I Could Be Wrong, I've Been Wrong Before

Family, Politics, Poker, Technology, Atheism, Ice Cream. What else could a man need. Except a place to make an ass of himself. Oh wait, I have that now too.

Name:
Location: Illinois, United States

So little to say, so much space to say it. Email: glintir-AT-mad.scientist.com

30 September 2005

Xtreme Hatred.

I hate extreme sports. I hate marketing that panders to extreme sports enthusiasts. I hate the use of the word extreme when the words "risky to the point of being stupid" are more appropriate. But until today, I never really knew why I hated the trend.

I don't hate the people who are involved. Most of the ones I've heard talk about the sports are really free spirits or daredevils. And, because they're successful, and kinda cool, young folks imitate them and break bones, and tear ligaments. Par for the course, I'd say. Kids harming themselves imitating their heroes doesn't make me hate it either. Hell, it's not even the marketing... "NEW EXXXTREME MARSHMALLOWS. OUR BLANDNESS IS OVER THE TOP!" Nope, just stupid and shallow and very normal. So, why do I hate it?

On the way to work this morning, (I do most of my thinking on my commute. I have a long commute.) I was thinking about skinny chicks. (Kate Moss, you know.) I really dislike skinny chicks. In fact, I dislike fat chicks, too. A little less than skinny chicks I think, because they're usually just a bit nicer. In my experience, extremely skinny women, and extremely fat women have issues. Mental issues. Big ones. I'm not saying this is always the case. I know in some cases the issues are medical. I'm talking about generalities. Generally, these women have very extreme views. Skinny women usually have extreme self image issues, or self esteem issues. Large women either have self esteem issues, or extreme problems with self indulgence, manifested in food.

So, then, I thought this... What is the correlation between extreme views of self, of world, of anything, and mental illness. I could make an argument for mental illness in extreme sports. I can clearly make arguments for mental illness in any fundamentalist religion. People who are welfare dependent by choice, not circumstance? Not right. People whose whole lives revolve around accumulating wealth? Just sick.

So I hate extremists. I'm an anti-extremist extremist, if you will. Now if you'll excluse me, I'm going to go wallow in self-loathing.

26 September 2005

Dead Silence

As I was driving to work this morning, listening to talk show hosts go on about open marraiges, I suddenly remembered a story about a Theist with whom I had dinner. This has nothing to do with open marriages, BTW, my mind works in mysterious ways.

I spend alot of time entertaining clients. I work in a technical field and regularly take groups of technicians, engineers, designers, and others out to dinner. Generally, since we're all technically minded people conversation covers one of 5 topics. Shop talk, General Science, Music and show production, Women, and Sports. Well, you know, the last two were a given. So, on the evening in question, I had brought up the topic of Mars and NASAs missions to Mars. We were poking fun at how NASA gets a robot up there and it immediately gets stuck on a rock. I mean c'mon, who knew there were rocks on Mars.. how to do you plan for THAT! And how meters and feet are quite different, which is why there's a rover sized crater on Mars, and so on. All in good fun. At this point, and young fellow brings up a story he heard about NASA and a mistake they made. I'll repeat the story here, and as you read it, know that it was told with great sincerity.

The young fellow says, that years ago, NASA's computers were chugging away on a problem of some sort. He didn't know the specifics, but did know that it involved "looking into the past" and calculating something or other regarding celestial mechanics. In any case, the computers came up with something odd. Based on their calculations a day was missing. (Actually, if you track down the story on the web it was 23 hours and 20 minutes, but he left that out.) The scientists looked high and low trying to find this missing day, before a christian pointed out that in the Bible the sun stood still for a full day for Joshua. So, he concluded, a christain and the bible cleared up NASAs mistake.


Dead Silence.











I'm fairly sure I was the next one to speak. I don't recall, but I think I said, "How about those Mets?"