Imagine this — another student, who is in trouble with school officials for being caught with ibuprofen, informed school officials that your child is the one who provided the meds.  Also, let’s just imagine that your child is an honor roll student who has never had any disciplinary actions brought against her (at this point, let’s just say your child is a girl).  Now, let’s kick this imaginary story up a notch.  What if the school officials believe the unsubstantiated accusations against your child AND the school officials decide to send your child to principal’s office for questioning?  When your child gets to the principal’s office, she is asked if she gave the student in trouble the ibuprofen.  Your child denies any knowledge of this.  Unfortunately, the principal does not believe your child and asks if he/she can search your child’s backpack.  Your child agrees simply because she hasn’t done anything wrong.  So, after searching your child’s backpack, and not finding anything, the principal decides to take your child to the nurse’s office to have her strip searched to see if there are any meds on her person.  Whoa!!!!  What???!!!  Yes!  The strip search involves your child being ordered to strip to her underwear.  Then, your child is commanded to pull her bra out and to the side, exposing her breasts.  Lastly, your child is told to pull her underwear out at the crotch, which exposes her pelvic area.  When the search failed to produce any meds, your child is told to get dressed and is sent back to class.

When your child gets home, she tells you what happened to her at school.  What would be your first reaction?    Would you go up to the school and cause all kinds of commotions?  I’ll tell what I would do.  Forgive my French, but all hell would break loose!  Let me take a breath….  I just get infuriated when I hear stuff like this!

What I just described above is not an imaginary story.  It actually happened to a 13-year-old girl in Safford, Arizona in 2003!  Her parents sued the school and just this past Friday, July 11, 2008, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that schools may not strip-search students for drugs based on an unverified tip, overturning two previous rulings.  Now, although I’m glad that the court ruled in favor of the little girl, it took five years to get this ruling, the ruling was only 6-5 AND two courts had previously ruled in favor of the strip search!  What kind of foolishness is that!  (If you would like to read the story concerning this reprehensible act, click here).

Now that I’ve ranted and raved about this, what do you think about this?  What would you do if it happens to your child?  I would love to hear your take on this…….

The second most important thing for a blog is comments – the most important being posts/content. We write, write and write hoping someone will read the content, agree or disagree and comment. Comments are the sure fire way of knowing someone out there is reading what we have to say. That is basically what blogging was created for. But how do people read what they don’t know exists? Traffic.

If a business is a physical location or Internet-based, if people don’t know a business exists they cannot become customers. Likewise, blogs and websites need traffic so people know they exist and are doing good/great things on the Internet. There is an ugly side to generating traffic that costs a lot of money – I’m not even going to go there. However, there is a gentleman named Graham Langdon who is helping us bloggers with this problem. I will not get into the details of what Graham is doing (click here to read more about Entrecard), but he has helped many sites increase their traffic.  Entrecard has done a lot for many sites when it comes to site visits via card drops and adverts, but many visitors stopped by briefly without leaving comments.

Entrecard recently announced a partnership with SezWho (click here to read more about SezWho).  You know how we do things here at 7daybuzz – I’m not going to talk on a high level and make things hard to understand.  I’m going to break this down as much as possible.

If you look at the bottom of every article and comment on our site you will now see “Rate this” with some stars and a rating.  This can be used to rate comments and articles – click away if you think someone says something good.  Also, there is “(Who am I?)” after the name of every author or person who comments.  Hovering over this will bring up some of the following: public information, websites, blogs and sites recently commented on.  If I understand this correctly, a person with a higher rating will have greater influence.  And how does someone get a higher rating?  A person’s rating will increase by leaving quality comments which encourages commenting.

So to summarize what this is all about, Entrecard brings traffic to the site and SezWho gives that traffic incentive to leave comments.  Oh, did I mention this is all free?  For that price, it is worth a try.  I have actually noticed a little more traffic in the short time we have had this on our site.  Time will tell, but I think this is brilliant.

Thank you Graham and thank you SezWho!

