Wut.Truth?

Charity

2006-10-19T17:09:00.000-05:00

I got this from here.

So evidently,once again, people are finding a way to do it on their own, and this really bothers the beauracrats, who evidently see it as creeping up on their turf.
People are hungry and they don't want the government to come in and take care of them? Some people have the audacity to take care of themselves?

I just finished listening to Atlas Shrugged. It was great. If you want to be a true capitalist (insert pig if you want, I won't be offended), then you need to check this book out. It is all about taking care of yourself. It is all taking pride in what you have and/or what you want, but earn it.

This was written largely as an argument against collectivism or communism, i.e. "To each according to their needs; from each according to their abilities." What is scary is that you can see the seeds and in many cases the fruits of collectivism in our own country. The welfare state is one of those fruits. The demonization of big business is another. Robbing from the rich with progressive tax codes to give to the undeserving poor is another.

I am not rich, but it would be nice if someday I worked hard enough to get that way, and it would be even nicer, if I could keep the fruits of my labors.

Those of you with jobs are probably in the midst of a United Way campaign. Now, I am sure that United Way does a lot of great things, but one thing they do is insult me as a potential donor. They ask you to give your "Fair Share" which is the equivelent of one hour's pay per pay check. My fair share?!

As if the government doesn't take enough of a "fair share" that they use to give away to those in "need", but now I have to have a charitable organization making me feel like it is my OBLIGATION to give to them. That is crap. We have come to that. It is my obligation to give what I have earned to those who have not. I am not against charity, but let's be clear here. I will give charity to those I feel are worthy of charity. To the people I see struggling to achieve, not just those are stuck in the morass. You need to be fighting to achieve... always.

The government doles out the money they take from us without a thought in the world except that the people "need" it. How many people on welfare try to get off of it. How many say, I only need this much and that will be enough to get me on my feet. No. More than likely they will say things like, I need it to pay my cable bill. I need it buy booze or cigarettes. Just look at what we saw after Katrina with those gift cards that they were handing out like candy. People were buying $1000 dollar purses and other crap that they needed, and I'm willing to bet these were the same people who were in line for more money two weeks later complaining that they needed help or their babies would starve.

That's my money they are spending. That's your money they are spending (assuming you have a job and pay taxes). Doesn't that piss you off? Don't you feel like an ass? I would love to buy my wife a nice purse like that. I would love to drive a decent car to work, instead of the ten year old piece of crap with 180,000 miles on it. I could if I didn't have to fork it all over to government... so they can hand it out where they feel it is needed. Social Security. Let me opt out now and have that extra 14% (because your employer pays half) of my pay and I will never bother the government for a dime.

But back to charity, since I am rambling. The government has robbed us of more than our money, or time, our labor, they have robbed us of the pride we could take in giving to charity, if we chose to. Of choosing who was worthy of our money, our time, our labor. Does that seem "fair?" They are giving away what we have earned though our work and effort, with out even a "thank you kindly", rather, it is our obligation our work over to another. We should feel blessed to pass over our money to those less fortunate than ourselves. Tell me, would you walk down the street and give 15-20% of your check just anyone?

And why should we feel blessed to hand over the fruits of our labor? Why should they not feel blessed to get it? Why should they not feel the stigma of knowing that they are beholden to the work I have done? Whatever happened to the righteousness of stigma?

You should not be able to feel pride that you are recieving food stamps. You SHOULD feel bad when you pay for food with them in the store, it should make you want to not have to live that way, to want to do something about it, to strive to achieve self-sufficiency, but now they are even taking that away, by handing out cards that look no different than the debit cards that I, who pay for my own food and sometimes with a struggle, do.

Charity SHOULD be an act of selfishness on my part. I SHOULD be able to give away what I have earned with PRIDE to those I feel are worthy of my effort, time and work. That is what money is. It is not something a company gives to you and you are just fortunate to have a job. No. It is symbolic of the work you have done. Symbolic of the value you have traded with that company. Who is the United Way to suggest that I am obliged to give my "Fair Share?" Who is the government to give away the work I have done to someone not of my choosing?

I should be able to take selfish pride in the work that I have done. It is mine, to give away as I see fit. If I give money to you, you should know, that I did it to make myself feel good. Me. The fact that the government not only takes my money, but my pride,is indefensible.

Your NEED does not create in me an obligation.

Atlas Shrugged

2006-07-31T22:09:00.000-05:00

So it’s been a while. Oh, well. No sense crying over spilt milk. Let’s go.

I’m listening to a new (to me) book. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. As the description of the book says it is an apologia for capitalism. So far, it is a Great, with a big G, book. The book really talks about the struggle of capitalism with, well let’s face it, idiots. In this case it is doers and risk takers vs. the bureaucrats and do-gooders. This book was written in 1957 and did such a good job of predicting the future that reading it (or listening to it) is like reading the headlines from today.

But I would like to address one portion of the beginning. One of the main characters, who is one of those selfish (sarcasm), successful, big business types is talking to an eminent scientist, whose organization has just put out a false statement about a new product on the market that the business person is using. Follow that?

A while back I wrote something wherein I suggested that voters are stupid (though I should have said ignorant) and should have to take some sort of simple test before they are able to vote. I am not retracting that statement as such, but this book has made me think a little deeper about it.

In the book, when the scientist is confronted with the false statement, he says something to the effect of “most people are dumb and don’t know what is good for them, therefore the people that do know what is good for them need to force them into doing what is right for them.” That is a paraphrase of many paragraphs, but I think it is a pretty honest translation.

I realized that I had advocated something similar, though for me it is more of a matter that the founding fathers had some things right, for instance that only property owners should have the right to vote. Since that changed, the size of our government has steadily grown… out of control, to the point where even the conservatives continue to grow government, albeit, not as quickly. Property owners were seen as originally having a vested stake in where the country was going as a whole and were therefore seen as being best able to make decisions concerning it. We can see the trouble changing that has created as more and more people fall under the growing population of people who do not pay taxes, but have an equal say in how those who do pay the bills have to pay them. Notice therefore that more and more money is just given away to those who don’t have it but “deserve” it, and more and more politics have become a race to see who can buy the votes of the poor with this entitlement or that. Ridiculous and quickly spelling the bankruptcy of our country.

Onward though.

The scientist’s philosophy led me to see the real issue though: a serious dishonesty of many of those who consider themselves best able to make the decisions. I, who consider myself fairly well informed on many issues, often see what I consider to be the stupidity of the public on many important issues, for instance global warming and stem cell research.

The environmentalists want to clean up the environment (even that is unlikely, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it is true.) so they come up with big scary “global warming” to scare the people in to enacting many regulations to clean up the earth (but magically are often more effective in redistributing wealth). No matter that most of the “evidence” is incomplete anecdote, bald face lies and junk science. Now, even people who don’t believe it, such as our President, are now out citing the preponderance of evidence (read the growing number of voters who believe the junk science and lies) giving global warming and the further claims of junk science additional credibility.

How can I blame the ignorant masses, when their very ignorance is directly caused by the inadequate and inaccurate information that they are given by the people we are supposed to trust because of their “neutrality,” namely the main stream media and our university scientists. If they are willing to lie in order to achieve their philosophical and idealistic ends and direct public policy through popularity and polls rather than honest discussion and discourse, how can I blame the ignorant masses? I can only speak honestly in my little forum and hope that I have some small effect.

I guess that is enough for now. I was also going to discuss the issue of stem cell research and the growing lies and hysterics surrounding it, but perhaps my SISTER would be inclined to share some opinion on that matter.

Now We Know Why We Are Over-Taxed

2006-05-17T07:59:00.000-05:00

Ok. So I know I complain a lot about how much money I feel our government wastes, but I have another example of ridiculous government spending. Perhaps Sami has noticed this one being in the radio industry. I have heard on multiple channels several times a day a commercial telling truck drivers to buckle up with the message at the end “paid for by the Wisconsin DOT.” C’mon. You’ve got to be kidding me. First, even if you can argue that the government should be advertising at all, which I don’t think they should be except in very important instances, there is still the fact that this is a targeted ad directed to a small portion of drivers, which you could probably still argue is OK, if you really tried. But can we at least agree, that if buckling up is good for truck drivers, that it is probably good for everyone, and targeted advertising in this case is a STUPID WASTE!

I get a little worked up about these things. A couple years ago the government was paying for commercials advertising the food stamp program. So they were paying money to tell people that they were giving money away. I thought I was going to have a coronary.

Lost

2006-05-04T14:12:00.000-05:00

Who watched Lost last night on Charter (crappy) digital cable?

At first I thought that they were trying to make a statement regarding US immigration policy, but really they were just playing the show in Spanish. Fortunately, after bitching loudly, I went and checked the bedroom TV, which is not on a digital box. It was in English, so evidently it was something strange on the digital side. And again I have to say "CHARTER SUCKS!" But they really have no reason to improve their service, since I can't give my business to Time Warner in my monopolistic city, and I just haven't been sold enough to pull the trigger on satellite TV.

By the way, holy crap! Just when you think Lost was getting lax. I won't spoil it if you haven't seen it, but damn.

Ouch!

2006-05-03T19:33:00.000-05:00

Holy goly gee wiz!

I just passed a kidney stone last night, and to say that it hurt was an understatement. One plus however was my first run-in with Morphine. That sure took the pain away in a hurry. Yowza!

All's well that comes out well though. Today I gave birth to a 2mm stone. I'm so proud.

Hillary Was Just Ahead of Her Time

2006-05-02T14:10:00.000-05:00

It looks like Hillary wanted to be an olympian. But I think that they just didn't have the events at that time that she would have been able to excel at, but I got a feeling the Chinese still owe the Clintons a little "gold", and so, being able to select an event as the host nation, they have decided to go with "100M Dash Hip Deep in Shit."

TAX DAY

2006-04-17T12:04:00.000-05:00

It's the best time of the year. That time of year when I can joyfully and officially turn over my hard earned money over to the government, who will then turn it over to all those at the trough vying for my dollars. Sarcasm... you gotta love it.

