U2 3D review

Wow. That about sums up the experience. The sites and sounds are quite stunning. I'm a huge U2 fan but the techology and clarity of the experience was amazing. To hover above the band and feel like you could touch them or to see their view of the stadium and the crowd was quite impressive. The sound quality was so good you could hear Bono hit a wrong chord and hear him pound his chest with his fist during one song. Even if you don't like U2, this is a must see event. You won't regret it...and unfortunately you probably won't enjoy their next concert as much as this film because you'll likely never get this close.

The Phony Stimulus. by James Cramer

Is Dobson's Political Clout Fading?

On Wednesday night, his political action website Citizenlink.com released assessments of the major Democratic and Republican candidates.

A stealth Mitt Romney endorsement from the religious right's powerbrokers?

Focus Action Candidate Commentary

At the age of 71 and semi-retired from the day-to-day operations of his organization, Dobson is seeing Focus on the Family 's fortunes wane - CEO Jim Daly describes them as "flat" - perhaps an inevitability for a ministry pegged to one towering figure. The ministry's expenses have exceeded its revenues for two years - what Daly calls a "drawdown from reserves" - by $4.1 million in fiscal year 2006 and by $9.9 million in 2005. (Figures for 2007 have not yet been released.) The ministry apparently has been "flat" for some time. For example, in 1994 Dobson's monthly newsletter had a circulation of 2.4 million copies. Today, that circulation is about 1.1 million.

According to news accounts and audited financial reports posted online for potential donors, the organization's staffing is down (30 layoffs last September). Total donations and number of donors are down as well. Focus orders and resells copies of Dobson's tapes and books, which are the evangelist's personal business; but those purchases have declined from $678,000 in 2004 to $269,000 in 2006. His last book was published in 2001; another is not anticipated until 2009. The whole Dobson family, including wife Shirley, daughter Danae and son Ryan, produce books and tapes, but revenue from all Dobson-family materials are down, from $781,000 in 2004 to $307,000 in 2006.

Even Focus on the Family Action - Dobson's most recent project, founded in 2004 to help steer public policy - seems stalled. Daly says Action's fortunes are tied to "hot issues in the public square"; in his letter to potential donors, Dobson offers "occasional specific voting recommendations on ballot measures in your area and on a national level." But contributions declined from $8.8 million in 2004, its start-up year, to $6.8 million in 2006, while website hits fell from 18,000 monthly in 2005 to 8,700 monthly in 2006. A Focus spokesperson says Focus Action is not the main public policy website and that CitizenLink.com, where the candidate assessments were announced, is doing much better.

Bono confesses sins to 'father' Al Gore

"He's been round my house and it's like...here's the recycler Al, you know...I've got a posh car, but it runs on ethanol, Al," Bono said.

Acknowledging that a career in rock music was not always conducive to a green lifestyle, Bono compared a conversation with Gore to an act of religious contrition.

"It's like being with an Irish priest. You start to confess your sins," he said. "Father Al, I am not just a noise polluter, I am a noise-polluting, diesel-soaking, gulfstream-flying rock star.

"I'm going to kick the habit. I'm trying father Al, but oil has been very good for me -- those convoys of articulated lorries, petrochemical products, hair gel."

More U2 3D reviews

U2 3D: what 3D ought to be

U2 3D: Even Better Than the Real Thing

U2 on 'Vertigo' tour - rocking in eye-popping 3D

Movie review: U2 3D best concert seats ever

'U2 3D' almost puts you on stage with band

More News...

An overhead view of U2's drummer, Larry Mullen, from 'U2 3D.'

Quote of the Day

"The Clintons play dirty when they feel threatened. But we knew that, didn't we? The recent roughing-up of Barack Obama was in the trademark style of the Clinton years in the White House. High-minded and self-important on the surface, smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package.... Evidently, many of the mainstream party faithful want the Clinton team as their presidential nominee. It's their choice, of course. But does the rest of the country really deserve this?" -- columnist William Greider, writing in the left-wing Nation magazine.

CQ Magazine: Scott Redd

The February issue of CQ continues our ongoing series of interviews with hams in high places, this month featuring retired Vice Admiral Scott Redd, K0DQ, who most recently served the nation as Director of the National Counterterroism Center. Scott is also an ardent contester who has won just about every major on-air competition at least once.

CQ Interviews:
Vice Admiral John Scott Redd (Ret.), KØDQ
Former Director
National Counterterrorism Center
BY RICH MOSESON,* W2VU
*Editor, CQ
e-mail:
Courtesy NCTC
www.cq-amateur-radio.com February 2008 • CQ • 13

The last paragraph of retired Vice Admiral Scott Redd’s official biography is one that’s guaranteed to get the attention of nearly any ham: After noting that Redd is past president of the Naval Academy Class of 1966 and that he has served on the advisory boards of several non-profit
organizations, the paragraph ends by saying, “An avid amateur radio operator, VADM Redd has won seven world championships.” In fact, said Scott, the only major contest he hasn’t won is the CQ World-Wide DX CW Contest … but more on that later.

“Ham radio has been and remains both a major and a very positive influence in both my professional life and my personal life,” said Redd, adding, “I used the knowledge gained
in ham radio in virtually every job I’ve had.” Those jobs have included a variety of top military assignments, followed by several high-level civilian positions in the federal government,
most recently as the chief architect of America’s war on terror, as the first Senate-confirmed Director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

As is the case with so many of us, Scott says it was getting into ham radio in his youth that got him pointed toward his eventual career, but in his case it was not so much the technology
as the operating experience and some of the people he contacted on the air from his hometown of Sidney, Iowa. He recalls discovering ham radio through Boy Scouts and building a crystal
radio, but not having a local ham mentor, or “Elmer.”

“I … didn’t really have an Elmer,” Redd noted, “but we used to go to Omaha, which was the nearest big city, and believe it or not—I’m not blowing smoke at this—I used to buy CQ. I
can remember buying CQ magazine in about 1954 on the newsstand outside of one of the big department stores there.

I’d take it home and just devour it. “Morse code was no problem. Got my license, my Novice
license,” Redd continued. “I guess I was 10 years old when I got licensed. … again, not having an Elmer was interesting. My dad bought me a Globe Scout. World Radio, if you remember
them … was in Council Bluffs. “I had my license about two months, I think, before I actually
made a contact, and the reason was I didn’t realize that there was a difference between the outside and the centerconductor, so I just had an antenna out there and I wrapped
it around the outside of the coax connector on the back of the Globe Scout. And as you would understand … it didn’t get out. So I finally had a ham from about 10 miles away come over and
he said ‘plug it in here’ and I was off and running.”

Once he actually started putting RF into the air, Scott quickly discovered the lure of DXing, recalling that he was “on 15 meters … calling CQ one afternoon and a guy from Argentina came back, and that was magic for me. And that just kind of got me started with my primary
interests, which are DXing first of all, and now contesting.”

“DXing really became a passion for me,” he continued. “I can remember going home from school—walking home, or running home, from school— at lunchtime, like in the 6th grade, to
work Europe on 15 meters. This was back in the high sunspot cycle, the coming up of (Cycle 19). … I made DXCC and it’s funny, about a year ago, I was looking at some old stuff and I found one
of my KØDQI cards and I had the very bold statement on it: ‘the youngest DXCC operator in the world.’ This was … I don’t know, I was age 13, so I guess it was 1956 or ’57. I think it was true.
Nobody ever challenged me, but that was a real passion, and by the time 1962 came around (when Redd graduated from high school—ed.), I had about 280 countries, a lot of (them) with
50 watts and a folded dipole, later with 400 watts and a small beam. But that’s where I was and DXing was really what I was into, and that wasn’t too bad a score back in those days. … At the
same time, I knew that I wanted to do something bigger.”

