Hey Guess What

Strings-n-Things

2008-06-15T22:52:00.006-05:00

I admittedly have a very narrow understanding of science… mostly because to be a true scientist requires levels of mathematical knowledge that I just can’t wrap my mind around. But I do enjoy reading and watching “pop culturilized” versions of scientific concepts. I recently posted a blog about my fascination with evolution as explained by prolific and eloquent authors such as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker. But lately my real fascination has come from the world of physics.

My intrigue began when I saw the movie What the Bleep Do We Know, which gives a very trippy yet accessible primer on the nature of Quantum Theory (though I thought the movie suffered by turning into too much of a new age “self-help” commercial a la The Secret). Less than a month after watching What the Bleep, I was hired to write a classroom video series about Quantum Theory. That’s when I realized that the movie really REALLY oversimplified the theory. I had to learn QT from the ground up and it wasn’t easy. I literally read the book they gave me about ten times from beginning to end and went through about five drafts of the scripts before I finally started to grasp not only the ideas but their implications. A few months later, the same company hired me to write another series about Relativity and the learning process began all over again. Briefly, for the uninitiated, Quantum Theory and Relativity are two very different aspects of physics. Overly-simply put, QT deals with the world of the very very small (atoms, electrons, quarks, etc) while Relativity deals with the world of the very very large (planets, galaxies, black holes, etc). The problem is that the two theories don’t jive with each other. Those equations and experiments that produce nice neat and tidy results when examining the forces of black holes, produce completely ludicrous results when examining the movements of electrons. And vice versa. In a universe that is supposed to obey strict, orderly and well-defined laws, the fact that there isn’t one universal set of equations to govern the very large and the very small has, quite frankly, been driving scientists batshit for the better part of the last century.

Enter String Theory. For the last thirty or forty years, this has been THE THEORY that was supposed to unify the two worlds. I’m not going to go into all the aspects of it (there is an awesome NOVA series online that breaks it all down), but overly simply put, the theory states that all matter and energy is made not of particles or waves but of infinitesimally small vibrating strings. Right now the theory is based entirely on complex (excruciatingly complex) math. There’s no way to test it simply because there’s no microscope powerful enough to observe something so small as a “string”. But the math, if it’s accurate, does two things. First of all, it seems to prove, mathematically, a lot of the trippy, f---ed up, whacked-out theories about parallel universes and diverging timelines that I have personally come up with over the years (often under the influence of THC). But more importantly for the world at large, String Theory seems to do what scientists have been hoping for by linking Relativity with QT… albeit with one caveat: the only way it works is if there are more dimensions than the four we know about.

Aside from one version of string theory (which puts the number of dimensions at 26) almost every other version puts the number at a much more familiar value: 10. Ten dimensions! If this turns out to be true, how freakin’ cool would that be? That would mean that the entire universe operates on a number that is the very basis for our entire numerical system. And the only reason that 10 is the basis for our entire numerical system is almost quaintly simple: because we have ten fingers. The bible says God made us in His image. Is that a literal truth? Does God look like a man? Or is God simply a Being of numbers and perfection – a 10^th dimensional being? Since He is considered to be All and Everything, is He essentially the embodiment of every dimension… numbering 10? Did he give us ten fingers to somehow represent that fact? We always think of Heaven as being “up in the sky.” Maybe Heaven won’t involve a three-dimensional “up”. Maybe Heaven (or Nirvana or Enlightenment) will mean rising to a higher dimensional plane. The Bible says that at the end of the world we will become like Jesus. Maybe that means we’ll be elevated from our three dimensions to something “higher” and more closely resembling God.

I can remember while studying for the Relativity series, reading something about the expansion of the universe. Again, overly-simply put, there were three ways the universe could have expanded immediately following the Big Bang. There could have been too little “bang”, causing all the density of matter to almost immediately collapse back into itself. Or there could have been too much “bang” causing all that matter to fling so far and so fast that it never had the chance to coalesce into galaxies, stars and solar systems. And then there’s the third way it could have gone. A perfectly balanced “bang” that allowed everything to fling outward and yet still come together into the order we see now. Physicists equate this to the idea of balancing a pencil on its tip. Theoretically it’s possible that you could do that. But you’d have to balance it absolutely perfectly and hope that no outside force (wind, bumping the table, a truck driving by on the street) altered its positioning by even a fraction of a millimeter. The Universe apparently formed like that. Perfectly. HOW THE HELL? Scientists check and recheck the math and they say it just doesn’t make sense that the universe should have formed this way. Like seriously, nothing in nature has ever formed in such harmony. I’m paraphrasing and probably (again) oversimplifying the matter, but the fact remains, the Universe formed PERFECTLY! How do you even begin to wrap your mind around how utterly amazing that is?

