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text: funnydie Up Next: Mitch Hedberg Spills His Guts AUTOPLAY Up Next In: 10 Mitch Hedberg Spills His Guts Talk to Kids PSA Tom Cruise Is a Cock-Block very funny Follow John C Reilly in Satisfaction Guaranteed Pepperbees cares about customers. September 23, 2007 970k Views Immortal Adam "Ghost Panther" McKayJohn C Reilly Adam "Ghost Panther" McKay Uploader John C Reilly Actor Additional Credits Starring John C Reilly 17,554Funny3,838Die 973,291 Views September 23, 2007 Published Category Not Safe For Work Sketch Tags John C Reilly Satisfaction Guaranteed fast food customers mcdonalds Female Announcer: Pepperbee's. Friendly service and delicious food since nineteen eighty-two. John C Reilly: Hello. I'm Doug Thomas, owner of Pepperbee's Restaurants. For twenty-five years we've provided fine food, great drinks, and our signature appe-teasers. Courteous Pepperbee's workers greet you with a smile and a warm, friendly attitude no matter what the request. John C Reilly: So, why is our customer service so great? I'll tell you why, it's simple. Because I get off on it. That's right. The only way that I can achieve an erection is by watching a customer get top-notch friendly service. John C Reilly: Every Pepperbee's is equipped with a secret sound-proof room with a two-way mirror, where I can watch you getting service. Then, I can sit here and cum like a Mentos dropped into a bottle of Diet Pepsi. Every time. Male Customer: I'd like the, uh, combo meal. John C Reilly: Ooh. Yeah. Male Customer: With everything on it except the onions. No onions, please. Female Waitress: All right. Sounds great! John C Reilly: Ahh! Ohh! Male Customer: Could I have, uh, extra ketchup? Female Waitress: Of course. Male Customer: Sorry, I like a lot of ketchup. Female Waitress: Whatever you want. John C Reilly: Oh! Ahh! You want napkins? Male Customer: And instead of french fries, could I have, um, onion rings? John C Reilly: No problem. Female Waitress: Sure. Um, did you want anything to drink? Or... Male Customer: Um... John C Reilly: Okay. All right. Uh-huh. Male Customer: Coke. John C Reilly: Ahh. Female Waitress: I can arrange that, sir. Male Customer: Awesome. John C Reilly: Ahh! Ahh! Ahh! Ahh! John C Reilly: A pleasant smile, delicious food, and me getting off. That's the guarantee at Pepperbee's. Listen, if you're in Pepperbee's and you see a door marked private, trust me, you do not want to open it. And out of a sense of decency, I won't even begin to describe to you what you'll find in that room. John C Reilly: Oh, the hell with it. You'll find me, with an ice cream scooper jammed up my a*s and jumper cables attached to my nipples. Female Announcer: Pepperbee's. Good eats, fine service, and a man alone in a room doing unspeakable things to himself. [Music Playing] Up Next Favorites 5:13 Mitch Hedberg Spills His Guts standupfan 1:11 Talk to Kids PSA The Attack! Advertisement More fromAdam "Ghost Panther" McKay 1:54 Step Brothers Red Band Interview Montage Will Ferrell 3:50 Will Ferrell & Adam McKay Toast & Roast IMDB Will Ferrell

subset: commoncrawl


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What a joy and privilege it is this morning to return to our study of 2 Corinthians. I want to encourage you to take your Bible, turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 8. We are in the midst of going through this great epistle and having just a wonderful time in the process. We find ourselves in chapter 8 this morning at verse 9, and we're only going to look at one verse this morning but we are going to look at that one verse fairly thoroughly, 2 Corinthians 8:9.
A wonderful story was told many years ago about a Persian monarch. We would call him a king and they would call him a Shah. This particular Shah reigned in Persia in a time of great splendor and magnificence and lived in the midst of all of that wealth and prosperity. But he had a heart for people who were poor and common, and so he decided that he would dress himself as a poor man, and that he would descend from the lofty heights of his splendor down to the commonest man that he could find and try to make a friend out of him. And such a man was a man whose job it was to stoke fires and prepare fires that could then be put into little containers and taken around the palace to keep people warm. He worked all the time in ashes and soot and smoke and filth, way, way down in a basement. The king then put on the garments of a poor man, descended the dark, damp, cellar stairs and came down to where the man was seated in a pile of ashes, he was called a fireman, appropriately, and he was tending to his fires. The king sat down beside him dressed in rags himself, and began to talk. At meal time the fireman produced some coarse black bread and a little bit of water and they ate together and drank together. And then the Shah went away.
But he came back day after day after day after day, again and again because his heart was filled with sympathy that eventually was demonstrated to that man in this longing just to be there to share a little bit of his common and difficult life. He gave the man sweet counsel from his wisdom and experience. This poor man opened his whole heart and loved his friend, so kind and so wise, and he thought so poor like himself.
At last the emperor thought, "I can't keep this up, I have to tell him who I really am and so I'll tell him and then I'll ask him what gift he would like from me, now that we're friends." So he said, "You think I'm poor but I'm not, I am the Shah, your emperor. What would you like?" He expected the man to petition him for some great thing but he sat, simply gazing in wonder and love. The king said, "Have you understood what I've told you? I can make you rich. I can make you noble. I can give you a city. I can give you anything. What do you want?" The man replied according to the story, "Yes, my lord, I understand. But what is this you have done to leave your palace and your glory to sit with me in this dark place, to partake of my coarse bread, to care whether my heart is glad or sorry? Even you can give nothing more precious than that. On others you may bestow rich presents but to me you have given yourself, it only remains to ask one thing...and that is that you never withdraw your friendship."
Well that lovely story is analogous, is parabolic to the gospel. It is just what Jesus did, a King who came down to dwell among common men to give them His life and His friendship. That very thing is stated in verse 9 in most simple and profound words. "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though He was rich yet for your sake He became poor that you through His poverty might become rich."
Here in this very ethical, very practical, pragmatic section of 2 Corinthians where Paul is talking about giving money to the support of the saints, right in the middle of this practical section is tucked this profound doctrinal verse. In fact, it's very much like chapter 5 verse 21 where that profound statement, maybe the profoundest of all statements ever made about the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ is just dropped in as a gem. Here is another one of those crystalogical gems, a diamond outshining all the other jewels around it. The wonder of this verse is captivating. Its vastness, its profundity, its reality, its impact certainly transcends with infinite glory the simplicity of its words, twenty one Greek words in verse 9, and they embrace eternity and time and eternity again. Twenty one Greek words and when translated into an English language like ours, even a child can understand their meaning. There are no difficult words. There are no confusing words. There really aren't any theological words. And though it can be easily grasped as to its simple straight-forward meaning, the fullness of what it says is incomprehensible. With one reading you understand what it says, but with an eternity you may never understand all that it involved.
It is a blazing diamond of truth and we're going to look at it this morning. To do it justice we ought to spend a series on it, but it does intersect with truth that we are aware of and so we'll take it just this morning, but don't miss anything. This is the story of Christ from riches to poverty. This is the story of every believer from poverty to riches. Christ is here in this verse revealed and so are we.
Now let me review briefly where we are. Paul is addressing the Corinthians on the subject of giving. In specific as he traveled he asked the Gentile churches to take collections of money that could be taken back to Jerusalem for the poor saints in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem church, you remember, was very poor. Why? Because many of the people in the church were pilgrims who had been visiting the land of Palestine during the time of feasts and they were converted to Christ and they stayed and never went back home, they had no jobs, no houses, no livelihood. And so those poor people, those pilgrims who stayed had to be cared for by the Jerusalem Christians. They had a problem though, because once they identified with Christ they lost their jobs, were put out of their family and therefore were poor as well. So the poverty of the Jerusalem church was very widespread. Most of the people were poor.
Early on in the life of the church the people who did have money sold what they had, took the money and gave to the poor and those were not resources that could be replenished and so many had become impoverished in that very process. In order to meet the needs of those poor saints, Paul was collecting money from all of the Gentile churches, including the Corinthian church. According to what we read in verse 6 and what we see in verses 10 and 11, they had already begun to give. They were the first to give. They started about a year before this letter was written, but they didn't finish their giving. And so in verse 10 he reminds them that they had begun to give and verse 11 he says now you need to finish it. He's telling them how to give.
Now remember back in 1 Corinthians 16 Paul even gave them the plan for giving. "On the first day of every week...verse 2 of 1 Corinthians 16...put aside and save as he may prosper, each one doing whatever he wants so no collections are made when I come." Do it weekly, during the weekly service when you come together for worship, take a collection set it aside so that when I come it will all be ready. They had apparently begun to do that, perhaps not continued it and he is here in this second letter encouraging them to finish their giving.
Now to stimulate them as to how to give...remember now, giving is whatever you want, whenever you want, the amount is not prescribed, the timing is not prescribed, that's from your heart. That's what free-will giving is all about, and we went into that in detail. But to stimulate them to be generous in the first eight verses he draws their attention to the churches of Macedonia. You'll notice in verse 1 he shows them what the churches in Macedonia have been doing. He doesn't talk about amounts, he talks about attitudes. And from verses 1 through 8 he shows them the generosity the Macedonian church has.
