In a few hours, I fly to NYC to be reunited with my lovely wife after far too many days of separation. What God has put together let no man rend asunder. Very excited about it. I've been to NYC twice, but I've seen nearly nothing there. The biggest sites I've been to are Redeemer and Saint's Alp.

Being alone has given me a little time to think, and not just about the hunger pangs that come from having zero cooking skills. I think the past couple weeks have helped me identify a few things about myself.

For one, I'm stubborn. I used to think I keep doing the things I'm doing out of inertia, but that's only part of it. The other part is stubbornness. Somewhere inside, I have to prove to myself that I can succeed at whatever I do, even if what I'm doing is suboptimal and not an ideal fit for who I am. This sense that I need to prove that I can do something, anything, makes me persist in whatever suboptimal things I'm doing.

To be more specific, I think I'm not a programmer. I don't know quite how to explain that exactly. It's not (I hope) that I'm not intelligent enough, that I'm not good at it, or even that I don't like doing it. It's just not who I am. Looking at other engineers, you can tell who is and isn't fundamentally a programmer, and I'm not. But I've persisted in it in large part because of stubbornness. The need to prove to myself that I can be a programmer. I could be an OK, maybe good programmer, but I think I could thrive doing something else. So long term, maybe even short term, it doesn't make sense for me to persist in something that's not the best fit for who I am.

This may seem obvious, but it was a revelation to me.

I'm a big believer that if you really want to solve a problem, you have to get to the source. So like with the problem of huge numbers of illegal immigrants coming to the U.S. from Mexico. We could institute certain measures, like tougher enforcement of borders or figuring out better ways to assimilate them. But if we really want to find a long term solution, we need to address the root cause. And that is, the difference in per capita GDP between the U.S. and Mexico is greater than that of any two adjacent countries in the world. Much of this is out of our control. But in whatever ways we can help Mexico develop, we should.

I'm also totally against abstinence-only sex education. I'll probably rant more about that one of these days, but yeah. I mean, I obviously understand the moral principle. The problem is, trying to make that one stand in the face of our sexual culture is like trying to stand up to a tidal wave. It just doesn't work. I think I mentioned that study before, that showed that kids who make abstinence-until-marriage pledges (who are presumably mostly Christian) have sex before marriage in numbers comparable to everyone else. The big difference is, they tend to engage in riskier acts. That study totally depressed me and freaked me out. But I guess I shouldn't be too suprised.

What we really need to do is change the culture. What's that involve? No clue. Personally, I'd like to see a different, non-anonymous Internet, stricter enforcement of MPAA ratings, and more regulation of what's shown on TV, like never showing Friends. Obviously, that's never gonna happen, but whatever, I still think Christians need to focus on finding ways to change the culture, not just get kids to make abstinence pledges that they don't keep.

Not that I know anything. Random.

Jieun is the most trustworthy person I know when it comes to things told to her in confidence. I'm basing this on the fact that she doesn't even tell me many things unless she has a good reason to. At times, people bring up with me personal things they've discussed with Jieun, assuming that she's told me about it, except she hasn't. When I ask her why she didn't tell me before, she says I didn't need to know. Which is mildly annoying, being in the dark. But only mildly, because honestly, ignorance is bliss. And it's good knowing how trustworthy she is, even sharing with her husband only when it's appropriate.

I dunno. Most times you tell people something and you just assume that they'll tell a handful of other people. It's just natural. But it doesn't happen with Jieun. And that's refreshing.

We got into a discussion tonight about church names. If our church ever changed it's name or planted a new church, we could go with the standard post-modern thing and call ourselves Breathe or something like that. But I think we should be more cutting-edge than that. We should be post-post-modern, the forefront of the next generation of church names. In my mind, I envision it being more abstract than what's out there now. So my suggestion was "Orange". But Ted says there's already a church out there called "Blue Sky." So it's been done; we need to push the envelope further.

So my new suggestion: ∛(love). It's perfect. Totally abstract with a tiny hint of meaning. If ever we need a new church name, that's my suggestion. Cutting-edge.

Whoa there. I'm not a Giants fan, and I don't know what the atmosphere is like in SBC Park now, but growing up, everyone in the Bay Area mocked people who left in the 7th inning. That was (and is) representative of L.A. Not here.

I hated the crowd that went to Giants games after Pac Bell Park opened. They weren't fans of sports, they were fans of trends. I remember getting irritated when a certain friend, who was never into sports before, suddenly got really into the Giants thanks to his corporate tickets. Made me ill. It was different in Candlestick, with the swirling winds where you could freeze and get a sunburn at the same time. That was more representative of Bay Area sports fans, the ones who actually came out for the sports. Real.

I know it's not the same as in places where there's nothing else to do but watch sports, but I think Bay Area fans are decent. Like attendance at Warrior games is still really good. That's dedication and loyalty.

