Guitar Center's Drum-Off 2009 Champion- Ramon Sampson ( HT @long_ck )

Thanks @long_ck for sending this to me. Only took me a week or two to actually watch it.

Gaming Stats

Source: Online Education

First Listen: Midlake's 'The Courage Of Others' (via NPR)

This Too Shall Pass [Video] by OK Go

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

And a letter from one of the band members about YouTube not enabling embedding.

Lego CL!CK Stop Animation Video. Sweet Moustache.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OinrOnjzH_A&feature=youtube_gdata

Dallas Willard on Memorizing Scripture

“Bible memorization is absolutely fundamental to spiritual formation. If I had to choose between all the disciplines of the spiritual life, I would choose Bible memorization, because it is a fundamental way of filling our minds with what it needs. This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth. That’s where you need it! How does it get in your mouth? Memorization”
(Dallas Willard, “Spiritual Formation in Christ for the Whole Life and Whole Person” in Vocatio, Vol. 12, no. 2, Spring, 2001, p. 7).

NYTimes: The Happiest People | Educate Instead of Arm?

From The New York Times:

The Happiest People

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

The people of Costa Rica are some of the most content on earth. Could it be because their priority is financing education not war?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/opinion/07kristof.html

Soli Deo Gloria,
Brian Ferry
Director of Student Ministry
513.289.3630
www.andersonhills.blogspot.com
www.theferryblog.blogspot.com
...sent from the Palm Pre

Vintage Ads

 

T...thought you, in particular, would enjoy this site: CLICK HERE

wilhelm!

so, after i told scott about the sons of lee marvin, it occured to me that you guys may also be in the dark about another amazing pop-culture phenomenon...the wilhelm scream! the wilhelm scream is a sample of a scream in an old western that has been inserted into literally hundreds of movies and tv shows as an industry inside joke. i believe that george lucas and steven spielberg started the joke by placing it all over star wars and indiana jones, but the wilhelm scream has been adopted by all sorts of filmmakers. here is a link to a youtube video that shows movie and tv clips where the wilhelm scream has been used, though it is only a fraction of the number of times it has actually been used. once you hear it, you'll start to recognize it more often than you'd think.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbYsoEasio

8 Tracks Mix

Running Barefoot? HT @outsideallday

Less stress on some joints running barefoot than with running shoes: CLICK HERE

Might be time to try some of these (Vibram FiveFingers):

MUST READ! 50 Things we know now that we didn't know this time last year: http://ow.ly/Tji1

It's astounding and marvelous to me that we are still discovering species and wonders of creation. Lest we humans get too full of ourselves we are constantly reminded that there are unending frontiers vast, minute, close & distant whose depths we can't ever plumb completely.

Some of my favorites:

2. Grumpy people think more clearly because negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking. 
   -> Charlie Brown's BRILLIANT!


9. Babies pick up their parents' accents from the womb, and infants are born crying in their native dialect. Researchers found that French newborns cry in a rising French accent, and German babies cry with a characteristic falling inflection. 
   -> So why is Quinn crying in Swahili?


15. The higher a patient's body-mass index, the less respect he or she gets from doctors. 
   -> Sorry fatties, the doctors hate you. Get on a treadmill.



19. The calmest place on Earth is on top of an icy plateau in Antarctica known as Ridge A, several hundred miles from the South Pole. It is so still that stars do not twinkle in the sky because there is no turbulence in the atmosphere to distort the light.
   -> sounds like the perfect place for a sabbatical or vacation.

20. The thrill of driving a sports car makes the body produce more testosterone. The findings suggest a biological explanation for why some men buy a sports car when struck by a "midlife crisis."
   -> VW convertible, here I come!



36. A new species of giant rat was discovered in a remote rainforest in Papua New Guinea. At 32.2 inches from nose to tail and 3.3 pounds, it's thought to be one of the largest rats ever found.
   -> I don't think this would have anything to do with their coffee but man, their coffee's delicious.


37. Differences in body odors produced by people who are more prone to insect bites show they have lower levels of fruity-smelling compounds in their sweat than those who are resistant to mosquitoes.
   -> sorry sweet meat, you're going to continue to be eaten. Since I smell like musty canvas I'm all set.


40. The speed of U.S Internet broadband lags far behind other industrial nations, including Japan, Finland, South Korea, France and Canada.
   -> I knew our intertubes were clogged!


44. A flesh-eating pitcher plant that grows more than 4 feet long can swallow and devour rats that are lured into its slipperlike mouth to drown or die of exhaustion before being slowly dissolved by digestive enzymes.
   -> sounds like they need some of these in Papua New Guinea. 


50. Watermelon is more efficient at rehydrating our bodies than drinking water. It contains 92 percent water and essential rehydration salts.
   -> still not a huge fan of watermelon but it's good to know. 



CLICK HERE to read the whole list. And definitely take a few minutes to do so.

Joyful, peaceful Christmastide & a blessed new year to you and yours. LISTEN: Christmas Auld Lang Syne by Bobby Darin

Gray Hair (via @theresurgence)

A Decent Prayer-byte for US American Christmas

With you I can live without other things, for you are God all-sufficient, and the glory, peace, rest, joy of the world is a creaturely, perishing thing in comparison with you. 
~from The Valley of Vision

NYTimes: To Deal With Obsession, Some Defriend Facebook

From The New York Times:

To Deal With Obsession, Some Defriend Facebook

By KATIE HAFNER

Recognizing that Facebook was interfering with their lives offline, some students took steps to kick the habit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/technology/internet/21facebook.html

Katherine Quinn Ferry's Uh...nnouncement.

In today's world this is probably old news, as Tweets were dispersed & Facebook status updates updated during labor, but we were blessed with Katherine Quinn Ferry (you can call her Quinn) on November 23, 2009 @ 2:59pm, 7lbs 14oz, 21 1/2 in. She was human and healthy so she's got that going for her which is nice.

Here is an announcement that we would ordinarily mail via the old USPS. However, our church, Anderson Hills UMC, has made it a priority the last couple of years to spend less and give more at Christmas so that we can drill clean water wells in rural Zambia, Africa. So...instead of printing and mailing the "announcements" we are sending them the new fashioned way and the money we save is going to the clean water project @ Anderson Hills. We do encourage you to print the photo of Quinn and display it prominently as you would on a refrigerator or the like. Or make it into a button you can pin on your jean jacket. Whatever. Your call.

Join us in giving thanks to God for our beautiful new daughter, for immediate access to clean water and for the plenty we all have.

CLICK HERE to see a little video of some pics taken by Marc LeRoux from www.lerouxvisual.com

CLICK HERE for another short video of Quinn's first couple weeks.

Merry Christmas from the brian ferry fam

Seven Days of the Week (I Never Go to Work) by They Might Be Giants

NYTimes: Obama’s Christian Realism

From The New York Times:

Obama's Christian Realism

By DAVID BROOKS

President Obama has revived a cold war liberal doctrine — that evil must be fought without succumbing to the sinfulness within — and tried to apply it to a different world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/opinion/15brooks.html

done and done

i am out from under the all-consuming architecture storm for a month!

here is a picture of my final project:

The 3 Girls

A clock for our new student ministry space? I wish...

Our new homemade DIY old white t-shirt Christmas star tree topper

Where Should I Eat: Fast Food Edition (via @timastevens)

From Eating The Road, other great flowcharts when deciding where/what to eat as well!

O Holy (AWFUL) Night. So terrible you can't stop listening.

This is many years old now, probably as old as the intertubes & mp3s but hey...I still snort from laughing so hard when I hear it. Every year.