No Pouting

As a single man, the month (and a little more) starting at Thanksgiving and ending at New Year's can be one of the most difficult times in the year. It's not that I don't love my family and being around my parents and all of my siblings. I do. But the holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's are all family-oriented holidays to me. And in the past, the lack of a family of my own (meaning a wife, kids, etc.) has been the cause of a negative attitude on my part towards my circumstances. This year, by God's grace, my goal is to make this next month a "No Pouting Zone." I am determined to enjoy what God has blessed me with instead of focusing on what He has not brought to pass. I've wasted far too many Decembers lamenting instead of celebrating. No more. It's time to rejoice as we enter Advent, a time of preparing to the celebrate once again the mystery of the Incarnation.

Ketchup.,..err...Catch-up Day

What a beautiful day that it is, and what a wonderful day to have a day off! Although ketchup will figure prominently in my plans for supper tonight (mmmm...sloppy joes), catch-up was the operative of the day. So far, I've accomplished many errands that I haven't been able to get to due to weather, Scholars' Bowl, or both. At this point, the only items left on today's to-do list are a long bike ride, supper, and relaxation. I'm looking forward to it, with a feeling of satisfaction and gratitude to God for a beautiful day that made catching up possible.

ISU-KSU Game Thoughts

Here are a few thoughts on a game that my alma mater could have won, if we had played better.
*ISU is a young team, and it played like one. It had three turnovers, one of them on a dropped option pitch that would have been a touchdown if the ball hadn't been fumbled. A holding penalty on an 88-yard touchdown run further showed signs of youth.
*If the ISU defenders could catch passes, they could have had 2-3 interceptions
*On the bright side, ISU ran the greatest fake punt that I have ever seen, a beautiful, "screen" like fake that fooled everyone, including me. I was not expecting it at all, K-State wasn't expecting it, and the result was amazing.
*Next year looks bright for ISU. A team that's a year older, a coach that is entering his third year, and a good chance to winning a conference game. ISU is still about 2 years away from being out of the Big XII North cellar, but there are signs of improvement. Who knows? ISU might well be challenging for the North division title here in a couple of years.

Raking Leaves...When?

I've got one more application of fertilizer (a "winterizer" batch) to apply to my minuscule front lawn. To complete that task, however, I need to get the leaves raked out of the way so they fertilizer lands on the grass and not the leaves. Finding time while the sun is up and the weather is nice has been difficult. Every day this week I've said to myself, "Self, I'm going to rake those leaves today once I get home from school." Invariably, though, something prevents me from getting home in time to get the leaves raked. I feel like I'm never going to get these leaves raked. I may just have to bite the metaphorical bullet tomorrow and rake leaves in the cold and wind. Or, I might just wait until next Tuesday.

Scattered Thoughts

Here are some scattered thoughts on a warm-ish, mostly cloudy Sunday:
--It's been quite a while since I've seen even a hint of snow falling in Topeka this early in the year, and yet, I saw snow flurries Saturday afternoon. It's not an unwelcome sight, although it is a bit surprising.
--Leaves must spontaneously generate, or be attracted to my yard somehow. It seems that I have more leaves in my yard than I have trees to generate them. Raking them will make for a couple of busy afternoons. Thankfully, it looks to be warmer than it was last week.
--My brother's new house is really nice.
--Do what you can. Start where you are. Use what you have.

Rant: Please, Not Until After Thanksgiving!

[rant]It's already started. From the moment November 1st dawned, some people--groups of people, really--have started to the inexorable march towards Christmas. Christmas decorations are already showing up in store windows and along city streets. Christmas (well, at least winter) music of the most saccharine kind is being blared from speakers in many stores. And I don't want to know how many radio stations started playing Christmas music already.
"So," you ask, "what's wrong with that?" Quite a bit, in my opinion. First of all, we have another holiday before Christmas, one that we should all be taking far more seriously than we currently do: Thanksgiving. Of course, in modern America, with its slowly-dying belief in God, the idea of giving thanks to the One who provided us with so much is becoming unthinkable. I guess I could understand why skipping it might be preferable. Second, and this is admittedly a personal taste issue, Christmas/winter music is a bit saccharine. Listening to it for two months is to me like eating a bag of sugar followed by drinking about 10 diet soft drinks in a row. The results just make me sick.
Once Thanksgiving is over, and the Advent season proper begins, I have no problem with Christmas music. In fact, I relish the thought of it. Which is why I don't want it spilling out into the streets right now: Christmas music loses its charm (its "specialness") when it becomes the default standard for 2 months. Give me 4 1/2 weeks of it, and I'll be good. But please, don't start roasting your chestnuts on an open fire until Jack Frost is nipping at your nose, which won't happen until after Thanksgiving.[/rant]

Interesting

I simply post this story here without comment. Read it and come to your own conclusions.
Planning Under Way for Obama Holiday.

