Think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things.

He drew a circle that shut me out-- heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: we drew a circle that took him in.

The most self-destructive impulse that afflicts young men is the desire to be honest with young women.

Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.

Some people pay a compliment as if they expected a receipt.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

Righteousness in the Bible is not a norm-prescribing ethics, but faithfulness to a relationship. The righteous person is loyal to the claims of all personal relationships.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky.

Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and for deeds left undone.

God desires love because it leads to intimate relationships, Satan desires tolerance because it leads to superficial relationships.

Absence makes the heart go wander.

Man is a social animal who dislikes his fellow beings.

O to be up above With the saints that we love. It will be such a glory, But to be down below With the saints that we know. That's a whole other story.

Skunked at Love? Try These Lines To Woo Your Favorite Valentines by Rachel Emma Silverman Ah, Valentine's Day - the jour d'amour. And who better represents romance than that Gallic gallant himself, Pepe Le Pew? Monsieur Le Pew, a dapper skunk, arrived on the big screen in January 1945 in the Warner Bros. cartoon "Odor-able Kitty." His creator was animator Chuck Jones, who also dreamed up Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. An early Pepe film, "For Scent-imental Reasons," won the 1949 Academy Award for best animated short. Since then, Pepe has starred in almost 20 cartoons, including "Little Beau Pepe" and "Past Parfumance." Throughout his oeuvre, the story's the same: A desperate skunk chases after a series of skunk-striped cats - "zee king-sized belle femme skunk fatales" Penelope, Fifi, Fabrette and Felice - and woos them vigorously in Franglais. Sadly, his ardor can't mask his odor, rendering his pursuit futile. Still, Pepe's been at it for over 50 years. This Sunday, why not try some of his bons mots and let those pheromones fly. Just remember to wash with scented soap first. ICEBREAKERS "Permit me to introduce myself. I am Pepe Le Pew, your lover." SWEET NOTHINGS "You are my peanut, I am your brittle!" "Ah, my leetle much ado about somezing. [kiss, kiss] Ah, my leetle lost labor's love." "Where are you, my leetle gumbo of chicken? Your French fried shrimp is sizzling for you." "You may call me Streetcar, because of my desire for you!" "Where are you, my leetle objet d'art? I am going to collect you!" SELF-AFFIRMATION "You know, eet eez possible to be too attractive!" [Pepe declared this as he was being chased by an amorous cat.] "You know, most men would get discouraged about now. ... Fortunately for you, I am not most men." "Ah, my darling, I love you. Where have I been all your life?" LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD "I'll tell you what: You stop resisting me, and I'll stop resisting you." "If you have not tried eet, do not knock eet!" "You are zee corned beef to me, I am zee cab-baj to you. Zee cab-baj do not run away from zee corned beef!" DEEP THOUGHTS "One nice thing eez, the game of love eez never called on account of darkness." "Sometimes I ask myself, `Eez it really worth eet?' And I answer myself, `Yes!'" (WSJ 12-Feb-1999)

Around the corner I have a friend In this great city that has no end, Yet the days go by and weeks rush on, And before I know it, a year is gone And I never see my old friend's face, For life is a swift and terrible race, He knows I like him just as well, As in the days when I rang his bell, And he rang mine. If, we were younger then, And now we are busy, tired men. Tired of playing a foolish game, Tired of trying to make a name. "Tomorrow" I say "I will call on Jim" "Just to show that I'm thinking of him." But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes, And distance between us grows and grows. Around the corner!- yet miles away, "Here's a telegram sir - "Jim died today." And that's what we get and deserve in the end. Around the corner, a vanished friend.

