Okay, I’m going to wade out into the waist deep water for a bit here. I have never understood the problem with reconciling science and religion. Maybe I should clarify that by religion I mean Christianity as it’s the only religion that I’m even halfway familiar with. On one side you’ve got an all powerful, all knowing, all encompassing God. On the other physical evidence. To get specific let’s look at creation. On the one hand you have the world created in seven days. On the other a universe that took billions of years to create. On the surface there appears to be a discrepancy, but let’s take a look at the God part again. We are dealing here with an entity that is omniscient. God can literally do anything. If God can create the earth and the universe in seven days couldn’t he have created it in such a way that the physical evidence would lead you to believe that it was created in some other way. To be brutally simplistic could not an all powerful being have created an earth that was littered with fossils that would lead you to believe, just looking at the evidence that can be seen and touched and experimented with, that dinosaurs and other creatures predated the date that strict creationists see as the beginning of the planet. That man and all the other life on the planet were built in such a way that again would lead someone to believe, based just on what their senses and power of reason could tell them, that all life evolved from some original source. If you grant that God is all powerful then the answer, by definition, is yes. I really don’t understand why you need to go any further than that. You could ask why, but again we are dealing with an all powerful, all knowing being. When faced with the problem of evil, say why does God let the innocent suffer and the wicked be rewarded the common answer from the devout is that God is so far beyond us that it is impossible for us to see his plan. Which makes perfect sense as long as you grant the existence of some kind of omnipresent being. Why then is it necessary to twist and distort the facts to come up with pseudoscience like Intelligent Design. It’s almost like the proponents of babble like Intelligent Design aren’t quite able to believe that God could be so creative. They want to replace a beautiful subtlety with hamfistedness. Grasping this idea would seem to make the path of discovery an unbelievable joyful activity for the devout. I could imagine the thought process of some believing scientist to be something like this. “Yes God I know in my heart of hearts that you created everything about six thousand years ago exactly like it is laid out in Genesis and other parts of the Bible, and by the way any discrepancies I find therein are a failure of my understanding and not of the actual text, but I am fascinated by how you brought this bit of light I’m seeing into being so that it appears to have originated a million years ago on the other side of the galaxy.” Every new piece of knowledge would be a tiny step closer to knowing the mind of God. Every new bit of data collected would be literally a message from God and a confirmation of his love for us. Imagine the entire universe is one big puzzle lovingly created for us to unravel, to discover what our ultimate purpose is. Of course being a non believer I may be missing something very basic. I am the person who had to raise his hand in an Old Testament class to clarify that we should take it as a given that God is good after all. Maybe it’s my lack of faith and certainty that obscure some reasoning that throws a monkey wrench into what I’m trying to get at. Anyway it’s late, so here are some pretty pictures in case you actually got this far.
And one more.
Well I’ve been to San Francisco, LA twice, Memphis, Louisville, Metropolis. It’s been a busy winter and spring. I’ll be going to Gulf Shores, back to Louisville at least once, and hitting Lexington before the summer is over then in the fall I’ll be going back to LA for a couple of days. When I spell it out like that I realize I’m one lucky SOB. About half of this travel was for work and half was tagging along for shooting ConTrek episodes. Along the way I’ve taken a ton of pictures, over six thousand. Of which about 60 are worth sharing. What’s that a .1% average? I’ve read a few books and seen a few movies of course. Hopefully over the next couple of weeks I’ll fill in some of the blanks and get back into the habit of posting here.
It’s official, I looked it up, US Code Annotated 1902.002 §167 ¶182. If New Years Day falls on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday then any New Year’s Resolutions you’ve made do not have to be honored until Monday. The statute doesn’t say anything about when you have to go back to work or anything like that but at least you don’t have to start your resolutions in the middle of the week.
Interestingly, in Rickmanbergstien from 1838 till 1987 the New Year always officially started on a Tuesday. In 1837 Rickmanbergstien planned to attack Allonsbergstien on New Years Day. A spy was captured in the Royal Rickmanbergstien Palace and it was feared that the date of the attack had been passed to Allonsbergstien. To keep from having to print new orders, the current Regent of Rickmanburgstien was notoriosly cheap, but still not have the attack spoiled by the Allonsbergstienians knowing what day it was coming New Years Day was just moved to Tuesday. While this did save the day as far as the attack on Allonsbergstien was conserned, Rickmanbergstien kicked their butt, the tribute extracted from Allonsbergstien never came close to paying for the lost trade caused by the date mismatch between Rickmanbergstien and the rest of the world The practice was regarded by the rest of the world as one of those qaint, charming, stupid things that the little city-states of Eupore does, but after Baron Buckminster von Hookes the last of the great Rickmanbergstien calendar makers died the practice had to be discontinued as having custom calendars printed for all Rickmanbergstienians would have consumed thirteen percent of the city state’s budget.