Now Macedonia was a northern part of Greece. There were three churches in Macedonia...Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. And all three of those congregations had been giving. As we went down through those eight verses we remember what they did in their giving. It was all highlighted for us. It was initiated by grace. Their giving transcended their very difficult circumstances. In other words, they weren't hindered by their difficulties. Their giving was with joy. Their giving was out of poverty. Even though they had little, they gave much. Their giving was generous, proportionate, sacrificial, voluntary. It was viewed as privilege, not obligation. In other words, they were eager and asked if they could give. Their giving was an act of worship. It was an act of submission to their pastors. It was consistent with other virtues. And finally, verse 8 says, it was evidence of the sincerity of their love. They really did love the Lord. They really did love the saints. And that was manifest in the generosity of their giving.
So Paul here endeavors to stimulate the giving of the Corinthians by showing them the example of the Macedonians. People just like them, not even very far away. You ought to give the way the Macedonians give. They show their love in their giving, you need to manifest yours in your giving the way they did.
But as he thinks about that, as he thinks about how that love manifests itself in giving, his mind goes immediately to the greatest love and the greatest gift, and that involves the Lord Jesus Christ. When you talk about love you have to talk about Christ. When you talk about love that gives, no example is better than Jesus Christ. He had been speaking about the Macedonians and they were a human model for giving, but he goes way beyond them here to the most generous, the most gracious, the most momentous giver of all...the Lord Jesus Christ. If love gives, this is the greatest love because this is the greatest gift. Christ is the supreme example of giving. And so he says in verse 9, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though He was rich yet for your sake He became poor that you through His poverty might become rich."
Jesus wanted to make us rich. And in order to make us rich He had to make Himself...what?...poor. That's magnanimous. That is generous. Rich people do help poor people but rarely if ever do rich people make themselves poor in the helping. Rich people give out of their riches, they don't impoverish themselves in the process normally. They normally give and are no poorer for the giving, but Jesus became poor that we might be made rich. In verse 9 he begins by saying, "For you know." The word "for" links us up with the prior verse. In verse 8 he says, "I'm not speaking this as a command but just to prove your love." In other words, I don't need to command you to do this because you know how Christ gave. I don't need to command you to give graciously, you have an example that supersedes any command I could give. Rather than doing it because I command it, do it because you see Christ illustrate it. In other words, the giving of Jesus Christ provides a greater incentive and motivation than the command of the Apostle. You know, he says, you're not ignorant about the giving of Christ. You couldn't be a Christian and be ignorant about that. Every Christian knows Christ came down and gave His life. Every one of us know that. That's the gospel. We all know that He was rich. We all know that He became poor in order that we might be made rich. That's not beyond our knowledge. We know that. And that should be the single greatest motivation, even more motivating than the model of the Macedonians though that teaches us much about how to give, is the example of Jesus Christ and His magnanimous self-giving. This, by the way, this giving eclipses all other giving.
So Paul has just said in verse 8 that love expresses itself in generous giving and Christ, he says in verse 9, is the single greatest example of that. And you know it, he says. Because everybody knows, everybody who knows the gospel, everybody who knows Christ knows His self-giving. That is at the heart of the gospel.
Now would you notice that he says this, "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ." And again he identifies the giving that Christ did as grace giving. And I simply remind you that all free-will giving is grace giving. It is not duty. It is not obligation. It is not a fixed percentage. It is not a tithe. It is not an amount. It is spontaneous giving. Whatever is in the heart. It is grace giving, not compelled, not grudging, not of necessity but simply because we will to give it. And that's how Christ gave. Christ gave purely out of love, purely out of mercy, purely out of grace, purely out of kindness. It was unmerited, spontaneous kindness to undeserving sinners coming from pure and uninfluenced love. And it is the action of the Savior that defines grace giving at its highest.
So as Paul has this thought, he stops the flow of writing about the giving of the Macedonians and applying it to the Corinthians and he bursts out with this greatest example of giving in verse 9...the giving of Christ. He goes way beyond anything the Macedonians or any other people could do to this most momentous gift and giver of all. His infinite gift to us has made us infinitely rich.
Now as he says, "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ," just note that he uses the full name of the incarnate God...Lord Jesus Christ. The name to which He is entitled by His person and by His perfect work. He is Lord, He was given that name fully because He had accomplished the work that was given unto Him and name that is above every name, Philippians 2, and that is the name Lord. He was Jesus because He came to save His people from their sins. He is Christ the anointed Messiah and King. You know...you know the giving of the Lord Jesus Christ, that is common knowledge to all believers. You know.
And then he describes it in simple terms. "He was rich, He became poor that you might become rich." I want you to look at those three truths..those three truths. Number one, the riches of Christ...the riches of Christ. It's expressed in that statement that though He was rich... Now when we talk about the riches of Christ, what are we talking about? Are we talking about some earthly material wealth? No. What we're talking about here refers to His eternal glory. What we're talking about is the eternity of Christ or the eternality of Christ, or the preexistence of Christ. He is a member of the eternal trinity. And the eternity of Christ or the eternality of Christ, listen carefully, is the most crucial truth in all of Christology. Therefore it is the most crucial truth in the gospel. And what is that? That Jesus is eternal. There was never a moment when Jesus Christ did not exist. Not always, obviously, in human form but the second member of the trinity is eternal. That is the most crucial truth in Christology. And it is the most often attacked by the cults and false teachers who want to strip Christianity of its power and its truthfulness. Attack the deity of Jesus Christ and you attack Christianity at its heart. He must be eternal or He is not God. If He is not eternal, then He is a creature that came into existence from another creature, or from God and therefore is a created being. False Christianity cults teach He is an angel, He is an emanation, He is a demigod, a subgod, a human, whatever it is, anything other than that He is the eternal God is untrue. He is not created. There never was a moment when He did not exist. He is the eternal God, not dependent on any other for His existence, not even on God the Father. He is self-existent and eternal.
By the way, it is not enough to say He is preexistent. Arias the heretic said He was preexistent and not eternal. He is both preexistent, that is He existed before His incarnation and He is eternal. And arguments for the eternality and the deity of Christ are inseparable. He cannot be God and not be eternal. If He is eternal He is therefore God. Jesus Christ then was rich and He was as rich as the eternal God is rich.
And that's all you really need to say about His riches. He is as rich as God is rich because He is the eternal God, the second person of the trinity, in every sense equal with every other person. Listen to what it says in Micah 5:2, "But as for you, Bethlehem," speaking of the village of Bethlehem where Christ would be born, "too little to be among the clans of Judah...just a small village...from you One will go forth to be ruler in Israel...speaking of Christ, but listen to this...whose goings are from long ago from the days of eternity." The child that was born there is eternal.
In Isaiah 9 he says, "Name that child the everlasting Father, the Father of eternity." In John 1 it tells us the Word is Christ and it tells us about the Word that the Word was with God and the Word was God. In Matthew...sorry, in John 8 and verse 58 Jesus said, "Before Abraham was born I am." In John 17 He says, "Restore Me to the glory...verse 5...I had with You before the world began." In John 10:30 He says, "I and the Father are one." In Colossians 1 He is the...He is the premier one. He is the supreme one. He is the one above all others who is called the image, or the representation of the invisible God. Colossians 2:9, "In Him dwells all the fullness of the deity." Hebrews 1:3, He is the express image of God.
So He is eternal God. And as eternal God He is as rich as God is rich. God owns everything. He owns the universe and all that is in it. He owns all power and all authority and all sovereignty and all glory and all honor and all majesty and all that is created and uncreated. The wealth of our Lord Jesus is beyond comprehension. It is boundless. It is infinite. He is infinite and His wealth is as infinite as His being.
Charles Hodge, the great theologian, wrote, "All divine names and titles are applied to Christ. He is called God the mighty God, the great God, God over all, Jehovah, Lord, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. All divine attributes are ascribed to Him. He is declared to be omnipresent, omniscient, almighty and immutable, the same yesterday, today and forever. He is set forth as the creator and upholder and ruler of the universe. All things were created by Him and for Him and by Him all thinks consist. He is the object of worship to all intelligent creatures, even the highest, all are commanded to prostrate themselves before Him. He is the object of all the religious sentiments, of reference, love, faith and devotion. To Him men and angels are responsible for their character and conduct. He required that man should honor Him as they honored the Father, that they should exercise the same faith in Him they do in God. He declares that He and the Father are one, that those who had seen Him had seen the Father. He calls all men unto Him, promises to forgive their sins, to send them the Holy Spirit, to give them rest and peace, to raise them at the last day and give them eternal life. God is not more and cannot promise more or do more than Christ is said to be, to promise and to do," end quote.
He is rich in the sense that He is God and as rich as God is rich, possessing eternity and all that it contains.
Second point, the poverty of Christ. "Yet for your sake He became poor." For your sake, not for His, for yours. What does this mean that He became poor? This has really been misunderstood through history. You can go back, for example, to St. Augustine. In calling on his readers to imitate Christ, Augustine listed the graces of Christ's life which the faithful could emulate. Among them he said is the grace of poverty and he supported that by quoting 2 Corinthians 8:9 and then urged Christians to live lives of poverty in this world.
