Sharp Cheddar Cheese: The Ongoing Saga

A Thick Slice of Mild Cheese (Uncensored/Unformatted...)

2009-11-09T14:10:00.000-08:00

A Thick Slice of Mild Cheese by the "K-man" (unformatted)

I just might be:
Introspective to a fault
Need to put my thoughts to action; limited time
A rhyme a waste of mine?
But there is power in a line
One must not forget
Not talking Hardy Boys; Frank and Joe; or fatty Chet

Attempts to engage the mysteries of life
Not fearing strife, but engaging it, sometimes abating it
Not stating it, debating it

Learning from mistakes
Takes some guts
And over time one hopes to avoid ruts
Making time flow not fly
Minding the who, where, when, and sometimes why

Keeping it really real:
I get high, I lie, I cry, I shy
Away from a lot of the above
And I lag in my search for multi-types of love
I keep my mind in the sky
A dirty dove

A material understanding
Pushes me to landing
But is the ground solid?
Id versus Ego (ongoing dispute)

Avoid boxes, walls, reliance on hallowed halls
On certain levels we're all the same
Shit, piss, puke in stalls
Places we feed
Fulfill needs
A spot I like to read

When I sit and shit
I try to expand my mind
Come up with shit lines at times
Rhyme rhyme with rhyme

Me and my mind we take our stinky, sweet time
A misdemeanor; minor crime

Not too quick to shout,
"It's all good!"
As a with ignoring withouts

Take heed as you read
Still want more cheese?
Share peace, seek truth, and love your neighbor as yourself...
Over and out.

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Hey all!

It's been a long while since any contribution to sccos for whatever reasons. It's never too late to pick up again, though. For all concerned, I am doing well. Currently a jaded "Junior-plus," Sociology major (possible B.S. by this summer!) living in an icy dungeon cell (supercheap rent is nice, though), I work some part-times and fail at balancing full-time student responsibilities (coming to terms with what I rationalize as higher-ed's weaknesses).

That's it for now...

I should be studying.

Peace and love to all!

Alister McGrath and Richard Dawkins' Dialogue

2009-10-19T12:56:00.000-07:00

Interesting video.

This actually raises my respect for Dawkins. The fact that these guys can talk as calmly and rationally as they are, even without really mincing words, is pretty impressive. The whole thing certainly doesn't need watching to get that point across; even five minutes would do to get it across. I still like McGrath better, but I have to give Dawkins more credit than I have in the past for making an honest effort to interact with ideas.

Props to the President!

2009-09-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

President Obama recently rejected outright those arguments made by some stupid people on the left that the only real issue people have with Obama is his race--here he's doing so with respect to health-care, but since he's intelligent I have no doubt he would do so with respect to every other issue that, like this one has nothing to do with his race.

Props to Obama for this.

Interestings, Fri. Sept. 04

2009-09-04T11:16:00.000-07:00

Interestings for the Week

What is an interesting, you ask?

It comes from a now-older KDUP radio show called The Mean Saints, in which a couple of friends of mine pretended to be miraculously radio-ized dead saints Athanasius and Jerome, and Jerome accidentally said "an interesting about G.K. Chesterton" instead of "an interesting fact about..." Anyway, it got me and a friend from the Faith and Leadership House using adjectives as nouns like no tomorrow. So here's some interestings from the last week that I've picked up, blogosphere or otherwise.

---

I found an interesting. Apparently, according to the USCCB and numerous Vatican documents, health care is a right,, not a privilege. I'm down with that. The unfortunate thing is, well...

Catholic teaching on health care + Catholic teaching on why the heck health care is even a right in the first place --> If any governmental system, a governmental system that nobody wants to run because it won't be allowed to provide abortion.

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There's an awesome about the new NIV Bible coming out...

How does that make you feel? If you're reading this you probably knew already, but at any rate. Roger Pearse, a hobbyist of classics and church Fathers, gives an awesome here. He also provides what amounts to in my mind a thought-provoking (if unintentional) commentary on the nature of corruption, as opposed to legit theological development.

---

Do yourself a favor and check out the gigantic that is Brickistan. It's a city made of Legos and it is nothing short of crazy. Overview photo of Brickistan follows:

So go to the Flickr page and check it out in detail.

---

Here's an impressive. The President is apparently going to give some speech to school kids about staying in school and trying hard or somesuch other after-school-special stuff that the kids probably really do need to hear, and some parents don't want it heard because they're afraid Obama's going to go socialist on their kids.

The official government website for the speeches is here and contains some classroom materials. I'm still not sure I really understand what the criticism is. I'm also putting this forth regardless of the question of how outraged we'd be if Bush wanted to talk to our nation's children without parental consent or...state education oversight of speech content? are you kidding? If Obama had said "I'm going to talk to the children about health care," then there'd be concern. Then this would be political, like if Bush had wanted to talk to kids about the War on Terror, which is, sadly, a much more politicized animal than anyone wants it to be.

But quite frankly if anyone who's the President of the USA wants to present an after-school-special message to kids about trying your hardest and how YOU can make a difference or whatever. If anyone's got an actual excerpt of this speech that shows it championing socialism, I'd like to see it. The White House plans to release the speech on Monday, a day before it's given, so opponents will have their chance to skim it for socialism if they want. As far as I can tell, though unless Obama tells the kids they're clinging bitterly to small-town values, he's fine. As it stands the only real case I've heard made consists of empty rhetoric, and that's not cool.

But it sure makes for a fun week.

A Peculiar Manor

2009-08-13T20:56:00.000-07:00

The following is a short story. The world it is in is one that exists mostly in my head. To clear up any theological confusions it is a world in which—sort of like in Lewis's Narnia, but not really quite like Narnia---persons know Jesus “by a different name.” There are a few theological ideas that I wanted to explore when I started thinking about this world, and I began to think up a series of stories with an unsolved murder acting as a plot device to connect them (though ultimately forming a sort of story in itself). This is one of those stories. It is not at the beginning or at the end, in part because I haven't got the murder part worked out totally yet, and don't know if I ever will work that out or write other pieces of this story. The attempt I have made here is an attempt to write the story in a largely self-contained fashion. Within you should expect to find a few Biblical themes explored, as well as other, less Scripturally explicit, theological ideas. If you do read it and you find some of these ideas, or other ones that you're not sure I meant to explore, please do feel free to post a comment and let me know what you've found. I would love to know what you find in terms of theme, even if you're not comfortable posting it here.

Lastly, anyone who knows me might guess that I owe a lot in terms of imagination and ideas and wit to G.K. Chesterton; I do, but I also hope and pray that what I write might be more than just a shadow of the work of those authors I admire, and a vehicle for Christian expression and exploration in its own right. Please enjoy, if you can.

A Peculiar Manor

Two travelers were huddled on the front porch of a great house in the country. It was night-time, and raining rather violently.

One was a man. Fairly young, sporting an off-white shirt under a brown vest underneath a gray trench-coat, with gray trousers. His skin was fairly light, his frame lanky. He had brown hair and wore a tasteful brown bowler. The other was a woman, two or three years his senior, who wore a white jacket over a light purple dress. She was tanner than him and held an average frame. Her hair was blonde and she wore what appeared to be a purple bowler, except stretched to three times its height.

The two had come a long way from a nearby city and had not a few scares, mostly because he had suspected her of a murder and, as the detective, had been forced to look after her and see her safely to somewhere within town. But friendly people thought to be unfriendly had chased them away, to the point where they had spent all the money they had, and found themselves faced with a twenty-mile walk back in the rain; two miles along they had found the house. Due to the aggressive weather, the pair hoped they might get out of the rain for awhile and perhaps have some tea or cocoa. The man knocked on the gigantic door and then turned to the woman. “Oh, come on! Where's your sense of adventure?”

“I lost it somewhere between being trailed by that man in black and riding in that flying deathtrap you called transportation.”

“Well, we've got to make the best of these things. Sometimes you can't...”

The door creaked open, revealing a servant girl about two years younger than him, dressed in what appeared to be a uniform of sorts, a white tunic and shorts, whose plain face was full of joy. The sight of rain-soaked strangers filled it further still. “Hello,” she said.

“Hello. I'm Ben Simonson and this is Lady--”

“Oh, no need for all that now. Get yourselves out of the rain first.”

Ben and the lady obliged; the servant addressed them again. “Now, you were saying?”

“I'm Ben Simonson and this is Lady Rose.”

“Lady Rose Alston.”

“Could we have a sit for an hour or two, to see if the rain subsides?”

“We can do better than that! Our master is always happy to have visitors for dinner.” She motioned to them to follow her and led them down one of a dozen hallways. “Can I get you a drin--?” she asked, as she led them into the parlor.

“Tea.” Rose was hasty.

“...Cocoa.” Ben gave it maybe too much thought.

After she left Rose turned to Ben with a serious face. “If it turns out they are cannibals, I won't be pleased.”

“Cannibals?”

“'Have visitors for dinner?'”

“That is not what that means.”

“Given the trip so far, I would not be surprised.”

The servant reentered and handed them their hot drinks. “Excuse me miss; what is your name?” asked the lady.

“Bernadette, ma'am. Also, the master will want you two at the head of the table tonight. Mr. Simonson on the right, and you on the left.”

“Can we meet him before dinner? Get introduced and whatnot?” Ben was sincerely intrigued.

“Well, he's not actually in at the moment and, well...” The plain face grew apologetic. “Master Nathan's only reliable appearance is at dinnertime.” The pair appeared quite puzzled, and so Bernadette continued. “He's like that.” She flashed a smile and left the two confused travelers sitting in the parlor and drinking their exceptional drinks.

****

When dinner came a male servant named Mark arrived to escort them to the dining room. The room itself contained only one table, but a large table. It seated twenty to a side on its long ends, and two or three on each of the short ends. When they arrived the last of the food was being set out, and it appeared that when the serving was done and the master arrived, the table would be full.

Once the table was full there were about five minutes of waiting, and then the same creak of the giant front door, and a loud slam. A few shuffles and footsteps later and the Master Nathan came bumbling through the dining room door. Now he was neither skinny nor heavyset, tall nor short. His skin was a mysterious tone; persons attempting to guess at a race usually failed. He wore a fine dark-red three-piece suit, with a top hat that fit his head perfectly. The suit was torn a little, and more than a little wet and muddied. “Apologies on my lateness, everybody. Now please--” here the master turned and noticed his guests. “Wonderful! Can someone say who they are?”

Bernadette piped up. “Ben Simonson and Lady Rose Alston.”

“Wonderful!” Now please, let us say grace. Rex, would you?”

A small servant stood up. He was one of the Reptilians, a strange and sometimes primitive people who were, well, quite reptilian in skin and face, though 'human' in their standing, walking and talking. Lady Rose wondered a bit at the sight, because like most city-folk she had heard so little about these strange people that she doubted their existence. Rex stood as Nathan sat, his tail wagging excitedly. “Oh, yes.”

The room silent, Rex spoke the prayer in a poem.

“God bless this house,
And bless our guests,
And the food upon this table.

God bless our friends,
And bless our foes,
And the horses in our stable.

God keep us safe and keep us free,
Of anger, hatred, greed and lust.

God keep us safe and help us grow
In Inri, wisdom that we trust.”

Rex Sat, and the serving and passing and eating of food (and not a little conversation) commenced.

Master Nathan asked his guests many questions, like who they were exactly and how they had come to his manor. And so the two recounted a few bizarre events to him. First there was a murder in the city they had come from, originally thought to have been part of a duel, on which Ben was a detective and in which the Lady had been a suspect, which was how the whole mess started. Second, a strange cloaked man had chased them to a small town shortly out of the city, and he had had to stay with her because, after all, she was still a suspect. Third, still fleeing from his man they had fled by way of bird-basket to a farmer's market a few acres from the house, where the cloaked man appeared to meet them, and turned out to be harmless. And last, trying to make their way to the city, their arrival at a strange house with one master and forty-three servants.

Nathan also asked whether Lady Rose was still a murder suspect. Rose's voice had more than hint of frustration when she responded that no, she wasn't, and she wouldn't be on this terrible adventure if anyone had had the sense not to make her a suspect to begin with.

“It was my fault,” said Ben. “I was supposed to keep an eye on her, and I didn't figure out she was innocent until we were up in that basket, pulled along by a flock of doves.”

“Ah,” said Nathan.

Now they in turn learned from Nathan and his servants the ways of their house, including their duty to do dishes after dinner, the master and servants' insistence that all guests stay the night, all the odds and ends of work at the manor, and Nathan's generosity and frequent misadventures outside. Most recently he had helped two farmers returning from the market to get their cart and mule out of a watery ditch.

The meal itself was quite good, and the guests at least okay with the duty of dishes. When those were done, they were told their clothes would be cleaned overnight and that they had servants' clothes waiting for them in the meantime.

****

Shortly before the house curfew the two relaxed in the servants' general room, talking with Bernadette and Rex. Lady Rose raised a practical question, asking whether the whole business with the dishes was payment for their stay.

“Not exactly,” Bernadette replied. “It's because whoever sits at his right and left always does the dishes. He always calls two of us in a night.”

“And the guests always get a shot,” Rex interjected. “Once a group of eight came, and he made 'em stay for four nights. Sometimes.” He paused. “Sometimes he picks someone who's mad at him. It's awkward, but fun. Remember that day the horses had diarrhea and stable-hand Ted was on his left, Bernie? That was classic.”

The servants exchanged a look and a laugh, then turned somewhat embarrassed to their guests when they remembered it was an inside joke. Bernadette spoke. “Sorry. If you're ever here again we'll fill you in. As it stands it's almost time for bed.”

