Best time to buy

Just in time for the holidays, here's a short article that lists some of the best times to buy stuff. Some of it is obvious and some aren't.

These are the facts...

Sorry for the lack of a column this week. At least try to pretend to be sad, ok? :)
Anyway, I'll return next week with something good, for once. So in place of a column, I present you two interesting articles!
People outrageous at how lawsuit-happy we have become as a nation, often cite the McDonald's Coffee lawsuit as a prime example of a frivolous lawsuit. However, as this urban legend grew, many important facts have been omitted. Here's a writeup about what really went down in that case. Maybe it wasn't so frivolous after all.

Lots of puzzles!

This game has a lot of puzzles to go through. It gives you no instructions, you have to figure everything out yourself. You only have to use your mouse tho, so click and drag away!

Improve your chance at getting a job

I read this guy's references, he seems like someone who knows what he's talking about. He gives some ways to better improve yourself for job interviews. A lot of very good points, and I agree with a lot of them, even though the last job interview I did was 5 years ago? Anyway, he adds a lot of humor in there as well. This is targeted mainly to tech companies, but I'm sure some of the basics can be applied elsewhere. Check it out.

Animator vs Animation II

Yes! A sequel to the award-winning (awarded by me) video. Definitely check it out.

Thanksgiving traditions

National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation

Urban legend has it, that the very first presidential pardon, was given by Lincoln when his son was worried that his pet turkey would be eaten on Thanksgiving. In a grand public gesture, as only a loving father would do, the President pardoned the turkey. This ritual became annualized in 1945, during the office of Harry Truman. The National Turkey Federation (Yes, even turkeys have lobbyists!) presented Truman with a turkey. Sadly, these turkeys would still end up as dinner, albeit for the president and his family. It wasn't until JFK, when he let the turkey live the rest of its free life in a turkey farm. In the present time, two turkeys are given to the president. The more photogenic turkey is the official "pardoned" turkey, while the runner-up, in case the first turkey is unable to perform its turkily duties, gets stuffed and eaten. Ha ha! Just kidding! No, he gets pardoned as well. Afterwards, they get sent to Disneyland (like all our other celebrities) and become the Grand Marshall of the Turkey Parade. And you only WISH I was making that up. Since 2003, the White House provides a poll for people to name the pair of turkeys. In 2003, the pair were named "Stars and Stripes". In 2004, it was "Biscuits and Gravy". 2005 saw "Marshmallow and Yams". And this year, they will be called... (drumr0ll please!) "Flyer and Fryer".

Traditional Thanksgiving Hymn

Apparently there are quite a few Thanksgiving songs, making it the second largest holiday with themed songs. The first is obviously Veteran's Day. Or Christmas, one of the two. Anyway, here's the official Thanksgiving song that you must sing at your Thanksgiving table. If you don't, it's not a real feast. It's called, "We Gather Together". Sing along with me now!

We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known;
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing,
Sing praises to His name: He forgets not his own.

Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, wast at our side, All glory be thine!

We all do extol thee, thou leader triumphant,
And pray that thou still our defender wilt be.
Let thy congregation escape tribulation;
Thy name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!

Macy's Thanksgiving Parade

Started in 1924, the Macy's Department Store in Manhattan held a parade for the city. Everybody loved it, and so the heads at Macy's decided to hold one every year. During World War 2, Macy's graciously donated the rubber, used to make their balloons to the war effort, which is the only time the Parade was not held. The year after the war, 1945, it returned bigger and better than ever. The 2-mile route was established then, which is the same route followed every year thereafter. Another first was that year was the first time it was televised. Of course, only the 5 richest people in America saw that show. During this time, the parade mainly consisted of high school marching bands and lots of big balloons. It wasn't until 1969, that floats, essentially big Kleenex boxes on wheels, were invented. Presently, about 2.5 million people line the streets to watch the parade, and over 40 million watch it on TV.

Thanksgiving Feast

The centerpiece of a Thanksgiving meal is the turkey. In 2003, USDA estimates over 260 million turkeys were raised in the country, of which 1/6 were consumed on Thanksgiving Day alone. That's a lot of turkeys! That's about 43 million turkeys eaten today! Another common tradition is for the person who gets the Turkey wishbone. This lucky person will hand one end of the bone to the person sitting next to them. Each grasping one end of the bone, they pull it apart. The one with the larger end will have his wish granted. Thus, a lucky person can have up to 2 wishes granted, one from birthday and one from Thanksgiving. There was a funny Seinfeld episode about that... Anyway, the typical side dishes that accompany the Turkey are: mashed potatoes (With the skins on! I've been converted to that and believe true mashed potatoes must have skins!), New England stuffing (it MUST be from New England, anywhere else is crap!) -- which is normally stuffed inside the turkey, candied yams (it's yamerriffic!), and lastly pumpkin pie (taken from Halloween's Jack-o-Lantern).

