Please take the time to read this...

Please do not disreguard this post because you are not a resident of South Dakota. This is an issue that will most likely hit the nation on the appeals.

"If you’re a woman in South Dakota or if you have a daughter, wife, sister or mother in South Dakota, you might want to turn an eye to Pierre.

Because whether you consider yourself pro-choice, anti-abortion or somewhere in-between, things are not right in the state’s Capital.

The bills being passed and the bills being rejected show a startling disregard for the health, safety and intelligence of South Dakota women."...read more from the link below.



READ THIS ARTICLE! It does not throw judgement at their viewers, just the negligent decision making in government:


http://www.rapidcityjournal.com

Good Idea

From a political blog (http://www.politics1.com/blog-0206a.htm..0227):

GAY ADOPTION. State Senator Robert Hagan (D-Ohio) says he will introduce legislation to ban Republican couples from adopting children. According to Hagan, "credible research'' shows that adopted children raised in GOP households are more at risk for developing "emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, and alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities." Hagan agrees there is no scientific evidence backing his claims about Republican parents -- just, as Hagan notes, there is none backing State Representative Ron Hood's (R) bill banning gay parents from adopting. Hood claims children purportedly suffer from emotional "harm" when they are adopted by gay couples. Hagen admits he created his proposal to mock Hood's proposed ban on gay adoption in a way that people would see the "blatantly discriminatory and extremely divisive" nature of the bill. The GOP House leadership does not support Hood's proposal.

The End of 7th Week Already??

Well another week is just about over.  It seems like this term is flying by crazy fast.  It has been a really good time though.  I didn't write much about semiformal afterwards, but all-in-all, it was a very fun time.  Kim and I had a great time together.  For specific stories, just hit me up on the phone or online or whatever.

In other news, I have figured out most of my grades.  Right now I don't have less than a 90 in any of my classes, so I guess that's good.  This term is going pretty well.

The pledges are closing in on their initiation.  I can't say what we do, but it should be a really good time this year.  It'll be interesting to see it from the other side this time.

On Wednesday I had the opportunity to take out an awesome girl named Kellie.  I met her last summer at a sorority BBQ.  This term she's been around Kettering a lot and around the Fiji's a lot because her best friend was kinda with my big B Grimace.  Well I was able to score a date with her, which I was really happy about.  Since we were both pretty busy this week, we just went out to dinner and decided to go do something more fun when we both have more time.   She said she's up for a second date, so I'm definitely looking forward to that.  She's a lot of fun.

So Steph (friend from new york) and her friend Jen might be coming out the weekend of the 3rd to hang out and party.  I met her last summer when I was out there hanging out with adam for the 4th.  Hopefully they make it out!

That's about all I have for now...I just wanted to try out my blogger widget.  Those of you that are windows only users wouldn't know...  Things are so much easier on a mac...and cleaner!!  That being said...get one!

I Love Apple

The new Macbook Pro is the sexiest laptop available. I absolutely love my new one. There's no need for a review here other than that it is simply amazing. I didn't know the first thing about Mac OS X, but in a matter of minutes I was finding my way all around it and doing everything that I could ever want to do. It's clean, fast, user-friendly, and something that all you windows users don't have: solid. The thing doesn't crash. Gotta love the Unix framework it's built on. BUY ONE! It's worth the $2500

Evolution or Intelligent Design

The controversy between evolution and intelligent design continues to grow through the country. While most people are taking strict sides to the debate, I somehow find myself somewhere in the middle. I have researched both sides quite a bit and have found that it takes more faith to believe in complete evolution than in an intelligent designer. To preface my argument, I'd like to point out that I am not religious and am not talking in favor of intelligent design because of any religious group. My feelings against evolution and somewhat for intelligent design come from my own research into the topic. In this post I plan on pointing out the flaws in evolution as well as the flaws that I see in intelligent design as it is presented today.

