So here are my top five priorities in life.
1. Prepare for parenthood
2. Get into shape
3. Save money
4. Educate myself daily
5. Maintain healthy marriage
Everything that lies outside of this list are provisional.
8.29.2010
The throes of SOC
Writing about writers block is its only cure. When there's nothing on the mind, almost nothing comes out. But, like slowly sliding up an off light dimmer, you can't start with your brightest material.
So when I feel compelled to write, (which is I'm sure, solely due to some obsessive gyrus in my brain) it usually comes out as nothing particularly interesting. What a shame. And to think that things were getting productive.
Sometimes recording the stream at which things come works. Well, come to think of it, that might become too tedious to edit. Maybe all non-technical writing after the turn of the 19th century is stream of consciousness, and we've just been under its influence for so much time, that we don't even notice? This hypothesis might require a bit more more education on my part to investigate, so I'm not even going to go there currently. Maybe some day I'll begin to understand some of today's authors who do tend to write in with a stream of consciousness. However, I think reading something that's solely SOC gets boring, and drags on after awhile.
With that, I'll Stop.
So when I feel compelled to write, (which is I'm sure, solely due to some obsessive gyrus in my brain) it usually comes out as nothing particularly interesting. What a shame. And to think that things were getting productive.
Sometimes recording the stream at which things come works. Well, come to think of it, that might become too tedious to edit. Maybe all non-technical writing after the turn of the 19th century is stream of consciousness, and we've just been under its influence for so much time, that we don't even notice? This hypothesis might require a bit more more education on my part to investigate, so I'm not even going to go there currently. Maybe some day I'll begin to understand some of today's authors who do tend to write in with a stream of consciousness. However, I think reading something that's solely SOC gets boring, and drags on after awhile.
With that, I'll Stop.
8.25.2010
$23.76
I just got up to pay the delivery man. Of course, this eponymous amount pales in comparison to mow much I've spent on pizza this year. At Papa John's, I've spent around $408.57 (recent transactions after August 13 excluded). At Donato's, $122.17. At Dominos, California Pizza Kitchen, Wolfman Pizza, Cici's, Luigi's Pizza, Pizza Hut, Giorgio's, Hungry Howie's and Carmellas, $192.43. If you suck at math, this all in total, as of August 13, is $723.17. This is what I'm spending on pizza after 2/3 of the year. At this pace, I'll spend another $238.65 on pizza for the rest of the year, which would bring me to a grand total of $961.82 spent on pizza for the year. Of course, this excludes all cash purchases, which I'm sure account for up to 1/4 more.
The bottom line is this: pizza's friggin expensive, and is costing me an arm and a leg to sustain. The pizza I just ordered, is, by the way, still sitting behind me untouched. I'm going to start doing calorie restriction today, beginning with 1500 calories for a week. If I can't sustain this after a week, I'm going to boost the calories by 100 each week to find a good sustainable area in which to work. Of course, there will be exceptions to this plan, such as Oktoberfest and Thanksgiving, but as long as I plan for these, and the number of calories I intake on this day remain insignificant, I should be able to sustain this program.
Since I'm restricting calories, I'm able to eat whatever I want, as long as I don't exceed my allotted calories for the day. This will take discipline and vigilance, but it should help me beat my addictions that seemed to have accumulated over the summer.
More tomorrow on what I should monitor while on calorie restriction.
The bottom line is this: pizza's friggin expensive, and is costing me an arm and a leg to sustain. The pizza I just ordered, is, by the way, still sitting behind me untouched. I'm going to start doing calorie restriction today, beginning with 1500 calories for a week. If I can't sustain this after a week, I'm going to boost the calories by 100 each week to find a good sustainable area in which to work. Of course, there will be exceptions to this plan, such as Oktoberfest and Thanksgiving, but as long as I plan for these, and the number of calories I intake on this day remain insignificant, I should be able to sustain this program.
Since I'm restricting calories, I'm able to eat whatever I want, as long as I don't exceed my allotted calories for the day. This will take discipline and vigilance, but it should help me beat my addictions that seemed to have accumulated over the summer.
More tomorrow on what I should monitor while on calorie restriction.
8.24.2010
Laziness. Pure laziness.
Just got back from vacation. Jetlagged. Having a hard time focusing. Time to readjust.
8.12.2010
Bed Post, vol.
I just fleshed out our plan for the next year of our lives. Thank god it doesn't involve Dominos Pizza at the end of that year. In the next year I should be headed to the Army, like I've been threatening to do for the last year. If that doesn't work, it'ts back to school @ Mizzou. Ah, it feels nice to know where I'm going in life.
8.08.2010
With Apologies to the Wachowski Brothers
I'm sitting here, alone in the dark, wired as Google, with a mind that races like McQueen through an open German field.
