12/30/2009 09:32:00 AM

Proselytize: To recruit someone to join one's party, institution, or cause. "Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy."

12/29/2009 04:18:00 PM

I know I’ve said elsewhere in my writings (on this very website, even) not to give up on your fellow man. I reserve the right to change my mind on that topic…and I have. As I’ve gotten older I have become increasingly concerned about the condition of this planet. When I think about how to donate my money or my time to a cause, humanity just doesn’t enter into my mind. I don’t trust people, period. That guy at the subway station begging for money so he says he can get something to eat; why is he wearing brand new Nikes? The organization that solicits donations to help the poor in the U.S.; why is their internet site registered through Somalia?

I say no to everyone who solicits money from me. Instead I seek out my own opportunities for helping this world: beach cleanups, buying groceries from local organic farmers, volunteering at the SPCA. I wish I could believe that humanity will rise above the hate and fear and greed. But everything I see on the evening news just goes to vindicate my thoughts. “Trust not to hope; it has forsaken these lands.”

11/20/2009 09:57:00 AM

I saw a video blurb on CNN recently about child-actor Kirk Cameron handing out “annotated” versions of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. It seems Cameron and the religious group he belongs to wrote a preface to the work and printed up some 200,000 copies to hand out on college campuses. The preface purports to debunk evolutionism in favor of creationism. What it actually does is call into question Darwin’s character, insinuating that he was a racist, that his ideas were responsible for the development of Nazism in Hitler’s Germany, and that he was sexist towards women.

Although the character assassination is in itself abhorrent and should be condemned, what interests me about this is how ignorant people can be when they let themselves be blinded by science or religion. Science has categorically proved that the process of evolution is a fact and does indeed happen in nature, and scientists have done so with all the requisite documentation and scientific rigor. Don’t hate on Charlie just because he proved this. What has not been proven is that the process of evolution as we know it occurs today is what led to the creation of man.

Einstein wrote, “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.” I really wish the evolutionists and the creationists would both get their stories straight.

9/22/2008 03:20:00 PM

A while back my wife and I were sitting in the car at a red light. The car in front of us – a 70’s/80’s era angular Detroit gas guzzler – contained four people, two in the front seat, two in the back. The right side back door opened; an arm reached out; and a passenger set a half-finished 7-Eleven Big Gulp cup on the ground. The door closed, the light turned green and the car drove away. I’m not sure words can describe my level of disgust.

When asked if I am an optimist or a pessimist, I like to respond that I am a realist. But I know that my realism is quite slanted toward the darker view of things. Scenes like the one related above, repeated ad nauseum every day, define my understanding of the world. Human beings, as a whole, don’t care. We can’t even put forth the effort to find a garbage can for a paper cup when we reach our destination. We aren’t cognizant of the world and our impact on it. We don’t care how our actions affect others or the environment. Our thoughts and behaviors center on the individual organism, not on the species.

If you believe in evolution, homo sapiens rose to the top of the evolutionary ladder because of our developed brains, our higher reasoning. But not even our vaunted gray matter can fend off millions of years of “survival of the fittest.” In the animal kingdom – which we are most definitely a part of – species do not protect and insure the survival of other species. Animals in the absence of predators will procreate unchecked until the surrounding environment is destroyed; there is no birth control practice among rabbits. It is clear to me that man has not risen far above the beasts.

In the movie The Matrix, Agent Smith soliloquized about humans at length during his attempt to break Morpheus. He compared men to an organism which displays the same tendency toward destruction: a bacterium. Not far off the mark.

7/29/2008 03:22:00 PM

My best friend and I were talking the other night about God, and about whether or not he (she or it) exists. Reflecting on that conversation today made me start to think about heaven.

If heaven really exists, what must it be like? No one has really hung out there and then come back to tell her friends about it, so I much doubt it would be like it is portrayed in movies, all clouds with grapes and harps. One common belief is that heaven is what your heart most desires and treasures. I’m pretty sure that what my heart desires is different from what your heart wants; we’re all individuals, right?

I love music. I can get caught up in a song and transported somewhere else. Music inspires such emotion in me. Maybe my heaven is all those songs, played back to back without end, moving me from place to place and feeling to feeling. Sort of a cosmic iPod.

