You may think I am joking, but I am not. Sexy Insurance! bills itself as the world’s first international social networking site for the sexiest industry on the planet! I think it was the marketing department and not the actuaries who came up with that last statement.

The site is designed to help folks in the insurance industry to meet up, swap war stories, network for jobs, and whatever else it is people do on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. It officially opened on January 11th and when I checked there are 170 members. Still a ways to go before they catch up with Facebook’s or MySpace’s 10s of millions.

Business Week magazine has a nice write up with some quotes from the site designers defending the ’sexy’ designation.

HatTip: Insurance Information Institute

My wife and I are spending this Super Bowl weekend at the Suquamish Clearwater Casino Resort with a (not-so-sexy) bunch of insurance agents. Each year members of the Special Risk Agents Association (SRAA) of Washington and representatives from the companies we represent get together for an annual meeting and have a good time. This group of agents is also known as ‘The Dirty Dozen’ because it used to be 12 of the largest agencies that wrote primarily non-standard (aka high-risk) auto insurance. Most agencies go after the ‘preferred’ business, people with no tickets, 2 cars, a home, etc (you have seen the TV commercials). Our agencies go after that business that, historically, the major companies did not want, people with DUIs, lead feet, under 25, etc.

Anyway, this should be a fun weekend. The resort is on the Kitsap Peninsula and our room looks out over the water, which even on a gray winter day is still gorgeous and relaxing. Even though we will pass the slot machines and gambling tables I doubt I will even put a nickel in the slots. It does not seem like entertainment and I cannot stand the overwhelming smell of cigarette smoke. Instead, Von and I went out today and checked out Bainbridge Island did some geocaching. I should be getting ready to go down to the hospitality suite and then dinner.

“I want to make sure the record reflects that Virginia Tech was a gun free zone, and the result was painfully predictable, only the victims were gun free…”
Brian Judy, NRA.

Which side makes more sense? Do gun bans obviously do not keep criminals from shooting innocent people but do the bans keep innocent people from killing each other? Or would the possibility that there are armed folks amongst us keep the criminal from either committing the crime to start with or, possibly, stop the criminals in the act?

I listened to the story today about Washington lawmakers debating whether people with concealed weapon permits be allowed to take their guns on to college campuses.

Many colleges think that banning guns will protect the student body. But gun rights activists say that this has just turned college campuses into “victim zones”, where everyone is unarmed except the bad guy. Republican State Senator Pam Roach introduced a bill (SB 6860) that would not allow Washington colleges and universities to ban licensed concealed weapons from their campus.

The pro-gun bill was introduced in response to the bill (SB 6841) proposed by State Senator Ed Murray, a Seattle Democrat, that would do the exact opposite, banning guns from any college campuses where high school students take classes. This would include all community colleges since they have Running Start students.

What I find interesting is that the Higher Education Committee Chairman, Senator Paull Shin, D-Edmonds, suggested that the two sponsors “work out their differences” and come back next year. LOL.

How do you hide a castle? Behind a 40-foot wall of hay bales, of course!

Somehow, a UK farmer managed to secretly build a castle, complete with battlements and mock cannons, and then live in it with his family. The “house” was hidden behind a 40-foot wall of hay bales for four years while it was being built to avoid applying for planning permission which he knew would be denied. The farmer claims that because no one objected to the home for four years, it is no longer illegal. But the planning council says that since nobody has seen the structure, the four-year period has not been met.

I think it is funny that no one complained about the ugly tires hanging holding down the ugly blue tarps hanging over the wall of hay. Or wondered why the family spent the night there. Or….

Luckily for the planning commission the castle only has mock cannons.

Hat Tip and More Photos at the Daily Mail

Somehow this picture really bothers me. Especially when you watch the video below and realized how utterly amazing this must be. I don’t really have much of a fear of heights but my heart begins to race just thinking about doing this. Especially with a small child. This photo is not faked! They are swimming in a natural rock pool called Devil’s Pool at the very top of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.

From September to December each year, when the water levels are low, it is possible (and they say safe) to swim in this naturally formed pool at the edge of this amazing 360-foot falls.

