thou shalt not be a dumbass...

One of my readers (dop) posted an article in her weblog the other day about a dinosaur-themed Creationist theme park. I think she expected me to be shocked. I gave up on that long ago. Mostly it just makes me sad now.

There are two kinds of “Creationists” really... I think of them as active and passive Creationists. The passive ones actually worry me the most. The active ones are easy to dismiss as just plain nuts. They are the ones who go around suggesting that the Earth is really only 6000 years old and that there were dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark and that Leviathan was a dinosaur and that the Flood killed all the dinosaurs and that pretty much everything we think we know about biology, geology, astronomy, and nuclear physics is WRONG. They try to back up their claims with “scientific” evidence and then ask that their demented, borderline clinically insane interpretations of scientific data be taught in schools as evidence that God created the Earth in 6 days. And I used to try to argue with these people... I used to try to go over to talk.origins on Usenet and have intelligent conversations with them, but nothing could be more pointless. Because anyone who can read the Bible and look at the story of Noah and read that as a historical document rather than an allegorical Fairy Tale... I mean... what are you going to say to someone like that? They are clearly not using anything even vaguely resembling a rational thought process. It’s the exact same kind of absolutely blind, incoherent devotion to an outdated mentality that causes certain other breeds of fundamentalists to blow themselves up and fly planes into buildings. It is stubbornly, defiantly, gleefully anti-thinking.

But the passive Creationist is someone who has never really thought about it much. If you ask him or her, they will say that God created Man. But if you pin them down on the age of the universe or the question of evolution, they’ll say... well... I believe that God made the Big Bang happen or “guided” evolution or something. Or worse, they’ll say... Oh maybe that’s true, but the scientists just haven’t proven it. Which is a huge failure on the part of science, and our educational system. That makes me sad. It makes me sad that in 12 years of school... nobody explained to these people how science works, or what science IS, or what a THEORY is, or HOW we know what we know about the world. Because these people were told some things in Sunday School when they were 8, and nobody ever taught them anything more... MORE... they were never taught to question or to think for themselves... they were never taught to look for something BETTER. It’s like coming across a 34 year-old who still believes in Santa Claus or still thinks babies come from the Stork something. It’s... SAD. These people aren’t being belligerent or hardheaded or clinging blindly to a millennium-old worldview. They just haven’t been educated. We’ve failed.

And these are the people whom the active Creationists are targeting with their fucking theme parks. (I mean, besides brainwashing their own children.) And it’s funny that the theme park that they are talking about in this story is about an hour from where I’m moving this summer. Maybe I’ll have to pay it a visit. Maybe I’ll have to hand out some pamphlets or something!

But what gives me faith is the knowledge of what happened with Copernicus. When Copernicus said that the Earth goes around the Sun, the first reaction was to ignore it. A couple of scientists paid attention. Nobody else. A generation later, people began to believe it. Then the Church paid attention. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake... Galileo was “vehemently suspected of heresy”, forced to denounce the belief, and placed under house arrest. But 50 years later ALL of the astronomers in Europe believed that the Sun was the center of the solar system. A hundred years after Copernicus, it was being taught in the universities. And 150 years after Copernicus’s death, his theory was being taught in Protestant secondary schools in his home country of Poland.

Darwin died in 1882. By my count we’ve got another 30 years or so left until we can look forward to the word “Creation Science” disappearing once and for all from the mouths of our uneducated School Boards. It WILL happen eventually.

I have faith.

wasteful stupidity alert...

I called Apple yesterday. I finally got around to dealing with my missing ”Shift” key. I popped off the key-cap one day to get a hair of a piece of schmutz out from underneath and it broke one of the microscopic plastic pins on the bottom of the cover. So I’ve been typing without a right-side Shift key for about 4 months. I’m kinda used to it, but I wanted to fix it before my warranty expired.