This, Redd noted, was a direct result of his ham radio activity. “DXing, as you can imagine, was—is—almost like the internet maybe is for kids today, but for a kid in small-town Iowa, that was my window to the world, and through a variety of circumstances, it really led to dreaming about bigger things. It definitively led to going to the Naval Academy, and that’s a story in and of itself.”

A Landlubber Goes to Sea

It seems that Scott Redd never really planned on going to Annapolis. Growing up in Iowa, he’d never even seen the ocean, let alone sailed on it. And his ham radio contacts had him looking
skyward… “Ham radio, as I said, was sort of a window on the world. I’d talked to Barry
Goldwater (K7UGA, the Arizona Senator and 1964 Republican Presidential candidate who had been a reserve Major General in the Air Force, and one of the leading proponents of establishing the the U.S. Air Force Academy—ed.) and actually talked to the Vice Commander of the Strategic Air Command, Butch Griswold, and (to make a) long story short, I wanted to go to the Air Force Academy because I wanted to fly airplanes, the Strategic Air Command and all that sort of stuff. My Congressman called and said, ‘Hey, I don’t have an appointment to the Air Force Academy, would you like to go to the Naval Academy?’ And I’d never seen the ocean and never gone anywhere. … I think I’d been east of the Mississippi once, and I said ‘sure.’ ”

Redd took to the Navy like, oh, I can’t resist the pun … like a duck to water. He was president of his class at the Naval Academy, where he majored in math and physics and was a Trident
Scholar. After graduation in 1966, Redd became a Fulbright Scholar and studied in Uruguay; then as a Burke Scholar, received a Master of Science degree in Operations Analysis from the Naval Postgraduate School. Through it all, though, ham radio was never far away.

“DXing was hard to stay up with (in the Navy). You couldn’t make the Honor Roll when you moved every two years, obviously, so DX contesting kind of took over.”

Scott recalled that his first contest win came from Uruguay. “I spent a year as a Fulbright cholar in Uruguay when I graduated from the Academy, ‘66–’67, and was CX3BBD, and actually operated (the CQ World-Wide DX Phone Contest) from CX2CO. … We won the multisingle
in, it must have been ’66, from down there.”

But Scott pointed out that “my highlight was probably in Mexico, ’71–’73 … actually in the ’71–’72 contest year.” At that point, he was a young Lieutenant with a young family, assigned to the Mexican Naval Academy in Veracruz. He brought his Drake 4 line and a couple of antennas to his new QTH and was quickly licensed as XE1IIJ and got on the air.

“In those days there were five major (contests),” Redd continued. “CQ World-Wide Phone and CW, ARRL Phone and CW, and (CQ) WPX, which was only sideband in those days, as you
may recall. I won four out of five. The only one I didn’t win was the CQ World-Wide CW, and those were the first four world championships … and that became my passion.”

“So anyway, I started doing singleoperating but typical of the Navy, came back from Mexico, went to sea, didn’t do much operating, came back ashore, finally won a U.S. championship from
W3GRF in 1987, right before I made Admiral. Then basically life just got too hectic and I did very little contesting,very little operating, except when I was in Bahrain, as A92Q, and let’s see, I think I was third in the world in WPX over there.”

Scott described that experience in an article he posted on the CQ WPX contestwebsite. “With a modest antenna system I entered my first CQ WPX CW as A92Q in 1995,” he wrote. “I had no
strategy, only a bare understanding of propagation from the Middle East, and didn’t think I’d be able to finish the contest.

But the Gulf was quiet that weekend and I managed a third-place worldwide finish. That was my first serious contest since Mexico as a DX station, as well as my first contest using a computer,
and my appetite was whetted.”

Back to our interview, Redd brought us up to the current time. “(I) finally retired from the military in ’98, went in the private sector … wanted to get back into contesting, ended up going down to Aruba (as P40Q and P41P, operating from the QTH of Jacky Oduber, P43P) and trying to win (the CQ WW CW). I also won WPX CW at some point for the world (2002—ed.), so now I’ve won five out of six world championships and I’ve been trying like a son-of-a-gun
to win CQ World-Wide CW. … I’ve come in number two, I’ve come in number three, but I’ve never won that one. And I don’t know if anybody’s ever actually won all six of them—there are only a few people who come close to it—so that’s still my goal, every time I get close, in
CQ World-Wide CW, to win the world. I haven’t gotten there yet.”

“So the long and the short of it is, I’m still interested in ham radio,” KØDQ added. “I’m looking forward to the chance, to the time, when I can go do it some more. I’ve done a little bit of operating back in Washington here, at W4RX, Jim Ahlgren … he’s a physician and he has a big mountaintop station.

I’ve had a couple of U.S. top ten finishes from there in the last couple of years, but basically, since coming to this job, I really haven’t been able to do much contesting, and in the years between government service I was going to Aruba. I was Papa-40-Queen down there for, I guess, three or four contests, and that’s where I won the WPX, one year with high power and one year with low power, and just missed a world record by a scratch on low power.”

A “Top Flight” Navy Career

Focusing on ham radio in our discussion, Scott somewhat glossed over the details of his military career, particularly between the time he made Admiral in 1987 and his retirement from active duty in 1998, so we’ll fill i the blanks from his various official biographies. His early commands included a guided missile destroyer, a destroyer squadron, a multi-national NATO force, and a carrier battle group.

From 1994 to 1996, Redd commanded all U.S. naval forces in the Middle East, and in 1995, recommissioned the only new U.S. Navy fleet in a half century, becoming the first Commander of the Fifth Fleet since World War II. While in the Middle East, he commanded seven major operations involving Iraq, Iran, and the withdrawal of United Nations forces from Somalia. He was awarded the Order of Bahrain along with five Distinguished Service Medals from the U.S. Navy.

Again, Scott always found time for ham radio along with his military duties.

“I’ve tried to be an ambassador for ham radio,” he explained, noting that he made a point of visiting notable hams in the region when he could. “Obviously, King Hussein, when I was out in the Fifth Fleet, (on) the professional side, I was out in Bahrain … went to see King Hussein.
(At a) different time in life, I went to see the Sultan of Oman several times, (he was) A-41-Alfa-Alfa. You know, a lot of the Middle Eastern rulers out there actually were ham radio operators in their youth.”

In 1996, Admiral Redd was reassigned to Washington, where he served as the Navy’s senior advisor on strategy and policy, and as chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense’s senior civilian
policy advisor. His final assignment on active duty was as Director of Strategic Plans and Policy in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this position, he was the senior advisor on strategy and policy for the entire U.S. military and was one of three military leaders (along with
the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) who regularly attended senior National Security Council meetings at the White House. While in this post, Redd also guided the development of a new National Military Strategy and supervised the military strategy portion of the Secretary of Defense’s $1.5 trillion Quadrennial Defense Review. Scott retired from active duty on September 1, 1998. The only real change, though, was exchanging his Navy uniform for a suit.

