Baseball

As the summer has officially arrived, I can spend some time focusing on a fantasy baseball team that I run in a league with some of my relatives and their friends. It's all in fun, but it still is an interesting challenge. The trickiest part is keeping on top of player injuries and streaks. You want the hot players in, and it's tricky sometimes to get the right mix of players, especially pitchers.
As far as real baseball goes, I enjoy listening to games. Lately, though, there hasn't been much excitement for Royals fans. The Kansas City Royals are the best AAA team playing in the Majors this year!

Summer Begins

With graduation yesterday--and it was a wonderful graduation ceremony...I will miss this class--the summer has officially arrived. Summer is always a bittersweet time for me, as it is for many teachers. It takes a while to adjust to the slower, less-structured pace of the season. Although I need it every year (as do my students, I suspect), I find that I also dread summer just a little. Perhaps it simply is because I am such a creature of habit. I like routine, and it's always difficult to adjust to a new one. Regardless of the cause, I am grateful to God that He stays with me throughout the challenges of switching routines. I couldn't survive the school year without Him, and I know I couldn't survive summer without Him, either.

Addendum: I just got home from the last graduation party, and I realized how much I'm going to miss this class.

More NYC Pictures

Below are a couple more pictures from the trip to NYC. My official duties for the school year end in two days, and I'm looking forward to having a bit of rest in the midst of an otherwise busy summer schedule.
A couple of captions are required. The first picture is of the side of one of the escalators in the Macy's on Fifth Avenue. Notice the number. :-) The second was taken in the Royal Suite at the Waldorf-Astoria. "The queen will see you now," says the Queen's Hong Kong secretary.

Life Right Now

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

And, continuing the trend, here are two more pictures from the New York Tour. The first is of an Arch on the northeast edge of Prospect Park in Brooklyn. The other is of a fountain in Central Park. Both parks share the same designer: Frederick Law Olmstead.

I'm Back

The posts about NYC have postponed indefinitely. In the past week and a half, I have been attempting to survive sans computer. At this point, I still have not recovered all of my data from the spontaneous death of my previous machine. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to find someone who will salvage the old data or not. I pray that they will, but I have, in my attempt to recover the data, managed to do more harm than good.
Anyway, I will be posting again, and I pray that I haven't made too big a mess of things.

Picture from NYC, pt. I

A couple of photos from the recent trip to New York City. The first is of the arch in Washington Square Park, and the second is of one of the many colored displays in Times Square. More to follow in subsequent posts.

Loquacious Cogitation

Numerous spherical conglomerations of dihyrdogen monoxide are failing in their struggle with gravity and rapidly alighting on the carbon-based carpet life form. A sufficient accumulation of these previously airborne particulate-liquid suspensions should force the postponement of tomorrow's contest of association football, bringing elation to the overly-taxed scholars of the ultimate level who have recently been protesting the level of their quotidian workload.
Expressions of gratitude; benevolent nocturnal time frame.

Graduate School Homework

It's sort of like the instructions on the back of the shampoo bottle (lather, rinse, repeat); only for graduate school, it's more like
1. Read
2. Write
3. Repeat
4. Repeat some more
5. Repeat ad naseum

The Emprorer Is Not Pleased...

Yesterday was the due date for taxes, and many people scrambled to file their taxes either online or through the mail. According to reports I've read, the Post Office decided to have a little fun this year, at least in Topeka, by hiring people to dress up as Star Wars characters to "stand guard" over the mailbox as people came to drop off their tax returns. I can just imagine how much fun a guy in a Darth Vader suit could have with people showing up to mail their returns.
[A man walks up to the R2-D2 shaped mailbox. A man dressed in a Darth Vader costume is standing next to it.]
Darth [in perfect James Earl Jones voice]: The Emperor is not pleased with your lack of progress on your taxes.
Man [dumbfound]: Uh....
Darth [pulling out toy light saber]: Paying your taxes is your destiny. The Emperor has foreseen it. Mail your return, and your journey to the Dark Side will be complete.
Man [very confused and scared]: Uh, yeah....
[Man drops the mailbox and hurriedly walks off]

