~jg3

One of those days…

March 12th, 2007

Filed under: Movies, Musings

I hadn’t realized it before because I hadn’t realized that such an organization of thought existed, but now that I know that there’s a name for it I’m comfortable (so far) calling myself a “Deist”. Here’s the quick summary:

Deist Principles:

You shall honor and worship the Creator in a fashion that suits you
You shall treat others with dignity and respect and you shall insist that others respect your dignity as well
You shall live life pragmatically and use Reason as the cornerstone for all you think, say and do
You shall be honest and not lie, cheat or steal
You shall not harm another unless it is in defense of yourself or loved ones
You shall treat others as you want to be treated
You shall take responsibility for your actions
You shall have faith in yourself
You shall honor and be faithful to your Father, your Mother and your Loved ones
You shall learn from the mistakes that you will make
You shall find awe, inspiration and beauty in the creation and the natural order of the universe
You shall search for truth and be willing to accept new ideas based on reason as you are exposed to them

Pretty simple. Perhaps not so simple to live always, but it is a lot easier to live according to a doctrine (can I call it that?) that you really believe than one that you really believe just exists to scare the Hell out of you.

I find it interesting that two of my historical heroes, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were either self-proclaimed Deists or lived and published thoughts on living that are wholly compatible with these principles.

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Filed under: about me, Musings

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Sunday Meditation

August 6th, 2006

Think for a minute. Get past the humor/irritation of an exquisite ironic liberal bumper sticker. What do we know about Jesus? Placed into a modern context, what would he do?

To bring him into a modern frame, we need to place him properly. If he lived in America, he definitely wouldn’t be part of the ruling elite. He wouldn’t even be in the White House on a tour. He might be a minister at a nondenominational parish in Washington state, or maybe an associate pastor running a school outside Mexico City. Was that not what you had in mind?

To get to the question above, let’s inventory the time that Jesus used force or raised his voice in anger and frustration: hmm…one. One time in the three years between when he began to publicly minister and when his message of peace and perserverence caught up to him and the folks in charge put him to death. And that one time, was in a temple. He was livid at the folks that were using the house of worship as a profit vector.

So, those of you sitting on a comfortable, padded pew in megachurches accross suburban America this morning, look down at your silicone WWJD bracelet and meditate on this. Because if there really is one God and there really is just one way to know the mind of God and if this God is an active participant in the universe and not just a hands-off creator/observer, you are in real danger.

Update: Today is the Christian holiday marking the transfiguration of Jesus.

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Air-conditioning on AlterNet

July 5th, 2006

So, for the second time today I’ve run accross interesting, if not a-little-too-enthusiastic articles on this site which was previously unknown to me but one with a name that is very interesting (to me): AlterNet. The article is called Air-conditioning: Our Cross to Bear.

I’ll tell you this story while you wait for that page to load:

The first thought I had this morning as I lay drowsing in bed was, “it is so quiet here. The bird’s song is so pretty. I can’t believe that I am inside the beltway, 200 yards from a major street, 400 yards from a Starbucks, and under a mile from the Interstate. What a lovely little quiet neighborhood with big trees and happy birds.” And then, my neighbor’s air conditioner kicked on. Like the rest of the little packed-in row-house units, their air conditioner is about thirty years old and noisy enough to notice but not noisy enough to do anything about, and certainly not noisy enough to replace due to the expense. Expense that mostly stems from the fact that these rowhouses were reengineered to have individual electric-powered heat instead of one big boiler for the whole community the only space for the furnace was in the attic. If you think about the physics of distributing hot air throughout a two-story house you realize that the attic is about the worst possible option for placement of the furnace. So, if you reengineered the house to have a heat pump instead of just an air conditioner you would have a lot of work to do and you would still be left with a noisy electric-powered fan jobby that sits in the back yard and interrupts the reverie of people like me who prefer to open their windows to the natural fresh air and bird songs to air conditioner noises and sealed, recirculated air.

The heavy, muggy, rainy summer air is what makes the bridge of my nose feel slimy after I’ve been outside in the summer. It is also an important element in what gives this place the lush feeling of stuff growing on top of stuff growing on top of stuff in a delicious, deciduious thickness.

Bonus Link! Taken from the AlterNet article linked above is this article in New Scientist that shows the fuel consumption difference in using the A/C versus rolling down the windows in the car:

Filed under: House, Musings, The Internet

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For whom the flowers grow

June 10th, 2006

I saw this sign in a garden recently: “We grow these beautiful flowers for our friends. And we grow these beautiful flowers for those who aren’t.

What you do on this earth impacts everyone.

