Rest in Peace

Trinity passed away early this morning. After a year she finally succumbed to complications from a cancerous tumor. Her family loved her very much. She will be missed.

Trinity the Kitten
1999-2005

Democracy in Action

"Let the market decide..."

"That's a local control issue..."

"Let the legislature do its work..."

"Activist judges are ruining our country..."

You hear that kind of thing all the time these days, primarily from religious conservatives. DO you think anyone will be lauding the action of the electorate in Dover, PA? Seems pretty clear that the market there decided fairly clearly.

New Dover board's task not enviable

In a patriotic display of public opinion, the voters around Dover, PA made a fairly clear statement regarding "Intelligent Design" and school curriculum by voting out their entire school board of Republican Creationists and voting in a entire new board of Democratic Evilutionists.

Thank God.

You know, while I listened to this story on the way home from work tonight I actually became more upset about the meta-issue than the issue. This board decided that a four paragraph statement regarding intelligent design had to be read in all science classes. Where does any board get off exercising that kind of intrusive control into any classroom about any subject? Do they have any sort of curricular training? Even if they were experts in the field they were meddling with, the decisions about what is or is not covered in a classroom to that level of specificity ought to be the unfettered responsibility of the teacher. It's a fairly long way from "you must teach the US Constitution" to "you must read these four paragraphs verbatim."

Also, just sort of sport-doing this argument, if they really want to introduce the story of creation into science classes they are shooting at the wrong subject. Even with whatever "holes' there are in the theory of evolution, the theory does stand up pretty well. If they want to get this stuff in, they ought to shoot at cosmology, not biology. The big bang is much more suspect in this arena. "What happened before the Big Bang?" and "Where did the roiling cloud of gases come from?" are natural lead ins to God. I had this very conversation with my uncle years ago. He was a computational physicist and was working on the question of the formation of spiral galaxies at the time. He was also a man of faith as well as a man of science, and at the end of a typical adolescent string of "what came before that?" questions he simply said that science does not have those answers and at some point many scientists turn to faith.

As a person of science myself, I have no problem with people turning to faith in the absence of science. Shouldn't that be enough for the classrooms? Do we need to have the two concepts in conflict when they can so easily co-exist? I am not sure any clear minded teacher would oppose that kind of characterization, even in a science class, as long as we don't try to outshout one idea with another; and as long as the notion of faith being used as an explanation happens in those arenas where science doesn't have an answer; and as long as the discussion of faith isn't discriminatory.

That's a lot of ands. Maybe it is best left discussed in other venues.

Election Day

aerdin: did you vote today?
DBoevers: I didn't
DBoevers: I'm a loser
aerdin: yeah me neither
DBoevers: I am saving up to vote against rick santorum
aerdin: i actually didnt even know it was election day
aerdin: lmao - thats great
aerdin: not for another year tho
DBoevers: true
DBoevers: think they'll let me vote twice cuz I saved up?
aerdin: barack obama was on the daily show last night
aerdin: he is quite cool
aerdin: and i dont think it is going to be too difficult to get rid of rick santorum
aerdin: i have faith in the people of pa
DBoevers: faith
DBoevers: is the problem
aerdin: yeah but i think more and more people are realizing that he is a dick
DBoevers: one would hope so
DBoevers: goes to show you what happens if we don't pay attention

Like Minded People

Can I highlight my own blog in my blog? I really like this post from today:

Five email tics I?d love for you to lose

That's from the PTMNewsbeat - a page in desperate need of a name change. Perhaps that will be a contest for another day.

Looking at the post on 43Folders you wind your way to a comment from a college professor who I think would relate very well to my rant at Rachel over staples. It turns out he has his own analogous post:

How to e-mail a professor

Just great stuff I could find myself screaming at the top of my lungs on any given day. Diatribes against "reply to all," hostility over attachments, I tell you, I felt so loved I almost cried.

Really we're all better off with the medication. I wonder how this guy feels about staples?

Spelling?

Putting your name on your work?

Following instructions?

I could go on for days, but these days I usually stop after a few minutes.

Ellipses...

Sometimes Blogger asks for verification, sometimes it doesn't - I wonder how it knows when it really is me... We took a night off from photo selecting, maybe be finished tomorrow... I am uncertain Trinity is going to make it much longer, she stopped eating today... Yesterday we proved fairly convincingly that a straight line is not the fastest distance between two points, especially when you are talking about metro Pittsburgh... A new mall doesn't automatically mean a good mall... I think Senator Venick won the debate, but I think Santos came off more likeable... I lost my list of blogging topics, not sure if I'd gotten to all of them... I had Shaq on my fantasy basketball team - so much for that... This week a student told me my class was the most important class they were taking, that was fantastic and I am overjoyed to hear it - is it a shame it wasn't a Drama student?.. The adage "if you draw everything it will work" is only true if people actually look at the drawing... I finally toured ETC's space on 2nd Ave - its amazing. I know where I want to go to grad school, oh wait, I went to grad school, oh well... I didn't forget Debi's birthday for the first time in, well, forever - thank you Plaxo... The hitmap has recorded over 22000 hits on this site, who'd-a-thunkit?.. People have been looking for Urinetown pics, I think if I do them they will wind up on the other page... I took out my CV last week, I think it may be easier to resign than to update it... I won't be at LDI for the first time in like 5 years, if you're there I'm sorry I am going to miss you... This week the Rigging Certification goes live with the first exams, nice to see the end of the tunnel on the project that started for me with a grad thesis... There was a storm today, it blew all the leaves off my front lawn - score!!!

