But radio can also be a source of surprisingly deep friendship. Especially, a source of comfort in hard times when loneliness might otherwise prevail.

Take a look at this short and touching video uploaded recently by a listener to LightFM:

Renee found LightFM during one of the hardest times of her life – and it gave her hope to continue on.

Another listener, Rae, uploaded a video recently, in which she said after listening to LightFM after finding out about it on the Internet, she “was beginning to heal on the inside, and be motivated into a love of life with an overwhelming sense of happiness.” At the end of her video, she includes a photo collage of the LightFM on-air team – with the heading “My Awesome Cheer Squad”.

I’ve been involved in radio for just on three years now, and I still get touched by these stories that I get the privilege of hearing time and time again. Many of them have similar themes – but they are new every single time because they always involve another person who has found a new lease on life in a unique way.

As someone involved in making relational radio, it’s encouraging to hear these stories – and sharing these stories around mean that more and more people have the opportunity to hear about a source of hope – that they might otherwise never know existed.

Melbourne’s 89.9 LightFM is running the “My LightFM” promotion until 25th June, where listeners upload a 60 second video sharing what LightFM means to them. Find out more or view the videos uploaded so far.

Three things you do when you Value someone: Acceptance, Accountability, and Affirmation.

1. Acceptance: I will accept you as you are
2. Accountability: I will take you further
3. Affirmation: I will show it – not just say it

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the summer solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

Also we wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make the world a great place, and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wishor to actually implement any of the wishes for himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wishor.

This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wishor…

Disclaimer:
No trees were harmed in the sending of this message, however, while a significant number of electrons were inconvenienced, no bits were lost.

Author: unknown. But sourced from a friend of a friend.

(I thought this was great! Merry Christmas to you – and best wishes – from me in Melbourne. Hope you have either a well-earned break or a few weeks of well-paid overtime, and get to spend time with those you love this Christmas!)

I’ve just spent a substantial amount of time reading about time travel, wormholes, and predestination paradoxes.

Time travel is theoretically impossible, right? If you were to go back and time and kill your father before he met your mother, you wouldn’t exist. Therefore, you wouldn’t have been able to go back in time and kill your father, thus your father wouldn’t have been killed and you would have existed, therefore being able to go back in time and kill him (the grandfather paradox).

If time travel is possible in the future, then perhaps it will only be possible in a segment of time that needs to be warped in the right shape. If we can’t create a segment like this until the future, then travel into the past (past when we were able to develop this segment) would be impossible.

The whole idea of time travel seems very sci-fi and impossible to imagine. But some part of me says that one day, we’ll discover a way to do it. Just think, two hundred years ago, the concept of a small device emitting an invisible ray of light to instruct another device 10 metres away to perform a particular action was probably thought impossible. Yet we use the remote control every day now without a second thought.

We’ll be exhibiting at a stand in the E-Commerce and E-Finance area, so keep an eye out for us with our free chupa-chups!

Depending on what happens, I may have some photos and other information to share here.

The annual Soul Survivor conference happens every April, during school holidays, in Sydney. It’s a week of teaching and worship, and going there each year gives me a week of unwinding, forgetting about work and the rest of life – and just focussing on God. Some of my big decisions have been made – or have had major progress made towards them – at the Soul Survivor conference.

I’ve uploaded a promo video below, which gives a small look at what happens at Soul festivals.

For more details, see the website at soulsurvivornsw.org.au.

As I said in my previous post, I’m not overly serious about this. Matt knows how I work out my tips. Can anyone else pick it?

My tips for round three:

• Broncos v Panthers
• Eels v Wests Tigers
• Dragons v Cowboys
• Sharks v Rabbitohs
• Storm v Warriors
• Bulldogs v Titans
• Roosters v Sea Eagles
• Raiders v Knights

May the strongest team win!

Ok, it won’t be long. I’ll be back soon.

Disclaimer out of the way; an eight year old girl was murdered in a suburban shopping centre in Perth late yesterday afternoon, after having been sexually assaulted. It was what appears to be a random attack, and a witness reported the killer ran from the shopping centre and “was sweaty and almost knocked [the witness] over as she entered the shopping centre”.

A man in his early twenties – who leads a quiet life working in a shop and living with his parents in a suburb of Perth – has no reason to choose an eight year old girl at random, in the 10 minutes whilst she is out of site of her family, and do something like this to her. Although at this stage the attack appears random, my view is that this man has been trying to satisfy sexual desires for a long time in a way that never truly satisfies him.

I believe he has been looking at pornography for quite awhile, trying to fill the void within him that is there because he can’t get a girlfriend. As he realises that there’s only so much porn can do for him, he starts watching girls in the street and in the shopping centre on a daily basis. His sexual drive builds up, and as a spur of the moment thing, something inside him tells him to grab for that girl yesterday afternoon. He is being driven by sex and lacks the power to stop it because he let his activities go too far in the first place.

He grabs for the girl, sexually assaults her, then suddenly realises what he’s done. Out of panic, he kills her and runs – as fast as he can. He is sweating all over because he knows he has just comitted a terrible crime, but doesn’t know why he did it. He goes straight home, not bothering to hide because he knows he’ll be found anyway.

He’s gone too far, and it’s too late.

It hasn’t happened yet for most of them, but for many of the millions of young men in Australia who satisfy sexual desires daily by watching raunchy movies, downloading porn, and casting their eyes over hotties in the streets, shopping centres, clubs and beaches, it’s only going to be a matter of time before the drive inside them forces them to do something they’ll regret. For most it probably won’t be as bad as what has happened here, but it may mean losing a relationship by taking it too far, or even just losing a friend of the opposite sex by trying to see too much.

Young men these days have to stop getting themselves involved in sexual immorailty for the sake of themselves and others. The sad thing is that society doesn’t make it easy for them; yet society grieves when an incident like this takes place. Everywhere we look we see temptations of sexual immorality staring us in the face: almost every TV show or movie (and many advertisements), the way many young women dress, ads everywhere on the Internet that promise to match us with our ideal sexual partners, and even sexually oriented comments made in passing by people who have wide exposure.

The way I see it, every movie director or TV show producer or any other person in control of some form of media who has intentionally put a sexy scene, photo or clip into their production in order to make it acceptable to our society is indirectly responsible for the death of Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu and those who will follow.

Someone has got to do something about this.

References:
ABC News: Girl found murdered in Perth shopping centre
ABC News: Police search for toilet murder suspect
ABC News: Toilet murder shocks Perth community
ABC News: Man charged over shopping centre murder
ABC News: Man faces court over shopping centre murder
News.com.au: Family devastated at death
SMH: Girl’s sex-assault murder: man charged
NineMSN: Girl snatched, killed in shopping centre

It really is great riding back there, except for the fact that you continually have to dodge rocks on the dirt paths, and watch out for bulls or kangaroos who could be potentially dangerous.

We also had to cross a creek, and I got some great photos along the way. I’m just about to go out, but I’ll upload some of those photos here when I get home tonight.

Gotta make this a weekly thing! More excercise, more photos, and more sun.