Christmas: In Retro-spec

So, Christmas time has come and gone. I' have received many presents and I feel the need to chronicle them and my thoughts on them.

• I got some clothes: Not really a clothes person. They are nice, but eh. not my thing.
• Gokusen (badly spelling mangled): Great anime. I recommended to everyone!
• Death Note: Another Good one, Although I only enjoy the 1st half.
• Lost Season 1: A great show! Yea. Not my favorite season, but its good.
• Spore + parts pack: Now I too can mad scientist up my own creatures!
• Fallout 3: Now roaming the wasteland with guns!
• New Phone! It Rocks Socks!
• Idiocracy! Watch This Movie! Now!
• Books 1 - 11 of Wheel of time...  Thats allot of words.

And their is christmas in a nutshell...

of info!

Dragon's Blood

So, tonight we start a new RPG setting with the BESM (Tri-stat) rules. My wife is GMing it and has been writing this setting for most of a month now... It looks good. I figure I can spend some time going over what I know about it, My character and even chronicle what happens in the game. Lets start with the setting.

The planet/continent is named Orotan, and is a single land mass with a massive interconnected water system with a mountain range on the southern side. The home village starts near the west side. The prominent thing about this setting are the dragons. They are Color Coded by abilities and by physical characteristics. The Nearest neighbors to the village (which I cannot remember the name of) are brown dragons, which have primarily physical enchantments. Think magically induced body building. Anyway, while many of the dragons are coded "normally" (white heals, black is toxins and disease) , several are different. In any case, Magic is passed down through to the "lesser" races by interbreeding the dragons with other races. That happened generally hundreds to thousands of years ago and so the majority (99.5-99.75%) of people ( and PC's) have magic simply by having a dragon in the family at some point in the past.

The PC's are all children in the village. And will likely need to leave for one reason or another. First session is tonight, and everyone will have a character by then.

Mine: Ryall

He is a 12 year old boy who suffers from asthma who studies blue magic. He is unaware of having black dragon blood in his history, He thinks he came from the blue dragons. Both colors are pretty well what you would expect. he is proud of his "heritage" and seeks more mastery of the blue element. I'm hoping for him to have massive psychological trauma when he finds out his true nature. We will see. His main attack spell are summoned water elementals that can self destruct, they aren't happy. He still needs more background and more motivation. but there he is.

Next Dragon's Blood: The first session and the introduction of the other PCs.

It's a Holiday Bonanza!

Its Holiday time, And here's whats up!

This week are final preparations for Di and I to get a new RP setting off the ground. She's running it, and I'm just doing the PC thing. We have a party of three right now and it seems to be the perfect size. My character is magical (dragon-blooded, in the setting), and hopefully won't go crazy or anything. Of course, it doesn't help I'm setting him up for failing. Oh, and it is a BESM 2.0 Tri-stat rules grounding, so it should ground out fine. On an (un)related note, I need to get a hold of Chadd again. Punk keeps having to work when I'm not and vice-versa.

We are going to start a new holiday tradition... (mind the oxymoron), Watching 'Santa Claus Conquers the Martins.' As presented by MST3K. Sadly, that title is accurate.

This week is "get ready for the office party at work" week. I get to spend my time being office Goomba (read that: bitch) to get all the supplies. Which really isn't any different from any other day I suppose... Moving on before I realize my job description.

World of Warcraft "Winter's Veil" event is on. Yay! Its more work than I care to put into it for the title, since I have the ambassador title. So, we will se how much I do on it... Still its good to see that the online world is not a static place.

More haikus soon. I promise. No Promise is guarantied or implied. Please call your doctor for promises lasting more than 4 hours. Do not take promise unless advised by a doctor. This gag would be funnier if I could get the text smaller.

Testing Post!!!!?

I want to find out if this post gets moved around the internet enough to make it scary!

Lets wait and see...

Twitter!

So, I am twitting now. I am not sure where it gets to go on what I do here, Namly Randomness. I approve so far anyway. Now, to get up to speed.

• I Voted. Yay! I was going to spam lecture about it, but that is not important any more. since it was a while ago. Thats all on that for a while I think.
• We are getting the house clean like no buddies buisness. I think it's way past due.
• Di is putting an epic BESM RPG together for us to run. It should be most awesome.
• This Bullet intentionally left blank.

