Poignant

Not long ago, my friend Tony and I went to see Glen Phillips in Denver. After months of hard touring, Glen and his wife came close to divorcing. They mended their marriage, but during the difficult time, he wrote this song. As I listened to this live recording, I thought about how it would have been 'easier' just to leave the remnants of the relationship there in the park... But Glen and his wife decided that 'easy' was not their prime value.

It's a sad, slow ballad and it broke my heart the first time I heard it, even with the comic relief at the end.

It's Over Now

You take the house
You take the car
I'll take a microphone
and my guitar

We'll meet in the park
watch the kid's playing
and silently guess
what the other's not saying

It's over now
You've had enough.

Now you're climbing trees
like that girl in the song
and I haven't seen you
so bright in so long

Who could have known
that it was so easy
that all that you needed
was simply to leave me

It's over now
You've had enough.
You've had enough.

Maybe there's hope for us
I don't want to doubt you
but I've got my work to do
with or without you

But what will it mean,
if many years later
you are still Padme
but I am Darth Vader?

It's over now
You've had enough.
You've had enough.

California Dreamin'

A little less than a year ago, I went to San Diego.

One of my favorite moments was walking among the citrus groves about 2 hours northeast of the city.



Colorado is beautiful, but on windy days like today, I pine for sundrenched paths lined with fresh fruit.

Hmm.

I think I can fit a sleeping bag under that fifth tree.

Satisfaction

One of Life's underrated pleasures is being satisfied with your purchase.

I love to research a purchase until I have enough information to make a decision, but not enough to make me second guess myself.

I used that process when buying a bike three weeks ago. I decided on a type, price and frame. Here's what I got:


I could have gone with the $3000+ Trek, with a handsome frame forged by master craftsmen from exotic alien alloys, precision diamond cut rims, self greasing - auto repairing chain and dérailleur, and the entire assembly prayed over by Trappist Monks... But I'm very happy with the Globe.

"Bong Hits 4 Jesus"

Christianity Today posted this about 'one of the most dangerous cases to religious freedom in the last decade'.

Why are Christian groups jumping to support this student? Is it because the student incorporated Jesus into his public statement?

Or do we support this student's right to free speech because not doing so would set a dangerous precedent that would find students unable to express any kind of 'counter educational' viewpoint?

Scientific perspective

My sister wrote and commented the following on "Darwin's God," the article I mentioned a few weeks ago. Nicole is brilliant. She has a degree in biology and worked for a time at a forensics lab in DC. These days, she runs her own home science experiment: she has two young boys. One is learning to walk and one is learning how to burn down the house.

Here are her thoughts on the relationship between science and faith.

Interesting article. I really enjoyed Justin Barret's thoughts and unique perspective. As a scientist I am routinely frustrated by both sides (religion and science) separating the issue and I agree with Justin that you need to consider both science and religion together.

Personal example - two weeks ago my 2 1/2 yr old stuck a pair of tweezers in a light socket. Zachary received a little shock but nothing like the cartoons depict, with his hair standing straight up and black all over his face. Right after this happened someone commented that he must have angels watching over him. Well, yes, but we are told not to worry about our life because God cares for those He has created (Matthew 6:25-34) so technically everyone has guardian angels watching over them and as much as I think my munchkin is special, God loves all of us and protects us how He sees fit.

Onto the science portion - most homes these days have GFCI outlets, or ground-fault circuit interrupter, that detects any imbalance in the flow of electrical current and trips the circuit. These are installed to protect us from faulty appliances or from situations as listed above. As a scientist I would say that the GFCI is why Zachary was not electrocuted. However, I would also say that the GFCI is possible because our loving God created us with incredible minds capable of designing and inventing such a device and creating electricians capable of wiring our house correctly for the device to work properly. I simply cannot divorce scientific logic and reason from my knowledge of God. As mentioned - to nonbelievers this is foolishness, but to a believing scientist it makes all the sense in the world.

Thanks, sis :)

Leporidae

I will preface this post by saying that the story isn’t for the faint of heart. Avid fans of Watership Down may want to take a pass.

My roommate shot a bunny.

Not a hare. Not a jackrabbit. A fluffy, big eared cottontail.

Steve happened to have a pellet gun, and the bunny happened to be out at the wrong time. Not one to waste anything, Steve brought his catch back to our place and cleaned it. Thankfully, I missed this entire process, or what we did last night would have been near impossible.

Steve called me as I was pulling up to the house and asked me to look up recipes for rabbit. We don’t typically stock rabbit, being a beef or buffalo shop, but I played along.

“Do we have a rabbit?”
“It’s in the fridge right now. You don’t have a weak stomach do you?”
“No”
“Good!”

