This week’s WBQotW has been in my queue for a very long time, but coincidentally I learned more about it just last week.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein

I had used this quote in an email to a disenfranchised catholic friend. Then, I decided to google it. Sure enough I found the article in which Einstein published his thoughts on religion and science. While I disagree with his assertions about God, I respect the fact that he understood the necessity of faith even in the realm of science.

Believe it or not, I’ve seen two movies on their respective opening nights this month. I know! I’m livin’ on the wild side! I’m a mad man! You can’t stop me!

Some guys from the office (myself included) took an afternoon off and went to see X3. That’s the cool, hip, wild-side-livin’ nickname for the third installment in the X-Men series, “The Last Stand”. I think it’s great that X-Men is now a to-be-taken-seriously movie franchise. Now, if you tell a girl you have Wolverine bed sheets, she’ll think of that hunk, Hugh Jackman, whereas a few years ago, the same girl would slap you and tell you to sell your comic books and move out of your parents’ basement before trying to hit on girls. Okay, well, she’d still probably say something like that, but she’d be thinking of that hunk, Hugh Jackman, while she said it.

The first X-Men was great. I liked how they developed the characters and introduced the mutant phenomenon in a (sort of) believable way to folks not familiar with the comic books. X2 was great. They introduced more mutants, upped the ante on the special effects, and killed off a major character (of course, real fans knew that that was just a set up for the arrival of Phoenix). X3 was great. They introduced more mutants, upped the ante on the special effects and killed off a major character. Oh… Hmm… Maybe this is getting a little formulaic. Ah, who cares? It’s X-Men!

Seriously, though, I really did enjoy X3. They did a great job portraying the new guys, like The Beast and Juggernaut. (If anyone had told me that Kelsey Grammer would be an X-Man, I’d have laughed them out of the comic-con.) The movie rides along at a fast pace and without losing the story.

My only complaint was the ending. It was entertaining and “fit”, but there were several logical alternatives that made more sense. I’ll have to explain more, but it will involve spoilers, so the next paragraph uses my patented spoiler resistant technology. Highlight it to read more if you don’t mind spoilers.

Pretty cool, eh? First, Phoenix makes her debut (being the reincarnated Jean Gray) but she can’t control her powers and becomes a very dangerous “bad guy”. At the end, Wolverine has to risk his life to face her and kill her. But wouldn’t it have made just as much sense for Rogue to sap Phoenix’s power. Or even better use that “Cure” mutant kid. He just walks up to her and her powers disappear. Why kill her? On a side note, it’s totally retarded that Logan’s shirt, and even his flesh gets torn away by Phoenix’s evapo-rays, but his pants don’t even get torn. Dave and I both said (at the same time) they should have made the rest of his suit out of whatever those pants are made of. Kind of ruined the moment for us.

Okay. Now that that’s out of the way, let me say that if you liked the other two X’s, you’ll like this one too. Is it better than either of the other two? That depends on who you ask. Still, I think it’s a great movie and I’m giving it four out of five grins.

Postscript: One last thing. I’m the kind of guy that always stays through the end of the credits, just in case there’s tasty morsel hiding there and I usually get made fun of for it. Well, this time, since I was with “the guys”, I left with them and, wouldn’t you know it, I found out from another friend later that there’s a tasty morsel after the credits. GAH!! If you held your bladder for two hours, you can wait another five minutes and let me see the secret scene! Seriously!

Tammy and I saw Pixar’s newest offering, “Cars”, on opening night. We really enjoy going to the Movie Tavern. They have pretty good food, served in the theater (Brilliant!) and it’s almost never crowded. Notice I said, “almost?”

We arrived thirty minutes early, which is about thirty minutes earlier than we usually show up for a show at the Movie Tavern. Much to our surprise, the was a line … a looong line … that reached all the way from the friendly ticket taker at the back of the lobby to just outside the front door. Fortunately we managed to get our usual seats (the two seats by themselves at the back of the theater). Whew. Still, I was concerned that the two thousand* movie goers under the age of 10 who shared the theater with us might disrupt my viewing pleasure. Turns out, it wasn’t too bad.

