Malaysia to ban divorce by SMS.

update: the above link has expired, but here is an other look at the same story:
SMS Divorce Raises Controversy In Malaysia

- Peace

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Keeping Track of Money

Got a $20 bill with the words track this bill on line @ www.cdn-money.com. I filled in the request info and reward with the following info:

Date/Time of Hit	Location	Time Between Hit	Distance	Speed	Condition	Date Entered
28-Jul-2003 2:49 PM	Calgary, AB	105 days, 23 hours, 4 minutes	298 km	0.117 km/h	fine	28-Jul-2003
13-Apr-2003 3:45 PM	Sherwood Park, AB	52 days, 17 hours, 12 minutes	42.3 km	0.033 km/h	very good	13-Apr-2003
19-Feb-2003 9:33 PM	Morinville, AB	--	--	--	about uncirculated	19-Feb-2003
Totals:		158 days, 16 hours, 16 minutes	340 km

Now I've often wondered who had bills before me, now I have a partial picture. This just speaks to my inner geek.

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Unchained Melody - another of Richards creative visioning of scripture.

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A Scary thing I found…
from How To Rig An Election In The United States

Imagine for example if you could:

- secure control of the companies that make the voting machines and vote counting software;
- centralise vote counting systems, and politicise their supervision;
- legislate for the adoption of such systems throughout your domain, and provide large amounts of money for the purchase of these systems;
- establish systems of vote counting that effectively prevent anybody on the ground in the election – at a booth or precinct level - from seeing what is happening at a micro-level;
- get all the major media to sign up to a single exit-polling system that you also control – removing the risk of exit-polling showing up your shenanigans.

And imagine further that you;

- install a backdoor, or numerous backdoors, in the vote counting systems you have built that enable you to manipulate the tabulation of results in real time as they are coming in.

Now imagine someone already did it.

White House E-Mail System Becomes Less User-Friendly - as seen on useit.com.

The White house has introduced a new web based system for sending email to W. Now the old president@whitehouse.gov still works but ...

there is no guarantee it will be read or responded to

Nice double speak that. The new system has some interesting features including:

• Users get the chance to declare that they want to a) write a supporting comment or b) write a differing opinion
  
• Choose from a set of prefab subject lines like the Economy - Fire Act. As the NYT points out there is no category for Jobs/Unemployment.
  
• You need to be an American to send W. an email. State and zip are a required field. There is no country field. No pesky Canadians or Iraqies or anyone else need apply to send an email to W.
  

You can try the new Whitehouse Web Mail system for your self.

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One of my favorite shows at Cornerstone 2003 was put on by Robert Randolph and the Family Band. They do what is known as sacred steel. Their c-stone interview describes at as "the soulful sound of the electric lap-steel guitar" Yound Robert adds "a freshness and youthful verve to the genre".

For just pure emotion and energy this band was the top of my week at c-stone. And I wasn't alone - Jeff C., reported to be a member of the elite but elusive band Hip By Proxy, called the set "amazing!".

You can down load live recordings (mp3 format) from their site, or check out their on-line sampler. I'd say the music on the sampler is closer to what we heard at c-stone. The mp3s seem to be of a bit more compressed bit stream, but are well worth the time.

The only draw back for me is that Robert doesn't go much in the way of lyrical depth. But that's not the point, Sacred Steel as done by Rober Randolph is all about the emotion. Enjoy.

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I've created a new site/blog. The Friends of Cornerstone. It's a list of all the sites/blogs that I know have some connection to c-stone. It of course includes all the folks who stated a blog as a result of my seminar on blogging. Will update it as I find/hear about new c-stone related sites.

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From the You want to call it what? dept.
powergenitalia.com - a company called PowerGen has an Itallian subsidiary so .....

Thanks to Jordon for pointing that out.

From Of Kleenex and Cheez Whiz by Joe Hadzima

When you are naming a product you should try to come up with a unique name. Depending on the "strength" of the mark, the breadth of the class of goods or services to which the trademark right pertains may be greater or smaller. If your mark is fanciful and contrived, such as "Exxon" or "Kodak" it is highly unlikely that someone else is using it. You also will have a stronger case against someone who later uses a similar mark to trade on (or "dilute") the reputation of your product.