Evolution, as it is taught today, is the idea that all living things on earth today evolved from a single cell organism that was created through the random chance of the right proteins falling together to create the cell. Text books in American schools are quick to point out evolution as a fact, without discussing the fallbacks of the THEORY. This is where our school systems are going wrong. In the following analysis, I'm paraphrasing the test of Lee Strobel. In the text, Strobel has interviews with a number of prominent figures in evolution's corresponding fields. What he finds is that evolution's four basic premises are flawed.

The first basis for Darwinian evolution is the Stanley Miller Experiment. The aim of this experiment, conducted in 1953, was to artificially produce the building blocks of life. The atmosphere of primitive earth was recreated and electric sparks were used to simulate lightning. The "lightning" produced a red goo containing amino acids. This experiment is now featured in almost all textbooks discussing evolution. In the 1950s, scientists believed the atmosphere was a hydrogen-rich mixture of methane, ammonia, and water vapor. What's accepted in the scientific world now is an atmosphere composed of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor. The newly accepted model for the atmosphere still creates "organic molecules" as text books vaguely put it, but they're far from being life supporting organic molecules. The experiment produces Formaldehyde and cyanide. This is not even close to the right ingredients needed to produce life. But even if you still think Miller had it right, the only thing created was amino acids and proteins...not whole cells. For them to fall together and create a cell would be like throwing all the parts to a bunch of different cars into a huge gyrating pile, then after awhile a fully put together, shiny new car would come out. The odds of the amino acids getting together to form a cell are astronomical. Like I said earlier...more faith required to believe in evolution than an intelligent designer.

The Stanley Miller experiment is only one of the four icons of evolution. The second is Darwin's Tree of Life. The tree of life is a sketch in which life is depicted as a tree, starting with an ancient ancestor at the bottom that grows into limbs, branches, and twigs. This view requires physical evidence, which the fossil record would have to support. Since this theory has been proposed, we've had over a century of fossil discoveries. Strobel asks Jonathan Wells, PHD, PHD (undergrad degrees in geology and physics, with a minor in biology, doctorate in religious studies, and author of the book, Charles Hodge's Critique of Darwinism) if the evolutionary tree held up. Wells answered, "Absolutely not. As an illustration of the fossil record, the Tree of Life is a dismal failure. But it is a good representation of Darwin's theory...In fact, Darwin knew the fossil record failed to support his tree. He acknowledged that major groups of animals--he calls them divisions, now they're called phyla--appear suddenly in the fossil record. That's not what his theory predicts." Since his time, the fossil record has shown that the "Cambrian explosion" (the rapid appearance of phylum-level differences) is even more sudden and abrupt that scientists once though. The fossil record uproots Darwin's tree and turns it upside down. There is very supporting evidence that I won't go into right now that shows that it's very very unlikely that many new fossils will be found to support the tree of life.

The third icon of evolution is Haeckel's Embryos. These are images that depict the embryos of a fish, salamander, tortoise, chicken, hog, calf, rabbit, and human side-by-side at 3 stages of development. The illustrations support Darwin in that they all have striking similarities, which goes to show that we all share a common ancestor. The first problem with Haeckel's embryos is that the drawings in the early stages were faked. He doctored the drawings to make them look more similar than they really are. The problem is that textbooks today still use the illustration to support evolution. The second problem with Haekel's ebmryos is that he cherry-picked his examples. He only shows a few of the seven vertebrate classes. "He stacked the deck by picking representatives that came closes to fitting his idea--and then went further by faking the similarities." Wells, being an embryologist, points out that the most dramatic problem is that what Haekel claimed to be the early stages of development is nothing of the sort. It's actually the midpoint of development, He tells us that if you go back to the earlier stages, the embryos look far more different from each other.

I could go on into the 4th icon, which is dubbed the missing link. It discusses the archaeopteryx. Like the other icons presented, this one too has many faults. My goal with this post, however, is just to throw some brief thoughts out there about evolution. Lee Strobel in his book The Case For a Creator investigates evolution's origins and its faults then proceeds into argument towards intelligent design. I have not finished the book yet, but it has opened my eyes to the American education system and how it presents very unfinished theories as facts to the children of the country. No wonder we rank so low on international education system comparisons.

