I've always wondered why...

This is the most coherent and concise explanation of why people are attracted to conspiracy theory I've found.  And I've always wondered why a more than expected percentage of people lean this direction.  Well here you go...

Why do people believe in highly improbable conspiracies? In previous columns I have provided partial answers, citing patternicity (the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise) and agenticity (the bent to believe the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents). Conspiracy theories connect the dots of random events into meaningful patterns and then infuse those patterns with intentional agency. Add to those propensities the confirmation bias (which seeks and finds confirmatory evidence for what we already believe) and the hindsight bias (which tailors after-the-fact explanations to what we already know happened), and we have the foundation for conspiratorial cognition.

Full article - Scientific American, Sept. '09

Time

What an odd thing this is.  So constant, so silent, so driving.  I'm becoming fascinated with this thing I've always taken for granted.

On one hand it's ruthless, allowing none to escape its eventual fatal grasp.  On the other it provides perspective, healing, peace.  It provides the reference for rhythms that become music, and it's a canvas on which seasons are splashed.  Try as we might, we cannot slow it nor hurry it.

It provides the logic by which one event is able to happen after another.  This never changes or reverses.  And once those two events are related this way, they are always and forever set in stone.  She's an endless zipper, consistently bringing events together never to be separated.  We can only hope peer back at them through the blurry lenses of memory.

However, there are problems with the way we understand entropy, such as whether our universe is closed or open, and it freaks me out a bit to be honest.  We can't fully or physically explain why time has an unchanging direction, highlighting the "now" that defines all of our collective consciousness' at once. 

Isn't weird that when we try to grasp even the most basic of principles, such as time, we open our hands and find that they have escaped our understanding, albeit more narrowly each time?  This is a pillar for me in my faith: that God is and has created things that are out of our grasp.

Blogging

I thought that Blogger would have just given up on me by now. I missed writing my thoughts, and I've wanted to get back into it. This semester, particularly Business Law, has proven to be a little taxing on the spare time. I miss it because I've wanted to help my own brain organize it's thoughts. It's very unwieldy. I hope blogging can be a way to journal and then be able to look back and find 'where I was' on particular issues.

Here are some of the things that have been rattling around as of late:

**I've been reading Fabric of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene. This is blowing my mind, and I'm still in the first third or so. I've always been deeply interested in physics, and I think a cool subject to explore would be how it relates to theology, cosmology, etc. So far I've been amazed that how we perceive things and how they *actually are can be so radically different. Teaser: light does not experience time, because it is going too fast (or exactly as fast as necessary not to be "influenced" by time). I've always wondered how God could possibly be separated from time. Could this be how/why? Or at least as close to understanding this as we can hope to get?

**I want to understand the effects that the American dream has on us sociologically, emotionally, and spiritually. Then I'd like to undream the American dream. Possibly even awake from it entirely.

**I think a further expansion of the previous topic would be how it relates to the church, understood as a collective community. What the church was first intended to be, what it has become, and what it can become with a dash of creativity and some open mindedness. Paradigm shifts are difficult for most people when it comes to religion or religious experiences. However, noting the amount of change the church (and actually, any and all religions) have gone through to date, why would we be so self involved as to think it has stopped once we arrive on scene? Change is good, it proves there's life.

Anyway, that's what been on the brain. I'm sure my future self will get a kick out of it.

A cool pic of Hong Kong

Almost Creepy...

A very cool gadget here - of course it would be in Germany.

Wii Golf with a 3 year old

(me - a practice swing)
"You have to push A daddy."
(another practice)

"Daddy you have to push A."

"Yes, I know honey, thank you."

"Well, you're not going up to the ball, you have to push A."

(sigh) "Do you remember who taught you how to play this?"

"Yeah."

"Who?"

"Me."

"You taught yourself to play?"

"Yeah, I did it over and over and I figured it out."

(At this point I become deeply concerned that my daughter is just like me.  Ugh...)

Or wait, is it Heather that's stubborn?  Yeah, stubborn genes are maternal.  Sorry ladies, it's science.

Life is a highway

Yeah, thanks Mr. Cochrane. I drive so much my life is a highway. Specifically it's the 101, or as I like to call it, THE PUNISHER.

So, I've been going easy on the gas for a while (easy on the acceleration, to be more exact). I was averaging 29-30 mpg's before I started and now .... wait for it.... I'm up to 35 mpg's!

Hardly the 45 mpg's I was hoping for. But here are some stats, based just on deciding to drive easier:

Length since last post...45 days (boo!)
~ 50 miles/day = 2990 miles (did I mention I have a hefty commute....also boo)
Based on my average price of $3.30/gallon

Gas saved/45 days = 14.2 gallons
$ saved/45 days= $46.99

Gas saved/year = 115.5 gallons
$ saved/year = $381.11

I guess driving like a grandma pays off. Next steps:

1) Uber-inflate tires








2) Remove the front license plate cover (it's like an inverse parachute)












3) Remove the roof rack bars (weight*aerodynamics + don't use it anyway = why not?)

I'm sure those 3 combined will only save 6.113 drops of fuel over the course of the glaciers melting; but hey, it'll only take me a minute!