Canada court rules on net music piracy
By Ken Warn
The campaign against internet music piracy was set back yesterday when a Canadian federal court ruled against a motion to allow large-scale music "uploaders" to be sued for copyright infringement. Uploaders make music available for others to download. Justice Konrad von Finckenstein threw out a motion, by the Canadian Recording Industry Association, which would have required five Canadian net service providers to disclose the identities of 29 uploaders. He ruled that downloading music did not amount to distribution.

hey if you are local, it's at Mission Secondary on 7th ave. in mission (duh!) this week. same bat time, same bat channel.

scrapping and fdisking the church computer. something in me loves to destroy. of course then i have to reinstall everything... crap!

just heard on the radio that a new study has found that women who do an average of 4 hours a day of housework have a 30% less likelihood of getting some kinds of cancer.... 30%. For God's sake, if you love your woman, don't do housework! if you really love her, leave stuff out, don't pick up after yourself, use more dishes, pee on the toilet seat!

We men have known for some time now that women should be doing all the housework. It was just a matter of time before science assured us that we have been selfless in our desire to help our women be all they can be. what man wouldn't want his sweetheart to have a full and rich life? so show your love, let her do what obviously she was created to do! science proves it! don't you love your girl enough to help her stay healthy!

quit being selfish! don't do housework!

�Any God who comes incarnate and get himself crucified is obviously not particularly concerned about safety.� � Rick Watts

Smoking cures weight problems...eventually

The sky is falling...no wait, I'm tipping over backwards.

When I turned two I was really anxious, because I'd doubled my age in a year.
I thought, if this keeps up, by the time I'm six I'll be ninety.

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box.
I was an only child....eventually.

All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand

check out this link for a different take on youth activities. don't know if i agree but it is thot-provoking.

i found this insightful.

Now, this month, comes a new Barna survey loaded with data that suggest the direction of the contemporary church is the wrong one. New Barna data suggest that �born again Christians� have a reputation slightly better than that of prostitutes, but lower than that of lawyers. And Barna, who is often quoted by the �seeker� crowd, for the first time came out with a statement explicitly saying that �seeker� approaches do not attract the unchurched. Instead, he says, the unchurched are seeking God's presence. "The one thing that the local church can provide that no other social institution does is the tangible, palpable presence of God," Barna says. "Trying to help people understand who God is, and ushering them into His presence is what we need to be aiming at," he says.

started going to counselling again today. the only reason i tell anyone is because there is this stigma about people who go, still. most people don't understand why someone needs professional help, especially a pastor or counsellor.

problem is, many of us don't have someone we can be completely honest with who is intelligent enough to offer positive solutions. i have accountability partners, prayer partners, close buddies, but find i'm still needing a stranger for penance and insight. it's tough to admit. sometimes it's hardest for those of us who have just enough education and experience to be dangerous.

several have commented that i appear 'sad' or 'aloof'. people have even talked about the church 'going nowhere' lately. something is stuck and maybe for the first time in my life i'm not sure what to do or feel. quitting or running is the immature way to go and yet i don't want to drag people down with me. we all want to be whole so here i go again... who knows?

many friends have suggested it's time to let go of my marriage and get on with dating or relationships or whatever. that's not really an option for me and it's good to know that people who are good in their field have other options. i need to be healthy before i screw up my job even worse, and my family. we all do, i guess.

don't get me wrong, i'm not losing it... this time... hehe. just feel... stuck.

Methane on Mars could signal life

Methane has been detected on Mars by three independent groups of scientists. And this could be a sign of life - indicating methane-producing bacteria.

came home from visiting someone at about 11pm last night and my oldest was still up. said he needed to talk to me. he then proceeded to tell me that i have lost my passion "since mom left" and that i'm using it as an excuse. he further told me that he wanted to move out to get away from the pain of being in a single-parent family. ouch.

i tried to talk to him, explain that i have two jobs, am trying to keep up a home and be his buddy, as well as co-lead a church but he wasn't having any of it. he told me in no uncertain terms to get my act together. it hurt... but certainly gave me something to think about!

