My personal glimpse into the first half of the 21st Century for some yet to be known future
Monday, March 14, 2005
Big 2001 Vacation: Part 2: 11/10/01-11/12/01
Carol-Ann is an interesting person. She’s Ronie’s Mother, and I can see the similarities. Carol-Ann worries a bit more than Ronie though. We left on a trip to Reno for a comped stay, at Harrid’s.
I gambled, and lost for 2 days. Not bad for a beginner. Carol-Ann played the slots constantly, going up and down on winnings and losses. She had a great time. I had a good time on slots and then blow my limited winnings and everything else on Blackjack and Roulette. I think I[‘m] finally starting to figure [out Roulette]. (of course that’s a joke). {Actually, I did start to understand how to play Roulette effectively. Since then, I usually leave the Roulette table nearly breaking even, if not actually winning.} Carol-Ann was worried that we would get snowed in, but we didn’t of course.
We saw three shows. [We saw a]n adorable fashion show from Macy’s by Harrids employees. The kids stole the show. We saw an adult review. We sat close enough to be under the dancers’ high kicks. The Gordie Brown show was funny, and fun.
Guess what, we didn’t get snowed in, but had we stayed longer, we would’ve.
{An other thing I remember was at the Blackjack tables where the dealers were getting upset at me cuz I was playing so very poorly. I guess they felt I was screwing everyone else up too.}
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Big 2001 vacation, Part 1: Introduction
I'm starting a new, short series of entries transcribed from my preblog
Travel Diary of my vacation of Nov 2001. No single event from this
vacation was life altering, but the trip on whole acted as a catalyst to
open the door for my spiritual enlightment. That sounds like an
overstatement, but it's not. Weird that upon reading these transcriptions,
I don't think you will see the transformation. I know I don't. I just
know how I was before, how I am now, and that this trip occurred at the
crossroads. Maybe Hawaii cleansed my spirit of most of its negativity.
Maybe the trip simply allowed me the excuse to let the last bits of the
younger me go.
Oddly, the first stop on this trip is Reno, NV.
...
___
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Thursday, March 10, 2005
Week wasn't so bad
Then, finally on Tues, my g/f was back in town. FINALLY! I missed her. :p I'll be able to see almost everyone again this weekend for my belated b/d gathering. It's shaping up to be a diverse and fun crowd!
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Hunger
Monday, March 07, 2005
Intelligent Design
It’s funny that fundamentalist put so much effort into trashing the Theory of Evolution. In the past, the only alternative that has been offered is the first two chapters of Genesis. Of course, the first two chapters of Genesis have two completely separate and contradictory creation myths. Fundamentalist try to pretend it’s one story, but is a sticky point that is often used to catch them in their lies (that is, taking only parts of the bible completely literally and ignoring or explaining away sections that contradict their beliefs).
So, Intelligent Design is invited. Intelligent Design attempts to prove that a creator must be the explanation for life on Earth, and its diversity, without making direct reference to the bible or a god. Intelligent Design promoters have come up with all kinds of trick formulae, mental exercises, and baseless assumptions in the effort to build up a body of support for their ideas. However, the biggest point that makes Intelligent Design nearly useless is that its promoters don’t use the scientific method to falsify hypotheses. It is not enough to say that one has evidence for a hypothesis. One must also try to find evidence that contradicts their hypothesis. Absolutely no one that is out promoting Intelligent Design has done that.
In my opinion, the people promoting Intelligent Design don’t care whether or not they are speaking truth. They are spurred on by money, taking advantage of the ignorant masses seeking a remedy to the contradiction between the bible and reality. Basically, Intelligent Design promoters are snake-oil-salesmen, pushing a do-nothing product on unsuspecting people.
