Rambling: Lent

Wednesday is a significant day in the church calendar, and it's a day that, sadly, will go unnoticed by a majority of evangelical Christians. That day is Ash Wednesday, the first day of a liturgical season called Lent.

The season of Lent has traditionally been a time set aside to lead up to Easter, a time of humbling ourselves before God in a more focused way than usual. (After all, we should always keep ourselves in right relationship with God.) Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the season. While it's found nowhere in Scripture, the message at an Ash Wednesday service is quite Scriptural: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return." It's so easy in an age of "all about me" Christianity to forget that we are the servants of a holy God and not the other way around. And it's good to be reminded that, outside of Christ, we can do nothing of any value, not even save ourselves from hell. Ash Wednesday -- and the whole season of Lent -- are meant to be a reminder of it. So, even though my church won't have an Ash Wednesday service, I'm still going to remind myself that I am nothing without my Lord and Savior. It's a reminder that I know I need.

Rambling: Dollar Bills Are Tough

You could say that I engaged in some money laundering this afternoon. It's not what you think, though.

I accidentally left a couple of dollar bills in one of my pants pockets when I threw the pants into the washer. Usually, paper thrown in a washing machine winds up looking like some sort of biohazard. These dollar bills, however, survived quite well. Presently, they are sitting on my desk, drying, wrinkled but whole and looking quite clean. The government uses some very sturdy paper for its money!

Rambling: Untitled

ABCDEFG
HIJKLMNOP
QRS
TUV
W
X
Y and Z
Now I've typed my ABC's. Next won't you type with me? :-)

Rant: Ice Dancing Is an Olympic Event?

<rant>So, I'm trying to watch the Winter Olympics, and I want to see the interesting sports, like ski jump, super G, and speed skating. What does NBC show, though, right in prime time? Ice dancing. Ice dancing -- a bizarre combination of dancing and figure skating, complete with all the things that don't appeal to me about either of the two events.

All difficult tosses, spins, and jumps of figure skating are gone. All that's left is a few carries and a lot of boring dance stuff. It's just not atheltic on the same level as pure ice skating. Don't get me wrong, I like to dance, but it doesn't make sense for ice dancing to be an Olympic event. After all, when was the last time you heard of someone at the summer games winning a gold medal in ballet? It's not that dance isn't athletic. It is. Yet ice dancing clearly does not belong at the Olympic level. Then there are the immodest, gaudy costumes that ice dancers feel compelled to wear. The colors and lack of material bring me to the verge of nausea.
I don't know why NBC feels so compelled to show us all of this when there are more legitimate sports such as hockey, skiing, ski jump, speed skating, and even figure skating. Make it stop, please. No more ice dancing! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!</rant>

Commentary: Big Brother Government and Bad Science

Big brother government is watching you, especially if you're Wal-Mart. And apparently staring means counting. I'll explain those two statements in commentaries below.

First, the Massachusetts pharmacy board has that Wal-mart must carry the "morning-after" pill. (This pill is a form of abortion because conception has already occurred...it is not "emergency contraception" as the liberal media would have us believe. After all, how can it be prevent conception if conception has already occurred? But I digress...). The issue I'm dealing with here is whether the board can force Wal-Mart--or any retailer--to carry a particular pill. And the answer to that question should be no. The last time I checked, this was the United States and not the Soviet Union. The government in a capitalist system (as opposed to the Soviet's command system) is not supposed to tell stores what to carry on their shelves, whether the store is a pharmacy, a grocery store, or a bookstore. Can you imagine the government telling a bookstore that it had to carry a particular book? No, that seems silly, and in the same way, requiring Wal-Mart to carry the contra-pregnancy pill is foolish as well. Wal-Mart is within its rights to decide what it will and will not stock. If a woman wants to find the pill, there are other pharmacies that sell it. Neither Wal-Mart nor any other store should be forced by the government to sell anything. This is plain and simple a case of the government forcing its will unfairly upon a corporation. [Sigh] America is becoming more and more like Europe every day. Let me know when techno and discos starting showing up again and when believing in Jesus Christ will be hate speech.
The second item deals with the third in a string of absurd conclusions that a few scientists have made in the past few years about counting. A few years ago, a small group of scientists concluded that dogs could count. Last year, another group decided that monkeys could count. Now, a group has used the same flawed reasoning as the other two studies to conclude that babies can count sooner than we previously thought. The problem with all of these studies is that the reasoning used to determine when a dog (or monkey or baby) is "counting".
In each experiment, the subject is shown a picture (or hears a sound) of a certain number of things. With the dogs, it was pictures of food pellets. I forget what it was with the monkeys. With babies, it was the sound of 2 or 3 women's voices saying, "Look". In each case, researchers found that the subjects stared longer when the same number of things were present than when a different number was present. For example, the dogs stared longer at the food pile if the same amount of food was there as in the picture, and the babies stared longer at pictures of women that matched the number of voices that they heard. In other words, the likelihood of something being counted is directly proportional to the time that the viewer looks at it. 1...2...3....Say what?!!!!!!!!!!!
That is one of the worst conclusions I have ever heard! It makes no sense! Logically, why would anyone (or any animal) stare longer at something that matched its expectations? If something is as expected, don't we spend less time looking at it? So, why the reverse assumption? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. The conclusion is logically flawed at its core, and I'm amazed that any serious researcher would actually make it. If anything, I think their findings disprove their hypothesis. [Double sigh]

Rambling: Rain Dilemma

Here's a classic dilemma pondered by many math and physics people at the college level. It's raining, and you want to make it from your car to wherever you're headed while staying as dry as possible. Should you run or should you walk?