As I said earlier, I want to discuss intelligent design. Many see it as a creationist theory in disguise. The fact of the matter is that it is as scientific as evolution. The problem that surrounds ID is the pressure from the churches. They see it as a way to open the school system up to creationism. Intelligent design is simply a theory that says life today is too complex to have happened by pure chance and must be the work of an intelligent designer. Saying this in a public school does not establish a religion or prohibit the free excercise thereof...which is the law that a lot of people try to call "separation of church and state." As long as our government doesn't endorse and make a national religion, we're not establishing a religion and as long as intelligent design doesn't prohibit free exercise, which it doesn't, it should be mentioned. It is just as viable of a theory as evolution. What has to be watched and regulated is the churches' influence. They distort the aim of intelligent design. Overall ID should be looked into and researched by the general public before it is dismissed.

I encourage everyone that reads this post to look into both evolution and intelligent design. I challenge you to do it with an open mind as well...something that most will have a hard time doing. You may be surprised as to what you may find out there. I know that I used to be a major opponent to intelligent design and a proponent of evolution. Allow change to happen...don't be stubborn.

The discovery institute is a good place to look to if you want information on intelligent design. They are a Seattle based think tank that is a prominent face in the on going debate. I would also highly recommend Lee Strobel's book. It'll open your eyes to a whole array of issues that everyone should know about.

Anyways, I just thought I'd post something on this since related topics have been all over the news lately. That's it for now...

I'll have a new update on wednesday to let you all know how the new MacBook Pro performs in the hands of me!

A good start to the weekend

Last night was a good time. I wasn't planning on going out at all, but I ended up going to the greenshouse where there happened to be a lot more people that I expected. I ended up inviting over Hannah and her sister and friends. It was nice to get to see her and talk with her. Kellie also called and asked if they could come over. Of course, I couldn't resist, so I let her know that she's always welcome. It was a good time hanging out...until about 3:30 this morning. Kellie and Steph ended up coming back to the fiji house because I wasn't about to let them drive. It ended up working out alright...except getting up at 10 this morning to take them back to the greenhouse to pick up their car. It was a suprisingly good time last night.

Friday was also pretty sweet because I'm pretty sure I did a good job on my differential equations test. Hopefully it comes back with a good grade on it. I also got my Vel Crowe Johnson cd in the mail yesterday. His cd is fucking awesome. It's a different style of hip-hop that you don't hear very often. You can only order it straight through him though. Search for his name on google and you'll find his site where you can order his cd. I highly recommend it.

So I guess my lack of patience paid off with my laptop. I'll have it in my hands by sometime next week. I can't wait!!

The rest of the weekend should be pretty fun also. We're (my fraternity brothers and dates) are all getting ready to go to semiformal up in canada. Tonight is going to be a blast. VIP passes to clubs, rented out banquet rooms in the hotel, a huge block of rooms for us, girls, dancing, alcohol, downtown Windsor, etc. It's definitely going to be a night to remember....for those of us that will lol. Tomorrow there will be a ton of new pictures posted from semiformal as well as pictures from last night. If only I could post video too...i have some funny stuff there. If you need to get a hold of me while I'm in Windsor, you probably won't be able to. Just leave me a voicemail.

I'm out...

Patience...or lack thereof

So I ordered my MacBook Pro the day after they were annonced by Apple, which was the 10th of January. They said they wouldn't be shipped until February. Upon ordering mine (the top of the line one for $2500 with student discounts), I find out that it wouldn't be shipping until the 15th of february. So yesterday I log onto apple's website to see what they have to say about my order only to find out that they upgraded my laptop from a 1.83 Ghz Core-Duo Intel processor to a 2.0 Ghz one. It was awesome to hear that...better processor for the same price...no problems there. The crappy thing is that my ship date also got pushed back almost 2 weeks. It doesn't even ship until the 28th now. I'll probably see it the beginning of march. I hate having to wait, but the huge upgrade to the processor makes it seem a little better. I'm sure it'll be awesome....just really really sucks having to wait so long for something you paid that much for. oh well...that's my rant for the day.

