Creationism, the new State Religion

I sent the following as part of an email today. It appears as though I flipped out, though I really did not mean to. We'll see if she ever talks to me again. But I really did feel I said something that needed to be said.

So I must ask one real question. (And I must apologize in advance. As I write this parenthetical, I've already written all that follows, and did NOT intend it as a rant! It certainly does look like it came out that way, but I really did just get on a roll and are very curious what someone as intelligent as you would say on the issue...)
You are a science girl! Indoctrinated to the world of the scientific method, and tiered lessons. AND are for lack of a better quantization, agnostic. But you believe that creationism should be taught in public schools?

Now, a secondary school's world-religions or sociology class is one thing, but to dedicate the valuable time of younger children to the beliefs of solely one sect? And where does one draw the line at teaching religion in schools? By almost sheer coincidence, all factions of Christianity are kosher (ha!) with creationism... but why not continue teaching the beliefs of, say, Pentecostal protestants? Are they irrelevant because they are greatly outnumbered by Baptists or Lutherans?

What would the Catholics say/do if they learned their children were being instructed in the ways of an entirely different denomination? Should fair and equal time be given to all divisions of all denominations? If fairness is the issue, should not Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism also be represented, as the vast majority of the world's population doesn't even subscribe to Christianity?

I am sure the Jewish friends that I have would have been yanked from public schooling by their pious parents if their tender minds were being taught christian creationism as science. I'm certain that that is exactly why the founding fathers sought to separate church and state.

Wow, ok...
A little serious for a first email, but as I'm pretty certain you could tell me what exp(pi*i) is off the top of your head, I'm sure you can handle it!

Sorry again for the rant!
Jason

Teach a man to...

I keep thinking to mention this. Several weeks ago I was talking to my mom on the phone and I guess she'd had dinner with my brother and his girlfriend and they were talking about me. Particularly how fastidious I can be. And miserly. Brian said "His time means nothing to him!" which everyone, I think, feted with a "funny but true".

But, really, nothing could be farther from the truth! See proof below:

• Eq. 1: time = money
• Eq. 2: total time/cost = sum(of all used time or money)
• Definition: Investment -- "Property or another possession acquired for future financial return or benefit."
• Therefore if I spend a lot of time learning to do something fucking awesome'ly, I have acquired an investment of knowledge which will likely result in reducing the overall total time I put into something. I now have more of my valuable time.
  

It IS true that frequently I do not know WHEN an investment might produce returns, but no one could deny that they often do. Hooray for bizarre skills!

Family Guy quote

[ Peter points into thin air ]
[ Mel Gibson runs off Mt. Rushmore ]
Lois: He just walked right off the cliff!
Peter: Of course he did, Christians don't believe in gravity!

Ha, yes, gravity is "just a theory" too.
(No, really. Due to incomplete information on causibility, it's not a "law".)

TV pics

AH-HA!!! The horizontal connector (??) to the yoke wasn't even attached!
Crappy solder job :-p.

I am taking a break

...from doing my work-work to spend some valuable time procrastinating. I like to do this just in case I become too productive, or sometimes even just when I am on the cusp of becoming productive. That way, I fall farther and farther behind and add another heaping spoonful of anxiety to my collection. Cleverly, I then no longer oversleep! ...because I simply cannot sleep due to my mind's unequaled ability to worry about the consequences of not being productive.


I was cleaning my sunglasses with my shirt as I sat at a red light earlier today, and bemoaned the prominence of a number of gouges in the lenses. A few of the most prominent mars were of origin that readily sprang to mind. Several weeks ago I was working on the underside of my truck when I bumped my head into, and then rubbed against, one of the moorings for the sidepanel. My head was just fine, but the right lens of my glasses proudly displayed my lack of preparation for the job.

So as I sat at the light, I was just kicking myself wondering why I had not removed them. For a brief moment I considered the fact that had the glasses not been there, it would have been my eye displaying out-and-out stupidity instead of just poor preperation... but as I envisioned exactly the situation I'd been in, I concluded that due to their in-set placement, my eyes really wouldn't have been in danger. In fact, our human eyes are really fantastically located to make sure we don't accidentally blind ourselves with any objects larger than a finger. (Knock-on-wood, my zero-for-hundreds racquetball-sans-goggles eye-injury tally can attest to that.)

Then two thoughts surfaced to immediately compliment eachother...

1. Thank you, evolution, for not putting my eyes on antennae or something
2. Severely injuring an eye would really suck for mating purposes

Mind you, I meant contemporary mating purposes when I thought that. As in, I imagine a serious eye injury could leave you looking not so aesthetically pleasing to the ladies. But! It then occurred to me that surely those two thoughts are probably quite closely related.

Aesthetics... as I would define it without any knowledge of the real definition, is a quality judgement based purely on visual inspection. I imagine somewhere in man's evolution, more than a few guys/primates had their eyes screwed up due to sheer bad luck AND accessibility of the ocular cavity to that bad luck. And after that? More than a few ladies/lady-primates steered clear of those poor injured souls. Surely, our even-then advanced brains were able to suggest varying probabilities of successful hunts/fights/etc between 2-eyed and less-than-2-eyed folks. Those ladies then relegated those guys to the procreation D.L..

And thus, I claim our human desire for pleasing aesthetics was an evolutionary key! Humans who "didn't look right" would get aesthetically red-flagged with good reason. Is it any surprise that the eyes are so frequently quoted as being one of the most striking features of persons we find attractive?! Our "insensitive" tendencies to find out-of-average individuals ugly, while unfortunate for some, is not something that's been manufactured by Cosmo or Soloflex.

Why can't I focus on WORK!??! AAARRGGHH!