In science, it is usually healthy to have opposing views battling out the facts until the truth is discovered. The 20th Century’s great example of this battle was between Big Bang Theory and Steady State Theory. Of course, the Big Bang Theory evidential won the day, but not before Steady State Theory studies had an impact on our understanding of the Universe. Steady State supporters made several important discoveries. Ultimately these discoveries ended up providing further proof for the Big Bang Theory, but without opposing views driving research, it may have taken much longer to understand our visible Universe.
Here’s my challenge to Intelligent Design promoters. Stop selling snail-oil and start taking science seriously. Only then is it possible that their contributions will play and important role in our understanding of the origin of species. Until that unlikely day, there is no practical use for Intelligent Design. Using the scientific method to study nature as it is (and not just how we want it to be) provides endless insights and benefits to everyone. The Theory of Evolution is practical science that is playing a role in making new discoveries. Intelligent Design provides no insights or benefits into anything because it ends the search for further discovery.
**Update 9/23/2013: I stand justified of my opinion according to this recent article: Discovery Institute is a con-profit scam.**
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Friday, February 25, 2005
Movies this Year I wanna see (as of right now)
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith [May]
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [April]
Batman Begins [June]
Million Dollar Baby
Kingdom of Heaven [May]
War of the Worlds [June]
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory [July]
Sin City [April]
Pink Panther [Sept]
The Aviator
A Scanner Darkly [Sept]
Fantastic Four [July]
I've recently seen Hitch. It's counts as a chick-flick, but it's actually pretty damn entertaining for us guys too. If anything, I've learned a few dance moves from the movie ::doin the q-tip:: lol
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
I'm finally well
Monday, February 21, 2005
It hits me
My hearts doing a little aching right now. Sometimes it hits me, I miss Bevie. Of course, looking through old artifacts tends to be a catalyst for memories. I miss her love. I miss being able to give her my love. I miss her.
Knarly Flu
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
V-DAy weekEND and nOw
Anyways, the whole weekend, it just felt like we were in the right place at the right time the whole time. :)
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Pacifica Trip
February 12-13, 2005 with Alice Leung, visited Pacifica CA, San Francisco, CA and San Francisco Zoo. (Original post/backup link)
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Cobb County, Georgia umm, theory = fact
Every neutral observation of that label is true, save one: "Evolution is a theory, not a fact..." I'm not sure what ignorant idiot thought this was a smart statement, but whoever it was doesn't know the scientific definition of the word theory. This statement is a contradiction.
Theory - the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art (Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary)
Basically, when a scientist uses the word theory, that person is discussing fact or truth as proven repeatably and predictably by the scientific method (i.e., theory = fact). Technically, any high school graduate should know this. Certainly, the teachers and schools themselves do know this. Any member of any school district board is supposed to know this, especially if they making decisions regarding curriculum.
There's a reason why 70% of all Fundamentalist Christians that go to college leave their fundamentalism behind by the time they graduate! Education makes them smarter. lol My hypothesis is that the 30% that hold on to their beliefs may tend to be business grads. hehe Either way, there is no way to reconcile fundamentalism (of any religion) with reality.
Saturday, February 05, 2005
251 guys kissing
We found an old aquaintance, Darr, there with is friends at the bar. After some more drinking, I noticed two of Darr's guy buddies being a bit too close for a bit too long. Nothing sexual, just strange for two guys. So I'm all, "I get each of you guys two drinks each if you two kiss, like full on." I punctuated "two drinks" with the peace hand gesture and stressed tone for dramatic effect.
I have this strange ability to read situations without thinking about them that lead to pretty entertaining results. Last night was no exception.
Ok, so everyone starts up with the peer pressure. Miriam was like the ring leader and became the unofficial judge of what constituted a qualifying kiss.
Finally, Darr's two friends embrace each other, then break away. More peer pressure. The one guy grabs his buddy and moves in, then they crack up and break away again. So, again more "encouragement". Finally he grabs his buddy, moves in and pulls him into his arms and dips and moves him around, simulating a kiss. Miriam was not fooled.
