The password is "cold"

1. I just spent about 48 hours with a bunch of the youth from Glen Mar at Winterfest, a Christian music festival at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA. This was my second year to spend New Year's this way, and it was again a wonderful experience. The bands - some new, some repeats - were good again, and they did a great job of integrating worship and teaching with fun and moving music. Perhaps more so than last year, I've come back feeling spiritually recharged, particularly with respect to my post-SAIS future. I have greater confidence that God will put me in the right place, while I have a stronger commitment to discern what that place is.

Liberty University was founded by Jerry Falwell, so we heard him speak briefly twice. His appeals to attend Liberty were not very interesting to me (nor were they directed at me, but at the 6,000+ kids there), but I was delighted to learn that he has fond memories of hunting squirrel as a boy on the very mountain where the university is located. I was not the only delighted one; the crowd, mainly from Virginia and the Carolinas, roared with approval. Jerry Falwell: varmint hunter.

2. Kerry and I watched The Day After Tomorrow, a film that answers the unasked question, "How can we make global climate change, a subtle process that takes centuries, the subject of a two-hour action movie?" The answer, as it happens, is to completely invent a story around a handful of nouns lifted from climatological studies, eg, "ice caps," "North Atlantic conveyor belt," and "cold." Oh, and to set loose some wolves in New York City. But that is all beside the point. The Day After Tomorrow is bad, no question, but it is a good bad movie, relentlessly ridiculous and entertaining, in exactly the way Van Helsing is not. I look forward to this same approach being applied to sequels to The Day After Tomorrow, based on paint drying and grass growing.

I'm shocked that Jake Gyllenhaal was 22-23 years old when this movie was made. He looks much older. I had thought that him as a high schooler was one of the worst casting decisions ever, but apparently the credit is due to the direction, makeup, and/or costuming.

3. Sorry, these were bad clues to the password. I wasn't cold at Winterfest or while watching the movie.