Brief Stint in the Private Sector

In 1999, Scott became Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of the NetSchools Corporation, which his bio describes as “a high-tech startup company in the education sector.” Scott filled in the details in our interview: “Essentially (NetSchools) was a systems approach or comprehensive approach to education and using technology in education. ... The core of it was,
on the one hand, every kid gets a laptop computer. Number two, you use the internet and you take the best of the best in terms of where there’s teaching styles, pedagogic styles, and you were
able to make that available to a much broader group of students. And number three, which was probably the most key thing to making it succeed, was that you trained the teachers in the use of technology. So that’s what that was all about, and we had some pretty dramatic results in terms of raising test scores and all sorts of things. We were actually cash-flow positive before 9-11, and of course, after 9-11, a lot of the state budgets were affected and we ended up selling the company.

“One of the interesting things was, how do you put a bunch of computers in a classroom and make it work? If you can imagine having 40 students in every class taking a laptop and plugging and unplugging it into a bunch of wires, that wasn’t a solution; the lower end of the RF spectrum had some problems, because it goes through walls, so we ended up using infrared … as the wireless system, if you will, within the classroom.

That’s the high end of the spectrum, obviously ... and that actually became a pretty significant piece of what we did.

So even in that, ham radio came in handy, and just more generally with computers. You work with contesting programs and everything else and you feel very comfortable with the computing
world, too. ... This is the future of education in the country, I believe. But it’s going to take a while to catch on.”

Back to Government Service

After five years in the private sector, Scott returned to the federal government, this time in a civilian role as Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer of the Coalition Provisional
Authority in Iraq, a position in which he was able to get local and foreign hams there back on the air.

“I was there a fairly short period of time, until I got called back by the President, but I was basically the co-Vice President of Iraq; Jerry Bremer was the head of the Coalition Provisional
Authority and I was his deputy, and it turned out that the half of the country that I took care of was the technology area, so actually I was responsible, along with electricity and gas and everything else, for about two months, for ham radio licensing, and a guy whose name
escapes me right now was actually the guy who ran it. We got, as you indicated, both the local Iraqi hams back on the air and we allowed the contractors and foreigners in the area to operate.”

After just two months in Iraq, Redd was called back to Washington to serve as Executive Director of the commission established as a result of the controversy over intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that preceded the U.S. invasion there in 2003 (the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction).
After the commission deliv

ered its report to the President in early 2005— a report that was adopted by President Bush as his blueprint for reforming the intelligence community—Redd was
named the Director of the newly formed National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and was confirmed by the Senate, assuming his new duties on August 1, 2005.

The NCTC has a dual mission and KØDQ had two bosses. The first mission is to serve as the federal government’s primary organization for analyzing and integrating all intelligence
related to terrorism. In that role, Scott reported to the Director of National Intelligence. The second mission—an extension of Scott’s earlier assignments— is to conduct strategic and
operational planning for all U.S. counterterrorism activities, essentially to be the chief architect of America’s war on terror. In this role, Redd reported directly to the President.

The Role of Ham Radio

Admiral Redd says ham radio has played an essential role in his professional life in addition to the hobby aspects that have provided him with a break from his day-to-day responsibilities.
“It got me going; it gave me a bunch of things professionally,” he explained. “I used the knowledge gained in ham radio in virtually every job I’ve had, from obvious things such as knowledge of HF propagation … you know, you’re on a Navy ship at sea, and you’re trying to
figure out how to get to the base and (I’d tell the radio op), ‘try the 3 meg to Keflavik; trust me, it’ll work,’ and the guy says, ‘the chief says no, it’ll never work’ … and 10 minutes later, we’re the
heroes of the entire battle group because they’ve established comms, and it’s all because as a DXer and a contester, you know what HF propagation is like.

“At the other end of the spectrum, understanding the RF spectrum is something that has entered into every aspect of my job, including the current one. I’ve used it in understanding radio and propagation, whether it’s navigation, communication, radar, electricity in general, satellites, electronic warfare, command-and-control, all of that. … For most of my contemporaries, all of that stuff was a black box and that was something for the techies and the geeks to worry about. And growing up with (ham radio), you’re just very comfortable with it, and I’ve used it in things such as arms control discussions and other stuff over the years, just because I feel comfortable with it.”

Redd continued, “I could take you through every job I’ve had. Of course, the Navy’s a technological service, but not just in the Navy. Even being in Washington and the policy committee, sitting in the White House situation room with the President—everything,
virtually everything that I touch and have touched in my career in government and indeed out of government, I’ve been better prepared to do that job because of ham radio. “Some of it’s a direct correlation … the things we’ve talked about—the RF spectrum, understanding technology
writ large, understanding electricity and electronics; and the other is just sort of the general thing, because … you have an understanding of how things work and if things don’t work, you look for solutions, you learn to solve problems. (It’s) sort of a thing that’s very difficult to
quantify, and to a certain extent it’s intangible, but I think you learn that in ham radio, whether it’s - in my case starting out, how do you connect an antenna to a transmitter when nobody’s
told you how to do it - to how do you get the last decibel out of that 4-element, or 5-element or 6-element Yagi, how do you stack ‘em and how do you get the phasing to line up in a two or three (Yagi) stack, that sort of stuff — working through that is a mental discipline, and

I think anybody’s who been through amateur radio and has gotten involved in it, and particularly has either built or experimented with it, is going to be better off for it. And getting in front of a microphone—I mean, when I got on a Navy ship, I had no compunction about
getting on and talking on a tactical voice circuit or … doing more than one thing at a time. I think you’ve got the general gist of it, I think it’s just something which has a tremendous payoff, some of it’s very easy to relate and quantify and the rest is a little bit more intangible, but
nonetheless very real.”

Ham Radio and National Security

In our December interview, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, ex-W3AWO, said he believes that not being competitive in science and technology poses an even greater threat to
the U.S. than does terrorism, noting that “(w)e need to expose young people to things like amateur radio to get them interested.” Since Adm. Redd’s job was to lead the war on terrorism, I asked whether he agreed with Secretary England, and whether he feels ham radio continues to be relevant to young people today.

Redd said he believes that both terrorism and a lack of competitiveness in science and technology are very real dangers to our country. “Which is number one, which is number two? I would say that tactically, the terrorism threat is obviously, certainly, the wolf closest to the sled, if you will; but they’re both very significant strategic threats, and I think we would be wrong to not take either one of them seriously and do something about it.”

Regarding the ongoing relevance of ham radio for young people today, Redd added, “Clearly, things have changed a lot since ham radio used to be one of the major means of communications, certainly for ships at sea or even if you were overseas, but I think … there are
things that you gain by being in amateur radio that you don’t get other places. And I guess, first and foremost, is the RF spectrum. No matter how you look at it and whether you’re talking about the high end of it or the HF side of it or wherever, it’s something that just permeates
everything we do. … So I think familiarity with that is one of the things you get in ham radio that you don’t get elsewhere. And number two is that sense of experimentation.”

Redd also referred back to comments made by Admiral Edmund Giambastiani, Jr., N4OC, recently retired Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in his October 2007 CQ interview, noting that even though he had worked closely with both England and Giambastiani, he hadn’t realized until now that either one had been or still was a ham.

“I grew up building Heathkits. Actually most of my building was of antennas, which was the area where I probably did more experimentation. But I think I agree with what Eddie said: You experiment around, you try something and see what it does. It takes the—what’s the word, not
the fear, and certainly not the magic— but it takes sort of the uncertainty about technology out of it, and you say, ‘OK, this is something I can work with, that I can mess around with,’ if you will, and it helps you in terms of understanding it, whether you’re making policy decisions
or whether you’re building the next generation of whatevers. So I think ham radio still has a significant role to play.

