Nope, it’s not the blog that is moving again. We’re moving in the old fashioned sense. We bought a lot in Eagle Mountain today. We’ve always wanted to live closer to the country, so we’re taking the leap. We absolutely love our home and ward in Orem; it is sad to leave. If you know anyone looking for a home in Orem, let me know.
I just watched 2012, and I really enjoyed it. You should know that I love “end of the world” movies. It’s interesting to consider how quickly this wonderful society we have could all come crumbling down. All it would take is a really bad virus (like in “I Am Legend”) or mother nature getting a little ruffled. I certainly don’t wish for it to happen–I am constantly amazed at the incredible culture and society we have today. We’ve never seen the likes of it in the history of humanity. I still find it interesting to think about how it could end in a very quick way.
2012 goes over the top in several places. Don’t expect it to be reality. There were multiple scientific problems with the movie, and I would bet a geologist would not just find problems, but be quite offended. For example, the tsunamis in the movie wreck huge cruise ships out in the open ocean. Tsunamis don’t become destructive until the near land (where the water slows down, bunches up, and huge waves start to form). Out in the open ocean, they are not huge waves but more bumps in the water. Ships go up with the bump, then go back down. During the Indian Ocean tsunami, many ships out to sea reported not even noticing the waves. I guess it is possible that the tsunamis in the movie were SO huge that they interacted with the ocean floor miles below in ways I don’t understand. :) I’m not that kind of scientist.
Then there were totally unbelievable parts, like when the “let’s open the ship doors back up with only 15 minutes left” speech causes all the countries to change their minds and risk everything to bring a few more people on board. With such huge ships and such huge doors, that simply would not have happened. The officers on board would have removed the doctor from the bridge as soon as he had 2 words out of his mouth. On another count, it was also hard to believe that even the Chinese could build ships as complex and large as they did in such a short amount of time.
If seeing most of humanity die is too much for you, I’d suggest passing on the movie. It doesn’t show any close-up details, but you know people are dying right and left as earthquakes and tsunamis occur and as cities tumble to the ground.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie. Be prepared to overlook reality in several places, and you’ll have a good ride.
Congrats to Dodge. For once the corporate risk lawyers made the right decision. One of the first things I did to my truck (a fairly typical Dodge Ram) was turn off the annoying “put on your seat belt” beep. The process was even right in the user’s manual. I couldn’t believe the lawyers allowed a process for turning it off, let alone allowing it right in the manual. I just had to enter a sequence on the dashboard controls, and the beep was gone forever. The little dashboard light still comes on, but I don’t have to listen to the beep.
My minivan is the exact opposite. The beep sounds every 30 seconds until I put my seat belt on. And there’s no way to turn it off (I’ve asked). I could hack the van and cut the cords, but that might mess up my resale potential as well as possibly mess up things like the child-weight-airbag-turn-off things. So I live with it in my van. But then again, everywhere I take my van I really should be wearing a seat belt.
Why, might you ask, would I care? Why would I drive around without a seat belt? I’m actually a regular wearer of my seat belt. I believe they save lives, and I normally put mine on immediately upon sitting down.
But consider the use of a truck in the mountains. First, seat belts just don’t work right when going over rocks. Every bump causes the seat belt to lock up (and often hurt the wearer). Second, a person gets in and out of a truck many, many times while driving in the mountains. Whether it’s to open/close a gate, change a sprinkler, check clearance, or move a few boulders, seat belts are annoying. Third, I simply don’t believe a seat belt is needed much when a truck is in low gear — it doesn’t go very fast and doesn’t have any cars around it.
Kudos to Dodge for recognizing that seat belts are used differently in a truck. Big kudos to its lawyers for allowing a code right in the user manual. Most companies would keep the beep (and prevent any disabling) to minimize their risk of lawsuits when users don’t wear their seat belts. Dodge seems to understand the people that use its trucks.
Thank you to all the war veterans and all other military who made this country possible, and thanks to those who keep it possible. We truly live in a great time of the world. We have so much good, so much knowledge, so much freedom. We also have problems (some of it just plain evil) to deal with. I am deeply grateful for those who make it possible for us to live this way.
A great search is for “Veterans Day” in Google Images (rather than in the regular search). The results are cool to look through:
This week’s Stargate Universe (the fourth episode) was the last one I’ll be watching. As a longtime Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis fan, I was SOOO excited when the creators decided to make a third series. SG-1 had a ten-year run, and it became my favorite TV show since Star Trek: TNG. Atlantis was also a great series until several key actors left.
What made SG-1, Atlantis, and TNG such great series was their morality and honor. Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) had huge shoes to fill as captain of the Enterprise. While I personally have never been a fan of the original Star Trek, Captain Kirk was legendary. What made Captain Picard so great was that he didn’t try to fill Kirk’s shoes — he built a legacy of his own. Contrasting with Kirk, he was refined and thought out situations. He was honorable to a fault. Regardless of the situation, we always knew that Picard would take the high road and would stick to his principles like the Prime Directive. Remember the episode where he is captured by the Cardassians and would not bend to the torture to say there were five lights. The character of Picard was someone to look up to; in some part, he positively affected my formative teenage years.
