If you enjoy occasionally peeking into the collective psyche of the world, you might try looking at Google Trends. Google takes in between 400-500 million searches a day. On the top end of the range, that works out to an average of 5,787 searches ... per second! I certainly add a few numbers to the daily search totals myself.Google Trends (www.google.com/trends) is a new section of Google that allows you to see what the hottest search words and phrases are. As Google says, "Hot Trends highlights searches that have sudden surges in popularity." Many times you can tell what is in the news by looking at what gets searched for. Many times you’re just confused!Just out of curiousity, I pulled it up for Friday, January 18. Top search phrase: "yin and yang." Number two: "sheep dash."The 13th Amendment to the Constitution came in at number 14.In a humbling display of…
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One of the lesson’s I learned while battling a recent cold ... cable news networks only track three stories at a time and use 12 different anchors to tell you the same thing, but in a slightly different way. And whenever a lead-in proclaims, "Breaking News" ... it’s probably not.
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Yesterday happened to be Groundhog Day. Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania claims to be the home of the original groundhog and even gave it a name -- Punxsutawney Phil.Every year the locals dress up in old-fashioned costumes and wait for Phil. We’re not quite sure how many “Phil’s” there actually are since groundhogs tend to look alike. But the locals have a good time nonetheless.While doing some research into Groundhog Day, I came across a few lesser-known groundhogs:Wiarton Willie of Wiarton, OntarioStaten Island Chuck of in New York City, New YorkSir Walter Wally of Raleigh, North CarolinaJimmy the Groundhog of Sun Prairie, WisconsinThe last one sounds like a member of the groundhog mafia or possibly a retired sportscaster.On the one hand, it’s kind of quaint that the men of Punxsutawney dress up in top hats and gather in a field at 4:30 in the morning to await Phil’s arrival. Six weeks of weather…
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Wow, it's 2008 already and this blog was last updated one month ago. In the blogosphere, that is grounds for a time-out. It's not that I've forgotten how to type ...Let's see ... where to start. Hannah and Hope are both involved in softball (opening day is this Saturday). We're really pleased with their coaches and both girls are enjoying the game. What more could you ask for! Look for pictures to be posted once the season gets underway.Hannah recently represented her school in the county-wide spelling bee for Christian schools. She came in second out of all the fifth graders. She was a bit nervous, but probably only her parents could tell. Hope is working on a state report project on New York and will be dressing up as the Statue of Liberty :-)On the baseball front ... my Christmas gift was season tickets to the Padres (20 game…
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It’s hard to believe we’re winding down another year. Though I know that minutes still have sixty seconds and a day is comprised of twenty-four hours, it sure seems like time is moving faster the older I get. Or maybe life is moving at the same pace it always has but my reflexes are just a bit slower.The story of the past twelve months has been an interesting one. As the story unfolded, the evidence of God’s presence was on every page.LifePoint celebrated her second anniversary, a feat not shared by every new church start-up. In church planting terminology, we were a “parachute drop.” That means we started without the benefit of mother church -- in fact, we started with a handful of people who simply wanted to follow a dream of starting a new church.Much like a child learns to crawl, then walk, and eventually run, we have gone…
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