I realize that I'm the only person who even watches the show, much less loves it, but whatever. My review of the artists last night on Hit Me Baby One More Time:

• Greg Kihn - OK. He's actually a DJ in San Jose now and I hear him on radio commercials for Stevens Creek Toyota. Anyway, his song was pretty good, but their cover of Boulevard Of Broken Dreams lacked the energy of the original. Although he went double time for the second verse, which was cool.
• Club Nouveau - I thought they were pretty bad. Individually, their vocals were great, but together, they sounded terrible. Lean On Me brought back memories though of my high school frosh retreat. Thank You was eh. The second Dido cover on this series. Interesting.
• Glass Tiger - Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone) was great, a perfect 80s performance. But their cover of Everything You Want, in addition to being a stale song, was awful. Did nothing different and was out of tune. Spicing things up in the cover is key for me. Else why do it? A disappointment.
• Billy Vera - Awesome. At This Moment is one of my favorite songs of all time, and it was featured in one of my favorite Family Ties episodes of all time, the one where Alex realizes he loves Ellen and drives hours to meet her at the train station. Great episode. Anyway, for some reason, I thought he might be black, but he's this white guy, who was already old when the song came out decades ago. But seeing him sing it and hear the voice come out - good times. I don't know True well enough to comment, but seeing the voice for At This Moment was the highlight for me.
• Thelma Houston - Sang her disco hit, Don't Leave Me This Way. Yeah, I don't recognize the title either, but you know the song if you hear it. Covered Fallin'. Neither of her songs were creative, but her vocals were absolutely amazing, and she deserved to win.

And you can see it when they perform - they absolutely love doing it. I think that's what I love about the show - seeing the palpable joy of people doing something they love to do. That's awesome. I'd love to be a one-hit wonder.

You know how the Smurf dance started, way back when. For a long time when we were growing up, we didn't have a garage door opener. So when we came home, I'd have to get out and manually unlock and open the garage door. If we came home at night, the headlights shining on the garage door formed a natural spotlight. So when I got out of the car, I'd do the Smurf dance in front of the headlights for a few seconds before opening the garage. I really have no idea where I picked this up and why I did this, but this is true of lots of things in my childhood.

Anyway, it's overhyped. There's nothing special/funny about it at all. At all.

To reiterate: Wang Chung was robbed. That was not a misprint.

Since I'm completely irresponsible, I stayed up until 3 playing Tetrinet 2 last night with Eric, Arthur, Roger, and Andy. Great times. It was like talking to an old friend. Brought back good memories. Tetrinet, I've missed you.

It's hard to believe that we started playing that 7 years ago. I am so old.

I know that no one cares but whatever. I finally got to see the Hit Me Baby One More Time show with Arrested Development. The old guy who serves no discernible purpose is still with the group! Still serving no discernible purpose! I got a kick out of that.

I like most the covers that are different and original. Vanilla Ice doing Destiny Child's Survivor was actually really interesting. I loved Wang Chung doing Hot In Herrre. They were robbed.

I dunno, I like the show.

Not to raise expections too much, but Batman Begins is easily the best movie I've seen this year. By far. How's that for not overhyping it? It might be though more a reflection of how few movies I've seen. But yeah, great movie.

***** SPOILERS *****

I think it gets 4 stars in my system. No 5th star because I've thought about it, and there's nothing deep about it. It flirts with interesting ideas about the nature of justice but Rha's Al Ghul goes too far beyond this, caring nothing about the innocent that justice should concern itself with, making his viewpoint untenable. So no profundity. But otherwise, a fantastic film. 4 stars.

***** END SPOILERS *****

I very lightly teared up at one point, though nowhere near the level of Spider-Man 2. Issues.

Also, I can't quite recommend seeing it at the IMAX in the San Jose Tech Museum. Picture and sound was amazing, but since it's a dome theater, it's just too enveloping. You literally have to turn your head to catch stuff and it's dizzying. The fight scenes were incomprehensible. At some point you have to just give up, stare at a fixed point, and try to let stuff soak in through your peripheral vision. Based on seeing Matrix 2 at the Sony Metreon in SF, I'd recommend going there over the Tech if you want to see a movie on IMAX.

I left my backpack in Tresidder after the FiCS reunion. It had my iPod and Etymotics in there, along with some work related stuff. After about a week I had resigned myself to not getting it back, and I was fine with that. But lo and behold, out of nowhere, someone left a comment on my blog saying he found my backpack and that I could pick it up. How did he find my blog? And how did he associate me with the blog? No idea. Anyway, everything was still in the backpack. I love Stanford. Would this have happened at say, Duke? I think not. Random slam.

Have I ever explained my philosophy about things? I think I have, but whatever, I'm redundant anyways so what's a little more. I strongly believe that we should keep just a tenuous hold on material things in this world. The way that works for me is, I will not buy anything that, were I to lose it, I would be very bothered by it. Kind of a vague criteria, but it makes sense and works for me emotionally. Basically, I don't want to care about material things too much.

I never bought a guitar in college because I knew I'd care about it too much and be devastated if I lost it, and I didn't feel right about having that attitude towards something. And that attitude toward a guitar has kind of inertiad its way to today even though now it's a negative thing that's inconveniencing other people.

