God: Simple Prayer

Two weeks ago my church's teaching pastor did a sermon on keeping prayer simple and honest.

Amybear has come to a couple of bible studies with me. I usually lead at least one group prayer there, either to start or close the lesson. One of the things she said that really struck me was that I "sound different" when I pray. Maybe it is just that when I pray I use my public address voice not my normal one. You know, talking from the diaphram not the throat. But I had to wonder whether I was being honest or open in my prayer or whether I was putting on a show.

Last week my senior pastor gave a sermon on using liturgy and written prayers to improve your prayer life. He said that this was an unusual thing for a Baptist to talk about, but that he had found it helpful himself. He also had noticed that many people good Baptist pray the same prayers week after week. As if they had a liturgy all their own.

I don't really have any interest in written prayers. Maybe I can write my own down, but I don't generally get much out of reading or praying through someone else's. I get bored and drift off. I feel like I'm going through the motions or putting on an appearance before God. It just doesn't feel like me. On the other hand I do notice I have self-made liturgies. I am definite one of those people who prays similar prayers on a regular basis. I had to wonder whether I was getting myself into a prayer rut through my own poor prayer habits. As if I was robbing my prayers of genuineness through the other extreme.

I must say that my own prayer life is obviously pretty mixed. I think where I need to go next is to invest more time into prayer and also focus more on having a conversation with God. Talking with him instead of talking to him or at him. No formal language, just talking with God about my day in much the same way I talk with Amybear when I get home from work. Moreover I need to include important components like listening into my prayer times.

Wheels: Big Iron in My Old Home Town

Turns out Evolution Performance, creators of a 10-second Mustang GT500, are just down the street from my parents. I must drive past there at least once a week and yet I never noticed it.

Fun: Celebrity Duets

Physics Geek, Jesus Freak says the show is pretty ok. It probably won't make it onto my Tuesday lineup though. Amy and I have a workable tuesday TV schedule. We watch Dead Like Me and follow it up with Eureka. Both are on Sci-fi and are pretty good, although we may start looking for something at 8 since Dead Like Me only has about 30 episodes.

Wheels: Stupid Intersections

From Steve:

...why on earth are there intersections in Delaware where two lanes form, one which turns right and one for drivers turning left or going straight? That doesn't make any sense! If you are going to have two lanes, have one for people turning left and the other for people turning right or going straight. That way traffic doesn't get backed up for the person turning left and/or impatient people don't swerve into the lane for drivers turning right only and nearly cause an accident.

These sorts of things annoy the heck out of me too. Even more so because I realize that some engineer probably was paid good money (probably our money through taxes) to design that crappy intersection.

Sometimes I wonder who does the traffic designs in Delaware. I look at the awful traffic flow at Christiana Mall and the equally horrible design of Brandywine Town Center and I wonder if the same people are behind them. Maybe there is a big group of traffic contractors that win a lot of bids through low prices and poor work.

Of course the mall and the town center may have been designed with the buildings first and everything else afterwards. They did the traffic flow as best they could given where the building and parking lots had to be. People getting into and out of there to shop was an afterthought.

Politics: The Economy Stupid

Are you pessimistic about the state of the economy? A lot of people are. Back Talk wonders why. He backs up why not with a lot of graphics using economic trends from the past decade.

There are things to be concerned with though, like the current decline in the housing market. Historically the housing market is not a bubble that bursts. People don't go broke overnight as in the stock market. Real estate bubbles deflate over a long period of time, usually due to inflation and slowly declining housing prices. Since I don't own a home yet, it doesn't bother me as much and Amybear and I may be able to take some advantage of this when we purchase a home.

The weak dollar doesn't bother me much at all. In general in discourages outsourcing to stay in the US, encourages stateside production, and helps our imports. I am more worried about the national debt (which is a big reason for the weak dollar) than the weak dollar itself.

Politics: Duck Season! Wabbit Season!

