23 June 2007

A wonderful day in the neighborhood

For Sale or Trade: One evil. . .very evil. . .vile. Possibly even possessed. . .combination washer/dryer.

Will consider all offers. Or quite possibly will trade for some dry towels, an industrial-sized mop and bucket, and. . .a flame-thrower. Yes, why not.

Or one young beautiful wife with a W/D of her very own that knows how to cook mashed potatoes and gravy with the right amount of pepper. . .and some Pepto-Bismol (just in case). And if she has a mop and bucket of her very own. . .well by all means. . .give me a call.

Am also looking for an apartment-sized trash compactor that will compact. . .um. . .Whirlpool Combination W/D.

And, what else.

And if anybody knows somebody willing to part with a CostCo-sized bottle of aspirin, I am open to talk.

(Maybe I should post this on Craigslist instead of here. Somebody might think I'm. . .a little crazy. And. . .that person would be right)

Current Mood: Frustrated

Currently Reading: the instruction manual for a brand new 5 gallon (quiet series) shop-vac

21 June 2007

South Texas

I went to San Antonio, TX for the past two days. It's larger than I expected and a little dirtier from Virginia Beach. I apologize for the picture quality, as my camera was only the size of a credit card.




This is part of the garden area around the mission. The trees made the 96 degree heat feel cool. . .almost.



Inside, it was much smaller than I expected, and you weren't allowed to take pictures. However, some things were noted.

-Davy Crockett was much smaller than I thought he'd be. They have his buckskin vest on display inside.

-Gen. Santa Anna should have had no trouble taking over the Alamo much sooner. I think he was either incompetent or lazy. Of course, the guys inside were not your average joes. . .

-The people who built the missions in that part of the country knew what they were doing. They're much cooler inside and built to last for hundreds of years. Unlike the wood houses you see nowadays.

-Davy Crockett had excellent penmanship. You can actually read his script quite easily. . .that had a couple of his journals and his law book on display.




Another Alamo shot.

The entire mission is smaller than what I thought. I pictured it being in the middle of the desert with 2-3 drunk Mexicans slouching outside drinking tequila. Not true. It's in the middle of downtown, right across the street from a wax museum and a Guinness Book of World Records store. It reminds me of Niagara Falls actually. . .touristy.



I found this razor sticking in the wall of my room. I did not put the razor there and do not know why this razor was sticking in the wall. When I was packing to leave, this very strange-looking cat. . .don't know the breed. . .walked into my room, jumped on the bed and stared at me. It would have been nice if it miaoed at me. . .you know. . .to let me know there was an actually animal in the room.

16 June 2007

Words

Sing a song from sixty.
Drink a little rye.
And if engineers make more than you,
Don't dare wonder why.

We spurned the steak and potatoes and ate the icing on the cake.
We got fat.
We craved more icing because sugar is sweet.
We went to 7-11 to buy it by the can.
We dumped the icing into our troughs and fed the pigs to make them fatter.
Sleep overcame the pigs, so we put caffeine in the icing.
Now the pigs are happy.

One of us gambled and got lucky.
Became like the Haves.
A year later, we lost it all.
Then we leached off the Haves.
Those mean nasty folks with big houses.
"You have so much. Give us what you have!"
We begged the goddess pass a law to make the Haves offer us food and drink.
We ate and drank and for a time were equals.
Then we became poor again.
And still, the Haves have and the Nots naught.
Then I thought to myself, leeches and pigs are never satisfied. Always looking for more.
But leeches need other's blood.
Though both love the mud, the Farmer feeds only the Pigs.
This is called History.

A fool is aloof by any other way.
Or, aloof is a fool. Think of it that way.

Poverty and Laziness are good friends.
Sometimes you'll see them hand-in-hand visiting Shame.
On a road that does not lead to Life.

Chick-Fil-A sells good food and is closed on the Sabbath.
But too much, Honey, is still meaningless in the end.

'Pleasant it is for little tin gods, when great Jove is gone.
But little tin gods make their mistake, when the hour comes for great Jove to wake.'
Kipling said this once upon a time.

Once upon another time, I saw a poor man get some wisdom.
It cost him all he had.
Now, that very man is still wise, but he is no longer poor.
And he eats steak and potatos and owns the bakery.