SIMPLE RULES FOR DATING MY DAUGHTER Rule One: If you pull into my driveway and honk you'd better be delivering a package, because you're sure not picking anything up. Rule Two: You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter's body, I will remove them. Rule Three: I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don't take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose this compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, in order to ensure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric nail gun and fasten your trousers securely in place to your waist. Rule Four: I'm sure you've been told that in today's world, sex without utilizing a "barrier method" of some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate, when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I will kill you. Rule Five: In order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on this subject is "early." Rule Six: I have no doubt you are a popular fellow, with many opportunities to date other girls. This is fine with me as long as it is okay with my daughter. Otherwise, once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I will make you cry. Rule Seven: As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour goes by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for the movie, you should not be dating. My daughter is putting on her makeup, a process that can take longer than painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead of just standing there, why don't you do something useful, like changing the oil in my car? Rule Eight: The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter: Places where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool. Places where there are no parents, policemen, or nuns within eyesight. Places where there is darkness. Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or happiness. Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka zipped up to her throat. Movies with a strong romantic or sexual theme are to be avoided; movies which features chain saws are okay. Hockey games are okay. Old folks homes are better. Rule Nine: Do not lie to me. I may appear to be a potbellied, balding, middle-aged, dimwitted has-been. But on issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you where you are going and with whom, you have one chance to tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me. Rule Ten: Be afraid. Be very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound of your car in the driveway for a chopper coming in over a rice paddy outside of Hanoi. When my Agent Orange starts acting up, the voices in my head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my daughter home. As soon as you pull into the driveway, you should exit your car with both hands in plain sight. Speak the perimeter password, announce in a clear voice that you have brought my daughter home safely and early, then return to your car--there is no need for you to come inside. The camouflaged face at the window is mine.

