A Random Pattern

No, no storms’ brewing, but there is a baby coming.

Unlike most blogs, this probably means my lucky readers will get more updates.  I’ve got lots of topics and posts lined up, so check back soon - that is, after we recover from the delivery.

Oh, and if you’re desparate to know the name - it’ll be posted up here tomorrow, presuming the little miss arrives by then.  We sure hope it doesn’t take longer than that!

live-blogging from the hospital.  How far this world has come….how far it still has to go. 

This morning, the following exchange between my wife and 2 1/2 year-old, while one fills out paperwork and the other eats cereal…

Selah: What you doing, mommy?

Mom: I’m doing paperwork.

Selah: I’m doing cerealwork!

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

We just celebrated Tessa’s 5th birthday.  During the celebrations, she informed us:

“I’m five today.  I’m a grown-up.  I can do lots of tings now![sic]”

“Oh?  What can you do?”, mom asks.

“I can drive!” she exclaims.  Uh, hate to break it to you kid… (especially after seeing her drive a race-car at Chuck-E-Cheese - it’s been a while since I’ve been lapped BY ALL 39 other cars before even finishing one lap. )

As I walk into the playroom, I hear this exchange:

Tessa: Chicken Ice Cream.

Selah: hehehehehe, chicken ice cream

Tessa: You like Chicken Ice Cream?

This from the girl who won’t eat anything except chicken nuggets, french fries, peanut butter, or ice cream.  Not sure why Selah was laughing either, but it cracked me up.

I guess you had to be there…

Apple should hire these guys - this video is more beautiful than the iPod ads.   Check it out here:

http://www.iphonenewyorkcity.com/

I have never been too interested in “The Big Apple”.  I don’t like cities, but I do like people.  This unofficial ad for the iPhone made me, for the first time, really see the appeal in New York, New York.  It is truly an inspired work of art.

It helps that I want an iPhone also.

Only 18 weeks and she’s already sucking her thumb. Amazing, in’it?

Family and friends, there are more pictures online of the girls and our recent vacation. Contact me if you want to see them.

You can intelligently disagree with the points made in the following YouTube video (or even intelligently agree). If so, we can have a great discussion. But if you don’t understand the arguments tendered, or aren’t familiar with the quoted sources, then you have no room to snub “christians” as ignorant.

Which point do you disagree with most, or find the least compelling? Why?

A friend and I were standing around the grill, watching the burgers cook. You know, if you don’t watch them they don’t get done.

Another friend walks up and comes up with this immensely clever line:

“How many programmers does it take to grill hamburgers?”. (I should mention said friend is a salesman. )

My first reaction is to offer a mocking half-laugh at this ‘joke’ (though admittedly, most of my jokes are worse). However, the programmer in me can’t resist the challenge of providing a technically correct answer.

“1″… Even though there are clearly two of us standing there.

From the salesman I receive a confused look and a “Huh?”. Moments later, my programmer friend starts laughing.

The salesman asks “What, is that some inside joke or something?”

The griller explains. “Let’s say you have an array of 10 numbers. You would expect them to be numbered 1 through 10. But the computer will number them 0 through 9 instead.”

I’m not sure if the next look from my salesman friend was more confusion, disgust, or some potent mixture of both.

Tessa woke us up this morning.  As she was talking with us, trying to get us to wake up and get moving, she noticed something on the covers.

“White shadows” she said excitedly!  (Never mind that she says everything excitedly.)
She was pointing at the bright spots of light where the sun was making its way through and around the shades.  My still sleep-numbed brain tossed about for another word or phrase to describe the sun-dappled scene that had entranced our daughter.  No, it seemed to me that “white shadows” was quite good enough, and a remarkably adroit phrase for a 4 year old.

footnote:  It says something about the world that our children learn first about the dark, scary shadows at night in their rooms, before ever being given a word for the kisses of sunlight in the morning.  Perhaps the latter is so much bigger, so much better, that it is hard to wrap up in a simple word.

This online game is quite fun, though not long term addictive (I don’t think … yet … ).  I’ve gotten a -8, though my first effort yielded a startling +108!   Not so good…

So how do you play?  Use your mouse, click and hold on the cat (heh, no pun intended), then move your mouse away to “draw” the cat’s bow.  He’ll automatically restock with an arrow whenever you click on him.  The further you pull back, the more power he’ll shoot with.  He’ll then follow along on a rubbery “string” behind his arrow.

Your goal?  Hit the target.  Doesn’t matter where, just get your arrow somewhere on it, preferably under par.  Good luck.

Oh, want an additional tip?  Go play first, then come back.

Back already?  Tip: You can reshoot arrows while still in the air.  You can also prepare to shoot while in air, which will release the cat from following his previous shot.  Happy hunting!  And post your best (lowest) scores below.

Do you question authority at every turn? On what authority?

From an (old) article on conspiracy theorists, I found this gem:

At some level, everyone knows this, even if some people pretend to think otherwise. The secularist who chides religious believers for having faith in what the Church teaches will also tell them, in the very next breath and with no sense of irony, to shut up and trust the experts where scientific matters are concerned. That there are philosophers and theologians who can present powerful and sophisticated justifications of religious belief is taken to be no defense of the average believer - he ought to “think for himself,” says the secularist. And yet while the average secularist couldn’t give you an interesting explanation or defense of quantum mechanics, relativity theory, or evolution if his life depended on it, the fact that there are experts who can do so is taken by him to justify his own faith in their findings. As the philosopher Christopher Martin has noted, the real difference between medieval and modern people is not that the former believe in the need for authority and the latter don’t - in fact both medievals and moderns believe in it and act accordingly - but rather that the former admitted that they believed in it, while the latter pretend they don’t.

Those of you, gentle readers, who are quite anti-religious, may not be able to read much of that article without your eyeballs going up in smoke. I encourage you to attempt to understand the writer’s point of view, and find that which you can agree with instead of being distracted by a few comments that raise your blood pressure (and are hardly critical to the core premise).