The previews were all for computer animated movies. ALL of them! How could this be? It seemed like just a few years ago, it was a remarkable feat to produce a full length CGI feature. It’s a brave new world … and I sound like a crotchety old man**. Hmmm.

One more, bit of boring background before we start the review. A few years ago, my uncle told me a remarkable story. Uncle Barney is a very successful auto mechanic back in Amarillo. His shop is located on what used to be “Old Route 66”. He had some unusual visitors one day. A bunch of Pixar producers pulled into the lot and invited him to lunch. (At this point in the story, my jaw unhinged.) They were doing “field research” on a new car movie and wanted to talk to him. When I saw the first previews for Cars and saw the rusty tow truck with the silly southern drawl, I thought, “Holy lug nuts! It’s Uncle Barney! They put him in the movie!” Not quite. Barney doesn’t have that much of an accent, nor is he as dumb as Larry the Cableguy acts, but still. It was really amazing.

Okay. Sorry. Let’s get the show on the road. (Pa-dum Tshhh!) I am a huge fan of Pixar, so I am hard pressed to do an unbiased review. Still, Cars was awesome! Every time Pixar releases a new movie, I am totally blown away (again, jaw unhinged) by the beauty and complexity of their CGI. I remember gaping at the wide shot of the airport in ToyStory2, the thousands of ants in BugsLife, and the depth and realism of the water in Nemo. In Cars, my mouth was gaped more than it was closed. It seemed like 90% of the movie contained graphic elements never dreamed of ten years ago. Forests, waterfalls, huge sunset vistas. It was all stunning. (Be sure to look for the dim reflections of the cars on the freshly laid asphalt.) Tammy reached over and closed my mouth at least once (and I’m not making that up).

As for the story, it is Pixar as usual: Great character development, rich plot, and a good message. Tammy felt that it “dragged” a little in places, but I didn’t notice. The humor was spot on, with plenty for kids and grown-ups alike. There was one double entendre, but it was so well masked that only a few of the folks in the audience really got it. (There’s a few of us gutter-minded people in every crowd, right?)

One of the really cool things about Cars is that they used real people for several roles. The real Richard Petty and even his wife have several lines. One of the ensemble cast (the Sheriff) was voiced by a guy famous for his books about historic Route 66.

Another unusual aspect of Cars was that the environment was completely non-human. They avoided any contrived explanations of how and why the cars talked and drove themselves by completely removing humanity from the world. This is a pretty bold idea but it came off flawlessly. Even with the humans factored out, though, they stayed as real as possible (okay, I know talking cars and reality are not best buddies. Hang with me.) The physics of the cars’ movements seemed to “work” in my mind. They weren’t rubbery toys. Even though they gestured with their tires and had eyes in their windshields, the bodies stayed nearly rigid which gave it a very believable feel.

I really tried to go into this show with an open mind, so as not to taint my review, but alas, it seems a forgone conclusion that I rate this movie highly. There is no doubt that I will add it to my Pixar collection and I can’t really find anything to detract. So, I’m giving Cars five out of five grins.

* Estimation based on the decibel level before the movie started.
** Sound like because, at times, I am.

War is hell. No doubt about that. When a war lasts over twenty years, it’s even worse. Such is the case with personal computing platforms. The road is strewn with the corpses of the fallen: IBM, Commodore, Tandy, even Atari. We are left with the “Big Three”, Macintosh, Windows, and Linux. For years I’ve lived in the Windows world, and peered into the other two from a distance, rarely reaching out to touch the grass greener. At my last job, I brushed closest to them. I managed the web servers with Red Hat Linux and our primary client was a school district running entirely on Macs.

In that torturous year (torturous for more reasons than OS platforms) I gained a pretty good understanding of the philosophy behind each of the Big Three. Now for the first time, I have formulated a metaphor which, I believe, best describes how these things “think”.

Imagine your computer is a car, a utilitarian piece of machinery who’s sole purpose is to get you from point A to point B. When you slide into the driver’s seat, you are confronted with the operating system. The OS, then is the system of communication between you, the driver, and the mechanics of the car.

