Shouzer

Just about thirteen months ago I shared here that I had been mentioned by name on a story done by an espn.com writer. Today, I have similar news to share. A question that I sent to Jaguars.com senior editor Vic Ketchman was answered in his latest column. I am “Kyle from Carbondale, IL” because I was at work while typing. Great success!

Now, I can say this without talking badly about myself because I don’t really drive my car that much.  When I awoke this morning on a nice lovely day I thought about all my plans: laundry, grocery shopping, relaxing with Scott, maybe going to a park or something.  It all came crashing down when on our way to the grocery store we got to my car.  Some wanker hit my fucking car and then didn’t have the decency to stick around and own up to it.  So we call the police, and they won’t send a cop out to make a report because the car is still drivable.  That’s bull shit.  Stupid CPD doesn’t wanna get off their ass and do their damn job.  Then the cop woman at the desk makes me feel like shit for having to make her stop reading her damn magazine and do her job!  What a major bitch.  I gotta run, have to go pick up another car….I’ll finish this rant later and put the pics up of the damage.

Check this shit out.  The last link on on that page is to Shouzer.  The image in question actually generates a lot of traffic for us every month, and I don’t even remember where it came from, hehe.  I think I grabbed it from somebody signature on a forum a few years back.

[Edit:] This ended up being a monster post. Despite that, I’d be really happy to hear what anybody else has to say about this. Comments are strongly encouraged!

There was a discussion on an email alias at work recently about intelligent design, and though the original conversation got extremely off-topic, I nonetheless spent quite a while thinking about it. From what I’ve seen, the typical debate seems to end up breaking down to religion vs atheism. Those that support religion are ostensibly religious, and those in favor of evolution or natural selection are typically perceived as atheist. What I don’t understand is why the two groups have to be mutually exclusive.

First–and I want to get this out of the way as quickly as possible–intelligent design is not science, nor should it ever be taught in school as a complement or alternative to evolution as science. Intelligent design’s sole purpose is to bring into science the requirement of a higher being. This mere fact alone precludes it from being science. Instead, it’s a giving up. Rather than actually trying to explain the way things are in physical terms, it’s a weak fallback to an unprovable, untestable, and intrinsically unscientific explanation.

Now, having said that, I don’t know why you have to be atheist to believe in evolution. I’m certainly not. I don’t understand what’s so “unintelligent” about evolution. The idea of natural selection explains a lot of things fantastically well. An organism’s or species’ favorable random mutations will become more common in successive generations furthering that species. It makes sense. It’s almost perfect.

So why can’t a typical Christian, for instance, accept this? Couldn’t it be the case that God created the world in this manner? We don’t have to remove the scientific randomness of it–God doesn’t have to be molding every single human, bug, and bacteria created. He doesn’t have to be actively carrying electricity over copper wires. No, science can explain it. If you believe in God, why not believe that He created things in a rational, explainable way? It would be well within his power.

The problem for me is that convservative religious groups often accept science when it’s convenient and condemn it when it’s not. They’ll write up blog posts from their laptops on their planes about how they didn’t evolve from monkeys. Oh yeah, and I suppose angels are storing those posts magically in the laptops while there’s no internet connection. They’re probably carrying the planes, too. Cell phones? They’re really work through a huge network of angels carrying our voices over vast distances. It has nothing to do with radio waves.

I’m a firm believer in science–real science–though I also mentioned earlier that I’m not atheist. I don’t accept the “general” notion of intelligent design, but I think natural selection is fairly intelligent. I don’t believe it’s too far-fetched to say some higher power designed things to work that way (i.e. it was an intelligent design…). In fact, I think it’s naive to believe that science will ever have all the answers.

The big bang, for example, while a fascinating theory, doesn’t actually explain the beginning of anything. Go far enough in the past and there was a single mass of infinite density, which then began expanding at an exponentially rapid pace? Honestly, what the fuck is that? Where did this magical ball (or point) of mass come from? Even if science can someday explain that, the next question will be what caused the thing that caused the big bang and so on? It’ll be an infinite series of questions and answers with no end.

The existence of life, of our universe, of anything is inherently beyond the realm of our scientific understanding. At the end of the day, taking all real science into account, “Why do I exist?” is still a valid question. That above all else necessitates my belief in a higher power, but it does not negate–nor should it supplant–actual science. And to attempt to do so with frivolous “theories” is a waste of time and a detriment to society as a whole.

I rarely ever watch commercials anymore, now that TiVo’s got my back. It might sound stupid, but it would actually be pretty hard to go back to watching regular, live TV all the time for all my weekly shows.

I was made painfully aware of that this weekend while I was watching all the NBA playoff games. In the mix of typically horrible crap between the actual games, I happened to catch a few pretty good commercials. For the record, Kyle linked me to one of them first.

Here’re the links to the first, second, and third commercials.

Well, I’m finally getting around to writing this post now. Sorry for the long absence. I’ve been terrible about keeping in touch the last few months. According to Juvers, it’s been two months since my last post, so I’ll start there.

The term ended at the end of February, and we’re on summer holidays now. I already miss my kids a lot, and I also miss the routine of going to my schools. Since then, I’ve been doing a wide assortment of things, including teaching holiday programs at schools, holiday club at the office, volunteer teaching, and teacher training. I suppose that’s all a bit boring though, so I’ll skip the details.

