Month: September 2006

  • Breaking SEO Myths Part One: The SEO Expert

    Could there be another industry more inflated by ego, misinformation, and repetition than search engine optimization? Perhaps there are a few others out there, but not many. But what else can one expect from an unregulated industry? There’s no FCC, FTC, FEC, FMC, FERC, HIPAA, ATF, SEC, FAA or any other acronym’d agency standardizing legitimate SEO practices.

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  • Harp and Bowl Worship

    I have participated in what is now termed “Harp and Bowl” worship at the All Nations House of Prayer (ANHOP) in Grand Prairie, texas, for the past two months. No single type of spiritual act has challenged me as much as this has. Something about the still and peaceful attitude of worship demands so much more of my focus and attention. It requires a man or woman to be fully engaged. We still sing familiar songs that everyone knows. But those songs are the starting place, not the end. They allow us the ability to begin on a common note, a common idea, and we progress into singing in the spirit. Here, all the singers on the team are encouraged to be bold and sing out in unison with various tongues, melodies, and sounds.

    The prayer leader reads aloud a Scripture, which is then sung by a chorus leader. After the chorus leader sings the passage two times, the singers sing out different phrases that relate to the theme of the passage. It becomes a dialogue of the whole group singing to the Lord, elaborating on his beauty, his glory, his majesty, and so on. Each time of worship is different. The spontaneous parts are always fresh and challenging. We must engage the Lord with our hearts in order to follow what the Spirit of God is saying at that time. He leads us into themes which release waves of revelation, refreshing, healing, or peace.

    It’s not a perfect model, but I love it for what it offers: enough structure to keep us on the same page without stifling the flow of the Holy Spirit.


  • United 93 and Thoughts on 9/11

    Recently, I saw United 93 for the first time. What a day that was… My memories of September 11th are much different than most Americans. I was overseas at the time, studying literature, writing, and philosophy in Copenhagen, Denmark. I heard from a Danish student in my kollegium that terrorists had attacked the U.S. Quickly, I went to the television and turned on my only available source of American news: CNN.

    United 93 reminded me of some feelings I had since forgotten. For the past five years, it has been easy to look back at the seizure of four hijacked planes and criticize the government and military for ineffective response. It has been easy to criticize because the surprise of that day wore off all too quickly, and because we eventually returned to our hard-hearted belief that we wouldn’t be attacked again (at least for awhile). But United 93 reminded me of the experience of that day… of the shock and uncertainty involved. While it was still happening, we didn’t know what to expect. We didn’t know if there were two hijacked planes or twenty. Seriously.

    Every major U.S. city could have been targeted at the same time if the terrorists had so chosen. After several years, it is easier to look back at 9/11 and not feel as much. Four planes were hijacked, the passengers onboard were killed, and many people in the World Trade Center were killed. Still, it’s easy to look back and say to myself, “Okay, so a couple planes flew into a couple buildings…” Plane crashes don’t have the same sense of terror as massive bombs. I mean, how would we feel if 40,000 people died from a bomb at a football game? We’d probably destroy several small countries in pursuite of vengeance/justice. Please do not misinterpret. I support our government and I respect our leaders. I believe that hunting Bin Laden and the gang is important. I still don’t understand why we invaded Iraq. Should Hussein have been removed? Absolutely yes. He committed murder thousands of times. But why so soon after 9/11?

    Why didn’t we spend those resources capturing Bin Laden and the terrorists responsible? Why did we invest so much in Iraq so shortly after a national crisis? This is not a political blog. United 93 was surprisingly faithful to the actual events of September 11th (as far as I know). It was difficult to watch with my wife because that day reminds us that we were apart – she here in Texas and I in Denmark. That day we could not comfort one another. Our experiences were very different. In that day of confusion, shock, and unbelief, I remember fearing attacks on Dallas/Fort Worth. I remember fearing that Heather and my friends were in danger. I remember not having a clue if anyone I loved was safe. I remember not being able to find comfort. It was a terrible day for many people, and for many reasons.

    For some, it was the day their father, mother, son, daughter, brother, or sister died. For others, it was the day they lost their jobs. For some, it was the day they were so traumatized from the experience that they tremble with fear to this day. For others, it was the day they feared the worst was going to happen everywhere. I was a part of that last group. I did not lose any friends on that day, but I suffered from the fear of not knowing how many attacks were being executed. I didn’t know if my loved ones were safe. I didn’t know what to do.

    For some, that feeling fades over time, and all we are left with is the memory of facts and figures. “X” number of people died from “x” number of terrorists. We forget that we were afraid of the unknown because the past is no longer unknown.


  • Live Foods Lack Some Essentials

    Living on Live Foods, by Alissa Cohen, is the book my wife and I have been following for the past 25 days. Alissa Cohen is apparently a pretty big figure in the world of live food diets these days. She provides scores of recipes for live food meals. Some are so good you could slap your mamma (no offense, Mom); others are so sub par that we’ve cringed at the amount of money and food spent preparing a dish that offends the palate.

    Since we began this diet/lifestyle on August 6th I have been steadily losing some weight; not much, mind you, but enough to notice the difference. Unfortunately, I have also been losing strength. I feel weaker. I notice it most when I play basketball at the rec center and when my whole body feels like mush and doesn’t want to move. I am still reserving judgment. I’ve been told that detoxing can take awhile (especially when you have excess fat to burn – darn root beer belly!). It’s possible that my weakness and occasional sluggish feelings stem from the detoxifying process. Then again, I could just need more good protein and fat.

    Here’s what you miss out on with the Live Food lifestyle: milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, sour cream, beef, pork, chicken, fish, venison, baked breads, and various other wonderful goodies. My mother-in-law’s personal research is beginning to reveal the possible need to re-include meats and dairy. We need certain vitamins that we seem to only get from eating meat, such as Vitamin D and Vitamin B12. Sure, you can get Vitamin D from sitting out in the sun, but who has the time or the willpower to sit out in 100 degree weather just to get a little bitty vitamin? We also need a certain level of cholesterol in our bodies which is apparently difficult to maintain without some amount of fat in our food. We obviously can’t eat avocados until we burst just to get a fraction of the fat we could quickly get with a slab of yummy beef. Did I say yummy? Well, pretend I didn’t.

    Tonight we will have hamburger patties in an attempt to raise our pathetically low cholesterol levels. And for the love of everything sacred, please don’t believe all the addle-brained hype about lowering your cholesterol. Scientific studies are currently so conflicting that some say you need to eat fatty foods to maintain healthy levels of cholesterol while others are saying eat only lean cuts of meat to lower your levels. My wife, in her God-given nutritional wisdom, believes that some amount of fatty meats are necessary, and that the truly bad levels of cholesterol come from eating processed and chemically enhanced foods.

    Yes, my friends, that is correct: Whataburger and Sonic hamburgers do not constitute a healthy dose of meat, bread, and vegetables (I know – real shocker). They still taste really good, but it is junk food (fake food) that raises harmful cholesterol. I don’t mean to come across as preachy. I still crave all those tasty chemicals too. I’m not judging anyone for what they eat. But I do think that we become responsible for the knowledge we come across. It is the difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance is living with a lack of information. Stupidity is making the same decisions over and over after hearing how they are bad for you and expecting to get a different result than everyone else in America.