Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Spelling Bee
Today was the county spelling bee (postponed from the Valentine's Day blizzard). Nate placed 5th out of thirteen, which is cool. On the practice round, 10 out of the 13 messed up, so if that round had counted, he would have been in the top three! Anyway, it was fun and now we can stop spelling for a while :-)
Thursday, February 22, 2007
The Next Shuttle For Parking Lot A-17 Will Be Departing in 5 Minutes
Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle; for Tweedledum said Tweedledee had spoiled his nice new rattle
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
My Favorite Song for This Week!
Profanity warning: the word "God" and the word "damn" appear adjacent to each other in this song (just once, otherwise the song is very much G rated :-)
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Oh, Joy!
"Laissez les bons temps rouler!" (or so my Googlefied French comes out!) Happy Mardi Gras, gang!!! Ash Wednesday tomorrow and the Lenten season. If you're Christian and liturgical, you find your mind's eye looking towards the cross. Sin, repentance, the death of the old self and the new birth of the new. But tonight... maybe some jambalaya and laughter!
Monday, February 19, 2007
On Dogs and Wasps: An Argument for Naturalism
Most of us in the Christian West are not opposed to using flyswatters to, well, swat flies. In fact, swatting flies, smacking mosquitoes, squashing roaches, and gassing wasps are all common behaviors. However, most of us would be horrified to see a driver swerve her car to intentionally run over a stray dog. Why? Assuming, for a moment, that the dog was not someone’s pet (so that the argument doesn’t invoke property rights), why are we upset over someone who kills a dog that’s hovering around them, but not a bug?
Let me first point out that it is not Biblical Christianity that makes the differentiation. The “Creation Mandate” does not distinguish between insects and mammals, humankind has dominion over both. An annoying wild dog is just as much a nuisance as an annoying wild wasp.
As a clue, let me also point out that when we’re saving aquatic life, it is most often dolphins and whales, not fish that we are keen to save.
Dolphins, whales, and dogs, like us, are mammals. On the continuum of the genetic code, they are more like us than, say, hornets are. One thing about mammals: we like each other. It helped us survive when we were tiny rodents in a world of big reptiles. Our genes want to survive, which means, for many mammals, a herd instinct. This is mostly for our own species, but not surprisingly for members of other similar species.
True, mammals eat each other. That’s part of the circle of life, but we also get along rather well. Cats and dogs and horses and even pigs bond better with us than snakes and fish and spiders. Closer relation in the evolutionary tree, rather than anything in the Genesis account, explains this bond.
Well, you might say, dogs and cats are smarter (i.e., more advanced nervous systems) than, say, spiders, so we care more about them because they can suffer more. True, but the Bible is pretty clear that humanity is the special kind of creation that is made in God’s image, all the rest of the creatures are made like each other. The Bible would suggest that dogs, spiders, wasps, and ponies are more like each other than any of them are like us. Evolution would suggest we are closer to, and feel more kinship with, other mammals.
I don't necessarily believe this argument, but it is one of two arguments for naturalism that came to me this weekend. Please feel free to, literally, knock the hell out of this argument! ;-)
Let me first point out that it is not Biblical Christianity that makes the differentiation. The “Creation Mandate” does not distinguish between insects and mammals, humankind has dominion over both. An annoying wild dog is just as much a nuisance as an annoying wild wasp.
As a clue, let me also point out that when we’re saving aquatic life, it is most often dolphins and whales, not fish that we are keen to save.
Dolphins, whales, and dogs, like us, are mammals. On the continuum of the genetic code, they are more like us than, say, hornets are. One thing about mammals: we like each other. It helped us survive when we were tiny rodents in a world of big reptiles. Our genes want to survive, which means, for many mammals, a herd instinct. This is mostly for our own species, but not surprisingly for members of other similar species.
True, mammals eat each other. That’s part of the circle of life, but we also get along rather well. Cats and dogs and horses and even pigs bond better with us than snakes and fish and spiders. Closer relation in the evolutionary tree, rather than anything in the Genesis account, explains this bond.