I don't want to pull the trigger on a new car because I know I'll care about it, whether it gets dented, scratched, stolen, whatever. With my Corolla, anything can (and has) happen to it and I basically don't care. I like that freedom.

So the way I've been is, before I buy or get anything, I always ask myself, if I get this, will I be too attached to it? Will I care about it too much? Think about it too much? Despair too much if I lost it? If so, I don't get it. Works for me.

There are negatives to thinking like this. To be honest, I think the mindset has been more stoic or Buddhist in terms of detachment rather than a Christian perspective on belongings. I say this because I've found myself in the past trying to be detached from relationships in addition to things, for roughly the same reasons - to ultimately avoid being hurt. And that's off, right? We should pursue and become attached to relationships even knowing full well that we will possibly, maybe even certainly, be hurt by them.

So how to be detached from things but not to people is something I've not yet mastered.

A sign of how sad my life is when Jieun's not around: I spent 2 hours last night watching Dancing With The Stars. I repeat: 2 hours watching Dancing With The Stars. Somebody shoot me now.

Hit Me Baby One More Time is a ridiculously entertaining show. I dare say brilliant. They all have one legitimate hit so people can get into it. Then the idea of them covering another hit... great idea. I was very into it.

So it was a while ago, but I really enjoyed and was encouraged by the FiCS reunion, much to my surprise. To be totally honest, I wasn't that excited about it going in to it.

I don't know how to say this the right way, so I'll just say it and you can rebuke me as needed. But going to certain Stanford weddings recently had depressed me a bit. It just felt like people weren't Christian anymore, meaning the pursuit of Christ was way way down, maybe even gone, from the list of people's priorities. I know that sounds awful. And honestly, I'm not making any judgments on people's salvation, nor do I feel superior in any way. It just made me sad that people were missing out on the practical blessings that come from making Jesus the primary focus of your life.

There's another aspect also that made me sad. And that was, in certain conversations I was made to feel bad for not being as career driven as others. A lot of this probably was just in my head. But it just felt like people were putting Jesus on the side for the sake of their careers, then looking down on me for not doing the same. And coming from fellow Christians, that wasn't a good feeling.

So I think there was a side of me that, because of this, kind of dreaded the FiCS reunion. Just wondering in my head, how many people still care about fellowship in general and FiCS in particular and will show up? And when we gather, will it still feel Christian, or just like a gathering of any group of people? Will it be an encouraging or discouraging time?

So yeah, I was pleasantly surprised and blessed by the time. It was awesome to see people, the people in our class in particular. And, I don't know how to quite explain this, but yeah, it "felt" Christian. We were just talking about whatever, but I came away feeling that Jesus is still is a huge part of people's lives, and it was great seeing how he's working in them. Like, Leo's pursuing his MDiv. That's awesome. Just in general, I got a feeling of God working in people.

I felt rebuked also, because some conversations I was encouraged by were with the same people I felt discouraged by before. The lesson: I was the one with issues, not them. Thinking they weren't pursuing Christ anymore was inaccurate and judgmental. A good rebuke.

One last note. I really hate attention. So that whole Smurf dance thing in the Jeopardy game I pretty much completely hated. I played along for 2 reasons. One, my thinking is, if a situation calls for you to do something you don't want, it's lame to be a spoilsport, you just have to suck up and do it. It's the same thing with like dancing at weddings. I hate it, I suck at it, but if it's required to support the couple, I'll do it. Second thing is, I've made Dave Call The Elders more than a few times in my day, so it's not exactly unfair.

But I ain't doing it again. Ever.

My favorite yogurt by far is Brown Cow. Especially the whole milk yogurt with cream top. Incredible. But even their non-fat stuff is really good. What's weird is it's cheaper at Mollie Stone's, which is a somewhat higher class supermarket, than at Albertson's. How does that work?

Not that anyone cares.

I hate talking about my heartburn. For various reasons. For one, a life philosophy of mine is "suck up". Deal with things, don't whine about it. And talking about the heartburn thing feels like whining. But whatever. Other thing is, it's nothing compared to what other people have to go through.

That said, it's been insanely frustrating. Going on four months now of constant heartburn. Got an endoscopy, and I'm negative for everything, so still no clue what's causing it, and therefore, no good idea how to get rid of it. Here are some of the major things that cause/irritate heartburn: caffeine, alcohol, overeating, being overweight, smoking, tight clothes. I do none of those things.

So now I'm trying to be super anal about not eating anything that might even possibly cause heartburn. And that's tough. The big things to avoid are fatty foods, spicy foods, and acidic foods like tomatoes and citrus fruits. That pretty much eliminates all Mexican and Italian food. Korean restaurants are pretty tough also. Either it's spicy and I can't eat it, pickled and I can't eat it (acidic), or they use garlic, which is another trouble food.

Anyway, sucks.

I have some opinions about immigration, and it might sound elitist or whatever, but I really think it's practical. On one hand, I believe fairly strongly that we shouldn't make it too onerous for talented people to come to the U.S. A big reason the country has remained so strong is that talented people keep coming from all over the world into the U.S. Our students are generally mediocre in tests compared to other countries. But smart people around the world keep coming here, and that's good for the country. So this post-9/11 approach of making immigration difficult for everyone willy-nilly strikes me as being a bad thing.

