Blame it on planetary alignment, or perhaps karma (or, more realistically, random chance), but my last half hour has been a veritable foray into the dark jungles of insularity and wall-building. The normally lyrical offerings of my radio on the way to work were temporarily replaced, due to a misclick, by the perennial favorite of my family proper, Rush Limbaugh, who was in the midst of a rather frenzied diatribe on the idiocy of liberal democrats. I have no idea what the particular issue was, but the actual phrasing was something in line with "Liberal democrats are the root cause of all the problems we're having; I'm not talking about their intentions, but the blundering way they mismanage things. Conservatives can't win a confidence election? My god, democrats couldn't even *spell* "confidence" if their lives depended on it." It's a sad commentary that I understand why this sort of "us vs. them, we're smart and they're stupid" rhetoric resonates with so many people, but it provides *no* avenues to compromise or communication.
(Amusingly, he segued directly into selling Brazilian hardwood flooring, something he never did when I was in high school and subjected to my father's listening preferences; I wonder if the smaller market share has led to some compromises.)
(And for the record, I'm perfectly capable of spelling "confidence." Please.)
My arrival at work was greeted with a Yahoo article on the Pope's condemnation of atheism as the source of some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" in history that has left behind "a trail of appalling destruction." The encyclical (the second-highest "public statement" in the Catholic canon, just behind the rare-and-uber-important apostolic constitution) is rife with oversimplifications and logical fallacies. The most notable equates atheism with Marxism (an association fallacy) and then blames atheism for the injustices done by Marxists, completely ignoring the fact that atheism is a very large umbrella that encompasses any ideology that does not believe in the existence of supernatural deities (regardless of its stance on any other issues). That definition includes Marxism and Communism. It *also* includes the diametric opposites (Ayn Rand's Objectivism is about as far from Marxism/Communism as you can get, and incorporates atheism as one of its tenets).
The deeper point again, though, is the lack of consensus building, or any route to cooperation with non-militant atheists. It seems human nature to attack other groups, regardless of how "enlightened" we feel we are. That, above all else, will eventually be our downfall.
I accidentally paid my power bill twice last month (once by online payment, and then again at the end of the month when I couldn't remember if I paid it online and their site was down, so I mailed a check). As a result, they credited my account and *this* month I owed a grand total of 87 cents. Due, of course, by the end of the month, with a $2 late fee if not paid on time. So my choices are to mail a check for 87 cents (meaning the check, the envelope and the stamp would make up more than a third of the cost) or pay it online like I normally do . . . except, to my amusement, the site won't accept a payment of less than a dollar.
So my next month's bill is going to have a credit of 13 cents on it . ;)
Although the frustration I experienced attempting to photograph the twins in a "professional setting" on Sunday probably doesn't bode well for my future as a photographer of any sort, I did manage to Photoshop a handful of them into something presentable to friends.
Posted at 11:21:00 PM. |
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Monday, November 26
Still Life
Take a single moment in time, one instant out of the last 12 billion years, and freeze the universe. Imagine it as a single, static object, a snow globe frozen solid in mid-shake. Imagine staring at a rain drop suspended in its plummet, its surface tensions, its kinetic energy held in check, its friction with the air around it, the interactions of its individual water molecules and, deeper than that, its basic atoms, and even deeper than that the subatomic particles that make up its atoms. Imagine a supernova, caught in mid-explosion, its energy displayed like a flower of light and beauty and destruction, its imperfections like ribbons snaking through its shock waves. Imagine the warped space-time of the solar system, tugged and stretched and pushed to greater and lesser extents by the masses of the sun, the planets, the moons, frozen in place like an ocean of gravity. Imagine a single blood cell, paused in mid-journey, surrounded by a swarm of its brethren as it waits for the rush of pressure to push it forward to the extremities of the body. Imagine that this single, quiet, peaceful, wondrous moment exists, always exists, if we pause to look.
