Barnson.org

An interesting fact I found on a radio website,

For the second straight year, The Wiggles have beaten out AC/DC and Nicole Kidman as Australia’s top earners. The Wiggles earned $37 million last year, AC/DC made $18 million, and Kidman brought in just about $16 million.

Am I the only one that thinks this is wrong?

TBS, formerly known as the Superstation, is running a mini-marathon of LOTR movies this weekend – Fellowship and Two Towers. I caught a very funny commercial this morning promoting the weekend’s movies, featuring some cleverly edited together frames of Frodo and Sam, set to the song Secret Lovers. There was a killer shot of Gandalf with this bemused look on his face. I guess it was the kind of thing that’s funny at 6:30 in the morning.

Saw some highlights on ESPN one night, This looks like a pretty cool event to see. I am trying to talk a couple co-workers into building one with me.

Flugtag

Okay, this is bizarre..

Look how many celebrities have volunteered to be Jedi Master Chefs!! JEDI MASTER CHEFS

OK, so this is geeky, but like several other topics, the goal is to archive this on my web site so I can look it up later:

How to use a prop balancer, tachometer, and 11×8 propeller to gauge wind speed.

A very unique feature of a Precision Balancer is it’s ability to read wind speed. This method can be as accurate as 2mph. All you need is a Tachometer and a Balancer and a 11 x 8 Prop.

Place the prop on the balancer and either place the balancer on a level surfaced or hold it so that the BACK of the prop is facing the direction the wind is coming from.

Turn on the tach and read the wind speed. The wind speed with the 11×8 prop will be the RPM divided by 100. Most tachometers read rpm in thousands so the wind speed will be in tens. For example, a reading of 0.5 on the tach is 5 mph. A reading of 18.8 on the tach is 188 mph (in which case you should not fly).

The recommended prop for most accurate readings is a Top Flite 11 x 8 Power Point prop. Any 11 x 8 prop should work and be reasonably accurate, if you want to be more accurate use the following formula:-

Wind Speed (in MPH) = RPM x Pitch of the prop (in inches) x .00114

This post is dedicated to “friends” who send me dozens of emails a day avowing that Bill Gates is using an email tracking program to watch if I forward an email to all of my friends so he can give me $100.00 and make a donation to the American Red Cross for the Make-A-Wish kid in England or else he’s going to shut down my Hotmail account:

http://www.softlab.ece.ntua.gr/~sivann/pub/swf/may02-smilepop-soapbox4.swf

I was just reading in the Old Testament and I just wanted to share a little:

18 For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else. 19 I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain: I the LORD speak righteousness, I declare things that are right. 20 ¶ Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations: they have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save.

22 Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.

Isaiah 45:18 – 20, 22

When I read this, I had a feeling inside that these things are truly from God. I wish you all could feel what I feel when I read certain passages. There’s this feeling of just knowing it’s true. I know these words aren’t just produced by a man for his own purposes.

Perhaps such words feel so true to me because they fit so completely with my own experiences where God has been there for me.

Anyway, Have a good Sabbath Day.

emilt

Today, the MN House passed a bill that makes it more difficult for government entities to acquire private property by strictly defining the situations in which eminent domain powers may be used. Although a bipartisan majority supported the bill, those who expressed concern that the bill goes too far were House reps from urban areas. The feeling is that it’s going to be hard for local governments to prove that a property is blighted and that cleaning up urban neighborhoods with environmental or crime problems will be virtually impossible.

I couldn’t find this blog’s prior stream of conversation on this issue. I recall that it was sparked last year by some big case.

The way I see it, this bill could result in more government corruption. If you’re a city council member, and some blighted (when speaking about eminent domain, this term is code for either ‘poor people with their family car jacked up on blocks in the front yard, or ‘old people who have been sitting in the same string of houses for 50+ years’) neighborhood is dragging down the tax base, you’re going to have to line up a developer in the shade with promises of increment financing, road construction, surrounding area improvement, etc. Most developers won’t take a leap to acquire blighted land unless they’re given some covert approval of preference beforehand.

Inspired by another post likening Justin to Nicholas Cage (which yeah, I can totally see, although I also think he bears an uncanny resemblance to that dude from Mad TV, I thought I’d start a thread in which people say the celebrity they think they resemble most. You can compare yourself to a) the celebrity YOU think you most resemble, b) the celebrity OTHER people think you most resemble, c) the celebrity you WISH you most resembled with a little bit of tweaking, etc…

For me, I have been compared to Sean Astin a couple times. Also, I apparently look a lot like Iron Chef Bobby Flay.

My wishlist answer, of course, is David Boreanaz. There is a resemblance when in good light. Or possibly bad. I swear that at least one of my old high school students said it was so. Actually, her words were “Mr. Rowan, I was channel surfing last night and I passed by this show and I was like ‘Oh my God it’s Mr. Rowan!’ except it wasn’t, it was Angel.”

Needless to say, she was one of my favorite students.

Yup, my little film Nocturne has gotten a little press… READ THE ARTICLE
This is from a premiere I attended last weekend! Woot woot!
Oh, and for more stuff from the film.. check this out! Click here for lots of Nocturne VIDEOS!