Let’s start with the left most end of the spectrum, the Macintosh. When you climb into your “iCar”, the first thing you notice is how plush it is. Soft, comfortable seats; huge windshield giving you a fantastic view of the road; and the best car audio system on the planet. Sure, it’s a little pricey, but what a ride! Once you’ve taken it all in, you decide to take it for a spin, but what’s this? There is no steering wheel! There are no peddles. Instead you have a single, big, shiny, back-lit button. It say’s “GO”. You press the button and miraculously the iCar drives you to work. “Brilliant!” you marvel. You press the button again, and the iCar drives you home. You never even had to look at the road. Then you decide to go out for dinner. “I think I’ll try that new Tex-Mex place,” you say. You press “GO” and before you know it, you’re sitting in front of the world’s best (and most expensive) Italian restaurant. “Wait. No. I want to go the the new Tex-Mex place. Besides, Italian gives me gas!” You press “GO” and the iCar promptly drives you to a newer, less reliable Italian place. “Are you deaf?! I said, ‘Tex-Mex’!” Before you know it, your parked outside of Pizza Hut. “Curse you, iCar!” you shout, banging the “GO” button with all your might. The iCar then promptly locks its doors trapping you inside until, hours later, you manage to kick out the side window and walk home.

In the center of the spectrum is Windows. The Win-mobile is exactly what you have come to expect from a car. Steering wheel, accelerator, brake, etc. There’s a radio, but each station plays more commercials than songs. There’s a CD player, but it destroyed your favorite CD last month, so you’re afraid to put another CD in it. You get behind the wheel and drive to work, battling traffic the whole way, bruising your behind on numerous pot-holes (program errors), cursing the tailgaters (pop-up ads), and around every corner is another construction zone (security update). After a grueling commute, you grudgingly get back into the Win-mobile to drive to dinner. You arrive at the Tex-Mex place only to find there’s a two-hour wait to be seated, because everyone in town decided to come to the same place to eat. The food is great, but was it really worth all the trouble?

Finally, on the right end of the spectrum, we have Linux. To your surprise, the car is totally free! You just walk up to the dealer, get in “car” (Linux is not real concerned with catchy names. Who needs marketing when it’s free?), and drive away. However, “car” also has no doors, no windshield, and no seat belts. If you want those, you’ll need to buy the Red Hat “car”. You decide it’s worth it. Now you feel a little more comfortable behind the… umm. Where’s the steering wheel? Oh, well, that comes standard with Suse “car” (but Suse has no doors), but if you really think you need it, you can get the wheel for free and bolt it on yourself. You do have you’re own wrench set, right? You manage to survive your commute, though you had to stop two or three times and tighten the bolts on your steering wheel, since the wrench wasn’t really the right size. Now it’s time for dinner. Where is that Tex-Mex place? Voila! You’re “car” comes with a phone book (man page). You open the book, look up “Tex-Mex”. Instead of directions to the restaurant, you find the following instructions. “Put fajita meat in tortilla. (These can be downloaded for free). Frozen margarita is strongly recommended. The tequila is in the trunk. Once you’re drunk, you should avoid the cops. Just in case, there’s a gun in the glove box.”

I have posted about the danger of talking and driving a couple of times. But just to set the record straight, here’s the research.

University of Utah study: Cell phone distraction causes 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States every year. A 20-year-old driver with a cell phone has the same reaction times as a 70-year-old driver who is not using a cell phone.

University of Toronto study: Drivers talking on cell phones are four times more likely to cause an accident than non-phoning drivers. The study also found that “hands free” devices do not have any added benefit.

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study (conducted in Australia): People using a cell phone were four times as likely to get into an injury accident, regardless of whether they were using a hand-held or hands-free device.

So, multiple studies across the globe with nearly identical results. Talking and driving makes you four times more likely to be in a wreck, which is roughly the same statistic for drivers with a 0.8 blood alcohol level. Yes, people. No matter how safe you think you are, when you’re on your phone, you are equivalent to a drunk driver. (See even more related studies here.)

