The world revolves around MY belief, damnit

If the basic argument of the so-called "theory" of Intelligent Design -- living things (or some miniscule specific component thereof) are too complex to have evolved on their own -- sounds good to you at first inspection, I must ask you:

How are you on the theory that the Earth goes around the Sun?

Because, it seems to me, Intelligent Design is on an equal par with primitive people's theories about The Heavens: Admit it, please -- it really seems obvious that the Sun and the Moon revolve around the Earth. They come up on one side of the sky, they go down on the other side.

But you (you educated thing, you) know that this is just the way it seems, right?

Assuming you accept that the Earth goes around the Sun, I hope it's because you've accepted the accumulated evidence in favor of this theory. If you're just accepting the words of authority, I wish you'd investigate the evidence yourself, and see why you're justified in believing it all on your own, without authorities to tell you what reality is.

So? So, in exactly the same way that it seems obvious that the Sun goes around the Earth, it seems obvious that life and everything couldn't have "just happened all by themselves."

I'm driving at two things here -- one, you can do some research yourself and educate yourself about the mountains of evidence from many fields of knowledge supporting the theory of Evolution (and in the process have your mind boggled by how fascinating and wonderful it all is)...or two, you really ought to be consistent and go with your gut feeling on the whole Sun and Earth thing.

I mean, if you're going to go with what seems obvious as your main Criteria of Truth, then you can't be selective in applying this criteria.

Teach yer children well

Considering the oft-emailed story about a toddler found after the 2004 Tsunami who was described as being "too young to adequately identify himself to rescuers" (who was reunited with his family -- see snopes.com, so stop emailing that story, please), to yield the following working theory:

Of course, parents teach their kids their own phone number and address, etc, in case they ever get separated or lost.  But maybe, especially for a really young child, it would be best to specifically teach the child to respond to the question someone will probably ask him -- for instance, drill the child to respond to the question, "What is your Mommy's name?" with mom's First Name Last Name.  Or "do you know your address? / Do you know where you live?" with Our Address.  Etc.

I guess my idea is to teach the child the pattern of the conversation that would occur in that situation, so that if it ever does, they know how to answer the questions.  Mommy's name may be (in normal daily life) "Mommy" -- but the answer to the question "What is your Mommy's name?" is Meg Smith.  Maybe I'm being overly clever, I dunno.  <shrug>

It's awfully easy to have ideas about kids before you have them, but I *do* have memories of getting lost in department stores as a small child, and people trying to help me, but I think I was too embarrassed at my situation to allow them to help me....And once, at summer camp, going into a large public restroom looking for my mom (at probably 5 or 6 yrs old), along with 10 other little girls looking for THEIR moms, and all the little girls were yelling "Mom!" or "Mommy!" and women's' voices were coming from the closed stalls -- "Jenny, is that you?" "Clarrissa?" etc.  I observed this mess, and considered what to do, and then called out "Susan?" and my mom answered me right away -- and the silence was sudden as the other little girls turned to see how I had managed to get my mom to recognize me so quickly.

Where did I put...?

I've had wonderful success in recent years, gradually teaching myself a new pattern for putting something away....first, ask myself the following:  "in all honesty, when I go looking for this item in the future, where will I think to look for it?" -- then I put it where I think I'll probably think to go looking for it (in the hypothetical future).

This has actually worked really well for me.

Overhead from upstairs

Sweetie was watching CNN last night, and they were doing a report about the history of political appointees.  Not terribly surprisingly, there's a long history of Presidents giving jobs to their friends, but they usually give away such jobs as "Undersecretary to the Blah Blah Blah" type jobs, not, you know, the head of FEMA or something like that.  Heh.

...And I swear I heard someone say something about Brown being "one of the least qualified people to ever hold a job."  The way I heard it, it wasn't "to hold a federal job" or a "crony job", it was "to ever hold a job" Period.

Another one of those things that is actually pathetic and awful, but you just have to laugh.