Jack O’Neill and the rest of his team in SG-1 were also honorable. There were numerous episodes that showed their strong character. They always protected Earth. They held up their end of the bargains. They were out for the little guy. On another torture episode, O’Neill shows his character when he is captured by Baal. What an awesome hero.
Then in the decade of the 2000’s, TV started to change. Battlestar Galactica (the remake in the 2000’s) started good but had to show the “human side” of the characters. Rather than working as a team that exhibited the best of humanity, Galactica set characters against one another. And they always had sex with one another (which was shown in explicit detail even for TV). It only took about two episodes of Galactica to realize that it was not the role model of the past.
SG: Universe is written in the style of Galactica. In the last episode, not only was there a full sex scene, O’Neill pushed for something his character never would have. BTW, the sex scene alone was enough for me to turn it off. Are we really that low of losers that we have to watch others get thrills? Come on! Give us a strong story plot! Show us some honor and character in the show that make us want to be better. Writers, you don’t need to resort to cheap tricks to sell your work! I already know how low human beings can go; history is replete with it. When I turn on the TV, I want to see characters exceed their circumstances. I want to see them show honor in the face of opposition.
Sure, the leader in SG: Universe showed some character in the last episode. Dr. Rush did as well. But they also showed many weaknesses to date that I really don’t want to know. There are too many unknowns with them, which I know is intentional on the part of the writers. It seems that Hollywood doesn’t feel it’s being honest if it doesn’t show ALL sides of the characters. I certainly don’t want a “Leave it to Beaver” experience when I watch TV. But I also don’t want to see all the bad a person can think or do any more than I want to see my neighbors hang their troubles out for all to see. I want to see human beings work as a team, exhibit strong morals, and give me hope for the bright future of humanity.
I guess I’ll break out the old SG-1 or TNG DVDs to watch.
P.S. One of my other favorite shows of all time is the Firefly series. This one was made right when this transition to “humanity” was occurring. So while it was an awesome show with so much potential, it walked the line quite a bit as well. Galactica and Universe have walked right across it and off the cliff. It won’t be long before network television has all the rawness of an HBO miniseries. I’m sad for our prospects in Sci Fi these days.
P.P.S. The same thing has happened in books (especially Sci Fi books) in recent years.
P.P.P.S. I was just talking with my wife about this new “style” of shows, and she remarked that it is simply a new version of the soap opera. Pretty perceptive comment, IMO.
I’ve been putting off the upgrade to Snow Leopard because PGP doesn’t support it yet. But last night my wireless card wouldn’t connect to my home network. I played with it for about 30 minutes, but I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. Rather than continue to hit my head against that wall, I decided it was time to erase everything and do a fresh install of Snow Leopard. The install went smoothly, as most Mac installs do. I reformatted the hard drive in the process, and it’s nice to have a fresh install.
Although I’ve written about it before, I need to give a thumbs up to Time Machine. Before formatting the drive, I connected a USB drive and backed up using Time Machine (now I had two backups: my regular, wireless TM backup and this USB TM drive). During the installation of Snow Leopard, it asked if I wanted to restore settings from a Time Machine backup.
The restore not only restored my data files, it entirely set up my computer to match my old install. This includes:
It took about 1.5 hours to restore my data and settings. My computer then looked as if I hadn’t done a fresh install. Time Machine is one of the best things about the Mac.
(I should note that during the restoration, I chose not to restore a couple of things (like database settings) because I wanted to do fresh installs of them.)
We’ve now had it at my house, and it really wasn’t that bad. The last of us got better a few days ago. My kids went to play with cousins for 4 days, and while they were there, everyone came down with the flu. I don’t know if my kids brought it to them, if their kids gave it to us, or if the whole group got it together. Whatever happened, all of the kids came down at the same time. My brother had his kids tested, and the results just came back positive.
Here’s a few thoughts about it:
The thing that surprised me the most was the communicability of it. Everyone was hit together. We also have much worse flus before (the kind where you throw up over and over and over). This wasn’t like that. It was more “achy” than anything.
I guess we don’t need the vaccine! We’ll watch the rest of you become zombies from it… j/k
We have gotten out of control as a society when it comes to connectivity — especially with the rising generation. Kids today think they need to be connected to their friends full time. In fact, it’s hard to get the full attention of many teenagers because they are constantly checking their texts, their MySpace/Facebook accounts, and their many other connections.
In the culture I grew up with, it was rude to have side conversations when talking to an individual. We gave those we were with our full attention. In contrast, it is very common for kids today to be physically present with one group and yet have 4+ conversations going on with others not with them. They are constantly “checking out” of the current conversation to quickly respond to a text or other message. And this isn’t seen as rude — it’s become part of the culture. Others in the group think nothing of this constant diversion as they talk with one another. I’ve even seen them texting members of the group who are physically with them!
