Evansville family opens their home to "Super Nanny"

Airing tomorrow night on ABC... should be interesting. Sounds as though the family isn't overly enthusiastic about their reality TV experience: Evansville family opens their home to "Super Nanny"

Beijing stricken by BSOD

For those of you who don't know, that's the Blue Screen of Death - the dread herald of catastrophic failure known and feared by those of us working a Windows box.

It appears that in the midst of Beijing's otherwise-spectacular opening ceremonies for the 2008 Summer Games, a lone computer melted down. Unfortunately, its existential crisis was fed into a massive projector, blowing the BSOD up to super-jumbo-mega size on the ceiling of the Bird's Nest. A number of quick spectators noticed and snapped pics, and the glitch can be seen briefly in NBC's coverage.

No comment from Microsoft on the high-profile fumble, nor from the Beijing Olympic Committee as to what we missed out on when the display went blue.

http://m.cnetasia.com/crave/post.htm?id=63005728

Cow. Another cow.

Wow. In a scene right out of Twister, the Fargo Forum is reporting sightings of flying cows, sent airborne by exceptionally high storm winds this morning, just north of Valley City. That's maybe half an hour from where I used to live!

(Registration may be required at the Forum's site in order to view the article - sorry.)

Big gain, local pain

This is why it's so hard for government to make the hard choices on any number of challenging issues - the very real, large-scale benefits for the nation as a whole always come at the expense of a particular few on the local level.

GM announced yesterday that it will close four of its plants - including the one just down the road in Janesville - by 2010. Normally I'd be cheering the decision, based as it is in the American consumer's fading interest in the monstrously huge vehicles that have been GM's trade in stock for the last decade. It's a good sign that where personal virtue and concern for the environment aren't enough to affect a change, at long last there are economic incentives and disincentives that seem to be getting the job done.

There's no reason for the vast majority of drivers to be mounting these behemoths for their daily commute. My car (which is really not all that small) regularly vanishes in the parking lot, hidden in the canyons winding between the massive SUVs and pickups. On the freeway between E-ville and Gretchen's, I'm often cut off by vehicles weighing twice what mine does, with a single person in the cabin, working the wheel and the pedals as though he were Dale, Jr. - or maybe Evel Knievel. All the while, burning through irreplaceable fossil fuels at a rate that makes my head spin, and coughing out greenhouse gases like there's no tomorrow (and maybe helping to ensure the aptness of that simile).

It's no secret how I feel about all these large vehicles - unless you're running a farm or have some legitimate need for the hauling capacity they offer, there's really no excuse for them. They should never have become mainstream passenger vehicles in the first place. I couldn't be happier that Americans are abandoning their SUVs and trucks in favor of smaller, more fuel-efficient wheels. As much as I feel the pinch every time I make The Big Drive to see my wife, I fundamentally agree with Thomas Friedman: $4 gas is a good thing for America in the grand scheme of things, if we're only smart enough to use it to our advantage.

So we've got an instance of the market forcing GM's hand, where virtue and common sense had previously been unable to upend the profit motive. Hip, hip, hooray! Right?

Except it's hard to be too cheery about this development, when a lot of good jobs are going to be vanishing from our local market here in about a year. As a pastor, I know how hard it's been for people to find work. It's frustrating to think that there will be a few thousand more suddenly on the market. I wonder how many of them will eventually need to come to me or one of my colleagues, seeking assistance from the churches? How many will we be able to help?

Human sin leads to human pain, and there's been a whole lot of human sin (greed, envy, callousness, pride, lousy stewardship, and so forth) tied up in the Big Vehicle fad, both behind the wheel and behind the corporate desk. Could the plants that are being closed have been shifted over to some other, more sensible product before things got this far? It's a question we'll be left pondering here in southern Wisconsin for a long time.

The benefits of GM's announcement will be broad, and I'm glad for them... but I feel for the workers who are sacrificing their jobs today so that we'll have a cleaner, more fuel-efficient tomorrow.

We win!

