We Go From Narnia To The Vatican To Sins to Vulcan

Took the day off from the gym to give my legs and knees a break. Will probably work on class stuff and other crap.

If you haven't seen the SNL Narnia video, please come out into the sunlight. The world is pretty and we miss you. Here's the West Coast response for you.

Bumped in an old high school teacher at the gym yesterday, but I doubt he remembered me. It's funny how people can be a large influence in your life for a chunk of time. This particular one dominated every room he was in and had little to no patience with hyper-hormonal teenagers...and our bunch were the ones who behaved ourselves at Cartoon High. Today, he's in his seventies and has shrunk to half of what he was. It was kind of a spooky encounter.

In the category of getting your knees cut off: President Bush among many others advocated "intelligent design" (ID) as an alternative method of introducing creationism into K-12 education. It's a nice catchphrase to rally around and gives credence to the faith-based belief that a Great One (no, not him or him) developed a universe from a cosmic blueprint.

It sounds good, except for teeny-tiny, oh so little insignificant detail: somebody forgot to check with headquarters. A scholar published in the Vatican newspaper wrote that ID was ideology and not proven science, and that biological evolution "represents the interpretative key of the history of life on Earth."

"This isn't how science is done. If the model proposed by Darwin is deemed insufficient, one should look for another, but it's not correct from a methodological point of view to take oneself away from the scientific field pretending to do science."

Here's a summary of the article. Memo to creationists: back to the drawing board. Pun intended.

I don't have a problem letting kids learn about ID in public high school as long as it's taught as an alternate method. I suspect it'd be a waste of time because kids today are so much more worldly that they were fifty years ago. They cut their teeth on the scientific method, for the most part.

Dropped in this blog somewhere the mention of Barry Bonds quitting the World Baseball Classic because he wants to be healthy for the upcoming season. ESPN reports the athletes participating in the WBC will have to undergo Olympic-style drug testing for all performance enhancing supplements, hormones, and condiments (like sweet mustard - it's a dog). It will not be the cursory examinations previously mandated by Major League Baseball. Coincidence, Mr. Bonds?

We all have our addictions but methamphetamine users are in a special hell of their own doing. Check out these pictures.

Did the bills and found we don't got the capital to cover our debits (surprise), so I gave up on My Ultimate IPod Dream and bought one of the cheaper models. Now the bills are a little happier and my conscious is not so angry.

And now after playing with the darn thing, I'm having that "having is not nearly as satisfying as wanting" feeling. There's a reason Greed is a Deadly Sin.

(That aside, please feed my hungry little IPod. :))