A similar economic spin on this verse is heard in Augustine's use of this passage in a sermon where he said, "Let the beggars come for He invites them though He was rich for our sakes became poor," equating again the poverty of Christ with economic poverty. Thomas Aquinas also looked at Christ, looked at this verse and said, "The appropriateness of the life of poverty which Christ led is based on the fact of 2 Corinthians 8:9. We too should take a vow of poverty because Christ lived such a poor life, as indicated in this verse.
Even John Calvin in writing his commentary on 2 Corinthians says, when he comes to this verse, "We see what destitution and lack of all things awaited Him right from His mother's womb and we hear what He Himself says...The foxes have holes, the birds of the air of nests, the Son of Man has not where to lay His head," Luke 9:58. "Thus He sanctified poverty in His own person so that believers should no longer shrink from it and by His poverty He has enriched us."
Well is that really what this is all about? Such a handling of this text and making the poverty of Jesus somehow a commentary on His economic status or His material circumstances is very common and even done today. This verse is often associated with that kind of perception. And you can frequently hear a preacher using this very verse to convey the impression that the moving and compelling force of the gospel is found in the dire poverty in which Jesus lived as if eliciting sympathy for His poverty had some redemptive virtue. A similar thing is often done when people preach on the crucifixion and they spend all their time talking about the pain and the suffering and the agony that Jesus endured as if eliciting sympathy for agony somehow was connected with believing in redemption.
It isn't. And sympathizing for someone suffering terrible pain on a cross or sympathizing for someone living in a poor life pattern is not the issue of the gospel. In fact, is irrelevant to His redemptive work.
Second Corinthians 8:9 says nothing about Jesus economically. It says nothing about His material condition in this world even though such discussion does tend to move people's emotions. And people of comfortable circumstances have been plunged into pity and plunged into feelings of guilt and remorse by the vivid accounts of a straw crib or a turtledove offered at the dedication, or an itinerant life and no where to lay His head and dividing His one meager garment, as it were, among the soldiers. And they say even the cross wasn't His own, the tomb wasn't His own. And all of that exaltation of the condition of earthly deprivation has nothing to do with this verse. It has nothing to do with redemption.
Jesus...listen...didn't make us rich by becoming economically poor. The gospel of salvation can no more be equated with the financial situation of Jesus than it can be equated with His pain on the cross. Those are not the issues. They may tug at the heart of human emotion but they misplace the point of the true impoverishing of the Lord. It isn't that He had to live in lowly circumstances. It is that God had to become man, that's the impoverishing. There's no salvation through the economic sacrifices of Jesus. In fact, if that were the case we would have expected Him to be a lot poorer than He was. In fact, if I may be so bold, He was perhaps not even classified in any sense among those in His society who were poor. There's nothing to indicate in the life of Jesus that He was poor. He lived a common ordinary life like many other people did.
You say, "Well wait a minute, even His birth Luke describes that He was born in a pile of straw in a stable." Listen, that does not indicate the poverty of Joseph and Mary, that indicates the crowded conditions of Bethlehem. It says they went to the inn and they didn't stay there because they had no money? No, because there was...what?...no room. These are not beggars. Joseph was a carpenter. He is called, is Jesus, the Son of Mary and He Himself is called by Mark in chapter 6 the carpenter. He had a trade. Jesus even did in His later life. His father had a trade, he was a builder. He built perhaps yoke for oxen. He built perhaps furniture for houses and doors and window frames and did brick work. He had his own business in Nazareth. He would not be numbered among the abject poor. And the fact that Mary for the purification offered the simplest birds instead of a lamb doesn't mean that she couldn't afford a lamb, it certainly was provided for those who couldn't, but could be given perhaps by others.
During His Galilean ministry He said, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air of nests, the Son of Man has not where to lay His head," that's because He left His home. There was a home in Nazareth. There was a place and family business. But He became an itinerant preacher. And so He didn't have a place to stay. They didn't have any mobile homes in those says, nothing to take with you. So what happened? He had to stay with friends which is precisely what evangelists, itinerant evangelists all over the world today still do and have done in our country in decades and centuries past. He was not in dire economic circumstances. The cost of His itinerant ministry and the support of His own life and His followers was obviously taken on by well off sympathizers, many of those sympathizers had been healed by Jesus. You can check on that in Luke chapter 8. And I'll tell you, if you were healed by Him, you'd support His ministry. And they did. A number of women came alongside as well to do things that they needed done and make provision for them. Hospitality was always provided for traveling preachers, that was an age-old Jewish custom and certainly Jesus enjoyed that hospitality in a number of homes and especially that of Mary and Martha.
But in no sense can we conclude that He was an impoverished beggar. He lived no poorer than most first-century Palestinian Jews and better off than a lot of them who had to beg. In fact, they had to have somebody in charge of the money, namely Judas to keep the bag. And they even, according to John 12 and 13 were able to use some of their money to help other people. So they had a little bit of surplus.
When you're talking about Jesus became poor you don't want to get off into this material realm, it's talking not about Him giving up material things but giving up immaterial things. He's referring to rich and poor in the spiritual sense as...by the way, Paul used the two words back in chapter 6 verse 10, there he says this of himself, "As poor yet making many rich." He's not talking economically there either, he's talking spiritually. He's talking about the terrible deprivations that Paul had to suffer and endure to get the gospel to people which made them so spiritually rich. Paul had his own sort of condescension from the loftiness of his education and his great leadership ability, he became a scourge and an off scouring to get the riches of the gospel to other people. And that was the poverty of which he speaks here regarding Jesus.
What was the poverty of Jesus? The incarnation. That's how the rich became poor. When He was born of a woman, Galatians 4:4, when He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, Romans 8:3, when He had to come to the cross, Colossians 1:20, when He needed to descend from David, Romans 1:3, when the Word became flesh, John 1:14, when He was made for a little while lower than the angels, Hebrews 2:7, when He was manifested in the flesh, 1 Timothy 3:16, that was the issue. He laid aside the free exercise of all of His prerogatives. He left being face to face with the Father, took on human form and no where is it better explained than in two passages, the first being Philippians chapter 2 and verse 6. "Who...speaking of Christ Jesus...although He existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped." There He was in the trinity in perfect equality with God but He didn't hold on to it. "But emptied Himself," He emptied Himself, "taking the form of a slave and being made in the likeness of men." That's the poverty of Jesus. "And being found in appearance as a man He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." He came all the way down to humanity. He suffered all that men suffer. "He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." He has been touched with all the feelings of our infirmities. He went all the way to death. It's that that's on the mind of Paul when he says He was rich and He became poor.
His riches was the glory He had before the world was made. His riches was being in the form of God and being equal with God, being God a very God. His becoming poor was emptying Himself. And in the Greek, by the way, the words translated "poor and empty" are so similar in meaning they are on occasion used interchangeably. The poverty of Christ is His incarnation. And He came all the way down, all the way down to death and the most ignominious death, death on a cross.
Look at Ephesians for a moment in chapter 4 and verses 8 to 10 because here you have another view of this impoverishing of Christ. In verse 8 Paul starts by quoting from Psalm 68:18, a prophecy regarding Christ, "When He ascended on high He led captive a host of captives and gave gifts to men." He's picturing a triumph here, we talked about that back in chapter 2. A triumph is where the conquering general ascends the hill at the end of the battle and he brings with him all the captives and he comes and he brings his captives and he gives out the spoils. It's a great and glorious event. He's conquered another nation. He comes back with all the riches of that nation, all the captives that have been liberated. He ascends the hill as the conquering hero, dispenses the gifts. That's a picture of Christ.
Verse 9 then says, "Now this expression He ascended, what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens that He might fill all the things." The point he makes as he comments on Psalm 68 is you can't ascend until you descend. He can't come back with His captives, He can't come back with all the spoils unless He went down, and He went down the lower parts of the earth, simply speaking of the degradation, the humiliation of Christ all the way down. Peter says He went all the way down, 1 Peter 3, into the very pit where the demons are and proclaimed His triumph over them.
"When He ascended on high" depicts then a triumphant Christ returning from the battle on earth. He comes back into the glories of heaven with all the captives that He's set free from the domain of darkness and He gives gifts and they're all through the giving of the Holy Spirit who then dispenses all the rest of the good gifts to His own.