It is particularly sweet in the great tax hellhole of Wisconsin, where not only do we have the federal burden bear but also the ridiculously high state burden to bear as well. We have a high state income tax... we have extremely high property taxes... we have one of the highest gas taxes... we have a middle of the road sales tax 5% then tack on what the county gets 0.1%. That doesn't include how many of the communities are finding ways to eliminate services that were traditionally covered under property taxes, now they are fees, like garbage collection, snow removal, street lights and my own community recently tried to institute a road use fee to cover the cost of road construction in the city. Hhmmm... what do our property taxes actually cover? The ambulance? No... you get charged for that now... Police? As long as it's not a false alarm, for which they may charge you. Schools? Oh yeah, schools. They go towards those. You get used to the large sucking drain sound that is our money going towards the school system. 85% of our schools budgets go towards salaries and lavish benefits and pensions. 85%

So you don't think things are out of control. What percent of your income do you think overall is fair to pay for what you get in services from the state? How about the federal government? I am actually really interested in what people think is fair. Let me know. In Wisconsin, the average is now 12.1%. See the "Twelve Percent" notes for April 11, 2006 if the article has changed.

Here is another interesting related article from last fall.

Educate Yourself

2006-04-03T19:58:00.000-05:00

Educate yourself. Be a skeptic.

I'm pretty sure I have blogged on this before, but it is important, so you will have to read it again.

I get all fired up when I think of what the state of science is today, or rather what is considered science today. I think that for most research there is not a problem. It is the fringes of science where I believe we have an issue. Topics like Global Warming, Second-Hand Smoke and Intelligent Design really show the areas where politicized scientific rhetoric has really taken over and destroyed the search for truth.

Faith is for religion. Faith is the basis of most religions, it is what makes them strong. It is what religion needs to continue on, what God expects of us. Faith.

Faith, however, destroys science. Science is the observation of the natural world... with skepticism. If you have a hypothesis and someone calls to your attention a weakness or flaw in your reasoning or methodology, you should welcome it as an oppurtunity to strengthen or discard the hypothesis. But what we have seen with the afore mentioned topics, especially Global Warming, is that much of the scientific community is ignoring weak and flawed science in favor of what they believe is the right thing to do. It becomes a matter of faith, the tenants of which are held to by their adherants with more zeal and fervor than most Christians.

This is a problem. The perversion of science into scientific rhetoric is converting the search for Truth into the search for policy. It is blurring the lines between what is fact and what is popular.

A recent Time/ABC said that 85% of people believe Global Warming is happening, never mind the fact that ABC also says our kids are stupid, and if that is true, why should we believe that the people those children become know anything worth polling. Why is that 85% number important? It is only a measure of how many people have been convinced by a decade of one-sided arguments. (You might also consider that the one thing children are taught in school IS that Global Warming exists and it's existence is not in question.) Why is it important to ignore honest critizism of results, reasoning and methodology that has given us "Global Warming"? Why is it that, even if those who honestly question those results give the propents of Global Warming the benefit of the doubt, they ignore requests to explain why it will certainly be a bad thing?

If Global Warming is such an obvious Truth, and those of us who question it are idiots, shouldn't it be easy to dismantle our arguments with science? Why do we only get answers that consist of shoddy science and scientific rhetoric? Is the Truth not so obvious as we are led to believe, and if it is not obvious, doesn't it warrant honest and truly scientific evaluation? How about an honest discussion?

Read this column by George Will, he makes a comment in it, that is only an aside, but it really made me stop and think. "In fact, the Earth is always experiencing either warming or cooling." It is such an obvious statement, but it leads me to wonder about the conotations associated with "Global Warming." It is always important to package rhetoric well, and the term Global Warming has done that. Your first thought is that warming is bad? Should it not be warming? That the earth is a certain temperature, and that should not be changing. Stasis? Really? The temperature where I live changes minute to minute, why should we believe that the earth would be different? George Will's obvious statement reflects the reality of a changing world. Is there any doubt that if those people thought the world was cooling that we would not be having a similar conversation, or more appropriately, a lack thereof? See the headlines from thirty years ago in Will's column if you don't believe me.

I am not saying that Global Warming does not exist. I am saying let's talk about it. Let's do what real scientist do and try to blow holes in the hypothesis, and if we find that it leaks, let's fix it or dicard it. Let's have science free from faith and full of skepticism.

I realize that I may not have conviced you. If you do one thing, read this speech given by Micheal Crichton. How can you not want to read a speech called "Aliens Cause Global Warming." Like me, he is not an opponent of Global Warming, he is an opponent of shoddy science. It is a little long, but no matter what you believe, you will be educated. If you believe in Global Warming or not you will expect more proof or look for more proof from those who faithfully feel that we are destined to drown in the rising seas of Global Warming. Please read it. You will not be sorry.

Some Fluff for a Friday

2006-03-31T12:22:00.000-06:00

So it's Friday, and I have given this post absolutely no forethought. Which is why I titled it Fluff.

Today here in the Milwaukee area it feels like spring in fact as well as in calendar days. The wind is blowing and it feels like it will probably rain today at some point. That is spring. I have always loved the rain, which is why Spring and Fall are my favorite times of year. That's a little fluffy.

I watched Memoirs of a Geisha the other night and really enjoyed it. I have always like movies that are visually appealing to me, which is why I liked American Beauty, Garden State and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. How is that for eclectic? All of them were visually stunning. Obviously, that is not all that made them good movies, but those are the ones that really affect me long term for whatever reason.

Anyway, Memoirs was pretty good. It had a lot of the visuals, but it was a good thing that I had my wife there with me explaining things to me as we watched. A lot of it came through, I guess, but she, having just read the book, was able to shed a lot more light on the story and some of the more poingiant moments. You expect that when a book is converted to a movie, I guess. So I started listening to it. Now I wish I would have read/listened to it first. I just started, but already can tell that it is well written, and that it sheds a lot more light on the culture and times in Japan. Very interesting.

That's enought for now, I guess.

Later.

So I Got Tagged Two.

2006-03-14T13:05:00.000-06:00

So I have been tagged, and like D, I will generally not be badgered into any sort of response, even if it means I will be immediately struck down by lightning. Or if you will. I will not tag another generally because I am opposed to putting my friends in a position of such mortal peril.

Having not been tagged before, I felt especially blessed to be tagged by Sami and the Donald both. I guess I better give a little personal info then.

1. People like me most because I am perfect in nearly every way.

2. I am a good… a perfect judge of what perfect is and I find that I fit the bill in nearly every way except that:

3. My feet smell like potato salad. Your classic American-in-your-backyard-type potato salad, not German potato salad. This does cause me some problems at times. Dogs are constantly sniffing my feet, and you generally see dogs sniffing each other’s butts, I have determined that dogs think potato salad smells like ass.

4. After a long hard day of working on my feet, I usually go home and soak my feet in a giant bowl of potato salad. The mayo and hardboiled eggs are very therapeutic when they are squeezed between your toes.

5. I don’t really like to eat my potato salad. I think it tastes like feet, but other people seem to think it tastes great when I bring it to picnics.

6. Sometimes I am a sarcastic liar. I can't help it, and I try not to let that fact keep me from blessing others with my presence.

Oathes and Promises

2006-03-10T16:35:00.000-06:00

Oaths and Promises.

I’ve been thinking about them a lot lately. I even made it one of my new years resolutions to keep my word better. I’m not talking about fluffy stuff like ‘keeping the promises I make to myself.’ I’m talking about doing what you say.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a liar. I don’t say that I will do something knowing I won’t… usually. But I am one hell of a procrastinator, and that seems to be the basis of many of my problems.

I watched a man give an oath the other night and it made me think about it again. It was an oath I have taken as well, and I believe kept. Anyway, what ever happened to the art of the oath? What happened to the men who felt the obligation of an oath like a stone around their neck, not as something that held them down, but as something that anchors them in place? (I’m saying men, because you just think about oaths and obligations as something of men, not to insult you women, who have them as well.) Politicians and others have warped ones word into some sort of illusory thing. You give it to present an image or appearance while you do everything you can to wiggle around it. They try to keep the letter of the oath without keeping the spirit of it.

I am not so naive as to think that this has not always been the case, but it seems to me that now that we often see the ability to worm around in ones word as positive trait, that shows savvy, intelligence and forethought. While often those who keep their word with cheer and spirit, are portrayed as bumpkins, who are naïve and inept, instead of virtuous.

How did that happen? There is no longer a stigma to the oath breaker, to the man who walks away from wife and family, to the adulterer, to the person who doesn’t pay back their creditor? You may say, “but perhaps they had their reasons.” You may be right, but in our rush to not hurt the feelings of someone who has done something wrong we have lost virtue of stigma, one of the best deterrents for bad behavior. An oath breaker should feel horrible, should feel stigmatized. We should forgive, but that does not mean that bad behavior should not be punished. Myself included.

There is no incentive to being steadfast in your word, except it be the love of your spouse. If this offends you, maybe that is a good thing.

A Wicked Review

2006-03-07T07:33:00.000-06:00

I just finished listening to Wicked by Gregory Maguire. It was a lot of fun looking at the life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West. She was a great character, possibly, one of my all time favorites. Actually, there were many good characters.

The author comes up with a fairly interesting plot. Oz has a lot political strife with the coming of the Wizard. I won’t give it all away.

As you might imagine, Elphaba (and I may be spelling names wrong since I listened to the book), the Wicked Witch of the West, is the main character and is portrayed in mostly positive light. Doing this brings up many questions of “what is evil?” that are laced throughout this book. The author did not beat you over the head with it, but many of the situations are designed to make you think about it, at least until the end where he has an interesting discussion about evil.

My own thought is that many of his conclusions about evil, the blatant and the subtle, are moral relativistic tripe. But if you recognize it for what it is, I don’t think it really takes away from the story. I have a feeling it would be difficult to try to paint an archetypical character like the Witch as a positive and good character without a lot of moral relativism. I would also say that the book is more or less anti-religious, but again, not so bad that you can’t overlook it to enjoy the book.