Conservative season! Thanks Ryan, now I remember why I don't send UD very many alumni contributions. The university: where "free" speech costs ten thousand dollars per semester and prior approval from university authorities.

Review: McD's Sweet Tea

I'm a lover of sweet tea. I have been since Amy went south for grad school. But the only place to get Southern-style sweet tea in the Delaware/Maryland area is Chick-fil-a. Nestea's "sweetened" teas just don't cut it. Well now McDonalds is offering a big cup of sweet tea for only a buck. I stopped there this morning since I already had a hankerin' for a McGriddle. The tea was quite good seemed to be fresh brewed from some sort of stainless steel aparatus in the back instead of mixed from powder. If this keeps up the Sweet Tea event horizon separating the South from the Not South might have to go the way of the dodo.

Blogging: Green-Eyed Monster House

Anonymous Opinion is buying a house. I'm officially jealous. Amybear and I are hoping to be homeowners within a year. First we need the money and a home we want. Our ideal house sounds a lot like Anon's, three bedroom with two and half baths. We'd like a yard for a puppy to play in as well.

The good news is that gas prices are expected to keep dropping for the forseeable future. All the extra money I'm pumping into my commute gets to go into the housing fund. It also means that if prices stay low we can plan on staying in Delaware (which I would prefer) rather than moving to Maryland to reduce my commute.

Review: Home Cookin'

Amybear and I are in an experimental phase in the kitchen. We've cycled through our usual recipes a few too many times I guess. Amybear is heading up the experimentation because she does the shopping and the better part of the cooking. She has been looking through our old cookbooks for a few days now and compiling things to try.

Yesterday she came home with an excellent recipe for a balsamic tuna dish. She got it for free from a card at the supermarket. The dish was quite excellent and we will be making it again. We cut the recipe in half because it is just the two of us. Check the link for a nice picture.

Guns & Gear: New Toys

I went to the range on Friday morning and took my buckmark and my M1 carbine. My range trips have been too infrequent of late and it really showed in the results of my efforts, especially with the buckmark. Handgun skills are just perishable like that.

I shot with the 4x scope on my carbine for a while and then I took it off and switched to the irons. Irons on this carbine are just more fun. The gun balances better and is just more enjoyable in general. Unfortunately for me shooting with irons on even a 25 meter target meant that I couldn't really see where I was hitting. The bullet holes were just too small until I got some clustered together. That is a problem. It would be an even bigger problem with my AR-15 since its .223 caliber bullet would be even smaller (although a lot faster) than my carbine's .30 caliber round.

My only recourse was to spend money, much to Amybear's chagrin. I could have purchased a spotting scope, but frankly I wouldn't save any money and they are only useful for one job. I decided to pick up a pair of 7x35mm or 8x40mm binoculars instead because they're multitaskers. I chose this magnification and objective size is multipurpose. Not too little, not too much. They have big enough lenses to work in dim light or daylight. They aren't too heavy. The eyepieces can be adjusted for guys with thick glasses. I can use them for birdwatching or take them on vacation.

When I got to Dick's, I tried out several pairs of binoculars in turn. The Nikon Action EXs were obvious best performers. They're no Swarovskis or anything, but they're definite closer to the knee of the price curve. I could tell the different in the quality of the optics from the others. I used a coupon from a recent night at the Blue Rocks to cut a few bucks off the price.

I'll try them out on Saturday when I take Mabel (pictured badly on the left with my Mossberg 590) for her first range visit. Hopefully things will go smoothly, but there is always the potential for bad things to happen. Especially considering the idiot who built the lower receiver.

Oh, and as you can see from the picture, my answer to the big-and-slow or small-and-fast debate in firearms performance is "both." This is oddly similar to my answer to the Predestination vs. Free-will and Faith vs. Reason debates.

Politics: Amazing Discoveries!

