Americans for Prosperity (AFP) hosted a speech by Christopher Lord Monckton, a UK climate disruption denier, at Copenhagen yesterday. According to a report on the event at It’sGettingHotInHere.org, there were only five attendees that weren’t AFP employees – until around 50 US youth climate activists showed up, took over the stage, and proceeded to hold up signs and chant “Real Americans for Prosperity are Americans for Clean Energy” from the stage behind Monckton, who continued his speech despite the disruption.

Until he drifted off message and said:

You are listening now to the shouts in the background of the Hitler youth.

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Before I sat down to write this post, I wrote two letters. In many respects the recipients could not be more different from me: George is 14 and Monica is 10. They live in rural villages in Tanzania. They have never left their region, while I’ve traveled all over the world. But the biggest difference is the fact that their families live on less than $1 a day. In fact, a billion of the world’s people are in a similar plight, and fully half the planet subsists on less than $2 a day. I, on the other hand, reside in one of the wealthier communities in the wealthiest nation in the world. But my plenty is making a major difference in the lives of George and Monica, and so can yours this holiday season, for children in similar situations.

While our family sponsors George and Monica on an ongoing monthly basis through Compassion International, organizations that care for the world’s poorest children also benefit from single donations that aid children without sponsors or which support community projects where they live. It can be a delight to give your own holiday gift recipients the chance to choose a gift in their name for a child in desperate need.

World Vision’s online gift catalog is a great portal. This relief, development and advocacy organization works with the world’s most vulnerable children, families and communities in more than 100 countries, to overcome poverty and injustice. Full story »

There’s been some complaint recently about being unable to edit comments, a feature we had until a couple of months ago. We had to take it out because there was a problem following a plugin upgrade, but with further testing, the problem appears to either have been corrected in a later revision or only applicable to how the admin accounts viewed comments for editing.

So we’ve reactivated the plugin. Please let us know if you experience problems with editing your comments so we can investigate further.

Our first semi-final was a tough, hard fought, back-and-forth affair. When the smoke cleared, The Stones had prevailed, and now advance to the Final. The numbers: #2 The Rolling Stones 54%; #5 Neil Young 46%.

In our second semi, the band that invented “Power Pop” (they’re probably more remembered for the “power” part) tees it up with the band that invented atmosphere. Cue: house lights down…

#2 Pink Floyd: Listen	#3 The Who: Listen

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I love dogs and I love football, so 2007 was painful for me. But the thing that snaps my string beans more than the accusations against a certain professional quarterback, whose comeback is amounting to little, are the statements by a celebrity/cushion, who said dog fighting was a thing that happened all the time in the south. I found that statement puzzling. I lived in Tennessee for 49 years, and was never invited to a dog fight, never heard about a dog fight, and certainly didn’t know there was money to be made at a dog fight. Besides, we all knew that for sheer entertainment, a cat fight was the show of choice. Full story »

This is hard. There are so many to choose from. We started going to their concerts in the 1970s when we were living in Providence, and have been going for decades, actually, including their occasional forays to London. A couple of years ago we timed our trip to Boston so we could hear their Christmas concert, as well as go to the Revels for the first time in a couple of years. The Camerata is responsible for the best bunch of Christmas music ever to have been recorded by a single American group, so I’ll just mention the highlights–A Medieval Christmas, A Renaissance Christmas, Noel (medieval French), Sing We Noel (early American and English), An Early American Christmas, A Mediterranean Christmas. They’re all great. Blue light special for bargain shoppers–you can get a threesome set (Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque) cheap at this time of year. I guess if I had a favorite, it would be Sing We Noel. But that old Medieval Christmas has held up well for well over thirty years now, and it’s still one of the best Christmas albums out there.
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