So I called Apple, set up my extended warranty, which I’ve also been meaning to do and told them I needed a replacement Shift key. ”We don’t stock replacement keys. We’ll have to send you a whole keyboard.”

Now... I ask you... what the FUCK? You are going to send me an entire $100 laptop keyboard instead of a 25 cent key cap?? That’s just fucking INSANE.

(PS: They told me I don’t have to send back the old one either, which means that I can sell the old key-caps one at a time on eBay to people whose warranties have expired!)

dave is a sucker for a good "meme"...

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

If one were to take that goal out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and resposnible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.

-- Albert Einstein, "Out of My Later Years"

I don't think you're supposed to put the source of the quote to be right proper about it, but I can't pass up the opportunity to point out how much Einstein rocked.

stop... THINK... purchase...

I was digging through the pile of the wife’s recent Target purchases last week, and found a package of “BloPens.” You know these things? You know when you were in the 7th grade and you’d chew on a Bic pen until the little plug came out of the end, and you’d keep sucking on it and chewing on it until you finally realize that there is a big *splurp* of ink being blown out of the tip? This is like that, only on purpose. They are these magic-marker thingies that you BLOW through the back of, and they work kind of like an airbrush, poofing a spray of ink out of the tip, kinda like an airbrush. Cool, huh?

Yeah... especially for a one-year-old and a five-year-old. It’s things like this that make me want to scream at her... “Do you stop and give even a MOMENT’S thought to the things you put in your shopping cart?? Ink spraying pens? In this house? Because clearly the kids don’t ruin ENOUGH shit with crayons and markers... they need some art-materials with a larger area of effect. Why not just buy them a pneumatic commercial paint sprayer? A big pack of extra-wide tip permanent Sharpies? Some water balloons filled with wood stain?”

Jesus.

nightmares...

My dreams on Sunday night ranged from “alligator-infested swamps” to “old-west-style gunfights in my house” to “piles of cats-on-fire”. Don’t even fucking ask me. I checked the web today to see if one of the side-effects of my allergy medicine was weird-ass fucked-up dreams. It doesn’t seem to be.

The Little One is down to only waking up once or twice during the night instead of 3 or 4 times. I’m wondering if my brain is going nuts what with all the extra REM sleep it’s not used to. Woo-hoo! Uninterrupted sleep! Time to get funky!

Please... stop... brain. Will you stop... please?

routine...

I got on the train today, and someone was in my seat.

You heard me... MY seat! You don’t understand the static nature of one of these early morning commuter trains. Same people, every day... they stand at the same place on the platform, get into the same car, sit in the same seats. Or nearly the same seats. Me? I take the forward facing side of the double-facing seats at the end of the last car. And today there was this couple sitting there. People I’ve never seen before. Who do they think THEY are??

So, I need to have a double-facing seat, because it’s really impossible to work on a laptop in the regular seats, so I went upstairs and took the same seats on the second level. And I’m sure I’m screwing up somebody ELSE’S morning by being here. It’s probably sending a ripple effect right down the train.

It’s weird, though... I don’t recognize ANY of these people up here. Except the Blonde From My Stop. She’s up here. Next row behind the seat I’m facing, actually. It’s funny... I can’t tell if I think she’s attractive or not. I’ve never seen her smile. I wonder...

Anyway. The semester is almost over... May 17th is the last day. Two weeks. I didn’t even buy a monthly ticket this month... it’s singles from here on out. Pretty soon, my seat will be up for grabs. It’s funny to think... all these TrainPeople you see every day. Will they notice? Will the Blonde ever think to herself... I wonder whatever happened to that Guy With The Ponytail?

Too late, Blondie. He’s gone for good. You missed your chance.

freaky old tv program synchronicity...

Last night we were watching TV and there was that AOL commercial that mocks the opening of ”The Six-Million Dollar Man” and listening to the voiceover, it really does sound like the same guy from the TV show. I’m pretty sure the voiceover for the TV show was done by the guy who played Steve Austin’s boss (Oscar?) so I looked him up on IMDB to see if he was still alive. He is. His name is “Richard Anderson.” He was also on Dynasty. So, who knows... it could be him.