I checked the fridge. On the shelf was a nondescript plastic bag with something solid yet disturbingly spongy. Rabbit, check.

When Steve arrived, he went to work on finding the edible parts of the rabbit. Anything deemed inedible went into the ‘rabbit discard pile’. Same concept as in Canasta, but messier.

We ended up going with something similar to this recipe, minus the egg. Our mixture for the breading was flour, cornmeal, Cajun seasoning, salt and pepper.

I can’t really say what rabbit tastes like. We seasoned liberally, so ours tasted like fried Cajun spices.

Rabbit frying.


Steve sampling the result.

The effect of Coconuts

Countries really need to stop sending us coconuts. Also, does it strike anyone else as odd that Canada exports coconuts to the US?

Math

My friend Nathan sent me a sample of answers given to complex math problems.

Why did the student recieve a zero? It seems reasonable enough that an elephant will block the object's movement.

A Creative Exercise

I've been feeling a little creatively drained today, and ran across a creative exercise that I had done back in January. I need to do this again, and thought I would share...



Here is the idea. My creativity comes not from inventing things from whole cloth, but from adjusting and adding to the world I see.

I found this story in the New York Times from January 13 1907:

TRAMP WAS A NOBLEMAN

Swedish Judge Identifies Old Man Found Dead--Fortune Awaited Him.

I won't quote the whole article, but here are the essentials: A Swedish noble, who had a massive estate waiting for him in Europe, dies in the middle of Ohio. He had been wandering around the United States for years. The story gave just enough detail to make me curious, but not enough to answer all of my questions.

Here is the exercise. Find a minor little story like this. First, write down all the details you can find, including the random ones...

Then, start asking questions. What part of the story is incomplete? What else would you like to know? When you have a good batch of questions, start answering them. Any idea works here, just jot it down.

Finally, circle the most entertaining answers. Et Voila! You have a much more entertaining story, now complete with conspiracies, spurned loves and family feuds.

Polyptych

My cousin Katie sends this image of her and my nephew Zach, doing the Warhol thing.

Hardwired for belief

There is a lengthy article in the New York Times about the 'evolutionary benefit' of belief in God. Many of the scientists interviewed for the article are puzzled at belief in things that do not correspond to the physical world, saying that such faith “does not appear to be a reasonable evolutionary strategy.” On a small scale, this could be an abberation, but the worldwide belief in some form of god is problematic for them.

'When a trait is universal, evolutionary biologists look for a genetic explanation and wonder how that gene or genes might enhance survival or reproductive success ... So many aspects of religious belief involve misattribution and misunderstanding of the real world. Wouldn’t this be a liability in the survival-of-the-fittest competition?'

Some scientists take the position that religious belief is a kind of security blanket, a delusion developed to shield ourselves from stress and fear. This is the view that religious belief survives because it is a beneficial evolutionary adaptation.

Others in the field poke holes in this thinking, saying "The human mind does not produce adequate comforting delusions against all situations of stress or fear." This opposing position holds that religious belief is simply a byproduct of having large, complex brains.

Those in the scientific realm can't decide if our faith is a blessing or a fluke.

The Bible is clear about our nature, clear that we are made with both body and spirit, and that both have needs. In Amos, the Lord speaks about the 400 'silent years' that were to come before Christ, and how we would react.

'Behold the days are coming' says the Lord God, 'that I will send a famine on the land. Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east. They shall run to and fro seeking the word of the LORD, but shall not find it.' Amos 8:11-12

Though we seek purpose and run after belief, any effort to find meaning on our own is useless. Paul is clear that even our knowledge of God is a gift.

'Now we have recieved, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.' ... 'But the natural man does not recieve the things of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.' 1 Cor 2:12 & 14

Faith is foolishness to the natural man. It does not appear to be a reasonable evolutionary strategy.

It is not. Our ability and propensity to believe in God are part of his strategy for redeeming us.

You would think...

You would think that a person with a college education could figure out how to tie a pleasant looking knot in a little bit of fabric. Apparently not.

When I wear a tie, which is becoming more frequent, I invariably spend 15 minutes in front of my computer, poring through Windsor and Double Windsor tutorials on the Internet. The problem with every tutorial I've found is that they are composed of static images. I find myself at Step 3, looking at the image for Step 4 and completely unable to imagine the step in between. Where is Step 3.5? How in the world did he get his tie to look so trim when mine looks like a massive goiter?

You can imagine my joy then, at finding this video as I tooled around YouTube.

Better living through Internet edification!

Credit where credit is due

A brief note on credit. The young man in the banner pic above is my cousin, Justin. pictured here gazing into a dust cloud in our grandparent's shed.