Mother jailed for faking daughter's cancer

An Ohio woman jailed for 6 1/2 years for faking her daughter's leukaemia to gain thousands of dollars said she concocted the scheme to keep her husband from leaving.

Teresa Milbrandt said she regretted what she did, which included shaving her daughter Hannah's head and giving her sleeping pills to make it look as if she was having chemotherapy. She also put Hannah in counselling to prepare for death.

Authorities said Milbrandt and her husband fooled 65 people and businesses into donating an estimated US$31,000 ($48,190) for Hannah's treatment.

interesting take by susan on the role of church discipline

ok, i'm a passivist by nature but this kind of stuff makes me want to hurt someone:

from the Toronto Star,

"Police crack child-porn ring"
Toronto officers help FBI to track down, rescue five children who were being sexually abusedToronto police have helped the FBI to crack a major international child pornography ring and to rescue five children who were being sexually abused.
One girl, who was rescued in Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina, was shown in computer images that were degrading and horrific in nature, police said.

Scenes showed her being defecated and urinated on, menaced with knives and being confined in a dog cage, police told reporters this morning.

Some of the images showed the girl with the slogan "Kill me, I'm a slut" written on her body in a substance that resembled blood, Bruce Smollet of the Sex Crimes Unit of the Toronto Police Services said.

This week, Brian Tod Scellenberger, 41, of Cary, N.C., was arrested. He is a married father of three who worked for a computer company.

The investigation began in December, 2003, with the Toronto police working with Interpol and the FBI after the child exploitation section of the Toronto sex crimes unit received a series of 450 images of a 6-year-old girl being sexually abused.

After studying the images, detectives were able to identify a wristband worn by the victim as being from a North Carolina school. Through further analysis of an image of a T-shirt, they were able to determine the specific school that the victim attended.

Toronto detectives contacted the FBI, who rescued the 6-year-old from the abuse she had endured for years, Smollet said."

i ran into a wayward sheep this morning who has recently made some very bad decisions. she was pregnant, unmarried, but vulnerable. we were in the local gas station and she pulled me aside to ask me a question. this week she had been to a birthday party and was accosted by someone who got in her face and said, "well at least i'm not pregnant and living in sin!". she was noticably shaken.

lately i have become a bit of a hardass when it comes to morality issues, i have taken 6 people aside in the past month i have taken people aside and called them into accountability. considering i spent much of my life avoiding such interactions, that's pretty significant. but as i looked at this young hurting girl i realized there is a great difference between accountability and judgmentalism. i try to 'hate the sin and not the sinner' as we've all been told and knew in an instant this girl did not need to be tuned.

i am learning in a world-gone-mad that people are more and more falling prey to their own weakness, especially when it comes to our sexuality. the sexual crisis is turning into an epidemic, with the internet only helping to spread the virus. old methods of addressing such problems may not be up to the task of securing our integrity in this new paradigm. it seems like almost everyone is having pre-marital sex (one of my friends recently commented that he missed 'post-marital' sex hehe). pornography and loosening tv standards are paving a way to a world where every child will have seen full penetration sex way too early in life; where the intimacy of love-making has been reduced to a recreational sport; where the gift of God has been cheapened and largely diminished. what He intended for good, as usual we are well on our way to screwing up bigtime.

from cbc news:
"French-immersion teens more literate: Statistics Canada
OTTAWA - Students attending French-immersion programs have higher literacy skills than those in non-immersion studies, according to a 2000 survey released by Statistics Canada Monday."

...now if i could only get them to freakin clean up their rooms!

I know you think that I shouldn't still love you,
Or tell you that.
But if I didn't say it, well I'd still have felt it
where's the sense in that?

I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder
Or return to where we were

But I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up in surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

I know I left too much mess and
destruction to come back again
And I caused nothing but trouble
I understand if you can't talk to me again
And if you live by the rules that "it's over"
then I'm sure that that makes sense

But I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

And when we meet
Which I'm sure we will
All I was then
Will be there still
I'll let it pass
And hold my tongue
And you will think
That I've moved on....