'When I come, will I find Faith on the Earth?"
I know somebody will be in the waiting room drinking coffee,
but I don't know if they'll still be happy.
Somebody else said that.

If all of your friends talk to you like Aesop,
perhaps you're not as smart as you think.
They might be trying to tell you something.
And if you have initials after your last name,
better listen closely.

Never sign a contract with a hyphenated-woman,
Unless, of course, you have a lot of money.
Sometimes even naive people know more than they let on.
This keeps them out of trouble.
And sometimes even Isaiah bowled alone.

Granite is a hard stone and take much chipping and pounding to make it useful.
But granite erodes less than marble, though it is duller.

Jezebel is a powerful woman and Elijah lives in the desert.
But Jezebel has more respect for Elijah than Ahab, though Ahab be a king.
Even Jezebel has a sense of humor. . .according to one insider.
She used to live in the desert,
Sometimes, I think, she forgets.

Another thing I saw.
Paris is a beautiful city, but nobody wants to live there.
Some men like to live in metal boxes, not many women do.
Not even Parisians.

In a wax museum, the lights are always on.
Though nobody is home, the statues need polished.
It's the nature of wax.
To decompose that is.
Madame Tussand told me this when I was a young man.
I never forgot what I heard in the City of Lights.

Fly away little bird, flee while you have the chance.
For the Fox knows this, and waits to pounce.
I don't think CNN said this.

13 June 2007

The Meaning of Life

What is going on in my head right now (or a random miscellany of stream-of-consciousness) :



The phrase 'then we got religion,' spirit, supermen, Jesus was the first of the new men, we're supposed to act like him, most don't, faith, walking on water, there will be things to do in heaven, lay up (deposit) treasures in heaven, food is not a deposit, I need to fast, the title of a blog post called 'leaving los larvae,' a demo for a Microsoft touch screen, an apocalyptic dream with people fighting over food and looking for me and the distant future in a Star Wars type universe. People want to kill me but cannot because I remain somehow invisible to them, or rather, appear just like them to their eyes. . .like cats think humans are other cats, but aren't, I should think noble thoughts, 'Whatsoever is good, holy, pure, etc., think on these things,' Why? For practice. In heaven, everybody will be able to read everybody else's thoughts. Storage. Mental storage. Microsoft (again). Why do I think of Microsoft all the time??? God is using Bill Gates to accomplish his goal of instant mass communication all over the globe and time is short. Time is being compressed. The sowers are overtaking the reapers. . .or is that the other way around? Oprah Winfrey. Why her? She's an excellent communicator. Thinking noble thoughts is like storing stuff for eternal purposes. Coarse joking is bad. Robin Williams is funny, but what he says isn't noble so don't think that. Adam messed up. God likes matter. Made it to see what man would do with it. Information. logos. Logos. words. Words are logos. Words come from Logos. God is Logos. Jesus is Logos personified. We should all be Logos personified like Jesus. 'What would Jesus do?' Jesus did what Jesus was designed to do. We should do what we were designed to do. We're not all designed to do what Jesus did. 'WWJD is a religious saying.' Sounds good though. That means we should be supermen. Everything we do in eternity requires faith. Walking on water requires faith. Designing a new planet and populating it requires faith. Why does this dream keep recurring in my mind? It's like a vision. I feel like Daniel. He probably saw airplanes and helicopters and freaked out. And what was the white Lamborghini-type-car-thing I dreamed of levitating on? Another future machine. Perhaps magnetism was involved. Nonsense. I distinctly remember orange gases in the rear area. God spoke and light appeared. Light is matter which is interchangeable with energy. What God is made of. When He speaks matter is affected. God is spirit. What is spirit? All humans are spirits. that possess a soul and live in a body. We have a body (matter) in order to interact with matter. For how can matter interact with other matter to become useful. Useful like cars. God likes cars. Fords make Him a little uneasy though. Chevys are like 'what might have been.' matter is like play-doh for spirits. Dormant until manipulated into the right conformation. And how can it be manipulated unless information to do so is present? And how can matter become molded into a useful entity without Complex-Specified Information? Crystals are complex, but they're not specified. Randomness. I hate randomness. Chance. Entropy. Murphy's Law. Matter on it's own tends to entropy. When God first made everything, He wound it up. Now it's winding down. Like a spring. Or a cuckoo clock. Does not everybody know this? I should lay off the energy drinks. I like to brood. Sauron did too. He should have gotten married. Would have caused less trouble for Middle Earth. Brooding. Just like a mother hen over her chicks. Late at night, hunched over a table, with glaring lights, intensely focused on a sheet of paper. I must transfer my thoughts to the material medium called paper. Conversion of energy to matter. E=Mc2. Like a force compelling me. I narrow my eyes and force circular thinking to cease. Channel my thoughts to the task at hand. And I know this is just a taste, a glimpse of what I will do for eternity. A prophet once told me I will possess people's souls through my patience. I think he meant I should start writing more. Shadowlands. Earth is the Shadowland. The Dark Planet. The Silent Place. The Land of Hidden and Dormant Things. Thulcandra. We see through a glass darkly, yet with enough concentration we can see more clearly. Ah, the prophet was right. One reason why Cary Grant was so popular. Embryos. We're in the early stages of metamorphosis. This is what the Great Designer had in mind when He formed Adam. He gives us things to help us achieve greater things. Life. Adam was designed to act like God, to imitate Himself, yet remain a separate entity from Himself. We're like pets. I wonder if squirrels get uncomfortable in summer with their furry faces? Adam was supposed to take the elements and fashion them into substance. To create. To take the dust from the ground and form it into machine that enhance his physical body. Engineering is art. Modify. And then. . .go to the farthest reaches of the universe and explore. Limitless possibilities. Still, the universe is finite. God smiled when man landed on the moon. One of the few things we did right. But the universe will end. The what? All matter will return to it's most elemental forms-quarks, muon, hadrons, bosons, leptons. Funny how every sub-atomic particle is composed of three parts. I think is hinting to us. Something we should know about particle physics. We're missing something big here. And it will make computer run faster. All matter will then be transformed to energy? Lots of things happened in the past, only what was done for Christ did last. A future saying. So, all that remains is what the spirit produced. The time is come to produce. Produce, produce, produce. Write, write, write. The mind of Jason is simply unable to comprehend this. What is written here is only a hint of my thoughts. . .and still, my spirit knows. For it senses something my mind cannot articulate or properly know. Words are useful but they convey only so much. Energy is more comprehensive than Matter. Frustrating. Someday Reality will be known.

