Current Family and Some of the New

  

The Search for Redemption

Bruce Kuklick writes in the July/August 2004 issue of Books&Culture:

My favorite recent expression of the emotional pain that brings about a measure of humility is the maturation of Robert Kennedy. After the murder of his brother the president in 1963, Robert Kennedy was desperate to understand why his family should have been made to suffer. He took to reading the Greek tragedies, and used as a mantra his own rendering of a translation from Aeschylus' Agamemnon. As Kennedy put it, "in our sleep, pain which we cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

Books & Culture

... without complaining or arguing ...

"14 Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe"

Philippians 2:14-15 New International Version (NIV)

BibleGateway.com

Reasons to worry

Historian Niall Ferguson on the U.S. Economy in New York Times

Not only do Americans borrow as never before; they also save remarkably little. The impressive resilience of American consumer spending in the past 15 years has been based partly on a collapse in the personal savings rate from around 7.5 percent of income to below zero. The aggregate national savings rate, which includes the public sector and corporations, averaged 13 percent in the 1960's. Last year it was just 0.8 percent . . .

. . . The average American has an income of about $40,000 a year and has, as we have seen, a personal savings rate of zero. The average Chinese earns around $1,500 per year but has personal savings of 23 percent of his income — and is lending a large chunk of these savings, via the People's Bank of China, to the average American.

On Management Responsibility

The First Principle of Financial Management, which is also The Second Rule of Failure Prevention:

The loss of X dollars is always the responsibility of an executive whose financial responsibility [read, spending authority] exceeds X dollars.

- Gerald M. Weinberg, Quality Software Responsibility, Volume 2, First-Order Measurement, page 159

This means that each manager must understand and effectively manage all risks within their sphere of responsibility.

Public Interest Research Groups

U.S. PIRG Home

Niger Donor Update

ReliefWeb UNICEF Humanitarian Action 02 Jun 2006

Estate Tax "Compromise" With 15 Percent Rate Is Little Different Than Permanent Repeal

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 5/31/06

Reducing the top rate to 15 percent would lose nearly as much revenue as full repeal.

Reducing the top rate to 15 percent would produce an effective rate of just 6 percent.

Reducing the top rate to 15 percent would provide a tax windfall to extremely large estates.

Reducing the top rate to 15 percent would largely eliminate an important incentive for charitable giving.

Kidz Online - Lesson Plans

Kidz Online - Lesson Plans

My son just called to say he has a job interview here this week. It looks like a great site!

simple confession

Joel Osteen and his father before him begin every service at Lakewood Church by leading the entire congregation in a simple prayer of confession and it starts like this:

"This is my Bible:
I am what it says I am;
I have what it says I have;
I can do what it says I can do."

djchuang