It's 3AM. Do You Know Which Pics You Want?

Me and the Missus just spent the better part of four hours going through wedding photos. We're not really counting, but I think we're just shy of 250 selections and chronologically we've just got to the part where we're both standing in front of the officiant.

Its not that bad though, the photog's page has the images 8 to a screen. We're on screen 217 of something like 281. The air conditioning at the venue failed, so the day came to a much more abreviated end as compared with the protracted beginning - that, and the photos actually start at the rehearsal the night before.

If you're counting, we've been through 1736 exposures - selecting 250 (about 14% yield and yet it still feels like we're taking too many). With 31 pages remaining, that's 248 images, at this pace we'll pick out 35 more for a grand total of 285 pics.

That may be too many, but I don't think we can face the thought of going through again for a cut pass. Might have to think of a different solution.

Did you miss the photos when they were first posted? Wanna see? You have to go here:

Michael Metzger and Staff, Inc.

where you will get to see more photos than you ever thought were possible of the pre-nup and the wedding day. If it asks for an event code you need to enter: MarisaandDavid.

Any suggestions on images to take are appreciated. Start from the end and go backwards to cover what we haven't done yet. Pics are designated by the three letter code (some kind of base 26 catalog system). Have fun.

Time to Kill

I'll say more about this sometime soon, but here is a great way to burn hour after hour...

Tower of Goo - Unlimited

Don't say I didn't warn you. Let's call it a link of the day.

MoveOn.org Would Rather You Didn't

I believe it is time for MoveOn.org to change its name. Recently, with all things being equal, their name would really be more accurate if it were something like DwellAndHarp.org. The tables have been turned, and their name just doesn't fit anymore.

Years ago I was taken with an organization that called itself something that had really been in my head for some time. In the thick of the Lewinsky thing, an advocacy group sprung up that espoused the opinion that we'd all expensed way too much over this thing and it was time to move on.

Ah the good old days.

During the last election cycle I was forced to pull my name from their d-list as what had been a fairly specific group aligned against a fairly specific problem morphed into a full blown lobbying organization. They were still MoveOn, but I have no idea what they were encouraging me to move on from.

Now MoveOn is compiling petition signatures against a supreme court nominee. This may be a good idea. I don't know. I all know is it has nothing to do with moving on from anything.

Its too bad. As a society we often unfortunately dwell on one story or another far beyond its real valuable shelf life. With the Pakistani earthquake, the rebuilding in the gulf states, oh, and the WAR IN IRAQ - with all that, CNN ran a special report today about how girls feel pressure to be thin. Maybe their features editor needs to move on. We heard this morning that a potential crisis is looming! Its possible that Brad Pitt, Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston, and Angelina Jolie might all turn up at the Golden Globes. Time to MoveOn from that issue?

There was a moment where MoveOn could have focused itself on whatever bit of newsCrack we'd found ourselves jonesing for and helped us get passed it to look at issues that really do matter. But it never happened. It never happened because MoveOn.org was never about moving on, it was about protecting their guys. Just like every other interest group.

And with that, I'm going to move on.

Our Majority Leader

Today, Dr. Bill Frist took time to get in front of cameras and refer to the Democratic (and PS democratically elected representatives of United States Citizens) opposition as having "no conviction, no principles, and no ideas."

Pretty rough stuff from someone at that moment demonstrating his conviction by maligning his congressional colleagues, demonstrating his principles by playing loose with financial disclosure rules, and who's biggest idea in the public view to date was to diagnose a permanently, mentally crippled woman as healthy after seeing her on television.

Mr. Frist, Dr. Frist, Senator Frist, please, a little decorum.

You know damn well they have ideas. They are just not your ideas.

You know damn well they have principles. They are just not your principles.

You know damn well they have conviction. If I were you I would be more worried that I might be immanently facing a conviction.

The majority leader of the United States Senate ought not to be a mud slinger. Its undignified. You aren't writing a blog, you are representing each and every one of us. Shape up, or ship out and hit the "get your own blog" button.

Lazy

Darn Steelers had to make it interesting. Well, could have been worse.

You Should Learn Japanese

You're cutting edge, and you are ready to delve into wacky Japanese culture. From Engrish to eating contests, you're born to be a crazy gaijin. Saiko!

What Language Should You Learn?

Well, I know a couple people that will like that.