My only gripe is that, at the end, the actions of the Witch that lead to her death (and please tell me you see that one coming!) really seem out of character with her for the majority of the book. I think that the author did that in order to have the events of his story match the story we all know, but it comes across as poorly thought out at the very end, when it doesn’t match up the rest of the story.

This Might Have Been Fun

2006-03-01T08:54:00.000-06:00

So there was a drinking engagement at the Calatrava, which is part of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Very cool if you haven't seen it. What really makes it beautiful is when you have a $30 all you can drink Martinifest at the crown jewel of Milwaukee. PARTY!

Going to the MAM can show you have class and sophistication, but maybe double-fisting Martinis and grabbing the breasts of valuable artwork should be saved for other occasions. Each can be fun, just not together.

One of the old or not so old sayings I heard in the day was "A Martini is a gentleman's way of asking for straight alcohol." It looks like they should have had this event just down the street at the Summerfest grounds.

Can We Agree On One Thing

2006-02-22T08:25:00.000-06:00

Read this article.

Can we just agree that if you have cable you are not one of the impoverished masses that plague our country.

A Long Time

2006-02-22T07:58:00.000-06:00

Today I will be attending a funeral.

I belong to a fraternal organization and one of my elderly brothers lost his wife the other day. He's a great man, but what had me thinking was the length of his marriage. You hear about long marriages all the time, but it is not until you really spend some time talking to a person who has been married for so long that you really get a sense of how integral that relationship is to your life at that point. They had been married for 65 years. 65 years!

It also had me thinking about one of my previous posts. Take a moment to think about the effects of longevity on marriage... I have nothing! It is difficult to fathom time like 65 years when I have barely been alive for half that time (not that I would want to be with anyone other than who I am right now). It is just a crazy long time. Now think about that being a hundred years or a one hundred, fifty...

Here and There

2006-02-13T12:00:00.000-06:00

I just finished listening to Cell by Stephen King. I liked it. It was fast paced and fun, kind of a Dawn of the Dead meets War of the Worlds.

I've been saying for quite some time now that King should be listened to. If you get a chance to listen to Bag of Bones you will see what I mean. I think it is one of his best works. Also, you get a real feel for the rythm of his writing and an appreciation of his natural and unforced dialogue, as he narrates this audiobook himself.

I also think On Writing is a must for any aspiring fiction writer. It is half memoir and half writer's guide. He has a lot of great advice for the would-be writer... like myself. One of my favorite bits is about keeping the backstory in the back. The writer often thinks on and on about the history that drives his character through the plot, but he says that it is easy to get caught up in writing that information at the expense of the story... and the reader.

I mentioned a while back that I might give the online novel thing a try. I just about have chapter 1 ready to go. I also have rough drafts of 2-4. And hope to start roughing 5 this week, having had some good ideas. This will be more for fun, as I only have the vaguest notion of where the characters will be going... or even who the charcters will be for that matter. But we will give it a try for a while. That will be coming soon... I hope.

What I'm Listening To

2006-02-06T13:05:00.000-06:00

I do work for a living... really. But as most of my job as a Technical Writer consists of largely staring at the computer, I try to fill my head with some other stuff along the way. So I listen to a lot of, what else, talk radio and a lot of audio books. Audible is a great way to get a lot of the good stuff usually for less than what you would pay for the hardcover, and definitely less than what you would pay for the cd/tape set (if you get a subscription anyway).

I only listen to unabridged versions of audiobooks. Right now I am listening to the Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites (Discworld #3) which is one of the more funny books I've ever listened to. Great narration. Deadpan humor. Very Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... Only funny.

But there is also another great site to check out. Escape Pod is a podcast that has a weekly short speculative fiction story, usually by a published author. Most of them are good. This one, The Death Trap of Dr. Nefario is very funny. It features a psychologist who gets a call from one of his "celebrity crime fighters" while he, the client named Dick, is trying to escape from the death trap of Dr. Nefario.

King Unbeliever should really like this one. May even already suspect who "Dick" is, though it will be clear enough when you listen.

So that is what I am listening to. I'll add some links on the sidebar.

Stereotypes Prevail

2006-01-31T12:03:00.000-06:00

So another postal worker went nuts. I'll say right out that it is sad!!!! So that not everyone thinks I'm completely insensitive, but really, what the hell is wrong with these people? I would like to know what percentage of these rampage killers, excluding kids like those in Columbine and Jonesboro, have been postal workers or ex-postal workers.

I know these almost always take place at the mail processing facilities. Is the work that stressful? Or is this really just a case of numbers. Are there so many postal workers that it appears as though an inordinately high number of rampage killers are also postal workers? In other words, are there so many postal workers that a killer is more likely to be a postal worker than a busdriver. But if that is the case you would think that the numbers would have thrown out a few Walmart employees along the way. And let's face it, if the numbers didn't then that smiling, bouncy, yellow price ball should have. So I'm guessing it is not a numbers thing.

So is it the pressure of the work? I've been to the post office, the don't seem to be in any more hurry than the people at the local DMV, but maybe there is more pressure in the processing facilities.

Can't we all just get along?

Friday Through and Thru

2006-01-27T08:21:00.000-06:00

It’s Friday, so how about something light.

The sun? Incandescent vs. fluorescent bulbs? Maglite: flashlight or billy club? Northern lights?

Not that kind of light. How about something light-hearted?

I got nothing. It’s Friday, and it will be the longest day of my week. I bartend on the weekends and this weekend I’m there all weekend, Friday through Sunday. I’m not complaining. It’s a good gig, and I make some good tips, drink good beer and rarely have to close the place down. But it really cuts down on the weekend free time.

Looking back I see I wrote "Friday THROUGH Sunday." I think that you can tell something about a person by whether he uses "through" or "thru." I looked it up. Either is grammatically correct, though I take some umbridge at the fact that "thru" is considered acceptable usage.

Through users: evidently anal, at least about this. Perhaps traditionalists who feel that a word is worth spelling out. Just look at the word. It is interesting in appearance, aesthetically pleasing to the eye. The silent "gh" ending is rare and cool.

Thru users: Impatient and unappreciative. Butchers, who grossly hack a word into something short and ugly. They are the people who eat the stuffing out of the Oreo and throw away the cookie. Would rather read a magazine than a book.

Maybe that is going a little far. No offense to you Thru-ists out there, maybe you can add to list of traits.

Ranting... Again

2006-01-24T07:59:00.000-06:00

It only took over a year for the election day
tire slashing case in Milwaukee, WI to go to trial. Some of the
things to come out of it were crazy. The defense basically claimed it
was a vast LEFT wing conspiracy to try to steal the election and that
the defendants had been made scape goats.

But the real conspiracy appears to be in the office of the Democratic
DA, E. Micheal McCann. While the jury was deliberating the felony
charges against the five defendants, McCann's office plead the charges down to
misdemeanors.

Nice. The defense said that they should have been plead down a long time
ago, and that they would have, had the defendants not included the sons
of Micheal Pratt, former Mayor of Milwaukee, and Gwen Moore, newly
elected House Represenitive.

I have to think that it is just the opposite. If this had JUST been a
tire slashing, then I would agree. But any idiot can see that if you are
slashing the tires of the Vote Drive vans on Election Day, that is an
attempt to supress the Vote and needs to be treated as the civil rights
violation that it is.

The Left has been accusing the Right of voter supression over the last
several elections, but have not been able to show an example of it... at
all. But they want everything investigated, they want changes made,
charges filed (though they have no one to charge), but when they are
caught doing it, when there are witnesses and evidence of voter
supression, well then it is all a big deal over nothing.

Is a little consistency too much to ask? If roles were reversed, I would
be castigating our side for doing such things, but I hear none of that
from the Left. But, since it is no big deal, maybe we should be changing
our attitude and tactics rather than expecting the Left to change
theirs. Expecting the "fair" minded left to play fair in an election is
evidently too much to ask.

Or perhaps, in a city where there were close to 10,000 more votes cast
than there were voters registered, where people were registering from non-existent addresses, where in the 2000
Election a major Democratic donator from New York was here trading
homeless people cigarettes for voting (caught on film and not charged
by, again, E. Micheal McCann), well, then perhaps some slashed tires
really are no big deal.

Connecting Beauty and the Geek to Voting

2006-01-20T09:10:00.000-06:00

OK. So it’s been a while. I know, I know. You have all been pining away for my brilliant commentary on… anything I choose to write about. Gripping, I know.

What is the impetus for my sudden reappearance? Of all things, Reality TV. I have been off the band wagon of Reality TV for quite some time, most of the time really. I put in a couple years on Survivor and flirted around with a couple other shows here and there, but have always preferred well written dramas, currently: The Office, My Name is Earl, Lost, Medium, Grey’s Anatomy and even Desperate Housewives, which seems to be getting back into its groove after a pretty “jump the shark” start.

But Reality TV has pulled me in with Beauty and the Geek. I’m pretty sure that this show was on before, but I never caught it. The combination of nervous geeks and ignorant beauties as combo meal was more than my weak will could resist.

It is funny to look at these extremes and try and figure out how they manage to make it through life. You have the Dungeon Master, the world record blind-folded, behind the back, Rubik’s Cube solver, models, hair stylists. What more could you ask for.

Last night, the geeks had to get up an do Karaoke, while the Beauties had to get up and answer a political/science/social issue question. Not one of the Beauties gave a coherent answer on the question they were given, and most had no clue as to what they were being asked.

This is where I climb up on my soap box: How the hell can anyone know nothing, and I mean nothing, about their government or social issues? I am sure that these women know a lot about what’s popular, or the rich and beautiful, but how can you move through this world and not even pick up the basics about your government, or what is going on in the world? To each his own, right? And I would agree, except that these people can vote!