ARE YOU A CONNECTOR? In Chapter Two, I talk about the central role that three personality types--that I call Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen-- play in social epidemics. In this excerpt, I describe a simple test that anyone can take to tell whether they fall into the first of those categories, the Connector. What makes someone a Connector? The first--and most obvious--criterion is that Connectors know lots of people. They are the kinds of people who know everyone. All of us know someone like this. But I don't think that we spend a lot of time thinking about the importance of these kinds of people. I'm not even sure that most of us really believe that the kind of person who knows everyone really knows everyone. But they do. There is a simple way to show this. In the paragraph below is a list of around 250 surnames, all taken at random from the Manhattan phone book. Go down the list and give yourself a point every time you see a surname that is shared by someone you know. (The definition of "know" here is very broad. It is if you sat down next to that person on a train, you would know their name if they introduced themselves to you, and they would know your name.) Multiple names count. If the name is Johnson, in other words, and you know three Johnsons, you get three points. The idea is that your score on this test should roughly represent how social you are. It's a simple way of estimating how many friends and acquaintances you have. Algazi, Alvarez, Alpern, Ametrano, Andrews, Aran, Arnstein, Ashford, Bailey Ballout, Bamberger, Baptista, Barr, Barrows, Baskerville, Bassiri, Bell, Bokgese, Brandao, Bravo, Brooke, Brightman, Billy, Blau, Bohen, Bohn, Borsuk, Brendle, Butler, Calle, Cantwell, Carrell, Chinlund, Cirker, Cohen, Collas, Couch, Callegher, Calcaterra, Cook, Carey, Cassell, Chen, Chung, Clarke, Cohn, Carton, Crowley, Curbelo, Dellamanna, Diaz, Dirar, Duncan, Dagostino, Delakas, Dillon, Donaghey, Daly, Dawson, Edery, Ellis, Elliott, Eastman, Easton, Famous, Fermin, Fialco, Finklestein, Farber, Falkin, Feinman, Friedman, Gardner, Gelpi, Glascock, Grandfield, Greenbaum Greenwood, Gruber, Garil, Goff, Gladwell, Greenup, Gannon, Ganshaw, Garcia, Gennis, Gerard, Gericke, Gilbert, Glassman, Glazer, Gomendio, Gonzalez, Greenstein, Guglielmo, Gurman, Haberkorn, Hoskins, Hussein, Hamm, Hardwick, Harrell, Hauptman, Hawkins, Henderson, Hayman, Hibara, Hehmann, Herbst, Hedges, Hogan, Hoffman, Horowitz, Hsu, Huber, Ikiz, Jaroschy, Johann, Jacobs, Jara, Johnson, Kassel, Keegan, Kuroda, Kavanau, Keller, Kevill, Kiew, Kimbrough, Kline, Kossoff, Kotzitzky, Kahn, Kiesler, Kosser, Korte, Leibowitz, Lin, Liu, Lowrance, Lundh, Laux, Leifer, Leung, Levine, Leiw, Lockwood, Logrono, Lohnes, Lowet, Laber, Leonardi, Marten, McLean, Michaels, Miranda, Moy, Marin, Muir, Murphy, Marodon, Matos, Mendoza, Muraki, Neck, Needham, Noboa, Null, O'Flynn, O'Neill, Orlowski, Perkins, Pieper, Pierre, Pons, Pruska, Paulino, Popper, Potter, Purpura, Palma, Perez, Portocarrero, Punwasi, Rader, Rankin, Ray, Reyes, Richardson, Ritter, Roos, Rose, Rosenfeld, Roth, Rutherford, Rustin, Ramos, Regan, Reisman, Renkert, Roberts, Rowan, Rene, Rosario, Rothbart, Saperstein, Schoenbrod, Schwed, Sears, Statosky, Sutphen, Sheehy, Silverton, Silverman, Silverstein, Sklar, Slotkin, Speros, Stollman, Sadowski, Schles, Shapiro, Sigdel, Snow, Spencer, Steinkol, Stewart, Stires, Stopnik, Stonehill, Tayss, Tilney, Temple, Torfield, Townsend, Trimpin, Turchin, Villa, Vasillov, Voda, Waring, Weber, Weinstein, Wang, Wegimont, Weed, Weishaus. I have given this test to at least a dozen groups of people. One was a freshman World Civilizations class at City College in Manhattan. The students were all in their late teens or early twenties, many of them recent immigrants to American, of middle and lower income. The average score in that class was 20.96, meaning that the average person in the class knew 21 people with the same last names as the people on my list. I also gave the test to a group of health educators and academics at a conference in Princeton New Jersey. This group was mostly in their 40's and 50's, largely white, highly educated--many had PhD's--and predominatly upper income. Their average score was 39. Then I gave the test to a relatively random sample of my friends and acquaintances, mostly journalists and professionals in their late 20's and 30's. The average score was 41. These results shouldn't be all that surprising. College students don't have as wide a circle of acquaintances as people in their 40's. It makes sense that between the age of 20 and 40 the number of people you know should roughly double, and that upper-income professionals should know more people than lower-income immigrants. In every group there was also quite a range between the highest and the lowest-scorers. That makes sense too, I think. Real estate salesmen know more people than computer hackers. What was surprising, though, was how enormous that range was. In the college class, the low score was 2 and the high score was 95. In my random sample, the low score was 9 and the high score was 118. Even at the conference in Princeton, which was a highly homogenous group of people of similar age, education and income--who were all, with a few exceptions, in the same profession--the range was enormous. The lowest score was 16. The highest score was 108. All told, I have given the test to about 400 people. Of those, there were two dozen or so scores under 20, and eight over 90, and four more over 100. The other surprising thing is that I found high scorers in every social group I looked at. The scores of the students at City College were less, on average, than adult scores. But even in that group there are people whose social circle is four or five times the size of other people's. Sprinkled among every walk of life, in other words, are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are Connectors.