...

A name that is "merely descriptive" won't be entitled to trademark protection unless you can show that over time the mark has acquired "secondary meaning;" that is, customers actually associate the mark with your goods.

If you thought that was good you may want to check out the index of articles published by Joe Hadzima.

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As seen on Bene Diction and Ian's Messy Desk.

Can you believe someone trademarked the term Bible Geek? How is it that generic terms like Bible Geek can be trademarked? It's as silly as Microsoft having the trademark for Windows, when the term Window has been in use long before "Windows, the add on to DOS".

BTW the much cooler, more Christian way for Bible Geek tm to defend it's trade mark would be to grant our fellow blogger Bible Geek with permision to use the term Bible Geek. (Under TM law you need to show that you defend your trade mark, but as I understand it giving someone to the permision to use it counts)

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PS the Who Links Who page for Cruciform Chronicle shows quite the reaction from fellow bloggers.

The Day My Butt Went Psycho.

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No Yukon, P.E.I. on new maps of Canada - as a man well aquinted with typos I feel for them, still this is just bad.

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One of the things about blogging is that anyone any where may pop in and read what you write, so it helps to be aware of the dangers of assuming that the jargon you use is universally understood.

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Stupid Protests 2
... as seen on JordonCooper.com

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Alberta Recording artist Jan Arden has a blog.
... as seen on HomoTextual.

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Now the Truth Can Be Told: Steve Taylor on what happend to Squint Entertainment

Steve Taylor gives his first interview on why he had to leave Squint at Cornerstone 2003. Here are the highlights.

In the fall of 2000, Roland [ed: guy who did the original deal with Steve] was pushed out of his position at Word. I guess the best way to put this would be in biblical language: the new pharaoh knew not Steve.

So Word decided to sell Squint. Big Idea tried to buy Squint with Steve, but as we know now Big Idea had a cash crunch funding Johna. And that was the end of that.

So what's he doing now? Is there any hope for a new album?

Those of you who are wondering what I've been doing for the last two years, I've been working almost exclusively, especially for the last nine months, on film projects. One of them sounds suspiciously like something you've heard before, but I really think this one is going to happen. We're supposed to start shooting in January. It's decent budget, $2.1 million dollars. The trick about movies, of course, is it takes so much money to make them. You can't go into your own studio and record something for $15,000, or something like that. You have to find people with money, and I'm not very good at that, as you know. But I think this one is going to happen.

You'll hear all about the project when it's announced, but that's supposed to be shot in January. Even these two concerts were a little bit awkward because movie people are used to hearing ideas from music people, but they just look at it as a hobby. I think they are inherently suspicious of music people wanting to get into movies. I've had to go out of my way to make sure that everybody knows I'm not doing music anymore, that this film pursuit is real, that that's what I'm doing with all my time. I've managed to burn most music bridges behind me and I'm sure I'll be going back to those people and saying, listen it was just a joke. I made a terrible mistake. So I've put everything on making this film happen. It it's any good, maybe I'll get to do another one, and it it's not, it'll be my fault because there is certainly enough money to make something decent. So that's my plans for the near future.

Ok so at least the sound track should be cool, and being a total Steve fan, the movie (if it gets made) should rock.

Bonus quotes :
Steve on Country Music:

In country music, we have one genre, country, and we have one set of radio stations, and we all just are aimed at that one group of radio stations. ... I'm thinking, yeah, that's why country music, like, sucks completely

Steve on the Music Industry

the record industry is so corrupt and is founded on so many wrong foundations. And those get piled up on top of bad foundations to where it's just a very corrupt industry

Steve on fans getting the old albums

if you want to get them off the Internet, I have no problem with that, go ahead. They are not available, have at at.

-Peace
Dave

PS I'm the Dave mentioned at the begining of the article. And I asked the 1st and 3rd "Audience" questions.

