Positive Stuff!

Today is Positive Day!

Alex's Fur

The other day when Alex came inside from his midnight catting around, I noticed that he had some fur missing from the back of his neck. Against the furball's wishes, I washed the area and put some antibiotic ointment on the wound.

Later I posted these words to Facebook:

Alex just came in from his morning catting around and again he has a chunk of fur torn out of the back of his next. This hasn't happened in more than a year. I wish I knew which of his playmates (or maybe an enemy cat) did that. It makes me reluctant to let him go outside, which isn't fair to Alex, especially since I've not seen what damage HE did to the other cat. Why can't cats get along peacefully like us humans?

I am so glad I did, because Michelene commented:

If Alex is missing only from the top of his neck though, it's fine. it's playful. It's anywhere else you'd need to worry. The scruff is a play/friendly zone.

I've confirmed her observation with a couple of cat sites on the Internnet and am delighted that now know that my furball isn't fighting other cats but playing with them!

Desmond Tutu Honors Aung San Suu Kyi

This week as Amnesty International awarded jailed Burmese democracy leader and Nobel Prize laurette Aung San Suu Kyi, Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town and also a recipient of the Nobel peace prize. wrote:

Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma deserve nothing less than our most strenuous efforts to help them secure their freedom. Every day we must ask ourselves: have we done everything that we can? I pledge that I will not rest until Aung San Suu Kyi, and all the people of Burma, are free. Please join me.

To read all of Archbishop Tutu's words, please go HERE.

2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recepiants

On July 3oth President Obama announced 16 recipients of the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. The awards will be presented on August 12. Below is a partial list of the receptients. For the full list and details about teh receoients, please click HERE to go to the White House.

• Stephen Hawking, internationally-recognized theoretical physicist and the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University.
• Sen. Edward Kennedy, who has worked tirelessly for health care reform over the last five decades.
• Billie Jean King, teens star, who has championed gender equality issues not only in sports, but in all aspects of life.
• Rev. Joseph Lowery, a leader of the civil rights movement since the 1950s, and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference along with Dr. Martin Luther King.
• Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow, the last living Plains Indian war chief and author of works on Native American history and culture who has served as an inspiration to young Native Americans across the country.
• Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official from a major city in the United States.
• Sandra Day O’Connor, Supreme Court Justice from 1981 until her retirement in 2006, who was the first woman ever to sit on the Supreme Court.
• Sidney Poitier, the first African American to be nominated and win a Best Actor Academy Award.
• Mary Robinson, the first female President of Ireland who was also United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
• Desmond Tutu, widely regarded as "South Africa’s moral conscience," who was a leading anti-apartheid activist in South Africa.

KATZ are always positive (& funny)

Tomorrow We May Learn the Fate of Aung San Suu Kyi

Fear is not the natural state of civilized people. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

The Lady in Our Hearts

If all goes as expected, the verdict in the pseudo-trial of Burmese democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, will be announced tomorrow. Of course, it will be tomorrow in Burma long before it is in the United States.

The expectations are not good: Aung San Suu Kyi has said that she expects the outcome of her trial will be painfully obvious

Meanwhile, the dictatorial generals who rule Burma have warned that any predictions of the outcome would amount to contempt of court.

On a more positive note, U2 lead singer Bono has used a concert in Dublin to announce Aung San Suu Kyi has won Amnesty International's highest honour, the Ambassador of Conscience Award.

Tomorrow is Positive Day, the brilliant idea of

a twelve year old girl!

Read more about Positive Day

in Dust Bunny's blog.

God Is...

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Liz, the author of the blog Finding Life Hard published a post today that was inspired by a blog post written by someone else regarding the nature of God.

You really must read Liz's post, Follow me and be persecuted, to understand the context in which I am writing because my words are based on a comment that I posted to Liz's post. (Ain't this blog overlapping weird?)

The blog post that began this chain reaction is a story (Life Cut Sort) of the unfortunate death of a young woman following cosmetic surgery in the blog in the blog, nickhereandnow. The post ended with the words:

This dreadful saga of incompetence and misfortune certainly undermines belief in some benign creator watching over us and keeping us from harm.

Liz's post is a response those closing words. Her theology is excellent as she examines the love and support of God through the good times and bad times, centering on the words that Jesus spoke to his disciples:

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross. (Matthew 16:24)

The following is an edited version of the comment I made on Liz's blog.

You've probably heard the saying/joke that "in the beginning God created us and we have been repaying the compliment ever since."

I think that Albert Schweitzer rather confirmed that in his theological work, The Quest of the Historical Jesus . We humans tend to picture God/Jesus/Moses/Mohammad in the light of our own lives and cultures and expectations.

Personally, I believe that another name for God is "Love". I see God as just and compassionate and unconditionally loving. I find in the suffering of Christ at least a wee understanding of my own pain as a human being.

I am very aware that not everyone believes the way I do; through years of pastoring and several thousand sermons I have also come to realize that it requires experience and spiritual growth for one to change his/her view of God and, yes, life.

There was a woman who I pastored for over 11 years who had grown up in a very fundamentalist cult whose teachings were that God is angry, judgmental, and vindictive. After 10 of the 11 years I was her pastor, she said to me as she left a worship service,

"Rev. Nick, there is something about the services here that I don't understand. I am supposed leave church feeling convicted of my sins and I leaving here feeling forgiven and even good about myself."

I understood her frame of reference. And I appreciated her compliment.

P.S. ~ Since I have quoted Albert Schweitzer, Alex would not forgive me if I didn't share one of Schweitzer's most important words:

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

Too Bad It's Monday (TBIM) Jokes & Humor & KATZ

Welcome to Too Bad It's Monday (TBIM)

Jokes & Humor & KATZ.

