Bored

Well, folks, I should be working on a presentation for tomorrow about how a fetus protects itself from its mother's immune system, but instead I'm playing around on Youtube. So, here you go. I'll pretend there's somebody reading this blog if you pretend that this counts as a post. Deal?




d2

Happy Birthday!

Today is my old buddy Charles Darwin's birthday. Because I go to a religious school, and because I am surrounded by woefully uninformed English majors, I have heard a lot of silly things about evolution and religion.

This week I heard someone say that we should all have the "courage to believe" in a strict creationist viewpoint despite heaps and heaps of evidence to the contrary. This person went on to say that anyone who believed in anything other than the 100% creationist theory - that God sat down and individually crafted every life form on earth - was not a true believer in God.

I disagree. I am a very religious person, I believe in God, but I have trouble with the idea that He sat at his workbench and made each individual creature. First of all, I just don't think that God is a micromanager. But that is an argument for another day, because it isn't the main thing that bothers me about this idea. My biggest beef with this is that it proposes a very different God than the one I want to believe in. Let me explain with a couple of examples.

First, chickenpox. I just can't believe that the same God who asked that the children be brought to Him would also create varicella zoster- the nasty little virus that has no other purpose than to torment people (especially children) with highly contagious rashes.

Next on my list are several kinds of wasps that, through various chemical means, can turn another bug into basically a zombie, generally to keep it alive long enough for the wasp's kids to eat it alive from the inside out. I don't really believe in a God who would create critters like that.

These are just two of the many examples of things that don't make much sense if you think of a loving creator individually crafting them, but make perfect sense if you think of them from an evolutionary perspective. All in all, the God who strict creationists believe in sounds a lot like this one:



Now, lest anyone think different, I should set the record straight that I do believe in a loving creator. I just don't believe in a micromanaging loving creator. I believe that He created the universe, and everything in it, but that it is very possible that He used evolution as a tool to create. I do not see how these models are mutually exclusive. If you would like to read a great book about these two going well together, I would check out Finding Darwin's God by Miller (I reviewed it a few months ago).

Happy Birthday, Chucky D!

crazy milk conspiracy

So, one thing I have always loved is reading conspiracy theories. I'm not sure why. They're just fun. Lately, some of these have had some bad press, as the "immunizations cause autism" set of theories has recently been debunked pretty handily.

In light of that, gmail brought me this beauty: the Milk Conspiracy. Yep. The milk conspiracy. Apparently big dairy is taking all the nutrients out of your milk by pasteurizing it. I'm not sure what exactly they stand to gain by doing this, but I am sure that it is truly evil.

Dr. Douglass also says he has proof that raw milk tastes better. I'm not sure how you prove something like that, but I admit that I am very curious. Not curious enough to give this nutcase my email address (you have to to read the report), but curious.

C-O-L-A cola

So, for anybody who has ever wondered why I am opposed to the enlightened European health care system, wonder no more.

Kim Petras, a German teenager, was Tim Petras until a few weeks ago. After psychologists determined that Kim was actually a girl stuck in a boy's body, she got a sex change. And the German health service paid for it. Seriously.

So, if we go over to a socialized health system here in the good old US of A, does that mean that my tax dollars are going to pay for things like this? Am I seriously going to have to fund sex changes so that little Kimmy can -and I quote her words here- "wear tight jeans" and "enjoy swimming and bikinis"?

I think that my money could be much better spent.

Quidditch

Last night my ward had an activity playing quidditch. It was surprisingly fun, despite what Lewis Black would say.

We had one goalie per team, three chasers (people who scored goals), two beaters (people who carried baseball bats and hit beach balls at the chasers) and one seeker (who went outside to find a hidden tennis ball). Did I mention that the whole time, every player has to hold a broom between their legs?

Yeah, it was pretty fun. And surprisingly demanding physically.

Stop changing my memories

Last night the guys and I watched The Empire Strikes Back. It is such a great movie, but every time I watch it I notice some new thing that George Lucas went back and messed up for me. Last night I noticed that Boba Fett's voice has been changed. Check it out. This is what he sounded like when I was a kid:


and this is what I heard last night:


It's just not cool. That guy has been the voice of Boba Fett for 30 years, and ol' George just went back and changed him for no good reason. All I can say is this: George, quit changing my memories. I liked Star Wars just the way it was.

Hack

Best. Hack. Ever.