Well, you might say, dogs and cats are smarter (i.e., more advanced nervous systems) than, say, spiders, so we care more about them because they can suffer more. True, but the Bible is pretty clear that humanity is the special kind of creation that is made in God’s image, all the rest of the creatures are made like each other. The Bible would suggest that dogs, spiders, wasps, and ponies are more like each other than any of them are like us. Evolution would suggest we are closer to, and feel more kinship with, other mammals.
I don't necessarily believe this argument, but it is one of two arguments for naturalism that came to me this weekend. Please feel free to, literally, knock the hell out of this argument! ;-)
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Snow and Rain
I'm grateful for the two days of deep snow and bitter winds. Winter... the kind you can trudge through knee-deep (or more!) snow, where temperatures are prefixed with a minus sign. Raw elements sort of put the melodrama of human "angst" in the background. Maslow's pyramid: physical survival trumps moody self-absorption (thank God!) But the winter has passed, and now it's just cold again. I pray the fire of love burns freely and fiercely in your souls, my friends.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
"Calling Dr. Bombay"
Nothing here but a quick check-in (remember back when I blogged daily, and the entries were full of creativity and wit... or maybe nostalgia makes things look sweeter than they really were; let's just pretend that's how it was, ok?)
A former student worker dropped off the first two seasons of House, so I can finally begin watching this show that everybody keeps telling me I'll love...
My son won the school spelling bee today. Next week, on Valentine's Day, I'll be going to watch him at the county spelling bee. I felt so glad for the little geek when the entire school was applauding for him today! The winning word was refugee.
Speaking of Valentine's Day, I'm not. So there! I wish all of you love and all that other crap, but I'll keep working on my first draft of Celibacy for Dummies.
Bookwise, the stack at hand (not to be confused with the books at home with slips of paper marking my spastic progress) consists of Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for the Common Ground Between God and Evolution (Kenneth Miller), Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms (ed. Wm. Hynes and Wm. Doty), and Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks: A Pain-Free, Project-Based, Get-Things-Done Guidebook (Rickford Grant). OK, I actually am a geek, and a committed Slackware user, but the book looked like a fun browse, so I've borrowed it from Governor's State University (interlibrary loan has to rate as one the greatest human inventions of all time!)
In the name of health, I'm attempting to consume some water each day (any amount would be, literally, infintely more than I typically drink). I also worked in a walk last weekend. This was the first time in too long, and it was bloody cold! Still I felt better at the end of that day than I do most days, so there must be something to it.
I'm trying to wrap my brain around something that I can fire off an ill-tempered rant against. Until then, here's a nice British version of the PC versus Mac debate. The comments are worth reading if, like me, you love pointless religious debates. Yeah, Brits are so much more civilized than us colonial rebels.
A former student worker dropped off the first two seasons of House, so I can finally begin watching this show that everybody keeps telling me I'll love...
My son won the school spelling bee today. Next week, on Valentine's Day, I'll be going to watch him at the county spelling bee. I felt so glad for the little geek when the entire school was applauding for him today! The winning word was refugee.
Speaking of Valentine's Day, I'm not. So there! I wish all of you love and all that other crap, but I'll keep working on my first draft of Celibacy for Dummies.
Bookwise, the stack at hand (not to be confused with the books at home with slips of paper marking my spastic progress) consists of Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for the Common Ground Between God and Evolution (Kenneth Miller), Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms (ed. Wm. Hynes and Wm. Doty), and Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks: A Pain-Free, Project-Based, Get-Things-Done Guidebook (Rickford Grant). OK, I actually am a geek, and a committed Slackware user, but the book looked like a fun browse, so I've borrowed it from Governor's State University (interlibrary loan has to rate as one the greatest human inventions of all time!)
In the name of health, I'm attempting to consume some water each day (any amount would be, literally, infintely more than I typically drink). I also worked in a walk last weekend. This was the first time in too long, and it was bloody cold! Still I felt better at the end of that day than I do most days, so there must be something to it.