HatTip: A Welsh View

There’s a rainbow somewhere
You were born to be there
You’re just running in circles
Till you reach out your hand
to the King of hearts.
— Randy Stonehill

Calvary Chapel of the Tri-Cities is once again sponsoring their annual Father Daughter Ball. Last year my daughter and I had a great time, dancing some dances and eating the goodies. A few of her friends also attended and they had fun dancing and playing together as well.

This year’s theme is King of Hearts and will start at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, February 29th at the TRAC facility in Pasco off of Road 68

Tickets are only $20 per “dad” and daughters are free. I do not doubt that the event will sell out, so remember to buy your tickets early. Tickets may be purchased at the Calvary Chapel Office , Cornerstone Cafe , Parable Christian Book Store. , Desert Dove Bibles and Books, and at Dawson Richards Tuxedo.

All Things Considered the other day had a story about the biblical allusions that Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee sprinkles in his speeches. NPR played excerpts containing the biblical references to folks who were raised in Christian households and had attended Sunday school. Most of those interviewed had no clue to Huckabee’s meaning. How about you?

In November, as Huckabee surged in the polls, a student at Liberty University asked him what was driving his startling success. Huckabee responded, “It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people.”

Wrong: “That’s when Moses … had to feed all the people, the multitude of people that left Egypt,”

For the next quiz question, we played a clip from Huckabee’s Super Tuesday victory speech: “Sometimes, one small smooth stone is even more effective than a whole lot of armor.”

Wrong: “Maybe something to do with the war.”

The next clip also came from Tuesday night’s speech: “We’ve also seen that the widow’s mite has more effectiveness than all the gold in the world.”

Wrong: “I have no clue, I thought a mite was a bug. Is it a spider?”

Professor Stephen Prothero of Boston University said:

“Half of Americans can’t name any of the four Gospels, and that includes the Christians, and half don’t know that Genesis is the first book of the Bible.”

“You could imagine that … this is his secret code way that he could speak to evangelicals without alienating more secular people, but the faulty part of that strategy is the evangelicals don’t even necessarily know these stories.”

It is truly sad to realize that Jay Leno’s ‘Jay Walking’ is not a put-on. Our culture has become so illiterate that unless it is a quote from “Lost”, or “Friends”, people have no clue what you are talking about.

I found this 20 question quiz online that you can use to test your knowledge. I got 19 out of 20.

Want to eat out at half price? Each Friday New Northwest Broadcasters, who run a half dozen of the radio stations in the Tri-Cities, offer a limited number of “JUST PAY HALF” Gift Certificates for a local restuarant. It is a great deal which allow you to buy $50 worth of gift certificates for only $25. They usually come as two $25 certificates or five $10 certificates. The “Just Pay Half” gift certificates go on sale every Friday at 8am and when they are gone, well, they are gone.

This week the deal is to Rosy’s Ice Cream Shoppe and Diner, a great little eatery in Richland. I have ordered mine already and can’t wait to go use them.

PS. While looking up info on Rosy’s Diner I found this online coupon good for one free entree. Use it before 02/29/2008 (and I am sure you will not be able to use the coupon and the gift certificate at the same time).

Finding a good book to listen to is always a challenge. Now that I have my Sansa e260 mp3 player I am able to get alot more listening done in a day. I like not being tied to what is on the radio at the moment and being able to go from home to car to work and back again while continuing the same story.

In my search for stuff worth listening to I ran across a recommendation at Librivox for Free Listens. The blog just started in January this year but he has already put up 9 reviews.

In his first post he lays out his plan for reviewing, at a pace of about one book per week, free human-read audiobooks that are available on the web.

Rating - I’ll give a rating on a ten point scale for the book itself. I’ll write up what I like and didn’t like, trying to avoid any spoilers beyond what you’d read on the cover of a paperback. Of course, my reviews are my own opinion and I may change my opinion.

He does like books that have only one reader. I must agree. It is hard sometimes to follow the character when the reader changes each chapter and you adapt to their ‘voice’. This will eliminate some of the larger works in Librivox, but there are still plenty available.

