Taking the opening of the Book of Genesis as a literal account of history, we face a contradiction very quickly: Genesis 1 asserts an order of creation that is plainly contradicted by the order of creation asserted in Genesis 2. That alone should be enough to give us pause, and I submit that it should further be taken as an indication that the strictly literal interpretation is not the one we are meant to follow.

Some time ago, I wrote a sentence on this very blog. The specific sentence, just for the record, actually read: “Things like geological evidence for the flood, and people like Adam and Eve, simply do not (and did not) exist, and the world is far older than the sum of the durations of the genealogies listed in Scripture.”

This is the position I maintain. A question, then, can be posed: is this position compatible with Catholic teaching (especially since I am, myself, a Catholic)?

On the one hand, the sudden uptick in the number of food stores and restaurants that are broadcasting their adherence to (or, at least, compliance with) Islamic dietary law shouldn’t be all that striking. Kosher foods are ludicrously common these days; one can find a kosher symbol on almost anything, especially on goods that come in jars or cans. So in a sense, the fact that we are seeing yet more religious certifications attached to foodstuffs is not particularly surprising.

And yet, it is. Partly, I think it is surprising because it is so brazen; whereas kosher is very subtly denoted on foods, “halal” is a term that gets shoved in one’s face, broadcast with big lettering and different-coloured wrapping. Kosher blends in, in other words; halal stands out, and in fact deliberately sets itself apart.

Then there’s the suddenness factor.

I used to work at a camera store near downtown Edmonton, and would occasionally take lunch at a donair and pizza joint a few blocks away. It was decent food (Lebanese do make good pizza)…but about three years ago, they suddenly slapped a big “halal” sign in the window. I stopped going shortly thereafter, though that was, admittedly, due to the fact that I got a job in a different part of town.

Near where I work now, another restaurant recently opened, which dealt in Arabic food; six months after opening, they too declared for halal. I can think of two explicitly halal food stores that I have seen appear in the last eighteen months; Superstore has only been carrying those halal chickens for a short while.

Contrast this with kosher, which seems as though it’s been an element or consideration in our groceries for…forever, really.

So we have brazenness, and we have suddenness. This is still just food we’re talking about, yes, but the food is a symptom — a sign — of something more, and more troubling. For what two words better describe Islam, as expressed by immigrants to Canada who hold that faith, than “sudden” (in the sense of being a recent thing) and “brazen” (or, perhaps, belligerent)? Unlike Jews, who have been a part of our Western culture rather than something set apart from it, Muslims seem bent on being just that: set apart. And they want everyone to know it, as well.

It’s troubling, moreso because it is also the foreseeable future of Canada. There’s the risk of a change in national character that I don’t think we are fully prepared for.

Yes, photons. I took a course in optical physics. It was fun and I got a pretty decent mark therein. Shut up.

The format for the site is going to change, and then heavily. I’m going to try and maintain a strict fast on repeating the content of others; what will be posted here will either be my own thoughts and comments on things, or else links to (and maybe excerpts from) my articles at Examiner.com. And the number of posts will also diminish; the site only shows one recent post, as a matter of course. So don’t expect more than one post a day. Except maybe today…I haven’t decided yet.

For the moment, that’s all there is to say; more later, if the mood strikes me. I’m also in the process of updating my Flickr archives, so that I can (just in general) streamline my photo-editing process, and in particular reduce the number of steps between Lightroom and Flickr/Pixelpipe.

But before I get to that point, I want to get all my extant photo archives dealt with.

The impetus for the Copenhagen conference was that the science makes it imperative for us to act. But even if that were true – and even if we knew what to do –- a global deal was never in the cards. As [Walter Russell Mead] writes, “The global warming movement proposed a complex set of international agreements involving vast transfers of funds, intrusive regulations in national economies, and substantial changes to the domestic political economies of most countries on the planet.” Copenhagen was never going to produce a breakthrough. It was a dead end.

