Parting

"Parting is all we know of heaven
And all we need of hell". Emily Dickinson

Anna Speaks the Truth

My freshman year in college my mother nearly died of a blood clot in her intestine.

For better or worse I dealt with this by completely avoiding it.  I stayed at college and didn't ask a lot of questions.  

My sister Anna was at home, where the reality of the situation was unavoidable.  Her junior year in high school she gave the following speech about it at a youth conference at our church.  Her words were the most honest, truthful admission of the doubt and pain that plague the Christian experience (the God-man relationship) I have ever heard from someone so young and so dear to me.  

She just told her story. I have listened to this recording many, many times and each time I'm floored by the amount of heartfelt truth and hard-earned wisdom it contains.  Anna is an amazing young woman and we share some of the best and the worst aspects of our family's character - and I love that. 

This doesn't even scratch the surface of Anna's depth of character, creativity, and awesomeness. But it's a beautiful piece of it.  I encourage you to give it a listen.

Anna Scott - Goldrush Speech - Summer 2004 (click to download)

Frontline - "Carson Daly" (or just me voluntarily embarrassing myself on the internet again)

In high school I was in a rock 'n roll band with my best friends called Frontline. We practiced in my garage on Saturday mornings until a neighbor made a tape recording of the volume level in each room of his house and left it in our mailbox. We moved to a member's attic room.

We played talent shows, high school and church events. Items won at talent shows included a Super Nintendo, a gi and karate lessons.

We also wrote and recorded our own music, which brings me to the purpose of this post. I decided it was high time to publicly embarrass myself by posting one of Frontline's recordings on this blog. It just seems like it needs to be done, so we can all bask in the glory and tragedy of high school.

So here for your enjoyment is "Carson Daly" by Frontline - a celebration of the undying truth that love conquers all.

Frontline - "Carson Daly" (click here to download)

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Top 10 FREE Windows Apps!

In keeping with my desire to become an information maven, here are my top 10 favorite free Windows apps.

1. Firefox (internet browser)

Surprise, surprise. But if you love customization and awesome plugins to help you browse better, there's no better way to experience the internet.

2. iTunes (media organizer/player)

Sure, it's bloated (version 8.1 is 87 meg and this thing hogs memory), but I haven't found a better way to organize and listen to my music library.

3. Foxit Reader (pdf reader)

People, DITCH ADOBE READER NOW. It's bloated, it takes forever to load (why do I need 250 plugins to read a pdf?) and it has nothing on this small, clean, killer app.

4. PSPad Editor (text/code editor)

If you do any HTML or PHP coding, this is a great editor. I am in love with the FTP and "reformat code" features.

5. Zipgenius (zip program)

Simple, clean, free way to handle all kinds of zipped archives. Use this if Windows' built-in zip features won't cut it or if you're getting tired of Winzip (like everyone else).

6. Skype (voice over internet)

This program lets me talk and "video chat" with my overseas friends for free. Amazing.

7. Google Chrome (internet browser)

I tried to resist for months, but Google Chrome's blazing speed is slowly eroding away my Firefox loyalty.

8. Windirstat (hard drive space analyzer)

See what's taking up your hard drive, graphically. The best tool I've found for figuring out what needs to go from my hard drive.

9. Windows XP Calculator PowerToy (calculator)

Stupid name, awesome replacement for the Windows calculator. This is basically a graphing calculator, but I turn the graphing features off and use it for its multi-line display.

10. Resizer (bulk image resizer)

Need to resize a ton of images, all at once? My buddy Josh showed me this little app back in 2003 and I've used it ever since. The website which hosted it is gone now, so I uploaded it myself just for you!

Honorable mentions:

Multi-mon taskbar - If you use dual monitors, this creates a taskbar for your second monitor to host only the applications being displayed on that monitor.

PDF creator - An easy-to-use pdf creator. It acts like a printer which you can print to from any program - only the output is a pdf!

Picasa - I don't really use this sort of thing, but if you need to organize and/or share photos, this is the app to do it with.

Look out behind you!

These awesome shots were taken at my uncle's hunting camp in the Florida Everglades at Christmastime, amid stories of gator attacks and airboat collisions.

Reminds me of the greatest photo ever taken.

Clemson Economics Professor Bryan Buckley Takes on the Pundits!

