I always liked this picture, but Snotty actually made it better. 

Magnanimity

Now, I had two very humbling experiences today. I do not claim to be the greatest living Christian, or even someone after whom one would model his or her life. However, I woke up this morning feeling quite guilty about an orgy of posting that may or may not have been done on a certain UK website that has been a source of some controversy amongst my circle of college internet friends. As I checked Phil's blog, there was a cease and desist order, that I will admit, in greatest part, applied to yours truly.
After an e-mail exchange with the aforementioned friend, I was convinced that I had, in fact been somewhat guilty of a transgression, which I may mention, was a repeat of a past bad act in the sixth grade, when I pounded the snot out of a fellow classmate who kept stealing my chalk and mocking me during an inside rainy day recess. I feel even worse about that incident, because I was such a brown-noser, I got off scot free without any punishment, and my verbal assailant received hard time in "DT--as we called it back in our heady elementary school days.
Anyways, as I returned home this evening from a pleasant snow-day party with fellow teachers, I realized that Mr. McShot, on whose behalf I had expended a tremendous amount of energy hating, had been the bigger man, and offered me an olive branch with a few, quite fair rebukes. I do agree that we bloggers take ourselves way too seriously, and my only real issue with Mr. McShot is not his blog, which in and of itself can be fairly amusing at times, but his unwarranted attack on my dear friend and committed Jesus Freak, Phil Christman, who believe it or not, was actually born with that name.
As a demonstration of good will, I am going to post a permanent link to Mr. McShot's website in a brand new category I will call, "Constructive Criticism." I will also post his testicularily complimentary picture above. I wandered the internet for a few minutes looking for an image that would enhance Mr. McShot's website, in which I failed miserably. Then made a lame attempt to make his semi-automatic-toting picture sexier, when I realized that I was so pennyloving cheap, I have five programs in which to edit pictures, and I can add text in none of them.
Anyways, Mr. McShot, I will find something appropriate at some juncture to match your gracious reference to my balls, and I want you to know that I genuinely appreciated the olive branch which was extended to me via the internet. I am sorry that I myself was not able to be exhibit the self-control which would've allowed me to avoid being a total jerk. I hope, that in the future, we will enjoy the learning opportunities which our blogs extend to each other.
As a final note, to quote the Beavis and Butthead Movie, which Andy Hoogheem forced both Phil Christman and I to watch my freshman year, "He said extend."

Good humor and semantics

I am very happy about school being cancelled today, and it looks like it will be cancelled tomorrow. However, this also means the library is closed, so if I want to watch TV while grading quizzes, it's Guiding Light or paid programming on PAX. Sometimes PBS has really neat educational programming on during the day. By sometimes, I mean, once in a blue moon. I did watch at least an hour of Slim Goodbody today while grading, though.
Anyways, it is good to have a sense of humor about oneself, and I found this story about Halle Berry to be quite refreshing. Also, there was a great piece on NPR this morning about arguments over semantics in political reporting. By the way, the Frontline piece referenced in that article, "The Persuaders," is definitely worth watching online, if you have a broadband connection.

Thank God for snow, and it' still coming! 

pensamientos del futuro del lenguaje

Un amigo de Felipe, Nathan Bierma, otro graduado de Calvin, escribio este articulo sobre el tema del efecto de espanol hablado en el lenguaje norteamericano. A mi me parece confirmar toda la evidencia anecdotica que vi en mi vida. Lee, el articulo es escrito en ingles.

Last night I watched Shaun of the Dead with Janna and Jessica. It was hilarious. Funniest zombie movie ever.

I also recently found this delightful blog, written in Portuguese and English. For all who are learning Portuguese, this is a fun way to hone your skills.