And now, the science scandals just keep on coming. First there was the vast cache of e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia, home of a crucial research unit responsible for collecting temperature data. Although not fatal to the science, they revealed a snakepit of scheming to keep contradictory research from being published, make imperfect data look better, and withhold information from unfriendly third parties. If science is supposed to be open and transparent, these guys acted as if they had a lot to hide.

Despite widespread efforts to play down the Climategate e-mails, they were very damaging. An investigation by the British newspaper the Guardian — among the most aggressive advocates for action on climate change – has found that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed, and that documents relating to them could not be produced.

Meantime, the IPCC — the body widely regarded, until now, as the ultimate authority on climate science — is looking worse and worse. After it was forced to retract its claim about melting glaciers, [Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC] dismissed the error as a one-off. But other IPCC claims have turned out to be just as groundless.

Do read the whole thing, good reader.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, as they say.

That said, there are two points I think are worth preserving from the article which I’d like to restate and/or clarify slightly.

The first is the statement from Vox that began the article:

I have to admit, I’ve never understood how women, who apparently spend considerably more time in front of the television on average than men, can possibly complain about the male preference for electronic games. Let’s face it, you had better be one scintillating conversationalist and/or contortionist if you seriously expect to compete with CoD [or Mass Effect - ed.]. Now, I do occasionally fear for the fate of the human race when talking to younger gamers who genuinely don’t seem to understand that real flesh-and-blood women could at least occasionally be preferable to porn and PS/3; at least back in the Golden Age, game geeks realized that they were compensating for missing out on something.

The key point here is interestingness, and in particular the relative interestingness of different activities, as seen from the male perspective. And note the categories of activity Vox selects: conversation (which many men apparently don’t particularly care for), and sex (which men are apparently obsessed with). In other words, Vox’s basic point is that for most guys, unless they are complete non-gamers, a good round of Call of Duty (or Mass Effect, as the case may be) is almost infinitely more enjoyable than a conversation, and also often substantially more enjoyable than Sex, especially fairly vanilla, single-position sex.

And yes, we can insert the usual “not all cases” qualifiers here, but in general the point stands. Is there a problem with the situation thus far described? Yeah, there is…there are at least two, in fact. One with the man, one with the woman, assuming the paradigm outlined in Item 1.

The problem with the man in that scenario is that the woman, his spouse, does have a reasonable expectation of getting to spend some time with her spouse, though it is probably good, at this point, to note the distinction between a reasonable expectation and an outright entitlement (and also the difference between attempting to have that expectation fulfilled and acting entitled.)

The problem with the woman in the scenario is her relative interestingness; the game is more interesting, more engaging, more thought-provoking, and perhaps more interactive and/or rewarding to interact with than she is. And here’s the kicker: that is not the game’s fault, nor is it the man’s fault.

Here’s a really-not-so-secret secret: guys do actually like conversation, as long as it’s spontaneous and engaging. The problem many guys encounter is that the conversations they have with their spouses that are spontaneous are not engaging, nor are the conversations which are about engaging topics particularly spontaneous. Funnily, the same basic considerations and concerns apply to sex; the spontaneous stuff isn’t typically that steamy (shall we say), and the steamy stuff isn’t typically all that spontaneous. Guys, not surprisingly, like sex when it is both spontaneous and steamy.

(And yes, the reciprocal situation — female gamer, male non-gamer — can probably safely be assumed to conform to this general paradigm as well. I will state that for the benefit of certain people I am fairly sure are going to be reading this, though I shouldn’t have to, because it really is a fairly obvious concept.)

The point, then, is: be more interesting than the game. Whether on the couch, around the dinner table, or in bed, be the more engaging and enjoyable activity. Otherwise, don’t be surprised if the game is the preferred passtime; it has more to offer.

The second thing I want to draw out of the original article is the note to any family or friends which ended said article: I won’t say what I really desperately want to say to some of you, because the rest of you — who don’t do what I’m about to go off about — don’t deserve to hear the invective that I want to pour out on the others.

So let me just say: if you’re reading this article, and if you have a Concern^TM that you just absolutely feel the need to call someone close to me about, please resist the temptation to pick up the damn phone. Man up (or woman up) and leave your Concern^TM in a damn comment, or else keep your Concern^TM to yourself. If you can’t say what you want to say about me in a public forum, such as this, then don’t bloody-well say it; it’s just not that damn important.