So the eternal God rich becomes poor, humbled into human flesh, killed, executed at the cross. That's His poverty. Although free and sovereign over all the created powers of the universe, He Himself comes under the powers, tastes the full measure of their thrust even to the cross. And for our sake He did it, for our sake He did it. It reminds me of 1 Corinthians 11:24 where Paul has that thought regarding Christ, "My body which is for you." And that takes us to the third point. We see the riches of Christ, the poverty of Christ, and thirdly the purpose. The purpose, clear, "That you through His poverty might become rich." All of that for you, for your sake. And this, by the way, explains what "for your sake" means. To make poor sinners rich. Materially rich? No. Spiritually rich? Yes. Eternally rich? Yes. Rich with what riches? Rich with the same riches that He possessed and possesses. Rich in salvation, forgiveness, joy, peace, life, light, glory, rich in honor, rich in majesty. We are so rich we are called joint heirs with Christ. We are promised an inheritance incorruptible and defiled that fades not away, laid up for us in heaven. We are rich, we are as rich as He is rich and we were really poor. That implies our poverty. In fact, we're so poor that we have to come as beggars. Matthew 5 tells us in the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, the beggars." We have nothing to commend ourselves. We are as poor as poor can be. We hunger and thirst for the basics. And He came to make us rich, to make us as rich as He is rich. In fact, if His riches is in being God, then our riches is being made like Him. The very life of God dwells in us. We live and yet Christ lives in us. We don't know where we end and He begins. We are the possessors of the eternal life of God. We will be made like Him. We will reflect His glory. We will own His heaven. We will possess the eternal glory of the new heaven and the new earth and all that it contains and we will possess the new Jerusalem, the crown jewel of eternity.
Listen to what Paul said to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 1, "I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus that in every way you were enriched in Him." Every way conceivable. Even the material, whatever the material is of the eternal state will be ours. And the immaterial joys and glories will be ours.
First Corinthians 3:22, "For all things are yours...all things are yours in the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours and you are Christ's and Christ is God's." Everything is ours. We are the rich. We have all riches, and we'll see more of that in chapter 9. We are joint heirs, we reign with Him, we sit on His throne, we are rich in position, we are rich in privilege. We are rich in relationship. We are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. Everything there is that can bless, we are given.
And, beloved, you can never forget that it was by His self-imposed and willing poverty that Jesus made us rich. This self-emptying, this self-sacrificing love by which we are so blessed and for which we are so thankful is exactly, Paul says, the reason why we need to give to others. As he stooped to be poor to make others rich, so must we. What a standard...what a standard. That is a very, very strong concept and that is exactly what Paul is saying. Paul is saying I don't want you to give, I want you to follow the Lord's example and I want you to give until you are impoverished. That's the way Christ gave.
Can we eagerly receive all that the poverty of Christ gives us and divest ourselves of nothing on behalf of someone else? I don't mean by that we need to be beggars. Jesus wasn't. But we need to be ready to meet anyone's extremity even if we suffer loss in the meeting. The Lord has created a community of people who share their life and their resources, who are willing to become poor to make someone richer. Fred Cradick(?) back in 1968 in a journal called, "The Interpretation Journal," wrote this, "There's nothing mundane and outside the concern and responsibility of the Christian. There are not two worlds. There is one. Money for relief of those who are poor is as spiritual as prayer. The offering for the saints...he writes...in Judea was for Paul a definite implication of the incarnation. It is no surprise that the discussion of the one should bring to mind the other. The offering, in fact, provided an occasion for teaching the meaning of Christology and Christology informed and elicited the offering," end quote.
In other words, Paul saw the offering as an expression of the central truth of Christianity and that is that Christ made Himself poor to make somebody else rich. How about you? How about you?
A poet summed it up. "O Thou wast crowned with thorns that I might wear a crown of glory fair, exceeding sorrowful that I might be exceeding glad in Thee. Rejected and despised that I might stand accepted and complete at Thy right hand. Wounded for my transgressions, stricken sore that I might sin no more, weak that I might be always strong in Thee, bound that I might be free, acquainted with grief that I might only know fullness of joy and everlasting flow. Thine was the chastening with no release that mine might be the peace, the bruising and the cruel stripes were Thine, the healing was mine. Thine was the sentence and the condemnation, mine the acquittal and full salvation. For Thee reviling in a mocking throng, for me the angels' song. For Thee the frown, the hiding of God's face, for me the smile of grace. Sorrows of hell and bitterest death for Thee, all heaven and everlasting life for me." That's it. He who was rich became poor that we might be made rich. And that is the pattern and the model, Paul says, for how we treat those around us among the saints who also are poor. Are we willing as He was? Let's bow in prayer.
/Our Father, again this morning the Word cuts to our hearts and we struggle to find our equilibrium and our balance and know how You want us to respond. On the one hand You've given us all things richly to enjoy. On the other hand You have said that the very one who set the example whose example we must follow if we say we abide in Him, we need to walk as he walked, was willing to divest Himself of whatever it took to meet the needs of those He loved. And that's the key. Lord, may we be eager to sacrifice to meet the needs of those around us who are Your children who cry out to us. How can we say we love You and close our compassion to those around us? Help us to find that balance between enjoying all that You have made, enjoying all the richness that You provide and holding it ever so lightly that it might be shared with those in need. Lord what a stewardship we have of everything we possess. And may we use it, enjoy it, give it in any case and may we demonstrate the sincerity of our gratitude to You and our love. May You know by what we do with all that we possess the priorities of our hearts. Thank You for the good things, the richness of life, the bounty. But, Lord, give us a tender heart toward those in need so that we may be truly sons of God. We pray in the name of Christ. Amen.
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The New England School of Art and Design Faculty Exhibition, at the Adams Gallery through March 5, 2013, includes work that represent the broad visual spectrum one would expect from an institution that embraces the disciplines of Interior Architecture, Graphic Design, Illustration and Fine Arts.
A wide variety of media and perspectives are used to celebrate direct observation, whimsy, metaphor and rigor, reflecting both the diverse interests of the faculty and the school's core mission: to expose students to as varied an artistic experience as possible.
The Faculty Exhibition is the first in a series of New England School of Art & Design-sponsored shows at the Adams Gallery, to be followed by:
- Contemporary Illustration: At Your Service – March 16 – April 28, 2013
Imagination, insight, wit, expression, technical virtuosity – put to use in a wide range of applications, from picture books to wrapping paper to snowboards and advertising for medical devices
- Master of Arts in Interior Architecture and Design Thesis Show – May 4 – 31, 2013
Capstone projects from a program ranked among the top 10 in the nation
The Adams Gallery is located in David J. Sargent Hall, Suffolk University, 120 Tremont St., Boston.
The gallery is free and open to the public 9 a.m.-7 p.m. daily.


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They want me to tell you fun tidbits. I'm an Air Force brat, so truth be told I'm not really from anywhere, even though claim Haughton. I'm a Virgo and I really do like long walks on the beach. I'm married to the fabulous Keith who is a total keeper since he won't put up with my crap. I'm also the crazy horse lady on the radio. I have Paisano, a Royal Dutch Warmblood, Under Pressure, my sweet Thoroughbred and Sweetheart my draft cross! I also have two cats (Lortab and Crackhead) and four dogs: Mikey (Dachshund), Bella (Bullmastiff mix), Cam (Cocker Spaniel mix) and Cyrus (Bullmastiff mix)! I'm passionate about rescuing/adopting animals as opposed to purchasing them from breeders. I like to read, celebrate all things Mardi Gras and live music!
#1 For New Country


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AICPA Opposes Potential Change in DOL Fiduciary Rule for Appraisers of Employee Stock Ownership Plans
July 18, 2013
Legislation has been introduced in the House and Senate that would prohibit the Department of Labor (DOL) from changing its definition of fiduciary under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to include appraisers of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) welcomed this legislation because the DOL's pending reissuance of its 2010 proposal is likely to include a fiduciary duty for appraisers of employee benefit plans.
S. 273 was introduced by Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY). H.R. 2041 was introduced by Representatives Brett Guthrie (R-KY), Lynn Jenkins (R-KS) and Dave Loebsack (D-IA). Senator Ayotte wrote a letter on June 27 to her Senate colleagues asking them to support the bill. In it she states that "this proposal is simply unnecessary. If there are allegations of fraud or abuse associated with an ESOP, an aggrieved party is not without recourse, since that party may bring an action against the current ESOP fiduciary, the trustee." Senator Ayotte continues by explaining, "ERISA imposes a number of stringent duties on those who act as plan fiduciaries, including a duty of undivided loyalty, a duty to act for the exclusive purposes of providing plan benefits and defraying reasonable expenses of administering the plan, and a stringent duty of care. Fiduciaries are personally liable for losses sustained by a plan that result from a violation of these duties."
It is precisely that proposed duty of undivided loyalty to plan participants that AICPA believes is misplaced and inconsistent with established regulatory requirements. In a letter dated July 10, 2013 to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the relevant House and Senate committees, AICPA President and CEO Barry C. Melancon, CPA, CGMA, stated, "Many CPAs perform business valuation services for ESOPs by providing an independent, third-party objective appraisal of the stock of employer companies that sponsor ESOPs. Many of these appraisals are also used for other purposes including satisfying the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requirements related to the ESOP's tax-exempt status. The Internal Revenue Code (IRC) requires that ESOP valuations be obtained from an independent appraiser at least annually. If the DOL were to redefine an ERISA fiduciary to include ESOP appraisers an inherent conflict would arise between the DOL and IRS requirements for ESOP appraisers."
Melancon further stated, "The DOL also has not demonstrated a need for such a broad and far-reaching change from more than 35 years of established policy. The DOL proposal is a draconian response to a very small number of deficient ESOP appraisals."