11 June 2007

Mondayness

Some running news: Got home at 3 AM. Woke up at 9 AM and warmed up cold tamales and chili. Still hungry. Added a can of ravioli. . .just right. Then, drank coffee and lots of water. 5 hours later crawled through a 6 1/2 mile run in 90 degree heat. Came home and washed the salt crystals off my dehydrated body. The last mile didn't feel all that bad. What I remember of it.

09 June 2007

Sometimes it's better to ask no questions

9 June 2007, 8:48 PM, Saturday, Chesapeake, VA

Went to Walmart at 7AM and saw an old woman talking to all the other customers as if they were old friends. What does one do when a talkative person wishes to discuss Life with you in the early morning hours? Why you nod your head, smile, and politely say, "Por lo siento Senora, pero no hablo ingles."

In the parking lot I walked past a giggling woman saran-wrapping a blue Chevy. I asked no questions and acting like this was a perfectly normal Saturday morning occurrence.

Then I drove to work, set off 25 bombs (because it's my job), clocked out and then. . .I accidentally killed the bird of peace, a dove, with my car.

and then. . .when I got home, a Jamaican walked over and handed me a free slice of pizza. Again, I asked no questions.

Earth, wind, and fire. . .and water and weeds. All of these can be purchased at Walmart. This amuses me to no end. The meaninglessness of it all. This. . .chasing after the wind. . .with one's Visa. I find it funny that can you not only purchase dirt, but organic dirt. That is, 'naturally produced dirt. Dirt free from dirt. Clean sterile dirt. Aseptic soil. and then. . .

In the food section we have, by the lettuce, . . .bags of dandelion shoots for sale. Weeds. Think of that.

