I have a strong sense of smell. When I was a kid, my mom couldn’t sneak candy in the car without me sniffing it out (and then asking for some). It’s a blessing and a curse.

When I walked into the theater last Friday at 11:30am to see “New Moon,” I noticed that someone sitting behind us had been drinking. I was initially surprised by the smell as it was still early in the day, but considering he and I were both likely being forced to watch the movie by our significant others, I couldn’t judge him.

About 20 minutes into the movie, I was *this* close to turning around and asking him for some of whatever he had. Yes, the movie was bad. The dialogue was tepid at best, the cinematography was mediocre, and the movie itself reeked of melodrama – worse than my friend behind me and whatever cheap bourbon he had been sucking down.

But that really didn’t bother me that much. I’ve seen bad movies before, and I have an active enough imagination to be entertained while watching even the worst fermented garbage that Hollywood throws at us. Like “Mom and Dad Save the World” with John Lovitz. That movie is terrible. Terribly awesome, but still terrible.

I found myself becoming more and more uncomfortable the longer I watched the movie. No, it wasn’t the gratuitous scenes of sculpted boys and men taking their shirts off, though there was plenty of that. It was with the movie’s heroine, Bella. Listening to her talk and watching her react to life’s twists and turns (I won’t spoil anything for you in case you particularly hate yourself and are going to see it) became harder and harder to bear.

The reason is due to her complete and utter dependence on Edward (and a little on Jacob, too). We all depend on people to some extent. I think it was Thomas Merton John Donne that said “No man is an island.” But Bella is so dependent that she spends months sitting in her room being depressed because Eddy isn’t around anymore. Like I said, melodrama. However, I am incredibly unnerved by how much her character needs Ed around to feel happy.

That whole “You complete me” nonsense in a relationship is literal poison.

If someone bases their sense of self and well-being on another person with whom they are involved, they are setting themselves up either for a quick and meaningless  or a volatile (and possibly violent) relationship. It’s dangerous, psychologically and emotionally.

And yet, this is exactly how Bella approaches her life. Her entire sense of self revolves around Ed-the-love-machine. In anything other than a movie (and book), this would be a recipe for an incredibly unhealthy relationship. But no, it’s a movie, so everything works out in the end. She gets the Ed she needs in order to survive, and everything works out.

My fear is this: Do we really want to act like being co-dependent is a good thing? That sounds like a horrible idea.

Ok, the title isn’t not as epic as it sounds. I haven’t posted in forever, and at the end of each week, I kick myself for it. Why? Writing takes up a large portion of what I do for a living, and yet I can’t ever get myself to put together something as small as a blog post every other day. Absurd.

Maybe it’s like exercising. I used to hate working out, and now I do all the time. The trick was that I had to stop thinking about it as working out and actually develop a goal. So I chose triathlons, because why not? Swimming, biking, and running – not enough monotony to drive me nuts.

We’ll see if blogging is more like that. Of course, I need a goal, but we’ll see…

For OS X: This will allow you to add events by typing a few words and hitting enter. Then you get to watch as the new event(s) are magically synced to iCal.

What you need:

• gcalcli (and prereqs) -  http://code.google.com/p/gcalcli/ (don’t worry. installing these aren’t as difficult as it seems)
• gmail/gcal account
• ical
• Script Editor (comes with your Mac)
• Calaboration – http://code.google.com/p/calaboration/

Install gcalcli using the instructions on the site – when you get it working, make sure you remember where you put the actual file “gcalcli.”

Now you need to get your google calendar and iCal synced up. Install Calaboration and run it after you have a good calendar set up. This will then configure iCal to work and sync with gCal. It should go fairly easily.

Here’s the juicy part. Google Calendar has a slick “quick add” feature that will parse through and interpret text that you enter. For example, if I type “meeting with boss on tues at 8am” it will set up an event called “meeting with boss” to occur at 8am the following Tues. In this case, it would be the 20th of January. You can also add things like “from 8am to 2pm,” and when you use the word “at,” it will even set up the location. Very cool stuff.

