Moving on...

to a new blog. Just tab to domesuchikku in my profile.

fuck

I slept through my psych exam last night. Good thing I get to average one out at the end of the semester. I hate when I do shit like this. Also forgot to pay my phone bill I have to run up to the mall at 10 and do that. 

Aside from those mis-steps everything is great right now. I'm working on a great project for my education course where I'll be examining conflict resolution and how it relates to the Evolution v. IDiocy debate. Clearly, I am biased. My partner for the project has been a conlfict resolution counselor for years though so score one for research. 

I'm out cycling for a few hours while we have this weather before the next few days of Tarterian hell. Summer come quickly.

hymie's basement

Somebody told me when the bomb hits
everybody in a 2-mile radius will be instantly sublimated,
but if you lay face down on the ground for some time,
avoiding the residual ripples of heat, you might survive,
permantly fucked up and twisted like you're always underwater refracted
but if you do go gas, there's nothing you can do when the air that was once you
is mingled and mashed with the kicked-up molecules of the enemy's former body
big-kid-tested, motherfucker approved.

pt. 2

and all i'm asking of you, not much,  is to show me

two living breathing reproducing pieces of machinery

then i'll see god and concede that he is more than me

but until that time i will be a fount of blasphemy

pt.1

i don't need no bullshit-non-profit-self-aggrandizing aggregate

get lost with your whitewash blues cos' i can't handle it

with self pity aside and moot factors not considerate

i'm feeling pretty good, lining up afore-lit candlesticks

Neglect

I have been down right awful about keeping up my writing. 

I'll get to writing here again soon, but for now my favorite lyrics of all time.

Listening for the hoofs of the rescue party

Waiting for some ghost pony to glide into Berkely

With an old fish bowl for a tear-trap strapped to its ghost saddle

And it moves slow like an exercise bike on an airport walkway

Something that wouldn't smell like ground ants or glossy magazine cologne

But a wet street after light, late summer rain

A wooden match just lit

Or something new in the green subject of a landscape painting

Or something new in the foreground in a poster of some Asian mountains

that says "PATIENCE" in a funky italics

In line to vote!

Got up at 4:15 to get here by 4:30, and to my surprise I was the first one in line.

I can never get over...

Note:

Holy hell I have been busy. Between school stuff and writing papers I've also been learning Trace Bundy's arrangment of Pachelbel's Canon. It is easily one of the most difficult guitar pieces I've learned but I can, bar by bar, play it entirely. Now I just have to string it together. Also I'm getting my Tremarctos tattoo soon! 

Evolutionism alert!

I recently stumbled upon Project Creation while plodding through the vast sea of pro-creation websites. The site makes many broad generalizations about evolution, and is starved for an understanding of the basic principles! Here are the "Three Questions to Ask those that think evolutionism is based on science." That's right, evolutionism.

Question 1) Where did the information in DNA come from originally?
Well, I'll be frank. The jury's out on this one. There are many people who could tackle this better than me. I'm not going to pretend to know shit about molecular biology.

Question 2) How can mutations that are only capable of rearranging or losing information, cause brand new information to appear?
Okay, this one I can do. It's a pretty fucked up question to begin with because the rearranging of bases produces what would be called new "information". Also, I'm a little bothered by his use of information because in this instance(and most instances probably) he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. New genetic material can in fact be added to the gene through the processes of duplication and mutation. The case that jumps to mind is MRSA(methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus). Staphylococcous aureus was discovered in 1880 by Alexander Ogston. Since it's discovery several strains have shown resistance to the antibiotic methicillin. The first instance of MRSA was reported in 1961 only two years after methicillin was introduced. If you looked at the genome of S. Aureus and MRSA you would find that MRSA has extra genetic information that S. Aureus does not.

Question 3) Why is there no evidence of 2, 4, 8 celled animals etc., ever having lived?

There is abundant evidence for one-celled animals in both the living world and the fossil record, but there is not one shred of evidence of any animal above the one-celled level until it reaches many thousands of cells in multi-cellular creatures. Yet if evolution were true there should be innumerable examples of 2, 4, 8 celled animals in both the living world and fossil record. In fact if evolution were true it should be impossible to classify animals by families at all. We shouldn’t find a world full of cats and dogs and cows and horses. What we should see around us is a world filled with dats and cogs and hows and corses, a blending of all of the different kinds of animals. The existence of distinct kinds of creatures as well as the lack of intermediate animals is clear evidence of a created world. This problem for evolutionists became so clear that several of the best known evolutionists of the 20th century had to invent what they called punctuated equilibrium. Their speculation was that for long periods in the past animals remained essentially unchanged, maintaining equilibrium, and then suddenly something happened to cause a major change very rapidly, a punctuation of that equilibrium. Those who support this idea maintain that change happened so fast that there was no fossil evidence of the change from one kind to another. So for people who promote punctuated equilibrium, the lack of fossil evidence is their proof for punctuated equilibrium.

That is his assertion. I don't even know how to begin to approach that level of idiocy. I did contact the guy so hopefully I'll have an interview with him up soon.

Well fuck...

Way to go Congress!
Now half of us won't be able to pay our bills.

I'm Phil and I support(ed) the bailout plan.

Chicago

I have a lot of mixed feelings about the Windy City. While I love the culture and diversity of the populace, it's also where I was first mugged. Which is pretty much how my Chicago experiences always go. Awe and body-blow.