Mmmm... talking about all this food has made me hungry. Anyway, there is one last tradition I'll talk about next week. Enjoy your holidays! I know I will, catering from Ranch 99... Yummy!

We can rebuild him... we have the technology

That wsa the opening lines for a great cheesy 70's show, "Six Million Dollar Man". I loved that show. Well, looks like the future is here! The first woman with a bionic arm. It's crazy. If they can improve the strength on it, I might just hack off my arms and get them replaced! Read it here. Be warned, it may require registration, although when I clicked it, it was fine.

Thanksgiving (Pt 1)

So this week is Thanksgiving. Similar to the Halloween post, I figured now is a good chance to talk about the history of Thanksgiving. (If this sounds like a cop-out, well... it is!)

The very first Thanksgiving happened with the Pilgrims, when they came to America during the 17th Century. Thought to be an outgrowth of the Harvest Festival back in the Old Country, the Pilgrims decided to celebrate the last day of Harvest with a celebration. At first it was more a religious observance rather than a celebration. They literally thanked God for rain. This happened off and on until about the 18th Century. After the Revolutionary War, each successive president starting from Washington would proclaim a day as Thanksgiving. This day would bounce back and forth based on the whim of the president at the time.

Lincoln signed a proclamation (He sure loves to make proclamations, doesn't he?) to celebrate Thanksgiving on the final Thursday of November. This continued annually until FDR came into power. Now remember, during his term of office, the Great Depression was going on. He wanted to move Thanksgiving back a week to the second-to-last Thursday, in order to give merchants more time to sell things during the holidays. You see, back then, Americans celebrate one holiday at a time, not like now when you see Christmas ads even before Halloween has come and gone! Since no one can do any shopping until Thanksgiving was out of the way, FDR's solution was to move it back, thus lengthening the Christmas season. But FDR didn't make it a federal mandate, he still left it up to the states. Some decided to follow his advice, some did not. In what is very common in the political arena, a compromise was reached. Congress passed a resolution which stated that Thanksgiving will always fall on the fourth Thursday of the month. In some years, it would be the second-to-last week, and in other years, it would be the last week. This year, it just happens to be the second to last week.

On Thurs, I'll post some of the more common Thanksgiving traditions. See you then!

Self-Esteem Test

An example of a stupid test (at least I think so.) It's supposed to show how much or how little self-esteem you have. The questions are so basic, it might as well sum up all 9 questions by asking how much self-esteem do you have?

Christopher Columbus: Not so good

This would have been perfect for Columbus Day, but since Thanksgiving is often associated with the whole "New World" Colonization thing, I figured this was another appropriate time. Plus, I needed an excuse to get rid of this post. Turns out the founder of the New World, Chris Columbus, was not a good guy after all. This is probably why my company doesn't celebrate Columbus Day. Here's the report.

Online Reference Tool for Programmers

I find this a helpful site to go to when I'm stuck on a programming problem. It's a site that gives you documentation on many computer languages. Very useful!

Microsoft what?

This is really cool. It's an online suite of applications that basically replace Microsoft Office. And best of all it's Free! I've been looking for something like this for a long time. Usually when I write, I save stuff on my computer and then have to email it to myself so I can edit it from any computer. Now, I can do all my writing on the web, and not have to worry about if it's the latest one! Really useful for creative types.
Check out the entire suite here. Remember it's all free!

Update: I've been using this for about 3 months now, and it's still great! You don't know how convenient it is to be able to write the same document from any computer.

Humility (Pt 2)

As with many things in a Christian's life, there are two types of humility. Take a wild guess what the two are. If you said Earthly Humility and Godly Humility, you are wrong! Ha ha. No, just kidding. Of course you're right, it's so obvious. It's just like there's "Earthly Wisdom" and "Heavenly Wisdom", "Earthly Foundation" and "Heavenly Foundation", "Earthly Video Games" and, wait... uh, scratch that last one.