Which brings me to my proposal, which is not new, and may have even been mentioned here in the past. People should have to pass a test before they can vote. I’m not talking inside baseball questions, either. I’m talking about four simple, three answer, multiple choice questions at the top of every ballot. You have to answer three of four for your ballot to count. You can pick questions from the citizen exams that people wanting to become citizens of the US have to pass. If we expect new citizens to answer these questions, why should there not be an expectation that the people BORN citizens, the people choosing our GOVERNMENT should be able to answer them? You can’t read? Tough shit. You don’t know that George Washington was our first President, that the government spends the People’s money collected as taxes? Tough shit. You don’t have a vague idea of what the Legislature, Judicial and Executive branches of the government are or do? You don’t deserve to decide who will be in those branches of the government.

If you cannot answer a couple of simple questions at the top of the ballot, you may not be stupid, but you are certainly ignorant. If that makes you feel bad, then perhaps you will do something about it.

What is really funny is that some of you will think this is over the top. Some of you will think that I expect too much, that this would put an undue burden on voters, that everyone has a right to vote.

That is where you are wrong. People under 18 can’t vote, felons can’t vote, illegal aliens can’t vote… OK, so they can here in Wisconsin where you don’t have to identify yourself before voting, but in most of our country you can’t. Why can’t we throw the ignorant in there as well?

So Who's Been Lying

2005-11-16T08:48:00.000-06:00

I know everybody thinks Bush lied to get us into this war, despite all the facts that tell us otherwise. This video is a good reminder for those with short memories, like the press and... most of the people who said these things in the first place.

This is on the GOP website. Play the video on the page.

This is also pretty funny and along the same lines. Video

So You Want to Live Forever

2005-10-25T12:15:00.000-05:00

Well, maybe not forever, but maybe a lot longer than you have been thinking.

Check out this.

If you could live a thousand years would you. I think it all depends on whether you feel life is a burden or a boon. I think I would take advantage of it if I could. I think about all the things I want to do now, and how there just never seems to be enough time. Are there really that many things on your list that you couldn't accomplish in your life if it lasted a 1000 yrs? I think your more likely to get it done.

Imagine the economic impact of such an advance. We can't all be Walmart Greeters. Think of the impact that it would have on Social Security. That is assuming it is a cheap and available process, drug or otherwise. But really what is the likelyhood of that? If it isn't then you have the haves and have nots, who not only have more money, but will ultimately live a lot longer as well. There could be almost a barrier that you would have to work towards during your natural life in order to afford it or maintain it before you die, or could you borrow it against the extended earnings of your extended life?

It would be like other technologies that some have, some can't have and some choose not to have. The Ammish (sp?) choose not to generally use electricity or other technologies that are readily available, while the desperately poor in other nations (as our poor are the relatively rich poor) do not have the ability to access the same technologies.

Would access to it be controlled? The world needs ditch diggers too, but do we need ditch diggers who live to be 1000 years old? Would it be the reward of the intelligencia? Who qualifies? How about a grand master ditch digger? How about a grand master chess player? ... who can't do anything else, not even dig a ditch?

If you think that we must provide a prisoner with a TV or a sex change, how are you going to feel about providing the elixir of life to a prisoner who is serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of a small child? If his/her life is not worth extending past it's natural span, is it worth extending past the moment?

If you thought Terri Schaivo should be allowed to be killed (or allowed to die if that was how you saw it) would you change your mind if we could have made it so life span wasn't a factor? Think of how far we have advanced in the last 100 years or 50, could we figure out a way to cure her and others like her? Time is the great healer supposedly.

Space exploration no longer limited by life spans. Would thrill seekers be more or less prevelant? Would you ever say, "Life is short."?

Would you be willing to leave it up to me to decide who should and shouldn't have access? If not, who would you be willing to leave it up to?

After we ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God took away the Tree of Life...

Great Headline

2005-10-20T08:41:00.000-05:00

I'll have to get back to the other stuff. I gotta spend some more time thinking about it.

Until then, this is funny! You just don't see poop mentioned enough in polical news. I feel oddly happy after reading this one.

A point

2005-10-17T19:44:00.000-05:00

So this might be the first of a couple. This will be the shorter one though.

If you are a point on a plane (geometrically speaking) and you are looking at another point, any distance away, how do you know you aren't really looking at a line leading directly away from you?

This isn't a riddle. It is just something that I thought of when I was thinking about the infinite. The real question was this: Is the infinite dependent on or subject to perspective?

I listened to a book, Mystery of the Aleph, a while back (I think I need to listen to it again to get a better grip on some of the ideas I have. You can refer to previous posts about my disclaimer that I am not a mathematician.)and it is the story of the people who studied infinity. One of those people was working on the orders of magnitude of infinity.

I think (with my gloriously brilliant mind) that there is no order of magnitude when it comes to infinity, there is no "more infinity." But my whole thought relies on the infinite being dependent on perspective? What's funny is zero might also be dependent on perspective and infinity. I will explain in the next post. Do I have your interest piqued? Is there even another person who reads this who has any interest in zero and the infinite?

Everyone Should Have a Stake

2005-10-13T12:06:00.000-05:00

Not "Everyone should have a steak!" Everyone should have a stake and pound a stake.

Take a look at the latest tax data on Sykes Writes and if it is not still there then take a look at the Tax Foundationstudy.

The bottom 50% of tax earners now pay less than 5% of taxes.

Further, 132 million returns were filed. Of those, 42 million returns completely wiped out tax liability through exemptions, deductions and credits. That's roughly 30% of those who filed had no tax liability at all. This number grows every year. This is a problem when the people who pay no taxes have just as much say in our government, and how those taxes should be spent as those who do.

I am not saying that these people should have no say. I am saying that everyone should have to pay taxes. There should be a fair tax system that may escalate based on your income but is still fair. A flat tax. If you make money you have to pay taxes. No deductions, no exceptions. Then when you find out that the federal gov. is willing to give a couple hundred million dollars to Milwaukee to start a light rail transit system that is unused and in the SNOW is unusable your hackles might raise.

When you find that a similar number of people who don't pay income taxes also believe that the government makes their own money rather than that the people provide them money, you begin to understand how we have managed to get where we are.

A flat tax would mean everybody pays something if they make anything. Also, enough of this automatic deduction, or at least if you do, you paycheck should have an equivelency indicator on the check. i.e. if the fed take $206 out of your pay check, it should say "=montly car payment."

Even better, maybe going to a national sales tax and eliminating the federal income tax so that we are not punishing those who might want to save, but we would be punishing those who were taking the generous check cards given out like candy after Katrina and spending it on Fendi bags and expensive shoes.

Feeling a little bitter. But maybe I'd feel better if I didn't have to pay over $10,000 in taxes last year. By the way, two years of that buys me a pretty nice car. I think about that everytime I climb into my 97 Cavalier with 150,000 miles on it.

Back for the Most Part?

2005-10-12T12:26:00.000-05:00

Did you ever hit one of those ruts, where even when you know you are moving forward, when you are doing all the right things, when nothing is really wrong or dragging, but you?

It’s weird. For the last couple weeks I’ve been a bit missing here on my blog, but the same could be said for me at home, at work, or anywhere else that I have been physically but… just not there.

We all go through it from time to time. The feeling of disconnect of separation, from everything. You go to bed earlier, you oversleep; you eat tons of ice cream (I’ve just been craving it lately for some reason.)

I get home and make dinner, then plant myself in front of the tube for a couple hours, then go to bed.

I think I’m finally coming out of it. It isn’t until you really realize it that you can pull yourself out of it, and it just dawned on me this morning, when I slept in again, an hour late this time. You look at yourself and say, “WTF?”

So tonight, I will get home from work (late, since I came in late) and go for a walk, clear my head, find my equilibrium, and generally get back in the swing.

Tomorrow, I will force myself to write again, to think critically, to tackle some issue with more than just a ho-hum effort, and then I will be more than a little back, and all of you, who hang on my every thought, my every run-on sentence, will see the light again, instead of the darkness I abandoned you to.

Crack Down

2005-10-03T22:48:00.000-05:00

Looks like they are cracking down at work. But that is where I get some of my best blogging done. On lunch of course.

I guess I will have to start writing at night, but that is really going to cut into my procrastination time.

See it's started already. I was going to put off writing this until tomorrow, but now I'm almost done with it. Now I don't know when I am going to get my "putting off 'til tomorrow" done.

Now, I'm not going to have anything to do tomorrow, because I did it tonight, and I'm not going to have anything to write about tomorrow, because I'm doing it right now.

Why does this always have to happen to me?

2005-10-03T12:14:00.000-05:00

It is amazing that you can go almost a whole week and really have nothing much to say about it. I worked. I ate. I slept. I guess I went out boating for a while yesterday, but all in all it has been a pretty uneventful week.

It is often like that. We go through days or weeks with little of event happening around us. Or maybe they are things of event, but really, we are just swept along in the tide of the moment. We are not really making decisions, but rather, living with the decisions others have made, or living with the decisions we made before.

I have a PT job to help pay for my Harley, and that was pretty much my whole weekend. I decided to buy the bike. I decided to get the PT job to help pay for it, and this last weekend was eaten up as a result of those decisions. Not that other things can't happen, there were surprises along the way, just nothing worth writing about.

And so, I trudge along in the wake of fate, waiting for the next crossroads, where fate stalls out and needs a nudge in the right... or wrong... hell, in some direction.

News?

2005-09-27T10:30:00.000-05:00

If the mainstream media can't get it right inside our own country, what should we think of the reports of the Quagmire in Iraq. Believe it or not, the LA TImes has a good article about how grossly incompetent the reporting was of the Hurricanes.

The reporters seem to go with rumors rather than verify any of the stories that are reported, feeling that a sensationalism sells better than truth. That Yellow Journalism has been around for a long time, and I'm sure that it has been more blatant in the past, but I think it is worse now, because they choose to cover it with a skim of truth.

The blogosphere has recently done a great job of forcing some of the mainstream media outlets to acknowledge the crap that they are putting out (The LA Times acknowledges they were reporting junk in the above article).

Even recently in WI the Greenbay Press-Gazette was forced to write an article confessing their double standard. I give them credit for the acknowledgement and thought the article was good. But that is a smaller paper. The big papers in Wisconsin never make those admissions (maybe rarely would be more accurate).

