I always wonder what makes people believe in Creation instead of evolution. I read things like this and it really makes me wonder about the amount of logic some people possess.

First of all, the absence of transitional forms... Possessing logic, one might think that the earth's crust is about ~75 km deep, at the highest. You may also think that the earth has a total surface area of about 145-150,000,000 km. You may want to get a calculator and type in something like 7 (I'd guess, the average depth of crust that holds presentable "life" fossils or other evidence) * 145,000,000. You get 1,015,000,000. That would be about how much earth you'd have to sift through to get a complete idea of the fossil record. The average archeological dig is what, a few acres?

So we end up with a very fraction of a percent of probable data out there, and someone has the nerve to complain about the 'lack of transitional forms' and point to a book written by men millions of years after the first recognizable australopithecine died as proof of "creation". Generally, in any other culture, we would relegate the writing of that book to myth and fiction. We would paste a shiny colorful cover on the front and sell it for 5.99 at Chapters as an 'informational look on the myths of an ancient culture'. That word right there, myth. Yet here, we try to discredit evidence provided by a provable scientific method as "wrong" and hold up a book as our only truth.

I guess I wouldn't be so offended if it was, maybe, a collection of books supported by viewable evidence. Like the story of Noah and the Ark - if people could physically view the ark, it may lend credibility. Or the Garden of Eden, the Bible's version of the transitional form - if there was some evidence of that, maybe it would be easier to believe.

But Creationism, much as Christianity, depends on the nay-saying of other ideas to promote and 'prove' its own. It's centered around belief of the unseen and fear of postexistance consequences, revolving around a book whose shady history doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

As such, we end up with people who 'believe' and say things like, "It should be noted that today anthropologists agree that the different human races have a common origin - a Biblical doctrine," a phrase which could easily be made true by modifying it slightly to read, "It should be noted that today anthropologists agree that the concept of human 'races' is defunct and absurd, and that there is currently only one human 'species' undivided by such societal constructs as 'race'." It should be noted that evolution has been a constantly changing idea - from Darwin's first book to now, people have not believed consistantly the same thing. They have relied upon facts and observable evidence to form and modify the theory, instead of hanging on to a myth of a long-dead population. The difference between Creation and evolution, simply put, is just that.

Of course, there is value in hanging on to old things. Certainly, I love antiques and would fill my house with them. However, hanging on to an old idea that has long been disproved and attempting to force it upon others (such as school children) is extreme and disturbing. We saw what forceful application of ideas could accomplish in World War II - why would we try, albeit in a less invasive way, to do it again? Why are we forcing children to learn about a belief system, a religion, as science?

And before I hear the cries of "Well, it's only fair," let me say this: it is not fair. Science is ever-evolving, as new ideas, theories, and evidence comes to light. Science has saved mortal bodies, it has given us bridges and cars and controlled combustion, it has given us knowledge of our earth and understanding of ourselves. It's help cure and sometimes, to hurt. But it is a wholly human thing, credited absolutely by human thought and ingenuity. There is no invisible god in science who forces people to accept a myth as their truth, no smothering weight of belief to stifle human curiousity. Creation may be force-fed as a truth, but as of yet it is only science that encourages the search for the truth.

I feel like lately, the last couple of months (or three) I haven't had any ideas of what to write about. Hence, why I've been writing nonsense.

So, dear, faithful readers. Put down a topic (or five) and I'll write about it. Be as detailed as you like, and it can be anything. Cheese, the Macarena, politics, etc. Help me get out of this rut!

You know it's just going to be "one of those days" when you stumble out of bed, scare the cat, and see her fly downstairs on fizzy pink wings.

I know, logically, cats cannot grow fizzy pink wings overnight. Or, at all, really. I understand this. Unfortunately, my morning-brain does not, and saw the cat fly downstairs on fizzy pink wings before whipping around the corner, out of sight.

Then, of course, she peeps around the banister and says, "Mwerow?" which is cat for "Are you coming down YET?"