After calling them on their fake kiss and some more encouragement, they move in on each other, pressing lip to lip in an impressive display of homosexuality that got as far as supple lip biting. I'm afraid the image of those two guys kissing and lip biting will forever be burned into my memory as pushishment for bringing up the idea. Oh the horror of it allll. LOL Anyways, the bartender was so impressed, she covered their drinks instead.
"Darr, you can never let these two live this down," I demand. He's all, "Don't worry, I'm not going to let them forget."
Ahh, fun times.
P.S., on a side note, Darr's date (the only female in his group) was giving date-like attention to another guy in the group. The odd thang was that she was kinda cute and the other guy was a bit of a hobbit. Very strange, especially since she didn't seem very interested in any of them. (As in, she was shooting looks to other guys.)
———
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Friday, February 04, 2005
Lack of Pagan Profanity
Here's a good prose on pagan profanity (more to the point, the absence of pagan profanity)
His view is that pagans have no reason to profane because profanity deals with religion, sex and shit in ways that are irrelevant to his beliefs. For example, he can't damn someone to hell because there is no hell and no devil to send them to.
My take on it is a bit different. Right, there is not hell or devil, so who the hell cares if I call on a god to damn something. LOL Anyways, check it out.
Church Orgie Sign
http://fcsuper.blogspot.com/2004/09/woohoo.html
Aux personnes recherchant la photographie d'orgie de signe d'église, vous pouvez la trouver en cliquant sur la section de "Blog-Entries-By-Topic" (Blog-Entrée-Par-Matière) dans la colonne gauche, et recherchez la "Photo-Blog". C'est entrée "Church-sponsered-orgies". Ou vous pouvez cliquer ce lien :
http://fcsuper.blogspot.com/2004/09/woohoo.html
The reason I'm posting this is that I've noticed a steady stream of hits from people looking for that photo but not finding it because of the way that Yahoo! image search works. Have fun! (In both French and English ::curious look::)
La raison que je signale ceci est que j'ai noté un jet régulier des coups des personnes recherchant cette photo mais ne la trouvant pas en raison de la manière dont Yahoo ! travaux de recherche d'image. Ayez l'amusement ! (dans le regard français et anglais de ::curious::)
Rocky
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Winchester Mystery House
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Learning to Ski
Friday, January 28, 2005
Tahoe ski trip
January 28-30, 2005 with Alice Leung, Miriam Erlichman and David Erlichman, visiting Northstar at South Lake Tahoe, CA. This was my first and prolly last time skiing for me. (Original post/backup link)
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
U.S. Press is so Politically Comprised
The American Press is so politically comprised that even some small, meaningless stories are politically skewed to put the President in as good of light as possible. At the inauguration, Bush Jr. and his family openly flashed the "Hook 'em horns" gesture several times. Well, that gesture just to happens to be exactly the same as the "Satanic Salute". So, basically, the President of the U.S.A looks like he's saluting the devil.
Simple enough, right? Well, apparently not. The AP put out a story reporting on a supposed Norwegian reaction to the President's gesture. First of all, I did some research and found out that this "Norwegian reaction" is based on an article from a Norwegian tabloid, not a creditable newspaper. Since when is it proper to use a tabloid to gauge an entire country's response? Suspicious.
So, the AP article says about the "Satanic Salute" interpretation, "That's what it means in the Nordics when you throw up the right hand with the index and pinky fingers raised, a gesture popular among heavy metal groups and their fans in the region." No, that's what it means everywhere in all of modern Western Civilization!
For some reason, the AP felt it is necessary to make the "Satanic Salute" interpretation of Bush's gesture seem like it was unusual and foreign, while trying to make the "Hook 'em horns" interpretation seem normal and common. In fact, the "Hook 'em horns" interpretation is actually the oddball. It's just screwy for the President to be making that gesture at all.