I find it disappointing that so many people interpret science and faith to be such disparate and incompatible concepts. For people of deep religious faith, so many scientific theories amount to little more than heresy, serving only to take glory away from God. On the flip side of that coin, it seems like a lot of scientists think that even entertaining the possibility of a supreme being somehow detracts from the beauty, wonder and logic of the Universe… and ultimately makes one a bad scientist. Yet so much of what I see in both science and religion seem to compliment each other in ways that are almost illogically perfect. It boggles my mind that more people don’t make this leap.

Insert Rocky Horror Lyrics Here

2008-05-25T01:48:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking about time travel a lot lately. Well really I've been thinking about higher dimensions in general a lot lately and time travel goes right along with that train of thought. To know why my brain has been going down this road check out the following video: Imagining the Tenth Dimension. For those of you who don't have the eleven minutes to invest (first of all, you're missing out, it's a total mind trip) the basic gist of this heady heady video is all about visualizing higher dimensions as a series of "points, lines and folds." As a quick example, imagine an ant traveling across a two-dimensional piece of paper. As far as the ant is concerned the paper is just a long flat surface. It walks in a straight line trying to come to the "end" of the paper just as we would fly a ship through space trying to get to the "end" of the universe. But if you used three-dimensional space, and folded that two-dimensional paper to another point on the sheet, you could essentially make that ant "jump" instantly from one point to another point in its universe. Similarly if you could "fold" three-dimensional space through the fourth dimension, you could jump instantly from one point in the universe to a point billions of light years away...

As most anyone who has a basic understanding of Einstein (or even basic science fiction physics) knows, the key to time travel lies in the fourth dimension. Time is the dimension that exists above the length, width and depth we all comprehend. It is the dimension that connects "space" as we know it now to "space" as it will be a minute from now. Or in its broadest sense it is the dimension that connects the Big Bang to the very end of the universe. In theory the ability to time travel exists in the ability to move through the fourth dimension in the same way we currently move through the third. But rather than driving down the street or taking an airplane to Australia or a rocket ship to the moon, we are taking a very different kind of highway through minutes, hours or millennia.

Different movies depict time travel in different ways. The one that comes to the mind of most people in my generation, of course, is the Back to the Future trilogy. In those movies, time travel is presented as an instantaneous transition. Doc Brown and Marty McFly jump thirty, seventy and a hundred years in a seamless leap. I don't quite get how that could happen. We can travel through three dimensions but it takes a finite amount of time. And it requires us to travel across the space in between. We can't just suddenly move from New Jersey to Australia. That would violate Einstein's theory of relativity that says nothing can move faster than the speed of light. So it would stand to reason that we can also not move through time without it taking a certain duration as we cross over all that time in between (unless, as the video says, we could "fold" instantly through the fifth dimension to whatever point in the fourth we wish). Of course then again, moving through space requires time, a higher dimensional measurement. So perhaps moving through time requires a higher type of measurement we haven't thought of.

Another thought. What would it be like to "see" in four dimensions? Well how would a theoretical two-dimensional being see us? Figure a piece of paper bisecting your body and a 2D guy looking at you. He'd only be able to see whatever length of body he happened to be aligned with. If the paper was bisecting you from top to bottom, he'd only see a "cross-section" of your 3D self: a line that changed from brown to flesh colored to the white of your shirt to the blue of your jeans. In order to comprehend your entire body, you'd have to move across the line of paper entirely. The 2D man would have to compile each cross-section into an overall picture of what you might look like. Similarly we as 3D people can only see "cross-sections" of the fourth dimension. For instance, as I sit writing this, I can only see the man sitting across from me as he exist in this exact second. If I were to see him "fourth-dimensionally" I would see essentially a blurred three-dimensional line of every movement he made before now and after now. This is a topic they discuss in Imagining the Tenth Dimension as well as in the book Slaughterhouse Five (where the main character gets "unstuck in time"). Seeing in four dimensions allows you to see every moment of a person's life all at once...

But this is where I get stuck… though I'm certain I've already lost most of you well before now. Would seeing in four dimensions allow me to see every moment of his life. Would I see him simultaneously as a baby and as a corpse? Or is it like three-dimensional space where I can only see the parts I am also a part of? While I certainly have the ability to see Australia (since I can travel through space to get there) I can't actually see it unless I physically go there. Similarly, will I only see this man's full fourth-dimensional self for the duration of moments that I am also a part of… the moments where he and I are in the same proximity? He has been sitting here in the hotel lounge since I arrived here with my laptop and perhaps before I leave he will at some point walk to the elevator. If I were to see him in four dimensions, would I only see him that far? That would make sense to me.

But what about people I see all the time? Every moment I'm with Lauren, would I see every moment of fourth-dimensional time we have shared? Or would I only see the beginning and end of each individual meeting? When I return to our room will I see her simultaneously from the moment we met through the moment we die? Or will I only see her from the moment I come through the door until the moment one of us leaves?