1Jo 4:7 ¶ Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God;
•    As children of God, it should be our desire to ascribe to and passionately embrace anything that is of God.
•    God directed Who He was and what He did towards–others. Love and loving is about another, not about self or how we can be loved in return.
•    We only hear of God loving us or others.  He wanted to love and be loved.
Eph 4:2 ¶ With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;
3 Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
•    The success of anything under the heavens is contingent on how we love, interact and cohesiveness.  We can succeed at anything if we humans can retain unity.  The story of the Tower of Babel was proof.
•    Gen 11:6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do
•    Although the situation was negative, godless and defiant, the essence of it remains true.  Only disunity can negate the efforts of humans who were born in the image of God.  We are, by design, creators.
•    And in a spiritual sense, if we “…all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” 1Co 1:10  nothing is impossible to us.
•    We have to artfully and carefully learn how to be involved with something and  still not make it about us.
•    The danger or extreme of what we call self-love is dangerous.  Perhaps the extreme is self-worship.  There is a self-love that numbers us among the wicked:
2Ti 3:2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy
•    The child of God is commanded to love their neighbors—as they love their selves, but first of God to love God with all that is within them. (Mt 22:37)
•    We need to achieve the balance of loving people as we love ourselves, not less than we love ourselves.  Under those circumstances, self-love is acceptable because it is love in context.
•    There is no greater love than one to die for a friend or just as you would only die for yourself.  It is an equal love because you are doing for them what you would do for yourself. Joh 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends..
•    Nothing works short of love that expends itself painfully and patiently.  Love is dispensed at risk and almost foolishly.
Ro 12:9 Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.
10 Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;
•    Dissimulation commonly takes the form of concealing one’s ability in order to gain the element of surprise over an opponent. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissimulation)
•    Love does not hold back for the sake of gaining an advantage or hold information to release it later at another’s expense.
•    When we love someone, we wonder how we often wonder how we can show it. Love is manifested in what it does.  It cannot be contained, concealed or hidden. It burst forth and directs itself at its object which is—away from itself.
•    If you love someone, you can’t rest until you show it. Even then it is difficult to fully manifest sufficiently..
•    Unselfish people are known for preferring their fellow.
•    Certainly we do not keep them at arm’s length after they have hurt us.  It is a very tiring endeavor.  Only in selfishness can we withhold love until we trust our offenders.  If our love is true, we cannot hold it back.

College football is a little more than a month away and the excitement is building for the beginning of a new season.  Many questions are being asked and many predictions are being made.  A big question that has been going around is the state of Notre Dame football, clearly the most popular college football program this country has ever known.  No other program has a network that just covers their home games exclusively and you can probably add up all of the movies that have been made about Notre Dame football and it would surpass all of the other college football movies combined.  There used to be magic in Notre Dame football, but lately, the Fighting Irish have found themselves becoming a most distasteful term, “a has-been.”

When you list the accomplishments of Notre Dame football, it usually takes a while before you can finish them, even if you condense them.  Notre Dame has won 8 “wire” (AP or coaches) national championships, although they credit themselves with 11 and have no problem letting anyone know that they were voted “national champion” by at least one sector 9 other times.  They have had 12 undefeated seasons and 6 of their players have won the Heisman Trophy as well.  Notre Dame has had the most All-Americans and after USC, the Fighting Irish has had the most NFL players and NFL Hall of Famers.  The Fighting Irish also has the 2nd-highest winning percentage, .744, along  with dozens of mind-boggling records.  How could anyone think the football program is in trouble with numbers such as these?

Lately, the Notre Dame football program has fallen on tough times, especially for a program so used to success.  Since 1980, Notre Dame has won one national championship in 1988 and one Heisman Trophy winner in Tim Brown in 1987.  This was during the Lou Holtz era, the last Notre Dame coach to have big-time success there.  Since then, Notre Dame has mostly been known for what they are no longer and that is a dominant program.  The Fighting Irish have lost nine consecutive bowl games since 1994 and all but two of them were by two touchdowns or more.  Last year, Notre Dame had an awful season going 3-9.  This was Notre Dame’s fourth losing season since 1999 and they have only had 13 losing seasons ever at Notre Dame.  Ironically, as bad as they were, it was the first time since 1992 that Notre Dame ended the season with two straight wins.

With the disappointing season last year, many predict that Notre Dame will be a much-improved team in 2008.  Most still believe that Charlie Weis is still the right coach and the fact that last year’s team started nine true freshmen at some point gives Fighting Irish fans hope that better play is on the way.  The question is how much better?  Are the days of the dominant Notre Dame teams over or have they just disappeared for a while?

If you are reading this you are seeing proof that technology works and it isn’t exclusively for those well versed in the inner workings of web pages and the internet.  No, it can be learned and the learning curve isn’t so steep to prevent an average Joe from grasping what is necessary.  I have been going through a intense learning curve with this site and I have not done it alone.