Obviously, it’s no secret it’s a graying hobby, and it’s harder to attract the youth, but I think it’s certainly something that is very important for us to continue to push as an educational thing, and as something that contributes to our national security, in the broadest sense.”

Christmas Morning

We wrapped up our discussion with a look at what keeps ham radio relevant to Scott Redd, even as he has held down a wide variety of top leadership posts in our national defense community,
both military and civilian.

“For me, because I’ve been in and out of this enough, Rich, it’s still, it’s still magic,” he said. “As a young kid growing up, Christmas morning was always exciting. You’d get up thinking, ‘What’s
going to be under the tree?’ Well, for me, it’s still exciting to wake up on the morning of a major contest, and I’m going to be able to operate in it and see what’s going to be. It’s just, it’s always
been a magical thing for me.”

“I think we’re always looking,” Scott added, “and rightly so, Rich, for how ham radio fits in the public forum in terms of worth and value, and those are all very real things; we should do that.
For me, that’s true, and I’ve used it that way and it’s been of tremendous value.

But it’s also a heck of a lot of fun. “I mean my two hobbies right now— probably ’cause my knees are shot— are fishing, and when I get a chance, ham radio. And to a certain extent, they’re both the same thing. You throw a lure out and you never know whether you’re going to catch something, and if you do, what it’s going to be and how big it’s going to be. You know, you call CQ on 20 meters over the North Pole and a wavering signal comes back and you don’t know whether it’s going to be a VU7 or whatever. There’s excitement and fun, which, for me quite frankly, has never grown old. It’s still magic.”

Postscript

Two weeks after our interview, Scott’s knees apparently caught up with him, and he announced that he would be resigning as NCTC Director effective November 10, 2007. He needed double
knee replacement surgery and felt that the surgery and recovery would take him away from his responsibilities for too long a time. In a memo to staffers, he said that, together, they
had “achieved great—even revolutionary— successes,” and that he feels the U.S. is better prepared today than at any time in its history to wage the global war on terror.

In an e-mail to CQ, he added, “It was, as you can imagine, a tough decision that was months in the making. I really hate to leave, but it’s the only prudent option at this point.” Redd said his plans for the near future are “to rest, get reconnected with family, and prepare for and
undergo surgery. Once we’re through all that, I look forward to re-engaging in ham radio. I especially look forward to doing some CW DX contesting from the U.S. and overseas.—Scott, KØDQ/A92Q”

We at CQ wish Scott all the best in his surgery and recovery, and look forward to hearing him back on the air soon, either from home, from Aruba, or from some other exotic DX location.
And we’ve got that CQ WW CW plaque on hold for you, Scott!

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U2 members see their own concert at Sundance; check out our blog; read our review

“I was really hoping we weren’t crap after all these years. Luckily we weren’t,” the Edge told the Associated Press before the band donned plastic glasses to watch the movie’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday night.

...“It’s kind of horrific,” to watch himself on stage in 3D, said Bono. “Its bad enough on a small screen. Now you get so see the lard arse 40-foot tall.”

The Edge said the cutting-edge 3D technology allowed “the songs to shine through,” though he was surprised to see the chemistry of the band in the details on screen, and how separate his band mates were on stage.

“Are you saying you felt lonely up there?” said Bono, smiling.

“No, I felt lonely for Larry,” the band’s drummer, the Edge replied.

“He likes being on his own,” said Bono. “Didn’t you bring him back a bottle of water?”

U2: A timeline

Bono meets Pentagon chief to discuss poverty

U2 3D reviews

NY Times - More Than Rock ’n’ Roll: U2 on Tour in 3-D Images
USA Today - 'U2 3D': Lifelike rattle and hum
Seattle Post Intelligencer - Dazzling 'U2 3D' just may usher in a revolution in musical theater
LA Times - U2 3D
CNET - No 3D in 'U2 3D' without binocular vision
Arizona Republic - At thrilling 3-D IMAX concert, it's like 'U2' are there
Boston Herald -Just when you thought Bono’s head couldn’t get any bigger... along comes ‘U2 3D’
@U2.com - U2 3D Sparks True Fan-demonium
Wired -U2 3D Brings Hyperreal Arena Rock to the Multiplex
More reviews

The film I had just seen -- the world's first three-dimensional live-action concert film -- was astounding... More than a week later, the film still resonates as a stunning cinematic experience, and the best rock show I've never attended. - Wired

The experience of seeing a concert movie, no matter how technically remarkable, never will replace the experience of being at the show. But U2 3D comes awfully close. -- Arizona Republic

U2 3D (* * * * out of four) in many ways delivers an experience that's even better than the real thing. It brings U2's dazzling rock spectacle to the multiplex with VIP comforts, all-access viewpoints and telescopic close-ups. - USA Today

The musical documentary “U2 3D,” which stitches together three performances by this Irish rock band during a recent tour of South America, is not merely a technical landmark — shot entirely in digital 3D — but also an aesthetic one, in that it’s the first Imax movie that deserves to be called a work of art. -- NY Times

"U2 3D," a showcase of the Irish band in digital 3-D that is so technologically advanced and totally exhilarating in every way that it may just make all the other '08 concert films obsolete. - Seattle Post Intelligencer

Given rock's erotic pull, it's fair to compare "U2 3D," U2's foray into 3-D digital film technology, to a shot of Viagra. And guess what? The potency drug does its job: 85 beautifully paced minutes of crystal clear, artfully lit shots of Bono and his mates doing their inspirational thing for an arena crowd whose joy surges forth like a tiger in an Imax nature presentation is enough to renew the spark with longtime fans and draw in kids who otherwise might not go for older men...Physical experience drives home this message. Screen images, even ones that lunge out at you, can't replace the sweat and din of thousands of fellow fans turned toward those anointed figures channeling all that energy onstage. "U2 3D" comes very close, though -- LA Times

If there was any lingering doubt that U2 is the global rock juggernaut of our time, "U2 3D" explodes it like so much dynamite. Evidently, the Irish rockers couldn't make do with their 22 Grammys, umpteen platinum albums and Nobel Prize-nominated lead singer. They just HAD to have their very own 3-D concert movie, too. And what a brilliantly lifelike show it is. - Orange County Register

Thoughts For Young Men, by J.C. Ryle

Don't Fear Starbucks: Why the franchise actually helps mom and pop coffeehouses.

OPC and PCA address Paedocommunion - Should baptized infants be given the Lord's supper?

PCA
OPC - committee (majority) report, minority report #1, and minority report #2

An Interview with Tim Keller

'Castle law' arms Texas homeowners with right to shoot

MICHAEL HOGUE / DMN illustration

'Castle law' arms Texas homeowners with right to shoot
Drivers now allowed to be armed, but critics see potential abuse
Rights issue elicits passion on both sides
The law

Bob Masse's U2 poster - Dallas 2001

To order from the famed artist, Contact Bob.
Who Is Bob Masse?

Midnight is When the Day Begins

Luke 2:1-20; John 1:1-14
December 24, 2007
Lake Harriet Christian Church
Minneapolis, MN

The True Meaning of Headship

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Bill Clinton, Stumping and Simmering

Hillary: The Movie

The Ringmaster Roles On

Is the Tipping Point Toast?

Marketers spend a billion dollars a year targeting influentials. Duncan Datts says they're wasting their money.