I don't think however, that we should open up the borders for everyone. In particular, and here's the maybe bad sounding part, but I think we need to enforce our borders with Mexico much better.

Some people seem to think that minority groups forming strong, lasting subcultures is a good thing. That's always happened somewhat, but groups tend to assimilate in time. Most Caucasians are just a mix now, and even with say Japanese, the majority of marriages involving people of Japanese descent in the U.S. are with non-Japanese, I want to say (not sure) mostly with Caucasians.

That's not happening with Mexicans, partly because they're coming now in unprecedented numbers, in absolute terms and in percentage of all immigrants. So they're forming subcultures and not leaving them. Some people think it's a good thing, and people dream of there being essentially two Americas, one English-speaking, one Spanish-speaking. After reading a bit of Huntington (I think that's his name) I've come to believe that this is a very bad thing for the country.

Samuelson's latest column in Newsweek kind of echoes this. He notes research showing that not only do Mexican immigrants have a hard time socio-economically, but their children have trouble advancing. And, the research suggests it's not discrimination at play. As a group, Mexican-American's incomes have dropped the past couple years, the only group to do so. One problem he mentions is that since there are so many Mexican immigrants coming in, they compete with one another for jobs, so it makes it harder for any of them to advance in society.

Anyway, his stance is we must be pro-immigration, and to do this, we need to control immigration. Sounds paradoxical. But without doing the latter, we prevent immigrants from succeeding in America. So he thinks we should declare everyone who's already in the U.S. legal immigrants, and then be strict about immigration control for the future. And I think this makes a lot of sense.

I read that article also. You forgot Complicated by Avril Lavigne. Anyway, I had the opposite reaction, I wanted to try to write a song with the 6-4-1-5 progression just to see what I could come up with. I still might.

Pet peeve: people who refer to Northern California as "NoCal". No one from here calls it that. It's "NorCal". "NoCal" is an idiotic Southern California thing. Don't use it.

Similar thing with people who call San Francisco "Frisco". I have never heard anyone from the Bay Area use that term. Ever.

You might have seen that 49ers video that's going around. Is this bad of me? I found that Asian "racist" stuff amusing. Course and classless, but I was amused.

My question is this. When is it OK for minorities to make fun of themselves? It seems like this is never allowed, and I don't get that. Caucasians can make fun of their stereotypes. Like the movie White Men Can't Jump. Or you see things all the time about how white people have no rhythm or whatever. They can do that, and do it all the time.

Minorities can't. Like, even if you're Asian, you can't make a movie called Yellow Men Are Nerds. Everyone will get on your case about how you're playing into Asian stereotypes and being irresponsible in your portrayal of Asians.

This feels wrong to me. Doesn't minority rights mean having the same rights and priviliges as the majority? So shouldn't the right of minorities to make fun of their own stereotypes be a goal? Why is this not allowed or considered a bad thing?

But what do I know. Nothing.

You probably shouldn't let me play catch with your kids. Couple weeks ago I was throwing the football with Grant and thumped him in the chest. Last week I was playing frisbee with Ashley and hit her in the face. Neither time very hard, but still. Whoops!

For no particular reason, the complete list of comics I read in the San Jose Mercury News, ordered by most to least liked.

1. Sherman's Lagoon
2. Dilbert
3. Monty
4. The Duplex
5. Pickles
6. Foxtrot
7. Jump Start
8. Baby Blues
9. For Better Or For Worse
10. Blondie

How important in life is planning?

A friend wrote something interesting recently equating "success" in life to good strategy in Settlers. His claim being that the key to success in Settlers is picking a strategy and sticking with it. People who constantly deviate from a plan never win. Victory requires a purposeful plan and deliberate sticking to that plan.

I kind of disagreed. I think slavish devotion to a predetermined plan spells disaster in Settlers. You should definitely plot a course of action, but you need to be flexible enough to adjust it according to what happens during the game or you won't win. That, I think, is the better strategy.

But regardless, how applicable is either to life? And what's the relative importance of planning? I ask because the theme of My Utmost a week ago was how we should not worry about our daily sustenance but just seek the Lord first. I've heard that many times before, but for some reason, this time I've been chewing on it a lot. We shouldn't worry about even our daily sustenance. So how much less should we worry about our careers and future and all that? It says don't worry, not don't plan, and there is a difference, but they do often go together; people worry without a plan, and when plans don't pan out, people worry. So maybe planning too much is wrong.

I dunno. My nature is to not plan. It drives certain people in my life crazy, and maybe I'm just making excuses for my natural behavior. Anyway, just stuff I'm chewing on.

SN. I've been on a pretty good Settlers winning streak lately. Go me.

Sophia says I should blog about my corn on the cob eating, so I will, but indirectly so it's just slightly less boring.

What she noticed is that I eat my corn extremely cleanly. What I do is eat out a row of kernels. Then I work my way down one row at a time, picking each row of kernels cleanly off the cob. So I pretty much get off all the corn that's possible to get.