Sparrows

It was such a nice day that I opened up my apartment to the outside air. As a result of having only the screen door open, I could see and hear what was going on outside. The birds were making a ton of noise, and none were noisier than a couple of sparrows (I think they were sparrows) that landed on my deck. There were two, one of which I think was a male because it was brighter-colored. The other one (the female?) landed and spent about ten minutes chirping away happily while the other (the male?) just sat there. It was almost like they were checking out my deck to see if it was a good place to build a nest. Regardless of what they were doing, they got my cat's attention. After tensely listening to the chirping for a while, she started chirping back and hopped off of my lap and ran to the screen door, wanting to get the birds but not sure how to get to them. If you have never heard a cat "chirp" at birds, it is one of the funniest sounds you will ever hear. Perhaps one of these days, I can record a bit of the sound and post it up here.

Forest Ponderings

One of my students got me started on this line of thinking earlier today. I thought it'd be interesting to explore the following questions:
Q: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?
A: Yes. Sound is defined as the vibration of air molecules by an object. Thus, as the tree falls and hits the ground, it vibrates air molecules (and the ground upon collision), making sound. That no one is there to observe the sound does not negate the existence of it.
Q: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does someone still manage to get government benefits for being hit by it?
A: Yes, most likely, given the government's recent track record. However, it may take 2 or 3 three appeals.
Q: If a man says something in the forest and no woman is in the forest to hear it, is he still wrong?
A: If you are a woman and you are reading this, then you will probably say that the answer is "yes," and I'm not going to argue with you. (Don't argue with a woman; either way you lose.) If you are a man and you are reading this, then you will probably say that the answer is "no." That is, you will answer "no" unless there's a woman within close proximity to you who is also reading this, in which case you will probably answer "yes."
Q: If an airplane crashes in the forest and no one is around, who buries the survivors?
A: Probably their next of kin, whenever they die. Usually survivors aren't buried. President Bush is the exception, of course. He gets buried by the media pretty much every day.
Q: If a liberal theologian says something in a forest and no one is around to hear it, will the media still print it as if he speaks authoritatively for all Christians?
A: The Jesus Seminar voted on this question, and the answer was as follows: 2% casted the red ("definitely") bead, 23% casted the pink ("probably") bead, 30% casted the gray ("maybe") bead, and 45% casted the black ("definitely not") bead. In the process, they also decided that Jesus was married and that He really didn't say most of what the Gospels quote Him as saying. I'm sure that these "facts" will come as a surprise to Him. The results were then immediately published by all the major news outlets.

Americans in Technical Support

I bought an iPod less than a month ago, and to my surprise, when I went to try to use it today, it was dead! It would not charge, reset, or power up. So, after about an hour's worth of searching through Apple's tech support web site and trying everything I could think of to get the silly device to work, I finally called Apple. I fully expected to talk to someone with an Indian accent named "Joe" (of course we know that's not his real name, just as we also know that we have no hope of pronouncing his real name). Instead, I was pleasantly surprised (after enduring the standard automated answering system) to be greeted by an American accent. The tech support guy was helpful, understanding, and recognized that since I bought the iPod less than 30 days, I was entitled to a new one as a replacement instead of a refurbished one. It took about 45 minutes to get the situation taken care of. I have to say that I'm disappointed that the product failed in such a short time. I'm glad that support was so good, though.

Global Warming...On Mars!

I just read an article today that reported that Mars is experiencing warming and has been since the 1970s. <sarcasm>This warming, of course, is quite clearly being caused by human-produced carbon dioxide.</sarcasm> Seriously, it is very interesting to me that Mars is experiencing the same warming as the Earth over the same time as Earth. For Mars, the only apparent cause is increased solar radiation. If the warming on Mars is caused by increased solar radiation, then why are we so quick to blame human activities for the warming here on Earth?

Rain and Mud

On Friday, Topeka set a record for precipitation on that date, 2.22 inches. A similar amount fell over in Lawrence, causing me to expect that the soccer tournament at which I was going to referee would be canceled. I was wrong. The tournament proceed, although the field where I worked had some horrible swampy areas. It was not the most enjoyable field to work on. It wouldn't have been so bad, either, if I hadn't had to do four games in a row, with the hardest one at the end. It was a difficult afternoon of hard work. Thankfully, the heavy rain is done for a while, giving this region a time to dry out.

