“Bouncing Off the Walls”
Welcome to my WebLog. (I won’t call it a “b--g”;
I don’t like the word.) Way too much information about my
life, my thoughts, my fears, and my ever-evolving politics. For
those of you who care (or for those who just accidentally found this
page due to a web search).
Note that the parent site for this WebLog is designed for “mature
audiences.” So if you can’t handle kinky sexuality
and adult language, or if you are a current or prospective employer,
don’t go poking around. You might want to leave right now,
in fact.
11:51 pm / Tuesday, September 27, 2005
What Were They Thinking?: Hep Cats
Click here for the previous entry.
I picked this up in the men’s room at the Eagle Bar in Portland, OR.
Please tell me no one actually got paid for that ad copy.
Click here for the next entry.
5:37 pm / Tuesday, September 27, 2005
I finally figured out the problem I have with the current champions of Intelligent Design.
They think God is an idiot.
Better explain that, hadn’t I?
I have no problem with the base concept of Intelligent Design: that a “higher power” (aka God) has a hand in the way things are in the universe. I have no problem believing that God set the cosmic dice rolling way back when in a way which would eventually result in our present, but I also believe that while there was a goal in mind, the details of the path to it were not guided every step of the way. And if the first roll or the 15 billionth didn’t get to where God wanted, He could roll the dice again. As often as He wanted. He has all the time in the world, after all… all the time. (Note two things which shake out of this: our present may just be one of those “details of the path” rather than the goal, and we could be one of those tries that doesn’t get to where God wants things to go. We do not and cannot know whether those are the case; we just have to be full of ourselves and believe that we are both important and correct.)
What I have a problem with is the idea than we can perceive the presence of God’s hand in the world around us, or at least that we can divine (ahem) it via the presence of things we can’t understand.
Puh-lease.
God is omnipotent. If He wants us to know he exists for sure, He’ll appear in a puff of smoke. If He doesn’t want us to know He exists for sure – if He wants us to have faith – He won’t leave loose ends hanging around that can only be explained by His existence. (Consider the Babelfish.)
God is capable of making things as complex as He wants. Infinitely complex, in fact, since He can transcend infinity. Every time we discover something, every time we peel back a layer, presto, there’s another layer behind it. We will never, can never see the Man Behind the Curtain. Like trying to find the last digit of pi, we can never actually get there; we can only approximate it.
This, thus, is where Intelligent Design falls flat on its face. Because there are some things which don’t fit into current prominent scientific theories (or at least the ones the individual has a vague awareness of) – despite the fact that there are many things which used to not fit but which now do, via either revisions of old theories or completely new ones – the assumption is made that those theories are thus failures, that nothing scientific can explain these lapses, and thus an “Intelligent Designer” is the only answer left. (Well, that or magic, I suppose.)
Falling back to the hand of God is a clear indication that someone doesn’t understand the very basic concepts of Science. Science isn’t about removing God from the equation, it’s about discovering His infinitely deep cleverness, complexity, and sophistication.
5:37 pm / Tuesday, September 27, 2005
What to Get for the Man Who Can Get Everything?
I had a birthday a month ago.
Both Rusty and my mother expressed that I’m difficult to buy for. I generally have enough expendable income that if there’s something I need – or want – I just go out and buy it. Why hint and nudge and then wait for a birthday or Christmas when I need/want it now?
(In part, my mother’s frustration is that I used to – 15 years ago – give her a multi-page list of books and CDs and movies and gadgets and such, things ranging from $10 on up. She then knew exactly what I would want. This year, she ended up, at my request, giving my a gift card from Lowe’s; I expect I’ll use it toward one of those fireplace/braziers to be used on the deck.)
Am I any more difficult to buy for than my sister, or my mother, or my grandmother? I doubt it. Just buy me a gift, same as you would for anyone else for whom you don’t know just what they “need”. Get me a sweater. Find me a cookbook, or a book on travel to Armenia, or just a Barnes & Nobel gift card with directions to buy some specific type of book. A nice bottle of wine or a liqueur. Get me a gift card for a half-dozen films from a movie theater chain, or from Hollywood video. In other words, either something I’m not likely to buy for myself on any given day, or something that even if I might buy it at the drop of a hat, that I can always use more of.
Same thing I do when I need to get gifts for someone. Simple, really.
11:32 pm / Thursday, August 5, 2005
In addition to I-912 on the ballot this year (see below), we have I-901, which will ban smoking in public places. (Actually, it goes a bit further than that and bans smoking within 25 feet of the entrance to such a place. Which means most outdoor bar patios are off limits, but you can stand in the middle of the street and dodge traffic while you puff.)
(I suspect the 25-foot rule is unenforceable, and will be challenged in court when it is enforced, and then thrown out. I hope so, anyway. I like my friends who smoke, just not when they smoke.)
The two arguments against I-901 seem to be “Why should you have the right to go to a bar that is smoke free, but they don’t have the right to go to one where there is smoking? If the non-smokers don’t like it, they can go elsewhere” and “Well, what do you expect… it’s a bar?”
(And yes, I acknowledge that one of the background purposes of anti-smoking legislation is an effort to outlaw tobacco by chipping away at the edges rather than going for the well-protected-by-lobbyists heart.)