I'm trying to wrap my brain around something that I can fire off an ill-tempered rant against. Until then, here's a nice British version of the PC versus Mac debate. The comments are worth reading if, like me, you love pointless religious debates. Yeah, Brits are so much more civilized than us colonial rebels.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Waiting for Franz Kafka's Love-Child
Is the country ready for another President Clinton?!? Well, we had another President George Bush, and look how that turned out. Yeah... how about that Obama? He seems like a nice young man. Hello, republicans, do you have anybody to run this time?!?
My cheap notebook, sold off because my employer didn't even think they could get any use out of them, is sitting here reminding me there's only a couple of days to the "official" full moon. Looking out my window, it's full enough for my reckoning. Computers are funny things. Take this notebook I'm writing on. It came with a 30 gig drive, which promptly died. It's cool, ny friend in the IT department set me up with another from a notebook too dead to sell off. Well, that one died. So I scrounged around and came up with a 10 gig drive. 10 gigs, and I'm feeling a little cramped for space. Good grief, when I first started this job my work PC was a 486 with a 210 MEG drive. Now a ten gig drive is too small?!? And it's not like I'm running XP here (let alone Vista... let's not even go down that road!) Nor am I running one of those "everything-and-the-kitchen-sink" linux distros. A simple Slack 11 install with a few "essential" additions (mono, dosbox, Adobe Reader, OpenOffice.org, and a couple other little things). Admittedly, I'm not out of space yet, but I look at my desktop
machine: an 80 gig drive for XP and a 160 gig drive for Slack. That seems like abundance (maybe too much abundance?) Did I really just ramble on about hard drive sizes? Something is terribly wrong here.
A note to my sister who may be checking this blog out for the first (and possibly last!) time: you should have visited one of my earlier blogs, back when the creative juices were flowing like the waters of the mighty Embarrass during storm season. This blog is basically a place where you can tell I'm still breathing, but that's about it :-) Oh, and "hi, Sis!"
Full moon. That bodes well (for something, don't know what... yet!) OK gang, it's late and I'm thirsty and tired. Later (and if, by some miracle, I resist posting before the weekend, may y'all enjoy the Bears whooping up on the Colts ;-)
My cheap notebook, sold off because my employer didn't even think they could get any use out of them, is sitting here reminding me there's only a couple of days to the "official" full moon. Looking out my window, it's full enough for my reckoning. Computers are funny things. Take this notebook I'm writing on. It came with a 30 gig drive, which promptly died. It's cool, ny friend in the IT department set me up with another from a notebook too dead to sell off. Well, that one died. So I scrounged around and came up with a 10 gig drive. 10 gigs, and I'm feeling a little cramped for space. Good grief, when I first started this job my work PC was a 486 with a 210 MEG drive. Now a ten gig drive is too small?!? And it's not like I'm running XP here (let alone Vista... let's not even go down that road!) Nor am I running one of those "everything-and-the-kitchen-sink" linux distros. A simple Slack 11 install with a few "essential" additions (mono, dosbox, Adobe Reader, OpenOffice.org, and a couple other little things). Admittedly, I'm not out of space yet, but I look at my desktop
machine: an 80 gig drive for XP and a 160 gig drive for Slack. That seems like abundance (maybe too much abundance?) Did I really just ramble on about hard drive sizes? Something is terribly wrong here.
A note to my sister who may be checking this blog out for the first (and possibly last!) time: you should have visited one of my earlier blogs, back when the creative juices were flowing like the waters of the mighty Embarrass during storm season. This blog is basically a place where you can tell I'm still breathing, but that's about it :-) Oh, and "hi, Sis!"
Full moon. That bodes well (for something, don't know what... yet!) OK gang, it's late and I'm thirsty and tired. Later (and if, by some miracle, I resist posting before the weekend, may y'all enjoy the Bears whooping up on the Colts ;-)
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