Month: January 2006

I graduated from college 10 years ago this May. While it doesn’t seem all that long ago, we have been paying on that student loan for the duration of our marriage…

Until yesterday. It’s finally paid off. Hurray!

This just in: The Big Guy is a little upset at recent statements by Pat Robertson blaming Him for Disrael Sharon’s stroke, among other things.

All,

Please pay your respects for my father, who passed away this morning from a two-year battle with cancer. He was a good man who took care of his kids, served his country in WWII, and lived by God’s comandments. His death was as good as a death can go: quick, painless, and surrounded by his wife and family. I mean this in all honest when I say I hope your death will be as peaceful and loving as his was. If there is a heaven, he’s there now smiling at me.

All my love and thanks Steve

Michael Paul Phillips October 10th, 1928 – January 8th, 2006

Sammy G was not a happy camper when yesterday’s mail brought a letter from the U.S. District Court emblazoned with the words, “Juror Materials.” Yes, yours truly has been selected as a potential juror for a federal court case, and I am delighted to be provided the opportunity to come forward and represent my fellow citizens by participating in this country’s great judicial system.

Included was a questionnaire to get the jury selection process rolling. They want answers bubbled in with a #2 pencil. I’m using a red pen.

Question #1: Are you a citizen of the United States?

Thanks to the defendant, whom I personally know, yes.

Question #2: Do you read, write, speak and understand the English language?

Buenos dias. Me gusta el defendant.

Question #3 Are you 18 years of age or older?

When can we get to the part about the death penalty?

Question #4: Do you have any physical or mental disability that would prevent you from serving as a juror?

My pancreas becomes infected when I get near lawyers.

Et cetera.

I ran across an interesting video of Bill Reilly on the Dave Letterman show at OneGoodMove.org.

I’m not much of a Letterman fan, but the thing I came away impressed with the fact that Bill Reilly came away looking like a pundit with an agenda to push, and Letterman came across looking like a regular guy who was distressed by the pundit’s assertions.

Over the holidays, I got into a small almost-argument regarding the whole “Happy Holidays” vs. “Merry Christmas” thing with my Mom. I could tell who the person was that listened to a lot of right-wing radio 🙂

Favorite quote by Letterman:

I’m not smart enough to debate you point to point on this, but I have the feeling that about 60% of what you say is crap. But I don’t know that for a fact.

In a previous discussion and in reference to a comment about me using a “God-based filter,” Matthew said:

This statement is you seeing things through your particular filter, for sure.

Don’t you also use a non-god filter? Because of our beliefs, we all filter what we experience through them. Have you ever bought a new car and then you start to notice that model everywhere? I’ve had that kind of experience with several vehicles and also with other things. Or once I become a part of some group, I start to notice others of that same group, even though I didn’t even see them before. This is our mental filters in action.

The one problem I see with a “non-god filter” is that a filter can’t detect the absence of something, but only its presence. So, through your filter, you detect the presence of other things that make sense but don’t see evidence of God and therefore might conclude he’s not there.

Here’s an example using simple science. You and I are looking at a picture and I say there is red in that picture. I’m looking through my red filter lens, of course. You, looking through your green lens, insist there is no red in the picture. You only see shades of green, blue, and yellow. Looking through your filter, you would never know if there was red in the picture or not–the shades of red and the absence of any color at all would look the same.

In the world of electronics, we can see the same sort of thing with radio waves and tuned circuits. I might have a radio receiver with a tuned circuit that receives signals between 88 and 108 MHz (millions of cycles per second)–this is the FM radio band. You have a receiver with a tuned circuit that receives signals between .540 and 1.6 MHz–this is the AM radio band. Either of us could insist that a station the other is listening to doesn’t exist because we can’t receive it. If we each understood that we were each using a different radio circuit that received different signals, then we could open up to the idea that each had found something valid and perhaps share both sets of signals for greater enjoyment. Without that understanding, we could waste a lot of time debating the existence of some particular station, and create a lot of contention and so on.