I'm visiting a weird state right now, recently all too familiar, which is undoubtedly the product of intaking too much sugar & caffeine at work. I'm bored, but I harbor that nagging spectral thought that prods and pokes me in the direction of anything other than what I'm doing right now. Though my motivation reserves are running critically low, I'm on edge, and feel just below impelled to read something substantive.
8.06.2010
Bed Post, volume (x)
The more I consider my place in the culture war between a multiplicity of dogmatic extremes, I often wonder where the average believer lies. Given the massive bias professed by practitioners of both science and religion, I wonder too, if we'll ever come close to a a functional consensus.
I just finished reading Stephen Jay Gould's essay "Nonoverlapping Magisteria," (Natural History 106, March 1997: 16-22) which offers a more lucid and functional solution to the problem at hand. In the essay, he claims that creationism is a fundamentalist doctrine rooted exclusively in American culture. Due to my own religious upbringing, I tend to side more with Gould than I do with Dawkins. However, I would still categorize myself as a functional atheist. I recognize that the idea of God has social currency and even individual value, but I just can't at this point, live my life as if God is constantly watching me. That is to say, there are no forseeable consequences, in the short or long term, to living a life as if God never existed. Of course I may be wrong, which is why I hedge my religiosity at any given moment as "provisional." I'm sure that as soon as I turn 50 I'll have a crisis of faith as I'm confronted with the increasingly nearing spectre of death; but I'm still young. There's time in my life to consider the potentially eternal conseques of my place on the religious spectrum.
I just finished reading Stephen Jay Gould's essay "Nonoverlapping Magisteria," (Natural History 106, March 1997: 16-22) which offers a more lucid and functional solution to the problem at hand. In the essay, he claims that creationism is a fundamentalist doctrine rooted exclusively in American culture. Due to my own religious upbringing, I tend to side more with Gould than I do with Dawkins. However, I would still categorize myself as a functional atheist. I recognize that the idea of God has social currency and even individual value, but I just can't at this point, live my life as if God is constantly watching me. That is to say, there are no forseeable consequences, in the short or long term, to living a life as if God never existed. Of course I may be wrong, which is why I hedge my religiosity at any given moment as "provisional." I'm sure that as soon as I turn 50 I'll have a crisis of faith as I'm confronted with the increasingly nearing spectre of death; but I'm still young. There's time in my life to consider the potentially eternal conseques of my place on the religious spectrum.
8.05.2010
Open Letter to all Christians, vol. 2
This is another in a series of emails I've been exchanging with two of my favorite creationists, my dad & brother. This one was more of a deflation of what might have been some unnecessary tension that occasionally builds up between my dad & I.
Dad:
I can see that we're on opposite ends of the culture war that's waging out there. I can't say that in the foreseeable future that I'll become a believer. To me, the ideas in the Bible, taken literally, are quite frankly, absurd. However, these ideas taken as a compilation of literature placed in their historical and cultural context work much better for me. I'd like to explain my reasoning, but I'll probably just end up blaspheming the faith that you've plainly worked very hard to construct for yourself.
The resolution to our dialogue is far in the future, but I think by continually communicating original ideas, we'll at least better understand how we arrived at our current, opposing conclusions. I think this is more important than parroting contrary sound bytes back and forth. I'm just as guilty as you are on this. So from now on, let's focus more on what we think, rather than what we expect others for us to think.
Most of my free time is dedicated to science. It's a passion of mine that extends far beyond the blogs and magazines that I read. With this comes with the ideologies and value judgments of scientists, which I'll admit, aren't always god-friendly. A recent poll This is ok to me, though. I no longer feel that these people are deeply offending me like I used to. They're just people with opinions, just like you & I. I think
Eventually, I'd like to become a science teacher, on some level. This affinity for science helps me to understand the world around me, and frees my mind to think about whatever I want to learn about. In my opinion, a reading of biblical text tells me nothing about the beauty of current astronomy, why common homeopathic remedies are a waste of money, the benefits of understanding faults in logical thinking, how & why creationism Intelligent Design, etc are intellectually dishonest. I get all of this from critically evaluating claims that I encounter, including those levied by Christians, or all religious folks, for that matter. I understand if reading the Bible gives one fulfillment or inspiration. Howeverer, I don't get it. The inspiration offered by the text of the Bible, whether it was divinely inspired or not, is limited to the knowledge of men 2000 years ago, and therefore stagnates in the light of fundamental advances in human understanding.
OK, I'll stop. I'm just following the maxim: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This should come with the caveat that extraordinary amounts of time & energy will be spent debating as well.
So with that, I'd like to suspend my side of the arguments for the time being. I have to admit: it's siphoning a good deal of the time and energy that I need to devote to building a healthy marriage and to prepare for the arrival of the Lima Bean. However, feel free to comment. It's not in my interest to permanently silence my biggest ideological opponent. A question comes to mind: what idealogical or religious differences do you have with Pops?