Human instinct is to run because running decreases the amount of time that you're in the rain. However, running increases the effective rate at which the rain hits you (think about how much harder it seems to be raining when you're driving a car on the highway as opposed sitting still). This increased rate could potentially nullify the benefit from being out in the rain for less time.
So would walking make more sense, then? Maybe, but that does increase the amount of time that you are out in the rain, meaning that you have longer to get wet.
The answer this question can be found using mathematics, but I don't have the time or desire to work on it right now. For now, I welcome your thoughts. If I have a little time, I might try to work out this puzzle.

Rambling: Writer's Block II

I want to post something, but I just don't feel like writing at all.
So, I'll leave you with one little thought, inspired by the KU-ISU game -- "If you play well, the referees can't do anything that will beat you."

Rambling: Riddle

It moves but is always there.
It can hold things but has no arms.
It be taken in and pushed out but cannot be touched.
It is necessary for life yet too much of it can be deadly.
What is it?

Air
Air moves (the wind) yet there is always air around you, even if the wind blows.
Air can hold things such dust, leaves, and water vapor.
Air is taken in when you breathe and pushed out by ventilation fans yet it is intangible.
Without air, we cannot live, yet too much of it (too much pressure) kills.

Commentary: The Frustrations of Urban Renewal

Change is never easy, especially when it comes to revitalizing older, decaying urban areas. A case in point is happening right here in Topeka.
A developer wants to transform an area near the Washburn University campus into a new, reinvigorated shopping center and apartment complex. I drive right by the area that the developer wants to work on. It's primarily an old collection of older buildings either run down and vacant or occupied by small businesses. If anywhere is in need of "urban renewal", then this is the place. It is example of what people think of when they mockingly refer to Topeka as "To-puke-a".

Most of the property owners in the stretch under consideration have already agreed to sell to the developer. However, two holdouts remain. The most publicized holdout is the owner of a small bike shop. He is refusing to sell for one simple reason: he knows that his property is worth something to the developer, and he's trying to get as much as he can out of the deal. Let me say clearly that I have no ill will towards the man for wishing to profit from the sale of his property, and while it makes sense that he should profit, some of his reported asking prices border on astronomical, such as $1.8 million, which is 18 times the value of the location.
The owner claims that he wishes to keep his business open. His actions, however, seem to belie those claims. If he really wanted to keep his business, then he could be given three times his property's worth, which would easily allow him to start over in a new location near the university and still have plenty of money to spare. Or he could negotiate a deal to have his business be given space in the new project. Yet he continues to demand much greater sums.
I am disappointed in this situation. I'm disappointed that this owner seems concerned solely with his own well-being and makes seemingly unrealistic demands upon the developer. These demands have hindered the progress of a development that will wind up helping to revitalize a portion of central Topeka. Now, I'm not at all suggesting that this many shouldn't be allowed to sell for two or even three times the worth for his property, but I'm disappointed that his asking price is so dramatically high.
I'm equally disappointed, though, in the developers, who are calling for the use of eminent domain to force the owner to sell his property. To do so would be to abuse governmental power and to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution. I don't care what the Supreme Court has said. I think it was wrong to say that it was okay for the government to seize land for economic development purposes. Eminent domain should be reserved for situations involving the construction of governmental facilities for public use (such as roads and bridges), and even then its use should be as limited as possible. Governmental intervention is not the solution here.
The solution to this problem lies with the two parties. Hopefully, the owner of the bike shop and the developer will be able to work out a deal that will allow the owner to make a good profit off of it (which is fine with me) while still keeping the cost of the development from becoming prohibitive. I urge them both to do so because this development will do much to help the heart of Topeka begin to come alive again.

Rambling: So Much for Global Warming!

According to a report released today by the local National Weather Service, this January was Topeka's 2nd warmest on record. The warmest ever was in 1933. While this unusually warm January doubtless will be used by local global warming proponents for months to come, the fact that this type of anomaly has occurred before, back in the Dust Bowl days, undermines pointing to this unusual weather as evidence for global warming. Is there other evidence? In my opinion, yes, there is some, but I am also not convinced of it. And I am qualified to make that judgment; my degree is in Meteorology.

Still, this warm January was close to the record. The average temperature was 41 degrees. The 1933 average was 41.4 degrees. That's warm, considering that a "normal" average high for the month is 39 with an average low of 18. We clearly have had an unusual run of warm weather. Will it end? Or will we just skip winter altogether and head right for Spring? I don't know. I don't make the weather. I don't even predict it much anymore. There is cold air up in Alaska, which is upstream from us. If it moves this way, we could see our temperatures plunge down. For now, I just am grateful to God for such an enjoyable month.