Then again, the ability to see every moment of somebody's life in four dimensions wouldn't require time travel at all. All of those moments would exist in the present. This is one of the ideas explored in Slaughterhouse Five. For people who can see all moments of a person's life, death is not something to be scared of since you can always see and interact with a dead person as they were when they were alive. You can see and experience past good times even when you are currently experiencing bad times. They all exist simultaneously. But it seems to me that seeing the fourth dimension in this way would probably require command of an even higher dimension. At least the fifth and possibly even the sixth. Because again, even though I exist in three-dimensions, I can't see every part of the third dimension… I'm limited by barriers such as walls, trees, the horizon and just pure distance. Being a part of the third dimension only means I can travel through it. But being able to see all of three-dimensional space at once would require the use of a higher dimension or perhaps a higher plane of existence. Likewise existing in the fourth dimension would only allow one to travel through time, not see the entire timeline at a glance.

Yes friends, these are the kinds of thoughts that keep me up at one-thirty on a Sunday night. I have no real conclusion to this so I simply leave you to your own thoughts and confusion.

(also, I'm certain there are countless typos in this post but I have no energy or brain capacity after all this to go back an edit… perhaps later.)

One of these things is EXACTLY like the other

2008-04-28T08:37:00.003-05:00

I know this statement is going to elicit a "well duh" from a lot of you, but conservative talk radio just doesn't make sense anymore. Let me qualify that statement by saying that I don't actually listen to most of talk radio. Glenn Beck is about the only show I will listen to, mostly because he is the only one who doesn't seem to be just a Republican stooge. But even he seems to have gone along with a lunacy brewing amongst all the conservative pundits lately in the form of an all out irrational fear and hatred of Barack Obama.

Look I get that conservatives would be against Obama. He is, after all, a Democrat and a liberal one at that. It's not that they hate him that has me puzzled. It's that they hate him SO MUCH MORE than Hillary Clinton. Like seriously, a lot of these guys are leading me and a lot of other people to believe that come November if the Democratic primary falls in favor Hillary, they will actually be voting for her instead of their own candidate, John McCain. You get that? They actually prefer Hillary to a Republican! But if the Democratic primary falls the other way, holy crap get ready for the apocalypse because apparenly if Obama becomes president everything in the world is just going to fall apart.

Can some rational person please please PLEASE explain this to me, because I have listened to both candidates. I've heard about where they stand on the issues. And save for a few minor details and the minutae of rhetoric, I see zero difference between the Hillary and Obama. Like none. Nothing. Zip. Don't believe me? These two graphics are from the very informative website ontheissues.org. It breaks down the political philosophy of every single senator and congressman based strictly on their voting record. Conservatives are trying to say that Obama is even more liberal than Hillary. Really?

Seriously, do you see a difference, because I really don't. Again, I get conservatives hating Obama. I just don't get how they can hate him so much more than Hillary. Really it's just a feat of logic that conservative radio has managed to dig down deep inside its soul and actually find positive things to say about a Clinton period. Isn't that a sign of the apocalypse right there? Hm... maybe they have a point about this Obama guy.

Is it thinly veiled homophobia?

2008-04-16T22:41:00.001-05:00

Can anybody explain to me why so many parents have such a stick up their ass over their kids climbing up the slide? Go to a park sometime. I guarantee within five minutes you'll hear, "No no, honey, slides aren't for climbing... No, no, honey, we only go down the slide." or some variation therein.

Seriously my-generation, did you read some study that I somehow missed? Why are you so afraid of your kid going (gasp) the wrong direction on a slide? I understand if there's actually another kid at the top waiting to slide down. But barring that, they ain't gonna pop the tires.

Science and Faith: The Real Missing Link

2008-04-13T22:37:00.010-05:00

I preface this whole blog with the following statement. I am a Jesus-loving, God-fearing Christian with a firm belief that everything that we see (and a whole bunch of stuff that we have yet to see) was created by a sentient God.

That being said, I LOVE reading about evolution. I personally find the concept fascinating. And I cringe whenever I hear cases going before the Supreme Court where a well-meaning Christian dolt is trying to force a school district into teaching Intelligent Design. It’s not that I don’t believe in Intelligent Design. Quite the contrary. But I don’t understand how any reasonably non-moronic person can fail to grasp the essential difference between a science and a philosophy. You cannot test the existence of a Creator by scientific means – at least not yet – and I challenge anybody to state otherwise. Unfortunately for we Creationists, as of now evolution is the foremost scientific theory dealing with life on Earth and there is plenty of scientific evidence to back it up. And when a theory has that solid a foundation, the burden really does fall on dissenters to disprove it. And while, yes, there are flaws in the theory – which I think should be mentioned in textbooks right alongside the evidence – the fact is Creationists are going to have to present a bit more evidence of their own before they get rational school boards to allow a philosophy to be taught inside a science lab.