As everyone knows, the state of the economy has been reported and discussed ad nausea for a while now. As my last few posts have illustrated, I've been listening, questioning, and commenting a good bit myself. My own personal pursuit of economic knowledge has been greatly benefited by having two close friends who are lifelong students of economics: Harrison Brookie (Clemson bachelors in political science, masters in economics, currently a high school history teacher) and Bryan Buckley (Clemson bachelors in economics and philosophy, masters in economics, soon to be PHD in economics, currently a Clemson economics professor). In more ways than I probably know (and in some cases, like to admit), these two men have shaped how I think about the economy.

On Monday, Professor Buckley's work reached new levels of achievement. A conservative think tank called The Marshall Institute published a published a paper of Bryan's called The Cost of Climate Regulation for American Households. The paper examines how proposed legislation to enact a "cap and trade" system to regulate carbon emissions will affect the average American. The bottom line: it won't be pretty. Energy companies will pass higher production costs on to consumers and we will see higher cost of goods, lower GDP, less jobs, and so forth.

However Bryan explains this may be necessary. Currently air is free, and it's overwhelmingly cheaper to pollute it with coal rather than keeping it clean with expensive air turbines or solar panels. If we want to prevent overuse (ie, over-pollution) of the air, we have to tax it and provide some incentive for companies to find cleaner alternative energy technologies. We must find a balance so that we don't hurt our economy by under-polluting the air as well.

This reasoning was unfortunately lost on Charlotte-area right-wing pundit Tara Servatius when Bryan was invited on her radio show today. Despite Bryan's brilliant execution and academic prowess, Servatius and her callers were hell-bent on using Bryan's work to accuse Obama's energy policy of killing jobs and GDP in an already hurting economy.

Nevertheless it was incredibly exciting to hear an old, dear friend of mine using his work to help others learn. Bryan has taught me so much, from how to craft hilarious improv comedy, to how to keep the US economy in perspective, to how to lead with humility, loyalty, and gentleness, to how to love people well. I was honored to be a part of his wedding in December. It was good to hear him share the knowledge he has gained from his lifelong study of economics and be recognized and respected as the expert he is.

Plus, I'm completely jealous of his status as a moderate conservative who the far-right has officially labeled a "liberal economist."

If you'd like to read more about the buzz Bryan's paper is stirring, Google "Bryan Buckley cap and trade" - he's overtaken the intraweb. Here are some links if you would like to hear Bryan's interview on the Tara Servatius show: First Hour, Second Hour.

Top 5 Things Which Have Recently Blown My Mind

1. 40% of Americans own a gun.

2. 95% of guns recovered from Mexico murders have been traced back to the US, because it's so darned easier to buy a gun in the US and smuggle it over the border than it is to buy one in Mexico.

If there is one issue I have become a flaming liberal about, it is gun control. BRING IT ON. The founding fathers never could have foreseen this.

3. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner had the guts to propose a 2 trillion dollar plan last month which would somehow save the financial market.  He said he would pay for it by printing money and somehow utilizing the private sector. The plan was so vague it made the stock market plummet. It seems all we're interested in anymore is how much the next rescue plan will cost, and even that we don't understand.

4. Apparently Obama's $800 billion stimulus plan includes funds to undo welfare reform, enough protectionism to scare the prime minister of Canada, and billions in special interest. Ugh. (By the way, you own 80% of AIG, and pretty soon you're gonna own more.)

5. You'd never know it, but through all this stimulus hundreds of economists argue we should do nothing (well not nothing, but not this), and to me they sound more and more right every news cycle. It seems despite all these Keynesians, there are still some Friedmanists out there.

Image: Steve Sack, Star Tribune

Get yourself to Slumdog Millionaire

It's been a long time since I got my money's worth at a movie theater. I think I owe them something.

This comment was overheard by the thoughtful Nathan Elmore at the historic West Hampton theater in Richmond, Virginia after Erin, Nathan and I finished viewing Slumdog Millionaire. I completely agreed.

The film was a moving story (I think the word Nathan used was "transportive"), splendidly and creatively told, which had everything a good story has including love, loss, joy, pain, truth, and redemption.

I've posted the trailer below just because I feel I should, but it doesn't really do the film justice. Please don't judge it by the trailer.

They don't give out Oscars for nothing. Well okay, sometimes they do. Regardless, go see this film!