Weeds. Weeds for your hard earned cash. Organic weeds with no pesticides. Pesticides, of course, can be purchased separately. Weeds with no chemicals and no bugs. Bugs can be purchased at Burpees magazine and NorthernTools.com. I know. I have the catalog. Pestilence for a price. Hmm. . .interesting. And still, in this meaningless life, the Teacher asks no questions.

Fire. That gift from Prometheus is now bought at a price in the form of matches, cigarette lighters, and gas grill ignitors.

Air costs 50 cents and you've got to pump it yourself.

Wind is a bit more expensive nowadays, but $20 sounds about right. Multiply that by 10 if you want it cold.

70% of the planet is covered in water, but rest assured gentle readers. . .Walmart sells plenty of water as well. In fact, some of the water is injected with greenhouse gases. . .which makes little sense. Why? Because you drink it. . .then burp, thus re-releasing the greenhouse gases back into the atmosphere and hastening the heat death of the Universe by producing more entropy.

This is why I ask no questions.

It's a mad mad mad mad world.

08 June 2007

Naturally speaking

So why do we create things? Why do writers write, painters paint, and sculptors sculpt? To express who we are. We make things to reveal our real self to the world. Because some of us are not terrible articulate, we reveal our real self, our soul, by what we make. We have to to do this too. It's not right otherwise. It's God's fault really, he designed us this way. It's inherent to want to do this. Have you ever tried not talking for 3 days? Can't do it. You'll start talking to yourself. . .and answering yourself because, naturally, you need an audience. And the more work you put into a project, the wearier you become because. . .you put a lot of yourself into it. And that's why God rested after making the universe.

Think about this, if you dare. Anything you make, only reveals a tiny part of your real self. Anything you make, any choice you decide upon, is telling about your nature.

Idols and idolatry are wrong because though idols may be pretty to look at. . .it's the fact that one is giving attention to the created rather the the createe.

Natural Selection. Nature is thought and taught in most universities to be a blind, random entity. Humans are believed to be the result of a series of chance events. Richard Dawkins says biological entities give the appearance of being designed. Is it just me, or does it sound like he's trying to persuade himself to believe what he intuitively knows to be otherwise?

Running news: I was bad this week. I have many excuses, headaches, heat, lack of sleep, need more rest, iron defiency, fear of asteroids hitting the planet-you name it. I didn't do a whole lot of running. Some weight work, but that's about it.

Non-running news: I'm going to San Antonio next week. I promise to post pictures if I have time.

05 June 2007

Two and a half months to go. . .

In 2 and 1/2 months, I will move to the other side of the North American continent. New job, new friends, new mountains, new ocean, new car, new church, new apartment. I'm not the slightest bit worried, instead I'm strangely excited. Life is an adventure you know. Not that my job here isn't sometimes an adventure. The other day, while ransacking the laboratory's cabinets looking for a plastic fork, I found in one drawer; a woman's pink woolen sock, a cardboard box labeled 'bombs,' and some chemicals that are near the bottom of the Periodic Table of Elements. (Dave, if you're reading this. . .they have metallic Selenium here! The solid metal form.)

Nessie is in the news again, (long as we're on the subject.) Last week somebody claimed to shoot a pic of her. Now, there is a $2 million reward for definitive evidence of the Loch Ness monster.

Yesterday, I saw a gold ring in a pig's snout going to prison. I'll let you fill in the details.

In running news: Last week was painful. I felt like a slug vacationing at the Great Salt Lake. Today wasn't much better-7 and 1/2 miles, very easy. Followed by weight-lifting and fried saffron rice.

03 June 2007

02 June 2007

Intelligent Design

On Monday 2, 2005, President Bush said Intelligent Design should be taught alongside evolution.

“I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,” Bush said. “You’re asking me whether or not most people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.

Statistics show nearly 90% of all Americans believe God created the world. Much talk has been made in the news recently concerning whether or not Intelligent Design (ID) should be taught as an alternative to Darwinian evolution, the theory stating natural selection caused gradual changes over time. Given the recent news to ID, it is important to evaluate its merits.

Intelligent Design. Just what is it?

ID is the view that life shows signs of having been designed by an intelligent being. It emerged from the Argument from Design.

