So its like it is 1991 all over again. U.S. soldiers are in desert gear about to invade Iraq. Patriot missle batteries are all around them. We seem to see Colin Powell on the television alot. And there’s a new Nirvana song on the radio (“You Know You’re Right”) I feel like I’m back in high school again.
What are they gonna call this pending war? Gulf War II? Do they even have a name for the Afghanistan War? Somehow “The War on Terror” seems less enduring.
If 1991’s war was about oil, today’s war is about staying safe. And the funny thing is we had more international support when it was about oil. Now no one seems to think Iraq is a threat to anybody. At least not enough to take Iraq out militarily. “Oh the humanity!” they scream from their artdeco apartments. The thing is, I am pretty sure these peace activitists are pro-peace because its the cool trendy thing to do, not because they understand the potential threat or anything. Let them exprience ground zero at NYC in real time on September 11th. Then ask them again if Saddam is a threat. Anybody who even has a hint of threatening behavior needs to be dealt with. Inspections aren’t working. Running around like Inspector Clouseau is about as effective as one of those “wild goosechases” Waylon Jennings always spoke about in the Dukes of Hazzard.
Part of me wants to get UN approval for it. Then the other part says we don’t need UN approval because some nations will never experience the real threat we experience. We’ll never be able to convince France of the threat Saddam poses to us.

ODD – Oppositional Defiant Disorder. CBS News reported on it tonight. The subject of the story, 8 year old Christopher, was labeled as ODD. What the news report showed was a kid in need of a good spanking. The father of Christopher was not shown. Just the mother wrestling with Christopher telling him not to do something….asking him to “Take a minute.” I think if there was a strong father figure around to dish out corporal punishment, Christopher wouldn’t be classified as “ODD.” Christopher knew exactly what he had. And to him it meant he could act up and blame it on his disorder. Unfortunately the mother was more concerned about classifying her son’s supposed disorder, rather than actually being a good parent.
I suspect Christopher may have been acting out for the CBS camera crew. Biting his mother. General just acting bad….
I realize that I’m basing my opinion on a 4 minute news report. Yet sometimes I think we are too quick to classify children with an alphabetical soup of psychological disorders. Instead we need to teach parents how to do their job.

Mark your calendars. War could start next Thursday. I would hate for you to plan a picnic knowing that a war would be starting. And sometimes I wonder how good are we at keeping secrets. When the British tabloid “The Sun” knows when war will start.
And Bush told Chirac ‘We will not forgive and we will not forget.” in regards to the threatened veto of the UN referendum authorizing force against Iraq.
So I’m anxious about this Iraq situation. How will it affect me? How will it affect America? Are we going to see more terrorism on our soil? Its something I can’t control, yet I feel it is important enough to share my fear of dread with you. Then I think of the lilies (Luke 12:27-28) and remember everything’s gonna be alright.
So I discovered Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” the other day on where else…Lightning 100. What a great song. Its too bad today’s generation has no sense of Dylan’s genius in songwriting….unless of course the Dixie Chicks decide to cover one of his tunes.
I’m compiling a list of Wonder Years quotes. I hope to make a whole page containing the quotes on this site. The first one comes from the episode titled “Private Butthead.” Don’t let the episode title fool you. Its got a great quote at the end:

“Love is never simple. Not for fathers and sons. We spend our lives full of hope and expectations. And most of the time we are bound to fail. But that afternoon as I watched my father sheltering his son against a future that was so unsure, all I knew was they didn�t want to let each other down anymore.”

It wasn’t the acting that made that a great series. Dana McKeller (Winnie) couldn’t act. And to some extent neither could Fred Savage. It was the writing that made the series exceptional.
And today is Mardi Gras. I remember the one and only time I celebrated Mardi Gras was in my 9th grade French class. We had some kinda bead party. It was pretty lame as I remember it. Our teacher seemed to be the only one excited about it. Methinks she had never celebrated it before at a “real party” in New Orleans…
Anyways I had a friend from college who lived near Biloxi, Mississippi. She said all along the gulf coast, each city has their own Mardi Gras celebration. Typically Biloxi’s celebration is much more tame compared to New Orleans.
Mardi Gras…what a strange celebration. Everyone is sinning right up until midnight and the everyone all of a sudden gets religion in their life or something. I guess it’s that type of mindset. Living unholy lives when nobody is looking, and then during a 40 day part of the year, giving up chocolate or something….