Personally, I wish that a strong economic mechanism were tried before the blanket outlawing. Recognizing the health and other effects of smoking, require public establishments be specifically licensed to allow it, like how liquor is dealt with. For a fee, plus compliance with building codes to provide really good ventilation and adequate health insurance for the employees, sure, let it be a smoking establishment. Those who can’t afford the license fee and the other requirements will have to remain smoke free. If there’s so much business to be had from permitting smoking, everyone will pay the fees and supply the other requirements, and the world will go on. Some establishments will opt for the lower cost route and not allow smoking, reasoning that the added business from the smokers would not cover the add costs, just like how some restaurants choose not to serve beer and wine. And zip, pow, suddenly there’s probably an opportunity for non-smokers to “just go somewhere else,” something which is just a pipe dream (pun intended).
But you know, that isn’t going to happen. And since it isn’t, will I – someone who suffers from asthma and recurring bronchitis which first showed up after an 8-hour drive with three smokers, one or more of whom was lit up at any time, bronchitis which makes me cough so hard that I’ve cracked ribs twice in the past decade and have ongoing back problems because of it – will I vote to ban smoking? Will I vote to have a nicer bar and dining experience than I currently have?
Fuck yes, I will. At the basest level, I’m just greedy.
6:27 pm / Thursday, July 28, 2005
Letterhack VIII: Gas Tax, Schmass Tax
This letter was printed in the July 28 issue of the The Stranger, in response to an article on I-912, the gas tax repeal initiative on this year’s ballot, from the previous week’s issue.
MATH REMAINS HARD
“The Western Strategy” was the most brain dead thing I’ve read in a while. Does Sanders honestly believe that the gas-tax repeal (I-912) is an East/West thing or an urban/rural one? He seems to think that everyone in the Puget Sound cities is going to be for it. Boy, is he in for a surprise. People see this as an add-on to gas prices that are already way too high, and probably climbing higher. It doesn’t matter where they live, so long as they drive. I-912 is going to win by a landslide. 80/20 or so.
I also believe that few people do the math. I fill up my gas tank about once every two weeks (a lot less often than some people). When the tax is fully installed (three years from now), that’s about $1.50 per fill-up, out of close to $40 for a full tank (and maybe more in three years). That’s less than the price of a single gallon of gas, or even of a drip coffee at Starbucks. It totals about $75 per year for me, the same as my license tab tax for Sound Transit. Realizing the pretty small impact on my wallet, I’ll vote against I-912, but most people won’t do that. “Math is hard,” as Barbie said.
Here is my original letter. I think a little clarity was lost in the editing, but that’s in the name of getting in more letters, so I forgive them:
Ye gods, “The Western Strategy” was the most braindead thing I’ve read in a while. Does Sanders honestly believe that the gas tax repeal (I-912) is an East/West thing, or an Urban/Rural one? He seems to think that everyone in the Puget Sound cities is going to be for it. Boy, is he in for a surprise.
Here’s what I believe:
* People see this as an add-on to gas prices that are already way too high, and probably climbing higher. Doesn’t matter where they live, so long as they drive.
* People see this as something that was rammed through by the legislature with a special clause on it to keep it from being challenged in court, and thus trying to bypass the will of the people in the name of grabbing money for the state.
* People don’t care that the Viaduct and the 520 Bridge are major beneficiaries of the fund, for good or for ill. They don’t see “Seattle is a bully” in this. They see only the tax in this.
* People will vote from their gut on this, and seeing it as a way to stop taxes, will vote to repeal. I-912 is going to win by a landslide. 80/20 or so.
I also believe that few people do the math on this. Myself, I fill up my gas tank about once every two weeks. (A lot less often than some people.) When the tax is fully installed (three years from now), that’s about $1.50 per fill up, out of close to $40 for a full tank (and maybe more in three years). That’s less than the price of a single gallon of gas, or even of a drip coffee at Starbucks. It totals about $75 per year for me, the same as my license tab tax for Sound Transit.
Realizing the pretty small impact on my wallet, I’ll vote against I-912. But most people won’t do that. “Math is hard,” as Barbie said.
2:15 pm / Thursday, July 28, 2005
What Were They Thinking?: Never Say Never Again
Click here for the previous entry.
7-Up used to have a slogan about their lack of caffeine (competing against Coke and Pepsi): “Never had it, never will.”
So then they introduced dnL (the 7-Up logo turned upside down) which has… caffeine.
To quote Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” What’s a little “never” between corporations, eh?
As with the cereals in the previous entry, dnL has no listing on the 7-Up website, even using the dnL URL.
Click here for the next entry.
[Weblog title reference: From the Bond film of the same name.]
2:23 pm / Thursday, July 28, 2005
Edited at 11:46 pm / Tuesday, September 27, 2005
What Were They Thinking?: Pop the Cherry
Click here for the previous entry.
What, “Cherry Burst Cheerios” – alliterating with the third word instead of the second one — wasn’t good enough?
While cherries are sometimes referred to as “berries”, they are actually related to apple and apricots and roses. Not to blueberries or raspberries or strawberries.
(Maybe the idea of bursting “cherries” was a little too much sexual innuendo for General Mills? Would that Kellogg’s had been so aware, when they changed Sugar Smacks to Honey Smacks to just plain Smacks. Oh, the violence. Oh, the drug references! Oh, I notice that Smacks isn’t even listed on the Kellogg’s site anymore! Nor is this Cheerios variation on the General Mills site.)
Click here for the next entry.