Anyway, every time I eat corn on the cob, I relish it. Reason is, in my childhood, I had braces for 5 years. Including neckgear, which I was (understandably, I think. It's traumatic) totally lazy about wearing. In fact, I don't think I ever finished my cycle, it's more my orthodontist got sick of seeing me after 5 years and just gave up. Anyway, during those 5 years, I couldn't eat certain foods, including whole apples and corn on the cob, else the braces might pop off. And that sucked.

So yeah, to this day, when I eat corn on the cob, I remember those years when those foods were impossible for me to eat, and it gives me an extra bit of enjoyment. It's weird. 5 years is just 1/6 of my life, but for some reason, things that happen to me in formative years stick with me for a long time.

For reason unknown, the orientation of the men's and women's bathrooms at work vary according to building and floor. Confusing. So the other day, I wasn't paying attention and walked headlong into a women's bathroom, encountering a frightened woman with a look on her face like I was the most brazen pervert ever. Bad times.

I have no idea how to encourage women. No, that's too strong a way to say it. But honestly, it's a mystery to me. With men, it's easier. Just say it like it is. Easy peasy. You think they're doing something wrong, you pretty much just say so. They ask a question, you pretty much just answer what you think. Women, you do that, they might get pissed off at you.

I read this interesting article once in SI years ago about a male coach of a women's sport, and he was saying how coaching women is different from coaching men. With male athletes, they screw up, you just yell at them. With women, you can't do that, it just doesn't work.

It's fairly similar in normal life, I think. Women want to be affirmed, no matter what. The stereotypical thing is the "Does this make me look fat?" question. The correct answer is always, with no hesitation, no. Affirmation. (Sometimes they throw you a curveball and say "I think this makes me look fat. What do you think?" My current theory is that the correct answer is still no. Affirm their feelings, not their statement. Why they ask a question that has only one correct answer is beyond me. How come men aren't allowed to apply this rule to our own questions? Like, "Honey, can I play XBox (only correct answer is yes)?")

That's easy, but what do you do when it's something less trivial? Like, and I'm going to be absurd here for discussion, but what if they ask, "Do I steal and plunder too much?" What if they actually do steal and plunder too much? The man can't say yes, because that's not affirming. But if they just affirm, the woman will just go on stealing and plundering too much. As far as I can tell, there's nothing a man can do to change a woman. The woman has to decide it for herself, and then a man can encourage that. But he can't just confront her to help her change the way he would another man, like "you steal and plunder too much. Stop it."

The most masterful of men know how to affirm women in such a way that the affirmation evokes a desire to change, I think. Unfortunately, I'm not a masterful man. I'm a confused, bewildered, ignorant man. My natural tendency is to just say it like it is. If Jieun actually were fat, and asked me if I thought so, my natural tendency would be to say yes. Fortunately, I've trained my natural tendencies, but I'm still terrible at affirming. Sorry, honey. Fortunately, Jieun is far from fat. She's drop-dead gorgeous. And she never steals nor plunders.

I'll continue later, but to quickly address some comments... I'm intentionally not talking about the Christian view with free will for now. I guess one of my life philosophies is that the Christian world view is no more inconsistent or difficult than the secular one. The Christian concept of predestination is difficult to reconcile with free will. One point I'm making is that this difficulty exists in secular thought also. But yeah, I'll save the Christian stuff for later.

Also, again, whether we feel free or not is completely irrelevant to whether we actually are free. We *obviously* feel free. We can *obviously* do whatever we "want". But both Christianity and modern secular science tell us that what we do is more determined than we feel. Therefore, "feeling" free clearly has nothing to do with whether we actually are free, whether we actually have choice, rather than the perception of choice.

Until I reached college, I was super picky about food. I'm still somewhat picky, but in general, I'm more willing to try new and different things food wise. This was actually a conscious decision on my part and was kind of related to things going on in my life at the time. But my feeling then was, I could choose to just do the same things I've always been doing, not experience anything new, limit myself to what's always been, and likely drive myself crazy. I was near that point at the end of high school. If I didn't experience something new, I may have gone insane. Truth be told, I was a little wary of going to Stanford, just because I had spent my entire life in the Bay Area and thought I needed to get out. But I felt my family moving to Houston might be change enough.

Or, I could choose to embrace new things and experiment with stuff I haven't seen before. It might be bad, but it might be good. Given how tired I was with how life was, I decided to go with this mindset. And I applied it to food. So like, before college, I never had sushi, disliked most seafood, didn't eat shellfish, didn't eat (mostly because I just didn't want to try anything new) French, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, and most other cuisines. During college, I decided to give everything a try, and I'm glad I did, because I discovered a whole bunch of delicious foods.

Like I said, I'm still somewhat picky, but mindset-wise, I'm always willing to try something new. Even with kimchee, which I rightly hate, I still try it once a year to make sure I really hate it. You can ask Jieun.

Whoa, random.

Dang, this is turning into a *very* occasional series. Oh well. Again, those of you prone to boredom, shoo.