So the difference between the two, lies in the source. Where does humility spring from? Let's start with the first one. Earthly humility comes from many sources. People with low self-esteem are often humble. Because of their poor self-image, typically, they feel they don't deserve the good fortune. They believe they do not possess any skills or characteristics that people would find appealing. If they won a race, they would attribute it to a fluke or luck. Every one's number is bound to come up. They also will make up excuses for why they did something well. "If that other runner didn't trip, he would have easily won." They can't help it, it's an unconscious thing. Their speech patterns will naturally flow from where their mind is at, and if they spent their entire life thinking only about themselves, then they can't help but use that word. For any famous person with a great skill, it's always expected to be humble. No one loves an arrogant person, especially since it creates this "I'm better than you" vibe, that, let's face it, isn't exactly an endearing quality.

Another type of earthly humility is the false humility, or the everyone expects me to be humble because I'm the good guy. Athletes are typically guilty of this. If they want to have a reputation for being a likeable guy, someone fans and kids can really look up to, they will often say things that seem humble. However, you really have to listen to what they're saying to be sure whether they mean it or not. If they say stuff like, "I had a great coach, who taught me well, and always encouraged me." or "It wasn't just me, it was the whole team.", then most likely they're being falsely humble. They tend to use a lot of the first person pronoun I, or other variations of it, like me, my, mine. They can't help it, it's an unconscious thing. If it isn't carefully monitored, speech patterns generally reflect where their mind is, and how they naturally think of themselves. Ultra-competitive people, which are in general athletes, superstar singers and actors, usually only care about their own selves. It's how they are able to succeed so well in their respective field. It's only natural that they think of themselves first. And yet, the public doesn't want to support egotistical people, which is what helped drive them to fame in the first place. So, these public figures take on a role, a mask if you will. The humble, good-guy-type, affable star who everyone says is just another normal person.

Of course, these aren't the only two causes. There's plenty more, but it's just the two I could think of off the top of my head. Plus, I'm as anxious as you to get to the good stuff!

On the flip side, there's the heavenly humility, which obviously has only one source... God. The thing about this type of humility is that anyone can become like it. All they need to do, is change their mind's perspective, not towards themselves (selfish) nor even toward others (selfless) but towards God. It's all about the realization that Man isn't at the top of the food chain, that there is a higher power. All of us mortals are weak, imperfect, unskilled, but there is one who isn't all of these things. Rather than compare talents and skills between two hopelessly imperfect beings, compare your talents with God. And once you do, you'll soon realize that you and God aren't playing on the same field, you're not even playing the same sport. You are barely crawling, while God is running marathons around you. And that's where spiritual humility comes from. Isaiah said it best:

“ Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The LORD of hosts.” (Isa 6:5)

Not only are we so far from God's standard, but a truly humble Christian realizes that all good things come from the Lord. Whatever skills you may think you have, whatever blessings you think you have inherited, whatever job, money, cars, love you possess, they all came from God. And just as easily as he gives to you, he can just as easily take it away. So don't take pride in such ephemeral things, because they won't last. Don't take pride in your wisdom, or knowledge, for those things are fleeting. Over the past year alone, we have learned that there's only 8 planets in the solar system not 9 or 10. Who knows what other knowledge we have that will be obsolete in 2, 5, 10 years from now? The only thing we can be proud of is God, the Provider of all things. "Therefore, as it is written: 'Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.' " (1Cor 1:31)

Humility

Today's secret word is 'Humility'.

There was a story about Ben Franklin, one of America's greatest inventor and thinker, that I heard on the radio one time, while driving to work. He tried to become the most morally perfect person (for a brief time. You'll see why later.) He would write down his progress in his notebook, about the various deeds and things he did to achieve the moral perfection that he sought. Until, that is, he wrote about Humility: "In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself...For even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my Humility."

It's a very funny word, and I would probably say one of the few words that is a paradox within its own name. Consider this: to give the character 'Humility' a name is precisely what it wants to avoid. A true humble person doesn't seek any popularity and, in fact, wishes to be nameless. How funny that we should create a name to something whose very definition doesn't want to be named. If Humility were really a person, it would try very hard to be noticed. By defining and naming that quality, you have rendered the very characteristic useless. Now you see the humor? No? Oh, maybe it's just me then.