Swalling Your Own $&!#

I recently checked out some Ali G videos from Blockbuster online, while I enjoyed his movie Indahouse, I wasn't so thrilled about the interview show. This displeasure was based on a principle Ricky Gervais of the BBC show The Office, mentioned in an interview with Terry Gross. Mr. Gervais mentioned that, in order for something to be funny, the one making the joke needs to be the butt of the joke. This was definitely true of Ali G for Indahouse, but in the interview shows, after having listened to the audio commentary for a few minutes, I realized Sacha Baron Cohen was mocking those whom he was interviewing without any realization that his characters sometimes come off as giant jerks.
Anyways, recently, at my friend Phil's blog, some young man who likes to frequent airport bars and is suprised that the other customers are only as bright as he is made a quite rude post. By the way, his website has quite an ingenious title, I think you will discover. Anyways, this guy is intellectually masturbating on his negative emotions and then swallowing his own effluent.
Now, I know that some have accused me of sending my own fair share of negativity into the electronic world, but I'm going to take this as a message from the ghost of blogging future. I need to watch my negativity, so that I don't metamorphose into this cockroach.
God bless America, because we could really use it.

Everyone deserves at least one snow day. :) 

Midnight Oil

Some of you may have noticed a theme in my early posts, the idea that ancient Latinists summed up in the phrase ningat, the desire for a snow day. Well, who knows if tonight the meteorologists are really telling the truth, but I do know this is really our last chance for some snow.
So, I'm chancing it by staying up late and playing with my blog. But, I'm frustrated with a co-worker, so I can't sleep. Doesn't it stink, how people can get under our skin--I really need to take care of this kind of frustration during daylight hours. C'est la vie.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy the updates. Buck Twenty-fi, this is a shout out to you, you my boy, and you are not the co-worker with whom I am frustated, who, I hope, never reads this blog. However, I am proud of your steps out into the blogosphere. Keep blogging, and I'll keep reading.
Peace.

How could you, Bob? 

It's only funny because it's true

One needs no excuse to read The Onion, but I have met this guy and, yes, he is insane. Unfortunately, 52% of the voting public agrees with him.

veridical theophany

I am going to make an important admission. I have been following the Michael Jackson trial quite faithfully at Google News. The reason I have been so fascinated by these developments is my interest in the idea of reality. For instance, Michael Jackson, whether or not you believe he is guilty, lives in what most of us would consider a fantasy world. His home is a themepark, his best friends are children and highly pampered celebrities, and not only did he name one of his children Blanket, but he named another Prince Michael II.
Now he is confronted with another world, the world of the courtroom. The whole goal of a court is to discover the truth, and due justice to a wronged party. However, as a faithful viewer of Judge Judy, I know that oftentimes, the wronged party gets no conciliation, not necessarily because Judge Judy is a bad or unfair judge, but because they failed to establish themselves on the right side of a point of order or law.
Truth and justice are the most ephemeral of values. For instance, take this poor gentleman, Ahmed Omar Abu-Ali. This man was raised by people who honor the ideals of truth and justice just as much as any of us. He probably saw himself as a freedom fighter, striking a blow at the heart of the death star like Luke Skywalker. If he had volunteered for the CIA, and went to another country to try and assassinate their leaders, we would have hailed him as a hero, possibly, even given him a job as the National Intelligence Czar.
However, he choose to throw in his towel with the stateless types, and therefore, is a terrorist. Not that the things he is accused of are any less evil than the torture he endured in Saudi Arabia, but he choose to join a group that was rather impotent to protest his imprisonment, which means he is probably going to get the death penalty.
The thing is, the only thing that separates the neo-cons and the jihadists is a religion and a language. There is no moral high ground here. George Bush pays lip service to peace, but hasn't made any real sacrifices to make it. Even though the bombing pauses in Vietnam were probably a poor military decision, LBJ was willing to sacrifice his strategic position to make real peace.
People who are willing to sacrifice for peace are few and far between. Ask George if we should pay more taxes for peace? Ask the Palestinians if they would be willing to accept only part of their land for peace? Ask the Sudanese government if they would be willing to share power for peace?
You see, peace is the ultimate end. If you fight a war, there are only two possible outcomes. First, you could lose the war, and be dominated by a more powerful people. The only other outcome is that you win the war, and then you dominate a weaker people. If you can't meet your fellow human beings as equals on the same level, you are doomed to live a lifetime of violence.
This goes to Kim Jung Il, Saddam Hussein, and all the hard-liners in Iran as much as it does to el jefe in Washington. Saddam Hussein caused the Iraq War just as much as George Bush did. The problem is, the Iraqi people did not have the means or the education to know how to sacrifice for peace.
Plenty of people, white and black, had to die, just to integrate Woolworth's. However, these folks did not march into the south bearing weapons and blowing things up. The came in a spirit of non-violence. Malcolm X was wrong and Martin Luther King Jr. was right. We need peace by any means non-violent. What the liberals of today need to do, is to educate the peoples of the world in non-violence. It worked in the 60's, why can't it work today.