And be thou advised: if it is at all brought to my attention that you didn’t leave your Concern^TM in a comment, and that you did instead phone your Concern^TM in, guess what? That’s bloggable. Yes, I will respect your anonymity, but the subject matter discussed will itself be bloggable. Nobody else will know who you are when they read the article…but you will know.

There are apparently a damn lot of you, so have some balls/ovaries and speak the hell up already. If leaving a comment isn’t your thing, send me a damn email; my iPhone is always on, and always on me. If you don’t want what you send me via email to appear on the blog, tell me as much in the subject line or message body, and that’s that.

Hell, you can even call me, on my iPhone, which is (again) always on and always on me, and which is, in fact, a phone. +1 (780)238-3993…same as it’s been for six years now.

In short: there’s any number of ways you can articulate your Concern^TM about me to me, rather than to third parties. Do this…or just shut up about it already. Because whatever you think you’re accomplishing by calling someone else about it…you aren’t actually accomplishing at all.

That’s right, a two-fer. Firing with both barrels, as it were. Full broadside.

The Currie must be stopped!

(via)

I do a lot of my blogging on my commute(s)…and since I took this week off of work, I haven’t had many of those.

Things will be back to normal on Monday.

Now with a picture!

(It’s left up to the reader to figure out which item below this image pertains to.)

Item 1: Given how pervasive things like portable DVD players, portable media players, and even netbooks or small notebooks with sufficient battery life and graphics capabilities to play back high-quality video have become these days, it’s no surprise that drivers have found new ways to utilize these technologies to grow their idiocy by leaps and bounds.

It’s bad enough when that idiocy results in crashes.

It’s worse still when those crashes result in bodily harm or death.

It’s even worse when the video distraction that precipitated a deadly crash was porn.

It’s no secret how dangerous it is for truck drivers to use in-cab computers and navigation systems while driving. Yesterday, the federal Department of Transportation (DOT) prohibited truckers from texting on the road, but, unfortunately, there’s no such ban on other devices.

Now, we’re seeing the heartbreaking results of this lack of action. According to an Associated Press report, a truck driver who was watching porn on his in-cab laptop struck a car near Buffalo, New York this past December, killing the woman inside. Thomas Wallace, a 45-year-old trucker from Ohio, was arrested Tuesday and charged with second-degree manslaughter in the death of Julie Stratton, a 33-year-old mother. Police say Wallace also broke federal trucking laws by sleeping less than four hours in the 27-hour period preceding the wreck. Stratton was inside the car, which was broken down on the side of a New York State Thruway after she’d hit a deer, when Wallace’s truck swerved and crashed into her vehicle.

While this is a horrible event, it often takes a tragedy to spur positive action. It’s a shame that a woman had to die, but let’s hope Stratton’s death will encourage legislators to clamp down on the truckers who use personal computers while piloting those massive rigs through our highways and byways.

There are times I lament the fact that the law does not have sufficient categories to suitably punish all offenders. Were justice truly served, Wallace would lose his license forever, and serve no small quantity of years behind bars. He will likely endure neither fate, however.

Item 2: Ah, Japan. If you’re a woman, good reader, and you are yearning — just yearning — to visit a society which treats women poorly, but which is not also some fetid Islamic backwater, Japan’s the place for you.

Seriously…the stuff that women have to put up with there is almost beyond comprehension at times. Case in point:

The latest product to come out of the perpetually fascinating land of Japan might just be the most simplistic, yet most disturbing we’ve yet to see. And that’s saying a lot.

A new DVD called ‘Miterudake for Lady‘ is designed to help Japanese women deal with men staring at them…by showing them images of men, well, staring at them. According to the manufacturer Avex, Miterudake (“only seeing” in Japanese) is targeted at the jaded woman whose “heart was almost broken at love and interpersonal relationships.” According to InventorSpot, after a minute of staring into the camera, one of the 51 Japanese men on the DVD will give a reassuring laugh, and offer some words of encouragement.

