Truly, You Have Now Seen It All

Helen Kane Repairs Cars

Well, she doesn't repair them, she just works the front desk at the place where I get my cars fixed. And I'm not sure it's really Helen Kane as I think Helen is dead. In any case, it's a young lady who sounds an awful lot like Helen Kane. She's super sweet, but her voice is incongruous with turning wrenches and hoisting engines.

When I call up to find out about my car will be done, I get this high-pitched little sweetie on the line talking to me about my radiator or head gasket.

Purple With Ice Cream On Top

Tiny flowers in our front yard. I left the original file quite large, so the image ought to be worth a click. Enjoy!

Since this little guy is in my front yard, I ought to know what it is, but I don't. I'm going to have to call my flower and gardening expert mom to find out.

Moms. You never stop needing them.

This Is Your State Department Run By Jon Stewart

The world stands #UnitedforUkraine. Let’s hope that the #Kremlin & @mfa_russia will live by the promise of hashtag
— Jen Psaki (@statedeptspox) April 24, 2014

That's your American State Department, boys and girls. "The promise of the hashtag." It's beyond parody. Even Bad Argument Hippie can't go far enough.

Supernatural

I've got the photos from the Proper English Breakfast (which was splendid), but I don't have the time to post them right now. Instead, here's one of my current obsessions, DC Talk.


Clearly, I need a new car stereo. I was blasting this while driving and I can still hear.

You Can Always Get Angry Later

I know I've posted about this before and perhaps many times. Still, it's always such good advice for me when I follow it that I like sharing it.

My default reaction to disappointments, annoyances and disagreements is anger. A random selection from the archives of the blog will show you that. Polemics come easily. Forgiveness from the polemicized comes hard. I think I've managed to keep the nasty snarks to a minimum with my family for the past several months. I find myself tempted and I manage to suppress it.

OK, "manage" isn't the right word. I didn't want to make this another religious post, but here's the truth: At Cursillo, when someone gives a talk, the prayer over the speaker is to have the Holy Spirit speak through that person. I sometimes pray for that when I get angry and it makes me think of Christian ways to deal with the situation and avoid verbally shredding someone else. I don't always do this; sometimes my self-restraint is simply long-range, enlightened self-interest. I can yell at you today, but our relationship after that point isn't going to be very good. You're going to be looking for reasons to yell at me.

When I've held back, I find myself thinking the next day just what would be happening over dinner or in the bedroom if I had cut loose and yelled the night before. I'm always glad I restrained myself.

No storm today. Just a beautiful ocean and sunshine. Life is good.

Hollywood Invertebrates

I'm making a traditional English breakfast this morning (photos to follow), so this will be short.

I had a conversation on Twitter last with a Hollywood writer. It started with me a bit saddened and shocked by a crude joke he posted. His stream isn't like that, he's usually quite good. I jabbed him a bit in reply and off we went. When challenged to defend such language, he quickly turned spineless. It was all, "everyone does it" and "what's the big deal?"

It was a trifle surreal. I argued he was better than that and he argued that he wasn't. There was no merit to his coarseness, just a sense of moral ennui.

Meanwhile, his audience is tearing itself apart.

On Easter weekend, 45 people were shot in the city (Chicago), six of them children.

Five youngsters under the age of 15—four girls and a boy—were shot in a playground where they had gone after Easter services at a nearby church.

Witnesses agree that a car pulled up and one of the occupants asked the youngsters if they were in a gang. There is some dispute about whether the youngsters even got a chance to say no before the people in the car started shooting.

These are the fatherless ones, the ones who watch the most TV. They aren't the ones reading books or learning how to build things. What does Mr. Hollywood offer them? More swear words, more violence, more sex acts.

Like they needed to see that.


Just one more Hollywood invertebrate going with the flow.

Cheezburger of the Day

Grampa kitteh is not impressed with your gifts.

If You've Got A Degree Then It All Makes Sense

We're funny people. We can live our whole lives observing things all around us and then throw evidence and experience out the window when someone with a degree from a prestigious university tells us something that, said by anyone else, would be dismissed as ludicrous nonsense. Feminists, for example.

It turns out that freezing your eggs in your mid to late 30s is a really good idea for women. That way, they can focus on their careers and still have kids later in life without the increased risks of birth defects from having children in their 40s. Brilliant, no? We know this is ingenious because people with important degrees tell us it is. Never mind what it would be like to try raising teenagers when you're in your 60s or what your social life would be with the other parents on the soccer team when you're old enough to be their parents. The woman with the fancy degree said this was good, so it must be.

Of course, if Jolene from Pine Ridge, MS, cosmetics saleswoman from Walmart told us this we'd reply, "What in tarnation are you thinking, Jolene? You ain't gonna find no man who wants to be having babies from frozen eggs when you're 45. If'n you wanted a family, you oughta have hitched up with that nice Wilson boy when you was cute and 22 instead of heading off to get that worthless degree from that Yankee university up north! At your age, you'll be lucky if old Blind John from the bait store down yonder will have you."