I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

as i was driving into my part-time gig this morning i heard on the radio about a flight inbound from Hawaii where a guy had to be subdued and bound in duct tape to keep him from roaming up and down the aisles reading his bible to all the other passengers in an obnoxious way. i wondered as i read, that what my response would be to such an escapade.

undoubtedly i believe i would be embarrassed. part of me would have wanted to confront the man, shake him a bit and ask him what he hoped to accomplish. another part of me would have tried to crawl under the seat or release the emergency exit ramp to escape such a situation. almost nothing in me would have cheered him on.

don't get me wrong, i respect his intent and his guts but frankly i am tired of the philosophy intrinsic in such acts and the methods used. i am tired of door-to-door campaigns, jesus videos and pretty much every evangelistic attempt made by organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ. Not only are they proving ineffectual in these post-modern days, but they smack of inauthenticity, a lack of concern for the individual, and a flagrant attempt to placate our guilt over not being effective in our neighbourhoods and in our faith.

i applaud every effort to live a life of vision and belief. i admire boldness and guts. there just has to be better means of sharing that which has made such a difference in your life in such a way as to not convince people that you are a cosmic joke. methods of the 1950's just may not be as effective as they were in the days of "leave it to beaver". is it possible that society changes, that people look at life differently then they did in the days of John Wesley or Billy Sunday.... or even Billy Graham?

i don't know about where you may live by in my town people want to see it, not hear it. they watch and wonder and it is in relationships that we find that we can be most transparent and effective. there may be room for the aforementioned methods but i believe that as a people we need to re-examine such counter-cultural attempts in light of sociology and maybe admit that in some ways we have done more harm than good. just my opinion...

It still hurts every time.
For the past few years people have started walking out when I�m speaking. Take one sunday for example. A young girl committed suicide in our town on that week and I spoke on 'hope in a hopeless situation'. I mentioned those struggling with rejection, pornography, suicidal tendencies and the like. I was blunt.

I�ve been blunt quite a bit lately; and I don�t talk in �Christianeze�. I quote bands like �Korn� and philosophers like Homer Simpson. By pastoral standards I am crass. Some would say crude. It is who I am.

I�ve been trying to be real, but it�s hard. We�ve all been burned. I am told often that I am not very pastoral. I don�t act, look or dress according to the caricature of a pastor. It�s no longer a rebel statement. I just don�t care to embrace a particular style. Ok, enough whining.

For years I stood up on Sundays and lied. I pretended I was something I was not. I think many of us play socially prescribed roles that we feel society, or more often the church, expects of us.

Certain expectations are healthy, especially for a pastor. The problem comes when we find ourselves seeking to live up to those expectations which diminish our uniqueness. I may never be as warm-hearted as my friend Mike Abercrombie or as caring as some others, but so what? We need to resist the urge to compare. A wise man once said (and I�m applying it to our situation here), �when you get to heaven God isn�t going to ask you, �why weren�t you more like MOther Theresa?� He�s going to ask, �why weren�t you more like you?�
In the bible it tells us that it�s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. The gospel is intended to free us to be more than we can ask or imagine, not less. Any credo that diminishes God�s plan for our life is to be dismissed, even when it is dressed up in cultural respectability or coolness.

I think it�s time that we make a conscious effort to stop comparing our accomplishments, our gifts and our faults. Maybe we should resist the temptation to conform for the wrong reasons. God has uniquely crafted our lives for a purpose. If you are socially viable, go with it. Many of us have wished we had your gifts and your opportunities. If you are a square peg in a round hole be happy� and be free.
With God�s help I am going to try to be the best me I can be and you try to be the best you that you can be. Because take it from me, one of me in this world is enough� but not too much. One of you is just about right too.

read this on google this morning from the London Telegraph:
The passion that is lost in a sea of blood

17 March 2004
" HAVE just sat through one of the most graphic and violent films that I have ever seen. Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ runs for 126 minutes and for a large part of that time it concentrates on the physical torture of Christ from his capture and trial right to his physical death on the Cross.