Lets see what happens now...

Huh?

I find it odd that I am crafting elaborate song/dance numbers for any given location I'm in.

Example(crossing a street):

Burst out the door, run to the street!

Go into a tight spin while checking for on coming traffic.

Do repeated back flips across street.
All of this is done in sync with whatever song I'm thinking of....

I have no idea what this means either...

Super-Mount and such

Ive been practicing my tanking on the headless horseman's event in WOW right now. As of this writing, the group has farmed him 17 times. We have had all of the rings drop for everyone. We have had magic brooms drop for everyone. twice. We got one pet (the sinister squashling) and 2 hats. One of the horseman's Mount has dropped. It looks like at these rates we will have 12 more days of the event. Which makes it a total of 48 more kills on the horseman. If my math works and the rate We have seen so far remains true:

Both the Squashling and the mount will drop 2.8 more times.
So one or none of us will not have it.
The hat has a doubled that: it will drop 5.6 more times.
We should all get that one.

I would hope that all four of us get:
The Mount
The Pet
The Hat

Everyone has everything else that they can possibly use. So all that is left are those... If my maths right and the drop rates are as I written them down.

I doubt I will get a horse /cry

Supermajority???

So, My boss linked the above opinion article, for all his workers to read. It relates all of the various things a democratic majority government (aside from Supreme Court) will try (and likely accomplish) to pass. I can find the party affiliation of the writer within 2 sentences, 4 at most. Lets look at all these issues, and see if any problems can be found.

Medicare of all - The rest of the world handles this without destroying their economy or their citizens. Why can't the US do that also?
Regulate everything! (The Business climate) - Claiming that regulating industries will slow the economy is kinda silly. Deregulation has led directly to both the Enron collapse and the Wallstreet face-plant.

Union Supremacy - This is a bad idea, agreed. Here in Colorado, however, that has to be voted in by a majority of voters. In any case, people can still write to their senators (regardless of party) and demand that they don't support bill "x." Just because the opposite parties politicians are in office doesn't mean they can't be written to. Write a letter, make a difference.

Taxes - Okay, more taxes. The governments income has to come from somewhere, and taxing the mid-to lowest section of the population is the akin to being anti-Robin Hood. Take from the poor, and leave the rich alone. Not a perfect analogy, But it points out the absurdity of the "trickle down" theory. When the economy needs money, the rich keep their money in savings like everyone else. Taking less from them so they can save more does not make sense. I propose a new idea: Upwelling. It's not about standing under a tree and getting one or two drops of extra, its about the level rising from the base.

Green revolution - Is it really so bad that we try to keep the planet livable for us and future generations? I think so.

Free Speech and Voter Rights - You would deny the District of Columbia the right to vote at congress? They would get one vote in the House at most, plus two more in the senate. You would keep general people from the vote on the day of the election if they still needed to register? You keep people from voting! If the population does not get a vote, then the country is not a democracy. Period. The End.
Special Interest Potpourri - This happened in the last 8 years plenty, so its no a democrat only thing. Also, No Child Left Behind was a failure. I was in my last years of high school when that program started, and it was already called "No Child Gets Ahead" by students. Better we have our education system watered down, and overhauled entirely than have it stay as it is.

The final thought: You have had 8 years with your party in charge of the government to get these things set up right. They failed pretty badly in my eyes. Looks like its another's turn now.

Fantastic Contraptions!

I've been spending some of my lunch time build these gizmos instead of doing my homework. Shame on me. Still, this is a pretty fun game! Woo!

Walkies!

Conve-o-Tank!

Saturn V!

Tank-a-Mat!

Mole-a-mat!

Dispose-a-Mat!

Odd!

Pull-a-Mat!
>I didn't do this one, But man do I wish I had!

Awesome!


edit: I think I am going to make this post an exhaustive list of my contraptions, though I will add new ones in their own post when I want to show them off.

Warcraft time - The Great Tank Debate!*

So, Ive respeced to feral, specifically Dire Bear, when the new patch came out. Since I am planning on doing this throughout the leveling stages of Wrath, now was my first opportunity to try out how druids tank, and to a lesser extent, how tank has changed all of a sudden. One big talent change for bears is how they gain rage. They still gain rage as normal, however they also gain rage by dodging. So it works out to if you hit me, I get angry and smack you. If you try to hit me I also get angry and smack you anyway. It really lets druids tank things with a greater disregard for others gear level.