The book that first turned me on to how intriguing the science of evolution can be was the book How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker. Prior to that, I never really knew much about the topic beyond what I and everybody else learned in 10^th grade biology – which basically amounted to vestigal organs, a bit about dominant and recessive genes and something to do with finches and the size of their beaks. But what Pinker does in his book is to essentially “reverse engineer” a human mind, showing how every aspect of human life, from the way we see, to the way we think, to the way we interact, to the emotions we feel, to the way we “made up” the concept of “God” were all shaped by our evolutionary past. While the book was probably the hardest thing I have ever read voluntarily, it brings up a lot of fascinating points to ponder, even if you don’t fully agree with the concept of evolution (which I’m still not sure I do… for reasons I’ll get into later). It was a truly life-changing book that left me wanting to know more.

Well it’s been a couple years but I finally took another plunge into that wacky world of Charles Darwin. I just finished the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins – perhaps the most famous Darwinist short of Darwin himself. In a nutshell, Dawkins presents evolution and natural selection from the point of view of the gene. He paints a probable picture of how life might have originated in the “primordial soup” and shows how DNA has become the very thing that controls every aspect of life everywhere on this planet today. One can’t help but conjure up images of The Matrix as Dawkins talks about a gene’s selfish, almost maniacal need to survive in the form of exact replicas and copies of itself – passing itself down through generations upon generations of engineered “survival machines” (a.k.a. “us”). Yes, according to Dawkins, humans, plants, insects, fungus, everything on earth that can be considered “alive” are nothing more than just elaborate “vehicles” designed for one reason and one reason only: to protect genes for long enough to produce more copies. Of course, unlike the machines in The Matrix, everything the genes do is unconscious and brought about purely by random chance. Nothing happens for a reason. It’s all accidental. Genes do nothing by effort or foresight. If a mutation gives its “survival machine” an edge on a competition, it’s purely by mistake, with natural selection giving it blind creedence.

Even as somebody who believes in God, it’s hard not to be swayed by people like Dawkins and Pinker. Beyond being brilliant scientists in their respective fields, they have such a way with words and metaphors that they break down highly mathematical concepts and make them so a completely science-illiterate person such as myself can understand. (Dawkins in particular weaves such stimulating prose, producing such droll and compelling lines like “Sex: that bizarre perversion of straightforward replication.”) What I often find myself saying is, “If evolution really happens, then it makes total sense that this is the way it would work.” But there is one thing that I have yet to glean from anything I’ve read about evolution thus far. It’s the one thing that gives me hope that the theory might one day be disproved: TIME.

There is an adage that if you give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time, they will eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. With just a bit of trivial mathematical understanding, this makes perfect sense. Sure, give anything an infinite amount of time and they’ll write just about any damn thing you want. The evolution of complex organisms such as ourselves seems to evoke that adage, with each successive generation (from primordial soup to all modern life forms) representing another “monkey keystroke”, and the long and intricate spiral of DNA representing their Shakespearian text of choice. Except in this analogy, the number of monkeys is FINITE, as is the duration of typing time. In this analogy, the monkeys haven’t had all the time in the universe to produce their magnum opus. And rather than banging out the complete works of Shakespeare just once, they have apparently done it a couple billion times – once for every complex species that has ever lived. How the hell does that happen, even once, purely by accident? Especially when, as Dawkins says, most mutations (which are necessary for evolution to happen) end up being a detriment to the new offspring, resulting in its death to natural selection. As near as I can see, in my admittedly puny scientific mind, there just doesn’t seem to have been enough time for evolution (as Darwinists present it) to have produced the insanely complex and diverse forms of life that exist today. The only thing that makes logical (albeit not scientifically verifiable) sense is if evolution was at least guided by an intelligent being.

I know to some Christians, even this is an unacceptable view of life on this planet. Anything short of the divine creation of the sun, the moon, and every living being on earth – completed in seven days less than 10,000 years ago – is a sinful mockery of God. I see their point, but I sometimes wonder if it’s necessarily an either/or thing. I personally look at evolution as being the “Helio-Centric Heresy” of our time. For those of you who flunked history, Galileo was nearly put to death for making the extremely sinful suggestion that it is the sun, not the earth, which is center of our universe. The faithful of that time thought it was a mockery of God to even suggest that we weren’t the very thing that all of Creation revolved around. Today we, of course, know the truth… turns out it was even worse than Galileo let on. But I daresay there isn’t a religious or secular person alive who thinks this scientific revelation in any way diminishes the power and majesty of God. And how silly do you think the scoffers of Galileo’s theory felt when they got to heaven and realized they had been invoking God’s name over a complete and total farce? I can’t help but wonder how many antagonists of evolution might end up getting to heaven and realizing the same thing. Yes, evolution may be wrong. We may have all simply appeared here in the blink of an eye. The devil may have even placed all those fossils just to throw us off the straight and narrow path. But won’t we feel silly to have spent so much time saying, “God does NOT work that way,” only to get to heaven and have Him say, “Uh… yes I do.”

Ben Stein is coming out with a documentary this year called EXPELLED which explores a growing group of scientists who are using actual science to try and prove Intelligent Design. Further, it explores how the science community as a whole has been systematically silencing anyone who even suggests that Darwin might have been wrong. While I’m initially leery of the film (based on research I’ve done into the blacklisted scientists) I am actually very intrigued to see what kind of new experiments are being done in this field. Short of a gloriously unexpected scientific revelation (like realizing our carbon dating methods were WAY off or, ya know, somebody inventing a time machine to actually go back into the primordial soup) I can’t imagine evolution will be disproved in our lifetime.

