Worth a listen to the Audio. Quote: "The video i took while at Fastrip on east 20th street. We huddled in the back of the store until the glass got sucked out , then ran into the walk in storage fridge. Sorry for the lack of visuals but the audio is pretty telling of how intense the storm was. The tornado hits at around 1:20 seconds."

New from Tim!
ROCKSHOW COMEDY TOUR - 2 DVD SET
Over 2 1/2 hours of Tim Hawkins, Bob Smiley, and John Branyan in concert & backstage on the Rockshow Tour in California.

http://www.timhawkins.net

THE HERO

Worship House Media by Jonathan Bryant Media

This Easter, show an intimate portrait of the crucifixion through the thoughts and emotions of those who witnessed it firsthand. His followers horrified and devastated; his accusers mocking and reveling. In a seemingly hopeless situation, we discover how the man that many saw as the victim, was in fact the Hero. "I lay down my life only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord."

Believing You Can Get Smarter Makes You Smarter

Thinking about intelligence as changeable and malleable, rather than stable and fixed, results in greater academic achievement, especially for people whose groups bear the burden of negative stereotypes about their intelligence.
Findings

Can people get smarter? Are some racial or social groups smarter than others? Despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, many people believe that intelligence is fixed, and, moreover, that some racial and social groups are inherently smarter than others. Merely evoking these stereotypes about the intellectual inferiority of these groups (such as women and Blacks) is enough to harm the academic perfomance of members of these groups. Social psychologist Claude Steele and his collaborators (2002) have called this phenomenon "stereotype threat."

Yet social psychologists Aronson, Fried, and Good (2001) have developed a possible antidote to stereotype threat. They taught African American and European American college students to think of intelligence as changeable, rather than fixed - a lesson that many psychological studies suggests is true. Students in a control group did not receive this message. Those students who learned about IQ's malleability improved their grades more than did students who did not receive this message, and also saw academics as more important than did students in the control group. Even more exciting was the finding that Black students benefited more from learning about the malleable nature of intelligence than did White students, showing that this intervention may successfully counteract stereotype threat.
Significance

This research showed a relatively easy way to narrow the Black-White academic achievement gap. Realizing that one's intelligence may be improved may actually improve one's intelligence, especially for those whose groups are targets of stereotypes alleging limited intelligence (e.g., Blacks, Latinos, and women in math domains.)
Practical Application

Blackwell, Dweck, and Trzesniewski (2002) recently replicated and applied this research with seventh-grade students in New York City. During the first eight weeks of the spring term, these students learned about the malleability of intelligence by reading and discussing a science-based article that described how intelligence develops. A control group of seventh-grade students did not learn about intelligence's changeability, and instead learned about memory and mnemonic strategies. As compared to the control group, students who learned about intelligence's malleability had higher academic motivation, better academic behavior, and better grades in mathematics. Indeed, students who were members of vulnerable groups (e.g., those who previously thought that intelligence cannot change, those who had low prior mathematics achievement, and female students) had higher mathematics grades following the intelligence-is-malleable intervention, while the grades of similar students in the control group declined. In fact, girls who received the intervention matched and even slightly exceeded the boys in math grades, whereas girls in the control group performed well below the boys.

These findings are especially important because the actual instruction time for the intervention totaled just three hours. Therefore, this is a very cost-effective method for improving students' academic motivation and achievement.

 

Reconnecting with an old flame can be a wonderful thing. Or it can be devastating to your relationship if your current spouse gets jealous.

That's apparently the problem now that so many people are reconnecting on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Men and women are finding old loves -- and their spouses are feeling betrayed.

Just a few weeks ago, divorce experts announced that 1 in every 5 divorces last year cited Facebook as a contributing factor. Who knows if that's an accurate statistic, but it kind of makes sense.

So what about you? Has your relationship been affected by social networking (FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.)?

 

His wife was trapped under rubble.

By Jill Dilibero

 

In the wake of the devastating earthquake that has rocked Haiti, many individuals are becoming heroes.

One such man was Frank Thorp Jr., a missionary worker who, when he heard that Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince was hit hard by an earthquake, raced back from 100 miles away to ensure his wife Jillian was safe, according to NBC Washington.

Thorp arrived at his mission house to find his wife and a colleague trapped underneath concrete and debris. They had been buried for more than nine hours.