Well the holidays are all over now (well they will be at the end of the day at least) and everything can go back to as close to normal as it gets. The next couple of months are going to be a little crazy. I’ve got three business trips coming up; Memphis, San Francisco and Indy, and likely weekend trips to Lexington and Atlanta. I’ll get to drive to Indy and Memphis, but I’ll be flying to San Francisco. I’d love to drive to San Francisco but it just ain’t practical. Anyway that’s me till the end of February.
I’ve been watching a lot of stuff on DVD since Christmas, got the Jeeves and Wooster and Blackadder complete box sets for Christmas, thanks Mom. I’ve just barely cracked into them so far. I’ve been distracted by a little four dollar treat from the Great Escape. It’s one of those multi disc el-cheap-o packages of mostly public domain movies. This one has twenty movies that have some, sometimes quite slight, connection to racing, or cars. They are all B level or worse films but they are all pretty interesting for one reason or another. The older ones have plots of varying levels of ridiculousness and tons of stock footage, one even has some glorious clips of European Grand Prix racing. The real jewels though are three movies made in the seventies. One biopic of Richard Petty starring Richard Petty, he’s not bad actually, and the dad from The Christmas Story playing Lee Petty, There’s some fun car chases with vintage iron and seventies NASCAR racing. Then there is the sublimely bad, a movie about a couple of dope smugglers and one about the most unlikely California Highway patrolman turned repo men you can imagine. They make Cannonball run look like Citizen Kane. What’s cool about them though is that they got made at all. You can just imagine the filmmakers hitting up their families and friends for money and maxing out credit cards to finish the things. The scripts and acting are pitiful but they still manage to put up some interesting car chases.
Then there is another movie that I just got my hands on Monday. I couldn’t watch it Monday night, I had to watch something to review for Cinegeek Monday night so I didn’t get to watch it till Tuesday, but I’ve seen it three times since then and I didn’t get in till about two am last night. It’s Gran Torino Clint Eastwood’s latest movie. It is amazing. A perfect movie. When you get a chance you have to see it. I’m not saying anything else about it so I don’t ruin it for you, if that that’s possible, but it is fantastic.
Well I got just enough time to get this posted and then get cleaned up to meet some friends for lunch so I’ll cut this off for now.
Happy New Year everybody.
Art’s birthday was Thursday so we all went over to Art’s Friday night for some birthday cake and other assorted revelries, by other assorted revelries I mean conversation and video games. “Other assorted revelries” sounds like some sly euphemism employed to mask illicit but extra cool activities. All of my illicit activities are licitly boring and I have no illusions about my coolness deficit. Anyway Friday night was a lot of fun as is every night i can spend with friends.
I did try something new Friday night. I don’t know if it was Rock Band or Guitar Hero, but I played it Friday night. I sang. It was fun. Singing has got to be the easiest part to play. I don’t know how anybody can do the guitar or drum parts. Like I said it’s fun but it kind of bugs me a bit too. How much harder would it be to actually create music instead of pretending to create music. Sure it’s not going to sound as good as what you hear in the game, but surely the fact that it’s actually you doing it would make up for that. Still I would play again given the opportunity.
Spent most of Saturday reading the Watchmen and watching Stephen, Daniel and James play Magic. More notes on Watchman in a separate post. That night we went to see JCVD , which again I will discuss in more detail in a separate post, but I will say it was great, see it if you get the chance.
Went to see Billy on Sunday, It’s been forever since I was out his way. Discussed possibilities of another Wyoming trip. Need to work up a load for my AR so we can start reloading.
Wow it’s not been as long as I though it was. Among other things I’ve been doing a little reading over the last couple of months. The 1000 book thing is still on my mind. What I will do is post a brief, or maybe not so brief note each time I finish a book and put it in the “1000 Books” category. That way I can keep track of what I’ve read.
Yeah well, I could try to make excuses about the inactivity here but I’d just have to make stuff up so I’ll just apologize instead.
I’m sorry.
Posting will still probably be light for awhile as I’m currently sans internet at Clovis Chitwood Heavy Industries World Headquarters and probably will be for at least the next week or two. Well that’s not technically true. I’ve got some access with my phone, but posting from it is not very fun.
New review up at Cinegeek and another one on the way. We recorded podcast number nine last night too. I’ll post again when I see that it’s gone up.
Anyway just wanted to break the silence.
I think I just wasted two and a half hours.
Google maps doesn’t show county lines. Or at least I haven’t figured out how to make it show the county lines, but AAA’s trip planner does. So I just spent two and a half hours trying to plot a course through all of Tennessee’s counties. Six pages of handwritten notes later (using a Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pen, it’s actually quite nice, very light) I figure I’m about two thirds of the way through, maybe a little more. The thing is though, I stared in Johnson county, what did I do that for? It would be a five or six hour trip just to start. Tennessee is a long state. I’m starting to think maybe it would be easier just to drive the Grand Canyon and back or something. Well actually that doesn’t really require any thought at all. I’ve forgetting the whole point. It’s supposed to be a challenge. Something that will take as much time to plan as to execute. I think I need a big map, some pins and thread. Google’s maps drag and drop feature would help if I already kind of had the trip roughly mapped out, but it has a limit on the number of distinct points you can have on a trip.