Here’s another example. Many teens have never learned to focus on a single activity like homework. Instead, they do their homework with 1) music playing on iPods, 2) MySpace and/or Facebook open so they can constantly watch their friends’ statuses, 3) IM applications or social network sites to chat with friends, and 4) answering texts that come across their phones. They have gained the ability to multitask, but they’ve never learned to crack down and study hard. Some seem unable to be able to do a focused task without these distractions to keep them “interested”.
Twitter, which some call the next generation of social networking, takes these distractions to yet another level. With Twitter, people constantly post their status and activities throughout the day. Do we really need to broadcast our schedules and activities? Beyond the addiction, I reject this one on a security basis alone. Yes, I realize companies and people use Twitter for more than just posting their activities, but that’s using the network for something other than “social networking”.
I think I get social networking. I’ve used it enough to see it for what it is. I understand why teens use social network sites instead of email today. It provides a much richer, immediate set of tools. In particular, I’ve enjoyed reading well-written blog entries and finding lost friends on Facebook. I enjoy the capabilities my cell phone gives me. I even enjoy IM with specific working groups.
What I reject is the concept that we need this level of connectivity in every aspect of our lives. There was a point in history when correspondence happened over weeks because we used snail mail. Then came phones, faxes, email, cell phones, IM, and eventually the full social networks. Our culture has increasingly learned to accept connectivity, immediacy, multitasking, and interrupted work.
I’ve finally drawn the line. As of this week, social networking is largely blocked on my home network. I don’t need (or want) to know your status throughout the day. You don’t need to know mine. And especially, my kids don’t need to be connected at the hip to their friends. Certainly, there are exceptions where these immediate networks are useful. But in most cases, we need to rediscover how to focus and work without constant interruption.
Glycerin has many, many uses. I was making homemade bubbles for the kids to play with, so I needed some glycerin. I found it for a couple of bucks at the local Wally world. It surprised me that it was kept in the medicines department.
Switch gears to my second child, Lyndsie, who gets horrible cracks in her feet each summer. Utah is very dry. In fact, when we lived in the deserts of Arizona and traveled to Utah, we were surprised at our need for lotion in Utah when we didn’t need it in Arizona. To our skin, Utah is actually drier than the low deserts.
Each summer, Lyndsie’s, feet cracked and bled unless she wore socks and shoes every day. Have you ever tried to tell a 3 year old to keep her shoes on all day? We did our best, but invariably, we’d have a crying child at night. We tried every cream on the market, including quite a few prescriptions from our pediatrician and our dermatologist. Some of the creams worked fairly well, but we had to stay on top of it every night.
Back to the glycerin. After making the bubbles, I looked at the primary uses of glycerin on the packaging. #1 use: dry skin. At an appointment with our dermatologist, he agreed it was useful for dry skin. So we tried swabbing her feet with a glycerin/water mix. We put plastic bags on her feet to keep the glycerin from getting everywhere (it’s quite oily). In TWO days of using it, her feet were soft and the cracks were almost gone. Amazing.
It works equally well on dry hands. I sometimes put it on my hands just before bed so it doesn’t get everywhere, and my hands will be perfect for the entire next day. Compare this with most lotions on the market. With most lotions, a person has to use them many times a day (at least in Utah we do).
If you want a second opinion on the effectiveness of glycerin, read the contents of your favorite lotion. I’ll bet you find glycerin as one of its main products.
The recent shooting of Melanie and Scott Hain has led a lot of people to mention that “those who live by the sword die by it.” It’s troubling to me how quickly people assign blame to firearms when anything bad happens. Melanie openly carried her pistol to her 5 year old’s soccer game recently, and she shocked a lot of people. I’ll grant that openly packing to a kids’ soccer game is not a smart thing to do (but only because our current society has gone so far away from responsible firearms use).
But consider a couple of facts of this case that are being ignored by many:
A person who is “living by the sword” is not one who carries a sword (gun) for personal protection. In my opinion, living by the sword is using a weapon routinely in one’s lifestyle. It is living the gangster life. I saw this exact lifestyle as a missionary in the inner city of Chicago. I can attest that there is a huge difference between a citizen who packs a weapon for personal protection and a gangster who lives by his weapon.
We are entering a world where people want no responsibility. They want the government (or whoever) to take care of them. To provide health care. To provide security. To bail their businesses out. To provide food and clothing. To ensure success with no risk. They want to live in a Disneyland-type world.
I take issue with this kind of attitude in adults. Adults should learn to be responsible. Kids are a different story. I have no problem providing these things to kids whose parents don’t provide it. Although I do wish it were provided by voluntary charities which people made voluntary donations to rather than by forced taking from the rich to poor. But regardless, I support it for kids. In particular, I support public education and school lunch (at least the kids get one meal each day). For kids who have deadbeat parents, public school provides a level playing ground. It’s what helps a kid with deadbeat parents eventually succeed. It is the foundation of the American dream.
In the war in heaven before this Earth existed, two plans were presented. One provided for responsibility, failure, redemption, and learning. The other guaranteed success with no risks but with no learning or progression. Which plan does the current trend sound like?