For your amusement from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

Jon Stewart: "I'm joined now by our own vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst, Rob Corddry. Rob, obviously a very unfortunate situation. How is the vice president handling it?

Rob Corddry: "Jon, tonight the vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Wittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush.

"And while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Whittington's face."

Jon Stewart: "But why, Rob? If he had known Mr. Whittington was not a bird, why would he still have shot him?"

Rob Corddry: "Jon, in a post-9-11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak."

Jon Stewart: "That's horrible."

Rob Corddry: "Look, the mere fact that we're even talking about how the vice president drives up with his rich friends in cars to shoot farm-raised wingless quail-tards is letting the quail know 'how' we're hunting them. I'm sure right now those birds are laughing at us in that little 'covey' of theirs.

Jon Stewart: "I'm not sure birds can laugh, Rob."

Rob Corddry: "Well, whatever it is they do … coo .. they're cooing at us right now, Jon, because here we are talking openly about our plans to hunt them. Jig is up. Quails one, America zero.

Jon Stewart: "Okay, well, on a purely human level, is the vice president at least sorry?"

Rob Corddry: "Jon, what difference does it make? The bullets are already in this man's face. Let's move forward across party lines as a people … to get him some sort of mask."

Laid back weekend

Well last week ended pretty well. On friday I found out that I got a 20/20 on my signals exam, so that made the day that much better. Friday evening was awesome though. Kim and I took off to great lakes mall so I could get some stuff for semiformal. All I really needed was a new pair of dress pants and some new dress shoes. After I found out that express didn't have the pants that I wanted, we went around until we found S&K menswear. I went in to get some pants and ended up getting two suits, 3 ties, a shirt, and some dress socks. I actually have to go back tomorrow and pick them up...they were being altered. Once we finally got out of there, we headed to guess. They were having an awesome sale, so I ended up buying a couple polos. Once I was tired of spending a lot of money, Kim and I headed to a restaurant and got a bite to eat.

Once I got back to flint, I dropped Kim off and went over to the greenhouse. From there jonesy and I went to the Pike pledge party where there was pretty much no one. We decided to leave there and headed to the Sigma Chi foam party. That had quite a few more people at it. We partied there for a while then headed back to the house at around 3 or so.

Saturday night a bunch of grad brothers came into town. We all went over to the greenhouse at around 8:30 or so. AFter a while, all of the older guys, including the grads, decided to go to the bar. Once they left only a few of us were at the greenhouse, so we played beer pong, euchre (i learned how to play) and other random games. A few of us decided to walk down to Lambda Chi for their rooms party. WE hung out there for a while and picked up Shane. We headed back to the greenhouse to have an awesomely good time for just the few of us. It was definitely a good time.

Sunday was much less fun. From 11 till about 11 at night I was studying for my social science midterm. I think it paid off though. The midterm was today and I was able to write quite a bit from memory. We had to write 3 essays in 2 hours at "no more than 700 words." He was orginally going to make us write 4 in that time. Thank God he decided to change that.

The rest of this weeks is going to be pretty easy. Not much going on except a differential equations test on friday. This coming weekend is going to be a good time though. Semiformal in Canada!!

Some people really miss the point

"Anonymous said...

wow, way to make yourself look like an asshole. i thought you were a nice guy...but i guess it was "self proclaimed" huh?"

I looked like an asshole? Who's the one that came onto MY site and flat out told me that something I posted was total bullshit, then didn't have the balls to let me know who they were? I'm more than a nice guy, but when it comes to people challenging opinions with absolutely NO WARRANT, I become extremely annoyed. I'm extremely open minded and will always listen to someone else's opinion, but not when it is presented as disrespectful as yours.

Who agrees with me here?? Am I not a nice guy because I think someone should address someone with respect and backing for their opinion when they are arguing with mine? I want all of you reading this to tell me what you think. I really want to know.

Opinions

I completely understand that people have their own opinions and views on things, but when they challenge someone else's views, they should at least have some sort of warrant behind their claim. Examples of a warrant would be evidence, empirical examples, etc. The person that posted this:

"Anonymous said...