Ben and Rose parted with the other two and left the servants' chamber. With the aid of one or two stragglers they located their guest rooms, across the way from each other and down a long hallway from the servants' quarters. “Hey Ben,” said the lady. “For what it is worth, this is probably the least terrifying part of the trip so far.”

“Heh. Yes.”

“Well, goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

CMR Commentary

2009-07-02T22:28:00.001-07:00

Creative Minority Report has some excellent theological musings on a new piece of an old celebrity scandal, here.

Reading List for the Summer

2009-06-26T10:17:00.000-07:00

Here's my reading list for the summer, in its general order. The three main categories are my theological reading list, as it were.

Finished Projects:
Love and Responsibility

Current Projects:
The Lamb's Supper
The Book of Romans

Later Projects:
Paul on Marriage and Celibacy
Secrets in the Dark
The Christian Commitment

Novels (Concurrent Reading)
The Man Who Was Thursday
Gilead
The Road

Descriptions (Read Items):
Love and Responsibility by Karol Wojtila, A.K.A. Pope John Paul II before he was JPII. I just finished this today and it was pretty much awesome. I didn't buy into every single thing that was said, but there may also be links in the argument that are made elsewhere, and as a framework for thought/discrenment (which is the reason I picked it up in the first place, broadly speaking) I found it quite useful.

Descriptions (Unread Ones):
The Lamb's Supper by Scott Hahn. Hahn is a Catholic theologian who writes a lot of popular theology and apparently here he's going to attempt a connection between the Mass and the Book of Revelation. This one should be interesting.
Paul on Marriage and Celibacy by Dr. Will Deming. Deming is actually on the theology faculty at University of Portland, the chair as of this year. I'm looking forward to reading his book.
Secrets in the Dark by Frederich Buechner. It's a book of sermons that I received and started a couple of summers ago, but then I stopped for whatever reason.
The Christian Commitment by Karl Rahner, S.J. I have no idea exactly what this is about, except that it probably involves the Christian commitment. But hopefully it's good!
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. This would be Gilbert's suspense-ish novel about an ideal everyman who infiltrates a ring of anarchy.
Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, which is a portrait of a small-town preacher, his father, and his father, and the first guy's son. It's also an immensely awesome look at life in general. This is actually a re-read for me.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which is apparently a kind of science fiction or speculative fiction.

If anyone's got anything theological or otherwise to add, please post and let me know.

Testing 1 2 3...

2009-06-25T12:48:00.001-07:00

A Thought

2009-06-13T20:01:00.001-07:00

Whenever a human being, particularly a human being who professes belief in God, realizes that the world is not the way it ought to be, they ought to do three things:

(1) Examine whether in this aspect the world is as it should be or not, that is, attempt to discern how this aspect of the world would be seen by the Divine.

Then, granted (1), they should

(2) Pray that this aspect of the way things are, insofar as it originates in themselves, would be cleansed and purged from their inner life.
(3) Work to change the world by their own actions--in thoughts, words, what they do and what they do not do.

I had a realization recently that there was in fact something about the world that I absolutely hated, and that I had an opportunity to help change it by doing it differently. So I did. Granted that I didn't go in quite the order I recommend, I also realized how I'd failed to pray for this change in myself as well as in the world.

I'm not going to say what it is. But if anyone has thoughts on this as an abstract ideal, let me know.

Braid and Portal Are Freaking Amazing

2009-06-12T12:43:00.000-07:00

This is a beautiful game. Screwed with me on many levels, but it was heavily enjoyable. I loved its world and its characters...it was also kind of sad. But it was good, and there's an actual lesson to be learned.

This game is also quite pretty. I'm hesitant to call it 'beautiful,' and I'm also hesitant to identify much of a real 'lesson,' or message, but it's a similarly brilliant puzzler-disguised-as-something-else kind of game.

FINALS COUNTDOWN

2009-04-27T20:46:00.000-07:00

Real Analysis in Class and Out-of-Class: Done. The out-of-class finished about halfway, and I should have at least most of the credit for every problem on the in-class. So this final shouldn't be too terrible.

Four left to go. They're all tomorrow.

Worst thing about all of this: Because of my own stupidity I'm guaranteed almost no sleep tonight. I only got about half an hour of sleep last night and got about three this afternoon. So I'm hoping for basically a little bit more sleep tonight, but there's also:

The good news: which is that after the Crypto Final and whatever food I ought to be eating...basically after a nice late 10 PM Tuesday prayer, I get to settle down and sleep for N hours, where N is the sum total of all the blood and sweat and tears of my procrastination and stupidity and awkwardness and growing in the Love of God this semester... I know Pat wouldn't object to me skipping his prayer under the circumstances, but I can always just nap between dinner and prayer and not worry about it...

Marriage Final Essays due: Done.

Now there's three left to go and they're all today. Logic won't suck but the other two will!

Logic In-Class Final Exam: 1:30 PM. I don't anticipate it taking me more than an hour and 15, so depending on how much time I need for the Crypto final I might ask Dr. Santana if showing up late is okay.

Now there's me, Crypto and Complex Variables.

Cryptography Final Take-Home Exam: 4:00 PM, so basically I get to hand it to Dr. Wootton at the start of my...

Complex Variables Final Exam: 4:10 PM. Basically I carve out about 30-60 minutes for review of this tomorrow sometime.

Now there's just me and a pile of somewhat regrettable classroom performances, but less regrettable out-of-classroom ones!

I love God. It might sound like a "well, duh," statement, but I don't exactly like God at the moment, entirely...but it's in a loving way.

The way things have gone this semester is yet another pointer to a Mystery that some logicians will never understand, because they will, in the words of Chesterton, be "seek[ing] to get the heavens into [their] head[s]."

What the Hetts?! #N: Wow

2009-04-25T10:34:00.000-07:00

A high school senior kicked major butt on, like, every standardized test ever.

Amazing.

"What the hetts?!"

The Thought

2009-04-21T01:54:00.001-07:00

The thought of God's grace being in any way without an element of violence has become to me a theological travesty. I still believe in God's plans. I still believe they are made to prosper us and not to harm us. But I am not so sure that we can really take the "not to harm us" to mean that God's plans never harm us...There appear to be too many miserable saints for this to be a real, viable option.

Feel free to discuss as you see fit.

Unintentional Spiritual Themes 1

2009-04-16T08:58:00.001-07:00

There's something unintentionally spiritual about this song. It feels a little bit Chestertonian, in terms of the theme of becoming like little children.

[Later edit: That theme, in connection with magic. Of course that theme and of itself belongs first/foremost to the big J.)

And Ain't I a Woman?

2009-04-11T20:15:00.000-07:00

One of the awesomest sermons I've ever read. Has one major theological problem, but it's in the phrasing, not the intention--and it's one of the greatest speeches I know of.

Brief Responses

2009-04-01T20:21:00.000-07:00

auntie k: what is your secret?

Lots of conditioner.

llgp: Certainly seems consistent with bearing one another's burdens.

Yes.

L-Po: Have you ever sent a card to Post Secret?

No.

Make Sure

2009-03-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

Make sure you don't carry your secrets alone.

I do not claim this as an explicitly Christian notion, but I certainly claim it as a piece of advice that ought to be a logical implication of anything calling itself Christianity.

Hat Tip

2009-03-25T09:26:00.001-07:00

Studying group theory late at night might just be a ticket to quasi-insanity.

Waking up all frazzled because of said quasi-insanity might just be a ticket to hilarity.

Film at 11.

On the plus side I'm feeling pretty good about the test I was doing.

The K-man's "Groovy Tune Sunday"

2009-03-15T18:37:00.001-07:00

I can't stop playing this tune!

Give it a listen, ye readers of the cheese.

artist: Animal Collective
song: My Girls
album: Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009)

"ADOBE SLABS FOR MY GIRLS!"

(EXCLAMATION POINT !)

I Tested my Spanish Today

2009-02-24T11:39:00.000-08:00

By trying to read this. It's just the wikipedia Spanish page for Mathematics. I've had to look a couple of words up already. More on this as it comes.

It's been so long...

2009-02-20T01:26:00.000-08:00

Hello internets! It's the k-man, back in action after a lengthy sabbatical. I am alive and studying at Portland State, taking some sociology courses as a declared Sociology Major.

Hmmm... nothing all that interesting is happening in my life at the moment. I've bought a few things recently as I am doing my best to support our economy in these tough times. A joke. BUT: the economy and the foundations for the global economic paradigm are pretty much the focus of two of my courses and I've learned that some major changes definitely need to occur as far as trade agreements go (see WTO, NAFTA, etc) before we see any lasting change (hint: buying an mp3 player and a drum set from random people on craiglist won't solve or ease the crisis we're in), especially internationally. Corporations able to sue countries = ERROR.

Anyway: I am also taking a course titled "The Sociology of Integrative Medicine," which is basically a review of complementary and alternative medicine modalities with a sociological twist. I'm proud to say we've meditated (more or less) as a class on multiple occasions.

Soooo: nothing too exciting. I might start contributing to SCCOS on a more regular basis if I get the urge.

Take care, internets! I leave you with a link! It be a hosted mp3 of a tune I've been groovin to lately. "Raphael Saadiq - Skyy, Can You Feel Me"

Blood Sugars Blogging (02-19-09)

2009-02-19T19:39:00.000-08:00

Blood Sugar table! EDIT: BLOGGER SCREWED IT UP. DO NOT HAVE TIME TO FIX NOW.

Accurate table will be up tomorrow!

Date MOR LUN AFT DIN
01/28/09 181 201 414
01/29/09 226 273
01/30/09 110 218 326
01/31/09 112 362
02/01/09
02/02/09 226 254 294
02/03/09 125 138 196 274
02/04/09 86 182 235
02/05/09 202 220
02/06/09 141 142
02/07/09 106 169 324
02/08/09 141 262
02/09/09 187 216 357
02/10/09 115 278 390 349
02/11/09 119 150 290
02/12/09 101 171 374
02/13/09 140 140 195 324
02/14/09 152 214
02/15/09 99 270 308
02/16/09 182 263 220
02/17/09 119 181 212
02/18/09 98 143 207
02/19/09 82 113 227

Lent: The Rules for the Season

2009-02-19T13:58:00.000-08:00

Warning: I'll be talking a lot about sex!

No, that's not what I'm giving up, because there's nothing to give up there, really. But my lenten sacrifice this year is sexual innuendo. I am aiming for a permanent reduction in its prevalence in my conversation, preceded by the period of Lent during which it may not be used.

But what is to qualify as innuendo? For purposes of this lenten sacrifice, innuendo will be defined in the following way, with exceptions listed below. If and only if I remember that I have forgotten an important exemption (i.e., a time when I am allowed under these terms to utilize sexual innuendo) I will add it here and make note that it has been added. It might seem a little legalistic to codify a Lenten sacrifice. I know that. But it's the best way for me to do this stuff.

For the entirety of Lent (up to, but not including, Easter Sunday afternoon), I may not commit:

(1) A deliberate attempt to make a coarse joke that involves sexuality.
(2) A deliberate attempt to make a pun which in some way involves sexuality.
(3) A deliberate attempt to set someone else up for such a joke or pun.
(4) A deliberate attempt to let someone else know that they, myself or anyone else has intentionally or unintentionally created a sexual innuendo.
(5) A failure to avoid modifying my own phrasings so as to avoid such setups.

Notes on the rule and exceptions to the rule:

(5) applies if and only if I have sufficient warning. So if I realize mid-sentence that the statement is open to innuendo, I may finish the sentence as originally planned, barring that a better wording occurs immediately.

I may utilize sexual innuendo in an effort to be more discrete and avoid more awkward discussions of sexuality and related concepts.

One of my housemates and I have a running joke/contest where we give each other quotations from The Office and then see if the other can identify where the quotation is from. If I am engaging in this game, I am allowed to use sexual innuendo if and only if it appears in the quoted statement by the characters. However, this is not an excuse to play the game merely so I have an excuse to use innuendo.

Lent begins, and so does the self and communal enforcement of these rules, next Wednesday, that is, Ash Wednesday, 12:00 AM.

Fun with Definitions and Living

2009-02-19T11:39:00.000-08:00

guilt: a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined. (dictionary.com definition number 2)

shame: the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another. (dictionary.com definition number 1)

Now as a Christian, I think guilt and shame can both be useful in motivating us to change our ways and repent; but I find that guilt (which I associate with actual wrongdoing on one's own part) is both healthier and more theologically sound as a motivator than shame (which I associate with wrongdoing only insofar as it is perceived by society.) Example:

A Christian man who is a regular church attender goes to a strip club. Now his guilt is a function mostly of his own moral code as it has been built up--if he's been in church most or all of his life, it's probably acting up at some point during the evening. But the shame is relative to his different social circles: his congregation, and the people, if any, who are at the strip club with him. One of those circles places a good deal more shame on the incident than the other.

I guess I find shame problematic because it gives others too much control over how one feels and makes moral decisions and is relative to society, whereas guilt is (at its best) a function of a well-formed conscience.

But what if we notice something about ourselves that causes both feelings? Guilt and shame? Is there a way to properly respond to the guilt within us without giving too much power to the shame? Certainly I distinguish the two, but certainly they are not without commonality, and find themselves often intertwined or at least incidentally aligned.

So what to do if I do something, or find myself doing something, that causes both?

Blood sugars will be posted after prayer tonight.