The AICPA has repeatedly advocated that, rather than expand the definition, as proposed by the DOL, rules should be implemented to ensure that only qualified individuals prepare valuations for benefit plans and that individuals follow recognized valuation standards. In our view, the DOL's rule should mirror other regulatory agencies regarding the regulation of appraisers.


text: Sugar Falls to Lowest Since August on Ample Supply; Cotton Gains December 12, 2013 09:10 AM Tweet TAGS: Marketing, Overseas December 18, 2014 By Bloomberg Email Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Sugar futures fell to the lowest since August on signs of ample global supplies. Cotton, coffee, cocoa and orange juice gained. Thailand, the world's second-largest sugar exporter, said that output more than doubled to 301,795 metric tons in the first 16 days of the season that started Nov. 25 from about a year earlier. Output in Brazil, the top producer and shipper, has climbed 0.7% in its season, according to Unica, a Sao Paulo- based industry group. "There's still plenty of sugar around, and prices will continue under pressure," Jack Scoville, a vice president at Price Futures Group in Chicago, said in a telephone interview. "There's no fundamental reason to buy." Raw sugar for March delivery declined 1.3 percent to settle at 16.3 cents a pound at 2 p.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York. Earlier, the price touched 16.29 cents, the lowest for a most- active contract since Aug. 23. Cotton futures for March delivery rose 0.7 percent to 83.06 cents a pound. Earlier, the price reached 83.13 cents, the highest since Oct. 21. Arabica-coffee futures for March delivery climbed 1.5 percent to $1.113 a pound. Earlier, the price reached $1.12, the highest since Dec. 4. Cocoa futures for March delivery advanced 1.2 percent to $2,787 a ton. Orange-juice futures for January delivery jumped 1.5 percent to $1.4625 a pound. Earlier, the commodity reached $1.463, the highest since July 31. --With assistance from Supunnabul Suwannakij in Bangkok. Editors: Patrick McKiernan, Thomas Galatola To contact the reporter on this story: Marvin G. Perez in New York at email@example.com To contact the editor responsible for this story: Millie Munshi at firstname.lastname@example.com Back to news


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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Figuring out how many jobs are created each December is never easy because of the holiday season and end-of-the-year quirks. Cold weather sets in and alters hiring patterns, for one thing, and companies add and subtract lots of temporary workers to handle the rush of Christmas shoppers.
More than likely, the level of hiring in December will track closely with the trend in job growth over the past two years. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch estimate 160,000 net jobs were created last month, just above the two-year monthly average of 152,000.
The unemployment rate is expected to remain flat at 7.7%.
In short, the labor market is little changed. The economy is adding jobs, but at a slower rate than is typically the case at this later stage of a recovery.
Yet the heightened possibility of a better-than-expected number suggests U.S. financial markets could experience a big move on Friday. Investors seem to be in a rallying mode early in the new year, especially after Washington struck a deal to avert budget crisis that could have weakened the economy.
"Even though the jobs report is less reliable in December than other months, it's apt to be an important number for markets," said Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist of Mizuho Securities.
The odds of a loftier employment report increased on Thursday after ADP, which processes thousands of company payrolls, posted the biggest increase in hiring since February. ADP said the economy gained 215,000 private-sector jobs in December — well above the 149,000 forecast. Read ADP report.
Many economists caution against reading too much into ADP since it has often diverged sharply from the official U.S. employment numbers. Yet some Wall Street firms raised their own job forecasts after the ADP report because it was unusually strong.
"ADP has been tracking nonfarm jobs report well in recent months," noted Robert Brusca of FAO Economics.
Tampa, Charlotte among gainers.
• U.S. homeownership at 18-year low
Another employment indicator with a good historical record also points to a somewhat improved hiring picture compared to November, when the U.S. added 146,000 jobs, based on a preliminary government estimate.
The Institute for Supply Management's employment index — a gauge of hiring intentions — jumped 4.3 points in December to 52.7%, marking the highest reading since September. Read about faster growth among U.S. manufacturers.
Some economists also expect a snapback in hiring in the construction trade after the industry surprisingly shed jobs in November. Rebuilding after damage from Hurricane Sandy is also likely to provide a boost.
Yet other factors weigh against the odds a big jobs number. The brouhaha in Washington over tax rates and spending, for example, caused a sharp drop in consumer confidence and made businesses nervous. That might have depressed hiring in December.
The retail sector, meanwhile, did not appear to generate as much sales as expected during the holidays. So retail hiring may have been subdued last month and stores may have laid off workers earlier than usual. Read more on retail sales.
Another important employment weather vane, the weekly jobless claims report, also sends a more muted message than the ADP and ISM reports. Claims climbed last week to a five-week high of 370,000 and are little changed since early fall. Read about latest increase in jobless claims.
If that's not enough, the last few years have also witnessed the emergence of a courier mirage in December owing to problems with how the government accounts for seasonal hiring patterns.
The government has reported a huge increase in courier jobs because of a spike in temporary hiring at delivery firms such as UPS and FedEx. These firms hire a lot more couriers than they used during the holiday season because of the explosion in Internet shopping.
Yet those job gains have been quickly revised away. Take the end of 2011. The government initially said the number of courier jobs jumped by 42,000 in December of that year, but just one month later, the increase became a decrease of 7,200 based on more complete information.
Sooner or later, the government will "fix" the courier problem by altering its formula for season adjustments. Until then keep an eye on that category.
Add it all up and December will probably be a hard month to figure — again. "There are all sorts of ebbs and flows," Ricchiuto said.
There's other data due Friday as well. The ISM will releases its services sector index for December at 10 a.m., and the Commerce Department will report factory orders data for November.


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Orion/Documentation/Developer Guide/Configuration services
Overview of configuration services
Orion provides a number of service APIs related to service configuration.
Managed Services
A service may need configuration information before it can perform its intended functionality. Such services are called Managed Services. A Managed Service implements a method,
updated(), which is called by the Orion configuration framework to provide configuration data to the service. (As with all service methods, updated() is called asynchronously.) Configuration data takes the form of a dictionary of key-value pairs, called properties. If no configuration data exists for the Managed Service,
null is passed.
A Managed Service needs to receive its configuration information before the service is invoked to perform other work. For example, a configurable validation service would want to receive the values of any custom validation options (or
null</code, if no custom values were configured) before actually performing any validation. For this reason, the framework guarantees that a Managed Service's updated() method will be called prior to any other service methods the service may implement.
Managed Services are registered with a PID (persistent identifier) which uniquely identifies the configuration information for the service.
The Orion concept of a Managed Service is analogous to the OSGi Managed Service.
Meta Typing
A metatype describes the shape of configuration data. In other words, it specifies what property names can appear in the properties dictionary, and what data types (string, boolean, number, etc) their values may have. Metatype information is defined in terms of "object classes", which can be reused. Metatype information is keyed by a configuration's PID. Metatype information is optional, so not every Managed Service need have metatype information associated with it.
Metatype information is contributed by services with the orion.cm.metatype service name.
The Orion concept of a Metatype is analogous to the OSGi Metatype.
Configuration management
Configuration data is managed by a ConfigurationAdmin service, which maintains a database of Configuration objects. The ConfigurationAdmin monitors the service registry and provides configuration data to Managed Services that are registered. Orion's implementation of ConfigurationAdmin persists configuration data to a Preferences Service.
In JavaScript code, configuration information is represented as <code>Configuration objects (refer to "orion.cm.Configuration" in the client API reference for details), which are returned by the ConfigurationAdmin's service methods. Because the ConfigurationAdmin service is currently only accessible to page code, Configuration objects can only be managed from page code. Managed Services currently cannot interact with Configurations directly, and can only receive configuration information via their
updated() method.
The Orion ConfigurationAdmin service is analogous to the OSGi ConfigurationAdmin.
On top of the basic configuration and metatype APIs, Orion also provides a higher-level Settings API.
orion.cm.configadmin service, also called ConfigurationAdmin, provides management of configuration data. Internally, the ConfigurationAdmin service is used by the Plugin Settings page to manage the values of settings.
The service methods are:
- getConfiguration(pid)
- Returns a Configuration with the given PID, creating a new Configuration if one does not already exist.
- listConfigurations()
- Returns an array of all current Configuration objects.
Refer to
orion.cm.ConfigurationAdmin in the client API reference for a full description of this service's API methods.
Here is an example of how to use the ConfigurationAdmin service to print out all existing configurations and their property values:
var configurations = serviceRegistry.getService("orion.cm.configadmin").listConfigurations().then(function(configurations) { configurations.forEach(function(configuration) { var properties = configuration.getProperties(); var propertyInfo = Object.keys(properties).map(function(propertyName) { if (propertyName !== "pid") { return "\n " + propertyName + ": " + JSON.stringify(properties[propertyName]) + "\n"; } }).join(""); console.log("Configuration pid: " + configuration.getPid() + "\n" + " properties: {" + propertyInfo + "\n" + " }"); }); });
The result might look something like this:
Configuration pid: nonnls.config properties: { enabled: false } Configuration pid: jslint.config properties: { options: "laxbreak:true, maxerr:50" }
Contributes a Managed Service. A Managed Service is a service that can receive configuration data.
