Friday, July 30, 2004

The Kerry Bunch

I was rather impressed by John Kerry's speech at the Democratic convention last night. I disagree with him on just about every issue, so that was no small feat on his part. For example, I don't remember which part of the Constitution mentions a right to health care, and I don't see the need to raise taxes on anyone. By the way, it was interesting to hear the applause at the convention for his proposal to raise taxes on people who make more than $200,000 per year. I wondered to myself how many of the people at the convention make less than $200K annually.

But all-in-all, a good job. I didn't see much that would scare away undecided voters. After the speech, my thinking is that Kerry's opponent had better state the reasons why the public should vote for him, and not just harp repeatedly on why Kerry would be the wrong choice.

What did you think of the speech?

The best moment of the night was when my wife, noting Kerry's 2 daughters and his wife's 3 sons, said, "Almost the Brady Bunch."

Monday, July 26, 2004

The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

It would be nice for me to continue write reviews of books here as I read them. Yesterday, I finished The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. (Here's the Amazon.com link.) If you're not familiar with the concept, it's a collection of letters from a senior demon to his young nephew, who, through temptation, is attempting to bring about the damnation of his first "patient".

There's probably not a lot in the way of a review that I can add beyond what you can find at the link above. But, in short, I thought the concept of the book was very clever, and found it to be very interesting. There are some "Christian" books that I wouldn't recommend to the typical non-Christian reader. That's not the case with this book. I'd recommend it to anyone. If you haven't already, then read this book!

Five stars out of five.

Football Practice

Today was my son's first day of football practice. I had been concerned that his "sedentary" lifestyle (despite the fact that he has like 0.3% body fat) would cause him to have a miserable time and hate the physical exertion. So, to get him ready, I had been running about 1 km with him almost every day for about 2 weeks. As so often happens, he got along with no problems despite my reservations.

My son is one of the older kids in the group. He's probably average height and thin for his age. From looking at the kids, it seems to me that there are some younger kids that are big for their age in the group. Compared to the other kids, it seemed he was alert and paying attention -- using those sharp mental abilities to make up for lack of physical talent -- just like his dad would.

Today (and all this week) is just physical conditioning. He said it was fun. I told him it will be more fun once they actually touch a football!

Monday, July 19, 2004

Save Your Work!

Yesterday, I had written my longest blog entry yet. I was on a roll, discussing that spot where religion, patriotism, and motorcycles all meet. As I was putting the finishing touches on the piece, I tried adding an HTML link (to one of the works of none other than Flavius Josephus), messed up something when trying to add a target="_blank" tag to the link, and somehow lost the whole shebang.

Now you'll never know what Josephus and Kawasaki have in common.

Monday, July 12, 2004

What's In A Name?

Poutineq. Pronounced "Poutine Q", or even "Poo-Teen-Kyuu".

What does it mean?

1.) When my brother was in college, some of his drinking budd^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^B fellow scholars used the term "doughnut". Since a doughnut resembles a zero, it was used to describe things in a negative way. It was also used (lovingly, I assume) for each other.

2.) Also, when these guys were in college, they were big fans of the letter "Q". Why? Well, why not? I'm under the impression that nothing could have made them happier than seeing a business with a huge "Q" on an overhead sign.

3.) At one point, my brother set up an e-mail account for himself named "DoughnutQ". While the account is long deactivated, its legacy lives on in poutineq.

4.) Not too many years thereafter, I first set up an account with a major internet site. I tried various combinations of my first and last names, but these had already all been taken. The site suggested that I add some digits (such as the year or my postal code) after my name, but I wanted an account name with no digits. Getting frustrated, I tried "poutine" as my account name. No dice; it wasn't available. Remembering the old "DoughnutQ" account, I appended a 'Q' after the word "poutine", and the rest is history.

5.) OK, so what is poutine? You could try looking in the dictionary(.com), but it isn't there. To quote one site on the web, "Poutine is a French-Canadian concoction comprised of french fries, gravy, and cheese curds." I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, but I would say "fried potatoes" rather than "french fries", and I'll point out that poutine can be found all over Canada. I hear it's good for the heart and circulatory system.

So there you have it!

Thursday, July 08, 2004

All Steinbecked Out

I recently finished reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck. This is the 4th work by him that I've read in recent years (too many prostitutes), and I must say that I'm all Steinbecked out for a while. At 600+ dense pages, East isn't for the easily-sidetracked, and I've had enough.

Central to the story is the translation of one Hebrew verb (timshel) from Genesis 4:7. See here for a segment from the book. Basically, Steinbeck's character translates the verb as Thou mayest, meaning that it is up to an individual (and not his ancestors or anything else) whether or not he will choose good or evil.

Interestingly, Steinbeck seems to be the only one who translates this verb this way, as you can see if you click on the Genesis link above. So, while it's an interesting thought, it doesn't seen to agree with the mainstream opinion of Biblical translators regarding the proper wording. Steinbeck's opinion doesn't necessarily agree with the rest of the Bible either. I'm sure I'll comment more on the Bible (and everything else) in the upcoming weeks, months, and years.

I guess Steinbeck wasn't a Calvinist.

East gets four stars out of five. I'm sorry if that's too low a rating for such a "classic", but I liked his Grapes of Wrath better, and that gets 5 stars.