Ranch Hand

Emblematical Representations

History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy… These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened.

Benjamin Franklin, Circa 1774

More on this later…

Growth Mindset…

Read a great little article on NYT.com today. It talks about how the mindset you carry contributes to your propensity to grow professionally (though much of what is said could apply to personal development as well).

A story is shared from Scott Forstall, senior vice president at Apple, wherein he ruminates on the hunt for personnel to work on the iPhone project. He approached key personnel, the “superstars” of their departments with an opportunity…

“to make mistakes and struggle, but eventually we may do something that we’ll remember the rest of our lives.”

Man, I long for someone to come and ask me that. I’m just not sure that’ll ever happen in my current career path.

In college, on the walls of the civil engineering department, there were posters with the following tagline:

Building the Quality of Life

What they failed to mention about building the quality of life are the processes… and bureaucracies… and lawyers… that stand in your way. These hindrances, while challenges in their own right, require no strategic problem solving to overcome but rather inane busywork of dotting i’s and crossing t’s.

Read Full Article…

Words

“They serve to canalise the worship or penitence or petition which might without them - such are our minds - spread into wide and shallow puddles.”
- CS Lewis

This quote from CS Lewis really resonated with me.  My prayers, when said aloud, often seem too structured, plain, and dispassionate.  On the flip-side, while praying silently, my mind often wanders and generates a far shallower prayer.

Gaming fun…

Well… all that Wii poaching (4 Wii’s sold) finally got to us. We’ve kept one of the Wii’s and have it set up in our living room now. So much fun. MarioKart Wii is an absolute blast. The Wii Wheel is far more functional than I had expected. I’m looking forward to a more serious racing sim to come out for use with the Wii Wheel.

We ARE in Kansas anymore

We are visiting my folks in Kansas this weekend to help them out with a house they are renovating. Kansas is the only state in the US where people don’t cleverly tell me, “You aren’t in Kansas anymore.” The goofy thing about people saying that to me is that they all seem to think they are so original with their humor.

As we drove up my folks’ street this evening I remarked to Amy that coming “home” to Kansas makes me feel younger somehow. I left Kansas as my permanent residence in 1998… most of my memories are of more youthful times and activities. That’s the only explanation I can think of.

Backyard Play…

Amy and I frequently babysit two boys named Noah and Jonah. Seven and five-years-old, respectively, we can’t keep them indoors on nice evenings like we had today.

They like to play kickball in our backyard with the other kids who live near us. We’ve had 8-player games of kickball in my backyard before. I inevitably join in… and even my neighbor, his wife, and daughter have played in the past. Total Americana.

The one thing I can’t figure out… the kids who live nearby never organize these games of kickball except when Amy and I are watching the boys. The games always end up in my backyard… the unlikeliest of place given the large 10′ x 12′ shed that sits smack-dab in the center of my yard. I was just pondering this tonight as the kids were enjoying the first game of Spring.

Added a plug-in to the blog… WP-Cache.

This will cache the pages of the blog rather than rebuilding them from PHP code upon each request. This increases efficiency for the server, allowing it to serve many more pages per second. Clued in to this by Coding Horror.

Not that this will do much for this blog… the most views I’ve had in a day, to date, is 25.

Life, Bioethics, Etc.

Interesting weekend so far…

Friday evening we attended the Central Indiana Crisis Pregnancy Center banquet. Today we attended an event at our church called Bioethics and The Bible. Discussion covered everything from genome research, stem cell research, infertility, fertility treatments, physician assisted suicide, euthanasia, and everything in between.

Some tidbits…

• 50 million abortions have been performed in the United States in the last 35 years.
• 69% of American believe that Physician Assisted Suicide is acceptable.
• Many infertility treatments result in the storage/freezing of zygotes (fertilized eggs) for future use. Many of these end up being destroyed.
• The fertility industry as increased 332% in the last 40 years.
• Infertility in men is increasing rapidly.
• Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent and therefore much more valuable/usable for research. They require the destruction of human embryos.

Any thoughts you’d care to share?

Finally, a paraphrase from Dr. Grier this morning…

Person-hood isn’t defined by our cognitive capacities or bodily functions. Person-hood defines what we are as an image-bearer of God.

Job 34:14-15

If he should set his heart to it
and gather to himself his spirit and his breath,
all flesh would perish together,
and man would return to dust.

What amazing comfort. God is so completely in all things that his absence in any place would immediately bring death.

Outstanding scale modeling of a Star Destroyer. Thanks to Dave for the link.