To which I said "Mphffguhh?" which is human for "What the hell was in the pizza I ate last night?"

If Noise could be given a state of mind, it would be this: !!! Koke, the dog, is more ??? all the time, but Noise is either ( ) or !!!. Stop or go, !!! or ( ), black or white. The food is either yummy or extremely yummy, the water is always Terrible or Extremely Nauseatingly We're Going To Shatter The Windows Now Terrible. There are only two choices with Noise.

Which is why the fizzy pink inexplicable wings were so... inexplicable, especially since it seems she kindly put them away for breakfast. There should either be fizzy pink wings, or no wings. That's just how Noise is. They should not appear inexpicably and then disappear for breakfast.

Apparently, though, that's just what happens. I have underestimated the Noise.

It was a perfectly fine day in a perfectly fine forest that Bertrand found the frog.

He saw it hopping almost idly across the hiking trail, and the bright green and mottled brown against the flat tan of the path caught his eye. Bertrand, being a solid fellow of somewhat philosophical bent, picked up the frog and held it up.

"Hello, dear frog," Bertrand said, admiring the bright green splotches over the frog's body. "You are a handsome fellow."

The frog stared.

"Yes, stare, indeed," Bertrand chuckled, "If it wasn't for an evolutionary freak accident, it may have been you holding me instead of the other way around!"

The frog stared.

"But here we are, Frog, surrounded by green living things, which produce chlorophyll and oxygen so that we may breathe, these natural biological things that make up life on earth, and here I am, millions of years after our species have separated on their paths of evolutionary progress, holding you, Frog."

The frog stared.

Bertrand chuckled again, a rich, self-satisfied chuckle, and let the frog back on the ground. The frog stood still for a moment, then hopped off into the tall grass. Bertrand smiled, took a deep breath of air, and started off down the trail once again.

The frog croaked loudly in the grass, and licked its eyeball. Another frog hopped out from under a log.

"Well, Xxilyhtp," the first frog said, heaving a sigh, "It doesn't appear as if they've caught on to the chlorophyll yet."

"Good thing, Nxxlhyt," the second frog commented, "We can probably get another few hundred thousand years out of them before they figure it out."

When she poked the unicorn with a stick, she didn't expect it to explode.

She had seen it in the clearing, a flash of white in the periphery of her vision. She had been innocently walking by, and this caught her attention, silvery pale in the muddled greens of the forest. And of course it was in a clearing, strewn with violets. She was surprised to see that no forest creatures had gathered about it to pay homage, as they did in the olde books. She thought she must be imagining it, a delusional curiousity. She peeped through the bushes, bramble scratching the palms of her hand, staring until her eyes watered. It didn't move, and it didn't vanish, but she could see the glimmering flanks moving slightly as it breathed.

Was it imagination? It had to be... unicorns, though they were said to exist, she never saw any proof. Well, any real proof. Ugly curled tusks that charlatans carried weren't enough to convince her. But how could she be sure? Was it solid? Was it real? A pellet of certain thought lodged in her awe-struck mind. She picked up a long stick and got down on her knees, crawling silently under the bramble...

She slid the stick slowly toward the unicorn, expecting at any moment for it to vanish, a figment of fancy. Surely dozing unicorns did not lie in concealed clearings, dozing amidst the violets. It was so... medieval.

Her arm trembled as she held the stick a few inches above the ground. She'd just give it a good poke, just to see if it was real. She held her breath as she held the end of the stick mere inches from the silven flank... one, two... three!

Then the world exploded around her with enough force to leave her ears ringing. The clearing of green became suddenly pink, something splattered her face and arms. A smell like hot laminating paper filled the air, and a second woosh of air filled the forest, flattening the brambles and making her hair stand on end.

She slowly straightened, her eyes wide. Pink sparkly goo covered the front of her shirt, and was beginning to tingle on her bare skin, the kind of nasty tingle that tells you that you're about to be dead in a couple of hours if you don't wash it off. Her normally straight hair stood around her head in a perfect halo, and her mouth was wide, a perfect "O" amidst the pink sparkly splatter of her face.