My friends and I were doing a 3-man instance in ramparts, one of the easier instances. The healer was Tier 6 and the DPS was halfway between tiers 5 and 6 as far as gear goes. My tanking gear is mostly blue quality, with some greens. In Burning Crusade, If I had attempted to tank this same instance with the same group,we would have lost people, wiped out, and generally taken allot of repair bill damage - to our banks. It would not matter how good or bad I am, The difference in gear level is high enough that there is way for me to hold threat from those two. In wrath, or at least the in game patch to ready the game for the expansion. I was holding aggro. From a Warlock and a Shaman healer, both at black temple raids in gear level. My gear level for feral is still early Karazhan. Some might say, well that's their job to let you hold aggro.

Not this warlock. His personal victory is being second highest on the threat meters. And stealing aggro from tanks. I have play DPS throughout most of my Burning Crusade experience, and let me say this: DPS's are not supposed to be doing this. So all you clothie DPS out there: Aggro equals bad, really bad, worse than anything else that could happen. Its a DPS'ers responsibility to keep their aggro under the tanks. When the tank is under geared, you need to lower your DPS itself to follow that, but it is rule #1. Period. The End. and for recap.

DPS Rules:

1. Don't grab aggro from tanks.
2. Don't grab aggro from tanks.

There are more but that is for another time. Suffice to say, I still kept aggro from the Aggro lovin' 'lock and I am amazed at the AOE tanking that Druids get now. Which I hear everyone gets now. Which makes me think that the tanks will be hit by wave after wave of lots of elites in the next patch. Give all classes more opportunity for CC, give all tanks the ability to AOE tank.

I smell being outnumbered 10 to one in wrath. And I'm still excited... Somehow?

*Greatness neither required nor guaranteed. Debating also not promised at this time. Tanking not necessarily mentioned.

All Hail Darwin!

So I was surfing around the internebs, and I found the above article...

I can't quite express how funny this article is. The idea of reversing normal roles and sides of an issue, with the evolutionists at the "this looks like a person stain" and the Religious folks at "its just a stain!" I think this shows the absurdity of both sides. Its not that it is a stain or not, its that people are fighting over a stain, or a sandwich, or what have you.

I just think that if I had a stain of some sort that looked like Darwin or Jesus in my bathroom... I would just think they were stalking me anyway. So there! (insert emoticon sticking out tongue here)

Epic Flyign Mounts!

So on wow, Di, KC and I are all trying to get our epic flying mounts before the expansion hits. We have until November 13th to get it done, and we are hoping it will be sooner than that. First we set up a joint bank for all of us to use. Next, we threw all of our money together to see how much we had as a group. Now, we have enough for Di's mount. She has it and loves it. And we are half-way towards getting Kacey's. Last is mine, by my own suggestion. We need right now about 7000 Gold pieces to get the last of them. So we should have Kacey's by the end of next week and Mine hopefully before Halloween. It looks like the people who have already gotten theirs are acquiring gold faster than the others already. It might not even take that long

I can hope. - Oh and one last Haiku:

For five thousand gold,
I would get an epic flight form.
This is expensive.

Lizards

I think its pretty awesome t osee my lizards exuviate its skin.

Yay! New words that sound awesome!

WAR, Not Wow I

So, I have been thinking on the whole Wow vs War thing. I find I don't have the time or money for both, and I find that I don't have the energy for both. Strictly speaking, it is not a compossible thing for me.

So, War is brand new, it is pretty awesome as far as beta's went. I had a Warrior priest who kicked more ass than was handy even. One would even say he could vaticinate the end of his enemies. But, I still need to purchase the new game. and all the people I tend to dislike on MMO's are all flooding to War, from wow because its a new game and the new Wow expansion isn't coming out for another month and a half. So I think right now, I'm going to play some Wow, and get all of those things I never could before the next expansion hits. Like my epic flight form. and level all of my secondary skills. and the like.

So, when the expansion hits I can just grind out 70 to 80 with just the new skill points and I don't have to worry about any new mounts or anything. then maybe a Death-knight. Its a shame I cannot play a game I like as much or more because no one else does though. Anyway, I hope I'm not Embrangling anyone with my confusing new vocabulary. (just FYI it is all real words! Woo!)

