All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Go

     OK, big bonus points to whomever can name the quote I adapted for my title.  In other random news, I reorganized my photos server-side and put them in folders.  I was getting quite a collection and I was getting tired of looking at this big disorganized pile of pictures in my content folder.  This works out much better.  Anyway, I’m pretty sure I updated all of the addresses for pictures in my blog, but I may have missed one or two.  If you see any broken pictures, let me know.

     So on to the main news!  I would like to announce that Phase 3 of Project Eden, “double-digging” the garden, has been completed!  I put double-digging in quotes because I didn’t exactly follow the technical procedure for it.  Ordinarily what you do is dig up the top 6-8in. of soil and then dig up the 6-8in. of soil beneath that.  Usually this is done by digging up a small section of the top half and sticking it into a wheelbarrow.  Then you dig up the bottom half of the newly dug trench.  After that, you dig up an adjacent area of the top half and move that into the spot that was occupied by the dirt you put into the wheelbarrow and repeat.  Once you get to the end, you put the dirt in the wheelbarrow into the empty section at the end and then move on to another row to repeat the whole process.  All the while you’re supposed to be working in soil amendments like compost and fertilizer.

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     Well, I feel all warm and glowy.  I finally held myself to my word and wrote my representatives!  As I have mentioned, I’ve been listening to KUER, or NPR, a lot recently.  I haven’t missed the music radio stations one bit.  Listening to the news and debates on current issues in our country and world has been very intellectually stimulating.  I’ve been following the war in Iraq, Iran’s worrisome nuclear program, immigration reform, oil prices, foreign affairs, market trends, science developments, and much much more!  I even find listening to the jazz they play nightly to be more engaging.

     I’ve been troubled greatly by a lot of what has been going on.  I don’t agree with President Bush’s immigration plan and I don’t like the Democratic solution any better.  The bickering and mudslinging over the war in Iraq is despicable.  And the solutions congress is proposing for the spike in gasoline prices I think are self-serving and harmful to the overall situation.  Being confronted with these issues has made me think about what I would do to solve the problem and why I think some of the plans suggested are bad.  While it’s a discussion I only have with myself and the radio (like people who play bridge, I haven’t found many people my age that regularly listen to NPR), it still has made me stretch and think in ways I haven’t before.

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     I would like to preface this by stating that what follows originally started out as a response-post.  However, I soon realized it was going way beyond the scope of just a response and needed to be set aside as an idea to be fleshed out all on its own.  I really don’t want to go back and re-write all of it so I’ll just present it here as it was.  I think it’s written such that it works without having to touch it up to “blog post” status (mostly), but there may be a couple of confusions so it would be helpful to read Homosexuality and Modernism.  Were it a comment, it would have followed MissJedi’s first comment, comment number eight.

     I agree from a moral perspective on the practice, as I’ve said.  But the thing is, we do not live in a theocracy.  We live in a democratic (never mind the semantics regarding the representation) nation that claims that my religious/moral beliefs are no more or less valid than yours.  In that light, it seems to me that the primary consideration the law should consider is how something affects the personal freedoms and liberties of others.

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     While perusing an associate’s writings, I came across this article of his on homosexuality and the subsequent discussion on it.  It’s an issue I’ve wrestled with in my mind a great deal, especially when I found out one of my step-brothers was gay.  To me, he was a shining example of what a faithful Latter-Day Saint should be.  He knew of the doctrine and of current events and enjoyed discussing them (not debating them, which I still find amazing).  He was kind, funny, and almost always pleasant mannered.  The only time I heard him raise his voice or yell was at me once and I thoroughly deserved it. 

     I looked forward every year to Christmas and New Year’s as a kid, not because of the presents or time off or holiday season, but because Robert would come up from Salt Lake City and I and my step-siblings would get together to play games.  We played board games like Monopoly, Life, and Scrabble.  We would even play a couple of card games and games like Jenga. 

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While perusing the APOD (Astronomy Picture Of the Day), I came across a blurb written by an astrophotographer on the ethics of using technology in taking pictures in astronomy.  His arguments were a little long and rambling (like a certain author I know), but I thought he made a good point.  Especially when he talked about people, tools, and evil.  Anyway, here is the article for your perusal and consideration.  One might just read it with only the narrow view of astrophotography (as it specifically discusses), but I think he was getting at something bigger.  I would just like to say that it pretty much “sums” up my views on ethics as well.

     So my likes in this world do not always fall in the realm of science/techie stuff.  Just most of it.  For example, Dave Barry would be my deity were that position not already well spoken for.  At the very least, he ranks a Buddha, though.  You may disagree with me, but that is simply because you have not achieved enlightenment yet.  Either way, I have an article of his I want to share.

     In addition to that is this crazy e-mail Mom sent me.  By crazy e-mail I mean chain letter.  You know the kind of things ignorant teens and pre-teens are obsessed with FWDing to everyone they know?  Twice?  Yeah, that’s my mom.  And my uncle-cousin-grandpa (he’s of the age of my grandfather, I think of him as an uncle, but I think he’s technically a cousin removed somehow).

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So just how big are things that happen on the sun? Well, about eight Earths could fit inside the loop of this solar prominence, side-by-side. EIGHT FREAKING EARTHS!!! And this is by no means a large one. The biggest observed solar prominence (by SOHO) occured in 1997 and was around 350,000km. In other words, 28 Earths would have fit side-by-side inside that prominence.

And don’t even get me started on CMEs.

If you haven’t checked out www.askaninja.com yet, you really need to!  But here is my favorite so far.  It’s a fan remix, not his work actually, but I about died.  So funny!  So random!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caspTsRGdos&eurl

OK, here’s the solution to the paint by numbers comic.  It’s sideways, but I think you can handle that:

http://blog.nucleartoiletpaper.com/sigma/wp-content/scan001.jpg

Also, Ninja.

“Behold, the Underminer! I’m always beneath you, but nothing is beneath me! I hereby declare war on peace and happiness! Soon, all will tremble before me!” Bonus points for naming that quote (no fair using Google and the like).

So a clap of thunder at about 5am this morning or something woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Much as I love getting up early in the mornings, I really would have liked to have not. Either way, once I was awake I got to thinking about yesterday. I have to be the single greatest opponent to my own view point.

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