The AP article tries to cover over the fact that the "Satanic Salute" is the most likely interpretation of Bush's gesture, when seen out of context, by coming up with this ridiculous Norwegian angle to the story
If the AP was truly making an unbiased report, they would've simply stated that the gesture was meant to be the “Hook ‘em horns” and not the "Satanic Salute," without all this nonsense about Norway.
Monday, January 24, 2005
Missed Concert and Skiing soon
My best friend Dave is planning another trip to the mountains for some skiing next weekend. I think my g/f and I will make this next trip. Dave and company had a cabin this last weekend, but with the Chicago play and Nate’s Concert and a few other personal chores and errands, it didn’t work out for us to join them.
Friday, January 21, 2005
Granted, housing prices did need to come up over the past decade to come in line with higher building costs. Now the housing prices have covered that many times over. There are townhouses now going for 700K. At this rate, they will be a million in a few years. Of course, I could just buy up a bunch older homes in an ok area of town, tear them down and build several million dollar townhomes on their lots for millions of dollars profit. Hmm. Then I keep thinking, what goes up must come down (excluding normal inflation, of course).
Thursday, January 20, 2005
I guess I'm not sick...
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Dream: Queen Reborn
And then there is big brother
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Chicago Live!
Monday, January 17, 2005
When I became a Christian
That is why for almost all Christian Fundamentalists, using this phrase is an intentional twofold lie.
Friday, January 14, 2005
Travel to the Present with Me
However, if I'm misunderstanding you, please enlighten me.
fcsuper link whore
Painfullycool - Not Me
Strange Cousin Susan
My Two Sen
Just Beneath the Surface
A New York Escorts Confessions
Just Call Me Naughty
Way Too Many Unruly Oranges
The Degenerate Speaks
Please let me know if It's Trouble appears on a blog not mentioned above. I'd like to have a complete a list. (I know of two other blogs where Its Trouble is listed, but they are inactive sites, so I'm not bothering to mention those.) I'd like to have a complete list cuz I'm considering the idea of having a blog roll of my favorite posts each month from blogs that backblog It's Trouble.
Federal Sentencing Guidelines Struck Down
There is one problem with the Supreme Court’s decision. The Supreme Court chickened out by determining that the system should be used as a recommendation for sentencing of criminals. This cop-out is due in part to the fact that several of the current members of the U.S. Supreme Court helped draft the unconstitutional system 20 years ago and they are still partial to it. Even with the abolishment of its mandatory nature, the continued use of the Federal Guidelines still undermines the Constitution. However, the overall decision by the Supreme Court is at least a step in the right direction.
I fear that the real lesson to be learned here is going to be lost on the politicians who are now scrambling to patchwork a congressional response to this groundbreaking decision. The real lesson is this, the U.S.A. should have a standard sentencing system for criminals, but that system should not use accusations and evidence that hasn’t been tried before a court, or been thrown out of court. All facets of sentencing should directly derive from facts presented at trial.
My hope for this country is that the Supreme Court will be more centralist and politically neutral at some point, allowing them to make untethered decisions that hold the Constitutional higher than extreme leftist and neo-conservative ideologies.
Problem with being a centralist is that I’ll prolly never be happy with anyone in power. My best hope is that the left and right are equally struggling against other. More equal and intense the struggle, the less likely our Government is going to be used to infringe on the rights of any persons protected by the U.S. Constitution. Right now, we are way out of balance.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Trouble with KFC Popcorn Chicken
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Life is like Wine?
With wine, I don't constantly seek out a new or deeper understanding of it. I experience it at the various appropriate times in context with meals, trips to Wine Country, gifts from friends, holidays, etc, and I learn about wine from those experiences. The more I partake of wine, the more I taste its complexity, the more I appreciate it and the more relevant it becomes. That pretty much parallels how I learn from my life. The longer I live, the more details I can see, the greater my experience and the better my understanding.