Too many times we either choose not to say thank you or we wait until it is too late.  I have thought about this a lot lately and I’m trying to do my best to say thank you to those who have done something, anything, to help me.

If you look on the right side of the page, under Featured Sites, you will find a link to all three of the sites I’m about to talk about.

Dreamcatcher (click here)

When I started to network with some people on the internet I noticed that many people are just trying to sell something.  Specifically, there is a huge market for selling the knowledge for selling something.  Yes, that wasn’t a typo.  People make a lot of money online teaching people how to market to others how to make money.  It is rather sickening really and a side of this thing I don’t really like.

I wanted to find someone to talk to, a real person, and I ran across the Dreamcatcher blog one day.  Tyna runs the site and she is a positive person.  If you want to read about positive aspects of life and thoughts/actions to always move in a positive direction, her blog is worth reading.  Tyna helped me a lot by pointing me in the right direction, giving advice and being there.  Thanks Tyna.

Webmaster’s Edge (click here)

This is really unbelievable, but Bradford over at the Webmaster’s Edge has helped me for free!  Actually, that is his niche and he should be commended for it.  In a world where everyone wants to get paid for virtually everything, he is willing to pass on his knowledge at no charge.  What he does is he turns questions into content for his site.  Really, many more people should thank him because this information is out there for anyone to learn from.

This site went through a small overhaul and Bradford deserves a lot of credit for the results.

The Blog Reviewer (click here)

Constructive criticism and free advertisement.  The Blog Reviewer reviewed our site and the results were appreciated.  No, the total review wasn’t positive, but that is OK.  What the review did was provoke change.  The Webmaster’s  Edge was my indoctrination to learning what is going on under the hood and the Blog Reviewer forced me to take action.

All three of the previously mentioned sites/people have played an integral part in the maturation of this site.  For that I say thank you.

In the summer of 2003, the ACC basically stole three of the Big East’s top football teams in Miami (Fla.), Virginia Tech, and Boston College.  This was thought to be a crippling blow to the Big East conference as the ACC looked to rival the SEC and the Big 12 in terms of becoming a college football power conference.  What has come for the ACC has been more money and more television coverage.  The surprise has been that not only has the ACC not become the football power conference they planned on becoming, they have also lost what was thought to be unprobable: their standing as a top basketball conference as well.

The arrival of Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College had the ACC believing they had arrived as a big-time football conference.  Miami had been the dominant college football program, winning the national title in 2001, losing the national title game in 2002, and having a 34-game winning streak in the midst of all of that.  Virginia Tech had their national success in playing in the national title game in 1999, against Florida State.  In fact, the ACC was looking at how from 1998-2002, the newly formed ACC would have had a representative in every national title game and would have had both representatives in 1999.

Since the coming together of the “new” ACC conference, Miami and Florida State have fallen on hard, hard times, a huge determent to the expansion.  After missing the ACC title game by losing their final home game in both 2004 and 2005, Miami had their two worst seasons since the 1970s, which included last year’s first losing season, 5-7, in 30 seasons.  Florida State had dominated the ACC before the 2004 season, winning 11 titles, but since the expansion, the Seminoles have won 1 ACC title and has had 5 or more losses in the last 3 seasons.  Not what the ACC had in mind when football was made a priority.

Meanwhile, the Big East has flourished since 2004.  They went to the Conference USA and got Louisville, South Florida, and Cincinnati to join the Big East Conference and the Big East Conference has taken off.  West Virginia has become a national power.  Louisville was an aspiring football program and has steadily ascended as a quality football program recently.  South Florida has quickly become one of the rising college football programs in the country and even programs such as Connecticut and Cincinnati are starting to become decent football programs as well.   In fact, the Big East is 3-0 when their representative has made the BCS while the ACC has been 0-3.

Now, what should have the ACC worried is not just that the Big East has at least stayed even, if not surpassed them in college football, but the Big East has clearly surpassed them in what was the ACC’s best sport, college basketball.  Like football, the ACC powers have fallen off.  With the exception of North Carolina, the traditional powers have disappointed.  Since 2004, Duke has won three games in the NCAA tournament.  Maryland, who won the national title in 2002, hasn’t made the NCAA tournament in three of the last four years.  Boston College, the one team who was supposed to do well in college basketball as well as college football, has fallen off in both sports.  In fact, the ACC has only had one team in the Sweet 16 in each of the last three years.

