Help from Grandpa

Here's a clip of Grandpa Reinking helping Jackson develop his walking skills during Thanksgiving weekend in Tulsa.

Walk This Way!!!

Here's a clip of Jackson practicing his walking skills. It won't be long now...

Homecoming 07

Enjoyed going back to Southern Nazarene University for homecoming this past weekend. It was Kimberly's ten-year reunion and it's always good to meet up with friends and family. Big shout out to my cousin Allison who did an excellent job watching our son Jackson during the reunion luncheon. He didn't cry or fuss once for her.

I love my university but I am sad to see the change in campus culture due to the increasing presence of athletics. Adding football and baseball has really transformed the dynamic of the campus community. The transformation has been for the most part a negative one.


The problem does not come from sporting events that involve smaller numbers of students...such as basketball, tennis, golf, track & field, etc... The problems arise from sports like football, soccer, baseball and softball where large numbers of athletes are involved. The recruitment of large numbers of athletes often allows some to slip in who are not the most positive members of Christian society. You always hate to see academics sacrificed for big time athletics...and I believe our society in general will not be judged positively by future generations for our obsession with such activities.

Microcredit and Kiva.org

This past May I blogged about how I had participated in providing a microloan to an entreprenuer in Zacatecas, Mexico through Kiva.org. Well, Alicia Pinales Najar has repaid her loan in full and I have taken that same $25 to help finance a microloan to Zipporah Wangari Kihika in Kenya. Zipporah sells eggs in a market within a slum in Mombasa, Kenya. Her husband sells potatoes at the local market. Her microloan will allow her to expand her business and purchase more inventory to help support her family. You can read more of her story here.

I encourage you to take a look at Kiva.org. The website is safe and secure and has been profiled in the NY Times, PBS Frontline/World, Oprah and is mentioned in Bill Clinton's new book. It's fast and easy. You can loan as little as $25. As soon as the loan is paid back you can either withdraw the money or cycle it into another loan. Microcredit is an ingenious way to act locally across the globe. The $25 I gave was given to me as a birthday gift. Now that gift can literally keep giving for as long as I keep cycling it through Kiva's microcredit program.

Halloween Parade

Jackson participated in his Daycare's Halloween Parade this morning in Kaufman, Texas. Here is a short video. Jackson is the little monkey sitting on Pop's (Tom) lap.




More pictures from this festive event can be found at my flickr site HERE.

Overheard in Class

Overhead in class while students were debating the following ancient conundrum...What came first...the chicken or the egg?...

"Well dinosaurs had eggs." - Kalee N.

In Rainbows

Last week I joined the online frenzy and downloaded the new Radiohead album "In Rainbows." I didn't get up at 1:45 am like the hardcore fans. I actually waited until the next day.

The whole thing is marketing genius. Name your own price? I paid 2.90 pounds...little over $5.00. Bypassing labels and keeping all the profits...and creating anticipation...Radiohead's making a killing.

Plus the album is really good. Not O.K. Computer or Kid A good...but still really good. It only took me about ten minutes to get the whole thing bought, downloaded and zapped to my iPod. Don't think there are too many other bands that can get away with bypassing the whole record label deal. Radiohead has always forged their own path.

Free Tibet!

Forney Cribs

The Little Man showing off his crib...or showing off that now he can pull up to a stand anywhere he wants.

Boomer Sooner!

28-21

World's Worst City

One of my favorite bands, Brazzaville, named themselves after the capital city of the Republic of Congo...as opposed to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) across the river. The band named themselves after the former French colonial capital for two reasons...one, a bandmember had lived there for a short time, and two, Brazzaville for years had held the dubious distinction of being the worst major city in the world for quality of life. They thought that fact would reflect the world-weary nature of their music.

But to the great joy of the Brazzavillians they are no longer residents of the world's worst city. That title has been passed to the once majestic city of Baghdad.

photo: The Band Brazzaville in their adopted home city of Barcelona, Catalunya

Anything Better to Do?

Just this past week I criticized my Republican Senator for wasting time by bringing to the floor a vote condemning Moveon.org for their ad criticizing General Petreaus.

Now the Democrats are joining in. Harry Reid actually wasted time circulating a letter around the senate condemning Rush Limbaugh for saying "phony soldiers" in regards to troops who criticize the war.

Don't these fools, Democratic or Republican, have anything better to do than attack websites and radio hosts...liberal or conservative...for simply stating their opinion?

No wonder dictators around the world can get away with murder. No wonder poverty spreads and health care costs explode. No wonder AIDS runs rampant in Africa and gas prices rise. No wonder carbon emissions increase and etc...etc...etc...

Our "representatives" are too busy posturing and indulging in worthless attacks to actually lead.

Tesla was robbed!

Tesla was robbed!

The Puppet Masters

I love teaching Chinese history and culture. I would love to visit someday to see the Wall, the Qin Dynasty terra cotta warriors and much more. But let's not fool ourselves. Just because China is not ruled by an overtly evil man like Mao Zedong does not mean that the current regime is any less evil.

For years the idea was that the more we engaged China through capitalism the more likely we could affect positive change. The communist government, however, has shown that it can make money through free enterprise yet still destroy the humanity of its citizens and the defenseless around the world. Military options of course should be off the table...but China can be hurt in other ways.

China desperately wants to be respected as a modern 21st Century superpower. They especially want to show off the "new China" in 2008. It's time for the international community to gird up and propose a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. China buys most of Sudan's oil. China is financially supporting the regimes in Burma, North Korea and Cuba.