An Awesome Short Play

2009-02-18T10:39:00.000-08:00

This is a short play by David Ives called Sure Thing it's about two people who meet in a cafe and whose conversation continually goes awry. Each time it does, a bell is rung and time resets to the last "good point" of conversation. It's...pretty hilarious.

Content warning: A single f-word is present in the script, which occurs here about 5:40 in the part 1 video. If you skip from 5:40 to 5:46 you should miss it. So you don't miss stuff, the gist is something like "Django Reinhard record...only all you'll really want to do is--"

Part 1:

Part 2:

Nancy Pelosi + Pope = ?!?!?!

2009-02-17T14:09:00.000-08:00

Well, here's an interesting news story. Nancy Pelosi's going to be meeting the Pope in Rome. And it's going to be an amazing to see.

Yes, I left out "thing" from "amazing thing." It's so amazing that it's just an amazing; the "thing" is not even necessary.

Hat tip to the Religion News Service.

In other news, I've discovered that Drum and Bass makes excellent music for doing mathematics to. What's currently playing is Pendulum's "Through the Loop," which samples the original Willy Wonka and makes me think it must be the scariest movie ever.

This is an Interesting

2009-02-05T23:53:00.000-08:00

Via Creative Minority Report. Apparently, the Obama campaign has made a strong commitment to transparency, and there are some questions as to how strong this commitment really is.

Moneyquote from CMR's Patrick Archbold: "Mr. President, if you have any mercy in your heart, any mercy at all, give Press Secretary Robert Gibbs a new job."

Watch, comment if you please.

X != Y

2009-01-27T13:34:00.001-08:00

What it says.

This is Quite Interesting

2009-01-22T11:53:00.000-08:00

Two churches, one white and one black, but both part, it seems, of the United Methodist Church, existing pretty much side-by-side for decades. I realize whoever's reading this may well have known about it already, but I definitely didn't. Definitely read the article even if you know the basic story already, though. It's...very interesting.

New York Times story here. My heart goes out to the people in these congregations and their struggle for reconciliation. I'm not quite sure what the proper prayer is here; maybe all I can really pray for is Christian unity in this case.

Edit: Hat tip to GetReligion.

The way this is going, I'm going to have to just start making posts full of theological interesting things, becuase so many of them keep happening.

Blood Sugars Blogging (01-22-09)

2009-01-22T08:47:00.000-08:00

I'll be blogging multiple meanings of blood sugar on an approximately weekly basis.

Blood Sugar:

01-22: 172
01-21: 445,309,197
01-20: 224
01-19: 366,289,
01-18: 249
01-17: 220
01-16: 235
01-14: 380

Blood Sugar:

You can find "Blood Sugar" by Pendulum by clicking on the link.

Theologically Interesting Thing

2009-01-21T21:02:00.000-08:00

Theological interesting thing:

Jesus was born out of wedlock. What does this mean for our expectations about the Divine, if anything?

"What the Hetts?!"

2009-01-19T18:51:00.000-08:00

Hello, depression.

What the hetts?!

It's the Week of Christian Unity!

2009-01-19T09:33:00.001-08:00

It's the week of Christian unity here.

What will you do, what prayers will you be saying to mark the occasion?

Personally I'll be doing some praying and thinking about what happens logistically with this sort of thing. It's really easy to pray a big game and forget about the fact that if we're ever going to achieve real Christian unity, someone's theology (or at least, someone's insistence on certain theological constructs) is going to have to change. There's a prayer service I'll be going to later this week for Christian unity, so I'll be watching and listening closely to the words that are said and the implications that are made, if any, for dialogue and theological systems.

The Person You Want to Be

2009-01-17T19:50:00.001-08:00

Let X = the person you are.
Let Y = the person you truly want to be. Not "if I were richer" or anything like that, but who you want to be morally, philosophically, spiritually.

Does X = Y?

Why or why not?

Whether X = Y or X != Y, is the fact of the equality or inequality a good or a bad thing?

I've been thinking about this question a bit lately, in particular in relation to relationships (romantic or unromantic.) I've decided it's fine for one person to change another in relationship as long as a) both people are open to being changed, b) both people are working towards a state of X = Y, c) neither of them is being coerced or forced along in an inappropriate fashion.

Silly Quotation Time

2009-01-16T16:21:00.000-08:00

From IRC, blatantly stolen from someone's signature on DigitalMZX.

ajs: I like how people talk behind my back when they know I'm asleep. I like to think that it's because I would superbly defeat their lies if I was active.

Bonus! Silly religious quotation!

Terryn: I've never heard anyone take umbrage to "old" and "new"
Es: terryn "old testament" is a horrible offense against the jews
Es: It implies that their religion be not poppin' fresh

I was definitely there for that one, and it was awesome. I wish I still had the full discussion there. That said, if you want to talk supercessionism, or talking behind peoples' backs, go ahead. You can even feel free to talk about supercessionism behind my back here while I'm away on retreat this weekend; I won't be able to do anything about it until tomorrow night!

Good day and God bless!

Christmas Break Reading List

2008-12-11T13:35:00.001-08:00

Christmas Break Reading List:

The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
A housemate gave me this for Secret Santa! I'm excited to read it; more Chestertonian fiction!

The seven letters of St. Ignatius to the early early Church
Un-academic reading related to my term paper. I hope it proves edifying.

Out of the Depths: Women's Experience of Evil and Salvation by Ivone Gebara
This is something that some of my friends had to read for a Theological Perspectives course this semester; I'm interested in Gebara's work, so I'm going to try and tackle this.

Are there any glaring omissions from this list? Please let me know. One caveat, though. If anyone in the Lower/Porter family adds anything over 200 pages to this list, and I accept it, and hasn't read Orthodoxy by Chesterton yet, adding said thing automatically adds it to their reading list for the Break, meaning I'm expecting them to have it read by January 14 or so, just as I'll expect me to have read their book by that time. I'm throwing that out partly as a challenge to the people in my extended family who don't think they can take the Chestertonian heat, when I'm fairly certain deep-down inside they're well and able.

Finals.

2008-12-11T03:36:00.000-08:00

Early Church History final complete.

Partial Differential Equations final survived, so far as I can tell. Update: I now have Professor confirmation and I-looked-at-my-test confirmation to confirm that I've survived not only the final but also the class.

Christian Personal Values final optional, and I already had a straight A in the class. So no point in taking it.

Real Analysis I final complete, or at the least I've used up all the time allotted in my professor's guidelines. Update: This appears to have gone fairly well and the problem that I did correctly that I was most worried about has been somewhat confirmed to have gone correctly via discussion with a classmate; this is as opposed to the one problem that I know for sure I did wrong.

Update: Religion and Science is done. Turned in. I'm probably going to bug my professor via e-mail to see about turning a bunch of stuff in to his online drop-box, because I haven't done that all semester. I'm pretty sure he and I both won't get in trouble for my not doing it; this is a just-in-case measure.

Classes ought to be survived, though I'm going to have to make some time to do some math over the break. I just am.

Theological thoughts: How do you people feel about the notion of God's self-emptying as applied to the process of creation? That is, in creation, God gives up some portion of the divine attribute of omnipotence? Update at 10:00 AM: I did write about this for the final, and it was interesting. I kind of like the voluntary-restriction-of-"omni" tack, but I wish people gave more credence to neo-Thomistic thought. In particular I wish the foreknowledge/foreordination distinction got more respect; you'd think it would from Christian theologians, considering Calvinists and Arminians have been arguing over whether it exists for years; oddly enough, in not acknowledging it so much, or in making it practically pointless, more modern theologians are siding with the Calvinists. Sigh.

Musical thoughts: "A Taste of Honey" is an awesome song. I'm not actually listening to the Herb Alpert version either; this is The Harry James Orchestra, apparently. And it's still awesome. Update: I've decided this song ought to be danced to.

Update in Placement: I did get some sleep, not entirely on purpose or entirely on accident.
Update: I'm going to go turn in a couple of finals and then get to relax, maybe sleep more. Good day and God bless.

Here's that Finals Schedule

2008-11-18T12:22:00.000-08:00

And it's looking absolutely horrid. I might (depending on scheduling of other things, like doctors' appointments) ask Dr. Hallstrom if I might take my PDE final a day early.

ON TUESDAY:

8:00-10:00 Early Christian History
10:30-12:30 Partial Differential Equations
1:30-3:30 Christian Personal Values

ON THURSDAY:

10:30-12:30 Real Analysis I
1:30-3:30 Religion and Science

I'm Insane

2008-11-17T09:51:00.000-08:00

Apparently I don't need Cryptography next semester. I don't even need to be in Differential Equations.

I also don't need to be in two of my theology classes, but those are good to have on hand for fulfilling my General Education upper-division stuff.

Sometimes it pays to actually check one's plan for graduation. If I had I might've been actually able to double-major-double-minor. Oh well.

Stuff on Translations

2008-11-13T12:09:00.000-08:00

Henri Neufeld has some interesting thoughts on Bible translations.

In other news, grad school in historical theology means I'll be learning some new languages. Latin and Greek for source texts and French and German for scholarship. (Thankfully it sounds as if the learning of the latter two will be a tad less intense.)

Adventure and Inconvenience

2008-11-02T00:35:00.000-07:00

"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered." - G.K. Chesterton

To be honest, sometimes these words seem to fit Disney movies more than they fit real life; what right-minded person looks at inconveniences as if they were adventures? But I'm starting to think they might be much more applicable to real life than I had started to think. After all, Chesterton never promised the resulting adventure would be fun or that the resulting inconvenience would not. He only said that an inconvenience can be looked at as adventure and an adventure as an inconvenience, and at least in the vast majority of cases I would say he's probably right.

Also, in other news, I've started a new thing where I'm trying to pray (not long, just like a line or two) every time I wash my hands.

I Just...

2008-10-30T23:20:00.000-07:00

I can't vote Obama.

He's. Just. Too. Pro. Choice.

It's just too much. I can't. People can scream at me all day to keep theology out of politics. I no longer care, as much as I respect their opinions and rights thereto.

Interesting Song

2008-09-20T13:51:00.000-07:00

I actually was told of this song by a MegaZeuxer a long time ago (note: not everything on that website is appropriate for kids.) It's a song by a band called "Hatfield and the North" called "Share It." The lyrics can be found on this webpage, and are quite awesome (there's half a stanza in there ranting about shampoo commercials), but I haven't quite worked out the meaning of everything in the song so again, there's the advising that it might not be fully appropriate. Anyway, here's the song: "Share It" by Hatfield and the North.

What?

2008-08-01T00:22:00.000-07:00

Matthew 3:7: "But when he [John the Baptist] saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: 'You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?'"

I'm confused. Is John mad? He goes on to remind them that being part of the Jewish tradition does not protect them from judgment, and that they ought to "produce fruit in keeping with repentance" (3:8) so it seems to be just part of a larger context of giving an (albeit less than friendly) exhortation to the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Quotations from the NIV.

Back After a Month--and Check This Out

2008-06-18T01:53:00.000-07:00

Holy crap. Lindy-hoppers on Good Morning America. 90's footage, but still good. There's a completely sick and insane aerial in there around 1:15, but do yourself a favor and watch it all anyway. Hat tip goes to a guy on the Gargle Blaster Blues forum.

This also marks the introduction of my label of "dancing: beautiful and fun", which is taken from an episode of the Muppet Babies where Scooter's sister, whatever her name is, is arguing with Piggy over whether dancing is supposed to be beautiful or fun; Scooter saves the day by coming out with a tap number and announcing "dancing can be beautiful and fun!"

How 'Bout that FLDS?

2008-04-29T22:37:00.000-07:00

So here's what I know, or think I know:

The Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints has, institutionally, perpetrated a lot of abuses against its members, particularly against teenage boys and girls, particularly in the arrangement of marriages between older men and teenage girls, but also in the exiling of boys from their homes to decrease competition for multiple wives. It is clearly an abusive organization.

At the YFZ Ranch in Texas we have about 400 children separated from their parents, many against their probably-legally-incompetent wills, and only one underage pregnant bride in custody. We have a bunch of families (families in a perpetually abusive system, but nonetheless I imagine at the least the mother-child bonds mean something) and they have been torn apart.

Based on a phone call from someone claiming to be a pregnant 16-year-old girl whom the authorities can't find. There are even suspicions that this girl is really a thirtysomething woman from out of state. They have some evidence now for the abuses they're accusing the FLDS of at this ranch, but it seems there may not have been enough to go in in the first place. I believe that the FLDS is an abusive church and that anyone involved in the essential rape of teenage girls or the exile of teenage boys should be prosecuted.

Does anything about this seem it's been handled in maybe a slightly un-Christian fashion? It's my personal opinion that in a Christian ethic both ends and means must be considered, and I'm fairly sure that the means have been violated in this case, and quite possibly the ends, too.

Parents, don't fret. This information has been stewing in my brain for quite awhile, and it's coming out now. But I am interested in what you have to say on the matter.

Back to liberation theology.

A Prescription to the Christian World

2008-03-30T21:41:00.000-07:00

...Read this. Responses are more than welcome, especially if you decide to try it.

I am sick of feeling my acute lack of compassion for people.
I am sick of serving God.
I am sick of having faith so deeply ingrained in me.
I am sick of feeling like I ought to work.
I am tired of being myself.
I am tired of caring about details of theology.

I'm going to keep trying to be compassionate anyway.
I'm going to keep serving God anyway.
I'm going to thank God for my faith anyway.
I'm going to try and work anyway.
I'm going to try and find who I am in God anyway.
I'm going to keep caring anyway.