Last week was Song Kran, which is the Thai new year’s. They celebrate in a variety of ways, but the most fun is by having a nation-wide water fight. You walk down the street, and people just shoot you with water guns. I didn’t go anywhere special within Thailand for that, but I did get shot by some kids on my street. I guess you could say I enjoyed it.

I went to Malaysia and Singapore during the week I had off. During this trip, I visited Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Melaca, and Singapore. Penang is an island in the north of Malaysia. The highlight there was an Indian restaraunt which was highly authentic. KL is the capital of Malaysia, and the highlight there was the Petronas twin towers. They are featured in the movie Entrapment. Melaca was an old capital of Malaysia, and it had lots of historic stuff. Singapore was pretty cool, though it was insanely expensive. I was excited because they had Mt. Dew, and I have been craving it.

The big news, though, is that I will be starting work at GM, probably in July. I am going to be a controls integration engineer in a team working on the 6-speed transmission. Don’t ask what that means, because I don’t really know to be honest. I’m going to be in Milford, MI, which is just outside of Detroit. GM’s test facility is there. It’s called the Milford Proving Grounds.

I’m not sure when I’ll be coming home. It’s the million dollar question. I finish my contract here on May 30th, and I will leave Thailand shortly after that. I would like to go traveling for a month, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford it. I’m trying to find some work at a summer camp or something, but it doesn’t look promising.

Anybody else noticed that iTunes is an absolutely horrible, bloated piece of shit?  For as much love as Apple gets (and hell, I provide my fair share), iTunes 7 really is one of the worst apps I’ve ever used.  The simple fact that it mysteriously requires Quicktime to be installed is bad enough, but on top of that it’s just dog slow.

Stupid iPhone and its software lock-in.  If I could sync that bad boy with Winamp, iTunes would be uninstalled in a heartbeat.

It’s been said that I enjoy the same restaurants that tend to attract an “older” population. A population in which the most popular job title is likely to be “Retired”. A population that might just contain an inordinate number of grandmas and grandpas. A population of senior citizens, if you will.

My friends, the old folks and I share a common interest in places like Bob Evans and Cracker Barrel. I know why I like them–breakfast at any time of the day. It’s absolutely glorious. Anybody who disagrees just dropped a rank on my list of friends.

Now, this is all well and good in most parts of the country. But in Washington? In Washington there just aren’t any Bob Evans. How weak is that? All I want at the end of the day is a delicious Sunshine Skillet. But where am I supposed to get one now? It was a sad realization that my days of Sunshine Skillets and Pot Roast Hash have all but come to an end.

One of the things that I sometimes overlook when asked what I miss about Champaign are the last two months (or so) of last school year when Jared, Al, and I played NBA2k7 nearly every night in my room. Though it will probably never come to mind as quickly as “the restaurants,” “living on my own,” or “Illini basketball,” those games we played were every bit as enjoyable. You see, Jared became a master of the “3 Team Trade” in Association Mode, and we wound up playing with a trio of Gilbert Arenas (Jared), LeBron James (me), and Amare Stoudemire (Al). The point of playing was not to win, but to maximize our winning margin. We started out with the goal of scoring 100 (a “hundystick”), but got to where it was disappointing if we didn’t have 100 by the end of the third. I don’t know if that sounds like fun to the reader, but that doesn’t matter. It was fun.

This post obviously means nothing to anyone but Jared and Al, but it was just on my mind. I was thinking about how the NBA playoffs were coming up, and how the Jazz might face the Suns in the first round, and how that would be an awesome series to watch with those guys and then follow it up with some 2k. We could probably try to play over Xbox Live, but it just wouldn’t be the same.

Anyway, I’m just saying I really liked doing that, and I’m not going to get to this year.

It’s the time of year when readers flock to Juver’s Blog to read an enthusiastic post about how all is right with the world because men are getting paid to cheat at play baseball once more. That post hasn’t arrived yet, but we’ll keep watching for it.

How do I feel about baseball, you ask? Well, since you asked, I loathe baseball. Let me qualify that; it is the MLB, in particular, that I can’t stand. As many of you know, I play some summer whiffle ball and enjoy that thoroughly. I also think fondly of my days as a Little Leaguer. But professional baseball just strikes a nerve with me. It takes away my sports talk radio on my drive home from work because our local Fox Sports Radio affiliate patches in Cubs games. It takes away the mind numbing ESPN afternoon programming that I use to drown out the silence while I play WoW and eat my late lunch. Eventually, it will take the place of such live televised sporting events as college basketball/football, NBA, and NFL. If the MLB backed down, we could just extend those seasons through the summer, and make rational people happy. It takes the place of The Sports Guy’s articles. Fantasy baseball takes the place of conversations with friends. Baseball ruins everything. Baseball is like the guy who speaks at a wedding when the minister askes if anyone has any reason why the two should not be joined in marriage. He (baseball) looks like a fool, and the most important important time (everyday) in the bride and groom’s (my) life is ruined by some uninvited ex-boyfriend (baseball, again) that you hoped had disappeared forever.

I can’t wait until November.