The Chinese always vetoes UN Security Council mandates that seek to sanction totalitarian regimes. China's vetoes in the past have assisted Milosevic in Yugoslavia (now Serbia), Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran along with countless other tyrants. Christians are imprisoned and executed on a daily basis. All dissent is forcibly quelled. China is still a totalitarian regime which supports evil around the world. It's time for the international community to speak out. China is often the puppet master behind the crazed despots making headlines today. It's time they're called out.

Of course money talks and the West makes too much money off China (and sees even greater market inroads there in the future) for anyone to speak the truth in ways that carry any real weight.

Free Who?

My fundamental problem with the recent events in Jena, Louisiana is that the central figures in the case (the African-American teenagers who assaulted a white classmate) are not heroes by any stretch of the word. Victims of heinous judicial (and perhaps prejudicial) injustice...yes, but they are not heroic victims.

There are not many heroes in the Jena case. The white students responsible for hanging nooses should have been expelled and punished much more severely. The African-American students who beat up one of those white students should have been tried as juveniles for their crime of assault and battery. And it was a crime. Let's not forget that. There are no innocents here.

There are serious issues of racism in Jena. That obviously needs to be dealt with. Those African-American teenagers should not have been tried as adults for attempted murder. However, Jesse Jackson and Sharpton are acting like these African-American young men are heroes for a new 21st Century civil rights movement. If that's the case, that movement is in serious trouble.

The movement loses its moral authority if these boys become the symbols used in its cause. Martin Luther King, Jr., the greatest of the civil rights leaders, would have never supported violent means to affect change. Non-violent protest was his mantra and his life work. King would never endorse these young men as the ones to pity or lift up onto a pillar of reverence.

As a Christian I believe injustice should never be met with violence. The most successful and morally legitmate battles against tyranny have been peaceful. These young men should have been guided to follow the model of Christ, Gandhi, Mandela, The Nepalese in 2005, and the Burmese monks of today on how to conquer an immoral system of racism or totalitarianism or other travesties against mankind.

Jena should be a rallying cause for those wishing to continue the fight against the horrible plague of racism. But that cause should not include lionizing people who perpetrated violence against a fellow (albeit dispicable) human being. Two wrongs do not make a right.

Stand up man!

We've entered a whole new ballgame folks...the little man is pulling to a stand without help from us.

Aggie Tirades

Well, I guess all Oklahomans are weighing in on Mike Gundy's postgame meltdown over Jenni Carlson's column questioning QB Bobby Reid's attitude. No secret I'm a Sooner fan so I'm not exactly impartial. All I have to say is that Carlson is a sportswriter who's written dumb things for years. But I don't think her column was that far out of line. Poorly conceived, as all her columns are, perhaps...but not worthy of such a performance from Gundy. And Mike Gundy (who I always liked in the past) is acting like an idiot ("A mother of children!!!"). But hey...the whole thing's been fun to watch...even if you're not a sports fan it's worth taking a look at the Gundy explosion on youtube.

Rocket Boy

Here is a video of Jackson as an astronaut.

Move On To Something Important

I'm so glad to see my senator, John Cornyn, spending his time drafting and introducing a Senate censure of a website. Why spend time trying to solve immigration issues, epidemic foreclosures, spiraling housing markets, rising gas prices, endemic poverty, third world Texas colonias, lack of health care, political corruption, campaign finance reform, unending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nuclear ambitions in Iran, genocide in Darfur, earthquakes in Indonesia, and whatever and so forth...

Yes, I'm glad to see my honorable senator from Texas and all the other yokels in D.C. spending time censuring a website that now has even more attention because our highest legislative assembly dignified it with an official rebuke from the United States of America. Way to go...That's the way to show 'em!

College Life

Notes from my Moleskine during a UIL Competition Conference (Saturday 9-15-07):

Sitting in the student union at the University of North Texas in front of a 'Mean Green for Obama' poster reading "The Dharma Bums" while listening to Coltrane on the iPod feeling a bit like a college student...but those days were long ago.

Now I'm outside because inside can be so stifling and its beautiful outside. I'm sitting on a bench under trees facing a gazebo with a fountain splishing and splashing nearby. I'm next to the Independence Hall looking admin building and the trees have been planted in rows like that scene in 'House of Flying Daggers' where a cool fight takes place. The benches are all lined up like the Central Park ones where George Peppard sat on in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" when he confronted the Barnaby Jones Bev Hillbilly guy. (turned out he was Holly Golighty's husband).

It's nice until three of my students spot me and want to gab but they let me use a cell phone to check on the fam in Forney and all's well. I get rid of them by convincing them to splash around in the fountain. They're relunctant at first but I appeal to their inner 'Rage Against the Machine' Zen lunatics. So they're gone now and it's so quiet that when I sneeze (one time!) a butch coed feminazi soldier a few benches up whirls around and gives me a if looks could kill glare. I just smile and say "Hey...how bout a God or whatever you believe in Bless You?" She's not amused.

I saw two guys, one faintly south Asian with a digital camera, taking action pics of a pasty white dude with a taliban beard carrying a black furry stuffed monkey as he walked up the hill with the massive screaming eagle statue.

Others doing Tai Chi or somesuch in unison on a mean green lawn. I love college campuses cause weird stuff's normal and on campus weird is not weird...it's normal. I also love college book stores but I need to stay out of them because I can't afford anything.