I've been working with a lot of stuff lately. So have many others, including a good number of my friends and relatives. I'm going to suggest a Prescription to the Christian World right now (this is not to suggest all of my friends and relatives are Christians so much as to suggest that the aforementioned Christian world will probably find this prescription most helpful.) This is based on the notion that despite our belief in an all-powerful God, we also maintain belief that the same God is all-knowing and all-loving. It's a jumbled prescription. It's probably not perfect in dosage or content. This prescription is really a prayer. It is a not a full prayer; I would recommend you find sometime in the same day, same hour, even the same prayer to work in whatever else in your belief system ought to be included in a proper prayer. But at any rate I recommend that you do this:

Take a walk. Slowly. In private if you can, and outside if possible. Admire God's creation. Tell God how wonderful Creation is. Tell God how much you found yourself annoyed by Creation, especially those crows. Tell God how much you love being a servant. Praise God for the opportunity to serve in this world and in the world to come. Then keep serving. Tell God how much you love/hate being a servant. Shout at God. Tell God how much you wish you could stop serving. Then keep serving anyway. The emotion doesn't matter. What matters here is that you're telling God. God is there. God will listen.

D.Lo Posts Old Writing

2008-03-13T03:13:00.000-07:00

Some old writing. Edited for personal stuff, but I felt it was good spiritual reflection, and now is as good a time as any to post it.

I’m not sure a person is always meant to take complete responsibility for their own actions, and for the results of those actions, because I think I get that much more insane when I try to do so... It helps a little to not just be angry with myself.

I feel sort of like a jerk right now for lots and lots of reasons, including the elevation of my petty thoughts and feelings in my mind over all the much more serious problems in my head…THERE I GO AGAIN…in their [my friends'] lives. This is not Christian.

And yeah, I know, children in Africa, children in Africa—there’s always something I can feel bad for not feeling bad about. I know. I don’t care. Other people have problems too; my problems aren’t the only freaking problems that matter. And that’s the issue, is that I’m not caring enough about stuff that I really ought to care about.

Hey Guys I Took A Quiz

2008-03-01T03:09:00.000-08:00

I took the hermeneutics quiz that's been going around some of the Christian blogosphere. I scored 66, which puts me just barely, barely in the progressive camp. So I guess take the quiz and post your scores. I doubt any of the people reading this will manage a 20 (lowest end of "conservative" but I'd like to see where you place.

I can't find the thing right now and I'm not going to try, but Henry Neufeld who does the Participatory Bible Study Blog took the quiz, got "progressive" but noted he had some issues with some of the questions. He didn't say what issues.

If I Didn't

2008-02-27T21:18:00.000-08:00

If I didn't believe firmly that we were all sinners, I'd probably be totally depressed right now, as opposed to just tired.

Don't worry too much about me, as it's not for once something I did that makes me relieved of that theological truth.

WOw

2008-02-20T13:22:00.000-08:00

Soy Yogurt is bad. At least, the stuff I had was pretty bad. As in, it was as bad as soy milk when I had soy milk (and I had soy milk about 10 years ago.)

200th POST: THE LENTEN SEASON BEGINS

2008-02-06T00:18:00.000-08:00

It is now officially 18 minutes into Ash Wednesday. What this means is that Lent is here, as are my Lenten Sacrifices. This year:

- No making "That's what she said" jokes. Expanded, this rule means: No making new "that's what she said" jokes or quoting Office iterations, no matter how tempting. No quoting other "that's what she said" jokes unless repeating a story. No intentionally setting up other people for a good "that's what she said" quip. Special situation: If I'm halfway through a phrase and then realize that it's a "that's what she said"-worthy phrase, I am allowed to finish the phrase as planned. In other words, it's about the intent at the moment the phrase leaves my mouth.
- No fries. No French fries, period. Not at the Cove or anywhere off-campus. I thought about giving up cheese but that's going to have to be a Lenten project all its own.

Additionally, I'll be giving up desert at the Commons / Cove only (so family gatherings and Burgerville shakes are allowed.) That last one's more of a health thing that I'm using Lent as impetus for, so I'm not counting it.

Other things you may want to know about, as far as goals for the year:

- I'm attempting again to memorize the book of James, which currently means reading it cyclically throughout the Spring semester.
- I'm going to try and learn to Waltz sometime before the year of 2008 is over and preferably before the start of the 08-09 year.
- I'm going to start learning to savor food, preferably before the end of the 07-08 school year. This will probably involve bugging Stephanie to see if she'll take me out someplace that serves good food in small portions.
- I'm going to try and work on my lindy-hop "game" (which means the swingout and building on that) and get the swingout down more solidly. Not sure how to do this, aside from going to swing on Mondays and maybe finding one or two times this semester I could go out for Lindy social dancing.

Lastly I went to the Mardis Gras celebration at the Commons tonight and the Jazz band played some swing-worthy stuff--on the last song a bunch of swing people got up and did some lindy hop and that was fun--at least for a few minutes I was back on my game, but I definitely felt dried out and wanting water afterwards.

Peace out and God bless!

...Wow

2008-01-30T02:11:00.000-08:00

XKCD is actually sort of sad today. (You should probably read this comic first to get context, though.) This is probably the one time I've really felt bad for the top-hat guy. Stuff like this is why XKCD as a comic is more spiritual and poignant than most of liberal Christianity. It's also an excuse to use my favorite "blargrequeafd" label!

Whoohoo

2008-01-27T14:36:00.001-08:00

Brief overview of my weekend and week:

I got to do Swing dance on Friday.
I got to go to a theology gathering at the Baastens' house on Saturday.
I got to do blues-dance on Saturday.
I get to do homework today. I also go to church, and I'm going to finish cleaning my room when this gets typed.
I get to go to class, work with Dr. Lum on making my proofs not suck, and do homework, and go to Swing club, and go to mass, on Monday.
I get to go to class, do homework, go to class again, and hopefully go dancing Tuesday.
I get to do class and homework on Wednesday. I might go to the basketball game.
Thursday is class, homework and CHUBS.
Friday is class, homework and slacking off.

I need to start readings and homework much, much earlier next week. As in, Thursday night. I'm feeling pretty good about myself right now, though:

I'm restarting my project of memorizing the epistle of James. I'm also improving as a dancer. I'm not ultra-good by any means, but stuff feels a lot more natural than it has in the past, and that's a good thing. Also, lindy-hop swing is very nice workout.

Fun Stuff Found in an Old Assignment Tracker

2008-01-07T23:01:00.000-08:00

I was looking through my old notebook for keeping track of assignments. It's the one from my Senior year of high school. Most of the pages have been thrown out but I kept a scant few temporarily, as they have awesome quotations from different people. I think an old friend of mine, Marcus, is the leader. I'll list all the quotations followed by the person they came from following:

"I think I saw my life flash before my eyes." - Stephen
"Was it shiny?" - Marcus

"You got a lot of points. Too bad you're shooting at the wrong basket." - Marcus

"Surround yourself with smart people." - Marcus, probably

"I'll give you participation points if you can read my notes." - Marcus

"Today's gonna be a good day, because I don't have to go tomorrow." - Marcus. I'm pretty sure that "going tomorrow" refers to CIP work-days, but I'm not absolutely sure.

"And the majority of dorm windows don't have trampolines under them." - Mr. Huelskamp

Not that many if any De La Salle people will ever read this, but this one came from a poster in Mr. Z's room. I think the context was to make posters revolving around issues from the 1800s: "A slave is a slave no mater who owns him. Stay nutral / It for the best"

I also found two other things:

"CLINTON VS. NEW YORK CITY!"

This was funny because when Mr. Boyle said it, I got this picture in my head of a king-kong sized Bill Clinton taking on the city of New York in the style of a giant-monster movie. As such it did at the time (and still today) strikes me as incredibly humorous. I believe the actual court case involved Clinton's ability to do a line-item veto, but I don't know.

Also, someone wrote "Hi Daniel!" randomly on my notebook. I think it was a girl, based on handwriting. Don't know who, though.

Anyway, I found this a fun ride. Hope you did too.

Adventure #1: Blues Dancing

2007-12-01T03:01:00.000-08:00

First thing's first...this Wikipedia article attempts to explain what Blues dancing is. Trying to explain it myself made me feel like a dork. There's a certain degree to which you just have to see the dance. (If you decide to YouTube something, you shouldn't automatically assume I'm dancing at the same distance as those people...Just thought I'd clear myself right now on that one.) Last Tuesday I went out blues dancing with some people from the Swing club. It was pretty awesome. It took about a total of 5 hours, from leaving from UP to returning.

When we got there, there was about an hourlong lesson followed by about three hours of dance. I got to dance with some people I hadn't ever even met yet, which was actually not the best experience in the world. From one of those dances, I'm convinced that I'd rather have someone say they don't want to dance with me if they don't want to, because I had someone agree to dance, and then make it really obvious that they weren't 'into it' (my phrasing) which made it not really fun for me either. So yeah. But there was another person I danced with a couple of times and she was pretty chill.

I was however appreciative of the people I came with, as far as dancing goes. I learned, a little bit, how to "dip" a follow, which was cool. I'm still not very practiced at it, but I'm all for learning new moves. I also pulled off a move I didn't quite expect to pull with someone from Swing club; I'm not sure quite how to describe it here, but if you're reading this there's a good chance I'll... Oh yes. I just remembered I have MS Paint on this computer.

Okay, hopefully that gives you a better idea. On the left is the connection (two-handed connection) I started with, the right is where I went with it. It might not look like much but I think it might be a little harder to communicate than it looks, or maybe I just felt really hardcore for nothing special. Whatever.

Anyway, I learned a lot, and it was a fun experience, and I am definitely glad for the people I went with because it's easier to try new things with people you know than with people you don't.

Blues-Dancing was the Adventure

2007-11-28T06:54:00.000-08:00

I decided I'm going to be more adventurous from here on out. I counted off-campus Blues-Dancing as my adventure this week because it was my first time going.

I'll post something more awesome about it in a...well, I'll probably post on Thursday.

Best. Shower. Ever.

2007-11-21T07:36:00.000-08:00

Dan's recipe for cold shower appreciation:

1) Stay up all night working on Modern Algebra and Computer Science.
2) Begin losing steam around 6:00 AM.
3) Take freaking cold shower around 7:15 AM, preferably with peppy Christian rock stuck in brain (Tree 63 was my example.) Just dive in. Don't be a wimp.

You might think I'm joking, and I'm probably a little high on lack of sleep, but that is seriously better than any other recent shower I've had.

This is easily going to be the best day ever. Oh, also, I don't stand a chance of finishing that book, but I do intend to read the first half and skim the rest. However I did get my CS done, and my Modern Algebra is to the point where the test won't kick my...hindquarters nearly as much as the first time. Anyway, it'll be breakfast time soon. Bye!

Hooray

2007-11-20T14:16:00.001-08:00

This could be just about one of the coolest things to come out of science in a long time. Looks like it'll be kosher for pretty much anyone for whom medicine is kosher, too. I don't even know where to file this. I guess under religion/theology is closest, but seriously. Science stuff doesn't get mentioned by me often enough for its own tab.

Hat tip goes to the Curt Jester.

Do You All Hate me a Little Bit More?

2007-11-04T10:50:00.000-08:00

After next semester I will only need a combined total of 21 credits to graduate (taking both majors into account.) For those of you playing at home, that means that--assuming I take a standard 15 each semester still--I have 9 credits to just play around with next year. I mean, if I can convince myself it won't just be really bad for my work ethic (at present, I'm convinced it will, so I'm leaning towards 15 credits a semester) I might even take one of those semesters at the minimum full-time 12.

Of course, that also means I must work hard. And I'm going to do my absolute best to make sure I get my Liturgy requirement for Theology out of the way next Fall so I don't have it hanging over my head in the Spring. And this is seriously the biggest possible threat to my Theology major.

Still, though. Considering how disparate my majors are in terms of requirement and how...I'm just amazed.

Music Painting Pictures in my Mind

2007-10-31T10:22:00.000-07:00

I'm going to talk about music.

I've listened to this song many a time in the last three-four days. I think it's a good example of that genre of electronic music often called "jungle"--which is either the same thing or very closely related to drum'n'bass. Check out this link and locate the "play now" button right below the description to get a sample. By far not all drum and bass sounds like this, but it's stuff like this that doesn't leave me any wonder as to why the genre is so closely related to something called "jungle." The groove just paints a picture in my mind. I recommend listening either a) in headphones or b) at a decent volume for the full effect of the awesomely fun bassline. You may have to get past the initial wall of sound to understand what I'm talking about but I hope you're willing to make the effort. The sample only goes 2 minutes anyway.

Also, while that song's not one of them, let it be known that I'll be bringing home a good portion of the jungle genre's "disco" subgenre with me this winter break.

(For the record I've been listening to the whole song.)

Enjoy, and God bless.

What the Hetts?! #18: This Person Does not Know Me

2007-10-30T13:43:00.000-07:00

Facebook applications have gotten way out of hand. I can deal with all the invitations to become a zombie and bite people, or the invitations to join the Jedi in their fight against the Sith or the ninjas in their battle with the pirates. I definitely do use a few of these applications (not so much the "battling" ones, unless Office trivia qualifies.) But...

Someone just sent me an invitation to some wingman application that showed up on my "home-page" thing as a "freecondoms" invitation.

Granted that the person in question doesn't know me ultra-well (we were in separate graduating classes in high school) I'm still sort of at a loss. Almost everything else I've been invited to I might conceivably join. But this just proves that someone being on your friend list really has no relation to whether they know you at all.