Robert Park's article in the Chronicle of Higher Education gives judges and other officials tips on how to spot bad science. It seems that while these individuals are great at understanding arguments which involve some forms of latin, they can't decode similar arguments in all forms per se. According to Park:

I began this list of warning signs to help federal judges detect scientific nonsense. But as I finished the list, I realized that in our increasingly technological society, spotting voodoo science is a skill that every citizen should develop.

Park offers seven rules that are a tip off:

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

3,4,5, and 7 are especially strong tip offs. Three means that the proof is easily faked. Four and Five are entirely based on perception. Seven requires the inventor to actual violate peer reviewed results.

Someone can violate some or all of these and still be correct. The Atkins diet did it. Recent discoveries of saline treatment for cystic fibrosis did too. But these are good warning signs when you are watching infomercials during a bout of insomnia. Yes those people really are often full of crap.

Politics: Xtreme Illegality

A Mexican theme park in Hidalgo offers people, mostly affluent Mexicans, the opportunity to experience what it is like to sneak across the US border. Or a simulation of it.

Advertising for the mock journey ... tells the pretend immigrants to "Make fun of the Border Patrol!" and to "Cross the border as an extreme sport!"

Word of the tourist attraction has provoked much head-scratching among immigrant advocates in the United States and real-life immigrants who have made the trek across the border.

Yup, I'm scratching my head right now.

God: Charity Cases

LawDog's most recent file highlights why I rarely give money to charity cases. After seeing a man and his kids asking for food:

...I get three sub specials from the deli, and as I scoot under the overpass, I stop and hand the meals to the man and his kids.

I am an adult, so I don't expect thanks for this sort of thing, but I was in no way prepared for the man to look at me, draw himself up to his full height and icily exclaim, "What's this?"

I look significantly at his sign, look back at him and say, "It's food."

He glares at me and snaps, "We don't want food, we want money."

Yup. As you know Amybear and I were long distance for quite a while. For a good period of that time Amy didn't like to make the drive from the DC area to Delaware. If you've driven the DC Beltway for any length of time, you'll understand why. So she took the train up. It cost her more but aggravated her less. It was a fair trade.

This led to me spending time at the Wilmington train station on a semi-regular basis. I got to know the usual characters a bit. I was propositioned by a young man trying to buy a train ticket back to his family in Jersey somewhere. On three different occassions. In three different months. Sadly the first time I fell for it and gave him ten bucks. On that day Amy's train was running late which meant I had to wait. Story of Amtrak's life. By the time her train showed up I realized I had been taken. This guy was working the crowd in the station like a pro, which he probably was. I overheard him use several different stories to different people.

I still try to obey the command to give to the poor. But I also obey the command not to give pearls to swine. Which is why I give food or warm clothes or support facilities that do both, but I don't give money unless I know the person.

Wheels & Fun: Cannonball Run

Do you ever watch Cannonball Run as a kid? I did. Recently Car and Driver's 50 year retrospective has led them to reprint their original story about the second Cannonball Bake Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash. This article represents the 1970s, which I suppose it does.

Politics: Being More Like Europe

Tim Worstall's column America: More Like Sweden Than You Thought is excellent. Read it, especially were it dissects common memes like the disparity between America's rich and poor. Turns out America's poor aren't any poorer than most developing countries, but our rich are a whole lot richer.

I'm more than willing to admit that Europe does some things better than we do. It is a fair cop as the US does not have some sort of monopoly on goodness or intelligence. On the other hand, most of the people who advocate adopting European methodologies do it poorly.

Many of the advocated systems that don't actually work well. For example, if you're going to advocate socialized medicine, advocate the French system not the British system. The British system is badly underfunded. The French system works pretty well in comparison. Unless you include cost. If I recall correctly, the French system is about twice as expensive as the British system. Which means that the French system offers good health care at the cost of bankrupting the nation, especially as the nation ages.

