Internet Advertising

Is it just me, or does the whole new regime of ad-sponsored Internet sites sound like a house of cards waiting to collapse?

Sports Note

Football is perhaps the ultimate non-athlete sport. They split a football team between the skill players (quarterback, running back, wide receiver) and, well, everyone else. Let's face it: if you're a guard or tackle you're pretty much there because you're one helluva big hunk of meat. (I know, I know, its not that easy. But if I were a big hunk of meat I could learn the guard/tackle thing; if I were a talented blocker I'd be worthless UNLESS I were a big hunk of meat.)

Other sports seem to have taken notice. For example, there's Shaq. The guy can't do anything unless he's RIGHT UNDER THE BASKET. A ten foot shot? Might as well be from half court. Free throws? Forget it. Ball handling? Not unless you're talking about jumping straight up and throwing the ball five feet to the basket.

If you were Shaq-sized, you, too, could pretty much do what he does. Maybe not with his personality, such as it is. But with no prior basketball experience, if you suddenly became Shaqesque, you'd have 90% of his, er, talent.

Hockey for some time has had people who can barely skate. What do they do? They stroll around the rink and take out the other team's best players, slamming them into the boards, the ice, whatever. Hey, you see a 250 pound lug who's is barely in control of himself barrelling down on you you get out of the way. And maybe miss a pass or muff a shot in the process.

Baseball is full of lunks who can hardly field, can only throw in the general vicinity of whatever they're aiming at, and basically swing at anything thrown their way when they're at bat. Of course, when they connect they are as likely to hit a home run as a popup -- which is why they're there.

The point is, the thing that makes any of these sports so compelling is the skill it takes to play them well. That guard ball-handling like a magician, the forward who can pop that off-balance three pointer in from the other side of the court, the wide-receiver who reels in a one handed catch in traffic, the hockey player who stickhandles his way through the defense and can make the perfect pass to boot, the outfielder who can run down the line drive and then throw a pinpoint bullet to grab a runner leaning too far off base. Even the perfectly executed choreography of linemen pulling to throw a block at the precise right time to spring the running back. Knowing that these guys have one-of-a-kind skills is what makes the whole thing worth watching.

Please keep the Sports Center highlights, the monster dunks, the home runs, the hockey fights. Quit idolizing the guys who have no skills other than being freak-sized slabs of beef. Show me the guys who do those things that take skill, not size.

Speed Racer

Long story short: go see it. You won't be sorry. Make sure you catch it in theaters: this movie needs the big screen, a television just won't cut it. Good story. Great visuals. Kids or adults, it doesn't matter.

The critics have it all wrong -- for reasons I can only imagine.

It helps if you liked -- or liked to make fun of -- the old Speed Racer cartoon. But its not required.

Go see it. And let me know what you think.

Science and Scientists -- Don't ask them to be something they aren't

Intelligent Designers and other non-evolutionists: If you want to criticize science, please make sure of two things: 1) you don't ask science to do something its not set up to do, and 2) you don't confuse science with scientist .



Science does not take a position on God. Science is not designed to take a position on God. Science deals in things, mostly from the natural world, that can be proven. It has a methodology (the so-called scientific method) and a limit below which proof is still considered wanting. Scientific speculation generally involves staking out new paths to follow as part of the process of proving something.



That science does not take a position on God does not make it atheistic. If you look down the list of academic subjects offered at any university you'll find that almost none of them take a position on God. The arts, engineering, mathematics, the various business disciplines, law, political science, economics, foreign languages: none of them take a position on God. Only philosophy and theology have a God component. (Anthropology and psychology have God components, too, but they're different: in both cases they report on God as a human construct.) With so many other fields to pick on, why pick on science?



I suspect part of the reason is my second point. Scientists are probably not more likely to be atheistic than those in other academic disciplines, at least on the there-is-no-God side of the coin, they get to use science to their advantage. Science may not be able to prove there is a God -- which, as I suggested, is not science's intention, anyway -- but this lack of proof is often taken as proof in and of itself -- proof that there is NO God, that is. Not that this is legitimate: if you don't set out to prove something you can't claim that not proving it proves anything.



Furthermore, other disciplines are at least more open to the concept of God. Music, for example, is often practiced in a religious setting by those with a religious bent. The law often makes moral arguments that have religious overtones. (Although if anyone has more of a claim to the stereotype of an atheistic professional, its the attorney!) Mathematics is too sterile to be mixed up with any claims of God. Science's rather rigid neutrality on the subject too often casts an atheistic patina on the scientist.



Finally, science directly contradicts some religious teachings. In some cases it does this by explaining things that once upon a time were considered something else. Because of science we don't consider someone to be demon-possessed; we classify them as mentally ill and we even have ways to treat them.



In other cases, science no room for alternate explanations. Did God create heaven and earth in six days, or was there a Big Bang? Did Jesus perform miracle healings or were the then-unknown properties of certain herbal medicines responsible? There's nothing in an anatomist's text called a soul.



But all this is trading on stereotypes. Scientists know the value of unanswered questions, and there are plenty of scientists who know that God is the answer to many of them. Was the Big Bang just God's way of creating heaven and earth in six days? (And what was there before the Big Bang, anyway?) We still have cases where a disease is mysteriously cured. Did those prayers help? (And don't doubt that among those praying were doctors and nurses.) A psychopath might be classified as mentally ill and also treatable, but what exactly IS the true source and nature of evil?



We can explain alot about death and dying, but there are just as many doctors and nurses hoping for an afterlife as there are engineers and musicians.