Keep This Going

If you haven’t watched both speeches I recommend it. I have provided the links below. They are both on YouTube.

They are around 40-50 minutes each. If you don’t have time or desire to watch them both I recommend watching the candidate that spoke for the opposite party that you are.

Also, if you have time don’t forget to watch the Vice President candidates as well.

John McCain’s Acceptance Speech

John McCain

Barack Obama’s Acceptance Speech

Barack Obama

So this is interesting. This was taken from the book Freakonomics. I haven’t read the whole book, but I keep hearing it is very interesting.

Urban Pool

“Consider the parents of an eight year old girl named, say, Molly. Her two best friends, Amy and Imani, each live nearby. Molly’s parents know that Amy’s parents keep a gun in their house, so they have forbidden Molly to play there. Instead, Molly spends a lot of time at Imani’s house, which has a swimming pool in the backyard. Molly’s parents feel good about having made such a smart choice to protect their daughter.”

Small hand gun that has a secure trigger lock

“But according to the data, their choice isn’t smart at all. In a given year, there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential pools in the United States. (In a country with 6 million pools, this means that roughly 550 children under the age of ten drown each year.) Meanwhile, there is 1 child killed by a gun for every 1 million plus guns. (In a country with an estimated 200 million guns, this means roughly 175 children under ten die each year from guns.) The likelihood of death by pool (1 in 11,000) versus death by gun (1 in 1 million-plus) isn’t even close: Molly is far more likely to die in a swimming accident at Imani’s house than in gunplay at Amy’s. “

I like my right to own guns. I believe heavily in gun safety, and I believe strongly against insanely strict gun laws… why is this you may ask….? What gang banger is going to “purchase” their gun “legally?” I don’t like the documenary “Bowling for Columbine.”

Okay so maybe I’m not, but I got your attention, eh?  This past summer some of you know that I traveled to the land of the rising sun.  Not Cedar Falls, but Japan (The area code I think is still 319 there).  It was a summer full of all sorts of high and low emotions.  If any of you have moved or been on a longer mission trip you may know the feeling of being super pumped to be somewhere new.  After the initial excitement of being in this sweet country where the use of chopsticks are mandatory, bowing is respectful, and apologizing for everything is normal, a person needs to come off of the original adrenaline rush.  Some of the coolest parts were living in a Japanese house with local Japanese college students.  To really submerge myself into the culture.  To build genuine friendships based on love, trust, and acceptance.  Honestly, I didn’t have the intense spiritual trip I thought I would or wanted.  I’ve been to Japan on the same trip before, and it was much more dramatic then.  I guess I was looking for the same thing to happen again.  At the same time, my character was still stretched and I was forced to grow as a person.  Because I had been there before, was the oldest, have a job and pay taxes, I was looked to as the leader without really being called the leader.  And although that may have been my role, it was no less important as anyone else.  As a team, as a body, we all had our own roles, and we couldn’t have lost one. 

But I came back……and it was really hard.  Some of you may know this, but I haven’t exactly loved my life in Arizona.  It’s been a pretty hard two and a half years.  Somewhere where people don’t know me, my past, my history, that I was in the biggest melodic hardcore band to hit the 319 in 74 years.  It’s just tough.  It’s like, “Hey, I just went on a sweet trip to Japan, anyone want to hear about it or talk about it?”  Not so much.  It’s just weird to be so needed, wanted, and appreciated somewhere for two months, and to come home and feel like know one cares.  I should probably just move to Colorado, eh?  Guys, it’s not as bad as it sounds.  I’ve got some good buds.  Sometimes I just have to realize that I’m in a different faze of life and that I can look back at my adolescence fondly and just move on.  Someone once described a persons 20′s like a swamp.  A time to try new things, to mess up, to take risks and not take the strait path through.  So that’s what I’m doing or at least trying.  I hope I come out of the swamp a better person.  I love and miss you guys dearly.

-D-D-David?