The Cutting Phenomena

One of the most interesting thing to me in today's society is the cutting phenomena. If you have not heard of it, it is a trend where people are randomly cutting themselves. Slicing arms, legs etc... Like drugs, people become addicted to it. They have to do it more and more. To people who are not near it, it sounds ridiculous.

I am a logical person. I also make the assumption that everyone else is logical. If you don't understand why someone does something, it is probably because you don't understand their logic. Remember, your logic/chain of thought may not be the same as theirs but I guarantee that they have one. Very few people in our world do things that are completely random and "Non-logical".

So why do these people say they cut themselves. From what I have read/seen it involves feeling "something". The pain/adrenaline rush they feel is stronger than anything else in their life. They feel a rush. Unfortunately, as any addict will tell you, each time you get a rush, the next time it will take more to get the same rush. It is a slippery path that goes nowhere good.

Why do these folks need to cut to feel? Our lives are so full of emotion and drama. TV and media have shown us everything. We can visualize anything and we have experienced things no one should ever experience. Rarely did our ancestors see a dead body. If they did, it was typically a family member/relative that we were directly related to. Now we see dead bodies on a daily basis whether real ones on the news or imagined ones in film/entertainment television. Socialogists/Psychologists have argued for years whether we can seperate those images from our reality. If you visualize it, it is reality. With all this drama/shocking in their daily lives, these people have become numb... Nothing shocks them. NOTHING SURPRISES THEM. Do you get that... Nothing. What are you shocked by/surprised by?

We drink energy drinks, we watch things that surprise us, we have seen more in one day than many people see in a lifetime.

The second thing in play is the advertising/media telling us that everything is about us. We deserve anything we want whether we can afford it or not. Good is relative. If it makes you happy do it. Anything can be done safely. Jump from planes, ride bikes crazily. Do what ever you want? When has that ever been healthy for a society. Individuals looking out for themselves denigrates to no one looking after anyone. The Bible is strong in humbling your self and looking after other. The first will be the last and the last will be the first... It ain't about you!!! and it aint about how you feel..

Daryl

Interesting Day

Okay.. Today did not start out like I planned. I got up early to be on-time for Bible Study/Prayer time with Eddie and Dennis. I have gotten in the bad habit of being 5-10 minutes late. I need to be respectful of this time and commitment of others. Unfortunately, as I drove down the street the transmission on my van slipped. I could not go faster that 5 mph. When it tried to change gears, the car would not move. This is the van that I replaced the transmission on almost 2 years ago. (Warranty Expired!)

I went home and made breakfast for the family.Pancakes and bacon solve everything. It was a good time with family. Our mornings are not always James Dobson moments. God blessed us with one daughter who is a morning person and one who is more like me... Get up at last minute and go.

Decision time on car...Do I need to try to diagnose more specifically the problem? Band-aid.-Borrow inlaws truck and drive it.. Fix-I have no idea...

Blogging Again..

Okay.. My third attempt to start blogging. I admit I have had a hard time getting used to writing. In many ways I feel like all I do is talk so writing does not have much appeal to me.. I am working on it...
We have been working hard to provide an online streaming solution. We started with UStream. It was pretty good but we had trouble with the firewire connection. It would not reliably connect. We tried Justin.TV and faithstream but finally landed on livestream.com. What I like best about livestream is the variety of ways it connects. In our Mac department, we use Quicktime Broadcaster. In our youth building we use Flash Media Encoder. We can use line commands to take control. For manual control we log into livestream.com/studio. There we can manage the VOD files or monitor chat.

We have put a direct portal in our website at http://www.fbca.org/live. I have asked as many folks as possible to hit it so we can see how it handles the traffic. I asked our web service provider if the traffic to the portal counted against our band width. They assured me that it did not. Next I examined the analytics on the Livestream website to guesstimate the costs of eliminating the ads on our streams. The base cost of $350 will help but from the usage policy I see we could be charged extra as our viewership will go up.

The next phase will be to use the analytics with othersites like Justin.tv to estimate costs from them...

Game Night

It's Wii Game night.


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