Posted at 12:25:00 PM. |
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Tuesday, November 20
Wireless World
This is pretty slick. A standard digital memory card that contains the architecture and software to transmit photos from your camera directly to your computer or an online photo-sharing site. It has some distance to traverse before making it into the mainstream (for example, it's currently only available in one format, which my camera doesn't use), but the idea is definitely sound.
Posted at 12:16:00 PM. |
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Monday, November 19
Weekend Update
A humble offering in penance of a lax posting schedule.
I've been finishing the exterior trim painting on my house in small snippets, weather permitting, over the last several days. All that remains is the back of the house (the gutter and downspouts and three windows), which can ride until spring at this point (the other three sides color-coordinate). I'll have pictures of the various house upgrades sooner or later.
Saturday was spent with my surrogate family, and contained such interesting highlights as the trip to the pet store so Lane could finish her research on budgies (her upcoming pet) and an hour of playing in the dark with the surplus Halloween glowsticks I bought a few weeks ago (the twins enjoyed those immensely). Of more particular note:
- Kylie's fascination with oranges led her to actually take a bite out of a whole one, a bite consisting in its entirety of the rind. Despite clearly finding the taste unpalatable, she refused to spit it out simply out of stubbornness (giving me a mischievous smile instead as she shook her head when I held my hand out under her mouth). As I was proceeding to peel and cut the orange (and bundle her into her high chair), I was vaguely aware of Alec behind me in the kitchen, but it wasn't until I heard the crunching sounds that I realized she had pushed a chair from the computer room into the kitchen to give her access to the counter, from which vantage point she had delved into the cupboard and was gorging on parmesan and garlic potato chips. My first admonition (issued while still cutting up the orange) was met with no reaction, but when she realized I was washing my hands to come get her she began frantically gorging herself on the chips. When I finally arrived on the scene and relieved her of the bag, she gave me a guilt-free giant smile and said "Nummy chips!", as though she'd "accidentally" discovered them and had no idea I was chastising her. She's going to be a handful.
- I discovered a gap in my training program when I referred to Alec as "the little MacGyver" (for her ingenuity at reaching the cupboard) and the following conversation occurred:
Lane: Who is MacGyver? Me: Alec. Lane: Yes, but why did you call her that? Me: Because she figured out how to get into the cupboard. Lane: How does that make her a MacGyver? Me: . . . Me: You don't know who MacGyver is? Lane: . . . Me: The guy who makes plastic explosives out of chewing gum and old socks? Lane: What? Me: Wow, that's something we're going to have to correct.
Sunday found Meghan and me at the Orpheum, enjoying the Cirque-Works Birdhouse Factory, a curious (but fantastic) blend of storytelling (without words), machinery, contortionism, acrobatics and juggling. It was an excellent turnout to an excellent show.
Posted at 12:32:00 PM. |
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Wednesday, November 14
Self-Identification
It's hard not to notice an interesting quirk of hip-hop music: the tendency for the artist to announce his name (sometimes repeatedly) in the song itself. Do you suppose this is an insecurity issue, part of the real or faked machismo of the genre or just a way to help listeners identify artists who sound a lot alike? It seems like a lot of "professional wrestling"-esque posturing. It's hard to see this working in other genres, although I suppose it would be comical to see John Williams start inserting his name into the beginnings of classical scores.
1) Rum tastes absolutely god awful. Like drinking WD-40 in a cup. How the hell do people drink this stuff?
2) Rum is not nearly as flammable as it's supposed to be, even at 80 proof.
Now, before those who know me well gasp at what appears to be a radical personality shift, leading to drunken arson sprees on my part, let me clarify that I was *trying* to make bananas flambe. What I ended up with is an inedible pan of bananas soaked in what could be labeled engine degreaser that wouldn't ignite. I tried a smaller piece of banana in a glass dish and did manage to ignite that one, but even after the flames went out it still tasted so strongly of rum that I wouldn't serve it to anyone else. Interestingly, I kept trying to ignite the dish that was already on fire, but the flames are too pale (and blue) to be seen under my halogens.
I'm thinking flaming deserts are not going to be my specialty, as cool as the idea sounded. Certainly not something I'm going to be serving to Lane and the twins.