After spending all week at C-Stone 2003 telling folks that I was the number two site for Dave King on Google, I get this email tonight

Dave,

I went looking for you in Google and you came up first. Your life is complete...

Joe

Well I wouldn't say compleet but I feel lucky. Maybe Joe will quit calling me Blog Boy and start calling me Blog Man. Yeah that would be better.

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Some folks have decided to give blogging a spin attending a couple of sessions with yours truly. Clearly these folks got too much sun a c-stone. It's my pleasure to introduce:

Nacho Average Blog – a high school student and fellow member of tribe geek. He has a deep love of all things microsoft.

Mozart's Pageturner has a great review of the movie Heaven.

Scott is still trying to figure out the significance of his blog title: Hardcore Poetics. Scott it just works, it is what is.

Heather's ambitious with two blogs Whisper the Muse Alive and Linguistic Liability.

Marry has her Tongue In Cheek and is thinking about dust.

Karen and John are telling their story as parents of a bipolar son on BipolarSupport. I hope they ceck out Alison's - Christian Depression Pages.

Adam is having fun with his never server and web cam over at The Blue System.

Nate His Royal Highness, the Emporer of Penguins. has been blogging for a while, but came by the seminar just to see what was up.

Some other blogs with Cornerstone Festival connections:

The folks at dreifuss.org - have been to c-stone.

brad boydston - is in part of the Evangelical Covenant Church, JPUSA's denomination. JPUSA host c-stone each year. JPUSA is pronounced je-poo-sa, by those in the know. Me I had to ask what Jepoosa was. Brad links to CT's Conerstone article.

Mustard on Your Leg got it's name from it's Cornerstone History.

Zac who's part of the Freq107 group was at C-Stone 2003 in an RV, not tenting with the masses.

Jason at Farmhouse Blues tell some cstone 2003 horror stories.

So there you go a whole crop of blogers with connections to Cornerstone. I'll turn this into a proper list this week. If you know of other C-stone related blogs, let me know.

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Traci Lords says FBI raid ending porn career 'saved my life’

I've tried to write about this before, but I've never been able to do it justice. John's widow asked me to speak at the memorial service today, so here's my best shot at explaining walking on holy ground.

For me it feels right to have this service on Friday. For the pas few weeks I've been heading up to the Rosedale hospice on Fridays to visit John. It was the highlight of my week to see John, to spend time with him was to walk on holy ground.

We'd talk about work, church, the squirrels that jumped from tree to tree out side John's window, the problems involved with plotting points on a globe, the books he was reading, how Bible study was going, the latest movie I'd seen. Just about anything.

We'd talk about how he was doing, What always came through was the sense of peace that God had given John. This was not an easy path by any means, he shared how his mind would race about a problem, and then God would show him that it wasn't a concern and he'd just relax. My prayers in the last few weeks have been “Lord give me the peace of mind you've given John, I want to be more like John”.

John had a peace and a joy that passes our understanding, that passes the things we don't understand. Who can make sense of the tragedy of losing John? I know I can't, all I know is it hurts. All I can do is pray that I would be open to God's love the way John was.

I can tell you that John lives with God in heaven today, because I was a witness to the Lord living with John. I'm deeply thankful to John for allowing me to walk on Holy ground with him.

- Peace

We're home from the trip. Just under 7000 km in all. I'd love to write more but I need to prepare to speak at a friend's Memorial Service tommorow.

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Good things:
Good thing #1: Harry takes an important step in teaching the other kids about defence against the dark arts.
Good thing #2: The children work together at the end to face their fears and their enemy. (it just took too many pages to get there)

Bad things:
Bad thing #1: 800 pages; The pacing and feel of this book made me want to scream several times GET ON WITH IT! (the movie version will have the good bits and be much more bearable)
Bad thing #2: Children's Book?; This is the darkest book of the lot so far. If this book had been J. K. Rowling's first it would have been clearly stacked in young adult.
Bad thing#3: Rowling needs a new villain or needs to do something to make Voldemort more interesting.

Overall:
I must be becomming a muggle. I didn't like the Order of the Phoenix very much (although I think it will make for a decent movie)