But that’s okay. The way I see it, somewhere between Science’s inherently flawed interpretation of the universe (the foremost theory in physics today can’t even be tested!) and Religion’s inherently flawed interpretation of the Bible (nearly every passage, according to scholars, can have as many as seventy possible interpretations!)… somewhere between these two extremes of thought lies the Truth. God is in there. Science is in there. There is room for both. We just need to figure out where they meet. Or not. When the end of our life comes and we meet Jesus in the sky, will any of these trivialities really matter? I doubt it. As such, I will continue to read about evolution (or quantum physics, or string theory or any other “ungodly” science), allowing myself to be fascinated and filled with wonder – while at the same time remaining skeptical of the evidence… the way any good scientist should.

Coolness and puke do not mix

2008-03-31T22:50:00.002-05:00

Everyone knows that becoming a parent changes you, often in ways you never expect. First of all, whether you know it or not, whether you accept it or not, once you have a kid, you are no longer cool. It just doesn’t happen. You can try and hang onto it, try and tell yourself and others, “Hey, I’m still the same guy I was before,” but no, it’s gone. All of it. The only thing to do is to reinvent yourself as a different kind of cool. You know the kind of cool where you know lyrics to Laurie Berkner and High School Musical songs. Nick Jr. cool.

Still the thing that changes most once you become a parent, is your level of tolerance for gross things. You obviously have to get past what a normal person’s gag reflex would be since you’ll be changing about nine thousand diapers per week. But it doesn’t stop there. What ends up happening is that grossness actually becomes a matter of convenience. That’s why you see mothers upending their infants, putting a nose to their diaper and sniffing. It’s just faster and easier to smell for poop than to undo a onesie, pull back the elastic on a Huggies and check to see if there’s something inside. When you see a dad pick a booger out of his toddler’s nose, the ick factor is simply more convenient than searching the house for one of those little bulb suction thingies—which said toddler probably hid inside the VCR anyway. This elevated yuck threshold obviously goes hand-in-hand with the loss of coolness I mentioned, because you simply cannot be cool while sniffing a person’s butt on a daily basis. It just doesn’t happen.

But this grossness thing reached new levels of abominableness when my entire family was recently sick with the flu. On one of those fun-filled nights my one-year-old, Jesse threw up on Lauren. But he didn’t just throw up on her. He threw up on her while he was nursing. You get that? He threw up… on her breast. This wasn’t just some relatively harmless baby spittle. This was full on, chunky, stomach flu ralphage. And do you know what Lauren’s response was? After her initial, knee-jerk, “aw gross” reaction, she quickly composed herself and said, “Okay, well at least it didn’t get on the couch.”

The couch? She has vomit on her boobs and yet she’s happy because it didn’t get on the couch? That’s how far we’ve come as parents—getting thrown up on has somehow become the preferable alternative to something else. When the hell does that happen anywhere else in life? Short of getting killed by an axe-wielding psychopath, how is getting thrown up on not the worst possible outcome of any social situation? I mean imagine you’re walking through the ethnic foods section of the supermarket and some guy just walks up and blows chunks all over you—lifting up your shirt and exposing your chest before doing so of course. Could you ever find a silver lining in that? Yet somehow, as a parent, having somebody puke all over your bare naked BOOBS is actually seen as a somewhat positive thing!

Man, I really hope my kids grow up to be rockstars because it would be a shame for them to siphon so much coolness out of me and Lauren and not put it to good use.

No, not the one with Queen Latifah

2008-03-29T13:33:00.001-05:00

I picked up the book BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE yesterday at the library... and I finished it on the plane. For those of you who haven’t seen the previews for the movie 21, which is based upon the book, this is the TRUE story of a bunch of MIT students who worked out this card-counting scheme and won millions of dollars from various casinos over the course of a couple years. If you’re a fan of Clooney’s Ocean’s 11, you’ll dig this book. It’s a really easy, really fast (did I mention I finished the whole thing in less than 24 hours), and actually quite satisfying read (see, it is possible to have all three, Dan Brown). In addition to giving a really gripping account of how these ballsy little geeks managed to get past the Vegas system (Think the Rain Main blackjack sequence times about 10), the author also gives some really cool backstory into the history of "old" Vegas and "new" Vegas (the security, the mob, the corporations, the back rooms, the strippers, the private investigation firms) in order to show you what these guys were truly up against.