Ok, how about this? A truly humble person never thinks about humility. As soon as you think about how humble you are, immediately you're proud, which is the antithesis of humility. It isn't a quality that you can boast about. For example, you can't say, "My best quality is my humility." Again, it means you are proud of the fact that you are um...not proud? However, someone else can say, "Look at this guy! What a humble guy!" But then, what happens? The person hearing it is immediately proud because someone has praised them! So, you can't even say it in front someone, lest they lose their humility.

And it's not something that can be desired either. You can't say, "I want to be a humble person." Because how can you tel you have reached your goall? If you seek praise from others for your humility, bam! You aren't humble again. It's a no-win situation. Plus on top of that, your motives for doing things have changed. Even performing "humbling" acts wouldn't be very humbling, because you are doing it for the sake of humility. And that defeats the purpose. Cleaning toilets, serving the homeless, even giving thanks to God may all seem like very humbling experiences, yet if you do them to serve yourself, it becomes meaningless. Look at athletes who win championships and medals, and then try to be self-effacing. "It wasn't me, it was my team, it was God who gave me the ability." These words become hollow and lose their meaning. It's what's expected of them to say so that the public won't think of them as arrogant pompous people. Do you know what a truly humble person would do? Well, I'm not sure, but I can definitely bet you they would not be giving interviews, that's for sure. They are the ones who quietly go to their locker room, without celebrating, without fanfare, and just disappear into anonymity.

Lastly, for a humble person, pursuing humility is the furthest thing on their minds. They don't do things because it looks like something a humble person would do. They don't talk about humility, they don't talk about pride, in fact, humility isn't even in their vocabulary. They don't even think about it at all. A humble person just exudes humility. It's in everything they do, whether it's raking the leaves or giving a speech. They don't actively run away from attention either. If it finds them, it's ok. If it doesn't, that's fine as well. Because if they actively try to hide, that means it's on their minds. And they especially do not try to analyze their actions or behaviors to see if it stems from pride because again, it shows that they care about being humble.

This is the meaning of humility. And yes, I'm well aware that since I have talked about it, I have broken the Brotherhood of The Humble's vow of secrecy. I have subjected myself to exile from that exalted order so that I can give you, my dear readers, special insight in what really goes on inside the Brotherhood. This is how much I treasure you!

Starbucks McD Map

An interesting map. On the left, it shows where Starbucks gets its supplies, and also how many stores it opened since 87. On the right, it shows McDonalds and its sales compared to its competitors and even countries! Very eye-opening.

Coffee is Healthy!

This will be good news to some of my coffee-drinking fiends, err I mean friends. Coffee apparently is good for you! So drink up and drink more! Article is here, don't shoot the messenger, all you anti-Coffee nuts!

Game: Ikagura

One of the best shoot-em-ups was Ikagura. Someone created a flash game of the very first boss. It's pretty fun, especially during those long work days ;)

Flash: How to draw a head

You need flash to view it, but it's a free online class on how to draw heads. It's from a real university so it's pretty good tutorial. Check it out here! Please note: This will take some time, so you should probably watch it when you're at home (or if your boss is in a meeting...)

Must we wallow in ignorance?

This column might be a little ranty. Just a warning. This is actually in response to my previous column (How weird is that, responding to my own comments?) I understand that we shouldn't do things that will cause other people to sin. But does that mean we should always cater to the lowest denominator of faith? Should we continue to let people believe in these baseless restrictions? Shouldn't we at least try to teach these people, so that they can grow and mature? Must we keep feeding them baby food all the time? Sure the growing process hurts, but they will have to do it eventually. You don't see 20 year olds walking around with a bib and still eating baby food, right?

Case in point: There was a movement among the early Christians, that as followers of Christ, we had no place in this world. Thus, a strict diet of basic food was encouraged, and even enforced among some of the monks. Sex, being a worldly and immoral act was forbidden, which is why even now many Catholic orders practice chastity. In order to commune more with God, these people began to live in caves to isolate themselves from the world, and provide more time for meditation. This all sounds good right? Poverty was encouraged, while wealth was degraded and to be avoided at all costs. By isolating the body from such worldly lusts, a person will become closer to God. However, as modern-day Christians we know better. For Protestants, we have even looser restrictions. We allow our leaders to marry, in fact, we encourage them to have families. It's ok to be rich, ok to eat rich food. These are things that we as Christians enjoy, because we know that it is not through our actions (or inactions as this case is), but it's through the Lord's Grace do we commune with God.