Finally, as a necessary concession to make sense of my biblical upbringing, and to level myself with the great cultural tradition set forth by the Bible, I'm going to start reading God: A Biography. It's been recommended, and should allow me, the biblical layperson, to better understand this ancient text.
I don't remember if I've told you about the term "Lima Bean." If not, it's the provisional name we've been using for her until we pick a real one. Since the baby looked like a lima bean at 9 weeks in the first ultrasound, we've called her that. It's likely to remain a nickname for a good part of her childhood. I've attached the most recent ultrasound photo that was taken last Friday. We had a bit of a scare concerning a blood test that showed elevated AFP (Alpha Fetal Protein) levels, so we had to consult an OB specialist uptown. This usually indicates spina bifida and/or certain genetic defects, but it turned out to be a statistical anomaly. We were just slightly above the cutoff for the average pregnancy, but the specialist told us that it's probably just an idiosyncratic artifact of our particular pregnancy, so nothing to worry about.
I know we talked last week about names, but I couldn't recall the good ones, mostly because I was in the middle of a beer tasting. So now, I give you, in a sober state, our top considerations: Andromeda, Luna, Callista, Lucia. All of them are astronomically object-based Latin sounding names. We're leaning toward Luna June Brewington. June only because it's a big month for Elena & I. I'll spare you the details.
Hope to hear from you soon.
-Derek
PS - I meant to ask you this before: do I have your permission to publish these email exchanges on my blog? I think some of the stuff we're covering is fascinating, and I'm inclined to include snippets of our convos.
Dad:
I can see that we're on opposite ends of the culture war that's waging out there. I can't say that in the foreseeable future that I'll become a believer. To me, the ideas in the Bible, taken literally, are quite frankly, absurd. However, these ideas taken as a compilation of literature placed in their historical and cultural context work much better for me. I'd like to explain my reasoning, but I'll probably just end up blaspheming the faith that you've plainly worked very hard to construct for yourself.
The resolution to our dialogue is far in the future, but I think by continually communicating original ideas, we'll at least better understand how we arrived at our current, opposing conclusions. I think this is more important than parroting contrary sound bytes back and forth. I'm just as guilty as you are on this. So from now on, let's focus more on what we think, rather than what we expect others for us to think.
Most of my free time is dedicated to science. It's a passion of mine that extends far beyond the blogs and magazines that I read. With this comes with the ideologies and value judgments of scientists, which I'll admit, aren't always god-friendly. A recent poll This is ok to me, though. I no longer feel that these people are deeply offending me like I used to. They're just people with opinions, just like you & I. I think
Eventually, I'd like to become a science teacher, on some level. This affinity for science helps me to understand the world around me, and frees my mind to think about whatever I want to learn about. In my opinion, a reading of biblical text tells me nothing about the beauty of current astronomy, why common homeopathic remedies are a waste of money, the benefits of understanding faults in logical thinking, how & why creationism Intelligent Design, etc are intellectually dishonest. I get all of this from critically evaluating claims that I encounter, including those levied by Christians, or all religious folks, for that matter. I understand if reading the Bible gives one fulfillment or inspiration. Howeverer, I don't get it. The inspiration offered by the text of the Bible, whether it was divinely inspired or not, is limited to the knowledge of men 2000 years ago, and therefore stagnates in the light of fundamental advances in human understanding.
OK, I'll stop. I'm just following the maxim: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This should come with the caveat that extraordinary amounts of time & energy will be spent debating as well.
So with that, I'd like to suspend my side of the arguments for the time being. I have to admit: it's siphoning a good deal of the time and energy that I need to devote to building a healthy marriage and to prepare for the arrival of the Lima Bean. However, feel free to comment. It's not in my interest to permanently silence my biggest ideological opponent. A question comes to mind: what idealogical or religious differences do you have with Pops?
Finally, as a necessary concession to make sense of my biblical upbringing, and to level myself with the great cultural tradition set forth by the Bible, I'm going to start reading God: A Biography. It's been recommended, and should allow me, the biblical layperson, to better understand this ancient text.
 |
| Luna (June?) Brewington @ 20 weeks |
I know we talked last week about names, but I couldn't recall the good ones, mostly because I was in the middle of a beer tasting. So now, I give you, in a sober state, our top considerations: Andromeda, Luna, Callista, Lucia. All of them are astronomically object-based Latin sounding names. We're leaning toward Luna June Brewington. June only because it's a big month for Elena & I. I'll spare you the details.
Hope to hear from you soon.
-Derek
PS - I meant to ask you this before: do I have your permission to publish these email exchanges on my blog? I think some of the stuff we're covering is fascinating, and I'm inclined to include snippets of our convos.
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