A Managed Service must implement the following method:
- updated(properties)
- The ConfigurationAdmin invokes this method to provide configuration to this Managed Service. If no configuration exists for this Managed Service's PID,
propertieswill be
null. Otherwise,
propertiesis an object containing the service's configuration data.
Contributes type definitions, which may be associated with a service's configuration.


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Ruining of the last bastion of free speech
Remember back in the day, when the Internet was fun? You could go online and visit with like-minded geeks and nerds who wanted to chat about subjects of common interest. It was commercial free and it didn't cost a dime.
Going online still doesn't cost anything in dollars and cents. Now, you pay with your sanity. You can't go to a website without being bombarded with advertising, pop-ups, videos and audio bits. A visit to any news outlet is maddening. What happened?
The advent of the personal computer and the commercialization of the Internet started around the mid-1990s. For practical purposes, the Internet has been available to the average user for less than two decades.
In that short period, inventive computer-savvy entrepreneurs have become multi-billionaires by devising ways for people to benefi t from the new technology. The Internet was intended to develop as an educational tool offering instant access to more information to more people than any other method of communication in history.
For the most part, the Internet has been self-policing with few laws governing its use. It has been a free source for people to share political, philosophical and religious views with impunity. It has had its downside with deviant behavior that has required regulation. Other than that, it has been the last bastion of free speech for much of the world where free speech was all but nonexistent.
The Internet has become the new television. Back in the late 1940s and early '50s, television revolutionized the world. It was widely acclaimed as the be-all end-all of communicative efforts. Visionaries and entrepreneurs were supportive of the medium as a new outlet for entertainment and information. Television offered instant gratifi- cation and made a better-informed world.
Skeptics claimed that television would cause the ultimate demise of the film and music businesses, and the downfall of radio. To a degree, they were right. Hollywood didn't fold, however; it just changed its tactics. Radio suffered for a while, but managed to stay afloat. Today there is no lack of radio programming, and the prices for radio advertising have not diminished.
They also claimed that people would stop reading and the book industry would collapse. Well — that didn't happen. The book business blossomed during the television heyday. And when the networks gave way to cable TV, the publishing industry grew even more.
It did, however, chip away at the newspaper business. Then, when the Internet developed, the newspapers suffered even more. Nonetheless, the will to survive won in the end. Newspapers adjusted to the modern technology by going online and charging the expense to their advertisers. Some even charge subscribers for full online editions.
Many small hometown newspapers are thriving because of their Internet presence. The online editions are often expanded to include more than local news, and their readership has grown as a result.
Today, if a business does not have an Internet presence, it is not taken seriously. Many television, radio and newspaper ads do nothing more than encourage viewers and readers to "visit us on the Internet at www.etc."
Because of this huge shift in business to take advantage of the barely regulated World Wide Web, the Internet ceased to be fun. Now, it's like a Wild West show.
Every day, Internet users are forced to wade through a sea of spam, pop-ups, and video commercials that interrupt every news bit, and half-page swatches of advertising links that break up articles and blogs.
The ad brokers relentlessly tempt website owners with defraying their costs and making extra money by allowing advertisers to permeate their sites. The Internet is an attractive target for the advertising sharks because results of advertising dollars can be monitored. Additionally, it offers the best response, beating the results of radio, television, and print of any kind.
The Internet cannot be beat for market penetration, and the costs are dramatically less than its competition.
Consequently, the unbridled, free-spirited world of cyberspace was harnessed, tamed and commercialized, again by big business and greed, the deadliest of the seven deadly sins.
The question remains, will the proverbial Phoenix rise from the dust and offer the free thinkers of this world a new outlet, where freedom of expression and imagination can remain unimpeded and with impunity? We can only hope.
Until then, the commerce demons will continue to stalk us and perpetuate a banal existence in a system we cannot understand.


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Ryder Cup in a flap over Twitter ban
No birdie for you. Oh go on then. Actually don't
Captains of the two Ryder Cup teams will ban golfers from using Twitter and Facebook during the tournament, but there is much flip-flopping afoot.
After two European golfers went against team orders, a compromise has been struck so that golfers may continue to tweet providing they avoid discussing team tactics or anything else said in team talks.
European captain Colin Montgomerie and his US opposite number Corey Pavin told a press conference on Monday that both squads have been banned from using either Facebook or Twitter for the duration of next weekend's eagerly-awaited tournament.
Montgomerie cited cricketer Kevin Pietersen's Twitter rant in justifying his decision to impose a social networking gagging order, AFP reports. Pietersen took to Twitter to express his disappointment at getting dropped from one day internationals against Pakistan following poor form with the bat in the proceeding test series.
In response to questions about a recent micro-blogging spat between Ian Poulter and US golf commentator Johnny Miller, the European captain said the ban was not directed at any particular member of the team.
However, team members Ian Poulter (@IanJamesPoulter) and Graeme McDowell (@Graeme_McDowell) continued to post updates on their respective Twitter accounts even after Monday's ruling. This provoked a sit-down on Wednesday and relaxation of the blanket ban together with an agreement that anything said in team talks will remain strictly off limits, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Pavin said the US team had decided that using Twitter during the tournament was an unnecessary distraction. "[Twitter] can be a little bit distracting some times," Pavin said, AFP reports. "I think it's important to focus on the Ryder Cup and playing the matches."
"We've decided as a whole to not Tweet this week, but first thing a week from today I am sure Tweeting will be all over the place," he added.
The latest Ryder Cup (which is contested every two years) tees off at Celtic Manor, Wales on Friday. The resort is owned by Welsh/Canadian networking billionaire Terry Matthews, founder of Mitel and Newbridge Networks.
Micro-blogging and professional sports have had an erratic relationship. Control freakery and a desire to prevent players making potentially embarrassing comments on social networking websites prompted Manchester United to impose a ban back in January.
Other football clubs have a more
foolhardy open attitude to social media. For example, Atlético Madrid star Diego Forlan (@diegoforlan) used the micro-blogging site to chronicle Uruguay's surprise progress to the World Cup semi-final in South Africa, during which he scored five goals, becoming joint top-scorer at the tournament. ®


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Release Date: October 13, 1999
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Teresa Miller is well-acquainted with the U.S. prison system, but not because she's spent time behind bars.
The associate professor of law at the University at Buffalo has taught a course on international human rights to female inmates in Albion Correctional Facility, worked with prisoners at Attica, and served as a volunteer lawyer with a prison project in Miami.
Miller is intensely interested in prisoners' rights and the accessibility of legal help within the system. This semester, the Harvard University law graduate is teaching courses at the UB Law School on "jailhouse lawyering" and prisoner law, which looks at constitutional law as it is applied in prisons.
"A lot of (inmates) want help with appeals, assistance in writing writs of habeas corpus or assistance in challenging their living conditions," says Miller, who is working with students in the jailhouse-lawyering course to rewrite a curriculum to teach research and writing to prisoners.
Any inmate who has the legal knowledge to assist other prisoners with their cases is considered a jailhouse lawyer. Often, paralegals or attorneys volunteer to teach those who want to provide legal assistance to other inmates, Miller says.
"There are great 'attorneys' in prison," she says. "They have a lot of time to sharpen their knowledge of the law." One of the goals of her course, she points out, is to include on her Web site http://www.ublaw.buffalo.edu/fas/miller/prisonlaw/ the updated curriculum so that any law student in the state can view it.
"The idea is to encourage more lawyers to volunteer to teach legal research and writing to inmates," she says.
While Miller is interested in the legal aspects of the prison system, her work also delves deep into the social and economic ramifications of incarceration.
"One in every 155 (people) is in prison," Miller says. "That's a staggering statistic."
Even more frightening to her are the numbers of African Americans who are incarcerated.
"One in every three black men between the ages of 20 and 29 is in jail, prison, on probation or parole," she says. "I'm interested in that (statistic) as an African American. It's very hard to find an African American who doesn't know someone in prison."
The trend toward incarceration, Miller says, is deeply disturbing.
"The response has not been, 'How do we downsize the prison population?' The response is, 'How do we make it more cost-effective to incarcerate all these people?'" she says. "That, to me, is a very cynical response."
Miller takes issue with the way prisons are "warehousing" violence within the system. "We throw (inmates) together into a very violent prison subculture, and we don't protect them and we let them prey on each other," she says, noting that this class of "undesirables" is up against the notion that they are a part of the country's "waste management."
"There is no longer a stated goal of rehabilitation," Miller says. "The idea…is just not popular. The warden and the (corrections) officers rely on the violence to keep prisoners in check."
Drugs, contraband, gambling and the sex enslavement that pervade the prison system contribute to the violence, Miller adds.
Prisons today, she says, are "not about lofty goals, just how to deal with the undesirables."
Miller spent a year working with inner-city youth at the Barnyard Community Center in Miami, where, she says, she witnessed the toll prison takes on struggling communities.