KIDS ON LOVE AND ROMANCE: SOME SUREFIRE WAYS TO MAKE A PERSON FALL IN LOVE WITH YOU "Tell them that you own a whole bunch of candy stores." (Del, age 6) "Shake your hips and hope for the best." (Camille, age 9) "Yell out that you love them at the top of your lungs ... and don't worry if their parents are right there." (Manuel, age 8) "Don't do things like have smelly, green sneakers. You might get attention, but attention ain't the same thing as love." (Alonzo, age 9) "One way is to take the girl out to eat. Make sure it's something she likes to eat. French fries usually works for me." (Bart, age 9) HOW A PERSON LEARNS TO KISS "You can have a big rehearsal with your Barbie and Ken dolls." (Julia, age 7) "You learn it right on the spot when the gooshy feelings get the best of you." (Brian, age 7) "It might help to watch soap operas all day." (Carin, age 9) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE? "When they're rich." (Pam, age 7) "It's never okay to kiss a boy. They always slobber all over you. That's why I stopped doing it." (Tammy, age 7) "If it's your mother, you can kiss her anytime. But if it's a new person, you have to ask permission." (Roger, age 6) "I look at kissing like this: Kissing is fine if you like it, but it's a free country and nobody should be forced to do it." (Dave, age 8) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ WHAT MOST PEOPLE ARE THINKING WHEN THEY SAY "I LOVE YOU"? "The person is thinking: Yeah, I really do love him. But I hope he showers at least once a day." (Michelle, age 9) "Some lovers might be real nervous, so they are glad that they finally got it out and said it and now they can go eat." (Dick, age 7)

A guy was invited to some old friends' home for dinner. His buddy preceded every request to his wife by endearing terms, calling her Honey, My Love, Darling, Sweetheart, Pumpkin, etc. He was impressed since the couple had been married almost 70 years, and while the wife was off in the kitchen he said to his buddy: "I think it's wonderful that after all the years you've been married, you still call your wife those pet names." His buddy hung his head. "To tell you the truth," he said, "I forgot her name about ten years ago.

In November, U.S. marshals in Detroit confiscated the belongings of Marie Antoinette Jackson-Randolph, a former high-society, day-care chain owner, who is now in prison for scamming the government out of $13.5 million in meal money for underprivileged children she allegedly fed at her centers. Among her "estate": 100 pieces of Baccarat, Waterford and Lalique crystal, 911 purses, 606 pairs of shoes, 165 pairs of boots, a roomful (floor to ceiling) of costume jewelry, and various fur and skin garments (leopard, coyote, mink, fox, sable, chinchilla, snake, lynx, rabbit, lamb, beaver, weasel and raccoon, in a variety of colors). (Said the owner of the company hired to sell the furs: "I don't know whether she hated animals or loved them. It's hard to tell.") ++++++ How often do we kill things in the name of love? Relationships are doomed by our selfish and consuming needs.

"What is Real?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out-handle?" "Real isn't how you're made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, [for he was always truthful]. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt." "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time--that’s why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily or have sharp edges or have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all because once you are Real, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

“Let me remind you of a fundamental asymmetry of the universe — somehow, there are more horses’ asses than there are horses.”

Computer program detects author gender Simple algorithm suggests words and syntax bear sex and genre stamp. 18 July 2003 PHILIP BALL A.S Byatt confuses the computer; will it see through George Elliot? A new computer program can tell whether a book was written by a man or a woman. The simple scan of key words and syntax is around 80% accurate on both fiction and non-fiction1,2. The program's success seems to confirm the stereotypical perception of differences in male and female language use. Crudely put, men talk more about objects, and women more about relationships. Female writers use more pronouns (I, you, she, their, myself), say the program's developers, Moshe Koppel of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, and colleagues. Males prefer words that identify or determine nouns (a, the, that) and words that quantify them (one, two, more). So this article would already, through sentences such as this, have probably betrayed its author as male: there is a prevalence of plural pronouns (they, them), indicating the male tendency to categorize rather than personalize. If I were female, the researchers imply, I'd be more likely to write sentences like this, which assume that you and I share common knowledge or engage us in a direct relationship. These differing styles have previously been called 'informational' and 'involved', respectively. Koppel and colleagues trained their algorithm on a few test cases to identify the most prevalent fingerprints of gender and of fiction and non-fiction. They then set it searching for these fingerprints in 566 English-language works in a variety of genres, ranging from A Guide to Prague to A. S. Byatt's novel Possession - which, intriguingly, the programme misclassified by gender, along with Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. Strikingly, the distinctions between male and female writers are much the same as those that, even more clearly, differentiate non-fiction and fiction. The programme can tell these two genres apart with 98% accuracy. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that non-fiction is more informational and fiction more involved. Most of the works studied were published after 1975. The Israeli team now intends to probe whether the differences extend further back in time - and so whether George Eliot was wasting her time disguising herself with a male nom de plume - and also whether they occur in other languages. References Koppel, M., Argamon, S. & Shimoni, A. R. Automatically categorizing written texts by author gender. Literary and Linguistic Computing, in the press, (2003). |Homepage| Argamon, S., Koppel, M., Fine, J. & Shimoni, A. R. Gender, genre, and writing style in formal written texts. Text, in the press, (2003).