"Well," the imp said, standing next to her, somehow not covered in pink goo. "Who knew that unicorns could explode?"

Steve's friend Mike got me hooked on Firefly and is slowly sending me the episodes as I have time to get them. It's so terribly wonderful that I'd probably sit here and watch it all day if I could.

Anyway. I'm sure it's time for another Romance Novel Review.

1.) Lady with hair so long it was dragging on the ground. She was walking her dog barefoot, on a country road when we drove by. I do not know how you grow hair that long, but I may like to know.

2.) Old woman in the pet-food who was strutting down the aisle saying "Kittykittykittykittykittykitty!" She saw me smiling and said "Oh, well! I think I'm losing my mind!" I grinned and said I thought it was funny, I said the same thing when I walked down the cat food aisle, except I usually did a little dance. It still makes me smile.

3.) A man sitting on a bench who looked like, if one replaced the Bermuda shorts and tee shirt with Roman armor, he would be a Roman general. He was sitting straight, and looked like instead of an umbrella, he should be holding a sword, point-down. Then he smiled when he saw what looked like his wife, and he turned into a man in love.

4.) An unreadable, inscrutable expression on the face of a friend. My senses itched like my hands do when there is a book on the shelf that I want to read, and I know I don't have time. I wanted to ask questions, but some questions are better left unasked where curious ears exist to hear.

5.) That little tableau that catches your attention unexpectedly. A small mirror, a picture of the deceased Pope, a candle, a tangled rosary in the home of an older woman. A crumpled, printed prayer for happiness in the home stuck to a refrigerator with plastic fruit magnets, with a grocery list beneath it written in a spidery hand. A blue glass half-filled with water, catching the sunlight on the kitchen counter, in the mind like snapshots.

6.) An old house, ancient and silent, standing behind a screen of kudzu and wild thorn bushes, all weathered wood and empty windows, but so grandly built, huge, glorious even in ruin, that it felt like someone, sometime, had truly loved that house. Loved it enough to carve its delicate arches with what looked like leaves and flowers, enough to build a cookhouse in the back and erect a fence, now sitting empty.

7.) A puppy romping in the tall grass with an older dog. The puppy would leap into the grass, disappear, then jump back onto the mowed lawn with a loud bark, then leap back into the grass and disappear, only to emerge a few feet away with another loud BARK! The other dog paid no attention except to casually pee on a bush.

Barring issues with the border (which, hopefully there are none...) and other immigration-related silly things, Steve will be visiting me from Wednesday the 17th of May to Tuesday the 23rd of May. I just bought the plane ticket last night.

I are excited.

Reasons I love Steve:

1.) Even when he's tired and just wants to go to bed, he'll still take Koke outside if I ask.
2.) He makes good spaghetti sauce.
3.) He gives good hugs.
4.) He treats me like an intelligent and rational person.
5.) He's not afraid to be silly.
6.) He'll admit his mistakes.
7.) He can usually fix anything.
8.) Including the timing belt on my old car. By himself.
9.) I like how he always manages to insinuate himself into a group of people and somehow become the leader.
10.) He likes animals. And doesn't mind if we get more.
( Anniversary Numero 2! )

I was leafing through the ads this morning while I'm waiting for my clothes to dry, and there's a popular shopping chain here called Save-A-Lot. Flipping over the back of the ad, they have 2 liters of knock-off soda listed for .59, and I think never in my history of existance have I seen soda names that are so indicative of the local population. Among a couple of other choices, you have "Mountain Holla", "Bubba", and "Dr. Pop." "Mountain Holla" helpfully has a bright red sun depicted on it, "hollaring".

Yes, hello, American South. I missed you.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush on Friday rejected calls to tax oil companies' record profits, but said he expects those companies to re-invest those profits in alternative fuels and new energy technologies.

"My attitude is that the oil companies need to be mindful that the American people expect them to reinvest their cash flows in such a way that it enhances our energy security," Bush said.