So a highly recommended read that isn’t too taxing on the mind. And it’s TRUE for crying out loud. It all actually happened, which of course makes it even cooler. I’m sure some parts were pizzazed up for dramatic effect and all, but still. And the thing is, you can tell that the movie at least has the potential to be just as good. A curious thing I noticed though, the lead role is being played by a white guy when all the participants in the original scheme were Asian, and, in fact, BEING Asian, Greek or Persian was apparently key to pulling off the scheme because the pit bosses were more suspicious of white kids making big bets. But whatever, I’m rather excited to check it out once it becomes available on DVD and Blu-Ray HiDef... or you know, if I happen to catch it on TNT one night.

It's the little things

2008-03-29T13:04:00.002-05:00

Walking through the Philadelphia International Airport at 5 o’clock this morning and seeing the disproportionate amount of bleary-eyed college students walking around has led me to two conclusions:

1) Early ass Saturday morning flights must be the dirt-cheapest way to travel considering many of said students couldn’t even afford the food they were eating (sharing Poland Springs and egg sandwiches and whatnot as they were).

and

2) Hollister must have their spring break this week.

Oh and I simply love Philadelphia graffiti.

In a stall today as I sat taking care of business I read the following: EAGLES SUCK. Nothing too mind blowing all things considered but some amusing pooper after my own heart crossed out EAGLES and replaced it with a much more general SPORTS. SPORTS SUCK. Yes... yes they do.

Also saw this charming attack on religion:

DONKEY’S TALK
PEOPLE CAN FLY
AND JESUS
LIVES IN THE SKY

What made it great were the lines some other defecator added in at a later date:

DONKEY’S TALK - YEAH, JUST LIKE THIS JACKASS
PEOPLE CAN FLY - YEAH, IN AIRPLANES
AND JESUS - THE SON OF GOD
LIVES IN THE SKY - IS ALL AROUND US YOU MORON.

God help me, but I love crass Christians... and proudly consider myself one of them.

Would you like retards with that?

2008-02-27T23:43:00.001-05:00

There are many reasons why I never ever ever eat at McDonald's, not the least of which being that I start farting about halfway through my burger and then don't stop for three and a half days. But also, I just find it utterly depressing that I have to deal with an entire team of people who are quite literally as stupid as a person can possibly get without qualifying for a bona fide "disorder."

I ordered a Happy Meal for my daughter tonight. A Chicken McNugget Happy Meal. There are two choices when one orders a McNugget Happy Meal: a 4-McNugget meal or a 6-McNugget meal. So when I stepped up to the register and placed my order with Tardface, I said, "Yes I'd like a four McNugget Happy Meal, please." So you can imagine my shock when I looked at my receipt ten seconds later and realized my credit card had just been charged fourteen dollars for a Happy Meal that should have cost about $4.50.

"Well you said you wanted four Happy Meals," responds Tardface.

Okay, I'm sorry, Tardface. I know you're stupid. But I also know that the corporation that employs you understands that you're stupid and so has broken down everything you must do into about thirty simple phrases: Big Mac, Fries, Number Six, Super Size... I simply can't imagine that I am the first person to ever come in here and verbalize this particular order to you. I know that you know that you have a four McNugget meal, so... why, Mister McDonald's employee wouldn't you have at least clarified what you thought you heard me say before charging me for four freakin' Happy Meals? Especially when you can clearly see I am standing her with ONE DAMN KID!

Now please go get your slightly-smarter manager to come give me a refund while I continue to fart in your general direction.

In the event of a sudden change in cabin humor...

2008-02-18T12:18:00.002-05:00

God help me, I love airline employees with a sense of humor. Even a stupid joke that you might not otherwise laugh at is rendered about ten times funnier when it is said over a P.A. system in the airport or on an airplane.

Cases in point:

I was flying from Bangor to Philadelphia a couple summers ago on one of those tiny puddle-jumper planes and the male flight attendant doing the safety lecture said, "Insert the flap into the buckle and pull the strap to tighten. If this is too confusing, exit the plane immediately as you're probably too stupid to be flying."

On another flight, the pilot came over the speaker and announced that there was a long line for the runway and we would likely be sitting here for almost an hour. But there was some good news. Can you guess what that good news was? Yep, he just saved a bunch of money on his car insurance.

And just this morning, as I sit in the New Orleans terminal with about a thousand other people after Allstar Weekend, this man with a very thick Cajun accent comes over the P.A. and says, "For anyone on standby for any flight... for any flight... standing will not get you on a flight any faster, so please feel free to grab a seat."

Seriously, under any other circumstances, none of these mildly humorous jokes would have made me laugh. But coming from somebody working in an industry where people are by nature pissed off at the public as a whole and you as an individual, it's just priceless comedy.

Mo-o-om... Marvin keeps taking my miles!

2008-02-16T00:42:00.004-05:00

My family recently booked a flight on US Airways. A few days later I got an email from them encouraging me to sign up for their “Dividend Miles” club. The basic gist of the email was, “Hey, if you sign up right now you can still get these miles.” But they didn’t stop there. The email continues on to say, “If you don’t sign up right now, we’re going to give your miles to Marvin!” I’m sorry, but why should that be the detail that ultimately convinces somebody to sign up for this program? If you’re not inspired enough to earn frequent flier miles for yourself, why should losing them to “Marvin” (swear I’m not even making that name up) in any way sway your decision?

