Jonathan's blog

Dear loyal reader, personally I'm not especially interested in video games these days.  However, if perchance your spouse is, don't dismiss it out of hand.  Maybe it would be a good source of bonding time and common interest between father and son. Studies also show that it would be good training for the future surgeons in your family.

Check out the word counts from Bush's Iraq strategy speech as compiled on the Mojo blog.  It makes a point in a round about way.

The new CPR guidelines announced recently change the number of compression per two rescue breaths from 15 to 30.  I guess I've been through the training about 4 or 5 times, so I'm pretty used to the 15 to 2 ratio.  Will I be able to remember that it's been changed to 30 to 2?  Don't know.  Hopefully I won't have to.

From an article in the San Francisco Chronicle: In October, for the first time, the national debt passed the $8 trillion mark.  The federal budget deficit is $319 billion.  Not only is this situation unsustainable, it also greatly increases the vulnerability of our economy: since taking office Bush has borrowed $1.05 trillion from foreign banks and governments.  Maybe we should roll back those tax cuts.

CIO Insight has an article about megachurches (average weekly attendance greater than 2000).  There are approximately 1800 megachurches in the U.S.  Together they account for about 7 % of church attendance (or ~ 7 million people) and are the equivalent of the third largest religious group in the country (only lagging behind the Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists).  However, the megachurches are typically not affiliated with any particular denomination.

...megachurches are growing at the expense of other churches. "Overall church attendance is not going up. People are going to megachurches from other churches," Chaves says. One factor driving growth, he adds, is cost. "You may have to go to a larger church to get quality, such as a youth minister and more programs, or better facilities."

The article is an interesting description of the creative use of technology by the megachurches.