Front Ended

So today on my way home, I was driving north on Interstate 35w and got off at the 46th Street exit (as I normally do).  Today there was a car stopped on the side of the road, just after the exit.  As I came up to the exit, the car moved on to the exit, I slowed down to let him in since he was moving slower then I was at the time.  Then, the car in front of me slammed on his breaks and came to a complete stop (still on the exit ramp) and threw his car into reverse.  I was able to stop in time (but just barely, as I was going about 65mph at the time), but by the time I had stopped, he was reversing into my car at about ~25 mph (I don’t know, how fast can your car go in reverse).  I had just enough  time to hit the horn before he hit me.  The car backed into me, and took a hard left turn to get back on to Interstate 35w.

Sitting there bewildered of what just happened, I called 911.  After I told the dispatcher that I was on the 46th St exit, she told me they had it on video and she was going to transfer me to the person who was working on the case.

So the Minneapolis police had just pulled this drive over when he ran.  They were watching him on the camera and waiting for him to make his next move, with cops on the ready.   When he stared driving up the exit ramp, he saw the cop at the top waiting for him, so he thought it would be smart to back down the ramp instead.To bad they already have your licensee and know where you live.

The officer said he will arrest the driver late tonight, and they are adding evading the police and hit and run to his charges.

The Proposal

Tonight while we were at the bar, after the show, a guy came up to us and told us that he was proposing to his girlfriend and would like to have a room full of people to watch him, we said sure. So we went into the other room to watch the proposal.

When we went into the other room, he was setting up the stage for something.  He then grabbed his girl, went up to the stage and started reading from the bible.  After reading First Corinthians, he proposed to her, then started talking about being reborn as a black man.  It was interesting to say the least.

ALL CAPS


Lemon Cucumber

I was sitting outside tonight with a couple of guys from my building when one of our ex-building mates came over with a bag of Lemon Cucumbers.

Lemon Cucumber

So now the question is, how do you eat it?

Brooklyn Space Program

Here a Son & Father launched a balloon from Newburgh, New York, and it climbed at a rate of 25 feet per second to 19 miles above the surface of the earth, high enough to see the curvature of the earth.  Once at altitude the balloon burst and the craft containing the iPhone and the camera fell back to the ground on a parachute.

They were then able to track the craft via the iPhones on board GPS.

You can see more images of their flight or support their effort on their website brooklynspaceprogram.org.

What The…

Stephen Hawking on God and the Universe

Excerpts from a column on the Wall Street Journal, which is in turn an excerpt from “The Grand Design,” by Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, to be published by Bantam Books today.

“…the latest advances in cosmology explain why the laws of the universe seem tailor-made for humans, without the need for a benevolent creator.

Many improbable occurrences conspired to create Earth’s human-friendly design, and they would indeed be puzzling if ours were the only solar system in the universe. But today we know of hundreds of other solar systems, and few doubt that there exist countless more among the billions of stars in our galaxy. Planets of all sorts exist, and obviously, when the beings on a planet that supports life examine the world around them, they are bound to find that their environment satisfies the conditions they require to exist…

Many people would like us to use these coincidences as evidence of the work of God. The idea that the universe was designed to accommodate mankind appears in theologies and mythologies dating from thousands of years ago. In Western culture the Old Testament contains the idea of providential design, but the traditional Christian viewpoint was also greatly influenced by Aristotle, who believed “in an intelligent natural world that functions according to some deliberate design.”

That is not the answer of modern science. As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

Our universe seems to be one of many, each with different laws. That multiverse idea is not a notion invented to account for the miracle of fine tuning. It is a consequence predicted by many theories in modern cosmology. If it is true it reduces the strong anthropic principle to the weak one, putting the fine tunings of physical law on the same footing as the environmental factors, for it means that our cosmic habitat—now the entire observable universe—is just one of many…”

My mind has difficulty wrapping itself around the concept that a “universe” can be one of many.  I don’t disagree with him, but I think I need to defer any ponderings about astrophysics and concentrate on the more prosaic aspects of life.

There Is No “Ground Zero Mosque”

As im sure you all know and are aware. There is currently a controversy started by some very uneducated conservatives about wither Muslims should be allowed to build a community center near the location of the World Trade Center.

What I feel is important to remember is that we are Americans. We are members of a country that was founded not as a Christian country, or a Jewish one, but instead as a place for all to come and be free. Free of this sort of persecution.

Threw out our own history, we have started walking down this path before. The path of forgetting who we are and why we are all here. We destroyed the Native Americans, we enslaved the African people, we even went to war with the Mormons. All in the name of what, Freedom.

What is Freedom when we are not all free. Why should freedom be reserved for some, but not all?

In the famous words of Martin Niemöller 1:

When [they] came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

I feel Keith Olbermann sums it up very nicely, tho I don’t agree with every thing he says. His main point needs to be heard.

So what are WE going to do about it?

The Kirby Video

This was mostly to play with the camera; but here are some nice shots of my friend, Kelsey‘s cat, Kirby playing within the flowers in her backyard.

Owls at the cabin!

This last weekend my parents made some new Owl friends.

This Memorial weekend we were at the cabin and saw 2 beautiful Barred Owls.  The first evening there was a huge one and a smaller one.  The second evening around 4:30 we saw one of them again. He/she sat in a tree while we took lots of pictures and just stared at us.

Read my Mother’s post on their site.