The Miterudake isn’t only for women who need extra help getting over the “Male Gaze,” though; there’s a version for men, too, and it’s even creepier. The guy version features more of a variety in demographic when it comes to staring subjects, including female twins and octogenarians, among others. And judging from one of the sample clips after the jump, Japanese men apparently get anxious even when school age girls stare at them, for reasons we obviously don’t even want to think about.

Yeesh.

Item 3: Ah, the French. Really the best people to look to if you need to find examples of useless gestures and entirely ineffectual means of fighting battles.

Even when the battle in question is the battle against AIDS:

A replica of a condom-shaped balloon, the “Condomfiere,” is set up at the Palais de la Decouverte on Jan. 26, 2010, in Paris as part of a campaign created by the French association CondomFly. The 40-meter-high Condomfiere will fly on every continent starting next Dec. 1, the World Day against AIDS, to promote condom use and prevention against sexually transmitted diseases.

You know what would be a better shape for that balloon, good reader? A zipper. Regular use thereof will do far more to stop the spread of STDs than a quantity of condoms sufficient to cover the entirety of France ever will.

Item 4: After Avatar, I suppose this was inevitable:

When does 3-D technology transform from a gimmick into a full-blown trend? No, not when live sporting events are broadcast in 3-D, and not even when ‘Avatar’ racks-up enough money to make Bill Gates jealous. No, the technology has finally arrived in its full-frontal glory when the porn industry embraces it, and now, that day has come.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Italian director Tinto Brass said Thursday that he’s ready to create the world’s first 3-D porno flick. You might remember Brass from his infamous 1979 film ‘Caligula,’ which was set in ancient Rome and featured graphic Sex scenes (incest, cheating, and a giant killing machine) that ruffled many feathers. So what’s the premise behind this 3-D porn? Brass says it’ll “revisit an abandoned project about a Roman emperor that was ruined by Americans, and go from there.” Sounds like he’ll really be stretching his creative muscles with this one. Brass says he’ll write the script and cast the film as soon as possible, and he hopes to begin filming in May or June. (Gore Vidal, feel up to the task?)

Item 5: Ah, Verizon…walking the fine line between trendy advertising and crass sexism:

If you ask us, the Palm Pre Plus pretty much sells itself. So if we were working out a promo campaign for it, we’d just display the competitive pricing front and center and get the hell out of the product’s way. But that just wouldn’t do for Verizon. After all the machismo it attached to the Droid, the wireless provider is back with a set of ads for the Pre Plus targeted at the modern lady. We’re not told why two slabs of plastic and silicon with comparable sliding keyboards and similar internals must be compartmentalized by gender, but we don’t really care. The new ads are crazy enough in themselves, so just go see ‘em after the break.

And let’s just be clear: by “the modern lady,” Verizon evidently means sitcom housewives of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Item 6: Surfing porn at work is bad. Surfing porn at work in full view of a news team giving an interview to your boss is bad and also quite stupid.

We’ve all seen news footage of a reporter delivering coverage on location when some joker runs into the frame. What you don’t often get to see is a guy in the background checking out racy photos while his boss gives a live interview.

During an otherwise stale report on the Australian economy for 7 News, the report cuts to Macquarie Bank, where a representative from the company begins explaining interest rates and inflation. For a solid minute, it’s the most uninteresting thing in the world.

And then you notice the man over the rep’s right shoulder who’s looking at what appears to be pictures of naked ladies (Victoria’s Secret model Miranda Kerr, reportedly) — while he’s talking to a co-worker, no less.

The highlight of the entire piece is just after the 1:30 mark, when the horndog takes a moment to look over his shoulder and spots the camera that’s been trained on him the entire time.

Okay, that’s enough for now. Any more and I’d have to call this one: “Rule 5 Thursday: Rampant Human Stupidity Edition.”

I honestly can’t remember where I shot this picture of some flowers, and I haven’t the first clue what kind of flowers they might be. I was just playing around with depth of field, to be honest. I had only just bought my EOS 350D, and was still learning its ins and outs.