I'm going to file this under "What the Hetts?!"

I Hope You Guys Have Seen This

2007-10-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

Stephen Colbert is running for President. Here's hoping his...quite over-the-top social commentary has something awesome to tell us about the state of American politics, or at least something funny.

Also, here's an article about a Facebook group started in response to two previous groups: "Barack Obama: One Million Strong for Barack and "Stop Hilary Clinton '08: One Million Strong AGAINST Hilary". These people started one for Colbert and they're almost to 1,000,000 members as of today (as in, I'm looking at the group page a few seconds ago.) I just checked again--and within the last few minutes the group grew 2,000 members.

Granted that nobody's taking the Colbert group or their membership therein quite as seriously as they would with the Obama or Clinton groups, it's still pretty funny that, well, check this quotation from the Colbert group guy:

It's taken Obama's 1,000,000 Strong Group more than 9 months to get 381,000 [384,272 as of my last check] members, We beat it in less than 5 days! We overtook them at 2:25 PM (EST)

Furthermore, It has taken the "Stop Hillary Clinton: (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary)" more than 8 months to get over 488,000 [as of my last check, 501,675] members. We beat this within 6 days!

That makes me happy. Maybe it shouldn't, but it does. Your thoughts? For the record, the Colbert group we're talking about hasn't even been up for a whole month yet, so far as I know.

Fun with Theology

2007-10-24T15:26:00.000-07:00

I had a fun thought today about one of Thich Nhat Hanh's fourteen precepts of the Order of Interbeing. This happened in my Biblical Spirituality class. I will quote the precept as follows. If you can guess what I did to it, please do. At the end of the post you'll see whether you guessed right! This is from the book Peace is Every Step.

2. Do not think that the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive others' viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout your entire life and to observe reality in yourself and in the world at all times.

Now, laying aside the fact that I actually have a fair amount of agreement with the "truth is found in life" part, and I do actually respect the idea of dialog between viewpoints and worldviews (though not necessarily Nhat Hanh's idea of dialog), I felt like being mean today, so I wrote something in my book that I'll share at the end.

I'm also going to complain about ridiculously epic course titles in theology.

"Poets/Prophets/Divas/Divines." Name for a course being taught next semester on, I believe, the prophetic and wisdom traditions in the Old Testament. Compare with the NT course offered, "Jesus' Ministry in Gospels."

"Revelation, Reason, Reform: 800-1600." Name for a course going right now about the reformation. For the record I've taken two classes from this professor already, and he's awesome--but his class titles have all contained at least one colon.

"Sages, Singers and Songwriters."
"The Life and Work of Augustine of Hippo." Same guy as R,R,R. I don't remember what but there was more in this title.
"The Drama of Modern Christianity." There was more in this title too.
"Biblical Spirituality: Saints and Sinners on a Journey with God."

Anyway, I'm not putting down any of these professors as professors. They're all what I like to call "smart people." Their class titles are just so epic.

Anyway, here's what I did to poor Mr. Nhat Hanh. I should probably feel bad about this, but I don't.

2. Do not think that the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. [Except math.] Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive others' viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout your entire life and to observe reality in yourself and in the world at all times.

Now I'm going to do some more.

2. Do not think that the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. [Except math.] Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. [Except when your present view is that you shouldn't be bound to your present view.] Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive others' viewpoints. [Unless those others' viewpoints are that you should be attached.] Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. [As said before, I like this. I agree with this.] Be ready to learn throughout your entire life and to observe reality in yourself and in the world at all times.[I agree with this too. Maybe not quite the way it's meant, but I do agree.]

This is me getting out the stuff that I hold inside, for the most part, during class. Also, since when did nonviolence in all circumstances actually become a realistic moral goal?

The Rundown

2007-10-15T23:59:00.001-07:00

Here's all the stuff (at least, all the stuff currently in my eyesight) that I ought to get done in order to be academically "on track" for part two of the semester.

Readings:

* The Ball and the Cross (latter half of the book)
* The Power and the Glory (whole of the book)
* Stories of God (getting a start, at least)

Doings:

* Library.doc (computer science assignment)
* Modern Algebra? (The Nord said there'd be an assignment but has yet to post it)
* Research for Dempsey Midterm (due I think November 5th, but I ought to get a start on it.)

And of course I have plenty planned socially, as if plenty hasn't already happened. I also should get to a church sometime this week, because I missed on Sunday morning. That or I just let it go and move on, and make sure to go next Sunday morning.

Two Midterms Down

2007-10-11T14:04:00.000-07:00

One to go! Computer Science is tomorrow; I'll be doing a bit of studying and making a "cheat sheet" (we're allowed one side of an 8x11 paper!)

Then comes Fall Break--there's not even a Biblical Spirituality class tomorrow, which means my break starts when the CS midterm ends. Over break I've got a fair amount of work to do, and I plan to hang out with some people.

Theological Pet Peeves; also, a Rejection of my Earlier Thinking

2007-10-02T17:57:00.000-07:00

First, a little bit of personal stuff from me, about the softening of one of my pet peeves (and thus its rephrasing on the list, to exclude the item I'm about to discuss. In all honesty this began with my annoyance of the notion of something being treated as a very specifically interpretable mandate when in fact it seemed to me a more general principle. I speak of the interpretation of the phrase "no unwholesome talk" as meaning "never ever ever cuss or swear," with which I take serious issue based on the fact that words are unwholesome dependent only on context. And, if you look at the verse as a whole it seems to point more to the notion of how we treat each other rather than the notion of what words we're using.

Partly using my reinterpretation of this verse (which, by the way, I do not take as a "license to cuss all the time" so much as the thought that we are allowed to in some circumstances and in others should not.) But essentially I took it way too far; now I ought to bring it back. I violated one of the Big Ten, and if you're following this story you know exactly which one I mean.

This is not a concession to those viewpoints which take that verse as a mandate never to use a word that has been defined as "bad" by society. This is however a concession that, perhaps, that has more to do with things than I would like to believe--and that based on my experience I ought to rethink exactly what ethical implications such a verse has for our lives.

So I'm making a list of theological pet peeves. Here's the two big ones:

* A piece of moral code being treated as if it were a Scriptural mandate when in fact it is in truth derived from tradition and not from Scripture.
* The notion that, if good doctrine isn't absolute necessity for Salvation, we ought not to really care all that much about it.

What are your religious/theological pet peeves?

Whoohoo. Time to go do some math.

Ladder-Climbing

2007-09-27T19:11:00.001-07:00

This was pretty awesome. Happened just yesterday, too!

Warning: Includes one "that's what she said" remark, if you care about young ears hearing that.

Ready for The Office?

2007-09-26T09:38:00.001-07:00

Starts this Thursday.

I'm actually not watching it then; the plan is to watch with Tyler sometime this weekend.

I'm psyched.

So...

2007-09-25T20:48:00.001-07:00

I didn't get the Differential Equations done for today. BUT as tomorrow goes, I only have left to read The Ball and the Cross for tomorrow's Literary Catholicism, I'm set up to study Modern Algebra (for Friday, no less!) tomorrow afternoon. So academically I'm looking forward to this being a more-than-mediocre week for math and a better-than-average week for the other subjects. So the ideal is that by the time classes start tomorrow I'll have read most or all of TBATC and will have done a little more work on Modern Algebra (that's right, I already started!)

This makes me happy, and by this I mean not feeling completely and utterly behind on everything academically. Next week's DiffEq starts on Friday. Thursday night if I'm feeling especially adventurous.

Two Monks

2007-09-22T13:27:00.001-07:00

Dr. Gallegos told me a story once while we were in Morelia. I don't remember the exact context but I think he was trying to help me with some mental stupidity of my own doing that I was trying to get past. It's actually a Buddhist story, but I though (and I think still) that the principle illustrated is useful for Christian practice as well. Don't try and figure out why I'm posting about this; I've sort of wanted to for a long time.

Two Buddhist monks are walking alongside each other on a path through the country. One is younger, and one is quite old. As they walk they pass a beautiful woman.

A couple of hours later, the younger monk turns to the older. "Say, when we were back there, did you have any...thoughts about the woman that we saw?"

The older monk looks back at him, and replies, "Yes. But I left my thoughts back there, and you have obviously carried yours with you."

At the risk that I should misinterpret the story, I'll let it say what it says, independent of what it says to me.

I'll post something about the clubbing experience later tonight or tomorrow sometime.

Sketch

2007-09-21T20:08:00.000-07:00

Going to FX tonight with Matthew and Stephanie. Plus a friend of each, and some friends of one of those friends. Apparently. A couple of friends of mine have each heard that it is "sketch." Another friend, Christopher Bonebrake, has actually been. He did not like it.

X is an under-21 club in Portland. It's sort of funny; I may have to wait until I am 21 till I can go someplace that satisfies my more conservative sensibilities as far as atmosphere and type of dancing involved (or even type of music involved.) Of course, none of this has been confirmed. I will have to see for myself just how "sketch" everything is.

Anticipating electronica/hip-hop mixture of some kind and a lot of dirty dancing. No, I will not take part in the dirty dancing. But if the groove is solid enough I may dance, period. For now, enjoy this video. It might look like it's going in a "sketch" direction. It isn't. It's just funny--and horrifying. It's the video for a song by a band called Pendulum called "Slam."

Any drum'n'bass band willing to pull this as their video has to have balls. Though a friend of mine pointed out to me that it may be a parody of another band's more serious video. Either way.

Also, 100% on my first Computer Science Exam. Hooray!

Mike Huckabee on the Daily Show

2007-09-19T15:08:00.000-07:00

Saw this on GetReligion first. Enjoy.

Airships Involved

2007-09-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

Nana got that song right, via e-mail. It's Jars of Clay's "Portrait of an Apology."

I finished my first book for a class, which was Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. I thoroughly enjoyed the book; its characterization was masterful and the story was told in a fun style, though I would very much hesitate to call it at all a "fun" story. I've got some less-fun reading to do this weekend, such as this guy named John Shea writing about spirituality and storytelling (what I've read of it isn't actually a bad book; I did a little reading before coming to school.) I also am starting to read Chesterton's The Ball and the Cross today. An airship is involved. Also, I have to do some math this weekend, or die, basically.

I really hope I get a guard-rail soon. I might just start sleeping on the loft anyway, as I'm sick of having this mattress on the floor and I sort of doubt I'm going to fall off of it. Plus, then I'd have room for this chair that apparently my parents have that I can have...or something like that.

I got to play some Smash Brothers last night, with my cousins and then with some college people. That was pretty fun. I plan on visiting with some people tonight and maybe playing Capture the Flag. If I do CTF, it's going to be one of those massive campus-wide events. I'm really not sure how badly I want to play CTF, especially in that massive format, and I think the answer might be "not as badly as I thought I might want to earlier."

Also, I'm going clubbing next weekend with some people. Hopefully there will be straight people and good music there, but the likelihood of getting both may be low, especially given that we're in the under-21 crowd. :/ Oh well. It'll be fun anyway.

Lastly, here's a song I worked on before the start of the school year called "Something Ventured." Let me know what you guys think--constructive criticism is definitely welcome.

I try to explain the way that the frame doesn't quite fit the edge

2007-09-05T11:14:00.000-07:00

I had a conversation with a guy named Andy (who's the first-floor RA in Christie) earlier this weekend, and I'm still echoing the sentiment of that conversation between myself and him:

Me: "Do you ever think that God brings good things out of our idiocy?"
Andy: "More often than I'd like."

I'm going to try doing RCIA this year. While I do that I'll be reading A Biblical Defense of Catholicism. So yeah, you can feel free to spread the word that I may be going Catholic. If you hear I am, please think and pray long and hard before automatically coming and telling me not to. (Those who have cautioned me I trust done so in love and in only the best of intentions--and I'm thinking of cautioning as different from simply telling me not to.)

I'm at an interesting place in my life. It's...a weird place, to say the least. I'm thankful for good friends and for good company, and for those people who fall under both categories. Jars of Clay is really good music for times like these. My theology classes could not have been better-timed.

Don't expect to see too much more of the "blargrequeafd" label. I may have to pull it out at random just for fun.

If you can actually tell me what song I got the title of this post from, I can totally give you a point.

Guys, Guys

2007-09-01T18:14:00.001-07:00

10 years ago it was 1997.

Holy crap, what's happening?

I don't even know how to file this. That's how bad it is.

Yay, School

2007-08-30T14:30:00.001-07:00

Funny news story:

This is pretty much the ultimate prank, and pretty awesome for a high school student. How do you guys feel about the punishment given? I almost think it was a little bit harsh.

Update on School:

Classes are going. That's about all I can really say about them right now, is they're going. Not badly or well, necessarily. I haven't missed any homework (which reminds me, I need to read Jonah for tomorrow) and I'm adjusting to the three-class block I have Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I also like my Thursdays (just Differential Equations, nothing more!)

I Got My Books

2007-08-23T14:41:00.001-07:00

Yes, I do. I've got a crap-load of them, too. Abstract Algebra, Differential Equations, Java (Computer Science intro class), a bunch of books for Literary Catholicism (including Chesterton's The Ball and the Cross, O'Connor's Wise Blood, and Greene's The End of the Affair and The Power and the Glory!) and a bunch of books for Biblical Spirituality (various commentaries and books on spirituality and the St. Mary's Press College Study Bible, which is a New American Bible for those wanting the translation used.)

"'Do you know who Graham Greene is?'
'I think we have all seen "Bonanza."'"

That quotation just kinda came to mind. Bonus points if you know where from.