Before Sometimes Saintly Nick shows you

the funny stuff,

he wants to pass on a couple

of announcements.

It appears that sometime today Nick's Bytes shall receive our 150,000th visitor.

If you are the one, please leave us (me) a comment.

OK?

Positive Day, the brilliant idea of

a twelve year old girl, is almost here.

Read more about Positive Day

in Dust Bunny's blog.

And now, on with

Too Bad It's Monday laughs!

It seems that the majority of the humor that I have been been recently receiving has been lists and graphics. Sooooo, lists and graphics are what I'm passing on, with KATZ and WISDOM, of course.

The Wisdom of the Aged

• "I'm so old they've cancelled my blood type." Bob Hope
• "As you get older three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can't remember the other two..." Sir Norman Wisdom
• "Yes, time flies. And where did it leave you? Old too soon...smart too late." Anonymous
• "You know you're getting old and fat when you can pinch an inch on your forehead." John Mendoza
• "As we grow older, our bodies get shorter and our anecdotes longer." Robert Quillen
• "People say that age is just a state of mind. I say it's more about the state of your body." Geoffrey Parfitt

Marriage Quotes

• "My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met." Rodney Dangerfield
• "When a man brings his wife flowers for no reason, there's a reason." Molly McGee
• "Always get married early in the morning. That way, if it doesn't work out, you haven't wasted a whole day." Mickey Rooney
• "In olden times, sacrifices were made at the altar, a practice that still continues." Helen Rowland
• "Getting married is very much like going to a restaurant with friends. You order what you want, then when you see what the other fellow has, you wish you had ordered that." Unknown
• "I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry." Rita Rudner

Writers' Quotes:

• "The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense." Tom Clancy
• "I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it." William Faulkner
• "I handed in a script last year and the studio didn't change one word. The word they didn't change was on page 87." Steve Martin
• "I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know." Mel Brooks
• "It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous." Robert Benchley
• "A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction." William Faulkner
• "The free-lance writer is the person who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps." Robert Benchley

Work quotes:

• "The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work." Robert Frost
• "The easiest job in the world has to be coroner. Surgery on dead people. What's the worst thing that could happen? If everything went wrong, maybe you'd get a pulse." Dennis Miller
• "Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?" Edgar Bergen
• "Doing nothing is very hard to do...you never know when you're finished." Leslie Nielsen
• "The trouble with unemployment is that the minute you wake up in the morning you're on the job." Slappy White
• "I only go to work on days that don't end in a 'y'." Robert Paul
• "It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up." Muhammad Ali
• "A good rule of thumb is if you've made it to thirty-five and your job still requires you to wear a name tag, you've made a serious vocational error." Dennis Miller

You've been programming too long...

• When you are counting objects, you go "0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D...".
• When asked about a bus schedule, you wonder if it is 16 or 32 bits.
• When your wife says "If you don't turn off that darn machine and come to bed,then I am going to divorce you!", and you chastise her for for omitting the else clause.
• When you are reading a book and look for the space bar to get to the next page.
• When you look for your car keys using: "grep keys /dev/pockets"
• When after fooling around all day with routers etc, you pick up the phone and start dialing an IP number.
• When you get in the elevator and double-press the button for the floor you want.
• When not only do you check your email more often than your paper mail, but you remember your {network address} faster than your postal one.
• When you go to balance your checkbook and discover that you're doing the math in octal.
• When you dream in 256 pallettes of 256 colors.

WISE(?)WORDS

Homer Simpson

Kurt Vonnegut

Timothy Leary

• It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except politians. ~ Mark Twain
• For these defendants, corruption was a way of life. They existed in an ethics-free zone. ~ RALPH J. MARRA JR., the acting United States attorney in New Jersey, announcing charges against 44 people.
• Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion. ~ Robertson Davies
• No matter how much education you have as a person of color, you still can’t escape institutional racism That’s what the issue is to me.~ Keith E. Horton, sports and entertainment lawyer in Chicago who is black
• Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. ~ Bertrand Russell
• In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. ~ Douglas Adams
• Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd be irresponsible, too. ~ Lichty and Wagner

KATZ

The defense has begun final arguments in the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Now may be the last opportunity to attempt to influence the Burmese disctators before he conviction

Another Type of Racial Profiling

While it's extremely difficult to tell in any given situation how much race -- consciously or subconsciously -- plays a role in a doctor's decision making, multiple studies over several decades have found doctors make different decisions for black patients and white patients even when they have the same medical problems and the same insurance. ~ CNN.com

The dialogue that was begun with the case of Professor Gates is spreading to other area of racial profiling and prejudice in the United States. The article, Does your doctor judge you based on your color?, by CNN Senior Medical Correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, documenting differing degrees of medical treatment (and respect) afforded patients based upon their race should shock me. Unfortunately it doesn't.

Through my years of visiting medical and nursing home facilities in Indiana, Kentucky, and Missouri both as a clergyperson and as a social worker, I have noted more than one that the color of one's skin can be a determining factor in the quality of medical care one receives. I believe that this is true especially in hospital emergency rooms.

As with Mr. Reid in the example given in the above referenced CNN story, Mr. Reid observed, the doctor he saw at the emergency room evidently assumed he wasn't intelligent or educated well enough to understand his medical condition and also, because he was African-American, he probably couldn't afford the more expensive but less invasive procedure.

I wish I knew what it will take to enable Americans to look at other people and not judge them by superficialities such as their color or their skin. Moreover, I wonder how long it will be before humans the world over can recognize simply the humanity of other people.