I feel like I've been too busy recently to even think, which sucks, because I feel most alive when I'm thinking. But that's life, I guess.

Just one quick Star Wars note. Kind of a spoiler I guess, but not really.

There is such thing as too much of a good thing. In the case of the Star Wars movies, with light sabers. The first trilogy used them sparingly enough that when they did come out, they were cool. By the end of Episode III, light sabers are just whatever. They're so prevalent that it loses it's charm, it's wow factor, and it becomes just another thing. Maybe that's the point. But me, I like the mystique better.

I think Scott had a similar criticism of the Matrix sequels, that one big thing about the first ones was that you had this feeling of "oh crap" anytime the agents were around. By the third movie, they'd been fighting them so much it was just like, eh, agents, whatever. And it's true. The fights with them were so frequent it started feeling casual. Same thing with the light sabers.

So yeah, I think I like it better when movies hold off on using too much of the cool stuff, to add mystery and aura to it. But that's just me.

Maybe it's just me, but I really liked Dave and Andrew's recent entries. Perhaps Calgary is the catalyst of interesting thoughts.

I read some more about the filibuster thing and maybe Dobson isn't crazy. Here's the thing. Since the founding of the U.S., a filibuster has been used for a judicial nominee only once, 37 years ago, and I won't get into details but it was markedly different than the situation now. In other words, the filibuster has essentially never been used in the history of the U.S. for judicial nominees. That gives me a slightly different perspective.

I fully realize that my blog is mind-numbingly boring. Number of reasons for that. One, lack of time. Two, lack of interest. And other things. Someone told me recently that they were surprised by my blog, that they had no idea that I was actually interesting. They didn't quite mean it like that, but I thought it was hilarious. I'm gonna prove them wrong. Show that I am just as boring on this page as I am in real life.

I think he went back to being MC Hammer after a while.

I'm against towels and bathroom soaps that are used purely for decoration. I just don't get this. If you want to decorate the bathroom, put up a picture or art or candles or whatever. But why have towels and soaps, things that were created to be used, for not using? Is there such thing as a decorative toilet brush? Decorative kleenex? Cuckoo.

Then again, I have a bunch of unopened DVDs which serve no purpose other than to take up space. This habit was reinforced by byue and jkwan. In the past we'd get all excited about great deals on DVDs and pounce on them. I think we all found that we have more time available for finding deals than actually watching movies. But I still buy DVDs for the purpose of piling up around the TV, unopened.

I like to think that they serve a decorative purpose, and it's my way of fighting on behalf of the male race against all the useless towels and soaps in the world.

The mainstream press generally makes James Dobson out to be some sort of fundamentalist ultraconservative weirdo. Honestly, that was kind of my impression of him too before I read any of his stuff. But in his books at least, he's really fair and reasonable. His positions may come out conservative, but of what I've read, it's not of the knee-jerk variety. It's always well reasoned and gives fair consideration to all the issues involved.

That's why I'm confused about his wanting to ban the filibuster for judicial nominess. Supposedly that's his #1 political priority. I haven't followed this really closely and I'm not totally sure what his exact position is, but this strikes me as being a very bad idea. Kind of on the principle of do unto others what you would have them to do you. What I mean by that is this. Republicans currently form the majority in Congress, but it's not going to be like that forever. There will come a time when Democrats will be the majority and have judicial nominees that will be on the opposite extreme as the present situation. In that day, the filibuster will be a useful tool for conservatives. So banning the filibuster doesn't seem very wise.

But what do I know.

It got slammed by the critics, but I really liked National Treasure also. Mindless and entertaining. I think maybe now that I watch fewer movies, I'm more easily impressed or something by the movies I do see. For some reason, I'm less and less inspired to watch movies much nowadays. Feels like a waste of time. Not that I'm doing anything constructive in its place. Curse you, Spider Solitaire. Curse you, Freecell.

I actually liked The Interpreter. Any movie that has a message that sticks with me is a plus in my eyes. The message from this movie: you need to let go of vengeance and rage. People get wronged all the time. But insisting on reparations for it leads to a neverending cycle of conflict. It is possible - it might even be the only way - to move on from being wronged without requiring personal justice or payback, whatever that is. We're the ones who choose to move on and have closure in our hearts. We make that decision internally. It's not something that happens through external events.

I think that's true. A problem with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is that each side has been so wronged, and they both want justice. One side has done terrible things to the people of the other side. The people respond with guerrila tactics and suicide bombers. Which necessitates a military response from the other side, which leads to more suffering. It never ends.

I really think one or the other side needs to just end the cycle and not respond for things to progress. But the people on either side won't stand for that, so it won't happen.

I also think this is why I agree with Friedman that Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. I dunno if you know anything about this guy, but he's amazing. He has enormous influence in Iraq, but he lives in poverty and rarely lives home. The biggest thing is, even with repeated, frequent Sunni attacks on Shiite mosques and civilians, he has insisted that there never be retaliation, which would have undoubtedly led to civil war, making a bad situation far worse. How many people have the courage to say, no matter how much we are being attacked, we're not going to fight back? Not going to rightfully retaliate for the sake of peace? That's amazing.