So I saw “Changing Lanes” last night. I was expecting an exciting movie with a big car chase at the end. Instead I got a 98 minute movie which tried to judge the moral compass of the average American. Two guys get mad at each other. Both do over the top things trying to outdo each other. Erasing someone’s credit. Sabotaging someone’s tire on their car. In the end they decide to be friends and move on. Whoops! Did I reveal the plotline of the movie? My bad.
So this whole Michael Jackson thing is just plain weird. I watched the specials. I found out he actually planted that tabloid story of him sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber. He had one of workers call up a tabloid and give them a picture of him in the hyperbaric chamber. News commentators speculated that it was his attempt to be edgy. But it came out as being just plain weird.
Then there was the accident on the set of the Pepsi commerical. You remember that one? The one where his hair caught on fire? Michael acted as though he was in pain, yet he was able to pick up his glove and wear it out the ambulance. One of the most surreal scenes was of him waving to the cameras and fans as he was being lifted out of the ambulance on his way to the hospital. Strange indeed. Michael Jackson may well be the new Howard Hughes.

Everybody is asking Al Roker about the blizzard that is hitting points north of here. Nevermind that Al doesn’t have a meteorological degree. He just reads telepromptors. Faux weathermen. That’s all we need. Willard did it for years and no one said anything.
32 years working at McDonald’s, and she hasn’t had a Big Mac.
I have a feeling many of these war protestors are just there because it is the cool thing to do. Not because they have some kind of stake in this. Not because they’ve actually visited Iraq or because they had a relative killed in the war. Peace rallies are trendy, hip, the “in” thing to do. Reliving/reviving the 60s?

“That song makes us think that from our orbital vantage point we observe an Earth without borders full of peace, beauty and magnificence, and we pray that humanity as a whole can imagine a borderless world as we see it and strive to live as one at peace.”
– Columbia Shuttle Pilot Willie McCool, after his team was awakened Jan. 30, 2003, by the John Lennon song, “Imagine” (Link)

They were playing “Imagine” on Lighting 100 the other day. Then they played that radio transmission from Columbia. Sorta erie in a way. Maybe the shuttle crew knew much more than what they were letting on.
Then again “Imagine” leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe its that line about “No religion too…”

“Heaven can wait
We’re only watching the skies
Hoping for the best
But expecting the worst
Are you going drop the bomb or not?”
–Alphaville “Forever Young”

And that what it’s feeling like these days. Are we going to drop the bomb or not? Are they going to drop the bomb? Radioactive dirty bomb? Who knows? It’s a different world that what we grew up in….
I’m glad we already know how to freak out if the orange alert turns to red. These directives on how to panic have been really helpful. And they said this war was all about oil. Yep. I panic over gas prices rising.

As I watched the news coverage of the Columbia disaster, I managed to hear 2 prank calls by Howard Stern’s fans. The first one came into MSNBC by someone who claimed “they shot down the space shuttle because Howard Stern was onboard.”
The second prank call came into CBS News with Dan Rather anchoring the coverage. The caller claimed to have debris from the space shuttle. He said “it looks like one of Baba Booey’s teeth.” Dan continued to ask the caller questions apparently oblivious to what was happening. Before they cut the caller off, he called Dan an idiot.
It was then that Dan’s co-anchor, Russ Mitchell, informed him it was a prank call. Dan then said “Well, I am an idiot, but that’s beside the point.”
My initual reaction to this was surprise that a prank caller was able to get through to a big television network and that it was broadcasted live. My secondary reaction was disgust that someone would be making light of an immediate tragedy.
Who’s to blame in all this? Stern’s fans? The networks themselves for not verifying callers? Probably both.
Howard Stern is there to offend. He’s there to push buttons. If I get offended, then he’s served his self-described purpose.
Then again, the networks need to check out these things. Or at least go to a short delay so they do not broadcast something they shouldn’t have. MSNBC went to a 7 second delay during the Miami postal truck hijack.
News Anchors made the difference during the Columbia Disaster.