The violence is hard to watch, and, to my taste, far too prolonged and filmed with an almost gratuitous concentration on physical suffering. I hated much of this film. Yet it was also strangely moving, and inspiring.

Coming in the week after the butchery of Madrid, it was a reminder - if one is needed - of the capacity of human beings to inflict pain and death on one another. However, the film also conveyed the transcendental power of Christian faith and action in a world scarred by disbelief and by human weakness and brutality.:"

it's another perspective that is also a popular one. the movie is horribly violent and i think parents need to think before taking children to it, even if it is an important story. but then again i read this morning about the fifteen year old who raped, tortured and killed a complete stranger in New Westminster and i am reminded again that the children of today have already been exposed to porn and violence on a scale that past generations cannot even fathom...

for many years i, and many like me, have paid lip service to the need to do something for canadian first nations peoples. and like many i have left it at that. i did not consider myself prejudiced against native people, it's just that most of them were lazy and didn't shower enough and mooched off of society for a living; couldn't handle money, couldn't be trusted and were all from alcoholic families with no self control. that wasn't prejudice, was it?

as a pastor of a church i was content to feed the predominately native community once a week and felt satisfied that i had made a difference. i could even recognize some of the downtown people on the street, could be counted on to give them a stipend if they needed it, and had even driven some of them around in my new sporty car. i was really helping "them" out.

then i met brander. he challenged my conceptions of native life and spirituality. he was very articulate, one of the most gifted musicians i have met, a painter, a poet, and a gifted leader and speaker. i knew down deep that this was because he was basically an apple, red on the outside and white on the inside.
i was wrong.

brander began subtly to influence my perception of first nations life. he invited me to events, talked to me about his culture, shared his love and burden for native people. then we started our sunday nite jam.

sunday nites we jam at the office. after a few weeks i began to notice that the majority, vast majority, of the people who attend were of native heritage. we asked brander if we should do something for "them". it was like dangling a carrot in front of a horse.

a few months in now, brander has basically been given the leadership of the jam and it has taken on a beautiful poetry of it's own. there is food, native drumming, heavy rock, crappy folk and lots of laughter. i have started calling every native elder 'uncle'. people bring their guitars and drums and horrible country tunes and its the highlight of many weeks.

i wish i could say there is no "them" anymore but that would be nieve. what i can say is that i have started down a path of understanding. i am still a little child in the first nations world, but sometimes it's fun to be a kid.

if you would like to learn more about authentic first nations community building don't ask me, i know nothing. but you can ask brander.

i find it interesting that people, myself included, have a hard time not getting involved. i'm not talking about in activites, i'm talking about in the lives of others. and not always in a productive way.

my good buddy brander asked to talk for a few minutes on sunday morning and when he was done i really didn't need to add anything so i didn't (ministers and leaders seem to have a difficult time with this concept, i know it has taken me some time to figure it out). basically he said alot of important things but one thing stood out in my mind - that when christians want to gossip they 'share' out of concern. it's true, i know i have been guilty too many times to mention. he wasn't done but a few minutes when some of the adherents proceeded to do exactly what he had asked us not to do. it's human nature i guess.

it's hard to not be inquisitive and harder still to keep my mouth shut sometimes. brander is a native elder and soon to be pastor at our church and even he was accosted by well meaning, seemingly mature, leader types who proceeded to denigrate things they should not, and which concerned my leadership in a general way. it was easier to whine to brander, even right after he had just spoken about it! it makes me mad but as usual i'll probably let it go without confronting them. i blame brander anyway...(after all, don't we usually have to put the blame on someone, even the messenger, regardless of their involvement?)

my eldest son mentioned to me today that 'people are walking all over you'. he didn't even refer to this incident as he knew nothing about it. it was a general observation. many people consider me confrontational by nature, but one-on-one i'm generally a pussy. after all, i eason, didn't brander just do an excellent job at saying what i would have said anyway?

