Happy May Day Everyone

But what is May Day actually other than the date of May 1?

Well, for one thing, it's an international distress call whether from ship, shore, or air. If you check the following website, you'll find that it is more than one thing.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/mayday.html

As an introduction to the above site, I quote the following:

"May 1st, often called May Day, just might have more holidays than any other day of the year. It's a celebration of Spring. It's a day of political protests. It's a neopagan festival, a saint's feast day, and a day for organized labor. In many countries, it is a national holiday."

There is much more info available on the site itself.

I kind of like the celebration of Spring myself. If my information is correct, it is hardly Spring in the SF Bay Area today, with heavy rains forecast. Sure hope it doesn't interfere with my Giants game tonight. Today is a typical May day here in the desert. 87 degrees F right now with slight overcast and just enough breeze to make the heat bearable.

So, whatever you're doing this day, have a great weekend and keep safe including staying away from piggies.= -;)

CHRISTIAN THOUGHT FOR THE DAY(Courtesy of Our Daily Bread)Like a compass, the Bible always points us in the right direction

How Private Is Your Business?

I have just finished a novel by Jeffery Deaver, one of my favorite authors. For those of you familiar with Deaver, it's a Lincoln Rhyme novel named Broken Window. I don't want to say too much here about the content for fear of spoiling it. That said, the "environment" of the novel is a world-wide information service company--the huge data miner Strategic Systems Datacorp. Their files contain everything about everyone, including you and me (?).

While the description of the extent of the contents of these files is likely to be premature, I believe it does portend what may come in the future. This information, if not used improperly is pretty benign, but who's to say it will always be used properly. See Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or George Orwell's 1984.

Do you know that every time you use your supermarket club card that the data of exactly what you purchased is transferred to a data bank? The drugs you buy at the pharmacy on your Visa card? Do you know that everything you buy at Costco is memorized forever? Your membership at the health club, the country club, Borders, the websites you visit.....they're all in a databank. Oh, don't forget the appliance warranty cards you fill out. They have lots of private information on them. Your warranty doesn't need submission of the form anyway.

Ok, so be careful out there. If you don't keep an eye on your identity, there are people out there who will.

CHRISTIAN THOUGHT FOR THE DAY(Courtesy of Our Daily Bread)Those who lay up treasures in heaven are the richest people on earth

PSA ?

No, that doesn't stand for Pacific Southwest Airlines. Remember them? If so, you're as old as I am. It was a great local airline which ended up with others as US Airways. Still a great local airline? Not so much.

PSA stands for Prostate Specific Antigen, which measures the amount of some sort of agent generated by the prostate gland and can, but not necessarily, the presence of cancer cells. There have been a number of medical reports recently issued which lead one to believe that the screening is a waste of time and money. The theory is that receiving a PSA reading over a certain number will cause too many men to go seek useless treatments because, "you'll die of something else before you will of prostate cancer", and you'll diminish your quality of life by seeking treatment especially that of radical surgery.

Let me tell you something. Screenings can save your life. Blaming cancer screening for doing more harm than good is targeting the wrong villain. It's not the screening process itself, it's the failure to identify which cancers are realtively bgenigh and which are aggresive and deadly. Doctors who fail sufficiently to explain the difference between dangerous and non-dangerous tumors are the problem.

So, go and do the right thing. If your'e 50 or more, make sure you get an anuual degital exam as well as the simple PSA blood test. My treatment, brachytherapy or radioactive seed implementation is brought my PS down from 6.3 to 3.5, to 2.6, and now down to 1.5 all in 9 months. I believe it will cotinue to go down for at least another 6 months or so. My treatment didn't affect my quality of life whatsoever.

CHRISTIAN THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
(Courtesy of Our Daily Bread)

As God adds years to your life, ask Him to add life to your years.

Blessings, Desert Dave

PSA ?

Scooter is So Sad

Poor little guy, his "Mommy" is at a Ladies golf getaway since yesterday noon, and won't return until late tomorrow. He only ate 1/2 of his breakfast yesterday, (he sometimes does that, saving some of it for later), but he has neither drunk water or eaten anything since.

Although he's happy to take a walk and is active as usual, once home he just lies in his crate and looks at me with those enormous brown eyes. I miss his "Mommy" also, but I know where she is, why she isn't her and when she'll be back. Scooter doesn't know squat other than she's not here. On top of that, I'm going to be golfing this afternoon and going out to dinner after that.

How nice it is for we humans to know that we can count on God in our lives, always there, always looking out for us, always loving us, and always knowing that he is going to return to earth to reunite with true Christians everywhere.

CHRISTIAN THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
(Courtesy of Our Daily Bread)

Christlike hospitality is an open heart and an open home


Blessings, Desert Dave

American Tea Parties

When I started this endeavor, I pledged (to myself) that I would eschew politics, even though I am a strong believer in both partisan and non-partisan politics. However, I feel compelled to write something about the April 15th demonstrations which have obscenely been called "tea bagging" by it's opponents. If you're not familiar with the term, "google" it.

I have posted two links below and have used the blogspot directions for making them clickable, but if they don't turn out that way, please just highlight them, copy, and paste into your browser address bar. The first link shows Jeaneane Garofolo on Keith Olberman's program. She states in strong terms that anyone who participated in the protests was a RACIST, and that the only reason they were there was because the hated a black man being in the White House. If you do any search at all, you will find many, many blogs that make the same observation.

The second link features a piece from Town Hall which puts my "spin" on it which is that this was not anti-Obama, it was for his current policies. This was not a Republican program, it was not a Democratic program, it was not a Fox News program except in the context that FN was the only network interested in reporting on it. Good grief, since when did public protest become anti-American. We've put up for years with public hostility towards parties, people and policies. Is it because we now are supposed to have "change"? I believe that both parties and both administrations are equally guilty for causing our current crisis.

Anyway, that's my rant for the day. I really hope that some of you out there will share your opinions on this topic.

http://townhall.com/Columnists/SabrinaLSchaeffer/2009/04/20/tea_parties_whats_next

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/04/16/garofalo-outdoes-herself-tea-parties-all-about-white-power-says-d-lister/comment-page-1/#comments

Rediscovering God In America

Last night, Tuesday, was a weekly home small group Bible study. We were privileged to see the Newt & Callista Gingrich DVD, "Rediscovering God in America". It is a powerful film in that it quotes the founders of our country and shows the various monuments that reference our nation's founding under God.

I don't know about you, but I am constantly bombarded with comments that our founders were really not religious and they had left England in order to escape religion, etc. The quotations of our founding fathers puts that where it belongs....in the garbage bag. The fact is that this nation has turned away from it's beginnings and has turned more and more towards secularism. God is not allowed in our public buildings, schools or any government facility, not even the Ten Commandments in a courtroom.

This film should be of interest to anyone, religious or secular. It portrays our history. Details on how to obtain may be seen at the following website:

rediscoveringgodinamericamovie.com

Sorry I can't seem to make the above a clickable link, but I tried.