W the dope fiend

I can't really hold it against him, seeing as Bill Clinton did the wacky weed in college. However, I find Clinton's excuse, that he didn't inhale, a little more sympathetic than Dubya's. For instance, the first (several) times I tried to smoke a cigarette, I couldn't for the life of me, inhale the darn thing. It was for sheer stupidity's sake. Therefore, I have a lot more sympathy with Clinton.
Bush, on the other hand, was condemning "hippie freaks" at the same time as he was popping acid. He was justifying the Vietnam War while going AWOL from his National Guard Unit. This is just hypocrisy, pure and simple. Now, I've been hypocritical about a lot of things in my life, but I don't try and pretend like Jesus likes the hypocrisy.
For instance, Bush's administration set the tone which allowed the Abu Ghirab and Guantanamo abuses to happen. At the same time he claims that he is against torture in all forms. I believe that an honest Christian man would have to admit that he is somewhat culpable for these abuses. However, Bush praises Rumsfeld's performance and "stays the course," recruiting more America-haters in the Middle East.
This is the kind of moral hypocrisy which earned Bush his stellar 49% approval rating, after being re-elected by an overwhelming 52% of the populace. I have been praying for Nemesis to punish his hubris for the last five years. However, I am afraid that the punishment that has been meted out has fallen upon the just and the unjust alike. It is the working dupes of my generation that are going to be eating out of trash cans until they die dejected in an alley.
By the way, Bush, if you want to cut Social Security benefits, why don't you just cut them, rather then hand them over to those same @$$holes who passed you the hash pipe at Yale.

Kyoto, Ahmed, and Junior

So, I was watching the Newshour on PBS, as I am known to do sometimes. There was a discussion between a white woman from the Clinton and the Carter administration and a white bearded dude from the AEI about the Kyoto treaty on global warming. Anyways, the white bearded dude suggested that our attitude about the Kyoto treaty had nothing to do with other nations' cooperation on the war on terror. Despite the obvious connection between Islamic terrorism and pollution--they are mad at us because we are there; we are there because they have oil; burning oil in mass quantities causes series air pollution--this gentleman suggested that nations are going to assist us on the war on terrorism merely because it is in their self interest. Now, the Madrid bombing aside, this guy is an idiot.
(I mention Madrid because those trains would probably never have been targeted if Jose Maria Aznar hadn't caved to Bush's demand for troops, even though 80% of his people were against the Iraq War. Miguel, Janna's and my Spanish host dad, was telling me in 2002 about how he thought the Spanish should instate the dealth penalty for Basque terrorists--his lovely wife, Carmen being Basque--however, he felt that George Bush was crazy and unbalanced.)
Anyways, the bearded white guy is an idiot, and this is why. Let me tell you a story about two neighbors. One neighbor, let's call him Ahmed, had a tree on his yard that had poisonous berries. This tree was becoming overgrown, and it began to hang over into the second neighbor's yard, let's call him Junior. Well, one day, one of Junior's favorite show dogs happens to go outside and eat some poisoned berries. Junior comes home and cries his little heart out.
Then, he goes next door to Ahmed's house and demands that Ahmed cut down the entire lovely tree. When Ahmed goes inside to call an arborist, Junior comes over with a chainsaw and chops down Ahmed's tree, which happens to fall on Ahmed's roof. Then Junior goes home and gives his housekeeper a raise, whose job it was to keep the stupid dog inside in the first place.
The next day, Ahmed comes over, and although he is somewhat upset about the tree that fell on his house, he only has one request for Junior. He asks Junior to kindly turn off a pipe that pumps pure arsenic out of Junior's house into the local water lines. Junior not only tells Ahmed that he should have a roof that is tree proof, but that if he, Junior, cuts off the arsenic flowing into the water supply, Junior will suffer a 10% cut in his billion dollar-a-year salary. Ahmed is somewhat miffed, because he manages to support his family with a modest $40,000 per annum.
However the story has somewhat of a happy ending, Ahmed develops technology to purify drinking water from the arsenic, sells it to his neighbors, and manages to retire to a nice gated community in Tampa. When his flight arrives at Tampa International, he is arrested and charged with being a Muslim at an airport. This, like being black on a Friday night, is only a misdeanor, and he is released on his own recognisance, although his brother, an American citizen arrested in Riyadh, is being imprisoned indefinitely by the Saudis without a formal charge.