So we are going to create a very small Applescript to send such a bit of text to gcal with ease. Here’s the code:


on run

   repeat

      display dialog "Enter event information:" default answer ""

      set eventInfo to text returned of result

      do shell script "/usr/bin/gcalcli --user YOURUSERNAME --pw YOURPASSWORD quick \"" eventInfo & "\""

   end repeat

 

end run

You can test the script by hitting the “run” button and checking your google calendar.

The only important part here is that the stuff after “do shell script” has to be one line, though it is OK if it wraps. the /usr/bin part before “gcalcli” might change depending on where you installed it, and you will need to enter your username and password (no quotes). Fire up GCal when you test the script, and you should know if it is working. Then open iCal, and voila! It is stored locally too!

Once the script is working correctly, you can save it as an application in the “Save” dialog, and then launch it like any other application. I like to use spotlight to launch it, for quicker access.

If you have a bunch of events to add with chunks of the same text (like an event title that is the same but with changing dates), you should be able to just paste it into the script without a problem. Enjoy!

I mean, I guess that’s almost a buck off……

I remember in high school youth group we had to respond to this particular situation: What two things would you take with you if you woke up with your room was on fire?

It was hilarious, in retrospect, because we all had to be very pious. This meant that our first item was our Bibles, followed by the one item that we really wanted to keep from getting torched. Give me a break. Our Bibles? Unless this is a 200 year old Bible that has been in a family for that long, I somehow doubt that any one of us would have cared at all about the ten-dollar Bible sitting under a pile of dirty laundry.

Of course, by answering such, we all appeared very well behaved and spiritual in front of everyone else. And we perpetuated the stigma that one can only be a part of the group if you were very pious, or at the very least, can fake it really well. We tended toward the latter.

It wasn’t until college that I heard the first accurate response to that question. My friend, Stephen, answered with, “My pants.” After all, we tend to sleep without pants, and if we have to watch the firemen try to save what’s left of our house or protect the houses around us, then it’s probably best to do so with our pants on.

I was traveling around Lake Tahoe and taking pictures, but I kept getting distracted and would occasionally forget to adjust my circular polarizer (lens filter). I’m glad I did, because it gave me a chance to see the difference between using it correctly and forgetting to rotate it. Check this out:

(Top – Without rotating) (Bottom – With Rotating)

I think the difference speaks for itself.

I heard about it from http://britannicanet.com/

So I figured I’d give it a shot, and lo and behold. I guess Tentatio meets their standards. Aside from decent sources when I run my mouth, this means I can do fun things like this:

This is a reaction to Bad-Astronomers’ post on faith and science.

I do not intend to prove you wrong. But there are other points of view – not particularly antagonistic to science – that are rarely heard.

I don’t think we have to split faith and science dualistically. When splitting like this takes place, the result is immediate polarization, and any attempt at communication breaks down into shaking fingers furiously at one another. Then, all anyone can do is shake harder…or make a fist and shake it, because that’ll show ‘em.

[Science is] a method, a way of finding this knowledge. Observe, hypothesize, predict, observe, revise. (emphasis mine)

Defining science as a method is well put. It amazes me how rarely people understand that concept, and in an ideal situation, anyone trumpeting under the banner of science would first have to submit to this method. Granted, I do not like talking about science totally in this way, merely because “submitting to the method” reminds me of some freaky cult – which isn’t science. Engineering, maybe, but not science.

Baseless insults to engineers aside, there stand at least two huge barriers in the way of finally putting an issue like this to rest. From the way I see things, the first problem is in the fact that both sides’ uppity-ness has little to do with the conclusions made and more so in the assumptions about the other party’s assumptions. (what an obnoxious sentence)

If a person has grown up in a spiritual culture that makes a big deal about the Earth being flat, and then a scientist comes along and points out that it is, indeed, round, that person’s entire life becomes shattered. So when Chuck Darwin started spending too much time looking at finches and comes to some astonishing ideas that result in even more astonishing conclusions, does that force any implications on others in a non-scientific realm?