Ah. So, here we are, some-trillion dollars in debt, paying $3.00/gallon for gasoline, and our President thinks that taxing the oil companies, who are making money hand-over-fist, is a bad thing. Yes, because they should just REINVEST their RECORD PROFITS in ALTERNATIVE ENERGY. In other words, give money to the COMPETITION. Yeah, like that's going to happen.

I've officially gotten tired of ogling this man's blatant stupidity. There's only so much contempt I can hold before it grows stale. So he thinks bringing in hundreds of unpaid immigrants from Mexico to work, and getting them to go through a process which would legalize them to work here is new? News, El Presidente: IT'S CALLED IMMIGRATION. He also, apparently, thinks that companies that have lots and lots and lots of profit shouldn't be taxed, probably because those companies are the ones that supported his bid for Presidency and also probably helped fix the results. There's a word for that, too. IT'S CALLED CORRUPTION. Oh boy, big word, I know, more than two syllables. You might want to pass that word off as "American industry", that might not involve use of a dictionary for him. Oh yeah, and then there's that thing about attacking another country and taking it over and installing a new puppet government in the name of liberty and freedom and all those delicious things... but that's a word I won't really bother with here, as it may or may not involve Godwin's law.

So you see, there's really only so much stupidity I can take before my mental processes begin to shut down and I am unable to absorb any more. Seeing as I'm at my limit today, having gone grocery shopping at noon on a Sunday, if you waved an article about how immigrants are planning a nation-wide "strike" so that their brethren may be admitted to the country freely regardless of legality, I would just have a blank stare on my face and not a word would penetrate. I think my greatest problem is that I expect people to be rational and employ even the smallest amount of common sense. If I could just divest myself of these unfortunate shackles, perhaps freedom, true freedom, would ensue. Alas!

So early in the morning, before leaving Canadia, I stopped to get two of my all-time favorite candy bars:

But not really. I'm in Canada right now, visiting Steve. I left after work on Wednesday and arrived Thursday morning, though to be fair, it would have been EARLY Thursday morning if I didn't have problems at the border and be forced to wait.* I did forget that this is Easter weekend, and this area of Ontario being what it is, everything is closed until Saturday.

Also, I've joined a knitting group in Richmond (yes, yes, laugh all you want). This happened, technically, on Monday, when I also coincidentally had my first Cosmopolitan and was trying with assistance of a friend to show another friend how to knit. It was brought up that "we should have a knitting party" and "yes, it would a great excuse to break out the hard liquor." Can you tell which of the priorities is more important?

And my boss gave me the news on Monday, as well, that I am definitely going to do some work-related training in North Carolina in a couple of weeks. I'm pleased about this because I've never really been to North Carolina for any extended period of time, and I'm usually up for travel, most especially since work is footing the bill for it.

Not much else to say, and Steve and I need to drive to Quebec. Expect copious amounts of photographic evidence, seeing as I have a BRAND SHINY NEW CAMERA that Steve got me for Christmas! It's another Kodak EasyShare, but 4.0 megapixel and this one has adjustable shutter speed and all that fun stuff. There is [insert less-than-three symbol here]!

---

*it appears that I was mistaken for the sixth member of a metal band travelling to Ottawa for an unspecified concert at an entirely unspecified venue, and therefore suspect. The fact I was wearing a Pink Floyd tee shirt and grubby jeans and my eyes were bloodshot from being on the road for so long did not seem to help matters (though I'd like to think the absence of the smell of pot-smoke and the inclusion of my Pine fresh deoderant set me apart).

I couldn't find one that I liked, so I opted to make one instead:

There is much love for J. K. Rowling right now...

For Girls Only, Probably...

Being thin. Probably not a subject that you ever expected to read about on this website, but my recent trip to London got me thinking... ( Read more... )

I want to find the biggest sandwich in Richmond. Yes. It has to be huge. Larger than my head. And delicious. A huge, delicious sandwich, preferably with fries or some other hot-baked side. No coleslaw. That's grounds for instant disqualification.