i have, for sometime now, maintained that the internet is the future of the recording industry. and frankly, musicians don't understand the future of the net. week after week i hear musicians complain that sharing mechanisms like kazaa are stealing their profits and punishing musicians. they just don't get it.

the future of the music industry has got to be on the net. larger harddrives, better formats, clearer quality recording downlad software and the myriad of other devices online enable more and more of us to skip buying the cd's at ridiculous costs and simply download the songs we like. it is the future whether musicians care to admit it or not. but they aren't imaginative enough to exploit what is in front of their face.

these same musicians complain that they don't see enough profit from cd sales and that the real money is on the road doing gigs but they still don't see the connection. so let me spell it out real bluntly.

don't make cd's. take the ten grand you were going to use for a crappy recording of your material and spend it on the net. release your music for free. get it into the hands of those who haven't heard of you.

i have long maintained that any local band could become well known if they understood the dynamics of the web community. file sharing is a way of life on the net and you would get alot more bang for your buck by advertising on google than you would at the local record store. for a relatively small cash input and a huge commitment to unabashedly exploit yourself on the web you could get your name out there. you could use that notariety to create an audience for your material. you could gig like you have never gigged before. but musicians will even read this, agree intellectually, and never do it.

then occasionally you hear about bands releasing their stuff for free on the net. it does happen. but it only happens occasionally. the most creative people in the world cannot seem to think outside the box when it comes to the vast and overpowering potential of the world wide web. someday someone will figure it out and make millions the easy way while the rest of the musical community whines and bitches and continues to pawn their wares to an audience that sees fewer and fewer reasons to purchase an archaic format.

A new survey by pollster George Barna finds only 9 percent of born-again Christians hold a biblical worldview.

Barna, who surveyed 2,033 adults in his study, found only 4 percent of the general population have a biblical worldview and suggests many of the nation's moral and spiritual challenges are directly attributable to this fact.

"If Jesus Christ came to this planet as a model of how we ought to live, then our goal should be to act like Jesus," said Barna. "Sadly, few people consistently demonstrate the love, obedience and priorities of Jesus. The primary reason that people do not act like Jesus is because they do not think like Jesus. Behavior stems from what we think � our attitudes, beliefs, values and opinions. Although most people own a Bible and know some of its content, our research found that most Americans have little idea how to integrate core biblical principles to form a unified and meaningful response to the challenges and opportunities of life. We're often more concerned with survival amidst chaos than with experiencing truth and significance."

For the purposes of the research, a biblical worldview was defined as believing that absolute moral truths exist; that such truth is defined by the Bible; and firm belief in six specific religious views. Those views were that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life; God is the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe and He still rules it today; salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned; Satan is real; a Christian has a responsibility to share their faith in Christ with other people; and the Bible is accurate in all of its teachings.

Only 7 percent of Protestants overall maintained a biblical worldview, according to the study. Of adults who attend mainline Protestant churches, only 2 percent shared those values. Among Catholics, less than one-half of 1 percent had a biblical worldview. The denominations that produced the highest proportions of adults with a biblical worldview were non-denominational Protestant churches, with 13 percent, Pentecostal churches, with 10 percent, and Baptist churches with 8 percent.

Among the most prevalent alternative worldviews was postmodernism, which seemed to be the dominant perspective among the two youngest generations.

One of the most striking insights from the research was the influence of such a way of thinking upon people's behavior. Adults with a biblical worldview possessed radically different views on morality, held divergent religious beliefs and demonstrated vastly different lifestyle choices.

People's views on morally acceptable behavior are deeply impacted by their worldview.

