This Blog -
Moved To:
http://professor-howdy.blogspot.com/

A statistician is someone who is good with numbers, but lacks the
personality to be an accountant.

An actuary is someone who brings a fake bomb on a plane because that
decreases the chances that there will be another bomb on the plane.
(Laurence J. Peter)

A programmer is someone who solves a problem you didn't know you had in a
way you don't understand.

A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat
which isn't there.

A topologist is a man who doesn't know the difference between a coffee
cup and a doughnut.

A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it
a "brief." (Franz Kafka)

A psychologist is a man who watches everyone else when a beautiful
girl enters the room.

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.

A consultant is someone who takes the watch off your wrist and tells you the time.
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Coffee Break Arcade is loaded with games. There are classic arcade
games like Pac Man and Asteroids. If you prefer to use your noodle,
there are word jumbles and jigsaw puzzles. Shooters, racing and sports
games are also represented.

There are variations on games, as well. Baseball is represented,
but so is wiffle ball. Skip the coffee and recapture your youth by
taking a break here.

TO VISIT THIS SITE, GO HERE:
http://www.coffeebreakarcade.com
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"No Life Without the Source"
Isaiah 59:2

Listen to the audio broadcast!
http://www.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/ramhurl?p=pnm&f=/rhm/sounds/awwy/awwy5050.rm

For my wife, it was sort of a symbol of the day she was born - daffodils. Growing up in the South, she was always able to have some fresh-picked daffodils for her birthday. But then we got married and found ourselves living pretty much in the North, where daffodils don't grow early in the year. So every year, as my honey's birthday approached, I had fun trying to find some florist that somehow had some daffodils for sale. I did. And once again, my gal had daffodils for her birthday. But even though they were very beautiful, the sad secret is they didn't last long - just like most of the flowers in the florist shop. They started to die as soon as they got cut from their stem.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "No Life Without the Source."

Someone has said that you and I are living in a "cut-flower civilization." We look like we're alive, but we're really cut off from the source of our life. That would be the God who designed us, who wired us - who planned us. He is, as the Bible says, "The author of life." (Acts 3:15) As spiritual "cut flowers," it's not that we don't try to generate life on our own. But no matter who or what we try, that strange loneliness and emptiness creep back into our soul. What we don't realize is that our loneliness is cosmic loneliness. Our emptiness is cosmic emptiness. We're missing the God who made us.

The Bible describes our true spiritual condition in eight sobering words. They're found in our word for today from the Word of God in Isaiah 59:2, "Your iniquities" - that's sins or wrongdoings - "have separated you from your God." Separated from God. In this life, that means never finding the purpose of your life; never finding the love that could satisfy your heart. And at the end of this life, "separated from God" means an awful eternity. In the single word the Bible uses, it means hell. God didn't put up the wall that keeps us from Him - we did. Those "iniquities" are made up of every time you and I have done things the way we wanted to do it instead of God's way. Over a lifetime, it's impossible to add all those up. But each sin, each "me first" choice, has put another brick in the wall.

So, separated from the One our life came from, we're slowly dying inside. And every day is one day closer to the ultimate separation of an eternity away from God, of paying sin's horrific death penalty. But in spite of the way you and I have marginalized and ignored our Creator, He was not willing to let us be cut off from Him forever. To reconnect us to Him required the greatest act of love in the history of the human race. In the Bible's words, "This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him." (1 John 4:9) So Jesus came, and Jesus died, to remove the sin-wall that keeps us cut off from God. In fact, when He was dying on that cross, He was cut off from God so you would never have to be.

That's why your decision about what you do with Jesus is the ultimate life-or-death decision. Because, as the Bible makes very clear, "God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life." (1 John 5:11-12) Either you have the Son of God in your heart and you have life forever, or you don't have the Son of God in your heart and you will miss eternal life.

You "have the Son of God" when you open your heart to Him, trusting Him as your only hope of having your sins forgiven, of having the wall between you and God come down, of going to heaven when you die. It's all about Jesus and whether you say yes or no to Him. If you don't say yes to His leadership in this life, you have whether actively or passively, said no. And I believe there's someone listening right now who would like to get this settled today. You need to tell Jesus that as soon as you can.

That life you were made for, the God you were made for, they're within your reach right now. If you'd like to listen to or read a brief explanation of just how you can experience this relationship for yourself, I hope you'll visit our website where that's what you'll find. That website is yoursforlife.net. Or you can call and get the booklet, Yours For Life, at 877-741-1200.

Please, don't risk another day without Him.

If you're not sure you belong to Jesus, and you would like to make sure today, Ron would like to send to you a free copy of the booklet, "Yours for Life: How to Have Life's Most Important Relationship." To read it online, click here:
http://www.yoursforlife.net/

OR, to request your free copy of "Yours for Life," click here:
http://rhm.gospelcom.net/yours/yflorder.html

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Discuss today's "A Word With You," post your comments, or encourage others in our discussion forum!
http://forums.gospelcom.net/view/rhm/awwy

How can I help support the work of Ron Hutchcraft Ministries?
http://rhm.gospelcom.net/support/

To find out how you can begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, please visit YOURS FOR LIFE: HOW TO HAVE LIFE'S MOST IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIP at:
http://www.yoursforlife.net
Or, call 1-888-NEED HIM.

"A Word With You" by Ron Hutchcraft is a daily radio challenge, with slice-of-life illustrations and insights - providing practical help on the issues that matter most. If your local Christian radio station does not air "A Word With You," please let them know how much you value this program. Over six years of transcripts are available online, at http://rhm.gospelcom.net/awwy.php
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My mind not only wanders, sometimes it leaves completely.
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In my UNC sociology class, we were instructed to write down
answers to some questions the prof was asking.

