Tuesday disguised as a Monday - Shame

Tuesday after a long weekend...yes I am addressing you!

You should be ashamed of yourself, acting as if you are a Monday after a normal weekend. it is morally repugnant to deceive us in this way. You should step up and act like a Tuesday. By pretending to be a Monday you create a false pain on this day. We should come to work ready to celebrate not only the joy or the lengthened bonus weekend, but also the shortened and therefore less painful work week. Somehow, though, you steal this joy, we feel the agony as if you were a Monday. I say again, this is not right. Be ashamed, be very ashamed, and shape up, let us get back to enjoying this glorious and short work week, with ... oh bliss, another weekend ahead, and at this time, only 3 1/2 days to get through.

Consider yourself warned, oh spiteful Tuesday!

I have a Dragon in my garage

I recently read this...

The Dragon In My Garage

by Carl Sagan

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

I Actually agree here. Why, as Christians are we offended that someone chooses not to believe as we do. This is in some way a rejection of us and what we believe, but it is not personal. They simply need more than we can show. I used to be them. I used to not believe, and could not see the "Dragon" either. I do now, and perhaps because I used to be a non believer, I am not offended by those who don't believe. I am offended when they choose to attack me, but non belief, well that does not offend me at all.

Yes, I have a dragon in my garage, you cannot see it, cannot physically prove it, but it is there nonetheless. You do not have to believe it, lets just agree together thateither you know something I don't, or I know something you don't, and leave it at that. I will leave you alone, and you can leave me alone. I won't attack you, you won't attack me...if only.

Some comments stick with us

I was recently on a canoe trip with several friends. It was one of those guy trips where people make fun of each other and make rude comments and help each other out where necessary, a sort of male bonding ritual. I may or may not have expressed before that I am quite sarcastic and I used it to great extent on this trip.

Now I think that for the most part everyone had fun, and lots of verbal "shots" were taken by everyone. One night around the campfire one of the men commented to his brother about me, "everything he says is mean, haven't you noticed?"

The comment wasn't meant as anything big, it was in a way a put down of the brother, but it really hit me hard. I don't want to be mean and I definitely don't want people to think I am mean. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I am kind of mean. I certainly am very good at it, if it is not a defining trait, it easily could be. Do I want it to be though? Is that how I want people to remember me?

Nope.

The challenge for me is that I don't know how to be a part of a group like that without being sarcastic and funny and well...mean. I need to learn though, I need to change this part of me. I really like those guys, a few of them are more important to me than I will ever be able to express. yet, I put them down, and perhaps, just perhaps, hurt someone when I meant to be funny.

I don't have a solution about how to change this part of me, and my relationships in these settings, but I do know that today is the only day I can begin to change, and so today I will begin. I will accept advice from anyone, because I am simply lost in this regard...suggestions anyone?


Dave

Emperor and the half wit

Today I read this quote...

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor. - Neil Gaiman

I strongly suspect that I am the half wit that spends all his time pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes on. Perhaps if I spent less time seeking other's faults and working on my own, I would be a better, happier person...or not.

Lawyer steals Hot dog!

Each week I receive a news compilation email called This is True. I enjoy the stories and get a kick out of Randy's comments. This week one of the stories got my goat...

PROSECUTOR, CHARGE THYSELF: A hot dog vendor in Athens, Ga., called police after someone ate a hot dog, then refused to pay for it. When officers caught up with the suspect, he denied knowing anything about it -- but officers noted he had mustard and ketchup on his shirt. The officer gave William Michael Olson another chance to pay for the dog or face arrest. "You are going to lock me up for a f---ing hot dog?!" Olson demanded. Sure enough, he refused to pay and was arrested for theft and public intoxication. After he was booked, Olson, 36, who admitted he had been drinking, resigned from his job: until then, he was an assistant district attorney. (Athens Banner-Herald) ...Red wine for meat, white wine for fish, rose for hot dogs.


Here is what got me riled up, this guy was a lawyer! How does a guy like that get through law school, and pass the bar. How is it that we have decided that the knowledge alone is enough to do a job like that. It makes me quite upset to think that this guy represents us in court. We need to stop just taking "good" students and start taking good "people" into these programs. We live in a litigious world, and one of the reasons is that we have stopped caring about right and wrong, and seem to only care about win or lose. In that same vein, as i was watching College Basketball this weekend I was struck when Missouri (who were up by two points with little time on the clock) were fouled, the player who was fouled is not good at shooting free throws, so all of a sudden, his "injury" was too bad for him to shoot his free throws, instead the coach got to substitute someone form the bench. They hit both free throws and won the game. The coach followed the rules, but really is that what was right in this situation? maybe this player was really hurt, but I doubt it, I am sure he could have shot, but win at all costs seems to be the motto, not win honorably or lose honorably, just win.

