Think This // After Hours

I am sick and tired of hearing the phrase Happy Holiday at this time of the year. When greeted this way, I always respond Merry Christmas to you too! It is December 25th after all, which is CHRISTMAS, nothing else, no other holiday but Christmas.

Why some people are so afraid of Christmas? Is being politically correct so important that they throw out 2000 years of history and tradition? Who are they trying “not to offend” by renaming December 25 to “Holiday” from Christmas?

Who are they?

I have yet to meet a person of another religion who was offended because Christians celebrate / or call Christmas CHRISTMAS. Have you?

I had lunch with a friend yesterday who is Jewish. He said something like ”I wish people would bring back Christ in to Christmas, because it is Christmas, not a generic holiday.” He wants for Christians to keep their Christmas tradition so that he can learn more and be reminded what Christmas really stands for to offset all the commercial and materialistic messages we hear this time of the year from all around us.

I like what Stuart Shepard of CitizenLink.com did in this video. He sends a message to all the retailers who are afraid to call December 25 Christmas. They do not want to offend their shoppers by using the word Christmas but they look ridiculous when trying to convince their buyers to buy their Christmas Trees, Christmas Lights, Christmas Gifts, Christmas Cards - who do you think will buy that stuff? People who celebrate Christmas or people who are offended by the word Christmas?

Watch the video, it is really good:

Merry Christmas!

I love my iPod. I listen to it on the bus or on my bike as I commute to work. I listen to it in bed to help me fall asleep. Sometimes, I hook it up to our stereo and listen to it while the family eats dinner. I also love iTunes. As first, I didn’t understand why I needed another specific jukebox-style piece of software to manage music. However, I really like the interface. You can add any column you want, you can easily change MP3 tags, even on a mass scale, and the ability to keep the music on your computer in synchronization with your iPod is an asset.I’m a big fan of the podcasts as well. I’ve tried a few of the “song of the day” podcasts out there and enjoyed them. However, I found the music they played to often be obsure and by unsigned acts that I had a hard time finding elsewhere, so I abandoned those podcasts. I currently listen to:

• Grammar Girl (http://grammar.qdnow.com/)
• Mr. Manners (http://manners.qdnow.com/)
• Frank Deford (Sports commentator on NPR)

What I really love are the little details that separate the iPod and iTunes from other music players that I have tried. Being a numbers junkie, I love to sort the list by the number of times I’ve played various songs, just to see what my listening habits are. I like that it tracks that. I can also sort by the number of times I’ve skipped a song to see if the song is no longer worthy of my collection. I also really dig the ratings as I can create smart playlists based on those ratings.

Speaking of smart playlists, that’s possibly my most favorite feature of the iPod and iTunes. Beyond just plain playlists of songs, smart playlists allow you to create a playlist with rules that filter which songs you hear. There’s even a site, SmartPlaylists.com, where people share ideas about smart playlists they’ve created.

Currently, I have the following smart playlists created in my iTunes and iPod:

• “Lost Friends” - this randomly plays anything with a play count of less than 1. This helps me find stuff in my 4,000-song collection that I haven’t been listening to
• “Unrated” - this plays anything without a rating. This allows me to listen to songs and rate them as I listen to them. I made this one such that the songs with the lowest playcount are played first, so it’s like a less-random version of “Lost Friends”.
• “4-Star Random” and “5-Star Random” - These play anything I’ve rated 4 and 5 stars, respectively, at random. This is when I want to really listen to the best stuff in my collection.
• “Children’s Random” - Since I’ve labeled all my kids’ music with an artist of “Childrens”, I created this playlist to play those songs at random.
• “Sleepy - Random” - This is one I listen to when I’m trying to fall asleep. I created a regular playlist called “Sleepy” where I’ve put some of the more mellow songs in my collection. Since I haven’t found a way to may a regular playlist always set to play songs at random, I created the smart playlist to pick songs from the first playlist and play them randomly.

Marek’s invited me to blahhhg on his blog. I have no idea what to really write about, so I think I’ll make my entries called “This I Love…” which will be similar to the NPR series “This I Believe…“. Instead of writing about a personal belief (which Marek has cornered anyway…*wink*) I’ll write about stuff that impresses me or stuff I just enjoy. That said…

I love Wikipedia. I love the concept where everyone chips in with information to build up a fantastic encyclopedia. Yep, I know it’s not always accurrate or up to date. Still, it came in handy when my daughter, Gillie, had to research her second-grade project on crickets last week. As for being out of date, well I love the fact that I was able to update my own entry on Wikipedia (which someone else must have started, because it certainly was not me).

Get this — they even have the tall WITI TV tower by my house listed in Wikipedia. If it were not for that, I would not have known that it was briefly the tallest free-standing tower in the world.

Lastly, as I’ve become more diet- and nutrition-conscious, I appreciated how balanced their entry on milk is. There’s a section on the health “benefits” but then an even bigger section on the detriments and controversies. It’s not a huge article, but it’s pretty well-written and talks about how a good portion of the milk in the U.S. would be illegal to sell in Europe or Canada because of pus or rBGH content. An interesting fact I learned from the site is that skim milk is 0.1% fat but is allowed to be called “fat free” according to USDA guidelines. That’s all for now…

[Marek: You can read more about Scott on his website at Yanoff.org.]

I am sick and tired to hear some much about the evil man who went on the shooting rage at Virginia Tech. Why is media all over showing his moronic video and pictures? They are giving him exactly what he wanted - a platform to spread his venom. His video does not show how is really was during when he did the shooting. This video on the news may actually serve as some sort of sick “excuse” of why he did that. I would not be even surprised to find some people out there who feel sorry for him, and “understand his pain.” This is sick and twisted.

Enough already!

Why not focus on the families whose lives where shattered by his evil act? Why not appeal to the public to show support for them?