"Next question," announced the instructor. "How would you
like to be seen by the opposite sex?"

I was thinking about my answer when the young woman next
to me turned and asked, "How do you spell 'intellectual?'"
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Below is an article written by Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated. He details his experiences when given the opportunity to fly in a F-14 Tomcat. If you aren't laughing out loud by the time you get to "Milk Duds," your sense of humor is broken.





"Now this message is for America's most famous athletes:



Someday you may be invited to fly in the back-seat of one of your country's most powerful fighter jets. Many of you already have ... John Elway, John Stockton, Tiger Woods to name a few. If you get this opportunity, let me urge you, with the greatest sincerity...

Move to Guam.
Change your name.
Fake your own death!
Whatever you do .
Do Not Go!!!


I know. The U.S. Navy invited me to try it. I was thrilled. I was pumped. I was toast! I should've known when they told me my pilot would be Chip (Biff) King of Fighter Squadron 213 at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach.

Whatever you're thinking a Top Gun named Chip (Biff) King looks like, triple it. He's about six-feet, tan, ice-blue eyes, wavy surfer hair, finger-crippling handshake -- the kind of man who wrestles dyspeptic alligators in his leisure time. If you see this man, run the other way. Fast.

Biff King was born to fly. His father, Jack King, was for years the voice of NASA missions. ("T-minus 15 seconds and counting ....." Remember?) Chip would charge neighborhood kids a quarter each to hear his dad. Jack would wake up from naps surrounded by nine-year-olds waiting for him to say, "We have a liftoff."

Biff was to fly me in an F-14D Tomcat, a ridiculously powerful $60 million weapon with nearly as much thrust as weight, not unlike Colin Montgomerie. I was worried about getting airsick, so the night before the flight I asked Biff if there was something I should eat the next morning.

"Bananas," he said.

"For the potassium?" I asked.

"No," Biff said, "because they taste about the same coming up as they do going down."

The next morning, out on the tarmac, I had on my flight suit with my name sewn over the left breast. (No call sign -- like Crash or Sticky or Leadfoot .. but, still, very cool.) I carried my helmet in the crook of my arm, as Biff had instructed. If ever in my life I had a chance to nail Nicole Kidman, this was it.

A fighter pilot named Psycho gave me a safety briefing and then fastened me into my ejection seat, which, when employed, would "egress" me out of the plane at such a velocity that I would be immediately knocked unconscious.

Just as I was thinking about aborting the flight, the canopy closed over me, and Biff gave the ground crew a thumbs-up. In minutes we were firing nose up at 600 mph. We leveled out and then canopy-rolled over another F-14.




Those 20 minutes were the rush of my life. Unfortunately, the ride lasted 80. It was like being on the roller coaster at Six Flags Over Hell. Only without rails. We did barrel rolls, sap rolls, loops, yanks and banks. We dived, rose and dived again, sometimes with a vertical velocity of 10,000 feet per minute. We chased another F-14, and it chased us.


We broke the speed of sound. Sea was sky and sky was sea. Flying at 200 feet we did 90-degree turns at 550 mph, creating a G force of 6.5, which is to say I felt as if 6.5 times my body weight was smashing against me, thereby approximating life as Mrs. Colin Montgomerie.

And I egressed the bananas. I egressed the pizza from the night before.


And the lunch before that. I egressed a box of Milk Duds from the sixth grade. I made Linda Blair look polite. Because of the G's, I was egressing stuff that did not even want to be egressed. I went through not one airsick bag, but two.

Biff said I passed out. Twice. I was coated in sweat. At one point, as we were coming in upside down in a banked curve on a mock bombing target and the G's were flattening me like a tortilla and I was in and out of consciousness, I realized I was the first person in history to throw down.

I used to know cool. Cool was Elway throwing a touchdown pass, or Norman making a five-iron bite. But now I really know cool. Cool is guys like Biff, men with cast-iron stomachs and freon nerves. I wouldn't go up there again for Derek Jeter's black book, but I'm glad Biff does every day, and for less a year than a rookie reliever makes in a home stand.

A week later, when the spins finally stopped, Biff called. He said he and the fighters had the perfect call sign for me. Said he'd send it on a patch for my flight suit.

What is it? I asked.

"Two Bags."
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Dear Yahoo!:
Is there such a thing as a Second World country?
Michelle
Washington, D.C.
Dear Michelle:
Third World countries (now known as "developing nations") are countries with a low "Human Development Index." First World countries (like the United States, Japan, and Germany) score much higher on the HDI. A nation's HDI is determined by its literacy rate, poverty rate, life expectancy, etc.

There is indeed a Second World, though the expression isn't exactly parallel to the other terms, and these days, few mention it. According to Nations Online, the phrase refers to "former communist-socialist, industrial states, the territory and sphere of influence of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic." For example, Romania, Hungary, Latvia, and of course, the big bear -- Mother Russia. China is also considered a Second World nation.

Thanks to the fall of the Soviet Union, the term "Second World" has become rather meaningless. Nowadays, a country's economic strength (not its government) determines how it's classified. Countries in Europe and North America as well as Australia are primarily First World, while Africa and South America are mostly made up of developing nations. Hopefully with economic aid and other support, the gap between the haves and the have-nots will grow smaller, and the need for words to distinguish them will disappear.
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