Finally, some local governments are doing something about it. Lawrence, Kansas is looking into a city ordinance to ban all cell phone driving, hands-free or otherwise. Obviously there are enforcement issues, but at least they’re doing something. In Lawrence, if you are in a wreck and the city can prove you were on your cell phone, expect to receive an additional $120 ticket for inattentive driving along with a $100 fine for violating the ban.

New York became the first state to ban cell phone use by drivers four years ago and several states have followed suit, but all still allow hands-free devices. Thus the Lawrence ban would be the strictest ban so far.

If you talk and drive, (Do I have to say it again? Apparently so.) STOP IT!!

Despite the title, this post has nothing to do with my underwear.

My elbow (formerly known as broken) is now fully functional. Last night was the first time I rode my bike on some hard off-road trails since the break. My arm performed perfectly. My lungs, however, did not. Two months of inactivity have adversely effected my stamina and my waist-line. Still, it is good to be back on the bike. To commemorate the occasion, I’d like to introduce you to my old friend “Angry Kid” and his own bicycle accident involving the very same bone I broke. Clicky clicky!

Tammy and I spent last weekend at youth camp with Glenview‘s middle school and high school youth. It was awesome! We learned about surrendering our lives to God, made some new friends, and Tammy got a great chance to get outside her “comfort zone”. (She’s never been real big on sleeping and bathing in such close proximity to other people.) By Sunday night, she didn’t want to leave. Even though camp lasted until Tuesday, she and I had to be back to work on Monday. We look forward to meeting up with the kids at church tonight and hearing about what we missed.

I’ve seen a few movies in the last month or so, and still have reviews to write. Keep your eyes pealed for those. I also need to finish writing the last chapter of our climbing wall build. So much to blog, so little time. Oh, I already told you that, huh? Well, then I guess that’s all I have to say about that!

I couldn’t possibly let today go by without commenting on it’s (non)significance.

Today is, of course, June, 6^th, 2006, or 06/06/2006 (to use Y2K compliant notation), or 2006-06-06 00:00:00 (if you’re talking to a SQL database), or 6/6/6 (if your just a lazy American). Naturally, our society, which is founded on a firm misunderstanding and strict misinterpretation of the Christian Bible, totally freaks out when there are three sixes in anything. Commence the dooms-day rhetoric!

I teach Sunday school for 8th grade boys (Yeah, I know. Pray for me.) and we are nearing the end of my study on the book of Revelation, where this mysterious number is mentioned quite a bit. As 8th grade boys are wont to do, they’ve told me about every urban myth and camp fire horror story concerning this number.

Yes, there are three “sixes” in every UPC bar code in the world, sort of. Yes, the guy who invented the bar code has six letters in his first, middle, and last name. Yes, in the Hebrew numeral alphabet, the letter for W is also the number six (thus WWW = 666). Yes, the Roman emperor Nero’s name using another numeral alphabet adds up to six hundred sixty-six.

But, if you’re going to get freaked out about a date, today is not the day to worry about. Our calendar is all scientific and stuff, but I strongly doubt that the numbers we have assigned to count the passage of time amount to a hill of musical fruit in God’s grand scheme. I would imagine the watches worn by the Heavenly hosts would not synch up well with even the most accurate atomic clocks here on Earth.

Will there be bizarre cultic rituals performed in dark basements today? Sure! But, will Satan’s spawn be born today? Only in a movie remake. (Tell that wasn’t marketing genius!)

If it will make you feel better, when you brush your teeth tonight, look in the mirror. If you don’t have some strange, permanent mark on your forehead that wasn’t there when you brushed your teeth this morning, you can sleep peacefully knowing that you have better than average dental hygiene. Also, you are probably not doomed to the fires of hell. Or are you?

I mentioned that things are pretty busy around here and (once again) I’m trying to focus my daylight hours more on work than play. Thus the blog is growing some moss. Sorry about that. To make up for it, the WBQotW for today exemplifies my usual frame of mind (the one that gets me in trouble).

Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off NOW.

Now, BACK TO WORK!