I’m always cold in the office. I like to be warm. Maybe my heaven is like crawling into a warm bed, with those expensive 1000 thread count sheets and a heavy down comforter. The smell of vanilla from the candle on the nightstand. The sound of ocean waves crashing on the beach, or a gentle rain falling. An endless sleep in the embrace of the best bed ever.

Orgasms are pretty good, let’s be honest with ourselves. Could my heaven be one never-ending super-intense orgasm? On second thought, the post-coital bliss feels really great too. Not sure how that would work out then. Limitless rounds of sex? With no time to recharge my batteries, no pillow talk? No way.

I think about these things. They don’t keep me up at night, but I do think about them.

8/07/2007 11:40:00 AM

Because I live about an hour’s drive away from where I work, I spend a good bit of each work day driving. Day after day I see that a portion of the human population is comprised of mental midgets. Here are some of the things I’ve noticed:

• Everyone driving slower than you is a moron, and everyone faster than you is an idiot.
• The people that have no problem driving 20 or more miles per hour over the speed limit on regular interstate are the very same people that won’t go one mph over the limit on a bridge. What is it about water that slows them down? Fear that they can’t swim? Some sort of force attraction to water (kind of like the force that makes my golf balls head right for the pond)?
• Tunnels are also a source of slowdown. Fear of the dark? No, they drive 85 mph with headlights on without issue. Fear of enclosed spaces, maybe?
• People can drive around a turn on the highway and maintain speed. Put a merge in the middle of a turn and they drive like Jed Clampett.
• God forbid you ever have a turn in a tunnel on a bridge with a merge. Their brains must just explode with the overloaded input. Which is exactly the situation you have on the Oakland Bay Bridge. It is no wonder the Bay Bridge has the worst traffic in the Bay Area year after year. You might as well get out and walk.
• Road signs are for everyone else on the road, not you. You can do whatever you want.
• People drive much slower than the posted speed limit when a highway patrol is on the road. Do you really think he is going to bust you for driving 65 in a 65 zone? Come on, people!
• And people won’t pass a patrol car, even if it is going below the limit. Do you think it’s a race and you need to let him win?
• Apparently, getting in front of just one more car before forcing your way into a turn lane will be the difference between life and death.

There’s some commercial on TV right now that starts off with, “People are smart.” I beg to differ; people are stupid. Just drive around for a while and you’ll see.

7/14/2006 11:33:00 AM

“And they say that a hero can save us, I’m not gonna stand here and wait. I'll hold onto the wings of the eagles, watching as they all fly away.”
- Chad Kroeger, “Hero”

Why de we as a society spend so much time and effort tearing down our heroes?

Lance Armstrong is one of my heroes. He was and still is an incredible bike rider that has done something amazing with his seven Tour de France victories. He battled back from cancer, surviving chemotherapy and brain surgery, and lived to start a foundation that works with children and others living with the disease. He has spurred millions of people to support cancer charities. He should be admired for what he has accomplished, both on and off the bike. Why then do so many people attack him? Are the French so outraged that he has won their precious race while their countrymen have been unable to do so for 21 years? Is Greg Lemond so jealous of Lance’s seven victories – compared to Greg’s own three – that he feels compelled to lie about Lance’s activities – accusations proved false in a court of law?

Admittedly, Zinedine Zidane’s head butt in his career-ending World Cup finals match was a tremendously “bone-headed” thing to do. But does he deserve all of the ridicule that has been so quickly heaped upon him? Within three days of the final, a Flash game appeared on the Internet where you could head butt Italians with a mouse-controlled Zidane. There is also an amateur video now of tourists head-butting people all over Paris. Should we not instead reflect on what Zinedine Zidane accomplished through his long and illustrious career?

It is almost like we wait for our heroes to make one mistake, and then we pounce on them. We kick them when they are down. Does it make us feel better knowing that we can bring our heroes down to our own level? What point then in having heroes at all if we are only going to strive to destroy them?

I take Lance Armstrong at face value. I don’t care if he doped in order to win his Tours. He and all of my heroes will remain so, even if they fall. Life needs heroes.