Why not?

I guess that I really am different from most other people.

I was driving around today on work business, listening to of all things: NPR. Who knew? Oddly enough, it gives me time to listen to national and world news affairs when I would otherwise be listening to terrible* music. I find it to be pretty neutral as far as bias goes and It even seems to keep the news distinct, if monotone. The broadcast topic was all on a bunch of American Clergy on Sunday all Speaking politics from their pulpits. The IRS wants to take away their Tax-exempt status because they are "going from a religious group to a political group." These churches did this as peaceful protest to The very thing the IRS did. To be fair, the different churches involved all had different messages, including supporting both major candidates. The issue is not who the churches support, its that they support anyone at all.

The churches are claiming two things gives them the right, nay, the responsibility to preach politics from the pulpit. 1st, Freedom of speech, one of those things that is both massively important and ridiculously insane to do at the same time. There is such a fine line between speech that is free and speech that is destructive. No one can draw it. The promise that anyone can say anything and not be arrested for it. I miss those days. The other thing giving them this "duty" is "separation of church and state" They claim it was put in the 1st amendment to protect the religion from government. That the government cannot do anything to harm a religion. So they cannot tax them for speaking about politics. Right?

Well, lets post that troublesome first amendment and then talk all about how awesome it is: (From www.usconstitution.net a fairly useful site!)

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified
12/15/1791. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition
the Government for a redress of
grievances.

So, the government cannot support or prohibit any religion. The government will leave your religion alone. You have to leave the government alone though. Why, it doesn't say that, does it? It does. By having a religion try to put a specific candidate into office, you are effectively trying to set our government up to follow your religion, which it cannot do. This is why we set up recognized religions as Tax-exempt. We don't touch them, they don't touch us.

And of Freedom of Speech? It is also guaranteed by the first amendment. I lets me state any opinion, as long As I can declare it first. For instance, In my opinion, President Bush is a doodie-head.** Nothing being said there is treason, and opinions are what is being protected against. So, that allows priests, holy men and more to state their personal opinion. They can do that.

The combination of the two is the crux of the issue. If a church priest says "I support candidate X," then he is stating his opinion and it is no big deal. If a church priest has the church itself say "We (the Church) support candidate X, and so should you," That church is no longer in safe first amendment territory. They didn't leave the government alone. Why? Well, to start, any person or organization can give up any rights they have at any time. A confession of a crime is an acknowledgement that the confessed is giving up their 5Th amendment rights. If I said something that committed treason, like speaking secrets to an enemy, then I could have my stupid butt arrested for saying it.

So, when a church gives up its rights to be ignored by the government by preaching politics from pulpits, The Government is well within its rights to do anything to the church. They could tax them, charge them with crimes (even relating to being religious!) and more. The government gets free reign over the churches rights to free speech and religion. So, churches out there: please keep your religion out of my government. Thank you. Feel free to as citizens of the US, support candidate X, but not in churches. Cause, then you give the government free rein on your rights. And never give up your rights. Ever.

* - I think its not bad personally, but others would disagree.

** - My opinion really is that President Bush is a Doodie-head.

To WoW the WaR, Of personal choice

I've been spending more time on World of Warcraft than I strictly should. I just recently got back into it as far as an active interest. I had been taking a break, though not as much of a break as much as not enough time to play to do anything on it. Where I am currently is, I have one level 70 main on my main server. She ( yes, she. I'll explain later) is a Balance specced Druid. I'm leaving behind the beginning sections of the endgame and starting to move into the middle ones. These sections are Raiding instances, specifically Tier 5 content and Zula'man. Its a place about only 20 to 30 percent of any server get to, But most servers are large enough that it translates to several thousands of players on each.

Balance druids are kind of rare at this level. Mostly it is because Blizzard has designed the class to be not as effective as others with the same role. The big Range DPS's are mages, warlocks, and hunters. the lower range DPS classes are priests and shamans The lowest Range DPS are druids. That blizzard did this is perfectly fine. If one class gets to powerful the other classes will never get played. Hunters, Mages and Warlocks All do one thing: damage, and allot of it. They also can crowd control. Priests and shamans are more healing classes; they lose damage powers for healing powers. But if Specced out right, they are still pretty good. They also have area benefits to those who are in their group. Finally, we get to Druids. They have about half the dps of any of the top tier. Even specced balance they can do fairly decent off healing, they have a unique in battle Resurrection, that no other class has. They have a fairly good area affect for those around them.