The Big East has had a reemergence of being the best conference in college basketball.  Like football, the expansion only made college basketball better while traditional powers have gotten stronger.  Georgetown made their first Final Four in more than 20 years in 2007.  Only the greatest Final Four underdog, maybe ever, George Mason in 2006, has kept Connecticut from being thought of as the best college basketball program this decade.  Louisville made their first Final 4 in decades in 2005 and just barely missed out in 2008.

Before coming to any conclusions, just remember that it has only been 5 years since the expansion of ACC and then the Big East, so valid conclusions should not be made so quickly.  Most of the changes have been due to the many different hiring of coaches in both sports rather than the switching of conferences.  What has been determined is that the Big East has gotten off to a much better start, which has to be gratifying since the ACC pretty much raided the Big East conference.  Now the question will be if this keeps up, who will the ACC blame for the Big East beating them at their own game?

This is somewhat of a follow up to some comments I made a while ago concerning SUVs and current gas prices.  While doing something else on my computer I ran across this interesting article (click here to read it).  I found the article interesting and agree with most of it – I don’t wish SUV owners would lose money.

Let’s begin by talking about what other countries think of us and our auto products.  I’m of the opinion, and the article backs this up, that other countries think we are not the brightest nation when it comes to how many SUVs are on the road.  The next time you are out and about look to see how many people are riding around in the big SUVs you see.  I would say that the vast majority of the time they aren’t carrying enough cargo or passengers to justify the large vehicle.  I don’t buy the sitting up high argument either.  Sure, you sit higher, but the center of gravity is higher and it doesn’t handle as well.  This equals a big vehicle blocking my way.  Please stay in the right lane!

Moving right along, I asked my brother why can’t American car companies make vehicles as efficient as foreign car makers.  He didn’t have an answer for me, but think about it.  When it comes to horsepower and miles per gallon American companies are the worst!  The other day I looked at a Honda Civic that gets 33mpg.  That wasn’t the hybrid Civic either.  Also, there is a whole class of cars that produce approximately 300hp with 3.5 liter V6 engines (or somewhere close).  The same size engine in an American car produces probably around 40 less horsepower.  What do they do to keep up?  They put a V8 in a car to match or exceed that horsepower and bingo the customer is burning more gas.  If you don’t believe me do some research on the Pontiac G8.

If you clicked on the link above you will have read that many dealerships are paying $8,000 less for SUVs in a trade. BAM!  The current gas prices just lowered the value of your SUV and that makes it hard to trade it in.  You keep paying those high gas prices – without a raise at work – and you just became poorer.  Your automobile expenses have you in the Mercedes, Lexus and Acura bracket, but you are driving….a Ford Expedition.  Do you really need that SUV?  You need it to pull your boat huh?  How much does that boat cost to fill up?

Like I said earlier, I don’t want SUV owners to lose money because I have some family with SUVs, but what is the answer?  You could try hypermiling, but that is very boring.  You could keep forwarding those emails to let everyone know when the next gas boycott is.  Those work so well (I’m being sarcastic).  You can continue to drive that big SUV and pay those gas prices – I put gas in my car the other day and it almost crushed me to pay $56.00 to fill up.  I know people who pay $100 to put gas in their SUV or truck.  That is unacceptable for me.

I don’t know the answer although I think if people stopped buying and driving these big vehicles automakers would have their lobbyists in Washington DC screaming bloody murder.  Remember, oil companies aren’t making the same profits as they were before gas went up.  They are making more profits!  If pressured enough, I believe things could change.

Let me know what you think can happen to change this situation.

* I read an ad where Exxon is doing research to improve battery technology for hybrid cars.  Yeah right! We should all be offended that people think we are that stupid.

I think I found something that can be beneficial to me and allows me to do something I’m growing fond of: writing.  Payperpost is new, at least new to me, and I think it will be an interesting way to expand my knowledge on various subjects.

The premise is very simple: I can search through topics, do some research and write a post similar to this one detailing what the subject/service/business has to offer.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to retire with what I get for doing this, but it will help out.

The money I make from PPP will more than likely go towards keeping this site up and running.  I like having a platform allowing people to talk about relevant subjects, but the site does not run on its own.  PPP will hopefully cover the monthly costs – a good thing for all of us.

I heard about PPP while browsing looking for basically nothing.  I have found some of the most interesting things just looking around and this is another one of those times.