I have a dilemma. My living room has a large brick fireplace, and dividing the walls into upper and lower segments is chair rail. The chair rail looks nice, but is currently a putrescent green against "eggshell" walls (*coughhack*). I want to paint the lower segment of the walls in a cream color ("Belgian Waffle", it's called, which is delicious enough to merit painting the walls with), the trim in white, and then some sort of color in the upper segment of the walls.

My mom had bought a gorgeous brown shade that I chose, but now I'm thinking I want to use that in the kitchen and one of the upper bedrooms instead of the living room, due to the huge built-in brown-stained bookcases, brown brick, and tan-ish carpet, but I'm having trouble deciding. Here's an example of the colors:

Don't you just love spam? Not the meat, but the stuff that comes in your inbox. Like this:

michal - I've been sorrowful with my size lately, what and you. 8:25 pm

It's not the "sorrowful with my size lately" (really - size with what? "God, I'm SO short, WOE WOE!" or maybe "Oh, my feet are too large, it's Chinese foot-binding for me!"), it's the "what and you" that gets me. And then, of course, GMail puts "Ginger Spam Salad" at the top as a clickable link.

Cathie - dont you want to pleaase your girlfriends. 4:25 pm

Because, don't you know, I have so very many girlfriends running around, it's so hard to keep track of how I can pleaase them all!

vfdaksbf - get a large r pen is now 3:29 pm

What.

...

On the upside, far from being sorrowful with my size, I've decided to try the "Savory Spam Primavera" that pops up every so often. After all, you have to give spam a chance sometime.

There was spider in my house.

A big, hairy, mean one that wanted to bite off my toes!

I came home, fully expecting no other furry creatures other than Koke to greet me at the door. Yea, I walked in, took off my coat and draped it over the chair by the door, and as I was leaning back, I came face to face with a large, brown spider.

Spider: "RARRRRR!!!" *jump*

Mel: "EEEEEEK!!!" *flatten oneself against the door, watch as the spider crawls swiftly down the wall and out of sight* *let out a deep breath*

*moment of silence*

Spider: "Ha-HA!" *leaps out from behind the corner, runs at Melya*

Mel: "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-" *throws open the door, runs outside* "EEEEEEEE!!!"

Koke: "???"

Mel: *slams door shut, runs around to the back door, looks around the corner before letting oneself in*

Koke: *coming in from the kitchen* "???"

Me: "Did you see the SIZE of that thing!? It wanted to eat my soul!"

Koke: "???"

Me: *creeps around the house, carefully watching all corners*

*moment of silence*

Spider: "Ha-HA!" *leaps out from the front-door corner, runs at Melya*

Mel: "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-" *runs upstairs* "-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!*

Spider: "I'll get you, my pretty!"

Mel: *grabs Hanes manual* "OMG OMG!" *hyperventilates*

*silence*

Spider: *peeps around the corner*

Mel: *doesn't breathe*

Spider: *maniacal cackle* *runs at Mel*

Mel: "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" *wild swinging with Hanes manual* *thwack!*

Spider: *dead*

Mel: *thwack!*

Spider: *twitch*

Mel: *thwack!*

Spider: *twitchtwitch* *dead*

Mel: *breathes*

Koke: "???"

Mel: *feels a moment of remorse, perhaps he just wanted a hug, after all...*

Spider #2: "YOU KILLED MY FATHER! PREPARE TO DIE!" *runs down the wall*

Mel: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

I like the word "goggles". Also, "gargantuan" and "sibilant". I used the word "edification" today and people looked at me funny. Also, "mendacious" and "servile" made them ask me what words I was making up, or if it was the "word of the day". One person recommended, yesterday, that I keep my vocabulary minimized to three syllables or less, lest their heads implode blow up. I wouldn't want that, therefore so I had better keep my obvious erudition smart-talk to myself. As much as I'd like to say a (lot) more, I had better stop before my verbosity educamation causes expiration via exhaustion my legs to fall off (which is one of the obvious side-effects of having too many brain cells to bang together, I hear).