So why the rarity. Mostly, because people cannot go to big raids as a balance druid. Reasons why:
1. They don't put out the DPS.
2. They don't have an effective crowd control.
3. They are under geared for the raid.

Well, this looks like 1 and 2 are blizzards doing. which is true. Blizzard has decided to "fix number 2" by giving an ability the druids already have that is related though unusable inside, the ability to be used indoors. So one down, two to go. The first one, Blizzard looks like they are possibly changing. Not sure right now, as they are adding a new expansion, we do not know yet how much extra damage each will be able to do.

So, number 3. Low gear. This at first looks like a player problem. "If your gear is low-leveled then you need to fix it". that is not actually the case. You see, most pieces of armor regardless of type (cloth, leather, mail, plate) can be firmly attached to one class for who it goes best with. Arguably the best magic dps classes are mages and warlocks, both of which use cloth. Balance druids can use leather. Simply put, Blizzard does not put out enough leather magic damage gear to let druids have leather as an option. So, balance druids need to take mage and warlock gear.

Now we are taking not only their spots but the gear from the ones who are left. As well as having no crowd control and low dps to boot. And we wonder why no one wants to take us to raids. Now, most raid groups hand out new gear on a system called DKP. It works out so that the main raiders get the first choice on any gear they can use. Its a good system, unless you are unable to do many raids within a group, or worse (like a druid) you are not allowed to go often. So you finally go, because they happen to have an extra slot. You get no gear because the main raiders still have priority. Your priority goes up slowly yes, but every week you don't raid you lose a percentage of it. If they don't let you go on raid because of those 3 points, then any priority you gained by luck goes away. Fast. So not enough gear means no entrance to raids, which means no gear. lovely circular logic.

Now this was going to be my thought between two games I am interested in playing right now, though I don't have much time. I was going to make this a post on my thoughts on 2 games I want to play and come to a decision on which one. Make this a two-part thing and I think I can do it.

Next up: Warhammer, Age of Reckoning and the pros and cons of that. plus hopefully my choice on the matter.

Act like a Time Traveller Day!!!!!

So, on 12/8/8 there is going to be an event like no other... act like a time traveler day!

I am hoping I can find something I can do to have fun with this. Maybe I can get something going on at the school or something. I think I could bring it up to the Film club, they'd love this

Portal Quasi-Sequal-Prequal thingy!

I found this site above that has a story mode for portal. It looks like it has 3 and a half more hours of portaly puzzle goodness. The down side is both small and huge at the same time. No GLaDOS. And as much fun as these might be, ( as I haven't played them yet), They will not be the same without her. They are being released on PS3 and Xbox 360 titled Portal: Still Alive. This explaines it better than I could ever hope to, but in the end. there is more portal, just no more GLaDOS.

Anyway, I'm going to spend some time I should be sending somewhere else on this thingy instead !

Woo Portal!

Self-Referencing Good Essays

What makes a good essay? Does it have a certain number of paragraphs? Is it structured or is it not structured at all? At least does it have an interesting Intro and conclusion? Most definitely, one would argue. In any case it does have to do one thing; it has to attempt to explain.

First and foremost, it must have a good beginning and a good end. The beginning is essential to grab the reader’s attention. It must shout at them, “Read Me Now!” it makes the reader want to read more. The good ending is also paramount. It needs a conclusion to effectively close out the paper. Some might say that conclusions need to borrow material from the introduction in order to truly succeed. However, if it does it must not repeat it. To repeat the introduction would seem almost more like restarting the paper than ending the current one. Oddly enough, these parts of the essay should be written last.

Next, one must have the rest of the essay. This is a fairly complex bit of writing compacted down to one statement. The rest of the essay is composed of Paragraphs logically ordered, with convincing transitions included in the front or back of each so as to link the essay together internally. This seemingly then, should be written first. This brings up the point of attempt. One cannot write an essay on just anything. One can write for sure, but an essay should be made of sterner stuff. Never write what is simple enough that it needs no explanation. Only write what needs to be said. What is a good essay? Only the reader knows.

Haikus abound!