One of the most surprising things about different sites on the internet is the people available to meet and network with.  Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, Friendfeed and now PPP are all places where you can meet people in all walks of life and I look forward to getting to know some people in the PPP community.

OK, lets see how this works out.

So we have a teen daughter who is at the stage and age where she is starting to, as the old schoolers say, smell herself.  She has a little boyfriend.  No matter what you do or say, you can’t be with her 24/7 nor can you monitor her every move.  As Christians we know that sex outside of marriage is wrong.  As Christians we teach our children that sex outside of marriage is wrong.  That is clear and there are no gray areas.  But what do we as Christians do when we suspect our daughter of engaging in sex before marriage?  One of the mother’s in my church used to say, if they really want to do it, they’ll do it behind a broomstick.  In other words, no matter how well you think you are monitoring her, if that hormonal young woman is determine to do it, she will find a place and a way to do it!  My question is, do we become proactive and put her on birth control or not?

Reality is, human nature can take the purest of intentions and twist them into something totally different.  I think twisting parents’ words and intentions is a teenager’s duty!  So do we put our daughters on birth control and possibly have them assuming that is our way of saying we condone premarital sex, or do we stick to Christian principals, ignore what we feel might be happening and pray and trust God for the best?

If you are like me, I didn’t want to raise a grandchild, yet I didn’t want to hand my daughter license to do something I told her was wrong and something I believed God’s word told me was wrong.  At some point and time, all of us have faced situations where once the fear of getting caught was removed, we did what we knew was wrong.  Well once the fear of getting pregnant is eliminated, what will she do?  On one hand you could be a sin enabler and life proceeds as is.  No worries of an unwanted pregnancy.  On the other hand you could be awaiting an unwanted pregnancy or worse!  What do you think?  Talk back to me.

Saturday is entertainment day on 7DayBuzz, and typically I’d highlight one specific person who’s in the entertainment business.  However, today I am going to deviate a little bit.  I love music and so does my husband Tom.  And because of our love for music, we get into these discussions about who we think is the best female singer.  Typically, we only discuss R&B female singers who are still living.  But, in this post, I will discuss those who are living as well as those who have passed way.  In addition, I am going to expand the category to include not only the best R&B female singers, but the best gospel female singers, the best pop female singers, the best R&B female groups, and if we have any readers who are rock fans, the best rock female singers.

Below, I’ve listed who I think is the best in each category.  To make this interesting and debatable, I am asking you to share with me who you think is the best in the categories.  We just may agree on some them.  Or, maybe not. :–)

Okay, here goes:

Best R&B Female Singers
1. Whitney Houston (Hands down, the best!  I look past her troubles – can’t take away her talent)
2. Jill Scott (She’s very close to my number one spot – I just couldn’t dethrone Whitney)
3. Heather Headley (Wonderful voice.  Very underrated)
4. Minnie Riperton (Talk about a woman with a range.  She can sing circles around Mariah Carey)
5. Patti LaBelle
6. Aretha Franklin (I only listed her because her older stuff is really good.  The newer stuff is questionable)
7. Stephanie Mills
8. Anita Baker
9. Gladys Knight
10. Mary J. Blige (Say what you want, she’s come a long way and has earned the title of being one of the best R&B female singers)

Best Gospel Female Singers
1. Mahalia Jackson
2. Yolanda Adams
3. Vanessa Bell Armstrong  (This woman’s voice is truly amazing)
4. Karen Clark-Sheard
5. Kim Burrell
6. Dorinda Clark Cole
7. Cece Winans

Best R&B Female Group
1. En Vogue (No other girl group will ever be better!)
2. Diana Ross & the Supremes
3. Destiny’s Child
4. The Emotions (If any of you remember the songs ‘Best of My Love’ and ‘Don’t Ask My Neighbors,’ you know why they’re on the list)
5. SWV

Best Pop Female Singers
1. Mariah Carey (Yep, she’s a better singer than Beyonce)
2. Beyonce (She is not R&B!)
3. Taylor Dane
4. Lisa Stansfield
5. Tina Turner (When she left Ike, she went totally Pop.  That’s why I didn’t list her under R&B)
6. Madonna
7. Joss Stone
8. Christina Aguilera

Best Rock Female Singers
1. Pat Benatar (‘Love is a Battlefield.’  Need I say more?)
2. Gwen Stafani
3. Annie Lennox
4. Stevie Nicks
5. Pink
6. Janis Joplin
7. Alanis Morissette
8. Debbie Harry