Hillary Clinton reveals personal anguish over Lewinsky saga

Fortune: Hillary's modest proposal (to wreck the housing market)

The current mortgage mess requires a more intelligent approach than the buzzsaw plan floated by Hillary Clinton.

When Ross Perot Calls…

The former presidential candidate blasts John McCain, and gets an education about Barack Obama's religion.

Barack or Hillary?

A look at the presidential candidates' positions on the five biggest challenges facing America.

Charlie Wilson's war against convention started at USNA

Charlie Wilson & Ronald Reagan's War

Dems Before The Iraq War

Mars Hill Tackles Sex, Rape, Birth Control the Biblical Way

"Do you believe that abortion as a result of rape is wrong?" one worship service attendant at Mars Hill Church in Seattle posed to the pastor.

It's one of many controversial and long-debated questions being asked at the growing church that draws a large twenty-something crowd every week. Pastor Mark Driscoll has opened up the pulpit to a daring "Ask Anything" session, giving unscripted answers to questions not typically addressed in the church.

And the content being addressed over the course of nine weeks has been divided into two categories: offensive and really offensive.

A plea to evangelicals — from an evangelical

Spiritual growth nurtured within

Religious or not, Americans focus on their inner lives as a path to God or a shelter from the 24/7 storm

Rove previews strategies against Clinton, Obama

Kudlow 101: Recession Indicators

A quick snapshot of the official recession indicators. These are from National Bureau of Economic Research. There are four indicators.

2007 Online Holiday Retail Sales Grew 29 Percent as Tracked by Chase Paymentech Pulse Index

Sales volume and the number of transactions conducted at 10
of the largest U.S. retail Web sites rose 29 percent during
the 2007 year-end holiday shopping period, according to data
tracked by the Chase Paymentech Pulse Index
(http://pulse.chasepaymentech.com), suggesting that online
shopping provided one of the few bright spots in an otherwise
sluggish period for the retail sector.

A four-day span in mid-December (Dec. 11-14) generated $598.1
million in online sales for Chase Paymentech Pulse Index
merchants for a daily average of $149.5 million. This was
the busiest sustained activity of the 2007 online holiday
season, and occurred two weeks prior to Christmas Day --
evidence that more shoppers were turning to the Web to do their
holiday shopping while ensuring delivery in time for holiday
celebrations.

Other significant metrics from the 2007 online holiday season,
as tracked by the Chase Paymentech Pulse Index, include:

-- Single-day highs: $168.9 million in sales and 3.05 million
in transactions (both on December 18)
-- Highest single-day average ticket order: $62.57 (November 28)
-- Busiest online shopping day of the week: Wednesdays, with
average daily sales of $103.7 million
-- Least-busy day of the week: Sundays, with average daily sales
of $61.5 million

Hearing on Steroids in Major League Baseball and the Mitchell Report

• Testimony of Frank and Brenda Marrero (510 KB)
• Testimony of Senator George Mitchell (28 KB)
• Letter to Attorney General Mukasey Regarding Miguel Tejada's Testimony (264 KB)
• Testimony of Bud Selig (51 KB)
• Testimony of Donald M. Fehr (48 KB)
• Therapeutic Use Exemption Summary Statistics for 2006 and 2007 (15 KB)

Bruised music majors back iTunes rival

Next month’s Super Bowl will feature a sales promotion that is audacious even by that event’s over-inflated standards: Amazon.com, the largest online retailer, will offer as many as 1bn free downloads from its new digital music store in partnership with Pepsi and singer Justin Timberlake.

Is iTunes Changing The Way We Read Scripture?

The two examples are "Bullet the Blue Sky" and Jeremiah 29:11.

Survey: Non-attendees find faith outside church

Oral history: The Monica Lewinsky scandal ten years on

Ten years after a young intern nearly brought down a president, the players in the Monica Lewinsky scandal talk to our correspondent

The Case Against Hillary Clinton, by Christopher Hitchens

Bono meets with France's President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris on January 8

Bono meets with France's President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris on January 8, 2008 to speak about humanitarian aid and to perhaps also give his blessing to Sarkozy's reported plans to marry French pop star and former model Carla Bruni.

With U2’s concert film being released later this month, Bono is turning his attention to different matters. The advocate was in France earlier this week on behalf of DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa), urging French leader Nicolas Sarkozy to increase his country’s aid to developing nations to .7 percent of gross national income by 2012. The singer considered his visit productive, saying via a statement, “The president admitted it would be very, very hard, but France would keep her word.”

Top terrorists go free under Musharraf's care

U.S. officials angrily protested Musharraf's recent release of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, a top al-Qaida operative whom the U.S. persuaded Musharraf to arrest in connection with a plot to target U.S. financial buildings.

"We're not exactly happy about that," said Vice Admiral John Scott Redd, head of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center in Washington.

The Real McCain Record: Obstacles in the way of conservative support.

McCain-Feingold — the most brazen frontal assault on political speech since Buckley v. Valeo.

McCain-Kennedy — the most far-reaching amnesty program in American history.

McCain-Lieberman — the most onerous and intrusive attack on American industry — through reporting, regulating, and taxing authority of greenhouse gases — in American history.

McCain-Kennedy-Edwards — the biggest boon to the trial bar since the tobacco settlement, under the rubric of a patients’ bill of rights.

McCain-Reimportantion of Drugs — a significant blow to pharmaceutical research and development, not to mention consumer safety (hey Rudy, pay attention, see link).
And McCain’s stated opposition to the Bush 2001 and 2003 tax cuts was largely based on socialist, class-warfare rhetoric — tax cuts for the rich, not for the middle class. The public record is full of these statements. Today, he recalls only his insistence on accompanying spending cuts.

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, McCain was consistently hostile to American enterprise, from media and pharmaceutical companies to technology and energy companies.

McCain also led the Gang of 14, which prevented the Republican leadership in the Senate from mounting a rule change that would have ended the systematic use (actual and threatened) of the filibuster to prevent majority approval of judicial nominees.

And then there’s the McCain defense record.

His supporters point to essentially one policy strength, McCain’s early support for a surge and counterinsurgency. It has now evolved into McCain taking credit for forcing the president to adopt General David Petreaus’s strategy. Where’s the evidence to support such a claim?

Moreover, Iraq is an important battle in our war against the Islamo-fascist threat. But the war is a global war, and it most certainly includes the continental United States, which, after all, was struck on 9/11. How does McCain fare in that regard?

McCain-ACLU — the unprecedented granting of due-process rights to unlawful enemy combatants (terrorists).

McCain has repeatedly called for the immediate closing of Guantanamo Bay and the introduction of al-Qaeda terrorists into our own prisons — despite the legal rights they would immediately gain and the burdens of managing such a dangerous population.

While McCain proudly and repeatedly points to his battles with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had to rebuild the U.S. military and fight a complex war, where was McCain in the lead-up to the war — when the military was being dangerously downsized by the Clinton administration and McCain’s friend, former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen? Where was McCain when the CIA was in desperate need of attention? Also, McCain was apparently in the dark about al-Qaeda like most of Washington, despite a decade of warnings.
While McCain proudly and repeatedly points to his battles with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had to rebuild the U.S. military and fight a complex war, where was McCain in the lead-up to the war — when the military was being dangerously downsized by the Clinton administration and McCain’s friend, former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen? Where was McCain when the CIA was in desperate need of attention? Also, McCain was apparently in the dark about al-Qaeda like most of Washington, despite a decade of warnings.

Countdown

I made this widget at MyFlashFetish.com.