What the Hetts?! #17: God by any Other Name...

2007-08-17T18:00:00.001-07:00

Well, an article here has a Roman Catholic bishop suggesting that Christians use the name Allah to refer to God.

"What the Hetts?!"

I'd be more comfortable of this if I were convinced that Christians and Muslims worshiped the same God...and I'm not convinced of such a thing. For purposes of philosophy of religion we could certainly talk about the Judeo-Christian-Islamic concept of God (all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving/benevolent), but when the rubber hits the road I think there are some decent differences. And I don't mean differences like Calvinists/Arminians arguing over a few verses in Paul. I mean differences between systems that are more fundamentally about grace and systems more fundamentally about works.

Also, since this is a news site--and I no longer rely on those to keep articles up for years and years--I'm providing a link to the Google-cached version of the article at this location.

Granted, the Relevance of this is Fading, but the Relevance of this Other Thing Isn't

2007-08-15T13:59:00.000-07:00

This probably would've been a much more relevant thing to link a few years ago, but it hadn't exactly been written then. So here it is now. This is a Christian's literary defense of the Harry Potter series of books. There's also some decent Chesterton quoting in the article. I don't really look down on people who refuse to read it for whatever reason, but I guess I do take slight issue with people condemning it as evil. (Does anyone of note do this anymore?) I'm not quite settled on all the "moral problems" that have been raised with it by some of those people but I don't think they're insurmountable. It's an interesting defense to say the least.

Also, I saw a link to this movement on a different blog and found it quite refreshing that the UMC has this movement. I guess I do feel a little bit irritated that they're calling for unity under their beliefs, but if their beliefs are the official beliefs of the UMC (as I am inclined to believe) then that is nothing but reasonable. Also, it's a lot better than calling for unity even when fundamental beliefs are ridiculously different.

What the Hetts?! #16b: BONUS: Reincarnation and the Chinese Government

2007-08-10T12:49:00.001-07:00

Ran across this post by the Dispatches from the Culture Wars guy, Ed Brayton, about a newspaper article which informs us that, apparently, Buddhist monks are not allowed to reincarnate without the permission of the Chinese government. Okay, so it's really just living Buddhas, which if I remember my World Religions (and I probably don't) is a smaller set. But they may have meant monks. Brayton used it as an opportunity to compare reincarnation to transubstantiation and "turning someone into a newt." Honestly I can't quite say I appreciate that, but I'm still glad he posted the article. It's proof that there's actual religious oppression in the world not being perpetrated by religious people. And no, I'm not going to deny past realities of Christendom or even current realities (if there are any of any substance), or the reality of many Middle-Eastern governments. But it's good that this stuff makes the news so it'll be known. A government trying to regulate not just a religious practice, but something which is, really, supernatural and which may not even actually exist--that's crazy. Then again it does make some sense. Buddhism is, in some ways, a threat to China. And I'm going to stop now because at this point I'm just ranting.

Original article is here. Disfrutalo.

"What the Hetts?!"

What the Hetts?! #16: Pencil, Brain

2007-08-07T17:12:00.000-07:00

Ho-ly snap. Also, a What the Hetts?! on Tuesday. Guess I'm on a new schedule now.

Woman with pencil in brain. For YEARS. Caused some nosebleeds and headaches.

Hat tip to Pure Pedantry.

Pure Pedantry, for me, is general recommended reading. Not always appropriate but when the articles are on issues of science they tend to be pretty educational.

Wrapping Up Morelia

2007-08-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

The last week in Morelia was pretty cool, and I'm very, very, very glad to be home.

Monday

Had to write my final paper for the culture class this day, and get some journals done.

Tuesday

Got the paper done in time for the class, and enough studying done to make the grade. Journals not done. I'm a slacker, I know. But thankfully Dr. Gallegos didn't show up to collect them Tuesday.

Wednesday

Did get journals done in time for the actual collection on Wednesday. Found out I got I think a B or B+ on the test and an A- in the course, a full letter grade higher than my current Spanish average! Until about five seconds ago, when I decided I'd definitely update this blog-thing, and when I found out I got an A in the social work course! This brings my Spanish GPA up to about a 3.29#. I stopped doing the division when I got there because that was a fine enough estimate for me.

Thursday

We flew back home! It was so beautiful. I got to have Burgerville as my first meal once back in Portland, and had some Subway at the Houston airport before that. Oh my goodness, it was beautiful. Also, I can drink tapwater again. This might not seem a great privilege to you all but you'd be amazed how much being in a country that actually needs bottled water can make you grateful for the privilege, yes, it is a privilege, of being able to drink water from the tap that hasn't been treated somehow.

All The Rest of the Days Up to and Including Today

I've been enjoying being back home and talking with people on the phone and all that other good stuff.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. That story I promised that I couldn't tell earlier.

On the way back from the Skye club, one friend of mine was stopped by corrupt cops. He had been quite inebriated and was attempting to walk it off, hence why he was walking at 4 AM instead of taking a taxi. The cops found a 4 and 1/2 inch knife on his person, apparently half an inch larger than allowed, and gave him the option of paying them the rough equivalent of $100USD or going to jail. He paid the $100, and they drove him to an ATM in the opposite direction of the way he was walking in order to get the money. He came out of the experience $100 shorter. Thankfully they let him keep his knife, at least, but the knife was very obviously not the point to begin with.

A Whole Other Bunch of Stuff I Don't Remember Well, A.K.A. Another Week in Morelia

2007-07-29T17:41:00.000-07:00

Monday

...Virtually no memory of anything today. It was either this day or Tuesday that we went to a domestic violence shelter for women and their sons/daughters who had been in abusive relationships.

Tuesday

...Virtually no memory of anything today either, but...yeah.

Wednesday

We didn't go anywhere today because we were going over our assignments for the practicas, or days we were to be in the community learning more firsthand about the various sites we'd visited.

Thursday

My group went to Casa Hogar de Buen Pastor, a children's home. But we didn't really, because nobody was there. Well, we went, but nobody was there, so we went to the domestic violence shelter where we helped by organizing some clothing and playing with the kids.

Friday

Two of the former Casa Hogar group went with the one person who had actaully signed up, to an old folks' home; I was one of those two. I don't mean to sound bitter or anything though, the old folks themselves of course are people too and were pretty nice. We talked with them for about a half an hour and then helped mass-prepare various enchilada-big-dinner related items. Note that when I say big dinner I mean the big meal of the day in Mexico, usually around 2-3 but I think perhaps a little earlier for these folks.

Later that day a bunch of our group went to Casa Esperanza to do a bit of hands-on manual labor. Casa Esperanza is another children's home, for girls who've been in difficult and dangerous situations. We leveled some dirt for about two and a half hours, then we dispersed to shower and whatnot. We reunited at the home of the family of a classmate, as we'd planned on going to Skye, or to Ego again Friday, because it was ladies' night at Ego.

We wound up going to Skye in a series of events that would take too long to explain. It was pretty bumpin', the grooves were pretty solid. As usual I left early but for the second time tied for first-person-going-home-from-club instead of taking first place. One thing that was kind of fun was that at least the Skye people got dolled up, so at least in my opinion we looked pretty awesome, but I was an idiot and didn't take a camera to capture how awesome.

Some other people went back to San Pancho, the place where we had a $10 cover which covered everything under $10 and most people got decently buzzed due to us having $5 each left by the time we'd ordered our food. However as said I was at Skye.

There's one other thing I want to share, but I prefer to wait till I get back to the states to share it...so don't let me forget, okay, guys? Don't worry, I didn't do anything illegal.

Saturday

Excursion to...dangit, I forgot the name of it already. But we were going to some ruins near a volcano. It was a freaking long walk. Not quite sure if it was worth it as my nose was incessantly runny and involuntarily letting snot drip. Not pleasant.

I elected not to go into town later, even though I missed out on seeing a church or something, because I was tired (I'd gotten on a writing spree Friday night on top of being home around 1:15 AM, so I got a little above two hours of sleep.)

Sunday

Mini-excursions to a beautiful national park in the town I forgot the name of, as well as a waterfall area where we had to climb down a bunch of steps and then back up them. Someone in our group tried to count the steps as we descended, but she got interrupted.

Eventually I got back here (to Morelia of course, not the internet cafe.) And then I came to use the internet and type this up. I've got some shopping to do tomorrow as well as review for my paper-test for the culture class. Presentations on Wednesday will not be a problem. Then Thursday I fly back and get to see people from the States once more!

Odds and Ends

2007-07-25T17:14:00.000-07:00

Welp, this post is basically odds and ends. Essentially it's me being bored...the stuff with actual stories is coming, as usual, on Sunday or if I'm especially tied up a couple of days late.

Odd

I'm making a list of things to do before I die. So far:

* One more season of soccer. I need to be somewhat in shape this year, so I'm thinking I'm going to go out for intramural next semester.
* Eat a Burgerville meal alone on a park bench. It's odd, and I'm pretty sure it's a basic concept I saw romanticized by the opening sequence to the old "Odd Couple" TV series, though I can't remember if the guy was eating his burger alone or not. At any rate, I'm going to do this one.
* Try cow tongue on purpose. I say on purpose because as some people know I once went to a more authentic Mexican place with my parents and accidentally got served the cow tongue instead of beef. My father ordered the cow tongue. Neither of us got the beef.
* Go clubbing in Portland. I want to see what it's like compared to where I've been in Mexico. Certain clubs will have to be avoided though, for various reasons.
* Stop being ashamed of my beliefs. As a Christian I sometimes find myself too afraid to offend someone to really speak my mind. This is more a lingering problem than a looming obstacle.
* Also, find a church I can live with and join it. I don't feel a Christian should drift between churches forever, which is sort of what I'm doing now.
* Dialogue with a Buddhist community. I want to do this because I want to be open to learning about other faiths and I feel this is an appropriate way to do it. I also want to learn more specifically about Buddhism because it seems to be a more naturally open/broad/accepting sort of faith. Note that I don't necessarily think all those terms in the theological sense are really that good, though I do with respect to people...Sometimes I hate nuance.
* Figure out what political party I belong with and why. I'm a Democrat right now but that's mostly if not completely family tradition. None of them really appeal to me much.
* See a non-American electronic music artist live. I'm an electronica fan. I'd love to see someone from Europe live or, heck, even someone from Mexico.

It might seem kind of morbid but I was bored on the bus one day. Number two is my favorite for humor so far. I know it's sort of a random list, sort of short, too. But I'm only 20 so I've got a bit more time to make and fulfill this list. Also, there's one or two things on there I don't really want to put on the internet, but I'd happily tell any of you my family people in person.

End

I'm also making a list of books to read. This is a complementary list to the first and falls under a more general life goal that's less specifically fulfilled, which is just to get more educated and read more stuff.

* The Cider House Rules. John Irving, apparently made a decent movie out of the book. I'll read it eventually.
* Los hijos de la luz (Children of the Light...no idea if it's orignally Spanish or not, but apparently the author was born in Madrid)
* Pilgrim's Progress. I'm not sure I'd feel complete as a Christian without reading it. Just kidding, but to a degree, speaking culturally, not really.
* The Harry Potter series. I read the first three. That'd leave me four more to go, assuming I don't care about remembering what the heck happened in the second and third books (I went back and re-read the first awhile back.)
* The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'm not sure I'd feel complete as someone who's lived in my wing of Christie Hall without at least having a goal of reading this.
* The Truth (part of the Discworld series, one of the same guys who did Good Omens). If it's anything like Mort it should be really funny.
* Dune. One of those books people tell me to read.
* Godel, Escher, Bach. It'll make me feel smarter.
* Living Buddha, Living Christ. I started it and haven't finished. Should finish this.
* The Lovely Bones. People have piqued my interest.
* Where is that in the Bible? A Catholic scriptural apologetic.

Odds and Ends

Pedestrians have, like, no rights in Morelia. If I could disbelieve my friends' stories about drivers actively speeding up, seemingly to try and hit them, this might not disturb me so much. But in a lot of ways I actually think the US system is better for protection of people overall than Morelia's system of organized chaos and opportunistic everyone-on-their-feet-or-in-a-car-or-existing. Oh, and bicyclists are just as annoying and probably breaking the law if not moreso than in Portland. There's a certain morality to the order in the chaos, somewhere, but it seems there's a good amount of people who can't be trusted to have it.

Did I mention Mexico, systematically, sucks at recycling? I know a few exceptions, and I've said this before, I think, but I'm not going to try in a country that isn't willing to make the effort to make the process sane. On that note, if anyone can point me to a recycling center within Morelia and in reasonable distance of where I live, I'll give it a shot. 20 minutes' travel time or less.

I'm going to be glad when I'm back in a country that has root beer. I'm also going to be glad to have more than twentysomething of my "American" songs to listen to (quotations because a good few of them are from other countries) and not to have to be at an internet cafe to listen to them.

I'm really looking forward to next semester at UP. It's going to rock socially and academically is looking up too, as I actually have people to study things with this year. If I can actually manage those two things while keeping in shape and not worrying about girls, this will be my best semester yet. Okay, those things probably won't all happen, but I'll drop the second (academics) only when it prevents me from breathing, okay? I still think it could be my best semester ever.

I'd love to do a survey and find out how much of the world in some fashion or another subscribes to universal reconcilation. I just don't see that happening probabilistically, if the Bible is to be taken as any sort of good authority on the issue.

Oh yeah, I'm learning things. For instance, the verb marear means "to make sick" and the verb "ensangrentar" means "to cover with blood," and lastly the verb "sumir" means "to plunge someone into." You can thank Jorge Luis Borges and the story of his I'm on now, "The Circular Ruins," for those. I still have pretty much no idea what's going on in the story, but it's good for my vocabulary.