Today they were reporting about a couple Wi soldiers that were killed in Iraq. Tragic. My prayers for their families. We hear our body count so often, and daily, that it almost numbs us to the loss. But we never hear what they are accomplishing over there or about our victories. It is sad that we only manage to hear about the deaths and not the accomplishments of these and other soldiers. It is like reading the Obituaries and only seeing, "Joe Blow died." "Frank Fart died.", but never seeing anything about them or their families in it.

That's all for now.

So You Think the World has It Out for You?

2005-09-22T11:55:00.000-05:00

There are some Katrina evacuees who have to be thinking WTF? "What did I do?"

They just get to Houston or Galveston or whereever in Tx and now it's get up and go again.

The real interesting thing is going to be what happens in Tx after this one is over, with so much effort being put forth in La. and Miss. I have a feeling that one thing we will see is a real compare and contrast vs. what happened in La. I think the Texans will have their s...tuff together, where those in La. did not. I realize things look a little helter skelter right now in the Houston area, but think how big Houston is compared to New Orleans. It is the 4th largest city in the country with over 2 million people. That is one hell of an evacuation, not to mention the fact they are saying at the moment that Rita is stronger than Katrina was at it's strongest.

We will really start to hear the Global Warming Rant now. Maybe I will tackle that next, so you can be armed with facts not normally heard.

Unlikely Inspiration

2005-09-20T11:57:00.000-05:00

Last night, I found inspiration from an unlikely source. A commercial. I like to bitch and gripe about the generally poor marketing that goes on out there, so I feel I should compliment a good commercial when I can, to show my even handedness (and since it compliments a previous post of mine, which I can't seem to link to. See "One Placebo and a Glass of Beer, Please!" in August Archives).

Anyway, it was a Nike commercial. It had a line that went something like this (I'll paraphrase): [One man says "I can.", another man says, "I can't." They are both right. Which one are you?]

For one who thinks positive thought alters reality or effects probability, it was a good line.

On an unrelated note, I am considering doing an online book. A serial, possibly with illustrations, though I don't have that lined up yet. I started some writing for it, but whether I do it depends largely on whether I am able to *feel* the characters. It shows promise though.

Thresheree

2005-09-19T12:07:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, my wife and I went to a thresheree in Richfield, WI. I went to one with my Gpa back in the day when I was a kid. It was interesting, so I thought I would take my wife to one, for a turn at something different.

It wasn't worth all the driving it took to find the place, but all in all. We saw some fricken' old tractors.

For those unaware, a thresheree has (or is supposed to, we didn't see one here, though there was supposed to have been one) old steam powered tractors and threshers. They're pretty neat to see if you've never had the chance. It's like watching a locomotive drive through a field at 1/2 mi/hr. They're damn slow. The ones we saw were running off of burning wood.

Any way, that was the best part of my Sunday, since the Packers lost to the damn Browns. Jeez.

One Fish, Two Fish

2005-09-16T12:22:00.000-05:00

This is a sketch I wrote a while back while I was thinking. It relates to the comments made in one of my earlier posts.

You are a fish in a bowl on a shelf. You swim about, eating and breathing. Doing all the things that come naturally to you as a fish. Your world is the bowl and you have explored it extensively, and think you understand its nature. But you can see beyond the glass of your bowl, and you are amazed at the vast expanse of the universe beyond it.

You see the walls of the house. The furniture, the cupboards, and counters. You see the odd terrain of the carpets and linoleums. You see other bowls on other counters and you think if only I could get to those bowls, what amazing places they must be. If only you could find away to travel in the universe outside your bowl. But the environment outside your bowl is deadly wicked. You see no way to travel the vast and unimaginable distances to the other bowls closest to you much less the ones that you see at the edge of your vision. How can I get to them?

And surely, the universe must be everything. How amazing it would be, you think, if I was the master and explorer of all of this vast expanse.

Imagine your amazement one day then when you wake up and another fish, strange and utterly unlike yourself, is swimming next to you in the bowl.

"Where did you come from?" You say. "I have traveled and explored every part of this bowl, how is it that you come here, how has this amazing thing happened?"

"I was brought here from another place." The other fish says. "A place far away from here, a wonderful place that makes this place I now find myself seem paltry and vile."

"How can this be?" You say again. "This place is wonderful; it is my home. Did you come from one of the other bowls? I have seen them. I have always imagined them to be beautiful places. I have always wanted to go to them. Which one is it? Perhaps you can show me how to get there."

But the other fish says, "I did not come from another bowl. The place that I came from is vast. Here you have gravel, and this little, plastic plant. Where I come from there is coral and kelp, real plants that would reach higher than you could reach if you stacked a hundred of your bowls on top of each other. I swam my whole life and never ran into one of these clear walls like the end of your bowl, the edge of your world."

"That is not possible." You say. "I have never seen a bowl that large in the universe. I cannot imagine that any bowl that large even exists."

"You look at this big room," the other fish says, "with all of its bowls and counters, and think of it as the universe. And what do I know, perhaps it is. But then I come from another place entirely. I was pulled out of my world and brought to this one. I watched horrified as I was plucked out into a vast empty space by what I can only describe as God, and transported here. I watched, immense and incomprehensible distances wash by me. I saw infinite space, that makes this universe look like a shell. I was terrified and amazed. Now I wonder."

"What do you wonder?" You ask.

"What transgression I committed against the face of God that was so horrible as to draw his attention. That was so terrible that he stooped from the vast infinite to pull me out of my world, my universe, and deliver me to this prison."

Wow!

2005-09-14T13:12:00.000-05:00

Evidently, just saying that Bush hates blacks, or that he was slow in aid of New Orleans because it was mostly black, doesn't push the envelope far enough. What we need is a real conspiracy theory. Thank God that we have Louis Farrakan to give what we've been sorely lacking up to this point.

Someone blew up the levee.

FARRAKHAN VISITS CHARLOTTE, CRITICIZES FEDERAL RESPOSE
07:13 PM EDT on Monday, September 12, 2005
By ANNA CROWLEY / 6NEWS

Minister Louis Farrakhan was very critical of the Red Cross and FEMA response to hurricane Katrina.
Minister Louis Farrakhan was in Charlotte Monday to rally support for his Millions More March. However, he did have some choice words about the response to Hurricane Katrina victims, some of whom are staying at the Charlotte Coliseum.
Farrakhan's been traveling across the country to visit shelters like the one that is set up at the coliseum. He said he's not happy with the job the American Red Cross is doing.
He had harsh words for FEMA too. But that was just the warm up. Farrakhan also shared his thoughts on how the levee breached in the first place.
"I heard from a very reliable source who saw a 25 foot deep crater under the levee breach. It may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry," Farrakhan said.

Gilton Balanos lived in the very neighborhood Farrakhan was talking about.
"I think that's ludicrous," Balanos said. "When this happened we were caught by surprise. Individuals, the government and everybody were caught by surprise."
Farrakhan also said that the Red Cross’ response to the disaster was inadequate. Red Cross Spokesperson Pam Daigle said "there was no basis for the criticism."
As for the issue of how the Red Cross spends money and on whom, Daigle said "the Red Cross’ books are open for anyone who wants to see the audits, who wants to see how we spend money."
"I'm sure some good is being done, but not enough to answer the cry." Farrakhan said.
Some evacuees who spoke to 6NEWS said they support Farrakhan and his look into what happened in New Orleans and other affected areas.
President Bush said Monday that Hurricane Katrina did not discriminate and neither will recovery efforts.

Irritation

2005-09-13T09:57:00.000-05:00

OK. I think I'll start pointing out marketing crap. I was just talking to some friends about how there should be education regarding marketing crap. That in reference to Budwiser saying that they brew their beer "longer." WTF? Longer than what? Can't you tell us something about your shitty beer that will actually let us know something?

I just heard a Time Warner commercial for Time Warner phone service. They were talking about how they have free long distance... for $39.95. OK. That's fine, it's included in the price of the service, but then they follow it up by saying, (and I'll have to paraphrase since I forgot the wording already) [It's as free as free can be!] or maybe it was [It couldn't be more free!]

WTF? Well, I can think of how it could be more free. How about lowering the ridiculous price of $40/mo.? (Vonage is only $25/mo.) How about lowering the ridiculous cost of broadband internet service?

I'm a free market person. I wouldn't bitch about the cost of cable if I could choose my cable company. I would actually be happy if I could have Time Warner, because Charter SUCKS! But I can't because I am forced to have charter in my area, while if I moved a 1/2 mi down the road, I would be forced to have Time Warner. Competition would drive these prices lower. Let the free market decide.

Taking a Stab at the Infinite

2005-09-13T08:26:00.000-05:00

DISCLAIMER: As usual, I am not a mathmatical theorist or philosopher, though I may pretend to be here. My thoughts may be plagued by inconsistancy and poor reasoning. If you are a mathematician (or anyone else for that matter) feel free to correct of clarify. It is through discussion that we learn.

Often, we toss infinity around like it is nothing. And to be honest, sometimes it is very close to nothing… But it’s not nothing!

We say things like “There are an infinite number of stars.” We say the same of drops of water in the ocean, grains of sand on the beach or in the desert. When we do we diminish the concept of infinity and the dramatic of effect of large quantities.

I understand that it is easy to say there are an infinite number of star, but isn’t it more dramatic to say 70 sextillion, that is 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That is a big frickin’ number. That is difficult to get your mind around, but it is quantifiable. But it is when you hear a number like that, that you look to infinity and say, “Damn, that’s big (or small)!”

Words have meaning. They are symbols for concepts. Transferring those concepts confuses and diminishes the concepts involved. How can we teach and discuss concepts like eternity, zero and infinity if we say “It’s just a really big (or small) number.” It’s not. Infinity defies definition. It is a staggering concept that has driven genius mad.

Imagine that a line has an infinite number of points. Whether that line is an inch or a mile. Does the mile long line have more points than the inch line? If infinite is… infinite, how could there be more… or less? You can see how it might drive someone mad. We should be amazed that infinity can be contained in a line an inch long. We should be humbled that we can’t understand or define it. We hope to contain it, and work around it, but it is always there, screwing with us like zero.

