Tidying up Scripture

one of a handful of memories that i have growing up (I have a terrible memory!) is sitting in church when i was about twelve, and wondering why God wasn't more clear with his doctrines when he wrote the Bible. I mean - its clear we all really want to follow him - but God really screwed up when he made things so purposely obtuse and "mysterious" so as to introduce so much room for confusion and latitude that all these denominations and disagreements could spring up. i mean, if he really wanted us to know what to believe - why didn't he just *say* it!

now i must mention that our pastor was doing his best to unscrew the narrative so that this story became understandable! and all that work (along with a growing awareness that there was disagreement as to what the scriptures really meant) is what made me realize that something was wrong. really seriously wrong. and i couldn't imagine what it was because - well, i even remember our pastor teaching us to be careful to reject modernism. and by modernism, my guess was he was worried about us invoking the thinking of man or the world while viewing scripture. not that i really knew another way to think.

in the midst of all this confusion - i had a really cool faith. i remember getting saved at age five by literally walking an isle lol - and then trying to tell my younger brothers about it downstairs in our family room that afternoon. and reading the bible all the way to grandmas house. and i remember getting baptized at age seven - and the seriousness of that commitment to have a public faith. everything was so real to me - and i especially loved reading the scripture. the new testament especially - the stories of Jesus. and then later on the poetic books.

its clear now that what i really wanted was for God to speak to me on my terms - terms that i created / preferred. you see, i was used to categorizing information in a certain way. like "parameters" for instance. i still like thinking in terms of those today. but also categories. codes of conduct. statements of belief. pre or post this or that. Gods sovereignty (no less!) understood in either / or terms. lots of opposites. mutual exclusivities. and dichotomies.

and i think that, like Ursus Wehrli's TED talk on "Tidying up art" we may have been trying to Tidy up Scripture.

the absurdity of which now seems evident.

those metal things

since my holiday plans (Christmas is the holiday i'm talking about, in case that was unclear to anyone) to travel have been thwarted, ive found myself not wanting to really see anybody except my wife and with a bunch of extra time on my hands. enough to start getting at some of those projects.

so yesterday i steam cleaned our living room carpet. pretty much just for the hell of it. and of course i pushed all the furniture around to let it dry. because, you know, when you steam clean - your carpet gets wet. that's by definition.

imagine my surprise today, when, i pushed our love seat back into place - to find RUST MARKS in the carpet. w. t. effing f.

my wife asked - "why... what is that? are there metal things underneath the legs??", to which i could only reply "apparently". to which she followed up with perhaps THE MOST perceptive and germane question I could ever envision: "why do they do that"?

and that my friends is exactly the fucking question. why the fuck did people, i want to say largely in the fifties, nail little metal things into the bottom of otherwise perfectly formed wooden legs?

to increase the pressure point like a woman's high heal does? so that you get digs in your floor? so you scratch the floor? so your table slides around easier? so that they will rust and leave a mark on whatever they are on if they get damp!?!?!? i'm mean seriously, why reduce the surface area AND put an intentional hostile and unforgiving material (that also rusts!) at your point of interface? and in your home no less? what, ... so they don't wear out? how long is this table supposed to last just sitting there - five hundred years? sure metal tires would last a long time - but they are the right answer to the wrong question for "best contact patch".

what the fuck were people thinking back then?

i'm loosing my tolerance for old school stupidity.

Gambling, the OK kind

So I think an economist (Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert) may have just stumbled upon the idea that unregulated individual investment of your life savings in the Stock Market is indistinguishable from the kind of gambling that is already illegal, and thus aught to be illegal as well.

isn't this the kind of thing pretty much everyone else has known all along?

... first obama gets elected - and now its being suggested white collar activities should be consistent with the rest of societies. i'm in shock and awe!

Who Throws a Shoe? Honestly!!

Answer: Muntazer al-Zaidi

an ode to speed

follow the ball bearing.... as it winds it way down

insurance companies lobby for stoopidly slow speed limits
and in regions with a statistically low amount of tickets
they provide free speed detection devices to police departments
so they can raise your rates for these infractions

safety is hard to quantify and prosecute
but speed infractions are easily quantifiable and prosecutable
police performance is measured via # of tickets
speeding tickets become a revenue maker for municipalities

so speed becomes a proxy for safety
and the largest revenue maker there is
driving gets dumbed down, people stop paying attention
a culture of minimal situational awareness is the norm

cars dont need to go faster than 75 mph (120 kph)
so the requirements for engineering are reduced
car makers dont need to make well designed cars
so the cars dont last, and dont drive well either

and like a tall lanky kid in middle school
trying on a new persona each week
american car manufacturers still dont have a identity
compare this to saab, volvo, audi, bwm, porsche...

you can put money into the system
you can raise the blood pressure temporarily
you can try to stop the hemorrhaging
but the ball bearing will always find its way down

want to change the landscape?
become competitive in the world?
build the best vehicles ever?
then we need to change our system

disassociate insurance from lobbying
disassociate insurance from police
disassociate speed citations from revenue
disassociate speed from safety

and support both goals of transportation: speed and safety.

america caters to the lowest common denominator
then we build cars every bit our equal...
but a nation of cowboys isn't founded on the LCD
its high time we celebrate our diversity.



*update:
best case, based on the american taxpayer buying the big three
we will build the crappiest alternative energy cars in the world