sermons is to go directly to www.bobschaefer.com/podcast. I've posted links there to subscribe and to go to the podcast's homepage. I'll also be updating the sermon archives pages to provide the link in the near future.

Now podcasting to an audio player near you...

What can I say? I'm a slave to trendiness. I've been blogging for years - it's time for me to follow the crowd like the sheep that I am, and begin podcasting, as well.

Podcasting is essentially the same as blogging, only with an audio file instead of written words. Lots of people are creating their own "radio" programs online by sitting themselves and a few friends down in front of a microphone, and loading the files up to the Web for all to hear. Just like it's possible to subscribe to blogs like mine, and get each new update delivered to you, it's also easy to subscribe to a podcast. In fact, the word comes from (duh!) iPods, which have been a favorite way to snatch new podcasts up as they come and listen to them on the go.

It's a natural fit for me, actually. I've been posting my sermons online in manuscript form for some time now, and have even excerpted teasers from them to post here on the blog from time to time. Why not make recordings of the sermons available, too? And if they're going to be online, why not use an easy distribution method to get them "out there" in a format many people are already using?

If you don't have the tools to subscribe to my sermon podcasts, you can always view them at http://odeo.com/channel/101968/view. They'll appear as a special blog page there that has a built-in audio player for you to click on. I'll also try to post them here in the blog at the same time as they go online with the official podcast.

Why the sudden enthusiasm for podcasting? It's simply, actually - I haven't been recording my sermons previously, but now I am. I discovered that it's a lot more fun to preach "in the moment" from notes, rather than from a fully composed manuscript. I spend so much more time looking at my people, and I really enjoy not knowing precisely how things are going to "turn out." I know the general contours of my sermon well, but letting the specific words come as they may each time I deliver the sermon is exciting.

Problem has been that I'd have no written recored to post that way. (It's silly to me to write out a full manuscript and then just memorize it, except for a few very specific occasions.) Without a secretary that I'd feel right asking to transcribe my sermons for me, it just didn't work well.

I've since picked up a decent digital voice recorder, which not only allows me to easily capture my sermons, but to upload them to my computer and play them back as slow as .5 speed, making it much easier to transcribe them myself. And if I'm already going that far, it's hardly any more effort to podcast the sermons once I'm done transcribing them.

So, here's the first one. It was preached at the St. Rose Care Center in Lamoure at chapel, so it's a little different delivery than I'm used to giving (particularly in speaking rather loudly so everyone can hear). You can post comments here, or go to the podcast page and post your comments there for others to read.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

It's your web - it's up to you to protect it

Visit www.savetheinternet.com for more information!

Just how deep is this rabbit hole, anyway?

I very rarely have occasion to cite USA Today in my blog (not exactly a bastion of high-quality journalism, IMNSHO), but today they've broken a story that's as relevant as it is disturbing - the US government, through the National Security Agency and at the behest of George Bush, has been tracking the phone calls of almost every single American citizen. Not just the terrorists, not even just those it has some small, potentially legit reason to believe are in cahoots with the terrorists... but every last customer of AT&T, SBC, Verizon and BellSouth. Unless you use Qwest or a small phone company that's off the federal radar, and never have called or been called by a customer of one of the other four mega-phone companies, your calls have been logged by the NSA.

In fact, "it's the largest database ever assembled in the world," according to one of USA Today's sources with first-hand knowledge of the program. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, it seems that the feds leaned hard on the major phone companies, insisting that it was their patriotic duty to hand over their internal records of their customers' dialing habits. Only Qwest had the integrity to insist on a warrant, an explicit authorization from the FISA court, or even a letter of authorization from the attorney general's office.

The FSA's response? "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," according to one source, whose account was confirmed by another.

So, let's recap:

1. After the September 11 attacks, the Bush White House secretly began at least two domestic surveillance programs, by an executive order, with no oversight by Congress. (Many more such programs may, in fact, be underway - simply because we don't know of their existance yet doesn't mean that they aren't being conducted. I'd argue that it's highly likely that more shady programs are going to be outed before the air is finally cleared of this stink.)
2. Three years later, the president assures the public that "nothing has
   changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists,
   we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
3. The NY Times almost blows the cover off Bush's to tap calls going to and from the United States (without a warrant or court order), but sits on the story until after the November 2005 election at the administration's request. The paper finally breaks the story in December.
4. During hearings last month before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dodges a question about the administration's authority to monitor domestic phone traffic without first getting a warrant - although he knows for a fact that such a program has been ongoing for several years, he responds abiguously: "I wouldn't rule it out."
5. Today we discover that the president's fervent desire is to monitor every American who happens to use a telephone, without a warrant, and without even acknowledging that the surveillance is occuring. This despite his earlier insistance that surveillance is only for the "bad guys" in al Qaeda, and certainly not widely deployed.
   

Now, it's important to note that the NSA has not (as far as we know) been monitoring the content of all these calls - only the time, date, duration, originating and receiving numbers. But if you made a call to your friend in Missouri, the government knows how long you shot the bull. And if you called PETA to praise their latest campaign (or even to object to it), the NSA's all over that, too. Heck, if you punk'd your friend by calling him 20 or 30 times in the middle of the night and hanging up, chances are good the feds know all about that, too.

And no one in the Bush administration thought this information was the least bit important for you to know.

That loud splat you hear? That's your civil liberties dying in a pulpy squish somewhere much farther down the depths of this hole. But we won't see that nasty mess for a while yet - there's still much more dark, dirty rabbit hole to tumble through.

What's she worth to you?

Just in time for Mother's Day comes this reality check from Salary.com: The amount of skill and time a typical stay-at-home mom puts into her family is worth just north of $134,000 in salary each year. For working moms, their "mom job" work is valued right around $86,000... in addition to the income they make at their "work job."

Obviously, it's impossible to put a dollar figure on the worth of a human being, but Salary.com's Mom Salary Wizard gives an eye-opening breakdown of the jobs moms do at home, the hours they invest in them, and what someone doing that type of work outside the home might expect to be compensated for all her effort.

There isn't any more important work than raising well the generations that come after us. Thank goodness there are women - and men, too - who can look beyond the financial sacrifices of parenting to see the tremendous good they are doing, for their children and for all of us.