I didn’t walk today, but I did do another three quarters of a mile yesterday. I don’t think I’ll get a chance Thursday or Friday. I’ll have to try and do something over the weekend. I’ve also downloaded the audio version of some books from Gutenberg.org. If I can remember to bring some earbuds with me I’ll start to listen to some of them when I walk.
I’ve almost finished the Arthurian Chronicles. It’s a much different story than I expected. It’s got some of the fantasy elements, like Merlin’s prophecies and Uther doing his shape shifting thing, but it’s not the Sword in the Stone, search for the Holy Grail, Lady in the Water story, or at least it hasn’t come up yet, on the other hand Arthur has conquered all of Britain, Denmark, France, Norway and is about to march on Rome.
I started the process to cancel my Sprint account, somebody from accounts is supposed to contact me, but I’ve not heard anything. I guess the dimwits are trying to call my datacard. I probably have to break down and call them myself. Arrg, don’t they understand that I’m a social reject and don’t like to dealing with people? Make it easy on yourself and me, just use email, but nooo, everythings got to be done over the phone.
This should be a cool weekend, Dark Knight Friday night, then RollerGirls on Saturday and then the private showing at the Belcourt Midnight Saturday. I think it’s going to be West World but I may be remembering it wrong.
Till next time,
I was going to go to bed but saw that I needed to run a load of laundry so I’m back. Yesterday there was a post at ar15.com asking how many states have you been to. Of course this kind of poll is probably heavily weighted because people who have no interest in travel probably aren’t even going to look at the post, but over thirty percent of the respondents had visited at least thirty states. One poster claimed to have spent at least three months in every state. Wow. It got me thinking the 48 state trip. I googled it and it appears that there are a couple of routes that are under seven thousand miles. One group that is under way currently is planning on doing it in 5 days on 135 gallons of diesel in a TDI Beetle. That’s fifty two miles to the gallon. I’m not that ambitious yet. For one I don’t think I know anybody crazy enough to try it with me, but I got to thinking about a trip that might be doable in a couple of days, and that I might actually be able to pull off solo. How long would it take me to visit every county in Tennessee. Maybe there’s a doc in there? Maybe a very boring doc. Anyway I guess it’s time to go play with Google maps for awhile. Or at least till the laundry gets done.
I feel like I ought to talk about Hell Boy II, but I don’t feel like it. Maybe later. I will say I liked it, quite a bit. I think I enjoyed the first one more, but definitely worth ten bucks. So what do I want to talk about.
How about books? Art Garfunkel has read 1023 books since June 1968. What’s interesting is that he’s kept track. Go back and click his name, all 1023 are listed. He’s probably read more since, the list only goes through 2007. I’m pretty sure I’ve read at least that many, I’m pretty sure that until recently I’ve owned at least that many. I’ve been trying to cull the collection down. 189 down so far. It’s funny when you actually start to quantify something. I originally guesstimated I had around 2K books. When I started to actually box them up I realized that I had probably closer to a thousand.
Anyway I’ve not been reading much lately,so when I read about Art’s 1000 books it got me thinking. How long would it take me to read my next thousand books? So I visited Gutenberg.org and downloaded a few things I have been meaning to read for twenty years and I started. I’m reading the Arthurian Chronicles now. Think I’ll knock down Beowulf for number two, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is on the list along with Nietsche. I don’t know how many times I’ve started Beyond Good and Evil or Thus Spake Zarathustra more often than Ulysses which maybe I’ll be brave enough to try and tackle again after I’ve built some momentum.
Speaking of momentum, I did something extremely out of character today. I did not want to do it. I kept thinking of a million little reasons and excuses not to to it today. On the way several little pains that I had not noticed all day kept cropping up. It was like my body was in rebellion. Which is weird because I was doing this for it, but it was acting like a two year old throwing a tantrum (notice the disassociation, it’s official I am crazy). Anyway against all my better instincts at fifteen after five I arrived at the Charlie Daniels Park in Mt.Juliet. I managed to walk three quarters of a mile in thirty minutes. Pitiful, but a start. Let’s see if I can repeat it tomorrow. My sister Amy is training for a marathon, maybe I’ll see if I can do a decimaraton.
On a final note thanks to the1spot on YouTube, for posting the latest episode of Top Gear. If you want to see it better hurry up. The BBC usually has YouTube take the episodes down in a day or so. Wow, it’s the 41st most viewed something or another today.
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