Maybe – or maybe not – but the immediate knee-jerk by everyone opposing C-Dawg might indicate that they merely assumed an imposed-conclusion about their spirituality. Plus, if those who aren’t scientists feel threatened and want to respond to science-based claims with their own science, do they violate their existential integrity in doing so? I say yes. Scientists can say that humanity descended from purple boogers shot from the nose of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but to what degree would that effect the notions of spiritual revelation? And if I decide that it does effect my religion, am I still religious by attacking back with more science?

There’s the rub.

The second of the huge barriers I mentioned is the strange polarization that has come to plague our intellectual realm. The one point on which scientists and creationists seem to agree is that we must choose one or the other.

Why?

Why not both/and?

Scientists might say that using both/and violates the methods on which their work rests. Theologians (conservative Christian, typically) often say that without a literal 6-day creation, then systematic theology states that “faith in Jesus” suddenly reduces to vanity.

I think the problem is that I can at least understand what both sides are saying. Spiritually, I have gained more out of life than I would have thought possible (though that is not necessarily the goal), and yet my fingers tap-tap-tap on the keyboard of my MacBook Pro – a pinnacle of science (fan-boyism aside).

Westerners love the comfort of either/or.

Tension that comes from both/and can be unsettling.

But somehow I think that the both/and tension might be the best way to go…

After a few published articles in a small (but national) magazine, www.wittenburgdoor.com – the only religious satire magazine that I know of, I have tried to tackle the organization of Scientology multiple times. But whenever my fingers start tapping on my old PowerBook with a missing shift key, I blank out. I cannot seem to satirize them for the same reason that I struggle to make fun of people like Pat Robertson: Where do you start? He makes himself look more ridiculous than even the best humorists.

I could link to xenutv.com and then laugh heartily at goofy scientologists trying to intimidate people. Documentaries accessible through video.google.com expose shady dealings and illegal financial gymnastics. But that’s not satire.

Perhaps most importantly, I could point out that if you go to scientology.org you will see just how ugly L. Ron Hubbard was. I mean, wow. It looks like Michael Jackson vomited up a pair of rabid hyenas, who then produced offspring that mutated into a man.

But that isn’t satire. It takes no work or creativity, because they essentially make fun of themselves. Since that is the situation, I will let them shoot their own selves in the foot. Note that from here on out my words are in bold. Starting……NOW!

From Scientology.org:

[On the name, Scientology] It comes from the Latin word “scio” meaning “knowing
in the fullest sense of the word” and the Greek word
“logos” meaning “study of.”

Not quite. I don’t know Latin, but I do know Attic and Koine Greek. Logos means “word” in it’s most basic usage. At best, it means “knowledge” in an idiomatic sense. Am I being overly picky? Yes. Am I being an ass? Yes. Why? to make you laugh. And then cry because an organization like this exists.

Fun fact: I once had this brilliant idea to fact check the various citations made by Scientology or its representative groups but ended up being so frustrated I had to stop. High Blood pressure runs in my family, after all. The reason I stopped: I couldn’t find a single fact that actually checked out.
    It leads me to believe that Scientology is actually Latin-Greek-made-up-hybrid-language for “make random facts up.” This would be even more ridiculous, because, as you can see, that sentence ends with a preposition. Shameful.

Another Fun Fact: Their precious e-meter is really a device similar to a galvanometer.
    This means it is very easy to beat their stress tests. Try it some time by either squeezing the handles a little bit when they  calibrate it, or concentrate on not moving your hands.
    When I beat the stress test, I had recently begun fighting Leukemia. Was I stressed? More than ever before. I guess Hubbard’s meter can only detect fake stress.

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