"We had to pull bricks and bricks and bricks and wood and doors and metal away for at least an hour before we were able to get her and her co-worker out," Thorp told NBC.

The quake measured at 7.0 on the Richter scale, devastating the lives of hundreds of thousands of Haitians.

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Find out how you can help the earthquake victims in Haiti through these organizations.

Jill Dilibero is a journalist in Boston.

 

Friday, January 08, 2010 - Assocated Press/Fox News

KAMPALA, Uganda - A Ugandan lawmaker on Friday refused to withdraw proposed legislation that would impose the death penalty for some gays and lesbians despite international condemnation and presidential opposition to a measure that could scare off foreign investors.

Lawmaker David Bahati said he will not heed a call late Thursday from the government to drop the proposed bill, as he feels such a measure is necessary in the conservative East African country.

On Thursday, Minister of State for Investment Aston Kajara said the government would ask Bahati to scrap the bill because they fear backlash from foreign investors. The bill, which Bahati proposed in September, has provoked criticism from gay-rights groups and protests in London, New York and Washington.

"I stand by the bill," Bahati said. "I will not withdraw it. We have our children in schools to protect against being recruited into (homosexuality). The process of legislating a law to protect our children against homosexuality and defending our family values must go on."

That leaves the decision to the country's parliament, which will discuss the legislation in late February or early March.

Although President Yoweri Museveni has told colleagues he believes the bill is too harsh and has encouraged his ruling National Resistance Movement Party to overturn the death sentence provision, Information Minister Kabakumba Matsiko said the parliament will act independently of the presidency.

"The bill did not come from the executive," she said. "It is a private members bill."

Earlier this week, several lawmakers and officials from the ruling party said they will push to remove the death penalty statute, and have proposed instead that gays receive counseling to convert them to heterosexuality.

The proposed legislation would toughen Uganda's already strict laws against homosexuality, which are bolstered by Uganda's conservative society, which generally frowns on homosexuality.

Lawmakers outlawed gay marriage in 2005. The proposed legislation is being touted as an update to Uganda's old statutes against homosexuality, which date from the 1950s and do not address homosexuality by name, only what the law terms as "unnatural offenses" and "gross indecency."

The draft of the new bill says anyone convicted of a homosexual act - which includes touching someone of the same sex with the intent of committing a homosexual act - could face life imprisonment. Current legislation imposes seven years' imprisonment. Under the new law, the death sentence could apply to sexually active gays living with HIV or in cases of same-sex rape. The new law also expands its scope to include Ugandans living abroad, who can be extradited and punished.

Kajara said government officials worried the bill would scare off investors.

"Ever since the bill was tabled, there have been a lot of outcries not only here but from all over the world," he said. "There has been negative publicity on Uganda which is not good for investment. As government, we shall talk to the private member who brought it to parliament and request him to withdraw it."

The measure was proposed in Uganda following a visit by leaders of U.S. conservative Christian ministries that promote therapy for gays to become heterosexual. However, at least one of those leaders has denounced the bill, as have some other conservative and liberal Christians in the United States.

On the African continent, South Africa is the only country that allows gay marriage. However, some South African groups have rejected homosexuality as "un-African" and gangs carry out so-called "corrective" rapes on lesbians. A 19-year-old lesbian athlete was gang-raped, tortured and murdered in 2008.

The Catholic church in Uganda has said it supports the bill but not the death penalty provision. But a group of non-traditional churches has accused Museveni of siding with gays and maintains that the Bible supports killing gays. Anglican Archbishop of York John Sentamu, who is one of the global fellowship's most senior priests, has said he condemns the proposed law in his native country.

 

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

As the eyes of the world turn to Haiti, let us join our hearts in prayer:

God of compassion
please watch over the people of Haiti,
and weave out of these terrible happenings
wonders of goodness and grace.
Surround those who have been affected by tragedy
with a sense of your present love,
and hold them in faith.
Though they are lost in grief,
may they find you and be comforted.
Guide us as a church
to find ways of providing assistance
that heal wounds and provide hope.
Help us to remember that when one of your children suffers
we all suffer;
through Jesus Christ who was dead, but lives
and rules this world with you. Amen.
(Adapted from Book of Common Worship)

-Bruce Reyes-Chow, Gradye Parsons and Linda Valentine