'Exhilarating new heights'

'U23D' 'amazes when the concert feels most alive,' reports Variety Magazine. 'Bono reaching out into the crowd, a girl on some guy's shoulders almost blocking your view, the crowd bouncing around us...' Premiere at Sundance in two weeks, first reviews appearing.


"U23D," which sticks to performances and crowds, boasts a remarkable human element. Shots that place the viewer next to the Edge, Bono or bassist Adam Clayton pull them off the pedestal that acts have to climb when addressing 50,000 fans at once.

Read the whole Variety review here


"U2 3D," takes the well-traveled concert film to exhilarating new heights.' adds the Hollywood Reporter. This 'feature-length feast for the eyes and ears (thanks to the all-enveloping 5.1 Surround Sound), re-creates the U2 live experience without interruptions ... (it) ... serves up prime U2 in a startlingly rendered, state-of-the-art arena that truly raises the bar for headache-free 3-D technology....
'...blending together performances from Vertigo Tour stops in Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo as well as Mexico City and Santiago, the filmmakers succeed in ripping down that wall between and stage and the audience, and, in the process, create a team atmosphere that's perfectly in keeping with the band's "we're all in this together" philosophy.'

Read the whole Hollywood Reporter review here

Top 25 Greatest Individual Seasons in Sports History

O-H-N-O

John David Mercer/US Presswire

Here's the game plan for 2008:

We need border patrols along Interstate 10, from Jacksonville to Pensacola. A Coast Guard blockade at Biscayne Bay. And the FAA should redirect all inbound flights to South Florida from Ohio.

If you see a silver helmet and a sweater vest coming, contact authorities.

... If you've ever seen lions maul a water buffalo, you've seen the last two title games.

When the program's bowl record is 0-9 against the SEC, the evidence is overwhelming. Buckeyes fans are fond of breaking into impromptu group spelling bees, shouting out "O-H-I-O." When an SEC team shows up on the other sideline it should be "O-H-N-O." They're also fond of calling their school The Ohio State University. It might also now be called The Overmatched State University of the BCS.

...Ohio State, meanwhile, now symbolizes the pigskin Peter Principle. The Buckeyes have achieved just enough the past two seasons to rise to a level where they're incompetent.

It's a tough thing, putting together an overachieving season and seeing it end in embarrassing fashion. Especially since the Buckeyes know what this means -- another year of "S-E-C" chants and barbs about flopping on the big stage.

"If you struggle to take criticism, then you need not be at Ohio State or not be playing the game of football."

Well, good. At least Tressel knows what he's in for.

And he should know not to bring that weak Big Ten stuff back to the BCS National Championship Game again next year.

Grace, Race, and Catholicity

At a time when churches are divided along ethnic, political, socio-economic, and generational lines, the question is as urgent for us today as it was for the apostolic church: Will we be defined by Christ and his victory, or by the rival catholicities of this passing age?


"When the Word creates community, the result is a church and not a special interest group or market niche. A new community is formed by the Spirit as an imperfect yet nevertheless real oasis in a world of strife."

The Ohio State...Bills?

The gospel of money

China Bolsters One-Child Policy

Bush of Arabia: This U.S. president is the most consequential the Middle East has ever seen.

Grace & politics

If I could see a way forward in Pakistan, I'd be delighted to point towards it, but everything I can see, at least from this distance, of a country with which I am more familiar than most, suggests that every mistake ever made by Pakistan's army and political class has come home to roost, and it is now between God and the Devil.

If I could see a way forward from mob rule in Kenya, etc. Ditto Lebanon. Ditto Georgia, another “emerging democracy” that does not look like it is going to emerge from the current election in a governable state.

Ditto Iowa, incidentally, whose caucuses declared the leading U.S. presidential candidates this week. A remarkably grim field of candidates for both American parties, and the winners -- Mike Huckabee for the Republicans, Barack Obama for the Democrats -- are neither of them remotely presidential material. Both persist in making childish and ignorant statements on foreign policy; neither has shown an inclination to rise from the condition of being a pathetic, inexperienced novice.

It is worse than that, for they are both petty characters, riding on a style, and will thus prove incorrigible. Both shallowly promise unspecified “change” when what is most needed is consistency and continuity at the Presidential level: an America that does not abandon her commitments and shift like a weathercock in every breeze. Voters should have a deep allergy to any candidate promising “change,” who cannot spell out for them what change, and why.

Wand-waving rhetoric is an unambiguous indication that character is wanting. Character is not some optional quality in a job that carries huge responsibilities, and in a democracy where the people are in more need of instruction than humouring. Whatever the flaws that have been attributed to him, George W. Bush has shown a sober appreciation of how much is at stake in every decision he makes, and right or wrong, has consistently avoided easy ways out.

To my view, the Republicans' Rudy Giuliani, whom I incidentally find repugnant for several reasons, is the least of the available evils, but it appears the social conservatives won't have him, largely because they are fools, who can only see that Giuliani is no social conservative. They do not understand that a President has very limited power over domestic social policies -- even Reagan changed nothing except the tone of the discussion.

Instead, the President acts as Protector of American interests, and by legitimate extension (through formal alliances) most Western interests, in a very frightening world. Voters would be wise to consider a candidate's credentials in that field alone.

Of course, I do not write as an American, but as Pierre Trudeau once fairly observed, a Canadian mouse in bed with that elephant whose every twist and grunt has ramifications for us. American voters have their own priorities, and do not generally listen to foreign advice, however well-intended. Democracy is always “democracy in one country” and the ramifications become simply a fact of life. Disaster can be a fact of life.

Charles Krauthammer, reviewing a slightly different list of failing democracies from the one I began above, wrote yesterday: “The Roman Church learned that spreading the creed required tolerance for the incorporation of certain pre-Christian practices as a way of strengthening the new faith and giving it local roots. For the spread of democracy today, we need to practice our own brand of syncretism and learn not to abandon the field when forced to settle for regional adaptations that fall short of the Jeffersonian ideal.”

He was looking to the future of the American mission as the evangelist of democracy, in a world still largely governed by durable tribal loyalties which preclude that “Jeffersonian ideal” -- which is itself fueled by the unreasonable desire to be freed from history. The confusion of worldly with spiritual ideals only compounds our worldly problems: for there is no perfect universal social order, only the kaleidoscope of give and take.

America is not needed to tell anyone how to live. But, America is desperately needed in her role as world policeman, not merely flying to crises on her own, but directing all cooperative efforts. She is stuck with this role, as the pre-eminent superpower; she is stuck with the demand for acts not words.

The world is a mess -- always a mess, but especially bad now. The intoxicant of democracy does not offer solutions. We can seek paths forward only country by country, and pray that, despite democracy, and the unworthiness of all electorates, good and able leaders emerge.