It is interesting when you think that in the Bible, God calls himself the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the two concepts that our best minds can’t define. Zero and the Infinite.

What's Cheaper Than Talk?

2005-09-12T13:26:00.000-05:00

I was bartending the other night, and was able to see “cheap” first hand. I have been cheap, have been accused of being cheap. But this was laughable, even though I wanted to punch the guy in the face.

A man came up to the bar and asked me to pour a Pinot Grigio for his (I’ll assume) wife. I did. A few moments later he came back up and said that his wife didn’t care for it, and could I pour a glass of chardonnay for her. Fine. I should have charged him for the next glass of wine, but… you know, customers always right. I poured it.

But here it is. He comes back a few moments later and says, “How much was the chardonnay? Don’t I get some change back?” As if he had returned the Pinot in a way that I could resell it, as if I hadn’t just done him the favor of giving him another glass of wine for free.

That, my friends, is cheap?

I don’t know if it matters, but the guy was a teacher. I told one of the other bartenders, incredulous, and she told me teachers and doctors are the cheapest customers. You wouldn’t think it about Doctors, would you?

Lesson learned? Never underestimate the depths to which someone will stoop to save a few cents. You would think that people that are that cheap could afford a little pride.

Lord Football

2005-09-08T11:50:00.000-05:00

It is time for "Lord Football to assume his autumnal throne." ( A line from Czabe , my favorite sports radio guy.)

It means fall, the best time of the year, is almost here. It means crisp air, hunting and Musky fishing. It is when camping is the best. The bugs are mostly gone and all that.

But Football. Glorious football. The wastrel of valuable hours of my life. Only beer and Bourbon rank higher on my list of useless time consumers. And what's best, one doesn't mean that I can't enjoy the other. Beautiful.

Is there frustration? Of course, but like life, it is the moments of sweet joyous victory, that put the crappy wothless defeats into perspective.

For the real fans of football, read this non-specific, but hilarious post to really get in the mood: You Will Suffer Humiliation When The Sports Team From My Area
Defeats The Sports Team From Your Area

All Kinds of Nothing to Say

2005-09-06T19:31:00.000-05:00

One thing I wonder, and I must confess a total lack of motivation to look it up, is how many companies and, by proxy, jobs are going to be lost in the New Orleans. Has anyone heard? Are there any large companies that will relocate because of this disaster? How many companies that just have a factory presence will use the opurtunity to relocate. I'm not saying this as a bash the companies comment. I'm not one to use any excuse to bash large companies just because they are out to make a buck. Who isn't?

It's one thing to ridicule companies that do illegal things to make that money, but overall the large companies of our country are very generous. I work for one of the best known companies in the country. They ponied up a million bucks for starters and there are a lot of other things they do to raise money for MDA and United Way. Charity is a big part of the Corporate Citizenship. Other companies in our area have done the same thing. A million bucks here and a million there ends up being a lot of money.

People seem to forget the companies are made up of people. Some of them make the big money, true. And I will even grant you that sometimes there is dead weight at the top, but no more so, and I would argue less so than the dead weight at the bottom.

Show me a person who does not aspire to better themselves and I will show you someone who is bitching about how the company is spending money on this that or the other thing, but is not giving them enough in raise. A million dollars given to the red cross is a lot of money. That could be a lot of raises for a lot of peoole. Would you suggest that they give more money to their people and cut the charity? How about giving money to the those "rich" shareholders? Oh, you mean you and me, the people with IRA's and 401Ks.

Often the same people who complain about the corporations have time to do so because of the money they have made to retire from these IRAs and 401Ks. Do you think they would be happy if the companies they invested in didn't give them a taste? Let's put it to the test and see.

Not sure how I got from where I started to here, but I did. Rant, rant, rant.

Compare and Contrast 101

2005-09-02T11:49:00.000-05:00

Be credible in your argument.

I was just looking at one of the blogs I follow: AP's Blog (usually fun but a little serious today. Nothing wrong with that).

This comment was made regarding the situation in New Orleans:

Stephen said...
The help that they need is on the way, as soon as Congress gets back to D.C. It's very interesting that they can call an emergency session during a holiday (on a Sunday night!) in order to "save" Terri Schiavo. Why have they waited a full 5 days to respond to this crisis?

I guess some people don't think that this is an opportunity to build up some "political capital."

I wanted to comment but the conversation had moved on, and I thought I would take a little more time to address it here.

This comment just seemed wrong on so many levels. The most obvious being the final comment about not taking the oppurtunity to build politcal capital. Hello!?! How about those who are blaming this disaster on Global Warming, a theory that many, scientists included, do not subscribe to. It's America's fault; it's the President's fault. We are just getting what we deserve.

How about the liberal left, people like Teddy Kennedy, who are using the oppurtunity to blame seemingly slow response times on Bush and the administration. Just altruism, I'm sure. No politics there.

Opponents of the War in Iraq, believing that our troops over there are preventing things getting done here. These same people would never suggest that we pull our troops out of Bosnia, or for that matter even France or Germany and bring them in, but we have to get them all out of Iraq.

It seems to me like there is plenty of politcal oppurtunism going on here and it is all people opposed to the current administration.

Now, how about comparing Congress' actions in the Schiavo case to their not having come back into session for this. I won't get into how the principles of assuming a right to life and how those principles will have more far reaching effects than even this hurricane. People disagree on this and convictions are strong and reasoned on both sides. It is during moments of conviction like this that political stands should be made for the sake of argument.

But here is the more general point. Congress has not officially come back into session yet, but does anyone think that the staffers are not planning what will be voted on next week when the do come into emergency session? The Schiavo case was completely different in this: It is easy to get together, quickly write a bill and vote on it, when all you have to do is vote to say "don't pull the plug" it's a little different when you have to come up with the best means of helping 3 states and millions of effected people. It takes a plan. It takes consensus and compromise. I would be interested to see how many of those same congressmen are heading or helping with Red Cross fundraising efforts right now. More than a few I would guess. Even the ones I don't agree with politically.

It is the difference between telling someone to go buy you a loaf of bread and making a loaf of bread for yourself.

Other thoughts on this:

Sometimes the biggest part of a plan is it's formation, not it's execution.
Every looter recorded on video should be charged with a crime when this is under control.
Every pointing finger represents a hand that could be helping.
There should be a legitimate discussion as to whether New Orleans should be rebuilt.
Maybe the current site of New Orleans would make a good location for several mega-refineries, since there is likely to be a lot of environmental damage.

What the Hell?

2005-09-01T11:39:00.000-05:00

What have we become? Is civilization such a thin sheen on us that it is so easily sloughed off by a hurricane?

I realize things are bad, but it is the citizenry that seems to be making everything worse. Look at all the looting going on (and I'm not talking about taking food from stores, but to take food from others?), look at the people shooting at the rescue helicopters and buses, look at this article in the LA Times: Trapped in an Arena of Suffering.

People smearing crap on walls, raping women and children, stealing from the other suffering people. I guess I'm not opposed to some suitable "examples" being made on the streets of the Big Easy. Imagine the hue and cry, though, that such actions would incur when we saw a rapist or violent looter, I mean "victim" shot by a guardsman on the street.

Zero 101

2005-08-30T13:48:00.000-05:00

Today's disclaimer: I am not a mathematician, sometimes I am just an idiot. Sometimes what I see as insight, is simply the obvious reframed. With that said, the following could be something true, but blatantly obvious or it could be false and show my ineptitude when it comes to math or math theory.

Zero causes all kinds of problems in math. When you divide a number by it, it is undefined. When you divide it by another number, it is still zero. You can pretend to add it or subtract it from a number, but you really doing "nothing".

I think that zero is no different from any other number, except for what it represents. Nothing. It is the origin, as many people may remember from high school graphing exercises, but did the teachers ever really say what that meant. It is the arbitrary point from which the graph starts wheter in one direction or many. Positive, negative, X, Y, Z. And that is the problem with zero. It is a point. When I said it is no different than any other number, I really meant any other point.

When we say 2-1=1, we all instintively understand what that means. When we were young, we were shown 2 apples or oranges, we took one away, and had one left. But 2 or 1 are really symbolic for quantity (obvious, right?). If we look at a number line though, for example, 1 is a quantity that represents the arbitrary distance between 0 and 1. 2 would represent the twice the distance of 1, therefore we can say 2-1=1.

The reason 0 is a problem, is that is a point. It is not a measure, it is nothing. A point having no dimension. The point 1 would really be no different, it is something we can do little with. But we do something with 1 that we don't with 0. We use it to represent the line 0to1. But in doing so, we give something to 1 that 0 will never have. We give it infinite possiblility, infinite divisibility. We give it dimension. We can imagine the smallest number we can imagine (0.00000000....1) and no matter how small a number we make it, it still represents a quantity, something of dimesion, which 0 will never be. And no matter how small the number. The line it represents contains infinite divisibility.

We can add a point to a line and it adds nothing to it, because as a point has no dimension it adds nothing to the line. In the same way subtracting will not change it.

But multiplication and division are different. Again it is units. I the same way that I can not divide 3 apples by 4 oranges and get any usable answer (except a ratio), I can not divide a point by a line or the other way around.

Calculus realizes this. Limits bear this in mind exactly. Calculus works on us making another assumption. That if a number is approaching 0, that we can assume it is zero. We give zero dimension, albeit very small demension.

How much of the math and measuring done today is distorted by the fact that we have put dimesion where it doesn't belong. How much of our knowlede has been distorted by having the faith, that approaching zero and zero are the same thing. It makes me think of the Architect's line in The Matrix: Reloaded:

"Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden to sedulously avoid it, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here."

How much built in error is there in equation after equation used to calculate the next equation all with the presumtive error that zero has dimension?

Off Again, Off Again

2005-08-23T13:00:00.000-05:00

Off to Chattanooga for the National H.O.G. Rally. Back to the tough thinking on Monday.