"That's really when I began to see inter-generational costs of incarceration," she says. "In (some) families, fathers had done time and were marginally employed. The older brother was doing a state bid, the next-younger brother had already been in the juvenile system. (It) goes down to the 6- or 7-year-old who's been caught shoplifting."
Miller says that incarceration will be one of the biggest issues facing the country in the next century, particularly how to cope with the consequences of the system the country has created.
"Prisons create the reality that we live," she says. "The division between inside and outside is completely fictitious."
Prisons, she says, aren't turning out better citizens, and families and friends of those doing time are sharing the consequences.
"They're not creating better communities, that's for sure," she says.


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Killer car. Totally dig it.FYI, there is no such thing as a 1998 S-Line.
Nice car! I'm not a huge fan of the wheels, but the rest looks great. Is it a 30v? If so, it shouldn't be too slow. I bet you noticed a difference in performance driving it up here, tough.
de-chrome the wheels, otherwise, great looking ride.
It is a 30v and it pulled pretty well in San Fran... and then we got to the Sierras and it went downhill from there.
PES can help out with that. How many miles on it?
Dude, I just saw the 4 letter word I didn't expect to see. Why the change of heart?
Wait....what? Mike, you go through cars like GM goes through tax dollars Do tell.
LOLWhat Richard said is true, I'm going to cut back on the expenses during college, and then get back into the four rings afterward. I love the car, but feel that this is the best decision for now.


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Senior, Corporate Finance
Congratulations to the ValMark Scholarship Winners11/12/2013
Michael Hapanowicz
Senior, Corporate Finance
Benjamin Barr
Senior, Accounting and Corporate Finance
2013 recipients of ValMark's Comprehensive
Financial Planning Scholarship
Special congratulations to Alex Daher - Senior, Financial Services and Sales Management and Kevin Mace - Senior, Financial Services for their second-place finish.
The Financial Planning Scholarship was judged on October 29 by a distinguished panel of industry judges at ValMark's corporate office. Applicants for the scholarship were chosen by submission of financial plans built using real-life scenarios and academic knowledge.


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We encourage you register to discuss everything from wrestling (past and present) to politics to sports and beyond. We also have a fun e-fed for those of you who enjoy role playing!
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LAMA Discussion and Interest Groups
Dialog with Directors Discussion Group: Mind the Generational Gap in Staff
The LAMA Dialog with Directors Discussion Group will meet during its traditional time slot on Monday, January 22, 1:30-3:30pm in the Hilton Seattle Windward Room. Join the discussion as we explore how managers and supervisors must operate to allow new or younger librarians space to grow without harming existing relationships with older or experienced staff. We will also look at what role new or experienced staff have in the process. Contact Brian Gray by email if you have a specific question you would like addressed during the discussion or would like to sign up for the email listserv to receive meeting summaries or future announcements.
Library Storage Discussion Group
The LAMA Library Storage Discussion Group will meet on Sunday, January 21, 10:30am - 12:30pm in the Hilton Seattle Sound View Room. Please join us to discuss and exchange ideas on the planning, design, development, operation, management and/or dismantling of library collection storage.
Topics for discussion at the meeting will include 'Planning for running out of space in storage' and 'Inventory control systems'. We will also have a presentation by Rian Smith, Principal Logistics Engineer for Daifuku America. We'll try to leave ample time for an open floor.
If you have any questions or would like to suggest an additional topic for discussion please contact Andrea Loigman by email.
MAES (Measurement, Assessment and Evaluation) Discussion Group
Come join us for a lively discussion on how to recruit participants for assessment-related efforts such as focus groups, interviews and usability studies. We'll also talk about ways to increase survey response rates.
Date: Sunday, 1/21/2007 Time: 10:30 AM-12:30 PM' Location: Washington State Convention & Trade Cent room: Room 607
Discussion led by: Steve Hiller Director, Assessment and Planning University of Washington Libraries ARL Visiting Program Officer for Assessment
Steve has extensive experience with getting folks to participate in a wide range of assessment activities during the past 15 years at the University of Washington. His ARL work has focused on evaluating assessement efforts at 25 academic research libraries over the past two years.
Questions or ideas for future sessions, please contact Kathy Ray, email@example.com
Facilities Planning Discussion Group
We at the University of Washington Libraries are very pleased to host the LAMA BES Facilities Planning Discussion Group meeting at the Suzzallo Library, in the historic Smith Room. Refreshments will be provided as well as tours of the recently completed Suzzallo Library Renovation Project and a visit to the new Law Library.
January 21, Sunday, 4 p.m. Suzzallo Library, Smith Room (3rd floor)
See www.washington.edu/home/maps/northcentral.html for a map of the campus.
Suzzallo is located on the central campus plaza.
How to get here:
Cab fares to the University from the Convention Center will be approximately $14 for one person or for a cab-load of up to 4 people. The cab ride will take approximately 20 minutes.
Tell the cab driver to take you to the flagpole, located at the end of Memorial Way. The entrance to campus is at NE 45th and 17th Ave NE. From the flagpole, walk down the stairs onto the brick plaza, past the Odegaard Undergraduate Library, and turn left. You will see the gothic facade of the Suzzallo Library. Use this entrance, and ask at the information desk for directions to the Smith Room.
If you take the bus from downtown, the fare is $1.25. Take Metro Bus #49, departing from Pike Street & Convention Place at 3:09 p.m. (This bus runs about every 20 minutes or so on Sundays) The bus will let you off near the campus on 15th Ave NE at NE 41st St. Walk East on the ramp that goes uphill to the campus from the 15th Ave sidewalk. You will see the flagpole ahead of you. You will pass by the Undergraduate Library on your right, on your way to the flagpole.
>From the flagpole, walk down the stairs onto the brick plaza, past the Undergraduate Library, and turn left. You will see the gothic facade of the Suzzallo Library. Use this entrance, and ask at the information desk for directions to the Smith Room.
QUESTIONS? Contact Paula Walker, UW Libraries, firstname.lastname@example.com or telephone (206) 616-8513.
Also, the UW Libraries staff have developed a web page with information about visiting the UW for Midwinter attendees. You can find it at http://www.lib.washington.edu/about/midwinter/
We are looking forward to seeing you on January 21st!
Paula Walker Director of Libraries Facilities Project Management Special Assistant to the Dean of University Libraries University of Washington


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Suffolk, ss.
Docket No. LB-08-396
GERALDO DeOLIVEIRA and NEW CREATION FLOORING, INC.,
Appearance for the Petitioners:
James B. Duggan, Esq.,
100 State St., 3rd floor.
Boston, MA 02109
Appearance for Respondent:
Bruce M. Trager, Esq.,
Assistant Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General-Fair Labor Division, 1 Ashburton Place, Rm. 1813, Boston, MA 02108
Administrative Magistrate:
Mark L. Silverstein, Esq.
Summary of Decision
An appeal challenging a $3,000 civil penalty assessed in a citation issued by the Attorney General's Fair Labor Division for failure to furnish records regarding wage payments, in violation of M.G.L. c. 151, § 19(3), is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction because it was not filed within the ten-day appeal period prescribed by M.G.L. c. 149, § 27C(b)(4).
That the petitioners lacked counsel to assist them in recognizing grounds for appealing the penalty until the appeal period had run was a matter of personal choice rather than the result of defective appeal rights notice in the Fair Labor Division's citation, and therefore did not toll the appeal period. The petitioners' challenge to the constitutionality of the statutory ten-day appeal period is noted as having been raised and, with the operative dates and absence of circumstances tolling the appeal period established, the claim is preserved for review by the Superior Court if the petitioners seek it.
Respondent Office of the Attorney General-Fair Labor Division issued a citation to petitioners Geraldo DeOliveira and New Creation Flooring, Inc. (No. MW080050, dated April 16, 2008) assessing a $3,000 civil penalty against them for unintentionally failing to furnish wage payment records to the Division, in violation of M.G.L. c. 151, § 19(3). In a section entitled "Right to Appeal This Citation," the citation advised the petitioners that:
You have the right to appeal the issuance of this citation to the Division of Administrative Law Appeals ("DALA"). A notice of this appeal must be filed with both the Attorney General and DALA within 10 days from receipt of the citation.
(Emphasis in original.)
A copy of the citation was sent to the petitioners by certified mail, and the certified mail receipt shows that it was received on April 17, 2008. The petitioners filed a notice of appeal dated June 11, 2008 with DALA and the Attorney General, and the respondent Fair Labor Division moved to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction based upon its untimeliness. The petitioners opposed the motion. For the reasons set forth below, the motion is granted.
A statutory ten-day appeal period governs challenges to a citation such as this one. M.G.L. c. 149, § 27C(b)(4) provides that "[a]ny person aggrieved by any citation or order issued pursuant to this subsection may appeal said citation or order by filing a notice of appeal with the attorney general and the division of administrative law appeals within ten days of the receipt of the citation or order."
The date from which the applicable ten-day appeal period started to run was April 17, 2008, the date of receipt shown by the certified mail receipt. [fn. 1] As the tenth day following April 17, 2008 fell on a Sunday (April 27, 2008), the ten-day appeal period expired, per M.G.L. c. 4, § 9, on the "next succeeding business day," which was Monday, April 28, 2008. The petitioners' appeal was filed on June 11, 2008, well after the ten-day period for appealing the citation had expired.