Instone-Brewer radically reinterprets the first passage using, of all things, quotation marks. The Greek of the New Testament didn't always contain them, and scholars agree that sometimes they must be added in to make sense of it.
That the Bible is a collection of assorted works written by various (and often anonymous) authors over a series of several centuries is uncontested (and in fact the exact number and arrangement of the books were the subject of lengthy proceedings that didn't end until the 16th century, and which resulted in at least four different "official" Bibles, depending on faction; the Council of Trent, for example, finalized the Catholic version, which differs from the Protestant version by about 14 books). Quotes like the above, however, remind me of one of the first theological problems I had with my (at the time) religion, namely, how can I depend unquestioningly on "divine instructions" that have been filtered through dozens or hundreds of humans (introducing errors, mistranslations or outright fabrications)? Taken from that angle, there is nothing unique, in comparison to the other ancient religious texts of the world, in the Word of God. A divine instruction that requires multiple successive interpretations and a large bureaucracy (of people who were once also unfamiliar with it) to explain to me what it means is far from the most efficient way of distributing something as vital as the rules that are supposed to govern this and all other states of existence. At the time this occurred to me (sometime in middle high school), I'd envisioned an alternative method of divine revelation involving a Bible that automatically translated itself into the language of the reader and was impervious to alteration. Of course, that solution has its own problems that I didn't see at the time (it makes believing on faith alone, one of the tenets of Christianity, rather difficult, and as Arthur C. Clarke would point out that feat wouldn't be beyond the capabilities of a sufficiently advanced alien species). Still, if a correct reading is absolutely vital to the eternal consequences of your soul, I would think at the very least an enlightened deity would provide clear, concrete instructions.
Halloween was enjoyed in fine fashion at Lane's house this year, starting with a visit to Vala's Pumpkin Patch. There, amidst the throngs of revelers, we roasted hot dogs (and, in Lane's case, intentionally charred a handful of marshmallows), rode the ponies, took a hayrack ride, picked out pumpkins and explored the animatronic storybook displays. The twins bonded with the petting zoo animals, and Lane spent some time with the llamas. Vala's sold handfuls of food for the animals (small green pellets that may well have been Soylent Green) in vending machines (a quarter gets you a scant handful, so I'm sure they're making a profit there), although endless streams of toddlers had already dropped so many of the pellets on the ground near the pens that buying them seemed almost pointless (I kept a near-continuous pile in my hand for the twins to plunder just by mining the ground in front of me).
Halloween itself led to quite the haul at the household, with a mountainous pile of simple sugars in colorful wrappers festooning the table under Lane's watchful eye. The twins were more interested in the trick-or-treat bags themselves, although they earned their own stashes in their skeleton costumes (stashes they're not going to get to keep, but they're still in the out-of-sight, out-of-mind stage so they're not likely to notice). The highlight of the evening came near the twins' bedtime, when a straggling group of late trick-or-treaters came to the door, one in an especially scary mask. Kylie was unconcerned, but Alec took off like a shot, wailing as she ran into the kitchen, insisted on being picked up, then insisted on being put back *down* on the other side of the baby gate that separates the kitchen from the family room, then ran to the far corner of the family room (the most distant point in the house from the front door, indicating that her spatial geometry skills function perfectly well when she's terrified), pushed an end table away from the wall and cowered behind it. She refused to come out (even when I offered to hold her), until I built her a "cave" by putting a blanket over the space between the couch and a lounger. She sprinted from the corner to the cave and sat on my lap for the next fifteen minutes, whimpering. It took Lisa to coax her out, under protest.
This led to the following observation I made to Scott: "Now we know which of your kids is going to survive the zombie apocalypse. Lane: 'Whoa, a zombie! Cool!' *bite* Kylie: 'Hi, zombie!' *bite* Alec: 'Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!' *running until she's in the next county'"
(For those concerned, Alec was perfectly fine the next morning.)
For future reference, you may have better luck selling something if you don't start off threatening legal action if the buyer doesn't follow your rules exactly . . .