Hooray! After two years of annoying its readers, the New York Times announced that it is ending its "premium content" subscription model, and once again giving online readers access to all the news that's fit to print. For those of us who enjoyed the Times' stable of columnists, it was a sad day when the paper decided to keep some of its very best and most influential writing walled off from the free Internet.

Of course, bloggers regularly reposted every single column, so that a simple Google search was usually all that was required to find the "Times Select" content. Normally I'd cry foul at trampling over the rights to the copy, but in my mind the whole point of an opinion piece is to influence the public mind. The columnists at the Times are influential and persuasive, and it was sad to see their paper limit their pulpit compared to lesser columnists, in an attempt to milk readers' wallets.

Goodbye, Times Select, and good riddance. Tomorrow will be a good, newsy day!

Breaking News: I-35W bridge in Twin Cities collapses

I'm looking at live news coverage of the I-35W bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, which completely collapsed just over an hour ago. Over 140,000 cars travel that road every day, and the collapse happened at the tail end of the evening rush, dropping vehicles and sections of the bridge into the river below. Rescue operations are underway; as of now, there is no evidence of terrorism.

If you're a praying person, now would be a very good time to lift up the victims, their families, and the rescue crews working the scene.

Blogging the Assembly!

Next week I'll be attending the Churchwide Assembly of the ELCA in Chicago as a volunteer. I'll be able to sit in on the business sessions and any other assembly event I like (as long as I'm not scheduled to be helping out at the time!).

St. John's is generously allowing me to count this experience toward my continuing education hours - and thereby use continuing ed. days and funds. When I proposed this to the council, I suggested that I could take advantage of St. John's fledgling web site to blog live from the assembly. It would be a way to generate some interest with the site, keep people back home in the loop, provide some awareness of the larger church, and put some content online, all in one fell swoop.

So I've established a new blog to post my experiences and reflections in Chicago - Dispatches from the 2007 ELCA Churchwide Assembly. I'll be updating it periodically before and after the assembly, and frequently (as in, multiple posts per day, I hope) while I'm there.

I'm looking forward to participating in an important event in the life of my church - and documenting some of the experience for those who can't be there themselves. Please hop on over to the assembly blog and check it out! Meanwhile, this blog isn't going anywhere. You'll continue to find the normal stuff here, just like always.

A tragedy at Lifest

I made an appearance at the outdoor Christian music festival Lifest this evening, to catch some performances with a group of high schoolers from St. John's who were camping out there.

It was a beautiful night out, but it was hard to get into the music - just as I was arriving (although I wouldn't know until hours later), a young girl fell to her death on a giant swing thrill ride. The reports are still coming in, but it sounds as though she and another rider were hoisted up by the crane, but when they pulled the ripcord, there was a snapping sound and the girl fell. The other rider remained suspended.

Many reports indicated that the fall was nearly 100 feet, which would make sense if the fall happened when the ripcord was pulled, at the top of the ride. Other reports are giving the height at 40-50 feet - a terrible fall, regardless.

I feel terrible for everyone involved - what a horrible accident. Please remember the victim's family and friends, as well as those who witnessed her fall, in your prayers tonight.

Think this will make next year's brochures?

It appears that between several dozen and a couple hundred Cobbers doffed their clothes and went for a dip in Prexy's Pond (a "murky" campus pond, per the AP, named after beloved former president "Prexy" Joe Knutson) to celebrate commencement at Concordia, my alma mater, yesterday.

A campus security staffer caught the nekkid Cobbers mid-swim in the wee hours of this morning, and tried without much success to break up the good times. In the process, his golf cart somehow wound up in the middle of the pond.

By the time the Moorhead PD arrived on the scene, there were no bare-cheeked new grads splashing around in the algae, but more than a few young people were found fleeing in nothing but their skivvies... presumably leaving a dripping trail behind them.

The smarter ones remembered to take their clothes (and their IDs) with them when they split. Those who didn't (and we can only hope there was an unsigned piece of paper in their diploma holder yesterday) will quite possibly face charges - or at least a very awkward moment when their personal belongings are returned to them.

(Thanks to Jason for the tip)