The following story was posted on the Washington Post’s website at 8:28AM EST on February 1, 2003. I personally saw it. It was up for several hours (although not accessible from the main page).
I am posting this not to make light of the disaster, but to point out that sometimes newspaper writers are so anxious to write up stories, sometimes they write them BEFORE they occur.

By Marcia Dunn
AP Aerospace Writer
Saturday, February 1, 2003; 8:28 AM
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. With security tighter than usual, space shuttle Columbia streaked toward a Florida touchdown Saturday to end a successful 16-day scientific research mission that included the first Israeli astronaut.
The early morning fog burned off as the sun rose, and Mission Control gave the seven astronauts the go-ahead to come home on time. “I guess you’ve been wondering, but you are ‘go’ for the deorbit burn,” Mission Control radioed at practically the last minute.
Ilan Ramon, a colonel in Israel’s air force and former fighter pilot, became the first man from his country to fly in space, and his presence resulted in an increase in security, not only for Columbia’s Jan. 16 launch, but also for its landing. Space agency officials feared his presence might make the shuttle more of a terrorist target.
“We’ve taken all reasonable measures, and all of our landings so far since 9-11 have gone perfectly,” said Lt. Col. Michael Rein, an Air Force spokesman.
Columbia’s crew Ramon and six Americans completed all of their 80-plus experiments in orbit. They studied ant, bee and spider behavior in weightlessness as well as changes in flames and flower scents, and took measurements of atmospheric dust with a pair of Israeli cameras.
The 13 lab rats on board part of a brain and heart study had to face the guillotine following the flight so researchers could see up-close the effects of so much time in weightlessness. The insects and other animals had a brighter, longer future: the student experimenters were going to get them back and many of the youngsters planned to keep them, almost like pets.
All of the scientific objectives were accomplished during the round-the-clock laboratory mission, and some of the work may be continued aboard the international space station, researchers said. The only problem of note was a pair of malfunctioning dehumidifiers, which temporarily raised temperatures inside the laboratory to the low 80s, 10 degrees higher than desired.
Some of Columbia’s crew members didn’t want their time in space to end.
“Do we really have to come back?” astronaut David Brown jokingly asked Mission Control before the ride home.
NASA’s next shuttle flight, a space station construction mission, is scheduled for March. The next time Columbia flies will be in November, when it carries into orbit educator-astronaut Barbara Morgan, who was the backup for Challenger crew member Christa McAuliffe in 1986.

That lesser known Moby song “We Are All Made of Stars” somehow takes on a different meaning today than it did when it first came out.
The sensationalism that has gone along with this disaster is sorta sickening. All the major networks already have slick computer generated Columbia logos just 24 hours after the disaster. Everyone is converging on Nacogdoches, Texas, trying to point a camera at a burnt piece of space debris, roped off like a crime scene. As humans we need tangible substance to try to put meaning to a disaster. We need to see the debris for some mobid reason.
Then there are those sickos that are trying to make money on Ebay by putting up their NASA souvenirs on Ebay for the highest bidder. We saw the same thing with the WTC.
So it will be interesting to see if NASA can figure out what went wrong based on amature video and a bunch of burnt space debris. It is always amazing to me how they are able to piece together scenerios based and such little information.
I feel terrible for the families of the astronauts. It is a terrible tragedy for them. I hope and pray that they will be able to find peace and comfort.

This is different. In 1986 we were all innocent, thinking we were invincible. Now we know things like this could happen. You always take a risk when you try to do things humans aren’t supposed to do.
Inevitable comparisons will be made to Challenger. There will be conspiracy theorists who will want to believe it was terrorist related. Terrorists aren’t that sophisticated. They couldn’t plant a bomb or something on board which would automatically blow up on re-entry. More likely they would have tried something on lift-off rather than re-entry.
What will this mean to the space program? We’ll have to continue to provide re-supply missions to the space station….or find a way to get them down.
It will definitely mean a setback for the American people. The economy is terrible, terrorism is a real threat….and now this.
Keep praying for America.