Pondering Evolution/Intelligent Design

The theme of this weekend has been examining the debate surrounding Evolution. First, on Friday night, I finally got to see the movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." The movie does a great job of looking at how academia is currently stifling debate over flaws in Evolution. In particular, those who espouse Intelligent Design (not to be confused with Creationism) face constant harassment or are forced to remain silent because they suggested that Neo-Darwinian evolution may not be valid. What especially disappoints me is that my alma mater, Iowa State, is one of the schools that stifled academic freedom. A few atheistic professors were able to convince the university to deny tenure to an Astronomy professor simply because he co-wrote a book that argued that the Earth could not have evolved as the result of chance. The fact that diverse opinions were not allowed to flourish at the university is just one incident in an attempt by many evolutionists to stifle any debate over Intelligent Design.
"But," many will say, "isn't evolution already establish as scientific fact, like gravity?" No, evolution is not a fact, neither is gravity, at least not in the sense of fact as we use it. (This was a part of our discussion in Sunday School, where we examined Darwinism's flaws in detail.) Gravitation and evolution are both theories that attempt to describe general patterns of reality. Theories always can be expanded or adjusted as more data comes in. In the case of gravitation, the theory has been updated and expanded over time thanks to Einstein's theory of General Relativity. In the case of Evolution, however, as we learn more and more about the complexity required for even the simplest organisms and simplest cells, we're discovering that blind Darwinian evolution simply could not have occurred. However, Evolution has been the dominant theory for so long (and its atheistic implications so important) that many mistakenly think that it is fact.
Given, however, the amount of irreducible complexity in even the simplest machines (and the lack of sufficient support from the fossil record), Evolutionary theory faces many, many challenges. It simply cannot continue as it is. As "Expelled" points out, rather than adjust their theories, some Evolutionary theorists have instead chosen to (with an almost-religious fervor) cling to the Theory of Evolution. The result has been a stifling of academic freedom and a lot of ad hominem attacks on those who attempt even a critique of Evolution.
I'm sorry to report that many of us who think that the Theory of Intelligent Design better explains life than Darwinism are neither ignorant nor stupid nor wicked. We simply are scientists who see significant discrepancies between the data and Evolutionary Theory and think that Intelligent Design Theory does a better job of explaining it. Unfortunately, in this current academic climate of "political correctness," Intelligent Design is anathema. Hopefully, one day there will be a recognition that Evolution is so deeply flawed that it must be rejected. But I won't be holding my breath.

Post-election Thoughts

*I had no confidence in the wisdom of the Americans voters. Now, I would say that my confidence is in the negatives, if that's possible. When the majority of Americans identify themselves as conservations and yet go vote for someone whose policies are, at best, left of center, it disturbs me greatly.
*The media won the election for Obama. Don't get me wrong; he ran a great campaign, but he could have run a C- campaign and still won because the media was so infatuated with him that they wouldn't run many negative stories about him. If we ever needed an example of what a sycophant looks like, I think we have found it in this year's media coverage.
*Whoever ran the McCain campaign should be disappointed with himself. The media were obviously against McCain (or at least not for him), and there were questions galore about whether he was young enough for the office. At the same time, his opponent was so far from the center and shifted his positions so constantly that McCain should have easily had the upper hand simply by pointing out the obvious. He didn't, at least not until it was too late.
*I wonder if I should live it up now before my taxes go through the roof in July, or whether I should save like crazy so I actually have a chance of eating something besides Ramen (or however you spell it) noodles for the next 4 years.
*It's interesting that when faced with the choice between 2 almost-identical candidates (Jenkins and Boyda), Kansans will vote for the Republican over the Democrat.
*In the end, I guess it all doesn't matter much. People have lived under far more horrible regimes than any that might occur in the next 4 years, and God ultimately is in control. So, I'm going to keep on doing what I'm doing and adjust to the circumstances as they come.

Beautiful Morning

When I got up this morning, the sun was already up, yet it was still very quiet. On my way back inside from my daily check of my rain gauge, I had to stop. The birds were silent, and the wind was at a whisper. No traffic had yet assaulted the roads. The only sounds were the intermittent click of leaves hitting the ground and a distant church carillon playing "Come Ye Thankful People Come." I stood there for what seemed like forever, breathing in the cool morning air and letting the near-silence wash over me.
Thanks to God for such a peaceful and beautiful start to the morning. If every day this autumn is going to be like that, I think I'm going to like it.