But why did we stop there? It seems ever since Martin Luther, there does not seem to be any other radical shifts in freedom. With Martin and others of his time, such as Calvin, they gave us the freedom to confess our sins directly to God and the freedom to conduct worship services in languages other than Latin. But now, it seems we have to cater to the conservatives, to be inclusive of people of all levels of faith (by levels I mean maturity levels). It seems we are saying it's ok to live with archaic rules, that it's ok to eat baby food.

But I don't think it is. I believe God wants us to grow. Not grow in earthly puffy knowledge, but grow in the knowledge of God's grace. We need to release these earthly shackles of things we "should" do, in order to present the "proper image". Because it's not what we do, it's not how we present ourselves, but it's our love for Christ that is the "proper image". How does showing up to Church dressed nicely demonstrate to people your love for Christ? How does drinking alcohol show disrespect to the Church Body? And why must we serve in Church ministries in order to show that we have faith in Christ?

While yes, we should nurture the babies of Christ, we shouldn't coddle them forever. Eventually, they need to discover that their salvation doesn't depend on the 10 commandments, or any of the other lessons of the Bible. Now, I'm not saying we should ignore the Bible and have no rules. What I'm saying is that there are earthly conventions that are restricting our walk with God. And it's up to those mature Christians to tell this to the Christian world. Rather than simply be passive and permissive, we should try to teach people about what is God's grace, and to teach people what it means to love Christ. Basically, what I'm ultimately trying to say is, "Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. " (Ecc 9:7)

Steps to being photogenic

I hate getting my picture taken and it shows. So, I will try to use these 5 steps and hopefully I won't look quite as bad. Read them for yourself and you may look like a STAR!

Puffy Knowledge

Last week, I was writing about Harvest Parties, which are basically Halloween with Christian themes. After reading the article that I linked to about them, I realize I should not have mocked the entire project. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a stupid idea, but I can see that it serves a purpose for some people. Naturally, this led me to one of the most famous verses in the Bible, about permissibility (If it's not a real word, then I'm making it real. I can do whatever I want, this is my blog!). Permissibility, as Nathaniel Kwok defines it, is the ability to allow things to happen without any arguments or ridicule.

"Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak." (1 Co 8:9) Actually, I linked the entire chapter not the verse, because the whole chapter is important. For the sake of keeping this blog short, I only picked out one verse (Who loves ya, baby?). In the chapter, Paul is talking about food sacrificed to idols, but what he says about it can be applied to nearly everything, really. For him, it's idol food, for me, it's occult festivals. Same difference. Basically, Paul is saying that he knows that eating food sacrificed to idols is not going to harm his conscience. Which I feel is the important point. He's not arguing whether it was right to eat or not eat idol food. He's saying that he doesn't feel guilty when he eats food sacrificed to idols. However, other people who may see him eat it, may feel that he's sinning. And if that's the case, then he shouldn't force his point of view on those people.

So, for me, I don't feel guilty for celebrating Halloween. I know that dressing up as the devil doesn't make me a devil. Just like dressing up as a vampire doesn't make me want to drink blood. Do I believe evil spirits exist? Yes, I do. But do I believe that ghouls, zombies, witches (the Willow the Buffy-friend witches, not those tree-hugging wiccan witches) exist? No, I don't. To me, there is nothing occultish about Halloween. I believe that Halloween has completely lost its original meaning and now is just an excuse to dress up in scary costumes and go to parties and pretend to have fun like cakewalk and bobbing for apples. Oooh! Someone stop me from walking the cake!

But I must follow Paul, not only because he's in the Bible and therefore kinda important, but more importantly because he's right. He's always right! (Kinda annoys me.) But anyway, if I go to a Halloween party while outwardly confessing my Christianity and a fellow Christian sees me and he thinks to himself, "Hmmm... Nate is dressed up as a Transformer, then it's ok for me too!" even though he doesn't really feel right about it, then umm... I lost my train of thought. Hopefully you got my point though. Just because I feel ok about it, is no excuse for me to hold a Thanksgiving parade about that idea. Knowledge should build up, not puff up.

Maybe for you, it's something different. Maybe it's eating pig blood jelly. Maybe it's playing Mah-jongg. Maybe it's even something as harmless as drinking. Whatever it is, if it causes your brothers and sisters in Christ to sin, causes them to do something that makes them feel guilty, then you should stop doing it in front of those Christians. Satan is already pretty good at causing people to sin, he doesn't need your help.