Decision-in-Decision; Indecision... Part IV

2005-08-22T14:48:00.000-05:00

My continued thought on this is that we, as thinking beings, as being cogniscient of our situation or reality, have the ability to affect the probabilites of the reality around us, both in the long and short term. I would think this is what separates us from the animals around us, who maybe able to make short term adjustments, but not see the long term in them.

When you first learn to play chess, you mostly react to the situation of the board during your turn. Slowly, you begin to see glimpses of where the game is going. You begin to see what you might be able to do direct those situations to your advantage. Once you are able to see not only what the board is, but what the board may become, you are able to come closer and closer to winning the game. Your opponent, especially in the beginning, may have many possible moves, and several probable moves. Your goal is to limit his probable moves, so that eventually they fall in line with your own. So that he is reacting to your moves in a way that is ultimately to your advantage.

Similarly, our thoughts lead us to make changes to our reality, to lead it to the outcomes we desire. We shape the probable, we carve tunnels of it through the reality around us. But this is not only manifested in the physical. Indecision, or no decision, or a decision to do nothing, is just as instrumental in the shaping of reality as action. Which tells me that thought, both conscious or subconscious, not our physical action, is our tool. It is our essential self, our spirit or soul.

That is the long way around, to what most people have an instinctual grasp of: "I think, therefore I am."

Open Minds Think A Like

2005-08-19T13:56:00.000-05:00

Check out this article in the Washington Post (You may have to subscribe for free).

Here's the lead:

Evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg made a fateful decision a year ago.

As editor of the hitherto obscure Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Sternberg decided to publish a paper making the case for "intelligent design," a controversial theory that holds that the machinery of life is so complex as to require the hand -- subtle or not -- of an intelligent creator.

Within hours of publication, senior scientists at the Smithsonian Institution -- which has helped fund and run the journal -- lashed out at Sternberg as a shoddy scientist and a closet Bible thumper.

If the "scientists" can't even handle arguments against a theory as locked in as Evolution, how are we supposed to believe they are seriously trying to answer honest questions regarding sacred cows like Global Warming?

These people have more faith in their theories than some fundamentalists have in their Religions. Science replaces the Burning Bush for them. They point to it and say, "But, it can't be wrong! Science says it's true!" As if Science has never been wrong. As if Science itself does not say that a theory is not a law. But some of these theories are treated as the Law handed down by Moses.

Here is the offending article: The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories

Decision-in-Decision; Indecision... Part III

2005-08-18T14:43:00.000-05:00

Today let's look at the second part of the title. Indecision. Best read up to keep up (Decision-in-Decision; Indecision and Decision-in-Decision; Indecision...again.

Let's assume for any given complex situation there may be more than one probable outcome, and there is an infinite number of possible outcomes.

The biggest argument against this, that I can think of (just to be objectiive) is that in science there are laws, where you can predict what will happen in a given situation. Gravity, the Newtonian Laws of Motion and the like. They say if this, then that. And that's it. It will aways happen that way.

My thought on that is this: Laws like that require sufficient definition for the given prediction. In other words, you have to simplify, the local universe for the prediction to hold true.

Take a high school physics problem for example: Billiards. If you take one ball and hit it into another hard enough to move it with out hitting a bumper (keeping it simple) you could predict, given the mass and speed of the first ball, the angle of impact to the second ball, the coefficient of friction of the table and air, gravity and all the other measurables, where the second ball would stop. Right? But to what degree of accuracy. An inch, a thousanth, a millionth, a billionth? Clearly for extremely accurate predictions you would need an extremely well defined local universe. Proximity matters.

So if you are allowed to simplify the local universe, removing all outside influences, and step back sufficiently from the outcome (proximity) you can give yourself the illusion that you have predictable results. They are predictable with allowed error, which is different. If you predict the point where the ball will stop, and allow that it could stop within a 1/4 in. or 1/100 or 1/1000000 in. or any distance at all greater than zero, then you have allowed that there are an infinite number of places where than ball could stop, given that there are an infinite number of points in any given distance.

So the accuracy of you prediction depends on the simplicity of the system and the level of definition and scrutiny of the prediction. Through this you can limit the probable, but can you limit the possible?

To be continued.

"One Placebo and a Glass of Beer, Please!"

2005-08-17T12:02:00.000-05:00

Most people understand what the Placebo Effect is, or is supposed to be, so I will assume a general knowledge.

Is the placebo effect indicitive of life in general?

We've all been told at one time or another to keep a positive attitude. Some of us are better at it than others. Those of us who consider themselves positive often ascribe the positive things that happen in their lives to their positivism. Those of us who are negative do not ascribe the bad things that happen in their life to their negativism, but rather to God, chance, fate or the universe as a whole hating them, or being out to get them.

It truly is the "glass-half-full" thing. Labeling the events that happen in our lives as positive or negative is greatly dependent on our positive/negative outlook. How do we see ourselves in relation to those events? While I believe that the labeling of the glass as half full/empty is important in how it effects our actions and reactions, I don't believe the label itself changes the reality of the situation. Half emty or half full, it is still a half a glass of beer. Can a negative outlook make a half a glass of beer less than that, or a positive glass of beer more than that? The placebo effect suggests that at least as far as our body chemistry is concerned, it may. A positive attitude may heal us quicker when sick, and not just because we percieve we feeling better, but in actuality, we may get better.

I wonder if in the same way, we can really affect the world around us. I don't mean that ones positive believe can overcome all odds, because our beliefs are also impacted by the beliefs of those around us.

What we percieve as the simple task of walking, is really nothing simple at all. It is muscles and brains, thought and exertion. It is our mind making thousands of adjustments with every step, both in what we are doing and how that is impacted by the world around us. Our perception of the world or reality around us greatly impacts those steps. Eliminate those perceptions and balance, measured steps and obstacle avoidance, all become increasingly difficult.

Now, to pull in some of what we talked about last week. Do our beliefs impact the world around us in a similar way. It seems obvious to say that we have an innate knowledge of the probable. We have an imagination of the possible. We understand where our next step is likely to land us and it is not likely to be on the moon. But do our beliefs lead our minds and bodies to manipulate, on small levels, the probable? When we walk, we do not give conscious thought to the angle and consistency of the terrain exept in general terms. We set our direction, and let our subconscious keep our footing, our balance, interpret obstacles. We judge the probable outcome of every step but let our subconscious make it happen. We take it for granted.

Does a positive/negative mindset affect that? Perhaps not in the pseudo-magical, "keep a positive attitude-to-improve your chances" way, that we think of when someone says, "keep a positive attitude". As if to do so suddenly makes us more suseptible to good things happening, that it changes the reality around us. Perhaps instead, the positive/negative attitude leans our subconscious one way or another, leading us to make the minute changes in our steps or balance, thereby encouraging one of the possible or probable outcomes. Making the less likely more likely simply by making unseen adjustments regarding ourselves and the world around us. Not magically changing reality, but "positively" or "negatively" taking a step as we navigate the probable and possible.

I wonder if I managed any coherent thoughts in that rambling.

Walk er Run

2005-08-10T09:45:00.000-05:00

We'll get back to Decision-In-Decision; Indecision when I get back from Mexico, next week. Take some time to think about it.

In the mean time, for those of you from Wisconsin looking for complete bias from our government entities, check out the hack job that the State Elections Board did on Scott Walker, candidate for Governor, for forgetting to put a disclaimer on an automated phone call. It seemed like just an over reaction when the story first broke, fining him $5,000. Now because of an industrious blogger and the open records law we find that they have dismissed every other similar violation for the last 8 years. Funny. See the evidence here.

What else is funny. It took a blogger to find the smoking gun. Where were the papers on this one?

Decision-in-Decision; Indecision... Again

2005-08-09T02:36:00.000-05:00

The following is something I wrote a while back for my own notes on the subject. Perhaps it will do a better job of showing the limitations of Cause & Effect. King Unbeliever was doing a good job blasting my first argument for the existence of Fate:

How do we reconcile fate (F), or predestination in the face of free will (FW)? In order to answer that question we need to determine what FW and F actually are.

FW, upon initial examination would seem to be the freedom to make choices. To make decisions that lead to consequences. All decisions, however mundane, tend to lead to consequence; it seems to be inherent in the concept. [Here is your admission of C&E.]

I was hungry after work, and rather than wait until I got home to eat the lovely meal that my wife prepared, I put 50 cents into a vending machine and grabbed a candy bar on my way out the door. As I drive home, my wife calls me and tells me that we are out of milk and asks that I stop on my way home and pick up a gallon at the store. I say that I would be happy to. And I make the necessary changes to my standard path to ensure that I end up at the store. I go in and grab a gallon of milk, and not that white water shit they try to pawn off as milk, but something with a little fat and substance to it. I get up to the counter, where the cashier tells me that I owe her $2.78. I reach into my pocket and pull out a couple wadded dollars and 37 cents in change. I say crap, and ask her if the lint is worth anything. When she shakes her head, I tell her that I have some change in my car and I will run out real quick and get it. As I hurry out the door of the store, I’m thinking about how much I really have in the car, and, with my attention elsewhere, I am struck by 16 year old kid in a black Camaro, who is looking down, changing the station because of the crappy song that he was listening to.

Free will?

We can look at this and say it was free will that leads me to this. I chose to grab the candy bar, which leads to me being short at the cash register, which lead to me running out the door and getting hit by a sixteen year old in a Camaro.

Perhaps, it was my decision to grab the candy bar that led to this. Perhaps such a minor decision was an act of FW. Let’s assume for the moment that it was. What, then, about all of the other decisions I made along the way. I decided to get the milk when I could have said no. I could have bought a half-gallon and had enough money. I could have checked my money situation and grabbed the change from my car ahead of time. I could have paid for the milk with my credit card. A change to any of these decisions could have led to me being home with my wife at the end of the day.

So was it fate then? Was I destined to make all of those decisions, which led me to the hospital, and beyond.

More likely it is a little of both. Fate may be better summed up as the Probable, and FW as the Arbitrary.

Each arbitrary decision leads to probable out come. Should I drop a ball from a tower it will likely hit the ground. This is the probable out come based on my decision and the world around me. But it is also possible that the probable outcome of a decision may include a subset of other decisions.