Monday, January 10, 2005
Causativity of Time Travel
So, if time exists, why is it only possible to travel forward in time as a certain rate? Why do we have memories of the past, but are unable to remember our future? These are common questions during discussions regarding time travel. We ask these questions because we perceive Time as linear. Maybe this is a false interpretation of our perception? In fact, we don’t experience time as a line with the Past in one direction and the Future in the other. We experience Time at a single point, the Present.
Problems with Linear Time
Time travel into the Past allows two violations of well proven laws and principles. First, it allows for an effect without a cause. For example, you could go back in time and prevent your own birth. However, if you prevented your own birth, how did you exist in order to go back in time? Second, time travel into the past allows for the creation of a perpetual motion machine through time by various means. Of course, such self sustaining system is a violation of the Laws of Thermodynamics.
Problems with Time Travel regardless of the nature of Time
Another problem with Time Travel to the Past is that the entire Universe is relative. Any action from one frame of reference is only applicable to that frame of reference. If an object could go back in time, that object would only be travelling within its own frame of reference. The Universe around the object wouldn’t change. Even worse, if you had a time machine that allowed time travel within one’s own frame of reference and you tried to make a person go back in their own Time, that person wouldn't get younger in the human sense, but only in the quantum sense. In other words, if the person went into your time machine at the age of 50, they would re-appear still a 50 year old afterwards. Only the person's atoms would've grown younger, not the person themself. This is because the placement of that person’s atoms in space (i.e., within a facial skin winkle) is irrelevant to the atoms’ place in Time (a facial skin winkle is still a winkle regardless of the quantum date of the atoms that make up the winkle).
Even without this little problem, in a relative Universe, the only way to travel back into the Universe’s Past is to make the entire Universe travel back in time, while only you stay in the present. Such a feat would require more energy than what currently exists in the Universe.
This brings me back to the idea that Time is not a line, but a single point. We only experience the Present because only the Present exists. Of course, that means we can’t travel to the Past or Future because neither exists.
Just as with Space, Time can have length (linear), height (planar) and breath (cubic). Maybe Time just doesn’t possess those properties in our own Universe?
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Thanks to Jennifer
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Amy Brown 2005 Calendar
Monday, January 03, 2005
Holiday Vacation
My g/f and I meet up early on Thursday and headed down for a little vacation in Monterey. We had a great time down there. On Thursday, we did a little shopping and then had an early dinner at this one restaurant with a nice atmosphere. We ended up at Bluefin to play pool for a while. We then headed back to the hotel to rested up for the long day to follow (New Years Eve).
We got up a little too late on Friday to go for breakfast, so we headed down to Cannery Row for a great lunch at Fishhopper. The weather on Friday was supposed to be cloudy and rainy. It was actually only partly cloudy during the day, and rainy in the early morning and night. The drive along 17 Mile Drive turned out to be nearly perfect. It was sunny, cool and beautiful. At this one beach, we came across this small group of squirrels that walk right up to you, stand on their hind legs and politely wait for food. At Cypress Point, we saw a beach full of harbor seals. At the Lone Cypress, we watched sea otters and migrating gray whales, along with a gorgeous backdrop. It was a very relaxing day. Friday evening, we meet up with Dave and his girlfriend for dinner. We all had a plan to head down to downtown Monterey for this thang called First Night (a New Years Eve celebration), but instead we ended back at the Bluefin for drinks, more pool and other games. They had the MTV New Years count down on the TVs to bring in the New Year. We all had a good time that wasn't crazy or wild. (darn! ;) )
On Saturday, we all headed down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It's changed a lot since I've last been there. If you haven't been there in 5 years or so, I'd actually recommend checking it out again. After that, we had another delicious lunch at the Fishhopper. We all headed back home around 3:30 or so. That evening, my g/f and I had dinner with her family.
I spent Sunday lounging around my place watching movies. For dinner, my g/f brought over a bake-it-yourself pizza which I duly cooked incorrectly. LOL I'm not as hopeless in the kitchen as that statement makes me sound.