Few of the advocated policies cross party lines. For instance you will never see a liberal advocate for a more European tax system. Our tax system is far more regressive than, say, Sweden's. In the US the businesses pay more to shield the citizens. In Europe the citizens pay more to shield the businesses. Which means that the Europeans can have a much higher tax rate without destroying their economy than the US. It is the Republicans who largely argue for a more European style tax system (although they don't use those terms) rather than the Democrats. The Democrats oppose such measures with the standard class warfare rhetoric.

Which is really the point. The "lets be like Europe" isn't really an argument at all. It's an appeal to authority. It's like political peer pressure. I mean if Germany jumped off a bridge would you follow him? Granted there are things we can learn, but why model ourselves after Europe just to model ourselves after Europe?

Whatever: More on Pluto

Physics Geek, Jesus Freak covers the recent Pluto and Kuiper Belt decision in more depth. I like his TKO nomenclature and I can add a bit to the discussion (in a non-substantive area):

Pluto does not account for the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, which is interesting because I think I was told in grade school that Pluto was found after a prediction was made that something should be out there. However, they neglected to tell me that Pluto wasn't it after all.

Neptune was discovered by looking at perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. (I'm sure there is a dirty joke in there somewhere.) People originally started looking for Pluto because of small perturbations in Neptune's orbit. Percival Lowell hypothesized that Neptune's orbit was being perturbed by an as-yet-undiscovered ninth planet which he referred to as Planet X. Lowell's second predicted location of Planet X resulted in the discovery of Pluto. Percival Lowell is why Pluto begins with P-L.

The funny thing about this is that Lowells was wrong. Pluto's orbit does not effect the orbit of Neptune. The unexplained perturbations in Neptune's orbit are because the initial estimates for Neptune's mass were incorrect. Finding Pluto was actually just dumb luck.

You have wikipedia and my boredom to thank for this little bit of storytime. Unless all of this was made up by some bored teenager in Kansas or something.

Fun: Hugh Laurie

Amy is a huge House fan. I like it too, although the episodes can be pretty formulaic. It did take me a while to wrap my mind around Hugh Laurie as House. I'd seen Laurie on TV before, but it was always in British comedies. John the Methodist's recent YouTube clip illustrates the roles he played regularly across the pond. Laurie played a farcical british fop as the Prince of Wales in Black Adder III. Ditto when he was Bertie Wooster in Jeeves and Wooster. Seeing him playing a satirical American jerk in a drama was just weird.

Amybear has the opposite experience of course. She's never seen any of his British work. When we caught a piece of his Inside the Actor's Studio appearance, she though it was odd for him to be funny and British. Go figure.

Fun: When Broad Flat Surfaces Attack

I did this once:

Played ultimate frisbee tonight for 2+ hours. I sprained my ankle after about 20 minutes, but played for at least another 1 3/4 hours on it. Now it hurts really bad.

Ok I didn't play for 1 3/4 hours on it. It was more like half an hour. But trust me it was enough to really screw up my ankle. It also convinced me and Amy, that I should take it easy until after the wedding.

Last year I managed to sprain both my ankles in one game of Ultimate. I left the game early. It took me a long time to recover. You don't realize how helpful limping is until you've hurt both legs and can't do it.

Blogging: Amybear Speaks! Er... Writes!

Amybear is blogging on blogspot a bit more frequently these days. Along with another new template, she's been discussing getting her life (and by extension our) life in order. The wedding thank you letters are finally done and she's found some websites to foster good cleaning habits.

Politics: Back to 8

When I woke up this morning there were 9 planets. Now for the first time since 1930, we're back to 8. Pluto is officially a "pluton" or a "dwarf planet" and will form the basis for a classification of Trans Neptunian Objects.

UPDATE: Yup, we lost a planet. Obviously all Bush's fault. I suppose I should add a science category or something one of these days. But I'm sure the decision was at least partly political (in the same way business decisions can be) so this category will do for now.