In a less technical example, could one ever know that FM 100 exists, by only watching their satellite TV system? Their frequencies are different as well as their modes of receiving the signals, and the way information is placed on the signal. (I know, maybe if it was satellite with FM stations included, then it would be apparent. But you get the point, right?)

So, it would seem the only way to prove that God does not exist would be to use the God-based filter and still see nothing. I have to say, my God-based filter sees a lot of God in the world. I also understand that your non-god filter does see many important and useful things in the world, without a hint of God in it.

Most evidence of God is in the hearts and minds of faithful people; it comes from the lives of those who look for him and find him. One can’t find God through scientific measurement, if he chooses not to be found that way. I would say it is faith in God that provides the filter we need to see evidence of him.

In my life, I’ve seen too many “coincidences” to believe it’s all just coincidence. There is an intelligent power in this universe–beyond our human understandings–that does indeed respond to us when we seek him. He has power to shake the earth to its foundation, power to create or destroy life in a instant, power to do all things he sees fit to do. I know this intelligent power, this being, as God.

emilt

Matthew,

I keep receiving e-mails from your site saying I have new private mail. I click the link and it says “Access Not Authorized” or something like that. It doesn’t seem to matter if I’m logged in or not.

How do I get to this private mail (and end the stream of daily e-mails)?

Thanks, emilt

Here is the link to another interesting blog following this.

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

A Man walking down the street falls into a hole. He finds that the walls are too steep to climb out of. A doctor walks by and the man calls out, Hey Doc can you help me out? The doctor scribbles a prescription down and tosses it into the hole. A Priest walks by and the man calls out, Father I am stuck can you help me out? The priest writes down a prayer and tosses it to the man in the hole. The third person to walk up is the man’s friend. The man in the hole calls out, Hey buddy; I am stuck in this hole and can’t find my way out. His friend jumps down into the hole. The man says “Hey, what good does that do; now we are both stuck down here.

So last night, as we were sitting at the dinner table playing Sequence, my middle son, Elijah, plopped himself down on the bench next to my oldest, Zack. After a few minutes of messing with the tiles (to the chorusses of “No, Elijah!” from the players), he began humming.

I recognized the tune after a few bars. The allegro from Mozart’s Sonata in G, better known as “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”, or “A Little Night Music”. I thought it was pretty cool that he was humming a classical tune. Pretty soon, he saw me grinning, and cranked the humming up to full volume.

I got a musical kid. You know, my kids can do and be whatever they want, but it’s nice to hear a kid have such an ear. He was even in the correct key! (Yes, I have semi-perfect pitch: if I think about it, I can name the note. It takes me a few moments to figure out, though, based on reference points in my brain.)

He then seamlessly transitioned to “Do Re Mi”, from The Sound of Music.

This may not seem really funny, until you consider the meter of the first few bars: dotted quarter, eighth, dotted quarter, eighth. Identical first bar meter, but with different notes. He seamlessly transitioned from one to the other, and I began singing along to the medley. Terribly entertaining. The reason this is funny is because my kids hear me do this all the time with other songs that sound similar. Like “If You Chance to meet a frown” and the chorus from “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”:

If you chance to meet a frown, Do not let it stay, Turn that frown right upside down And smile that frown away.

Noone likes a frowny face, Change it to a smile! Make the world a better place by smiling all the while!

(Chorus) He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!

Oh, If you chance to meet a frown, Do not let it stay, Turn that frown right upside down (then a bit of a mixture) ’cause Santa Clause is coming to town.

My other kids are starting to do this, too. Taking a song and making up lyrics on-the-spot to try to be funny. They will learn later in life that, unfortunately, as funny as we think this is at home, this will brand them as an insufferable dork in high school, with redemption coming in the form of other musically-inclined kids in college.

Alas. Four or five years of suffering.

Anyway, you can have fun with all kinds of songs. I love song humor! One of the things that’s been fun is putting odd words at the end of hymns in the church hymnal, or pious popular songs. Like, “In the Bathtub”, or “In Bed”. Totally changes the meaning of the tune. “Amazing Grace in Bed”. “Praise to the Man In the Bathtub”. “Onward, Christian Soldiers In Bed”.

Sure, it’s not highbrow. But it’s fun.