40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes

Hat tip to ysmarko for the video and the transcript, to which I only added the first bit. The video below is inspirational speeches from 40 different movies, all edited together into one two-minute speech. See how many you can recognize! Transcript is below.



Shame on you. This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you’re going to let it be the worst. And I guarantee a week won’t go by in your life you won’t regret walking out, letting them get the best of you. Well, I’m not going home. We’ve come too far! And I’m going to stay right here and fight for this lost cause. A day may come when the courage of men fails… but it is not THIS day. The line must be drawn HERE. This far, no further! I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. You’re going to work harder than you ever worked before. But that’s fine, we’ll just get tougher with it! If a person grits his teeth and shows real determination, failure is not an option. That’s how winning is done! Believe me when I say we can break this army here, and win just one for the Gipper. But I say to you what every warrior has known since the beginning of time: you’ve got to get mad. I mean plum mad dog mean. If you would be free men, then you must fight to fulfill that promise! Let us cut out their living guts one inch at a time, and they will know what we can do! Let no man forget how menacing we are. We are lions! You’re like a big bear, man! This is YOUR time! Seize the day, never surrender, victory or death… that’s the Chicago Way! Who’s with me? Clap! Clap! Don’t let Tink die! Clap! Alright! Let’s fly! And gentlemen in England now abed shall know my name is the Lord when I tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our Independence Day!

A Red, White and Blue Christmas

The White House Website is featuring the ornaments sent in by all 50 states to adorn the 2008 White House Christmas Tree. The link above will take you to the list by state, where you can click through to view each state's contribution. I particularly like the eagle ornament sent in from Wisconsin's 8th district.

Hat tip Rightyblog.

The Bible or The Bard?

The Bible or The Bard? Score: 80% (8 out of 10)

Twitter

Just in case anyone wants to follow me on twitter, I'm wannabenewsboy on there.

UPDATE: You can now see my latest tweets on the sidebar.

Fri... er, Saturday Funny

Cross posted from According to Coop (my political/current events blog), with a tip of the hat to marko, here's a mashup of Home Alone and I Am Legend. If you remember the former and have seen the latter, you may understand the humor I found in this.

Side note: This marks post number 75 for While Rome Burns. 100, here we come!

Like bits of data on the Internet...

...these are the posts of our blogs.

I hesitated to post on the dispute between Richard Abanes and Ken Silva, but as Pastor Silva's site, Apprising.org, appears to be offline at this hour, I decided now is as good a time as any. I was going to post a brief rundown of what has brought us to this point, but I decided that if you're reading this post, you probably know what's going on by now, and if not, do a little poking around, I'm sure you'll get caught up pretty quickly.

OK, here goes...

I have a lot of issues with Ken Silva and the things he posts at Apprising Ministries. To be brutally honest, it's hard for me to get through even one of his articles/missives, what for his liberal use of name calling (heretical this, neo-liberal that, ecumenical church of deceit, Roshi, Yogi, Guru, etc. etc. etc...). However, I read the original article in question (link is to Google cache copy), and I can certainly see where Richard Abanes would see that he was being libeled by Ken Silva. Why he has chosen to wait this long to bring up the issue, I do not know, and I do not pretend to know the motives of Pastor Silva or Rev. Abanes. Just wanted to make that clear.

My take? Both of them went too far. In spite of the fact that Richard Abanes felt that talking to Ken Silva directly would have been fruitless (and based on exchanges I've seen online between Ken and others, I'd say Richard is probably right about that), he should have at least tried to resolve the issue with Ken directly. He has also, I feel, added some unnecessary fuel to the fire over the last few days.

Now, lest you think I am letting Ken off the hook... Ken Silva has, in my assessment, blown this whole thing completely out of proportion. This is one article among THOUSANDS on his site. Ken had the chance to be the bigger person and simply pull the article from his site, no harm no foul. Instead, he posted the message from iPower (his hosting company) for all to see, and stoked the fires that soon spread across the blogosphere. Not to mention, he violated copyright laws by posting an email from Richard Abanes that had a clear copyright notice at the bottom. Furthermore, I find it hard to believe that Ken had no form of recourse with iPower. He could have called them, explained his side of the story, and discussed possible solutions to this problem. He could have gotten in touch with Abanes directly and resolved this, at which point Abanes could have redacted his complaint to iPower. It's possible Ken could have sought some sort of arbitration with iPower to prevent the deletion of his site.

Long story short, this whole thing has gone too far. While I disagree with almost everything Ken Silva has posted at apprising.org, it didn't need to come to this.

That's my opinion. That and $1.50 will get you a copy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel tomorrow morning.

Church on the Move! No, seriously...

Hat tip to ysmarko.

Pastor's Draft

With a tip of the hat to my old friend and former coworker Danny Clayton, I present you LarkNews.com's "Pastor's Draft," a humorous spin on the NFL draft. Enjoy!

How fast can YOU name all 50 states?

In 2m 57s

Click here to Play

[h/t ysmarko]

Trees, Tyson, and Tony Jones: SoL Strikes Again

Ingrid must have been bored today, or something. Her latest post rails against Tony Jones' new book The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier. The first thing that strikes me about her post, however, is that she's taking someone else's word for it (namely, that of Lighthouse Trails Research on their From the Lighthouse blog). But wait, it gets better.

First, how does she know that the trees pictured at the top of her post were used for Tony's book? Then, she drags Brian McLaren into the fray, simply because he is credited with giving Jones the idea for this book. Then, she somehow twists what he has to say into a message about the rights of chickens, and how we need to be defending them. Uh, what?

I can't write any more about this. I just can't. Go read it for yourself, but I warn you; Ingrid has really dialed up the rhetoric on this one.

Burger of DOOM!

Please, if you have any kind of heart trouble, DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK! Don't say I didn't warn you.

H/T: Air1 Radio

About The Author

I was inspired to write this when I noticed that the writers of CRN.info have a "Who We Are" page, including subpages for each contributor.

Dan Cooper, or "Coop" as he is known to his friends, resides in the Milwaukee, WI area, sharing an apartment with his widowed mother and two spoiled cats. He is an aspiring chef and baker, and enjoys cooking for family, close friends, friends in general, and gatherings of all sizes. He is a member of Victory International Fellowship, an Assemblies of God church, in Brookfield, WI, where he sings in the choir and on the worship team, giving him an outlet for his musical talents. He also serves as a volunteer youth sponsor, giving him an outlet to be the big kid his friends (and students) know him to be. He is an avid reader, an occasional writer, a karaoke junkie, and a fitness enthusiast working on guru status.

I have a new fitness goal...

It is to be able to do this to a frying pan.

HT: ysmarko

As the Deer... So I Long

Great post by nakedpastor over at his blog today, which I have also (officially) added to my blogroll. I've been reading his blog ever since his dustup with Slice, but never put it in the sidebar. Anyway, go read.

Big Mac's Birthday and Self Control

Great post by Matt B over at CRN.Info, one that is definitely worth reading. There is a lot of talk about self control in the church today, but most of it focuses on sex and alcohol. Self control can be applied to so much more, which is what Matt explores in this article.