Hey, Rocket, try to top these alibis

• The bar of creativity and shamelessness, after all, is higher than Ross Rebagliati's old associates. And who, pray tell, is Rebagliati? He's a Canadian snowboarder whom the International Olympic Committee stripped of a gold medal in 1998 for testing positive for marijuana. Rebagliati explained that he hadn't smoked the forbidden weed since the previous April, but he had been exposed to some second-hand smoke during a New Year's Eve party with friends in Whistler, British Columbia. An appeal board actually ruled in Rebagliati's favor, making the unofficial tune of the Nagano Games O' Cannabis.
• Earlier this year, Italian soccer player Marco Borriello blamed a positive drug test on an ointment he had rubbed on a, ahem, private part because his Argentine model girlfriend had passed on an infection. Borriello's ultimately unsuccessful spin was the inevitable variation on a defense Olympian Dennis Mitchell used nearly a decade earlier.
• Mitchell explained illegal levels of testosterone in his body on drinking several bottles of beer and having sex with his wife at least four times the night before the 1998 test. At his disciplinary hearing, Mitchell reportedly told the panel, "It was the lady's birthday; she deserved a treat," which may help explain why USA Track and Field accepted his defense. The International Association of Athletics Federations didn't buy it, though, banning him for two years.
• Cyclist Tyler Hamilton countered a positive test for blood doping with an evil-twin defense. With a straight face, Hamilton explained that a "vanishing twin" died in his mother's womb, leaving with him the incriminating-looking foreign blood. His defense will live on long after anybody remembers any of his cycling accomplishments.
• Spanish discus thrower David Martinez didn't have an evil twin — real or imagined — to blame for a positive test for anabolic steroids, so he tried the old infected pig-meat defense. Tennis player Petr Korda tried passing off a positive drug test after he won the 1998 Australian Open on eating too much veal, only to have medical science laugh in his face. Chinese track coach Ma Junren blamed three of his record-setting runners testing positive for EPO on a supplement containing dried caterpillars and turtle blood.
• German runner Dieter Baumann claimed a failed steroid test was the result of someone injecting his toothpaste with the forbidden enhancers. High jumper Javier Sotomayor blamed a positive cocaine test on the CIA or an anti-Cuban mafia spiking his food. Uzbekistan track coach Sergei Voynov explained he had a stockpile of growth hormone to treat baldness.
• British bobsledder Lenny Paul's excuse for a failed doping test? Tainted spaghetti Bolognese. Not to be outdone, British shotputter Paul Edwards blamed a positive steroids test on drinking shampoo. Please, people, read the instructions: Rinse. Repeat. But do not drink.
• When the world was a much more innocent place, Zambian tennis player Lighton Ndefwayl offered a litany of excuses for losing a match to Musumba Bwayla. Calling Bwayla "a stupid man and a hopeless player," Ndefwayl said he lost "because my jock strap was too tight" and because his opponent's incessant flatulence while serving caused concentration lapses.
• Soccer player Darren Barnard was explaining he'd have to sit out five months because he slipped on puppy pee? When Brazilian soccer player Ramalho was explaining how he spent three days sick in bed because he swallowed a suppository intended to treat a dental condition? When outfielder Marty Cordova had to miss nearly a week because of a severe sunburn suffered when he fell asleep at a tanning salon?

The Qualifications of Hillary W. Clinton: A dynasty in decline.

The Natural and His Wife: Bill Clinton's partner - in life and politics - has yet to repeat his success.

Two Dallas Van Halen Tickets for Sale

7 p.m. CT, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2008

Section: 105

Row: M
Seats: 13, 14
Click Here To Purchase

Wallace should throw high and tight with Clemens interview

Odds, and history, don't bode well for Clemens' denials

In the fiercest of defenses, David Justice appeared on ESPN Radio to express his anger that he was named in the report. Justice claimed he never met steroid dealer Kirk Radomski and wasn't given the opportunity by Mitchell investigators to respond to allegations that he had purchased growth hormone from Radomski. Justice might not have ever used growth hormone, but in his animated public defense, he left out his verbal commitment to speak to Mitchell about the Radomski-McNamee allegations that appear on pages 181 and 182 in the report, along with the several phone calls Mitchell's investigators made to him to reschedule and the certified letter sent to his Poway, Calif., home. Justice signed for that letter; Mitchell's investigators provided ESPN.com with a copy of its receipt that contains Justice's signature.

Why didn't Pettitte or Roberts or Vina or Justice or anyone else simply tell Mitchell what each has told the public since the report was released?

GOP, R.I.P.? The Reagan coalition is down, but not out.

Mike Huckabee's New Deal - More God, more government.

Alice Cooper: The shock rock pioneer speaks about his Christian faith

"As a Christian, I don't declare myself as a 'Christian rock star'. I'm a rock performer who's a Christian. Alice Cooper is the guy who wants to entertain the audience - it happens that he's a Christian. Alice (the character I play on stage) began life as a villain and he remains one. There's a villain and a hero in every Shakespeare play. Alice is no more dangerous than a villain in a cartoon or a Disney film. We have fun with him. He snarls and wears make up. He's punished for his crime and he comes back on the stage in white top and tails. We put on a good show. I've always put limits on Alice because I believe there's a certain amount of Alice that's a gentleman. He'd slit your throat, but he'd never swear at you. And there's always a punchline; he may kill you, but he'll slip on a banana peel. I get right-wing Christians down on me and I always ask them the question: 'If I was doing Macbeth, would it be OK?' And they always say that's Shakespeare so of course. I say that's about four times more violent than anything I do on stage."

In his conversation, he is clear that he has no pretensions. He doesn't see himself as the world's greatest theologian or think he is ever going to be. He is concerned that his listener understands that the God he is seeking to serve is the "classic" one of the Christian Scriptures and creeds and not some modern amended version. The constant use of "classic" to describe his view of God, Jesus, Satan and the Bible may sound a little too much of the Coca-Cola wars to the listener who isn't used to the terminology but his point is well made. This isn't Alice Cooper's version of God or some celebrity-invented religion or anything of that kind. He goes to Bible study regularly when he is not on tour because he wants to understand God better and because he wants to know more about what God has to say to his life. He isn't interested in being a "celebrity-for-Christ". He wants to be a typical church-going Christian who is learning to love God and love his neighbour. It just so happens that he is Alice Cooper and this brings an interesting twist to the whole process.

Siskel & Ebert Review Rattle & Hum

Reds' Spring Training tickets go on sale Jan. 19

• Spring Training schedule
• Ticket information

U2 New cd News

When we first began compiling details of the releases and events that would shape 2008, it felt very familiar. On the horizon, then, are new albums from such established acts as Coldplay, U2, Oasis R.E.M., The Verve, Green Day, Madonna, Metallica and more. In the case of Coldplay and U2, at least, the scent of re-invention is in the air. As for R.E.M., whose forthcoming album I’ve heard, it looks like very much being a case of a renewed sense of focus and a return to former glories.

U2 new cd news

CARR'S FINAL WORDS: Transcript of his postgame speech to his team

Wolverines give Carr special send-off

Meeting of past, future in Wolverines' win over Florida

Behind the scenes: Michigan coach Lloyd Carr's final moments before retiring with win in bowl

Michigan Upsets Florida

Video link

Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr is doused by his players at the end of the Capital One Bowl football game in Orlando, Fla., Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2008. Michigan beat Florida 41-35. This was Carr's last game as head coach.

Michigan Wolverines receiver Adrian Arrington grabs a pass away from Florida Gators defender Markihe Anderson for a 37-yard gain that set up the winning touchdown during the fourth quarter of the Capital One Bowl at Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium in Orlando, Florida January 1, 2008.

Carr Named Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Award Winner

Lloyd Carr on his retirement

Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of U2

David Wells on "new spirituality" and gnosticism

...When Christian faith encountered this spirituality in the early centuries, Anders Nygren declares, it had arrived at “its hour of destiny.”8 This was so because this spirituality was, in its outworkings, its beliefs, and its view of life, the polar opposite of what we find in Christian faith. It was an opponent. And the besetting temptation that the Church would encounter, sometimes in fierce ways and at other times in more subtle ways, was to wonder if it could lessen the fierceness of the competition by incorporating in itself elements of this pagan way of looking at the spiritual life. These two spiritualities, Christian and pagan, Nygren contrasts in the language of two very different kinds of love, Agape and Eros. From this time forth, and coming right down into the contemporary moment, the struggle is going to be how Agape is going to preserve itself from the persistent intrusions of Eros.