That's oversimplifying things, to be sure. The 45-year-old career-crazed feminist is going to have a lot harder time getting a husband than Jolene from Pine Ridge, MS. For one thing, Jolene would probably at least have a clue about men. The women in that article (at least the first page of it which was all I could handle) don't seem to have any comprehension of men at all. Dating in your 40s is pretty awful, but you can still find a gem out there if you try. Dating a woman who froze her eggs so she could focus on her career would seem like willful suicide to me.

When I told her I thought gender theory was total idiocy, she reacted badly.

复活节快乐 (Happy Easter!)

How beautiful to read this on Easter Sunday.

"It is a wonderful thing to be a follower of Jesus Christ. It gives us great confidence," beamed Jin Hongxin, a 40-year-old visitor who was admiring the golden cross above Liushi's altar in the lead up to Holy Week.

This image comes from another lovely resurrection story.

Happy Easter, everyone!

More Evidence That The English Premier League Is The Best League In Sports

I just finished watching last place Sunderland beat second place Chelsea in an absolute scorcher of a match. In the EPL, the bottom three teams are relegated to the league below at the end of the season and the top three teams from that league are promoted in to the EPL. That means bottom-tier teams have to play just as hard as the top-tier teams. With 3 more games to go, both ends of the standings are up for grabs.

Near the end of the season in American leagues, whether it's baseball, football, basketball or hockey, players on last place teams are typically thinking about golf tee times instead of playing the game. In the EPL, they're playing like fiends.

Imagine what the Houston Astros - New York Yankees series in late August is going to be like. I feel vaguely dizzy and nauseous just contemplating it. Meanwhile, I can't wait to see almost any of next week's EPL matches.

Finally, What The World Has Been Waiting For

An insect song sung by a barbershop quartet.

There goes another one off my Bucket List.

Cheezburger of the Day

Well, This Kind Of Explains Why I've Always Liked U2

Sweet, Sweet Normalcy

My wife and I teach the remarriage class for the Diocese. The Catholic Church requires you to take marriage preparation classes if you want a Catholic wedding. The classes have been great fun and we feel we're making a difference in these couples' lives with our stories and lessons.

Every class starts with the couples introducing themselves and telling their love story. The stories are sometimes funny and sometimes touching, but they all have the same dynamics in common. The man talks about how beautiful he thought the woman was and the woman talks about how kind and capable she thought the man was. They say it with humor and they say it with love. It always gets the class started out on a happy note.

The couples are all different ages, races, wealth levels, education levels and so on. It's a lovely cross-section of America. For 7 hours or so, all of us in the room share intimate stories and discuss important topics in daily life. Seating is haphazard, so when the class breaks into discussion groups, the combinations are random. There's never any problem with that.

When I see stories about UCLA students occupying buildings over "microaggressions" or Chris Matthews telling us we're swimming in racism or hear that we're not supposed to use the word "bossy" any more because it somehow prevents little girls from growing up to be leaders, I think of these classes and wonder how Chris Matthews, the Huffington Post writers and the student protesters got so darned weird.

Electrical Engineering In Alabama?

Next year, one of our sons will graduate with an EE degree. San Diego may still be where he finds a job in the field, but from his internship search for this summer, it's not a foregone conclusion. One of my Cursillo buddies, a banker, tells me that California in general doesn't have a healthy employment outlook. So where to go if you're young and bright and have an Electrical Engineering degree?

How about Alabama? Dig this.

The location quotient is the ratio of the area concentration of occupational employment to the national average concentration. A location quotient greater than one indicates the occupation has a higher share of employment than average, and a location quotient less than one indicates the occupation is less prevalent in the area than average.

Huntsville and Birmingham are hotbeds of electrical engineering. Why? Well, for Huntsville, there's Cummings Research Park (CRP).

The second largest R&D park in the country with 200+ companies, 25,000+ employees.

I found an NPR story out there from 2011 focusing on downsizing at NASA, people being fired at CRP and working the red state political angle, but two years later those stump-toothed, inbred, redneck hillbillies still seem to be doing alright if the Bureau of Labor Statistics is to be believed.

Or are they to be believed? A Monster.com search revealed 3 EE positions up for grabs in Huntsville vs. 10 in San Diego. Correcting for population sizes, Huntsville (183,000) and Sam Diego (1,338,000), then Huntsville has effectively 22 jobs for the same population. Yep, there it is. Huntsville, AL has a larger concentration of EE jobs than San Diego, CA.

Wow. I would not have believed it if I hadn't clicked around myself.

Love Makes A Family

Renee Aste (why aren't you following her on Twitter?) linked to this news story recently.

In the picture Shanesha Taylor is staring straight into the camera with tears streaming down her cheeks. It’s her mug shot, taken after the Arizona single mother was arrested for leaving her children in a locked car with the windows slightly cracked.

Horrible as that sounds it’s only part of the story. As Shanesha explained to the arresting officer she had no one to watch her kids while she interviewed for a job. The 35-year-old mother is homeless; she risked leaving her children for a short time for the chance to get work.