Filed under: adventures, Musings

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Nap Nomenclature

April 29th, 2006

Naps are wonderful things. As an adult, I realize this. I wish as a child I had the appreciation for them which I have now. Incidentally, it was my mother I was talking to not long ago on a day when she had not been able to make time for a nap as she had intended to. “I didn’t get my nap today” she said, and I realized that you don’t get naps you take naps. It is always there, the time, the couch, the blanket. If you are to have a nap you must take that time from whatever other busy-ness your day may be filled with and apply it to only yourself and rest.

That highlighted to me just how important it is the way we talk about naps (among other things), and I started to compile a list of nap names. I realized that much like the Eskimo have many names for snow, we have many ways of talking about naps here are a few:

Disco nap - One of the few naps taken at night, a disco nap is a quick sleep during a party or night out with which you recharge so you can get back and party with even more gusto into the wee hours.
Power nap - Imagine a leather couch in a high-powered executive’s corner office. Imagine that they schedule twenty minutes into their afternoon to sleep soundly there and wake up ready to blaze ahead through an afternoon of boring meetings. Power naps are characterized by short periods of sound sleep in the middle of a productive day. Might be referred to as “getting a wink”.
Cat nap - The key characteristic of a cat nap is not how you sleep but how you wake up. Where a power nap would conclude with a jump and stretch and bustle of activity, waking from a cat nap may include as little as opening the eyes and possibly rolling over. This may lead to another cat nap or just laying there and looking out the window at the ~~delicious~~ birds. Also called a television nap. A master at this kind of snoozing can watch a baseball game on television and sleep during each half inning while the opposing team bats and wake up to watch the home team on offense.
Afternoon nap - An afternoon nap has been a regularly scheduled feature in the day of many remarkable people like Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and Thomas Edison to name a few. The key characteristic here is the regularity and as the name implies it is done in the afternoon, after being awake and productive for several hours and with several hours of productivity still to go. This is a favorite of adults and often loathed by children. Also called a siesta
Church nap - Also called a meeting nap, this is dozing when you are not supposed to be, and doing so with every attempt at stealth. My favorite part of this nap is when you are awake enough to feel the weight of your skull balancing on the vertabrae in your neck, but not awake enough to control the neck muscles to keep your head from falling out of balance. Often this feeling of your head falling off your neck is what startles you awake. Must also be taken sitting upright.
Airplane nap - So named because it is taken sitting up, often while travelling (can also be taken on a bus or train, or in a waiting area). Usually in a confined area where leaning to the side is impossible, leaning the seat back three-quarters of an inch does little for comfort (except to annoy the person behind you), and guarantees that a flight attendant will wake you up to ensure that you cannot remain so comfortable for the last twenty nappable minutes. Thus, the airplane nap is often taken with the chin on the chest.
Morning nap - Distinct from merely “sleeping in” because it requires getting up and dressing and/or eating but still arriving back in a horizontal position before noon. This rare and unusual nap is usually taken in circumstances of ill health or after an night of little or no sleep.
Micro nap - Is characterized by being short (2-5 minutes). Although rarely deep or intense sleep, the micro nap can be an important psychological punctuation to one’s day.

Let us be clear about this, a nap is not a substitute for a restful night’s sleep. In fact the healthiest people in the world, the Japanese, say as much in their list of sleep guidelines (Engrish). Without a healthy night’s sleep, your body may commandeer your eyelids and a coup of exhaustion can occur (like what happend to Dick Cheney).

And finally, if you have any trouble convincing your boss that a nap will improve your performance, you can either take your wallet and head over to MetroNaps during your break or you can show this “official-looking page full of explanations about why napping is good for business.”

Filed under: Funny, Musings

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Spring Training

March 29th, 2006

What if your job had Spring training? What if every year you came back from the holidays and cleaned out your desk and re-organized your to-do list and then went to a month of training and problem solving to hone your skills and audition for your job. At the end of the month you could potentially get your job back and your desk in an office with a window and your full salary or be sent out to the cube farms to wear a headset and work tickets and answer calls. Over the course of the year you would be measured on each day’s performance much like you are now, but if you were really in a slump you could be sent “down” the org chart to recuperate and get your “swing” back.

Wow, that would be really stressful. I would be a lot more inclined to toot my own horn and I know it would really change the way my coworkers performed. The interesting thing is that you’re not really competing against each other directly, it is more like a college class that is graded on a curve. There are a fixed number of positions to fill and a few people are expected to be placed there and a few people are not expected to, but they are given the outside chance. A lot of people fall somewhere in between, and they have to show up every day of spring training to fight for their job.

The funny part about this is that the real winner here is the business that we all work for. At the end, they have a more trained and energized workforce and they’ve put their best team of people forward to compete. So, unless you thrive on stress and competition don’t tell the guys in suits about this idea because I’m sure they’d love to find a way to make this work (I’m sure labor groups would stand in the way though).

Filed under: baseball, Musings

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