Joan

Below is a picture of my sister standing next to a print I bought for Janna for Christmas. It was great to see you, Joan. May you be blessed in your search for a job.

Joan 

Virgil Goode, Jr. M.C.

This is the letter my elected representative sent me today.
>>
Dear Mr. Lind:
Thank you very much for your recent email in which you shared your feelings about the need to continue maintaining the Hubble Space Telescope. I appreciated your observations about the Hubble and its importance in the area of astronomical discovery. I will gladly show your views every consideration when decisions relating to the funding priorities for NASA and related agencies come before the Congress.
Thank you again for communicating with me on this matter.
<<
I appreciate the communique, but on the envelope, Virgil refers to himself as an M.C., which I believe infers that he is a Member of Congress. However, I hope this does not mean that Representative Goode is spinning discs in Georgetown for the under 30 set. If he is, I would suggest, he do some mixing and matching, and make his DJ name, "Goode M.C. Jr." I think that it has the very hiphop cachet which could give him more street cred with the black voters. At least he has come out against President Bush's crazy scheme.
Do you remember Perfect Strangers? When Larry would always come up with some crazy get-rich-quick scheme, Balki would bring him back down to earth with his naive Mediterranean simplicity. Well, I think W. is Larry, and hopefully Howard the Dean can successfully play the part of the crazy 2nd cousin. Sparks are sure to fly.