I should've known something was gonna go wrong with this trip from the moment we got to the Greyhound station. It's 2 am, Lucas Oil Stadium is standing across the street being the several hundred odd million dollar waste it is. And directly outside of our gate was a deranged, homeless black man performing judo on the bus mall. Jake's stepdad really pulled through for us and got us the already cheap tickets for free.

The ride up was very uneventful. Ryan ended up asleep with a t-shirt over his head, and I ended up asleep on him. As far as I know, Jake and Tiffany just played Gameboy. We got into the station at 5:20 Chicago time and laid around on the bus for a while. After several minutes of awkward somersaulting in the seats, we decided to just start our day. Mistake number one.

We set out for Michigan Avenue and the Red line buses immediately. It's worth mentioning that I've never experienced better weather in the city than that morning, and I'm always stunned by how empty the streets in Chicago are before 7 am. Aside from the solitary jogger we didn't run into anyone walking through the financial sector. When we got closer to the Magnificent Mile homeless people started to turn up en masse, mostly glued to benches. Jake was pretty anxious to do something, so we just decided to eat at McDonald's because some of us were getting cranky.

Now after we left the McDonald's we crossed the street to look at the Rainforest Cafe and I have to say I nearly shit my pants. On the concrete in the back alley was a pool of red liquid that was the general size of a body. I'm sure it could've been someone dropping a pig or something (do they still carry whole pigs around?), but I've never been so scared of a puddle in my whole life. We quickly made it out of the alley and headed towards the buslines.

Thanks to my fantastic navigatory skills we ended up 4 blocks from where we were supposed to be, and I had fostered the ire of one of my comrades. It certainly wasn't hard to do considering the amount of sleep we all had. With all of us tucked comfortably on the bus to Chinatown the tension was expelled. There isn't a whole lot to do in any part of Chicago until at least 9 am so we just went to the Wal-green's, got some novelty candy, and hunkered down with a Chinese newspaper. I think I have retained no more than 100 characters from my Chinese classes so it was a brief read.

9 am -
We can finally do stuff! We hit pretty much every shop in Chinatown and dropped far too much money. I know that Pokemon stuff isn't Chinese but Ryan bought the cutest apron with the 1st generation family on it. I bought 2 pairs of kung-fu shoes (aka slippers), a keychain, and a bunch of haichu. I was going to bring some home to Kate, but I ate it all waiting for lunch time to come around.

Jake and Tiffany ran off at some point so I'm not really sure what they did for that period. When we all got back together we went to the mall. We grabbed some ginkco fruit from a tree hoping that we would be able to plant some back at home. However, the smell was just disarming and Jake and Ryan threw it away (I think?). We ate at the best Chinese food for lunch, I wish I could remember the name of the restaurant. They were the best rice cakes I've ever had, and I've had a lot. We remained occupied until 2 or so and headed back to the bus stop. Thanks to me and Ryan's poor judgement we ended up over at McCormick. It was the wrong direction.

We decided to just walk back to the Greyhound station. Mistake two.

It was only...oh, I don't know. 6 fucking miles to walk through winding city blocks on 1 hour of sleep in a 48 hour period! I'm going to cut this part out because it was seriously the most stressful hour and a half of my life.

So we make it to the bus station and make it onto our bus. The fucking bus breaks down on the way home! I have never had such awful luck in my entire life. End.

Atheist Blogroll and SPORE

Alright, I've been added to the Atheist Blogroll! You can see the 25 most recently updated blogs in my sidebar. It's a great community so make sure to check out them out. If you're interested in joining, the founder of the blogroll is found here. Deep Thoughts.

Also, I uploaded the SPORE creation viewer at the bottom of the page if you're interested in that.
Uh, that's about it for now. Big post coming later tonight.

Sayonara!

ACLU

The Student and Member Conference is fast approaching!

Hot damn!!!

It's Always Sunny

New season starts tonight! I rarely get this excited about TV.

Steakhouse

I'm sitting in the car waiting for Jake to get out of work. We're going to BK for lunch. This was pointless.

God I am bored!

Boy, I tell ya hwhat.

The media is making it sound like doomsday with the financial meltdown. They're gonna scare a lot of ignorant people into thinking they all need to rush out and get guns so they can "match lead with gold." I don't need to remind anyone that gun-toting maniacs already run rampant in our society.

The fact of the matter is this has to happen for the economy to get better. A system can't exponentially improve, and for the most part it hasn't been improving for a number of years now. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who pays attention to the markets. I'm glad I don't have any money in Lynch or Lehman, but guess what!

FDIC!

Someone still loves you Ed Hochuli...kind of.

While your call sent me into a Hulk-esque rage Ed, I can forgive you. Everyone makes mistakes. The Chargers just have to work a little harder this season. I'm sure they can still come out on top as division leaders...maybe. With a lot of luck and relying on others to fuck up.

In other news I left my brother to deal with vicious community college recruiters on his own. My time was no better spent wandering around, trying to avoid the beggars at the bus stop.

Image credit: With Leather

Martialis heureka

The newest member of the ant family! (living anyway)

The new species lives in the soil and is completely blind, as evidenced by the lack of eyes. He's also a member to his own subspecies of ant. It's only a matter of time before he nets some comrades. What a neat insect.

Original article