[note: Jerod gave me permission to use this however I want, whenever I want] Glen, So I am in Dallas with Crysten Coy attending Henri's support raising siminar. He used your video about how to relate with churches and it was very cool. He is emailing it out to a few of the people in the group who expressed interst in seeing it a few more time to take down the info. So in the support raising phonebook sized binder we are working through, there is a part on vision. One of the questions asks who has influemced you in your call to ministry? Of course I wrote you down as someone who influenced me. Then I thought about that for a second: the whole time I was doing my laundry and eating your food never realized that whole thing was a discipleship setup! I was being discipled, and I just now realized it. You are a tricky one Glen Davis. Tricky. I just wanted to say thanks for that. Now I have support raising homework to work on. Just thought I would let you know that. Godspeed. Jerod

Pray Together, Stay Together? Want a marriage that lasts? Dust off your hymnal. A 15-year study found that couples who went to church once a month were less than half as likely to divorce than non-churchgoers. In the study, 37 percent of those who rarely attended church divorced, while only 14 percent of regular churchgoers parted company. Researchers James P. Swyers and David B. Larson of the International Center for the Integration of Health & Spirituality found faith had "a strong, beneficial influence on the stability and quality of marriages. Spouses who attend church regularly have the lowest risk of divorce." But if one attends church much more than the other, the marriage is less likely to endure. Swyers and Larson say churchgoers solve problems more constructively than church-skippers who are more prone to verbal aggression and stonewalling. And it doesn't hurt that religious couples see their marriage "as having sacred, spiritual significance." Whether they were of the same denomination didn't seem to matter. Prayer played a big role: 53 percent of those who prayed about conflicts reported good marital adjustment, compared with 17 percent who didn't seek divine help. So to shore up your marriage, you may have to cancel Sunday brunch!

In August, 2003, a study was released revealing that money can't buy happiness. Beginning in 1975, University of Southern California researcher Richard Easterlin surveyed 1500 persons annually and found: Many people are under the illusion that the more money we make, the happier we'll be. We put all of our resources into making money at the expense of our family and our health…The problem is we don't realize that our material wants increase with the amount of money we make. The study discovered happiness was related to quality time with loved ones, good health, being friendly, having an optimistic outlook, exercising self-control, and possessing a deep sense of ethics.

In the wedding, the sequence is something like this: The isle, then the alter, then the hymn. Then after the wedding it just becomes, "I’ll alter him!"

You may have started off as an ideal --then your wedding-marriage becomes more accurately --an ordeal. Finally you start looking for a new deal.

The three rings of a marriage The engagement ring, --then there’s the wedding ring --then there’s the suffering.

"In spite of my 30 years of research into the feminine soul --I have not been able to answer the question --'What does a woman want?'"

"So-called ‘incompatibility’ is a myth invented by jurists in order to plead for divorce. It is likewise just a common excuse people use to hide their own failings. Misunderstandings and mistakes can be corrected where there is a willingness to do so. The problem is a lack of complete frankness."

Our calling and purpose as followers of Christ is to love God completely, to love self correctly, and to love others compassionately.

People ask me what advice I have for a married couple struggling in their relationship. I always answer: pray and forgive. And to young people from violent homes, I say: pray and forgive. And again, even to the single mother with no family support: pray and forgive.

His shortcoming is his long staying.

Does Anyone Know The Source of This Quote?

He was a lover of mankind, but he loved no man.

Brush Your Teeth

Brush your teeth at night if you want to keep your teeth. Brush your teeth in the morning if you want to keep your friends.