And no one cares.

Il Mare is maybe my favorite movie I've seen that makes zero sense. It goes without saying that it's Korean. I can't believe they're remaking it with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Bleah.

You know a balance I've never quite figured out. I strongly believe that people are better off in church rather than out of it. Doesn't matter who you are, what kind of things you've been doing, if you're a liar, a thief, a criminal or whatever, I would rather people be in church than out of it. So I think the church needs to be a place where all people, no matter what they're like, feel welcome. My dad is big on the idea that the church is a hospital. It's not for well people. It's for sick people. So it needs to be a place where sick people feel welcome. Not a place where you have to be well before you can come.

The thing is, you don't want church to be a place where people just do whatever they want either. They need to be challenged out of sin, else church looks no different from the world and loses its attraction. What's so great about church if the people there are no different from the world? What kind of salt and light is that?

So the people of God should be different from the world behavior wise, and we should challenge each other to do that. But the church should be a place where any type of person feels welcome. I guess just for me, I've never figured out that balance, between accepting and challenging. I know it's there. I just haven't grasped it.

Joking or not, I pretty much completely disagree with Tony's post, but I'll just comment on one part: beauty.

I actually find beauty a fascinating subject. It's easy for Christians to say that caring about beauty is vanity or a bad thing, but that's simplistic and wrong. The Bible uses the words beauty and beautiful at times in a positive way. And we have a bunch of worship songs nowadays that bandy about "beauty" and "beautiful". So it can't be that beauty itself is bad. It's just more we should have the right criteria for beauty, which is I guess inner character.

What's interesting to me, and I've written about it before, but there are standards of beauty in science. Biologists might think of the interplay of biological functions as beautiful. I think when the structure of DNA was discovered, it was described as beautiful. Even mathematicians and computer scientists have standards of beauty, but we use words like elegant, for example as applied to a proof or algorithm. In any case, if you think about it, the concept of beauty is a really pervasive value in life, and that's really interesting.

Anyway, from the random stuff I've read through the years, I believe that in general, people's standards of beauty stem from 2 criteria - health and average. The health thing everyone always mentions, nowadays often in an evolutionary context. But yeah, what makes you seem healthy is attractive. Like no pimples. Being tall. Nowadays, being thin is seen as healthy, so that's attractive. In times past, the opposite was true, thinness was a sign of sickliness, so they valued more filled out frames.

The other criteria is the average. Newsweek had an issue on this years ago. But there were a bunch of studies that showed that while we think that we value extreme features as attractive, the opposite is actually true - we value the average. The closer a feature (or face) is to the average, the more attractive it is. It's actually a really interesting result.

So that's why we often (not always) think of people of mixed races as attractive. Their features are closer to the average of what we see. It's also probably why white people who are tan are thought of as more attractive, same with light-skinned black people.

My point: I don't think Asian women's standards of beauty are based on trying to be Western, at least fundamentally. It's more, Western influence has changed the perception of what's "average", and at heart, that's what most people base beauty on, at least subconsciously. That's my theory.

Whoa. Brian Littrell of the Backstreet Boys is coming out with a Christian album. He already released a single (yet another cover of In Christ Alone). I don't know what's most disturbing: that I know who Brian Littrell is, that I know he's a Backstreet Boy, or that I know that he's coming out with a Christian album.

I know who he is because when we were living in James Rd. and watching 5 Netflix DVDs a week, we once watched this DVD on the Backstreet Boys. John could not have been more disturbed by the behavior of the teenybopper girls in it. Lord knows what he'll do if he has daughters. I have no idea why we watched it, but we did. And for the record, the BB are another thing I don't get. They're all unattractive, and on the DVD they sang a few songs acapella and were horribly out of tune. No looks and no talent. Sounds like a formula for success. Cuckoo.

Anyway, it's odd to me how In Christ Alone is like a Christian standard now. It was just a semi-obscure song by Michael English until Frank Reich quoted it after that game against the Oilers. Weird how stuff like that happens.

So a confession: I like Christian music. I don't just tolerate it or submit to it because it's Good For Me, like broccoli. I honestly like it. I realize that makes me tragically unhip/uncouth nowadays, even among Christian circles. Everyone thinks Christian music is cheesy, cliched, and unoriginal. True, true, and true. But I dunno, I listen to my old Christian CDs and love them. I listen to other stuff too, but there will always be a big place in my heart for Christian music.

One big thing is this: Christian music can be encouraging to me. Like, that Twila Paris song, Neither Will I, is fairly cheesy musically, but it really encourages me. I can't say that about secular music. The best I can feel with that is ecstatic. Which is a nice feeling. But somewhat empty.

After Mike's sermon on Sunday I was inspired to listen to some Michael Jackson. I listened to that Childhood song he referenced... it's disturbing.

Anyway, the sermon and its emphasis on Thriller made me feel kind of young, because I think Bad was much more influential in my childhood than Thriller. Which makes sense. I was only 6 when Thriller came out, 11 when Bad came out.