Solo recordings - I tend to review recordings made by one person, rather than the chapter-per-person organization of the Librivox group recordings. I do this for two reasons: 1) I like solo recordings better and 2) it’s easier to review. Listing the qualities of 14 different readers is difficult enough as it is without the possibility that I’ll have to own up that one of the 14 is sub-par.

I also like the idea of not giving bad reviews, especially since once you find you don’t like the book, why finish! (And maybe the problem is with the listener and not the story)

No bad reviews - If I’m reading a book and decide I don’t like it, I’ll put it aside; no hard feelings. I’ve come back to books from time to time and discovered that they’re actually good books, but I just wasn’t in the right mental state to enjoy it. The same goes with readers. I won’t continue listening if I dislike the reader, but neither will I publish my opinion that the reader is awful. There’s too much of good stuff out there to spend time dwelling on the negative.

I am looking forward to his reviews and to be able to add some of these to my listening queue.

Great Books Audio ~ Chapter a Day publishes a ‘chapter’ at a time from classic literature, both fiction and poetry, as a podcast. This is a great way to not only expand your horizons but to “read” some of the books you should have read in high school.

Although the title includes “Chapter a Day”, it appears that anywhere from 5 to 20 ‘chapters’ are published each month, averaging about 3 per week. You can listen directly on the site, download the mp3, or subscribe to the podcast. So far I have only heard one voice narrating the stories, so I assume it is done by the site’s owner, Walter Burek, though the site does not give any details about the podcast’s origins or motivations.

Along with the first chapter of each work, the host includes some information about the book or poem and it’s author. Subsequent chapters each have a picture of some kind that relate to the story in some way, usually quite interesting.

I am currently listening to “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells and the reader’s voice fits in well with the single person narration format of the story. Will be interesting to see how he does on more complex stories. It would be nice if there was an index page linking to the start of each story and poem read.

Here is a list of the books that have been read so far and a link to the first chapter:

• The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Man Who Knew Too Much by G.K. Chesterton
• The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Call of the Wild by Jack London

Details

• Website: http://www.greatbooksaudio.com
• RSS: http://podcasts.odiogo.com/great-books-a-chapter-a-day/podcasts-xml.php
• Host: Walter Gerald Burek
• Started: November 2006
• Frequency: 5 to 20 podcasts per month

Patrick Henry’s speech, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, was given in March 1775 at the Second Virginia Convention in Richmond Virginia. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were among the delegates present to debate the issue of organizing a militia to resist Great Britain’s oppressive rule. I do not ever remember ever having heard or read the actual text of this speech before.
I can see how this speech might have been a deciding factor in committing Virginia troops to join Massachusetts troops to fight the British.

The speech can be downloaded for free from Learn-out-Loud at the link above. I found this audio file while searching for free audio books and discovered Learn-Out-Loud’s Founding Document’s Podcast. This looks to have been a great podcast but Learn-out-Loud has not added anything new to the schedule since April 2007, but I still look forward to listening to the half-dozen things they did post.

When it comes to romance I am alway a day late and a dollar short, so it figures that this post would be a week late too. Just saw this Valentines Day Message with a Reformed Bent at Domain for Truth, and I think this is actually ‘bent’ in more ways than one. :)

Tomorrow Chapter A Day on Wisconsin Public Radio will begin it’s broadcast of All Brave Sailors by J. Revell Carr. The book is read by Norman Gilliland and will run from Thursday, February 21, through Friday, March 7, 2008. This book was originally published in January 2004 and the paperback version was published in July 2007.

Summary

In the early years of WWII, a German raider, the Widder, would disguise itself as a neutral Swedish freighter and attack unsuspecting enemy ships, usually sinking the ships and killing all on board. In August 1940 the unarmed British freighter, Anglo-Saxon, was sunk by the Widder but 7 merchant marines were able to escape undetected on a small ‘jolly boat’.

The story chronicles the fate of these seven men over the next 70 days as they drift across the Atlantic Ocean and struggle with hunger, exposure, thirst, and madness. Along with this amazing story, the author adds the story of the notorious captain, Hellmuth von Ruckteschell who was eventually tried as a war criminal.

Listening

Chapter A Day broadcasts online at 12:30pm CST each weekday but they also make available the last 5 days readings online so you can listen at a time more convenient for you.