The End of the Odds and Ends

There's a few odds and ends for you. As promised there weren't really any anecdotes unless you count the two or three minor event-like things I mentioned. Anecdotes are coming later, as in Sunday, assuming they're any good.

Belanova and Other Odds and Ends this Last Week...Also, How Everything is a Blur

2007-07-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

Everything's getting to be a freakin' blur these days. Seriously.

Wednesday

Excursion to Juanzanito I think it was called, an island outside of Patzcuaro. Boatse were involved...of course, that makes sense. There will be yet another Patzcuaro excursion this coming Tuesday to see a traditional healer. Apparently on one of the traditional healer trips with a group of nursing students someone got cured of a curse but didn't believe it afterwards. I have no idea, but if so, it creates some interesting theological implications.

Thursday

I forget what the hetts we did today, except that I did bug a friend to see if she could watch on Facebook when I changed my relationship status from undeclared to single (undeclared status doesn't show at all on your profile...) Basically, I wasn't declared as single before, and wasn't even declared as straight until a few months ago. But I heard a rumor that if people see you going single in their news-feed on Facebook, even if you weren't in a relationship before, it still shows up as a broken heart. I'm going to make you wait for the result of the experiment because it's only two sections down.

Friday

The same thing here, for the daytime.

I'm going to talk about Belanova, which is an electro-pop musical group that Christian, a guy who works at the Central Universitario de Michaocan, recommended to me. At the time of this writing I am digesting the track "Te Quedas O Te Vas" (You Stay or You Go) which has a freaking amazing bassline. As in, to Uncle Scott, if you're reading: I think you'll dig this track, and to everyone else: I think Uncle Scott, and possibly you, will dig this track. Technically Belanova is electro-pop, but this is definitely a disco-house track, in my opinion. So it's the the electronic music that the generation of my parents is probably most likely to enjoy. The only thing is I translated the lyrics and they're sort of depressing. As in, here's the first part in English:

I think that time will resolve this (calmly or indifferently, I think is the word)
Don't spend your life crying for yourself
The world will spin
With or without you it goes
I don't think you want to stay here and die

Which if not for the song's amazingly awesome funky bassline and fun fun fun strings and...frankly, the singer has an awesome voice, too...if not for all the great groove elements the song would be quite depressing.

Friday night I went to this place called the Re (um-lauts on the e) Bar which was having a three-DJ concert. Each DJ played some trance, with it getting progressively more energetic and less relaxation-style. It was all pretty good, though, with the exception of an overly abrasive synth here and there. The place also had good atmosphere.

Saturday

Saturday morning I went to the school insanely early because we were leaving at seven in the morning to go to...dangit, now I've forgotten the name of the town! But miners were involved, as were key figures in Mexican independence. Apparently four of them were beheaded, and their heads hung in one of the museums we visited, for ten years!

But anyway, Saturday morning I went to the school insanely early and actually met the friend who helped me with my Facebook experiment. She told me the feed had indeed shown a broken heart, which made me insanely happy. That's got to be one of the funniest things ever. As a refresher, it's funny because it systematically assumed someone declaring their status as single is leaving a relationship, even when (as in my case) there's no relationship to leave.

Anyway, we did lots of other stuff. A couple of other museums (including one of more naturally "mummified" corpses, and another which was actually the house of Diego Riviera.) The corpses were cool but sort of frightening. Some of them had it seemed been buried alive and I think Dr. Gallegos confirmed this.

A bunch of us went to a restaurant in...Guanajuato, that was it! And we had a wonderful discussion about relationship problems. We'd had another variation of that discussion at a restaurant a few weeks before, San Pancho, and this one was just as fun. The basic argument of the discussion, I'll outline a bit later.

At a restaurant/bar we went to later that night we had another discussion which was related tangentially to the first. This is your warning to cover your little ones' eyes.

A few people were discussing sexual experiences that they had had on one side of me. I wasn't involved in that so much but I was involved in the closely related discussion right next to it. I had shared that I planned on saving myself for marriage and had used the bases analogy to do so. Basically I said I'd stay off third and fourth bases as those are the things I believe constitute sex, and I would probably avoid second as well (first is kissing...I hope you can fill in the blanks) because the farther you go the easier it is to go farther.

The discussion was actually quite humorous and we actually agreed there should be five bases to accomodate other, erm, acts that didn't really belong on any of the established bases. My absolute rule, for the record, remained to stay off third or higher and preferably (for your assurance, my family, that's just short of being an absolute rule) off of second. Christian also explained to some of us the Mexican slang that has gone into discussion of sex, which was funny.

Actually, I'm just going to say, it's a rule for me, it's where my standards are going to be set. Partly because I'm not comfortable with grey areas and partly because I'm especially not comfortable with grey areas that could compromise me morally.

Anyway, the really awesome thing that happened was that one of the other guys at the table, who was in on my discussion, wished me good luck with saving myself for marriage. After a bit of discussion on that comment (I defended it; it's not like it'll be easy to do) he told me that seriously, he wished me good luck. I really appreciated what he had to say about that.

After that place, which had some pretty nice acoustic-guitar-ish music, we went to a club called the Capitolio which was pretty nice. It was sort of in-between Ego and Carlos and Charlie's in atmosphere and "nice-ness." I left way early, as did my roommate for the weekend. It was alright, but I preferred the other places. Maybe because more people went and there were, as such, more people I felt comfortable dancing with.

One other thing about Saturday: I read two chapters of the book of James in Spanish. It's Spanish Spanish, so it uses the vosotros (you plural) tense, instead of a contextual usage of third-person plural with a designated noun Ustedes, but it was qutie readable and knowing the book made it easier. Saturday night I took an opportunity after getting home way early (as usual) from the discoteque to walk around the hotel a bit and pray. I'm glad I did because I'm finally getting past some things that have been bugging me for ranges of weeks to months to a over a year now. I'm glad because it's looking like this could be a time of spiritual renewal for me which was one of the things I sort of wanted to do going into the experience of Morelia to begin with.

Also, I started reading Borges' Ficciones again. Enjoying it again. Restarted the story I was on, though.

Sunday

Pretty much the biggest event was me sitting down to type this. I also had a fun religious discussion with a friend on the way back from Guanajuato.

Everything Else

That's pretty much it for this week. Everything's a blur because stuff's stopped going slowly and started going quickly. Can't wait to be back in the states.

Oh yeah, the romance debate (hoping for comments on this):

Can a man and a woman be very good friends (as in, just short of or best friends) without one person or the other having an attraction (not merely physical) to the other?

Can this sort of friendship even occur unless at some point there has been such an attraction on one or both sides?

Is it ethical for one party in such a friendship to maintain the friendship at its level if the other party is interested in the one romantically?

One Long Week(end)

2007-07-17T11:38:00.000-07:00

Well, here's the rundown of stuff. There's one thing that could be difficult for some of you, but rest assured it's nothing inherently wrong.

Monday

Dance class. The Merengue. Actually quite a fun dance. I'm observing however that lots of dances, however romantic, have some more sexualized elements. Not incredibly so, but somewhat, yes. However it was still a lot of fun. Not that I really remember any of it at all.

Tuesday

Got a call from the parents, which was good. I honestly have no memory of what the heck we studied in class that day.

Wednesday

We went to the old folks' home. The accommodations looked okay, but not absolutely wonderful. There was a guy who I think may have been a Priest or studying to be one who led worship for them, a couple of songs that we were there for.

Thursday

We went to a DIF place for what I think were at-risk youths. DIF in Mexico, in my understanding, is sort of like Department of Human Services is in Oregon. At night we went to see the latest Harry Potter movie. Despite my being completely out of the loop on Harry Potter, I found it enjoyable.

Friday

We went to the beach. We were going to go to Señor Frog's (bar/disco/restaurant) because it was no-cover, but it turned out there was a $10 cover. So we stayed at the tavern we were at when we got the news (I will contend that "Beer Planet," the name of said tavern, is the best bar name ever.) Unsure at this point how I felt about drinking in Mexico I let it rest on the verity of a rumor that at the next hotel we were staying at there would be an open bar. I told two people about this.

Saturday

We went to the beach again today. My wallet had an adventure! It went into the ocean mistakenly and came back short only 200 cash pesos (roughly $20USD.) All the cards, everything but those 200, all that is safe! …And the open bar rumor got confirmed.

Sunday

I had my first drink Sunday. It was pretty light, as in I'm not even sure if I was really affected. For further explanation I feel I should quote the e-mail I sent Dad:

Honestly I wasn't ready. If it's possible I think I pressured myself too much to "fit in" and as a consequence I made a bad experience out of what should've been a positive rite of passage, if that makes any sense.

And I'd love to blame other people to. I'd love to say my parents put too much pressure on me not to drink or that my friends put too much pressure on me to drink. But the fact is by the time I actually did,

a) However intentional your pressure was, I'm the one who has to choose how much stock I put in it
b) My friends' pressure may have been quasi-intentional, but when I explain more of that to you (and I will) you'll know I really can't call it peer pressure, and a couple people made it explicitly clear shouldn't if I didn't want to

Which brings me to the bottom line, which is I really didn't want to, or at least not that badly. Whatever I might say about pressures one way or the other, I chose to be an idiot and do the opposite of what I wanted. So it's my bad. Following this, I'm probably just going to be on refrescos (edit: soft-drinks) for the remainder of the trip (never had the 2nd drink yesterday) and as such won't be drinking again till my 21st (but won't then if I discover I'm still not ready, because the psychological effect wasn't worth it.)

End of e-mail quotation. For the record, I talked with one of the people beforehand that I`d made my stupid "promise" to and they basically said not to drink if I didn't want to. One other person also made that blatantly clear and I'm thankful to both of them for it. I'm sure the other "promised" person would've understood if I'd just said I wasn't ready and wanted to wait for the 21st. And while I'm not as sure here, I'm fairly certain the same would be true of the one person I actually felt at all pressured by—and even then it was probably just me overblowing things. I take responsibility because I chose to drink. And I'm feeling regret for it now because I wasn't ready and I'll never be able to redo it. And for the remainder of my time in Mexico I decided that I'm going to continue getting water and refrescos at the bars.

One last thing. I talked with my Dad and it's his understanding that I made no promise not to drink. But to the extent that I raised that expectation and then failed to follow through, I apologize.

Sunday night got better, though. We went to a place called Carlos and Charlie's, which is a sister business of Señor Frog's. The music was good and I really enjoyed the dancing, what there was of it. Also, there was a program "sexy man" contest. I didn't enter, but one of my classmates became the gringo from Michoacan and brought the house all the way down. As in, he completely annihilated the competition—the local competition. As in, if America had kicked butt in Iraq and continued to do so the way that he did on the stage, people wouldn't be complaining about our military situation there. (Let's just not get into the morality of the war to begin with.) That's a lie--they'd still be complaining--but not as many of them and not as much. I'll admit, I was pretty impressed. I'm not one for doing stripteases myself, though.

This club was considerably more, um, basic than Ego. Still dancing, though, and still fun. And the music was bumpin´! Actually, one of the guides on our trip, Christian, is also a fan of electronica. We're actually going to a bar this Friday to hear some local stuff. He also recommended some Mexican electronica I could check out. I'd say I'm going to miss having electronica be not the most ostracized form of music where I am, except taht I'm going back to Christie where, in my wing, it's quite popular.

Also, honestly, obviously not for alcohol but for the musical aspect, I'm going to miss being able to go to taverns.

Monday

We stayed at the hotel some after check-out. I went to the worst internet café in existence. The hourly price was roughly $8USD an hour. On the way home I encountered one of the better Morelia taxi drivers. Why was he better? Because instead of charging a full extra 30 pesos for an extra distance of about 20-30 blocks he only charged me 20. I was prepared to pay thirty, too.

I also ate some Domino´s Pizza for lunch on Monday. Bad for me, and heavily American, I know. But so good.

Tuesday

Return to the Casa Hogar de Buen Pastor, the home for girls who'd been in difficult situations. Got to sit and watch presentations; I didn't have to give any!

More of the time in Morelia

2007-07-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's another rundown, from Monday to today.

Monday: School as usual. Dance class at night. We "learned" the Merengue which means if we get another chance to go out dancing I might remember about 20 seconds' worth of it. The others might do better. Hopefully if I ever try dancing it with someone, they'll remember the same 20 seconds.

Tuesday: School as usual again. I didn't go to the arts and crafts class at night but we got together for someone's birthday to go to the park and play some soccer with the locals. That was a load of fun.

Wednesday: Field trip to a home for formerly massively impovershed and/or abused girls, some of whom have even apparently been in prostitution...They were all so young and full of life. It's kind of sad to think of any of them having been in those situations. In the evening most of us went on a short downtown tour, dinner with our trip's professor (who paid), and some of us went to a party that one person's host family threw, which was pretty cool.

Thursday: Field trip to the Red Cross. Soccer in the evening.

Friday: Went to a restaurant called San Pancho. Pretty nice place, and good food.

Saturday: The school trip was to Patzcuaro and then to Santa Clara. We bought some things. I got some OVEN MITTS for the family back in the USA.

Sunday: Pretty much just this session at the internet cafe for me, although some friends went to the zoo and were gonna watch the Mexico-Paraguay game.

Also, a friend told a story on the way back from Thursday's soccer about a game of would you rather that involved this question: "Would you rather roll around in a pile of dog crap or small fart for the rest of your life?"