Destroying Our Future to Pay for the Present

I think it's time for Kansans to wake up and pay attention to what the state Legislature has done. By a 21-19 vote yesterday, the state Senate approved a House measure that would allow for the expansion of gambling in Kansas, including the building of three state-owned casinos. Have we become so desperate for money that we are now willing to build casinos that will, if anything, only increase the number of gambling addicts? Have we become so desperate for money that we are willing to encourage vice in order to get money into the state coffers? It's a sad day for Kansas, as many will discover in about 5-10 years when the full social impacts of these casinos are felt. May God have mercy on our state!

Dead Sea Scrolls

Since it was Spring Break for me, and I was starting to go stir crazy staying around my apartment most of the time, I decided to drive over to Kansas City and visit the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at Union Station. Surprisingly, getting to Union Station and parking weren't as much of a hassle as I expected. The route to Union Station is easy, and parking in the garage on the west side was free (unless I had stayed longer than 3 hours, which I didn't).
The exhibit itself wasn't as well attended as I expected: I was one of 4 people in the 2:30 group. The majority of the exhibit focused on the background of the scrolls, the community at Qumran (where the scrolls were found), and the political situation in Judea at that time. For the majority of Americans, this background is helpful for them, since their knowledge of Old Testament history is, at best, limited. The scrolls themselves were fascinating to view. There were several different fragments (or replicas, depending) on display. The most interesting part for me was how small the writing was. I can only imagine the amount of care and detail that went into writing the scrolls.
The exhibit was not perfect, though. <rant>Instead of using B.C. and A.D. to designate the appropriate era for a year, the exhibit used the modern, politically-correct (and intellectually disingenuous) labels of B.C.E. and C.E. B.C.E. means "Before Common Era" and C.E. means "Common Era", and A.D. 1 is the same as 1 C.E. In other words, the systems are identical, but someone was bothered by the references to Jesus Christ in the traditional system. So, instead I had to endure a minor slap in the face that denied the importance of the Lord in history. (Besides, there is no such thing as a "common era." The Jews, Arabs, Hindus, and Chinese all use or have used different calendar systems. It is only in the West that B.C. and A.D. are common. Thus, the system is not really about removing religious bias but instead instilling an anti-Christian bias.) </rant>
In spite of this one minor flaw, I enjoyed the exhibit. It was certainly better than sitting around home bored for another day.

Interesting Article

Kerby Anderson of Probe Ministries has recently put up an interesting commentary on global warming, especially in response to Al Gore's "documentary" An Inconvenient Truth. This short article is well worth your time.

Bracket Go Down the Hole

Although I am not totally surprised by it, KU's loss earlier today to UCLA has messed up my bracket, since I had KU reaching the championship game. The only thing that could hurt my bracket more is if Ohio State goes out (which is likely), leaving me without the ability to accumulate any more points. I could tell somewhat early on in the game that this wasn't going to be KU's night. They missed point-blank shots, the referees let the game be very physical, the "neutral" court was in San Jose, close enough to Los Angeles for a sizable contingent of UCLA fans to make its way up to the game. So, add all that together, and you get a KU loss. And with it goes half of my bracket. Oh, well. It's all just for fun, anyway.

Here Come the Storms

Today is the first official day of Spring, also known as the vernal equinox, and just in time, strong to severe storms are breaking out to the north. At this point, it looks like the first line will miss Topeka, but it's good to see Spring-like weather again. If we do get rain--which would be wonderful--I only hope we get what we need and not too much. I really would hate to lose a soccer game due to a swamped field. Only time will tell, though, what God has in store.

Thoughts about a Glass

An optimist says, "The glass is half-full."
A pessimist says, "The glass is half-empty."
A cynic says, "Not only is the glass half-empty, but what's left isn't worth drinking."
A meteorologist says, "There's a 70% chance of the glass being half-empty."
A mathematician says, "Liquid occupies 50% of this glass's internal volume."
A conspiracy theorist says, "The glass was put here as part of the government's attempt to cover-up its involvement in the JFK assassination."
A Democrat says, "The glass is half-empty, and it's the Republicans fault!"
A Republican says, "The glass is half-empty, and it's the Democrats fault!"
A Blogger says, "The glass, whether it's half-full or half-empty, at least gives me something to write about..."