Its getting kinda heavy and meaningful here... So here's some haiku!

I traveled miles,
with my feet inside your shoes.
You are barefooted.

Found my shirt today.
It smells of oil, fuel, and paint.
Now I'm lightheaded.

When out on the road,
Do order a cheeseburger.
It won't disappoint.

That's all for now. Woo! Haiku!
edit - I edited the Haiku to make them more fit the syllable requirements. Because I'm horrible at Syllables. Expect more changes later when I learn them better.

I pulled, I prodded, I yanked from the earth

This is an essay I wrote as part of my writing class. Its here because I feel like it.

I spent the morning pulling up weeds at my job. It’s not part of my normal job; one of my coworkers had slacked on his responsibilities. It amounted to his spraying weed killer on them, and later coming by and pulling the dead weeds out. Which was done sporadically at best. So I pulled weeds. I hacked at the larger ones with a hoe. I grabbed the ones that had rolled off like tumbleweeds, the weeds that had been sprayed. I came home with a broken blister on my hand, and sore thumbs like video games had never known.

I saw many different plants that day. Some were tumbleweeds, as tall as I was. They had rolled up on the fence, held up from the old-west showdown that they were late for. I was sure a lot more got away, as they had stacked 6 feet to the top of the fence. The live ones resisted my pull, desisting and rejecting human intervention. Some were wide, some were thorny, and several were even thin and narrow. However, all the plants were tall. Most as tall as my shoulders, they were.

Also removed was a tree. It was near the fence as well it was small and only 5 or 6 years old. The company was going to be putting down asphalt to better maintain its yard. The tree had to go. It was already close enough to the fence to start growing into it. We cut the plant limbs that were growing through the fence, so we could pull it out. Then they pulled in the crane they have. All the while I sat and watched, wondering why they need to pull out the tree. After the steel hooks found purchase the crane struggled briefly. With a heart-wrenching tear, the tree came free of the earth.

I look at where the tree was even now. It has a piece of wood still attached to the fence, where the young tree stands no more. I wonder who should have privilege over there. Do the “weeds” and trees that do nothing to the outside world have precedence, or the men who use the land to store merchandise and equipment? Who are we to say what lives and what dies? These men could not say what all man-made is there; it looks like a junkyard. Nature is gone, replaced with a junkyard. Today, I was weeding at work. I pulled, I prodded, and I yanked from the ground. What was once a jungle of weeds is now a jungle of steel. What is better; A plot of plants, now overgrown; or perhaps a layer of junk, rusted red with age? I toiled and worked, pulled nature from not. I wondered: will nature be back? Will it cover the junk? Why do we need it except to keep it “humane”?

Evolutionists, Creationists, and Spore! Oh My!

This thing started when a die-hard creationist started a blog to denounce Spore to the world. I had intended this originally a response to her main points about how evolution is wrong. I went over it at length somewhere else, suffice to say this is a separate entity.

Intelligent design in Christianity is founded on two basic principles. Some power (god) created the universe and All of the animals at the same time. Since his design was perfect, they haven't changed since. So, 6000 B.C. cheetahs, and skunks, and polar bears all came into being within a one day period. The requirement for this system of ecosystems is belief in the Intelligent Power that did it all. The Church logic behind this is:

God exists because the Bible says He does.
The Bible is correct because it was divinely inspired.
Therefore, God exists.

Meanwhile, the theory of evolution works allot differently. The concept arises from the term natural selection. Natural selection happens when a generation passes down good traits to their offspring and don't pass down bad traits. For instance, two male wolves are hunting separate prey. One happens to have longer legs, to run faster with. He catches the deer he's after, and successfully breeds a new generation. The other wolf has short legs and cannot catch the deer he chases. This wolf dies without ever reproducing.

If the population consists of only short and long legged wolves, over time the long legged wolves will become the more prominent part of the species. eventually the differences between long legged and short legged wolves will be enough to warrant calling them different species. At this point when one species becomes two, do we consider them evolved from the original one. The main part is that evolution is measured in generations, not in time.

Proof of evolution is found several places. Neighboring species, fossil records, genetic records. Proof is not in a book, but in something that cannot influenced by human hands.

So, we have our competing theories. Lets check, at first glance they do seem contrary. One is orderly and perfectly maintained. The other seems random at best and chaotic at worst. One sets the age of the planet as much older than the other. One is completely ridiculous, while the other is true.