The opening salvos were, of course, fired in the conflict in the early church over gnosticism; today, they are being fired by the new spirituality. Although the gnosticism of the patristic period was only one particular expression of Eros, it is, nevertheless, worth revisiting because of its parallels with postmodern spirituality.

...The combination of a modernized social fabric and the Enlightenment ideology that took root in it until relatively recently produced the autonomous self. This is the self that is not subject to outside authority and into which all reality has been contracted. The result is a radicalized individualism with a deeply privatized outlook and a mood that is insistently therapeutic. All of this has produced soil throughout society that positively invites the new spirituality. It seems normal and natural. That is why it is as difficult for the church to contest today as was gnosticism in the early centuries.

...This casual embrace of what is postmodern has increasingly led to an embrace of its spiritual yearning without noticing that this embrace carries within it the seeds of destruction for evangelical faith. The contrast between biblical faith and this contemporary spirituality is that between two entirely different ways of looking at life and at God. Nygren, as noted earlier, used the Greek words for two different kinds of love, Eros and Agape, to characterize these worldviews, and his elucidation is still helpful. In the one worldview, which he calls Eros, it is the self which is in the center. Eros, Nygren says, has at its heart a kind of want, longing, or yearning.17 It is this fact, of course, which has always put the church in something of a conundrum. Is this yearning a natural preparation for the gospel, human nature crying out in its emptiness, calling out to be filled with something else? It was this thought that led Clement of Alexandria in the early church to speak of the “true Christian gnostic” as if gnosticism’s yearning for what was spiritual reached its fulfillment in Christian faith. Yet if this yearningis a preparation, it is one that stands in need of serious purging, for it carries within itself an understanding about God and salvation that is diametrically opposed to what we have in biblical faith. In this sense, it is less a preparation and more of a wrong turn. Why is this so?
The movement of Eros spirituality is upward. Its essence, its drive, is the sinner finding God. The movement of Agape, by contrast, is downward. It is all about God finding the sinner. Eros spirituality is the kind of spirituality that arises from human nature, and it builds on the presumption that it can forge its own salvation. Agape arises in God, was incarnate in Christ, and reaches us through the work of the Holy Spirit opening lives to receive the gospel of Christ’s saving death. In this understanding, salvation is given and never forged or manufactured. Eros is the projection of the human spirit into eternity, the immortalizing of its own impulses. Agape is the intrusion of eternity into the fabric of life, coming not from below, but from above. Eros is human love. Agape is divine love. Human love of this kind, because it has need and want at its center, because it is always wanting to have its needs and wants satisfied, will always seek to control the object of its desires. That is why in these new spiritualities it is the spiritual person who makes up his or her beliefs and practices, mixing and matching and experimenting to see what works best and assuming the prerogative to discard at will. The sacred is therefore loved for what can be had from loving it. The sacred is pursued because it has value to the pursuer, and that value is measured in terms of the therapeutic payoff. There is, therefore, always a profit-and-loss mentality to these spiritualities.

Death of a Prospect:: Understanding a young ballplayer's perplexing murder.

The Boomer boom and The Beatles

I’ve been reading about the Beatles of late and I’m curious to know what everyone found interesting about them at the time. I just don’t understand the phenomenon and a number of folks from my generation don’t either. In fact, most would look back to Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones. Their lyrics were nothing to write home about (I want to hold your hand; she loves you; twist and shout; can’t buy me love?). I have to wonder if they aren’t just a boomer creation in that they hit the U.S. when most boomers (1943-1960) were at most 20. Nothing new had appeared on the scene since Elvis in the 1950s so nothing was really going on in music. Pop radio was really just in its infancy. Songs were still mainly under three minutes. More modern recording technology was just emerging (Sgt. Peppers’s was a sonic first on many levels in terms of what they did in the recording process – echo, reverb/feedback, double-tracking, reverse tape effects, sampling, the eight-track recording, etc.) The music press didn’t exist yet in the U.S. and was only in its formative years in the UK. There were still only three networks. They brought ideas into the mainstream that were on the fringes previously (drug use, meditation, Eastern religion).

I’m just left with the feeling that they just happened to come along in the midst of a perfect storm and they were able to ride a wave of technological advances across a relatively empty landscape at time when one of the largest generations was hitting their teen years.

Thoughts/comments?

Huckabee’s Remarkable Play

Redd in The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack

“Redd has a neat, white mustache. His thick white hair is parted low. He is fast-talking and professorial. He sweeps his arms out while he’s speaking, in wide, shipboard gestures.” – p. 161, Chapter 16, “Threat Matrix,” in The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack by Ronald Kessler

Redd appears on pages 160, 161, 162-164, 166, 170-171, 243-244 and is pictured with W, Townsend and Hayden at the NCTC operations center in the photos section.

Hillary Now Dependent on Husband for Win

Then, as the panic built within her campaign that she might lose Iowa, Bill was called in from the sidelines.

His performance may turn out to have been helpful, but — with its exaggerations and self-preoccupation — it also reinforced worries that he could be a major distraction during her presidency.

A recent poll said that 44 percent of the women who support her say that they do so because of him.

Dolphins-Patriots Comparison

Category	'72 Dolphins	'07 Patriots
Opponents' record	70-108-4	94-89
Record vs. winning teams	2-0	6-0
Points scored/allowed	385/171	589/274
Passing yards/TDs	2,235/17	4,859/50
Rushing yards/TDs	2,960/26	1,849/17
Offensive ranking	1	1
Defensive ranking	1	4
Patriots' stats are through 16 games

A by-the-numbers look at the New England Patriots, who became the first team in NFL history to complete a 16-0 regular season.

1: 16-0 regular seasons in NFL history

2: Times the Patriots scored 50 points this season.

3. Super Bowl championships won by New England this decade.

3A. Television stations that broadcast regular-season finale against the New York Giants (NFL Network, CBS, NBC).

4. Times the Patriots have scored at least 40 points this season.

5. Playoff teams New England has defeated this season, including four division winners (Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, San Diego and Dallas).

6. Points needed against Giants to set all-time NFL single-season scoring record.

7. Times New England has held opposition to 13 points or less.

8. Seasons Bill Belichick has coached the Patriots.

9. Times New England has held opposition to 14 points or less.

10. Consecutive games in which Tom Brady threw multiple touchdown passes.

11. Games that Patriots have won by at least 17 points.

12. Times New England has scored at least 30 points this season.

13. Games in which Randy Moss caught at least one TD pass.

19. Consecutive regular-season victories by Patriots, breaking their own NFL record).

21. Different players to score a touchdown this season, tying a record held by Los Angeles Rams (1987) and Denver Broncos (2000).

23. Touchdowns scored by Moss, breaking NFL record held by Jerry Rice in 1987.

50. Touchdowns thrown by Brady, eclipsing NFL record of Peyton Manning in 2004.

315. Difference between points scored and allowed by Patriots, breaking record of 292 by Chicago Bears, 1942).

589. Points scored by Patriots this season, surpassing league mark of 556 set by Minnesota in 1998.