The petitioners do not contest these operative dates and assert, instead, that (1) the petitioners were without counsel until the day they filed their appeal, and accordingly the ten-day appeal period should be extended to preserve the petitioners' appeal rights (which I treat as an argument that the ten-day appeal period should be tolled), and (2) the ten-day appeal period prescribed by M.G.L. c. 149, § 27C(b)(4) is unconstitutional on its face because it "presents a hypertechnical bar to administrative review of an agency decision without any support in law, or reason" that would leave citizens (the petitioners among them) unable to seek review of Attorney General action such as the citation and penalty challenged here, and because the statute includes no provision by which the ten-day appeal period may be extended, whether for good cause shown or otherwise.
1. Extension and tolling of appeal period
Statutory limitations of time for commencing adjudicatory appeals at DALA challenging agency action, such as the ten-day period for appealing a fair labor citation prescribed by M.G.L. c. 149, § 27C(b)(4), are jurisdictional requirements that a forum such as DALA cannot extend, but the commencement or expiration of the time limit may be suspended, or "tolled," in limited circumstances. See Matter of Conroy Development Corp., Docket Nos. DEP-06-865/866/867, Recommended Final Decision, 14 DEPR 52, 56 (Mass. Div. of Admin. Law App., Apr. 27, 2007), adopted by Final Decision, 14 DEPR 182 (Mass. Dep't of Envtl. Prot., Aug. 23, 2007) (principle enunciated in context of 10-day limitation of time prescribed by the Wetlands Protection Act, M.G.L. c. 131, § 40, for seeking Department of Environmental Protection review of wetlands permits issued under the Act by local conservation commissions).
Tolls of statutory time limitations on appeals may be provided by statute-for example, M.G.L. c. 260, § 7, which tolls the time within which a minor or a person incapacitated by reason of mental illness may bring a claim-or by caselaw. Caselaw-based tolls recognize events or conduct beyond the control of the appealing party that genuinely cause it to miss the appeal deadline, among them defective notice of the action the party wishes to challenge, or some other action or omission by the opposing party that estops it from contesting the appeal as time-barred. See, e.g., White v. Peabody Construction Co., Inc., 386 Mass. 121, 434 N.E.2d 1015, 1023 (1982) (discussing estoppel to raise the statute of limitations as a defense in civil actions, under M.G.L. c. 260, § 12, where a defendant fraudulently conceals the existence of a cause of action-for example, by making representations that it knew or should have known would induce the plaintiff to defer bringing suit, and the plaintiff delayed doing so in reliance upon the representation). In contrast, some actions by others, including a defaulting party's own counsel, may not generate sufficient "extraordinary circumstance" to justify tolling the applicable limitations period, particularly when the party exercises no personal diligence in meeting a time limitation. Cf. Cordle v. Guarino, 428 F.3d 46, 48-49 (1st. Cir. 2005)(no tolling of time to file federal habeas petition on account of neglect by petitioners' counsel to file it or advise the petitioner of the deadline for doing so, petitioner's ignorance of the deadline, or the incarceration itself, because the petitioner waited eight years after her conviction, and over three years after the applicable time limit expired, before seeking habeas relief on her own). Similarly, confusion or mistaken impressions regarding appeal rights or the applicable appeal period does not suffice to toll the appeal period, and neither does the appealing party's belated recognition that it had grounds for appealing. See Conroy, 14 DEPR at 57; see also Matter of Thomsen, Docket No. 2002-085, Recommended Final Decision, 9 DEPR 281, 282-83 (Mass. Dep't of Envtl. Prot., Office of Admin. Law App., Dec. 5, 2002), adopted by Final Decision, 9 DEPR 281 (Mass. Dep't of Envtl. Prot., Dec. 12, 2002).
The petitioners assert neither defective notice to them of the citation nor any other conduct on the Attorney General's part that caused them to defer appealing until the ten-day appeal period had expired. The only reason they offer for filing no appeal until June 11, 2008 was that they did not have counsel until that time. Implicit in this argument is that, without counsel, the petitioners did not recognize that they could or should appeal the citation.
With no assertion to the contrary, the petitioners' lack of counsel until well after the appeal period had run appears to have been a matter of personal choice rather than the result of action or omission by another party. Whatever the reason was for obtaining counsel belatedly, however, the citation stated the petitioners' appeal rights and the ten-day deadline for appealing clearly and accurately enough to be understood even without counsel's assistance. The petitioners do not assert that they were confused about their appeal rights or the time for appealing the citation. There are presented, in short, no circumstances beyond the petitioners' control that caused them to miss the ten-day deadline for appealing the citation despite diligence on their part. No tolling of the ten-day appeal period is justified here, consequently, and the appeal was time-barred.
2. Constitutionality of ten-day appeal period
The petitioners also challenge the ten-day appeal period prescribed by M.G.L. c. 149, § 27C(b)(4) as unconstitutional. It is their argument, in essence, that a short limitations period such as this one ensures the forfeiture of legitimate claims through inadvertence or inability to obtain counsel and frame and file an appeal within the time prescribed, and therefore renders ineffective the right to appeal that the statute prescribes.
The petitioners' argument implicates no discretionary action by the Fair Labor Division or by DALA. The application of the statutory appeal period is entirely calendar-based and requires no factfinding other than to establish the operative events and dates-the date on which the petitioners received the citation and the ten-day appeal period starting running (above, at 2-3), the last date on which the petitioners could have commenced an appeal and the later date on which they filed one (above, at 3), and the absence of any event tolling the appeal period's running or expiration (above, at 4-5). No sifting of facts is needed, however, to determine whether the appeal period should apply, because M.G.L. c. 149, § 27C(b)(4) allows no exercise of discretion as to its applicability.
The petitioners' constitutional challenge is directed, then, entirely at the legislature's decision to apply a short, ten-day limitations period to appeals such as this one, and it is therefore one that the Superior Court may hear directly without any prior exhaustion of remedies in this forum. See Liability Investigative Fund Effort, Inc. v. Medical Malpractice Joint Underwriting Association of Massachusetts, 409 Mass. 734, 569 N.E.2d 797, 803 (1991) (claim by physicians that statute authorizing the insurance commissioner to set rates for medical malpractice insurance violated the United States Constitution and the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, e.g. because it allegedly effected an unconstitutional taking, was not a ratemaking challenge to be decided first by the insurance commissioner and then appealed, and the dismissal of the physicians' Superior Court action was therefore vacated); Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co. v. Comm'r of Insurance, 407 Mass. 23, 551 N.E.2d 502, 504-05 (1990) (because the insurance commissioner was without statutory authority to adjudicate a constitutional challenge to a statute apportioning among insurance companies the expenses and losses of providing involuntary or "residual" motor vehicle liability insurance to persons who otherwise could not obtain coverage, the Superior Court should not have dismissed a declaratory judgment action challenging the statute's constitutionality for failure to exhaust administrative remedies).
Neither DALA's establishing statute, M.G.L. c. 7, § 4H, nor M.G.L. c. 149, directs that the constitutionality of the applicable time limitation be challenged at DALA in the first instance or, if it is, that DALA decide whether the time limitation is constitutional, and no directive to do so is properly read into M.G.L. c. 149, § 27C(b)(4)'s general statement of appeal rights. See Hartford Accident, 551 N.E.2d 502, 504-05. The petitioners' challenge to the constitutionality of the ten-day appeal period that applies here should be determined not by DALA but, instead, by the Superior Court, either on appeal of this decision pursuant to M.G.L. c. 30A (the next step provided by M.G.L. c. 149, § 27C(b)(4)) upon the record of this proceeding, or by way of a separate declaratory judgment action. See Liability Investigative Fund Effort, 569 N.E.2d at 803-04.
The petitioners' challenge to the ten-day appeal period prescribed by M.G.L. c. 149, § 27C(b)(4) is therefore noted as having been raised, and, with the operative dates and absence of circumstances tolling the appeal period established (above, at 2-6), this claim is preserved for review by the Superior Court if the petitioners seek it.
Because the petitioners filed this appeal more than ten business days after they received the citation, and the ten-day appeal period prescribed by M.G.L. c. 149, § 27C(b)(4) was not tolled, the appeal was untimely and, thus, jurisdictionally defective. This appeal is dismissed, accordingly, for lack of jurisdiction, pursuant to 801 CMR 1.01(4)(a).
Mark L. Silverstein
Administrative Magistrate
Dated: August 28, 2009
1/ The Fair Labor Division asserted that the date of receipt was April 22, 2008, but the certified mail receipt shows this to have been the date on which the receipt was date-stamped as having been received by the Division. The "date of delivery" of the certified mailing is handwritten on the receipt as "4/17/08." However, even if the appeal period were computed from April 22, 2008 (making May 2, 2008 the tenth and last day on which a timely appeal could have been filed), the petitioners' appeal on June 11, 2008 was still filed after the ten-day appeal period expired.