The Smarmy Carny

Spot these leaves!

A coin defect in the Wisconsin 2004-D coins could make your 25¢ piece worth $100 and upward.

Normal Wisconsin quarters do not have any extra little leaves, but two variations (called "extra leaf down" and "extra leaf up," as seen in the picture to the right) are causing quite a stir. You can read up on further details at coinworld.com.

Of course, if you don't believe me, feel free to send any Wisconsin 2004-D coins my way for inspection. $100 bills are also accepted.

The Purpose-Driven Life

My church has just kicked off "40 Days of Purpose," a campaign that utilizes Rick Warren's book The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? These 40 days are intentionally lined up within the Lenten season so that we will wrap up on Easter weekend.

For our kick-off meeting, we watched a 90-minute DVD presentation from Rick Warren that was quite enjoyable to watch and listen to. I am not normally much of a note-taker, but he had me scribbling notes in the margin throughout the presentation. Once I have my notes in front of me, I might include some of those thoughts in this post.

If you're not familiar with The Purpose-Driven Life, read this snippet from purposedrivenlife.com:

The Purpose-Driven Life is a manifesto for Christian living in the 21st century…a lifestyle based on eternal purposes, not cultural values. Using biblical stories and letting the Bible speak for itself, Warren clearly explains God's five purposes for each of us:

1. We were planned for God's pleasure, so your first purpose is to offer real worship.
2. We were formed for God's family, so your second purpose is to enjoy real fellowship.
3. We were created to become like Christ, so your third purpose is to learn real discipleship.
4. We were shaped for serving God, so your fourth purpose is to practice real ministry.
5. We were made for a mission, so your fifth purpose is to live out real evangelism.

That said, there were a couple things in Warren's presentation that made me raise an eyebrow, though. The one item that still has my mind whirring was during his section on evangelism. He said something to the effect of "If we don't tell others the Good News, someone who should be in heaven might not be there." I realize that he was trying to convey the urgency of evangelism, but something just didn't sit right with me on that. I'm not a Calvinist to any appreciable degree, but this seems to have brought out some Calvinistic sentiments in me. If someone should be in heaven, I feel like they would end up there via other means. Maybe I'm just using Calvinistic views to avoid the urgency of evangelism, but my hesitancy seems deeper than mere avoidance. Then again, perhaps it is simply semantics — particularly with the word "should." In philosophical circles, "should" carries with it a certain weightiness. I'm not saying I'm right about this, and I'm not saying he's wrong. I'm just saying it still makes me a bit uneasy.

I have already read portions of The Purpose-Driven Life, and it holds so much amazing information in it. I'm really looking forward to delving into it, and hopefully I can actually apply it to my life instead of merely reading it.

Rhymes with "Tax Laud"

Remember: when you win a million dollars in front of 59 million people on the most popular reality show of all time, you might not try to keep that money a secret. If anyone is paying attention, it's the IRS.

The Smoking Gun released this document, in which the IRS claims that Richard Hatch not only failed to claim his Survivor million in 2000, but also did not report $321,000 in 2001. Whoops.

Any time someone wins a large sum from a game show, lottery, etc., I immediately figure out roughly what they have won after taxes. With a million dollars, can't you afford a decent accountant?

This all makes me curious about how often winners of large sums of money fail to report their large winnings on their taxes. I can't imagine how it wouldn't cross your mind during tax time. I remember biting my nails one year over $2 that I won on a free Bingo website. You'd hope that Jeopardy winners and the like would be intelligent enough to claim the winnings, but the lottery is the complete opposite. Not only do you need zero intelligence to win, I think that it's more likely that people playing the lottery regularly are more likely to lack that certain je ne sais quoi regarding financial intelligence. Lotto winners are the neanderthals of winners. I don't expect them to last a year with a million dollars, and many of them don't.

The odd thing is that reality show winners, for the most part, are neither of these two categories per se. Reality shows get a bad rap from the general public, and so do reality show contestants, for the most part. Most of these generalizations are formed by some of these half-baked reality shows that crop up. Still, even though Survivor has its fair share of losers, one has to be at least half-sane and half-brained in order to win. (Note: Of course, I could be wrong. I don't actually watch Survivor. *cough*) I did see enough of Richard Hatch to believe him to be someone with a properly functioning brain.

Crunch!"

I just wonder what the problem is. Lack of foresight? Awful accounting? Greed? The world may never know how many dollars it takes to get to the tax fraud center of a Survivor Pop.