Really? Is one true and one false? My personal beliefs being what they are, I cannot simply agree with Intelligent design. however, I will not just say the theory is bunk either. Back to that logical train of thought, there is a problem with it. Its circular logic. Logical sequences can only work if the pattern works with all possible outcomes, which circular logic fails at quite spectacularly. Now, one can say that its impossible to combine those theories.

God made all creatures the way they are in the present day.
God made all creatures perfectly.
Evolution changes creatures over time.
Creatures that are perfect don't change.
Evolution Exists.

The logical conclusion is that if evolution exists God cannot. This is based on the circular argument in that god exists because the Bible says so, and that the bible is perfectly accurate because God divinely inspired it that way. To simplify:

Evolution says creatures change.
The Bible says creatures don't change.
If the bible is wrong then it is not divinely inspired.
Therefore God cannot exist.

Here is the crux of the issue. The easy fix would be to say the bible was wrong on how, but that God still did this "through" evolution. that he uses it as His tool. I expect that this "fix" would just make people mad though. It doesn't really solve anything. It just lets the evolutionists win without a struggle.

The place to make the change is proving the existence of God. All of these philosophers over the last 2000 years have struggled to prove God exists. And their one triumph in that regard is the circular logic above. But as much as it cannot prove that He exists, it also cannot prove he doesn't exist. That is why its an invalid argument, it cannot do anything for either side. Its impossible to prove that God exists. Its similarly impossible to prove that he does not exist. Science doesn't test a principle to prove it. Science does experiments to Disprove the theories and the ideas.

Anything that you disprove is not true. If you cannot disprove it, then it is true. Notice you can keep testing, but you cannot prove anything. You can only get the list of possible causes smaller and smaller. Its not that evolution can be proven, its that it cannot be disproved. Its not that God can be disproved, its that the Bible can.

Imagine trying to explain evolution to a gorilla who knows sign language. You teach it the language perfectly, and you can even hold small conversations with it. The current Intelligent design theory might well be the results of how the gorilla best understands the concept. It might only be able to understand "A long time ago, I (God) made everything."

This is where Spore comes in. It is a game where you guide a species from the evolutionary beginning of a single cell through the space age. The player takes the place of God. and then uses the tools inside that system of evolution to plan their planet.

In the end, I still don't believe God exists. But that doesn't stop the possibility that He doesn't.

Welcome Back!

I'm still working on that evolution essay. But thats for another time. For now its time to play "Here's what I'm doing now!"

In the 2 years since my last post, Big changes have been afoot. I'm back in school. I'm still in a physics related science major except I'm at Red Rocks Community College. I'm also running a Warhammer Club there. I've grown up some, I've become more politicaly aware. I've worked my head around my spiritual beliefs. I spent alot of time online with friends, jumped through some differant Online games, and am about to start one that I've been waiting for since that last post in 2006. My work responsibility has multiplied ten-fold. I still have to wash the bosses SUV. Within the last two weeks I have gotten an itch to read poetry, still not sure why. I still don't drink much. Maybe once a month, So thats a good thing I guess. I spent time with family I ahven't seen since 2005 even.

So, thats me right now. Hi, how you doing?

Some days, it takes forever to get anywhere.

I spent a good deal of time this morning reading a blog denouncing Spore (a video game based around the concepts of evolution) in favor of intelligent design. In my head, I was halfway through writing an email response before I remembered this very blog. So I started to revive my blog, all the while still forming this response. It was going to be great. I was going to point out the logical flaws in their arguments, point out possible reasons why evolution could be in fact, intelligent design. Most of all, I was going to be polite, nice, and honest. I figured that, after taking half a glance at the comments in the blog itself, that someone should enter the argument on Spore's side who's not making themselves look like a hooting dickhead.

Then I saw her defend herself and viciously attack Will Wright in a single hour. Her focus had changed from warning people about something she didn't like to practically call herself a martyr.

I'm not going to bother with an essay or arguments with her, because she's no longer on the playing field she was when she started, but I am.

All that being said, I still have half an essay done in my head. I'm going to finish it, and post it here. But it now for me to display my views on Intelligent design, Evolution, God, and maybe something else. But I don't need to tell hatemongers my opinions, especially when they don't listen anyway.