Actually, it reminds me of this weird thing we used to do in elementary school. For a while this teacher was into meditation and weirdo stuff like that. So every week (every day? I can't remember how frequently we did things as a kid) we'd take time during class and all close our eyes while she led us in guided meditation. You know, breath out tension, breath in peace, visualize ourselves flying, oddball stuff like that. And at the end, we'd all sit with our heads on the table, eyes closed, while she played Man In The Mirror. I suppose it was meant to inspire us towards self-actualization or something. Cuckoo.

Is that kosher? I dunno, I didn't think anything about it at the time, but in retrospect, it's kind of kooky, and perhaps reinforced some ideas about spirituality that aren't cool. I'm not a fan of teachers pushing Christianity in public schools. But I don't think they should have a free pass in pushing other ideas about spirituality just because they don't think of it as an organized religion. I dunno.

Regardless, I like Man In The Mirror. And the last line of the chorus speaks to me; I think it's appropriate for our church. If you want to make our church a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change. I dunno, I think our church is small enough that if we don't like something about it, us doing something to change that will make a significant difference. I dunno.

Another thing that spoke to me recently, My Utmost from April 16th. Chambers is talking about mountaintop experiences, I guess they're like spiritual highs. And he writes, "Laziness can always be seen in our cravings for a mountaintop experience; all we talk about is our planning for our time on the mountain. We must learn to live in the ordinary 'gray' day according to what we saw on the mountain."

Ain't that the truth for me. I frequently think about taking a day or whatever to meet God and never actually do it. That's just laziness talking, not wanting to deal with the spirituality of the day to day. OK, rambling.

I was at Albertson's last night buying some Rice Krispies. So they come in 13.5 oz and 16 oz boxes. Here's the thing that makes no sense. The regular price of the 13.5 oz box is more than the regular price of the 16 oz box. Huh? On top of that, they had a buy one get one free thing going on for only the 16 oz box. So the price of a 16 oz box of Rice Krispies is less than half that of a 13.5 oz box. That makes no sense whatsoever.

It also made no sense to me how for a while both Whoppers and Whopper Jrs were $0.99. Huh?

Not that anyone cares, but I rather like the Albertson's on Fair Oaks and El Camino. They have a reading table. It's a nice way to catch up on Us Weekly, a terrible, trashy, evil magazine that I'm inexplicably drawn to like flies are drawn to poop.

Interesting. So I'm experimenting with this new subscription model of music that RealRhapsody, Napster, and some others are doing. Not sure how familiar you are with it, but the way it works is, you pay a monthly (or annual) subscription fee, and you get unlimited downloads of any/all the music in their library. You can play it on your computer or (for some) on any portable music device that supports their DRM schemes. So instead for each song individually, you pay a subscription fee and get access to every song they have. The catch is, when your subscription ends, you can't play any of the songs you've downloaded anymore.

It's an interesting idea, and I think it's a cool model. It's cool being able to search for music and be able to hear anything you want. I've been looking for different recorded versions of Holy Is The Lord by Chris Tomlin. I've found 4 so far: the album version, one from Oneday 03, one from Passion 05, and a kids version. I think I like the Passion 05 one best, mostly because his voice is seriously offkey in places. Raw.

Looking for an apartment? Two cool tools.

Hmm. Some people don't like the new short thoughts look. Far be it for me to deprive them. So here's a permanent link to the old-style page:

I think the next few entries are going to be quasiphilosophical, abstract, boring entries. So those of you who aren't interested (i.e. everyone), come back in May.

One of my core beliefs is that the conundrums of Christianity are not really different than those posed by secular thought. People who think that Christianity is contradictory or logically problematic haven't really taken the time to think through the problems in their own thinking. Because the same types of problems are there.

Like, a big one is the predestination / free will thing. How it makes sense that things are predestined and yet we are held personally responsible for them. I don't want to get too into this, but I want to make the point - the main point of the next few entries - that modern secular thought has the exact same problem. Whether you are aware of it or not, modern science and thought is telling us more and more that there is no such thing as free will, and that's a really big deal.

I'm not the only person who thinks this. A few months ago (maybe a year now), I saw this article in I think it was Foreign Affairs, or some type of highbrow magazine I don't typically read, that talked about the 10 biggest problems in the world today. They had some things you'd expect, like the Iraq / Arab problem. But to my surprise, one thing they listed was the death of free will in modern society, which said pretty much exactly what I had already come to believe. Reading it was both exhilirating and depressing. Exhilirating to know that I'm not insane and that other intelligent people think the same way I do. My thoughts felt validated. But depressed because I realized that any thoughts I might consider original, many people have already thought before. But whatever. The validation thing was the stronger emotion.

Anyway. I'll start with this. We currently base our notions of moral and personal responsibility on a particular view of what constitutes free will. We say people have free will if they are in control. If they do something under their own control, then they're morally responsible for it. If they do something but weren't in control, then they're not fully responsible for it. So if I freely steal something, I'm responsible for theft. If I was brainwashed to steal something, I'm not morally responsible for it. In any situation where a person does something that they can't help but do, they're not morally responsible for it.

Bored yet? If not, you will be. I promise.