I'd tell you the same thing if we were in person: that article was full of bullshit. Full of uneducated rambling."

in response to my State of Illusion post, is obviously lacking warrants in their opinion, while what I posted was full of empirical examples.

Also, if you're going to come onto my blog and tell me things that I post are "bullshit" make sure you leave your name, so I know who the fuck is challenging me. Did you not leave your name because you really don't know what the hell you're talking about, or is it because you're just a mindless drone that believes everything that he/she hears from our oh-so-great leader and his cronies? At this point, I would have to say that the one that has the most convincing argument for being right about the topics discussed in State of Illusion is the author of it, not someone that says it's bullshit rambling. If whoever posted that and the other comment about the article would actually like to discuss the ideas presented, I'm more than happy to, but don't be a bitch and hide behind the internet's cloak.

B-L-O-G

It's been a few days, but in those days I had a ton of fun. Lets start it out with friday night. I cruised on over to the Greenhouse pretty early on. It was slow for a while, but then a bunch of delts and their friends showed up. We had an awesome time dancing, drinking, and talking the entire night. I took a ton of pictures of which 55 are posted in my picture album (link on the right).

Saturday brought another fun day. I decided that I was going to skip the first film of the day that I was supposed to go to for the global issues film festival and go paintballing instead. It was awesome to get to play again. I miss it a ton. The place we went was called The Bunker and it was one of the nicest places I have ever played. I was really impressed with it. I plan on opening my own place in the future and this is the type of place I would like it to be modeled after. After playing for a couple hours and getting my phone shot/broken, I busted ass back to school to catch the second film of the day. I ended up getting there right when it started. I didn't know that it was a two and a half hour documentary though. It just kept going and going...it sucked. After that I grabbed some food, took a shower and headed over to the greenhouse with Shane and Dan Freshman. We got over there only to see the greenhouse crew (matt and purdy) cleaning. We just sat around talking for a while then all of the sudden a bunch of people showed up and the party took off. Two girls from Alma got crazy. AFter a while they weren't even dancing...they were pretty much just dry humping all over the place. It was a good time. At about 3, Shane and I left the party and took a trip to McDonalds to get him some drunk food lol. I made sure to have some fun in the 6" of new snow that fell that night in his car too. Pictures from saturday are also posted online.

Sunday was a good day as well. The morning was slow and full of chores and homework. The afternoon was a different story. Our pledges put on a Super Bowl party and invited over one o the sororities and got a bunch of food for everyone. We all chilled around the big screen and watched the superbowl. It was a decent game overall, but the officiating officially sucked. I think that made the game what it was. There were a few shitty calls...like the offensive pass interference, the "touchdown" by the steelers and the illegal blocking call...made during a tackle!! It was bullshit. The commercials kinda sucked too. The only good ones were first and second quarter. AFter that they were boring as hell. The halftime show, National Anthem, and pregame show kinda sucked too. I was rather disappointed with most of the superbowl experience on tv. Hopefully it'll be better next year. After the superbowl, I didn't do much but homework.

This week is looking to be pretty difficult. I already gave my presnentation in Social Sciences, but I still ahve a book review to do in there, a test in differential equations tomorrow and a test in Applied Electrical Signals on thursday. so i've got quite a bit of work to do.

In other news, I got a new phone today. It's pretty sweet. It's called the SLVR from motorola. It's actually thinner than the RAZR. I'm still waiting on my laptop though. It should be here in a couple weeks...sucks having to wait this long for it damnit! It'll be worth it though!

This next weekend will be a nice time to relax. I'm thinking about going down to MSU to hang out with a friend. That's still up in the air right now though. One thing I'm doing for sure is hanging out with Shana! I'm still trying to decide what we could go do. I'll think of something fun.

So I've been trying to listen to different music as much as possible. Lately I found Vel Crowe Johnson. He's a former metal artist that is now a hip-hop artist. He has some good stuff. I'm in the process of trying to get a hold of one of his promo CDs as he doesn't have anything for sale to the general public yet. Click the link I posted and it'll take you to his myspace music page. Out of his 4 songs on there, I really like 3 of them. You can download them or just stream them. Check it out!