Upon comparing the perspectives of those who have a biblical worldview with those who do not, the former group were 31 times less likely to accept cohabitation; 18 times less likely to endorse drunkenness; 15 times less likely to condone homosexual sex; 12 times less likely to accept profanity; and 11 times less likely to describe adultery as morally acceptable

It still hurts every time.
For the past few years people have started walking out when I�m speaking. Take today for example. A young girl committed suicide in our town this week and I spoke on hope in a hopeless situation. I mentioned those struggling with rejection, pornography, suicidal tendencies and the like. I was blunt.

I�ve been blunt quite a bit lately; and I don�t talk in �Christianeze�. I quote bands like �Korn� and philosophers like Homer Simpson. By pastoral standards I am crass. Some would say crude. It is who I am.

I�ve been trying to be real, but it�s hard. We�ve all been burned. I am told often that I am not very pastoral. I don�t act, look or dress according to the caricature of a pastor. It�s no longer a rebel statement. I just don�t care to embrace a particular style. Ok, enough whining.

For years I stood up on Sundays and lied. I pretended I was something I was not. I think many of us play socially prescribed roles that we feel society, or more often the church, expects of us.

Certain expectations are healthy, especially for a pastor. The problem comes when we find ourselves seeking to live up to those expectations which diminish our uniqueness. I may never be as warm-hearted as Vern Munshaw or as caring as my friend mike abercrombie, but so what? We need to resist the urge to compare. A wise man once said (and I�m applying it to our situation here), �when you get to heaven God isn�t going to ask you, �why weren�t you more like Vern?� He�s going to ask, �why weren�t you more like you?�
Ephesians 1 tells us that it�s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. The gospel is intended to free us to be more than we can ask or imagine, not less. Any credo that diminishes God�s plan for our life is to be dismissed, even when it is dressed up in cultural respectability or coolness.

I think it�s time that we make a conscious effort to stop comparing our churches, our gifts and our faults. Maybe we should resist the temptation to conform for the wrong reasons. God has uniquely crafted our ministries and our lives for a purpose. If you are socially viable, rejoice. Many of us have wished we had your gifts and your opportunities. If you are a square peg in a round hole be happy� and be free.
With God�s help I am going to try to be the best me I can be and you try to be the best you that you can be. Because take it from me, one of me in this world is enough� but not too much. One of you is just about right too.

think this is an acute coinage which accurately captures how many of us behave nowadays with regard to the Church. We don't have allegiance to just one, and we don't only connect locally. Our spiritual lives reflect the mobile and dispersed patterns of the rest of our lives.

Once upon a time a geographical parish was a real community, within which people were born, lived, worked and died, sometimes without ever travelling outside it. Few of us in the Western world live such localised lives today. We move in a series of networks, enabled by our technologies of transport and communication.

The internet is not the originator of this phenomenon, but it makes explicit what is happening and facilitates it on a far wider scale than ever before. It's doubtful whether the alternative worship movement would exist in anything like its present form without it. Quite possibly it is the first indigenous church movement of the internet age.

Your mom wants you to have on clean underwear when you go out. Why? (in case you get in an accident)

Tell you what. If I get mangled in some heinous accident let me assure you, my underwear ain�t going to be clean.
Susan tells me that she�s been packed for the Costa Rica trip already for weeks... I only have 6 pairs of underwear � I pack two weeks ahead and I�m going commando. (Now there is a visual image you didn�t need).
It�s great � make sure you pack clean underwear for your trip to Costa Rica. That way if you get in an accident and the local surgeon is working on you smoking a cigar and picking his nose he�ll be really impressed� while he operates with his Buck Knife.

so i was driving home yesterday and i just caught a bit of a news announcement that the rcmp was going to crack down on people with bug zappers. they were so adament that this was a problem in local homes, garages and back yards that they had established a special task force of dozens of officers to track down and prosecute those who offended. i couldn't believe the fuss and the tax dollars they were going to pump into something so ridiculous and started to get upset that they would waste their time. the announcement went on and on about this epidemic and i was getting hotter and hotter until at one point in the news the announcer said, 'yes this problem with drug labs is getting out of control.' i thot he had said bug zappers! i had to laugh at myself and wonder how often i don't really hear what is being said and jump to my own conclusions!