Shanesha and her two children were living in her car. How horrible! One or more of the following things must happen immediately:

1. Shanesha should be thrown in jail.
2. Shanesha should be released and given shelter.
3. The State needs to pay for free day care for all.
4. Shanesha's kids should become wards of the foster parent system.
5. Shanesha needs parenting classes.
6. (fill in the blank here)

What's the big deal? We're taught that "love makes a family." Wasn't this love every step of the way? Didn't Shanesha love the father of her children? Didn't Shanesha love her children? Wasn't Shanesha doing the best she possibly could? Seriously, I would bet that the answer to all those questions is a resounding "Yes!"

Here's something that will not be recommended from this news story:

1. We all need to honor the Biblical injunctions on marriage and sex.

Shanesha did what almost all Americans do and then her life went very, very wrong. Until it did, she was following modern, secular morality. Shanesha didn't know it would turn out this way, otherwise she never would have done it. The same goes for all of us. Those of us who get away with it were examples to Shanesha. She saw us do it, so she did it, too.

If love makes a family, then how did Shanesha go wrong when every step was based on love?

Here, the porcupine social worker is placing the children into custody as the bird mom bids them a tearful farewell. Love wins again!

If there is a God and he loves us, wouldn't he give us rules for life that led us away from fates like Shanesha's? Looking at it from the Shanesha angle, defining adultery as a sin is an act of love.

Addendum: Shanesha is a hero in my book. There aren't words to describe my admiration for her.

Cheezburger of the Day

Our Children Are In Good Hands

Highlights from my daughter's high school history class notes taken on Thursday of this week. The class is learning about the War of American Aggression, or "The Cold War."

• The Soviets won the space race with Sputnik
• The CIA made secret, high-altitude flights over Soviet territory
• The Soviets knew about American spies

Comrade, do you know your history?

There's nothing in her notes about gulags, mass starvation, Soviet aggression, religious repression, the Eastern European uprisings in the 50s ...

Why would there be? This is Soviet American history, after all.

Atheist Hypocrisy Is Worse Than Christian Hypocrisy

We all have limbic systems that drive our animal appetites. Sex n' drugs n' rock and roll are desirable because the primitive lizard brains that sit inside of our glorious human brains says they are. Your limbic system is what drives you to do both the things necessary for survival and the things you really oughtn't like lust and gluttony. For Christians, we face a constant fight with our limbic systems as we strive to be what the Bible tells us to be. When we fail, we're hypocrites. We preach one thing and do another.

So, yes, it's bad when you do things like this:

#ThatAwkwardMomentWhen you realize that you've been staring at the girl's butt in front of you for half of Mass.
— Catholic Men's Humor (@CatholicMensHum) April 6, 2014

We shouldn't have done that. We tell others we're trying to do what's right and then we go and give in to the lizard brain. Our lives are constant struggles with Mr. Lizard. Mea culpa.

Then you come to the case of the atheist hypocrite like Sam Harris. Sam's big thing is logic. He's superior to me because he uses logic and reason and evidence and I don't. I drag my knuckles in the ground, grovel in front of crudely carved statues and eat my peas with a knife. I can barely be called civilized. He, on the other hand, is quick to tell you how totally logical he is. He evangelizes his atheism by crowing about his logic. Yes sirree, he's full to the brim with logic. He writes books packed with the stuff.

Except for when they aren't.

Sam's book, Free Will, is one of the worst books I have ever read. I listened to Sam narrate it from Audible.com and I nearly drove off the road ten minutes in. Here's the howler that got me laughing so hard I almost wrecked my car:

You don't have free will, but your decisions still matter.

That has to be one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. I posed it to two of our kids and they instantly blurted out the obvious question, "Why?" Sam doesn't have a logically-derived answer for that. It's possible that the question didn't seem important to him, but not very likely as it's the crucial to much of the book. Instead, he must know full well he doesn't have a serous answer to it.

Sam Harris, you see, is a logic hypocrite.

To me, this is far less forgivable than my succumbing to lust or gluttony or sloth (three of my favorites). While I'm engaged in perpetual neuron-to-neuron combat with my lizard brain, Sam has no such excuse. Logic is very unforgiving. It's either there or it's not. When you toss out a bit of trash like "You don't have free will, but your decisions still matter" without rigorous proof, you're violating your code of logic. When you do it in a book, you know you're flipping all of us the bird.

Sam slipped that piece of rubbish into his book knowing it was nonsense. As a Christian, I believe we are all sinners and have to try to do our best. I sin and need forgiveness. As an atheist, Sam believes he is logically logical and full of evidential evidence that derives his deductions. His whole act is based on him being utterly logical. When he makes premeditated "sins" of logic, that's a totally different thing in my mind. I have an excuse: my limbic system. Sam has none.

Luckily for him, he has no free will, so I guess we shouldn't hold him to very high standards. Or buy any more of his books.