felicem diem Sancti Valentini

I read in my friend's, Phil Christman's, blog, that he was agitating for better care for disadvantaged members of society during Lent. (By the way, right now I am taking a class in basic software design at PVCC, so I am going to work on putting up links to other cool people's blogs soon, like Pharaoh DeVrieops himself. Continuing this aside, Guamo, Cato was talking about patience with reference to destroying that great seafaring state, Carthage, which posed as much threat to Rome as Saddam did the good ol' U.S. of A. before the Third Punic War.)
Anyways, Phil's concern for the downtrodden of society is extremely noble and puts me to shame, but I think we Christians either take this world or the next too seriously. Personally, I believe that intention is the force that holds the spiritual/physical universe together. I think when you get beyond the basic building blocks of matter, there is merely will and desire. So, taking care of the poor is important because, as the angels said, the pax hominibus, requires bonae voluntatis. Also, the quest for knowledge and wisdom in the universe is important. It represents that bona voluntas that keeps the Nuclear Force Strong, as if it were our universal Pimp Hand.
Therefore, I am extremely concerned about the Hubble Space Telescope, which represents the bona voluntas of all humanity. If we let this precious gem crash to earth in a million pieces, it will be as tragic as the death of a Palestian child or a working family declaring bankruptcy due to unpayable medical bills. This is an e-mail and a letter to my congressman I sent in reference to this topic.
"Write your congresspeople. This is pure idiocy, we spent millions of dollars putting this spacecraft into orbit and making it operable. There is a list miles long of astronomers wanting to use it for observations, and its replacement is going to be designed only to see extremely distant objects. This telescope has revolutionized astronomy, yet we are going to let if fall back to earth like some cheap Russian rocket toy. Let congress know we'd rather our tax dollars go to funding real science, rather than George Bush's Martian Adventure, which, if it is carried out the same way he carried out the Iraq War, will result in five dead astronauts, a defunct space cat, and 20,000 space ants floating aimlessly somewhere between here and the asteroid belt."
>>
Esteemed Representative Goode,
As a conservative, and a fiscal one at that, I would suggest to you that the Hubble Space Telescope is a program worth funding over and above other NASA programs, especially, plans to go to Mars. Hubble’s scientific value to all humanity is priceless. Its future replacement would be specialized in viewing very distant objects and would not be ready until 2011. Many astronomers doing valuable research would not be able to pursue the knowledge which is our universal patrimony. There are already many whose research on the Hubble is being turned away; therefore two space telescopes, whose observational fields would be different, would be to our advantage.
As a taxpayer, I am glad to see that my tax dollars were spent in an attempt to gain more knowledge of the heavens. However, I am very displeased to learn that this investment of tremendous sums of money would not be allowed to mature to its full potential. You are pulling out our scientific capital from our astronomical IRA too soon. Billions of dollars to travel to Mars could easily be exchanged for millions doing scientifically proven research.
God has given us the intellect and curiosity to explore his creation. To turn our awestruck eyes away from the heavens, which declare his glory, to focus on hubristic attempts to conquer other worlds smacks of the arrogance of the builders of the Tower of Babel. Please show your true conservatism, and conserve this investment we, the people, have made in knowledge. Please, do not waste it on our foolish pride.
Sincerely,
Matthew James Lind
<<
The desire to see our origins, whether we storm the Kansas State Board of Education, or we look to peer-reviewed science to give us answers ties us together as a human species. The mythos which pervades every society about creation is something that tells us more about ourselves then it does about how the world was really made. I believe science that science will infinitely provide ever more complicated explanations for the origin of the universe, which will never resolve the basic question of nothing versus something.
Science demands those that engage in it must endorse positivism, WYSIWYG. Therefore, Scientists are very queasy about creatio ex nihilo, just as I am equally queasy about certainty, due to my nature as a humanist. God defines herself as the only one with the ability to choose their own existence. In fact, as humans, we can only choose suicide, which most religions believe merely to be a transmogrification of the form of our existence, not the fact that we exist, have existed, or will exist.
Therefore, the bona voluntas of a scientist can only endorse the unmystical part of the universe, even though scientists themselves are equally susceptible to all of the infirmities of our spiritual/physical existence. By the way, my second chakra seems to be sorting itself out, my throat hasn't hurt all day.

chakra #2

I've had a sore throat for the past few days. I consulted my resident medical expert, la Juanita, who suggested that a sore throat could be related to a blockage in my second chakra, related to my personal expression or creativity. I realized that everytime I attempted to blog in the last few weeks, I just haven't been able to put it together.
Earlier today I was watching a DVD of Kids in the Hall, and there was a fabulous writer's block sketch, and I just watched Gwen Stefani sing about writer's block on MSN. I thought this was sufficient impetus to write a blog about writer's block, plus Gwen called me a "stupid ho."
Anyways, Janna hated Adaptation, because it was about writer's block. However, I was on the imdb website, and I noticed it had Latin subtitles. I don't know if this is true, but if it is, that is kind of cool.
Anyways, sorry I haven't written in a while, but my sister completed her visit this weekend. It was great to see her, and I really hope that she is offered the job at RMC, but I realize that there are a lot of other options for her.
I will try and write more later, hopefully this will clear up my sore throat.