Anyway, today there’s nothing on the TiVo, so I’m flipping channels (Old School!) and I find an old episode of “The Fugitive” on TV-Land. I think it’s one of the last episodes. And this week’s guest star?

Richard Anderson.

Whoa.

(cut to shot of grass growing...)

I’ve been seeing previews lately for a supposed summer blockbuster called “The Day After Tomorrow”. It’s apparently a disaster movie about global warming.

Let me say that again...

A disaster movie about global warming.

And all I can think is... man, that’s gotta be one long fucking movie.

”Is it hot in here, or is just me?”

job, move, timing...

We're tying to get a handle on the "transfer of power" that is coming up in July, and there are a lot of factors to consider. We've gotten 3 moving estimates so far, and they are coming up in the neighborhood of $6000-$7000. But it turns out that the first week of July is the busiest moving time of the year, and thus is designated "PEAK" time and costs about $1000 more. So what would cost us $7500 on July 1 will only cost $6500 if we wait until July 7th.

So we are somewhat inclined to push the moving date back a week, especially since the builders down there in AL won't exactly promise us a completion date before the middle of the month. They never say "No" - but they never say "Yes" either. They just say - "Around the middle of July". We have some flexibility on the closing date on our end, and we don't want to wind up in a situation where we close on July 2 up here and wind up having to put our stuff in storage for 2 weeks, which could get REALLY expensive.

On the other hand, once July 1st hits, I'm no longer getting PAID by anybody, nor do I have health insurance or anything, so we don't want to drag out the interim period TOO long. Right now we're leaning towards closing here on July 6th or 7th, which would get us OUT of the peak moving period, and given the 9 days that we're allowed to have our stuff on the truck, give us until July 15th - and then just pray that the house is done by then.

We also haven't decided how to get US and our CARS and our CATS down to Mobile in a way that makes sense. We'll probably wind up having MY car transported, which I think only costs a few hundred bucks. We're also looking into commercial pet transport, since we can't really spend 4 days with the cats in the car! Because our original plan was to drive from here to Baltimore, spend the night with family, then to Southern VA, stay with friends, then to Atlanta to stay with more friends, then to Mobile. So we'd be on the road 4 days and catch up with the moving van down there. But now it's looking like maybe it would be better to just send the wife and kids down by plane, and I could do a quick 2-day drive down by myself. A lot actually depends on the cats, even though that seems a bit silly.

In any case, we need to decide soon, because all of the moving companies tell us if we're moving in July we need to book before the middle of May. I just wish it was all OVER with.

computer stuff...

My net connection is all flaky this morning. Time to unplug the cable box in the basement, then plug it back in. Sometimes that fixes it.

I updated the system software on my laptop the other day for the first time. I never to the automatic updates. I figure – if it’s not having any PROBLEMS... why fuck with the operating system? But lately the graphics on my Mac have been going all wacko-pixellated on me whenever I resize a window... usually after I unplug from an external LCD projector at work. So, I figured I’d hold my breath and update... from 10.2.2 to 10.2.8. So far... no problems.

I had a very successful night of illegal downloading last night. It’s always very satisfying when you can scrape together a whole album one track at a time. I scored three last night – “Rock N’ Roll” by Ryan Adams... “White Blood Cells” by the White Stripes... and the latest album by the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. I think I’m pretty well-stocked with new music for a while.

I never mentioned one other mishap from a few weeks ago. I tripped over the cord to my laptop, sending the whole thing crashing to the ground and mangling the fuck out of the AC plug. I had use pliers to bend it back into something resembling “round” so it would go back into the hole, but even still you have to push just a *leeetle* too hard to get it in there. It ain’t pretty, but it works. There is a little crack there in the case too. Fucking shit.