Apparently US Airways is trying to appeal to the three-year-old sensibilities in all of us. I can’t tell you how many times my daughter and niece—who are three and four respectively—have broken down crying simply because one of them wanted to play with a toy that the other one already had. “Mommy, I want the Littlest Pet Shop Bulldog!” Mind you, the crying child wanted nothing to do with that stupid bulldog thirty seconds ago, but now that her cousin has decided to play with it, that is suddenly the only thing on earth that could ever possibly make her happy. You can try distracting her with food, movies, other toys, but no. As long as her cousin continues to possess a bulldog that should have been hers, nothing else will make her happy. The three-year-old mantra seems to be: “I don’t want this. I don’t want that. I want what YOU have!"

I guess we never really grow out of that. That’s where the whole “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality derives from. Your big screen standard def TV was just fine two years ago until everybody around you started buying plasma HD. Now, god forbid they have something you don’t have. US Airways understands this mentality better than we do apparently. And the thing is, I’m almost certain the scare tactic works amazingly well on their customers: “Oh god no! I can’t imagine that I’ll ever fly enough to make these Dividend Miles worth the effort of signing up, but damnit I will not let that bastard Marvin (who might actually find some use for them) get his grubby little hands anywhere near my miles.”

Well hey Marvin, you can have our miles. I don’t think my three-year-old is going to notice.

Anyone? Anyone? Anyone know who Darwin is?

2008-02-15T18:32:00.005-05:00

Today I clicked on perhaps my very first "targeted Google ad" ever, and found something profoundly interesting. Apparently Ben Stein ("Beuller... Beuller...") has made a documentary which is coming out later this year. The doc is called EXPELLED and it addresses a recent trend in academia whereby scientists, teachers, students and really anyone involved in the realm of academic thinking are ostracized for merely suggesting that Darwinism might be wrong. As someone who is an unapologetic Christian but who has read up on evolution and finds the ideas behind it intriguing and fascinating (if not necessarily foregone conclusions) I am very eager and curious to see this film.

I want to stress—and the website stresses over and over—that the aim of this film is NOT to preach Intelligent Design or to make a case against evolution. What it does is expose the “invisible hand” of “Big Science” which has been bullying otherwise intelligent researchers into accepting evolution as it is currently understood, or else. Well established scientists and college professors are being fired, denied tenure, and cut out of research funding simply for pursuing “fact” and “truth” no matter where the road may lead. It’s a trend that is disturbingly familiar in our current vernacular, something that transcends science and religion: anti-war voices being told to “just shut up” by conservatives or global warming skeptics being called “treasonous” by Al Gore acolytes just to name a couple.

If an idea or theory is self-evident why the need to discourage dissenting voices and research? No matter what your religious or scientific beliefs, if the idea of challenging the “Establishment” and encouraging “free thinking” intrigues you, then I encourage you to check out the film’s website. Watch the trailer and read the online literature. And when the movie comes out later this year, go see it with a truly open mind.

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/

At my feelers, unleash hell

2008-02-14T22:36:00.006-05:00

As a father, I am really really looking forward to the age where ant farms become appropriate toys. I loved my ant farm as a kid and I can’t wait for the excuse to have one again. For the uninitiated, a typical ant farm consisted of two-panes of glass (or plastic) spaced a couple of centimeters apart which you filled with soil from your yard. You’d go gather up about twenty or thirty ants from the same colony and transport them home in a peanut butter jar. After jimmying them one-by-one into the ant farm with some food (the instructions suggested sugar water curiously enough) you’d just sit back and let them go to work for about a week, digging tunnels and settling into their new home. After that the real fun would begin.

You’d start by going out and collecting about twenty ants from a different anthill. Your next move was really a matter of taste. You could drop all twenty of the rival ants into the ant farm at the same time and watch as both sides fought to the bitter violent death, leaving behind only one or two befuddled sentries. On the other hand, you could drop them in two or three at a time and watch as the colony ganged up and tore them to pieces. Occasionally, one of the intruders would put up a good fight and take down a couple of the ravenous mob (especially if you were lucky enough to find a colony of red ants), but in the end he was still inherently doomed.

This was the way I chose to put my rival ants to work. I’d gradually up the number of intruders over the course of an hour or so, giving my colony plenty of practice against increasingly difficult odds. Then, after I felt that all of my little six-legged soldiers had been sufficiently trained up in the art of war, I’d give them a real challenge. I’d go out and find myself a big freakin’ SPIDER and drop that into the farm. Here’s where the action really got interesting. Unlike ant-on-ant battles, which pretty much always came down to whoever had the bigger army, you never really knew how a spider would fare against an entire colony. A spider is obviously big enough and tough enough hold its own against four or five ants at once. And if he positions himself properly the narrowness of the tunnels can actually work to his favor, preventing the ants from swarming him in numbers he can’t easily handle. But ants are nothing if not coordinated. It all boils down to how fast they can rally a multi-pronged attack, sending flanking units to the surface to come around and attack the spider from behind. Once the ants can pin down the intruding monster on both sides, forcing him to split his attention, it’s only a matter of time before they get past his long legs and onto his back. After that, the outcome of the fight is pretty much a foregone conclusion. Now it’s just a matter of how many ants the spider will be able take down with him.