Mothers playing videogames

Peter Moore, the VP of the Xbox360 Game Division, said that even moms would be playing the Xbox360. So one journalist decided to put that quote to the test. A really interesting article and good views on games from another perspective.

Game: Four second frenzy

This game is just like Warioware. I dunno if you ever played it on GBA or DS. Basically it's a bunch of minigames lasting 4 seconds each. You only have to use the direction keys and space bar. Each game is different. Check it out, very fun and very addicting.

Email Psychology

For those interested in "pop" psychology, here's an article about what the state of your inbox has to say about you and your parentage. Bon apetit!

The Halloween spirit

Someone asked me, "is it true we are not supposed to celebratei it". Ok, bad grammar and spelling aside, this is a very interesting question. I'm not some sort of divine authority on Christian law, this is just one inconsequential leaf of an opinion in the vast rushing river of Christian morality. However, what I can do is give you the tools to make your own decision.

If you read my blog earlier this week, you are pretty much know all you need to know about Halloween. Yes, the origin of Halloween lies in a pagan ritual, a ritual that pre-Church was not very Satan-y or demonic. It simply marked the end of the harvest year, and the beginning of winter. Only later, did other people add their customs and symbolism and relevance onto this holiday. The Church, in an effort to sway and control the chaotic times during the early centuries, created a holy day out of the festival, while at the same time demonizing the pagan ritual. Unfortunately, they undersestimated the seductive call of evil, and now we remember more the ghosts and goblins and witches instead of the saints and angels and halos. But the bulk of this tradition, and even the name itself, Halloween (or Hallow's Evening) is pretty much a Catholic (read: Christian) invention. So, on one hand Halloween is good.

However distorted it has become, the popular culture portrays Halloween as the scary month. More horror movies open during the month of October than any other time. There are all those haunted houses and scary mazes, which really, are not very scary at all. It's more shock-surprise than anything, with people just jumping out at odd times to scare you. That's not true horror. True horror is discovering that you forgot to pay your taxes and it's April 16th! But anyway, Halloween has been changed to a time when it's easier to believe in demons and ghouls and undead. So that makes Halloween a bad thing (in Christian eyes).

But, kids get candy! For Free! Plus there's lots of parties going on around that time. So that's good!

But then there's also those rumors and stories about how some deranged guy puts razor blades in apples and gives them to kids. Not to mention the serial killers who come out on Halloween. That's also very bad.

Many Christian circles have taken to changing Halloween to Harvest Party. What's different about it? Well, let's see... usually Churches sponsor "Harvest Night" and they have parties held on on Church Grounds. People dress up in costumes, and they play little mini-carnival-like games, as well as bobbing for apples. Oh, and instead of Jack-o-Lanterns of scary faces, they're usually smiling or some other similarly happy theme. So... yeah... not too much difference. I guess, it's just a way for Churches to get in the act. Does a name change really make it ok?

When I first thought about Halloween, I thought it was funny that many Christians decry Halloween because of its satanic significance, and yet at the same time complain when Christmas becomes commercialized and marginalized. I was thikning about this for a long while, but it kinda makes sense. In their world-view, all holidays and festivals have significance and meaning, and they don't want to see any holiday lose its meaning. So, while Halloween has an evil significance, Christmas has a good significance. At least they get points for consistency. However, realistically, both holidays have pretty much lost their religious contexts. Both holidays have been commercialized. Most people don't even know the history of Halloween, and sadly the history of Christmas. When I was a kid, my parents let me go trick-or-treating. They didn't think that taking part of Halloween was "embracing" it. They viewed it as a fun past time that us kids enjoyed. And really, that's all Halloween is now.... an excuse for kids to dress up as their favorite hero(ine) and get lots of candy and then go on a sugar-high the next day.

Ultimately, it's up to the individual family to decide whether to do Halloween or not, and it's up to the same familial unit to uphold the religious significance of Christmas or not. Just because people sing Christmas carols and attend the Nativity Mass, that doesn't make them a born-again Christian who's going to Heaven when they die. So it is with people who dress up as witches or ghosts and go trick-or-treating, they're not going to Hell because of that. And changing the name from Halloween to Harvest yet still have all the same contraptions of Halloween is just plain dumb. In my eyes. It's what's in your heart and mind that counts.

Paper Art

This is incredible. This guy makes really detailed paper sculptures. Not only that, but he uses the paper and sculpture as symobls for stuff. Some of his stuff is incredibly intricate.