As the ball will probably hit the ground, do to the influence of God’s universe and gravity, it was also likely that the minor decisions that I made that led up to me being struck, weren’t decisions but a series of probable choices, based on myself as an entity of free will.

Free will is a choice, that arbitrarily defies probability or it is a choice between two or more equal or near equal probabilities.

So here is the point, and I realize that I may not be making a point that I suggested I would (by the end of this discussion, perhaps I will be able to do that. It’s hard to gather up all the thoughts you have on a topic like this and make them make sense to someone else). So let's say, here is a point: Fate is what fills the holes between FW choices. To say Cause & Effect are the end all and be all misses the mark. C&E are physical manifestations of FW/F.

Our Arbitrary choices affect the probabilities involved in any situation, but they do not affect the possibilities involved in any situation.

Pure Causality eliminates probability and possibility by suggesting that there is only one allowed Effect for any given Cause, and by allowed I mean a predictable result based on a complete understanding of the universe at that moment. Pure Causality eliminates Free Will. Choice would be an illusion; what we see as choice would really be the predictable (given enough understanding of the universe) result of the preceding condition of the universe, whether we understood it or not.

Damn. Now who sounds like the Architect.

Free Will requires Probable results not Effected results. Causality is the illusion created by ignoring the possible. Causality makes us pawns in a preconcluded game.

Decision-in-Decision; Indecision

2005-08-08T14:10:00.000-05:00

Decision-in-Decision; Indecision

I didn’t have anything to say about anything current at the moment, so I thought I relay some thoughts on an easy subject. Free Will (FW) and Fate (F). I know it sounds easy, and that you know everything you need to on these subjects, but let’s give another once over. I think this might take a couple posts.

Let’s start with the disclaimers. First, I am not Philosopher, at least not in the sense that I have read tons of Philosophy, know all the jargon and all the pertinent thinkers in this area of thought. Second, many of these thoughts I have come upon by spending lots of time thinking, so while I don’t pretend to be the first to have thought them by any stretch, I can’t attribute them to anyone, as I wouldn’t know who. But if I do, then I will. Also, many of these have been refined by discussions with my friends, who I won’t name, but for the sake of argument, let’s say they exist, and this is me giving them a credit where credit is due.

I’m not sure how this will flow, since I tend to ramble, as evidenced above. Let’s make a general statement and see where that takes us.

Free Will and Fate are not mutually exclusive.

Here’s an analogy to explain:

Buck plans a bike ride from his home in Delafield to the Peoples Republic of Madison. We will call this his act of FW. Nothing huge, but we can extrapolate or interpolate from there what we need to.

He can’t take I-94 because it is illegal, or rather he could, but he won’t. He decides to take HWY 83 South to HWY 18, then take that West to Madison.

Someone who is a FW purist might say that every decision that he makes is one of FW. His path, whether to stop at the light, whether to ride on the road or on the should, whether to coast down hills to conserve energy, or power through to conserve time.

But I think FW is really one major decision and several sub-decisions. The decision to take the trip was FW, the path he took was a subset of that decision (sFW).

Fate fills the holes between FW choices. Fate is the probable outcome of our FW. That Harry had to stop and pee outside of Cambridge and chose to do so rather than piss himself is the Fated outcome of a FW decision.

We’ll leave off there today. But I will give you some idea of where we will take this. That way you can see that I’m intending further explanation without leaving myself wide open to scorching (though it is still anticipated), and it will give you time to think about those things yourself.

Is FW, sFW and F dependent on the segment of time we choose to view them in?
You equated F to probability. Is there a difference in your mind?
If you believe in God, where does he fit in to all of this?
Why didn’t Harry go North on 83 and take 16 to 19 to Sun Praire and hit Madison from there?

All that and more to come sometime, I hope.

Turtles Under the Feet of Elephants

2005-08-05T09:34:00.000-05:00

I've got to admit, I was a little skeptical when I started listening to Terry Pratchett's Discworld series on Audible, but I just finished with the second book and it is hilarious.

I did hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and didn't care for it one way or the other. But if you liked that humor you will love Discworld. It is sarcastic and witty. Discworld is balanced on the backs of four elephants, which in turn stand on the back of Atuin, a giant turtle who moves through the universe. It is a world you can walk off the edge of.

The main protagonists are a failed wizard who only knows one spell and can't cast it, the Discworld's first tourist, who wants to buy everything in sight and is always positive, and his magical traveling luggage which is loyal to a fault.

Quickly becoming one of my light hearted favorites.

The Faith of Big Bangers

2005-08-04T11:35:00.000-05:00

I'm a Christian, not the Bible banging kind, and not the kind that is likely to go to Heaven if I don't get myself back in order. I'm the kind that thinks a lot and acts a little. Just to give you some perspective on where I'm coming from.

This week, then news was making a big deal about the fact that President Bush was suggesting that it was OK to teach "Intelligent Design" i.e. Creationism along side Evolution and the Big Bang. I'm always stunned that this is such a big deal. It is always made out that anybody who believes in intelligent design must be an idiot, even though there are a lot of extremely intelligent people, many of the scientists who do believe. You can even argue that the Biblical creation is ridiculous, in that it suggests that God created the world in seven days. After all how could even an omnipotent god create the universe in 7 days?

I realize that my answer, "He's omnipotent. He can do anything. Creating the universe is 'anything'." Borders on the simplistic and sarcastic.

I believe that if I asked Stephen Hawking or Carl Sagan, if he were alive, how they believed in the Big Bang, they could tell me, as could other scientist who have really considered the question. But what about the average Joe? What about the teacher in school who doesn't want to suggest other possibilities?

Because here is the thing? Who has the bigger leap of faith? Me, who believes in an omnipotent God, capable of all things, including creating the universe in 7, or really 6 days. Or is it the Big Banger, who must believe that the universe was created in less than 6 days, instantly, in fact, and by what, nothing? That the universe was condensed into a single point in space, but where did that come from? Was it just always there? I am honestly interested in how the average Joe reconciles these questions when they accuse people who believe in God of blind faith.

On another topic, and maybe someone out there can answer this one, if the universe was condensed into a single point, was it cold? I was thinking, (and I won't let the fact that I am not a scientist stop me from making ridiculous statements or false conclusions) that perhaps if there was a big bang, it doesn't preclude the mind of God. If the universe were condensed at one point, would it have been at absolute zero temp? In absolute zero, supposedly everything stops moving, down to the smallest particle, and I would think that would allow everything to be collapsed in on itself. What would it take to get it to blow? Could one particle of light be enough to agitate one subatomic particle above absolute zero causing the universe to explode into being?

Another question I have for the Big Bangers, we believe there are black holes, where a star has collapsed on itself and has become so dense that it's gravity pulls everything including light back into it, nothing can escape once caught in it's gravity. Wouldn't the whole universe packed into a point be denser than a star packed into a point, and if so wouldn't it be like a black hole itself? How would the universe escape itself...? These questions just come as I think about it.

Since When is a Little Revenge Wrong?

2005-08-03T09:33:00.000-05:00

This is a week old now, but still interesting. Here in Milwaukee we have a Sheriff who speaks his mind, David Clarke. Over the last couple years, he has become one of my heroes. He tells it like it is and isn't afraid to take on the sacred cow of the inner city. Sheriff Clarke is black, but does not use that fact to demand special treatment, nor does he allow others to do it either. All of which has little to do with what happened last week.

Sheriff Clarke is not popular with the Deputies Union. He was (according to the reference of my memory) a career Milwaukee Police Officer when he was appointed to replace Lev Baldwin, when he retired (a story in itself). The Deputies Union, or whatever they go by, has been against him at every turn. I think this is mostly due to him having come up through the MPD instead of the Sheriff's office.

Recently (I'm not exactly sure when) one of the Deputies, a bailiff at the county courthouse, wrote an article in the union newsletter calling Sheriff Clarke a coward for having a bodyguard. We could get into whether or not that is the case, but we won't.

Last week, ostensibly to start a new "get friendly with the neighborhood" program, Sheriff Clarke pulled the deputy from his cushy job at the courthouse, and plopped him in the middle of one of the worst neighborhoods in Milwaukee where there has been a rash of killings lately. He is making him do foot patrol and go from house to house letting the people know that the Sheriff's Dept. was going to be around.

Well, the crap hit the fan and Clarke was getting a lot of bad press for the reassignment, which everyone was saying was "too dangerous" for an armed deputy to undertake during the day. Please. Around here everyone sided with the deputy, and I'm thinking what the heck.

Since when do people think they can insult their boss and expect no retaliation? Why is it up to the boss to be the bigger person? Why should we accept boorish behavior from the minions? If you want to do it fine, but for all of you who work, go tell your boss to screw himself. What do expect to happen? Nothing? Then I want your job. Here they are prattling on about free speech. He had the freedom to say what he wanted, and the privilege to be around to see the results.

The worst thing Clarke did war pretend it was anything but retaliation. Since when is a little revenge being petty, people do it all the time. Petty is writing an article about your boss, because you think he won't or can't do anything about it. Now, Clarke throws the hammer back, and this deputy is suing for the dangerous assignment. Who's the coward now?

What's the fun of a blog if you can't take a mean stand?

In the beginning...

2005-08-02T14:59:00.000-05:00

Purpose. That is where we start. For me, the blogger, purpose is mine to declare. For you, the bloggee, purpose is yours to divine. However, rarely do things go as we intend, whether it is due to fate, divine purpose (cruelly interfering with our own less divine type), probability, our own ineptitude, or anynumber of things. And rarely is anyone elses purpose as simple as that which we perceive, whether to lack of perception or our own stupidity (which, let's be frank, is the reason for most mistakes of judgement).

So let's meet in the middle somewhere and not define this... whatever it will be too strictly.

I will say it is a collection of my thoughts strung out for you to throw in my face when the ugly spectre of inconsistency and hypocricy inevitably rears its head. Sometimes politcal, sometimes philisophical, sometimes gramatically incorrect and mis... spelled wrong.

You will say is a load of crap.

Perhaps we will both be right.