Well, which would you rather?

¡Estoy en Mexico!

2007-07-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

So here´s the rundown of what has happened:

Day 1: Took two planes--to Houston and then to Morelia. We arrived at the Centro Universitario de Michoacan, and met our host families. The guy who picked me up did so in a Taxi and was my host brother Abraham. I´m enjoying my host family. There´s been lots of good food. Not all what you´d call "traditional" but people and places rarely live up to stereotypes. My host family''s all awesome, though. My host mom cooks good food and I'm able to practice my Spanish a lot during meals with her and my host dad. With Abraham it's usually Spanglish of a mostly-English variety, but I often take the intiative and speak Spanish anyway.

Day 2: We have our orientation at the school and I begin to be scared of my class on Mexican Health Systems and social work. The class is a combination of actual service experience / site visits and various lectures in Spanish designed to kill me. We had a walking tour with one of the women who runs the school.

We went to the mass at the Cathedral at 6pm, too. That was pretty awesome. I feel the need to let people know that we carried the tradition of holding hands during the Our Father down to the Mexican mass where it does not belong. I'm not mad about this; at the time and in retrospect I found/find it rather comical. I also thought crossing my arms would indicate "soy un protestante, no communion para mi" but no. My classmates reminded me that this might have been because in Mexico Catholic communion is directly to the mouth, and so the symbol is to put one's two fingers (as in a closed peace sign) over one's mouth. I actually did attempt to explain to the priest (bishop or archbishop, we think, actually) that "era un protestante" (the wrong tense, for those who don't know Spanish.) This left me not knowing whether to be more embarassed that I'd had to turn down a Bishop's communion or that I'd used the wrong verb tense to explain it.

Day 3 (Thursday, so you know): First class on the history and culture of Mexico, specifically Michoacan. I'm thinking this will actually be the easier of the two. The professor is easier to understand than either the main or guest speakers in the other class (in fairness I think she may be American.) This was the day I think I'd shifted out of what-did-I-get-myself-into mode...of course that day was also the day I shifted right back in again.

Day 4: Classes. I felt better about them on this day. At night we went to a restaurant called the Cafe Santa Fe, where a live band was playing. That was pretty cool. This was actually a semi-official outing. If you're ever in Morelia, and at the Cafe Santa Fe, the fajitas are pretty freakin' good. Stay away from the lemonade. I think the "drinks" drinks were alright, from what my friends were saying.

Day 5: We went to the waterpark yesterday. I slid down a slide that if you know me is big for me. I got massive sunburn, too. I'll make sure I get a picture of some of that. At night (this was one of the less-official outings) we went to a discoteqa (club). I didn't drink, but I think pretty much everyone else did. It was still fun though, and after awhile I loosened up a bit and began to enjoy myself. Also, lots of house music. So I declare that the DJs had better taste than those at my high school dances. Also, EGO (the discoteqa) had an awesome view of Morelia at night, what with all the city lights and everything.

Also, before we went to the waterpark, I had a fun theological discussion with some classmates about Catholics praying to saints. I sided in defense of the practice, for the record. One of my classmates, one of those who was involved in the debate, is a very strongly Protestant Christian. He's pretty much awesome just like the rest of them.

Day 6: By Morelia standards I slept in--till 10:00! Pancakes for breakfast, a little reading, too much TV (mostly subtitled Without a Trace with a little bit of dubbed cartoonage.)

I'm not entirely sure I actually want to be here for the next five weeks, honestly. But I'm having a good enough time and I think it'll get better once I get more comfortable around my classmates and get a little more social--mind, parental units, that I'll be doing so without sacrificing my homework. But I'm happy for the opporunity to--and looking forward to--getting to know the pretty awesome group of people who I'm here studying with.

If I can find the time and an internet cafe that lets me I'm going to break out the MegaZeux sometime. Probably not for a couple of weeks, though.

Also, books read: this last week I read Mort. It's about a kid named Mort who becomes Death's apprentice. Before I left I finished Good Omens, which contains some pretty interesting notions. For anyone in my family reading it, don't expect your theology to be taken seriously. Do expect to laugh. Many times.

Now I'm reading Borges' Ficciones and am enjoying it, when I can understand it. I found out the lady who took us on our walking tour reads Borges. She told me it's pretty difficult reading even if you're a native speaker, which was good to know, because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't understand Borges in Spanish or in English.

Mexico!

2007-06-25T23:39:00.001-07:00

I'll be there for the next five weeks! I'm going to try and post something every week I'm there.

Maybe I'll even get around to posting those responses to post comments I said I'd get around to like five weeks ago.

Tetris, Sort Of

2007-06-19T02:28:00.000-07:00

This video is interesting, to say the least...

Enjoy.

What the Hetts?! #15: This is...Sparta?; also, CostCo

2007-06-13T23:07:00.001-07:00

I'd recommend you take a second before reading to remember that I'm about to link you to an article that's purporting the facts. Not opinion or conjecture or conspiracy theory--no, facts. As in if this isn't true, someone owes the world a big explanation. And if it is true--which it seems to be--well, I guess the Pentagon's already done its explaining. I can't guarantee any of these links will be child-safe reading, but they could be at least entertaining. A couple of the comments on Dispatches are funny, at least. I saw this linked first in this DigitalMZX thread, and secondly linked on Dispatches from the Culture Wars. I'm not kidding you on this. The third link is the link to the article--it's found here. So there you have it...our government apparently conspired to change the sexual orientation of enemy soldiers.

"What the Hetts?!"

Also, I've been discussing Ron Paul, politics, theology, and a whole host of other things recently with Andy, a friend from UP who is actually going to be one of my RAs next year...Something fun came up in our conversation just tonight that I'll post here:

[11:04:14 PM] KKairos> i think if i ever actually get into education i'm going to do my best to try and cut down on the spending that has to come from my school
[11:04:17 PM] KKairos> whether it's public or private
[11:04:33 PM] KKairos> ...in other words i'll be getting a costco membership and doing my supplies shopping there
[11:04:35 PM] Andy> cool man, that will take you far, i think
[11:04:39 PM] Andy> haha, nice
[11:04:52 PM] KKairos> that's what they should really do, is get costco memberships for public schools
[11:05:01 PM] KKairos> if they haven't already
[11:05:20 PM] Andy> hmm, that's a good idea, i don't know if they do or not
[11:05:24 PM] KKairos> $100 worth of pencils will last them like 10 years
[11:05:32 PM] KKairos> perhaps that's a bit extreme, but you get the idea
[11:05:46 PM] Andy> until they go out of style, but yep i got your drift

Hamas and Education; also, books

2007-06-12T00:56:00.000-07:00

So, here's an interesting article on CNN about the state of education in Palestinian schools. Let's not get into any controversy about the surrounding situation, here. The stuff I'm worried about is the idea of ideological bias in schools. I know that in general that should be bad enough, but here we're talking about Hamas getting more and more power over education in Palestine.

Among the causes for concern, are Hamas' desire to use textbooks that are less just-the-facts than those of their much more moderate counterpart, the Fatah movement (at least, I've never heard Fatah called a terrorist group), allegations of Holocaust denial in the histories Hamas wants to teach, and the allegation that many open government positions are being filled by Hamas candidates who are far from the most qualified for the job. Religious indoctrination is not necessarily more of a concern than before, although there has been in at least one area an added religion class per week--and a couple of female students reported being hassled and pressured to wear traditional women's Muslim garb. So in my opinion, it could be.

The original article is quite long, but I seriously recommend the read.

What do you guys think?

Also, books:

Finished Neuromancer and The Fountainhead. Now on to Good Omens, then Ficciónes while I'm in Mexico. Then when I get back I'm going to try and tackle Gődel, Escher, Bach before school starts again. If I still have time after GEB, then I read Dune. If I actually get through Dune, I'll have gotten my reading list completed. Either way it'll be an accomplishment by the standards of someone who's never actually forced himself to read five books in a summer before.

What the Hetts?! #14: Specialty Cows

2007-06-01T01:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this isn't quite as much of an odd news thing, but it is a bit odd and it's entertaining. And it tells us things about cows that we didn't know before.

An interesting article on Scienceblogs's "pure pedantry" describes how cows have been discovered that have the ability to produce skim milk. As in, milk without fat. Coming straight out the cow. That's pretty sweet--and apparently it's not the result of human interference but is actually naturally present in some cows already. At least, from what I can tell.

AND, one cow has been identified as being able to produce milk that will give butter that will be easier to spread straight from the fridge. Again, as I understand it, this is the cow's natural ability.

Check out the cow-related awesomeness at this link.

"What the Hetts?!"

What the Hetts?! #13: A Double Whammy

2007-05-24T13:44:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes...As the result of my having found two stories thus far today, there will be not just one but TWO stories for this week's "What the Hetts?!" To get the original story click on the header.

1) Internet Taxes

The story came through Slashdot. Apparently there are some over in Washington who feel that it would be a good idea to tax the internet. So our internet connections and what we shop for online could become susceptible to various taxes...Actually, it seems as though depending on where we live, we may be intended to voluntarily cough up cash for stuff we buy online--at least according to this article we are. And this would make that essentially voluntary taxation an enforced thing.

The other aspect of this debate is that some in Congress want to enable the government to tax internet access; here I think they mean mostly broadband. One member of our wonderful Congress even claims we could see taxes on e-mail. I'm a bit irked.

"What the Hetts?!"

2) UK School Ignoring the Holocaust

This one also came from Slashdot. Apparently there's a history department in the UK that's ignoring the Holocaust. It's because it's afraid of encountering anti-Israel sensibility in certain segments of its Muslim student population. Apparently there's been some "resistance" (from the article) over the teaching of the Crusades, which are covered by local mosques differently from how they're covered in the classroom. Lastly there was even a bit of resistance from Christian parents who wanted the Israeli-Palestinian conflict taught a certain way.

It's good to note that, as Snopes points out, this isn't a UK-wide ban on Holocaust teaching and it's only one history department. Still, it's sort of scary.

"What the Hetts?!"

Playing Games in Spanish

2007-05-22T22:54:00.000-07:00

So some of you may know that partly in preparation for Mexico I've been running things in Spanish. This means my G-Mail account is set to run in Spanish, so while the e-mails are English, the interface isn't. Which is good. I'm also running a strategy game, The Battle for Wesnoth in Spanish instead of English. It's got a fantasy theme so the usefulness of the vocabulary may be debatable. Still, anything helps, I say. The screenshot above is an orc talking about the player's troops...in Spanish. This is great. What makes it even better is that some of the dialogue's untranslated, so the characters speak Spanish, then English, then Spanish again. Quite humorous.

The translation: Look! I see a boat! Humans are coming! We can squash them! (I actually had to look up aplastarlos, the word which translated as "squash them."

Click on it to get a larger (more readable) version.

Tetris Attack for the WIN

2007-05-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

So, anyone in the family who remembers how we used to rock at Tetris Attack, I present to you this clip. It isn't Tetris Attack; it's what Tetris Attack was in Japan before it got the Yoshi theme put on it for American shores (for the record the title of this game is Panel de Pon, but gameplay-wise it's exactly the same. And the people playing it are...amazing, to say the least. I recomment watching at least two minutes of this to get the idea of how awesome these people are. I'm pretty sure they'd beat me into the ground any day.

What the Hetts?! #12: Pee Where You Will?

2007-05-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

A man was recently electrocuted. That's not so unusual, but here's how he did it: he peed on his Playstation 2 gaming system while it was still plugged into the wall! Apparently it also rendered him unconscious about ten seconds. I guess it's not exactly what I'd have done or the outcome I'd have seen coming, but it's still rather unusual. Why on earth you'd pee on your game system is beyond me. The original story, which I believe was linked from Kotaku, can be found at Fox News.

"What the Hetts?!"

Well, that piece is back now.

The Swing of Things

2007-05-16T01:18:00.000-07:00

In an effort to get back in the swing of things with this blog I'm going to try and do two regulars: 1) What the Hetts?! on Thursdays. I've got a couple that could appear tomorrow. 2) Christian Theology Board Game on Sundays.

Hopefully I can establish a decent habit for this stuff before I go to Mexico. Once I get there the second may not be so realistic but I might still manage the first. If need be I could probably shift What the Hetts?! temporarily to a weekend day. I've basically been gaming, lazing around and (somewhat) reading this summer, having finished Neuromancer and moved on to The Fountainhead. I just passed page 200 in that book, so I've got a little under 500 to go. Neuromancer is good if you like a science-fiction caper. It won, like, three big science fiction awards, and is quite well-written. I'm not sure I caught every detail of the plot, or exactly what was going on everywhere, but it's quite an enjoyable ride.

As for The Fountainhead, I know it's supposed to be in part a distilling of Ayn Rand's philosophy, though she apparently doesn't intend it to be primarily that, at least from what I hear...At any rate it appears to be about architects and their lives and careers, and it's at least pretty well-written so far. Not sure how much of her philosophy I'm going to agree with in the end. I already know it partly involves rejection of the supernatural, so pending the revelation that God is not supernatural I'll have to disagree with that part. But some elements of it I might agree with.

Finals Are Over

2007-05-02T13:44:00.000-07:00

Hooray. Also, there's a game now in development which looks to be an awesome piece of freeware, entitled The Underside. It's sort of like Cave Story (which is a game pretty much anyone reading this could play, and their kids could play it too in my opinion.) However it plays a bit differently, despite stylistic similarities, and emits a much quirkier and offbeat sort of atmosphere. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Here's a trailer video from the author, courtesy of YouTube:

Enjoy.