For thousands of years, the complexity in nature has led people to believe there must be an intelligent Creator. This is the Argument from Design. The basic premise of this argument is that the world exhibits an intelligent purpose based on experience from nature such as its order, unity, and complexity. Thus, there must be an intelligent purpose and order that we can observe.

One of the best-known expressions of the Argument from Design was by the British philosopher and clergyman William Paley (1743-1805). In his book, "Natural Theology," he bases this argument on an analogy.

Suppose one was to find a watch lying on the ground. We know from human experience that the watch, with its complexity, must have been created by an intelligent designer. The same analogy applies to the universe. As with a watch, the universe exhibits complexity and order, thus it must also have an intelligent designer. Hence, watch is to watchmaker as universe is to God.

Living structures were thought to be beyond the power of physical processes operating by blind chance, thus, they must have been the "wise contrivance" of an intelligent creator.

Although his notion was sound, it never provided a rigorous standard for detecting design in nature. So when Darwin’s theory arrived, design all but vanished from biology.

With Darwin's Theory of Evolution now reigning as the dominant paradigm of the day, one would think the Argument from Design to be dead. However, the past few decades have witnessed a resurgence in the number of serious Christian scientists who hold to the belief of design in nature. This has been linked to an increase in many discoveries in science that are favorable to the Argument from Design (i.e. quantum mechanics and information content in DNA). Discoveries that have convinced many scholars, Darwin’s theory is inadequate to account for.

A new area in scientific research began emerging called Intelligent Design (ID). ID has two basic assumptions: an intelligent agent is necessary to cause the complex, information richness in biology and that these causes are empirically detectable. Empirical detectability is what sets apart ID from the design arguments of the past.

To say that something is empirically detectable is to imply there are methods based on observational features that distinguish it as being intelligently caused from being caused by undirected natural causes…i.e. Darwinian evolution. Many other sciences, such as cryptography and archaeology, have similar methods for distinguishing intelligent causes.

So how does it work?

ID looks for the existence of specified-complexity, that is, when we see a highly improbable event (complexity) with an associated identifiable pattern (specification), we recognize that event, or object, as designed.

For example, suppose I hand you a sheet of paper with the sentence.

ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME

And told you I typed it blindfolded, would you believe me?

Perhaps, perhaps not. This sentence, comprised of only two letters repeated, is a highly probable event. High probability corresponds to low complexity. The sentence fits a pattern (it’s specified), but because it is so short, one cannot say it was designed.

Now suppose I hand you an article with the sentence:

JDNXOWQPLMZNVIEW8VGHDB3764HFKDHJKDHJ

Even though the sentence is complex, it fits no recognizable pattern (it’s not specified).

I hand you a third sheet of paper with

TO BE OR NOT TO BE, THAT IS THE QUESTION.

And told you I typed it out on my computer blindfolded, you would probably not believe me.

Why? The odds are too low, for one thing. The likelihood of churning out a grammatically correct sentence in English by random is almost nil. This sentence clearly has an author. That’s specified-complexity in a nutshell.

So how does this apply to Biology?

The more biologists learn about life, especially on the microscopic level, the more it looks as if life is the product of design. In his book, “Darwin’s Black Box,” author Dr. Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University, uses the example of a bacteria’s flagellum. The flagellum is a motor bacteria use to propel themselves. Approximately 40 proteins are needed for it to work properly. If any one protein is missing, the flagellum won’t work. It takes every protein working in unison to operate. That is, if you remove one part, nothing works.

Another, non-biological, example would be the mousetrap. A mousetrap is essentially useless if any one part is missing. I suppose one could argue for its merits as a doorstop, but this is simply shirking the issue.

Behe calls this phenomenon Irreducible Complexity. Irreducible Complexity is another evidence of ID. Other Biological examples Behe mentions include the mammalian eye, the blood clotting mechanism, the immune system, and photosynthesis.

Why is it so important and how is it relevant to science?

ID differs from the Argument from Design in that ID doesn’t specify the agent of creation. Most ID theorists believe it is the God of the Bible, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be so. The main thing is that the object under investigation was designed. We can detect design without knowing what it was designed for. Furthermore, if we know something was designed, we can try to figure out its purpose. You can’t do this with evolution. ID adds another tool to a scientist’s tool chest.