It is an unfortunate thing that we have fallen to this lowly and miserable state. I find it embarassing to me as a human, that we are settiling for this lowly state.

The Lost Generation

Most likely anyone who spends any significant (read: owns a computer) time on the Internet has already seen this. Even more likely is that you could apply this to any generation - although it is targeted to (and made by a person in) the Millennial, Gen Y, Net Gen, Echo Boomers, iGeneration, etc.

At the time I am posting this the cumulative views are 4,385,187. It was originally posted November 30, 2007. Yup, a viral hit. But a fun view. Dave has told me that there is a church/Christianity-based version and they are all based on a commercial from Europe. Dave - please post/link to those if you are still able to find them.

Lost Generation



Here is the original video...


Here is the Christian version

Dave

The begining of the end...of the newspaper?

I have subscribed to a print version of a newspaper for a total of 2 years over my entire life. I subscribed to the Calgary Sun during the 2002-2003 basketball season as I was coaching, and I subscribed to the National Post in 2006. Both times I recycled and as I took boxes of papers to the big green bins I reflected on how many issues I did not even crack open and how many others I only scanned a section or two. I just do not have the time to read the paper.

I currently have a digital subscription to the Calgary Herald (for the past three years) and I do not even open the emails anymore. I do not have the time.

I have recently started using Google Reader to scan the blogs I am interested in and I have added several news feeds. I use the "Mark as Read" feature too often. I just do not have the time to read them all.

I do scan the headlines (sometimes) and I listen to news radio on my way to work. The radio, the old technology, is my largest source of news. Newspapers are dying.

This video is a great (20 min.) look at the closure of a paper - a complete closure, no digital edition will remain. I learned about this from Mitch Joel over at Six Pixels of Separation. You can read his blog post here.


Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Why am I a sports fan?

Considering there are more than 330 teams participating in Div. 1 basketball in the NCAA, and using this sport as a limited example, only 1 team will be crowned the National Champion at the end of the season, that leaves many, many fans disappointed. Considering also that in the 25 years I have been a college hoops fan the team I have chosen to follow, the North Carolina Tar Heels has won the championship twice (1993 and 2005). (They had previous to my following them also won championships in 1957 and 1982.) Looking only at the end-of-season result, I have been "disappointed" 23 times - a staggering 92% of the time. This is not a high rate of success. In those 25 years there have been 19 different teams who won those 25 championships (Kentucky(2), UNC(2), Duke (3), Uconn(2), and Florida(2) all had multiple championships), leaving somewhere near (the total number of teams has changed over the years) 300 schools who have not won the championship once in the past 25 years. And yet, I, and so many others, have continued to be loyal to "our" team, and to be a fan. What are we thinking?

Why am I a sports fan?

I could not help thinking this over the past week as I watched the Colts lose to the Chargers in the wild-card game (NFL playoffs), I read about the upset Boston College staged over the Heels @UNC and then watched my CBS Live Scoreboard as the #3 Heels lost on the road to the (now) 13-0 #4 Wake Forest Demon Deacon's. I am not a huge NFL fan, and I was surprised how disappointed I was watching the game. I am a huge college hoops fan, and I was very disappointed and even hurt to read about and watch the UNC losses. I find myself being confused as to why it is that important to me. Nothing in my life, not my family, not my job, not my income (I do not bet on sports), nothing is different because a team I am cheering for won or lost. Nothing.

Sure, when the team I am cheering for wins I feel good about it. I will celebrate, and brag to my firends (especially if they cheer for another team), but the positive benefits are really quite small and they do not last very long. I am infused with a small amount of "fan happyness" for a short period, a couple of hours to a few days, but that is always the extent of it. In fact, after those few days I am already getting caught up in the "what about next year" chatter.

But when the team loses (and, as I have said, every team loses more than they win - at least as far as the championship goes) it seems to hurt a lot more. And that hurt is so much more painful than the "joy" of the victory when they do win. Logically I should stop being a fan, as avoidance of the hurt should outweight the potential joy which is really not that much of a high.

But I don't. I keep cheering. I keep following. I keep rationalizing to myself, 'this is the year', 'the next game will be better', or 'if "we" could only do more of x, y, and z.'. I cling to a thread that my support of the team is actually making an important difference in the team being successful. This group of people, none of whom I have ever met, are needing me to remain positive and keep my faith in them so they can be successful. The illogical arguments are unlimited. But I must continue, for I am a fan. And this is what fans do.

Interesting. It seems I can not even understand myself. No wonder most women are driven crazy by their "sports fan" husbands. I should spend more time thinking about this but I can't. I've got articles to read and besides, we've got Virgina on Thursday and then 2 days later Miami(FL) at home. Heck, the way I see it, by the time we play @Duke on Feb. 11 we can go from being 0-2 in the ACC to 7-2. And, those Dookies are in trouble...they have to play Wake twice this season.