When people think of little boys and ants, they usually conjure up images of us incinerating them with a magnifying glass, or dousing them with gasoline. They really don’t give us enough credit. We came up with way way way more f---ed up ideas than that. Ant farms gave us a staging ground to recreate the Roman Coliseum! We made countless drones fight for their lives purely for our own amusement. We let swarms of opposing armies slaughter each other just to see who would come out on top. We put trained fighters into the ring with the equivalent of Bengal tigers just to see how many would die before vanquishing the beast

Now I know what you’re thinking: serial killers in training. But trust me, no mass murder has ever wasted his time executing insects. They killed cats and dogs and birds and things. Things with faces. Things with personalities. Things you can love, sympathize and identify with. But who ever identified with a freakin’ ant? And I mean a real ant, not that cute puppet thing from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Sure we were messed up. All boys are. But hey, at least we purged our homicidal curiosities on creatures that everyone kills on a daily basis. Is it really so messed up that we got additional entertainment value out of it? And is it really so messed up that I can’t wait to share that joy with my son?

Home runs or, ya know... HOME RUNS?

2008-02-14T12:25:00.005-05:00

So Roger Clemens just went before Congress to testify about his “alleged” steroid use. I know I may not be the best person to comment about this whole matter considering I could really give a damn about any sport that I am not actively engaged in, but who the hell even cares if a baseball player wants to take steroids? If the Major League Baseball Commission (or whatever that ruling body is) doesn’t care enough to give frequent and mandatory drug screenings to their players, why should the government even get involved? If the powers that be want to ruin their own sport (have you noticed that, unless it’s the Red Sox, Yankees or Cubs, nobody REALLY cares about who goes to the World Series anymore?) I say let them – it’ll be one less game that makes me feel like a little girl because I can’t name any of the players or their stats.

Frankly I just don’t get the whole steroid thing anyway. Why somebody would willingly inject a foreign substance into their body – something that has been shown to cause (amongst other things) heart attacks, strokes, tumors and kidney failure – just so they can hit a ball a little bit farther is beyond me… especially when you consider the reason why a guy becomes an athlete in the first place. Professional athletes may feed you a line of crap about their “love of the game” or the “thrill of competition” blah blah blah. If that were really the reason the started playing baseball there would be no twenty million dollar contracts. The main overriding reason why guys desire to become big time athletes is simple: to get… LAID. Even those ridiculously lucrative contracts are only there to serve that main purpose. So if the main reason you got into professional sports was to get laid, then why would you take a substance that also shrinks your penis, makes you impotent and gives you acne and man boobs? Wouldn’t that pretty much rule out any laying of any kind? People talk about ‘roid rage as another side effect of steroids. Personally, I don’t think it’s the steroids. I think it’s the realization that after doing everything humanly (and chemically) possible to become the best athlete they can possibly be, in the end these guys are nothing but flaccid, tiny pricked neo-virgins with slightly better batting averages. I’d want to kick the shit out of somebody too if that happened to me.

So I say open up all professional sports to steroid use. If Roger Clemens, or whoever, wants bigger muscles and doesn't care about the eenie weenie peenie, more power to him. Once the women of the world realize that all those athletes they’ve been lusting after can’t even hold an erection, it’ll give my fellow audio/visual geeks a little more bedtime action.

Place head on table. Smash repeatedly.

2008-02-07T10:37:00.000-05:00

So let me see if I understand this correctly. The Republicans have narrowed the race down to two guys: one who half of them can't stand because he's "too liberal" and another who half of them can't stand because he's a Mormon. What's more, they absolutely cannot shut up about it.

Seriously GOP, are you people TRYING to get Hilary elected?

Mothers, please don't beat your babies

2008-01-24T18:05:00.000-05:00

Allison and I were just chillin out tonight, listening to the Happy Feet soundtrack while we cleaned up her room, when she suddenly says: "This is the one where they don't beat baby girls."

That made me stop for a second. I was trying to remember a place in the movie where the penguins beat up the baby penguins. I know there was a part where the dad was worried that he'd drop an egg. But I don't remember them actually beating one of the babies.

"When do they beat the babies?" I ask.

"No they don't beat the baby girls I said."

I crinkled up my forehead trying to think what the hell movie she could possibly be talking about when I realized which song was playing. It was Nicole Kidman singing the Prince song, "Kiss." And that's when I realized what the first line of the song might sound like to the unfamiliar brain of a three-year-old: "You don't have to be rich to be my pearl," becomes:

"You don't have to beat baby girls."

Now my question is this: Is it weird that Allison understood that as a perfectly innocuous line?