The zing of Irony in the morning

There's nothing that'll drive my blood pressure up quite like being late for a doctor's appointment to check my borderline high blood pressure.

FYI your current power outage

So we're sittin' here at work, and we're hearing that several of our other offices (including Payroll) are currently in-the-dark.  Power outage.  Considering going home.  Our power flickered this morning, but didn't go out (which is good, since we're in the basement, and it's surprisingly DARK when the lights all go out).

Gradually we realize that this means that much of Los Angeles must currently be in the dark, given the disparate locations of our other offices.  So, in curiosity, I go looking on the web for any available info...vaguely, in the back of my mind, I may be seeing Tommy Lee Jones falling into a sinkhole at Wilshire and the 405, and we're all none-the-wiser since we have no TV to turn on....

Can't get to kfwb.com -- my browser claims the site doesn't exist, and then suggests that I might like to visit the "related website" kfwb.com.  Hmm.

Can't get to local npr.com -- same browser message as above.

I try yahoo.com news, type in "los angeles power outage" and get a link to the following article, for the San Luis Obisbo times website:

Posted on Mon, Sep. 12, 2005
M O R E   N E W S   F R O M   
 * Power Failure
Major power outage in part of Los Angeles
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - A major portion of Los Angeles lost power Monday afternoon.
Outages were reported from downtown to the San Fernando Valley.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power did not immediately have an explanation for what happened.

...
Gee, um, thanks for that.

 

Why is W still popular with anybody?

A friend forwards a righteously angry article, published in her local newspaper, headed with her question "how do we preach outside the choir?"

My response to her important question:

I know, it's such a killer!

I had a thought the other day, after reading an email from my mom. I had asked if she'd had a chance to see The Daily Show this last week, because they were on fire. Supendous stuff, really. Angry as hell, and still funny as hell! Incredible.

Anyway, she wrote back that she'd seen the first few minutes of several shows, but that Dad can't watch it for very long -- she said it makes him unhappy and uncomfortable. She doesn't know if he feels sorry for W, or if it's just that he can't stand the feeling of so much direct invective being aimed at one person. I can totally believe that Dad feels that way. And then a while later, I found myself thinking...

...The rise of Hitler (I know, it's only my 2nd post on this blog, and I'm already mentioning Hitler) was due to many intersecting forces -- but I agree with the theory that one of those factors was the family-structure / family culture of Germany itself. Hitler's leadership style matched the formative family experiences of so many of his fellow countrymen -- the father as dictator, absolute authority. Wouldn't have been everyones' model, of course, but it definitely was for enough people.

You don't question Father (or your Husband). Not ever. Father brough you into this world...

So there I was, thinking about my Dad's emotional reaction to the righteous torching of this culture's President (the Asshole in Chief, as I call him to myself). And I know for myself how much my own father and my own family represent a particular flavor of dysfunctionality. There were (of course) particulars to our family dysfunction, but it also fit the Model that could be called Protecting the Big Lie. Suffice to say that it doesn't matter what the particular Big Lie is for any particular family, and that you must also be aware of the subheading -- at all Costs.

Protecting the Big Lie...at all Costs.

I submit to you that our current President is from this same model of family dysfunction. And I submit to you that the insight I had on Friday afternoon, walking to my car after work, is that enough families in our current culture are of this same flavor of dysfunction to elect and re-elect this man to the highest office.

Ask yourself -- what is the W administration best at? Ignoring the elephant in the room. Give 'em an elephant, watch them go. They are absolutely insanely masterful at it. Why? Because all of them are, underneath everything else that they are, and every other skill they possess, expertly trained in Protecting the Big Lie...

...at All Costs.

So, why am I here?

To be honest, I need a place to be completely honest. I have a lovely life, but also have thoughts which don't bear expression to any of the people directly in my life.

But that's no problem -- no one person ought to be everything to you, and if the only person I can enjoy telling these thoughts to is myself, what's wrong with that? :-)