Intelligent Design vs. Rock N Roll

An interesting** paradox came to my mind while I was at the dentist.

And no, I was not on any laughing gas. Although I do hate how as the shots wear off my nose tickled like I needed to sneeze... But dentist visits make for another entry.

The religious Christian folks who advocate teaching "Intelligent Design" in our children's science curriculum usually use a certain angle. It is usually pointed out that "Intelligent Design" and "Evolution" are both theories and therefore can be taught side by side as theory.

All-right, leaving aside the rebuttal that "Intelligent Design" is a moral, historical, allegorical, and theological "theory" and therefore doesn't belong in a SCIENCE curriculum, there is a glaring issue with their "teach them side by side" position.

Creationists like to push the concept that we should teach both theories side by side, and let the kids make their own intelligent decisions about which they feel is the more plausible theory.

While at the same time, those same exact people - are fighting to censor our airwaves. They say that lots of music or TV programming is inappropriate for kids, or even young adults, and therefore should not be on our airwaves. They push "decency" standards. They sue.

Why is it OK for kids to make decisions themselves about the origin of mankind, yet not about exposure to nudity, profanity, or violence?

If we want to go further, we can look at alcohol or tobacco consumption, driving, and even sex and marriage.

All of these things, are the types of things that many of the same people who are pushing "Intelligent Design" actively shelter their children from with the excuse that they are not able to make good decisions as children or adolescents.

But how about the humdinger? All of those things are easy pickins for the the religious zealot. How about something else? How about. . .

Wait for it. . .

Homosexuality?

Why can't a person who is intelligent enough to decide which complicated theory got us here - decide whether or not they prefer same sex companionship?

I say, if they can chose how we got here, they can chose whether or not they want to change the channel when sex and violence come on TV. But if you don't give your child enough credit to make it through life if they are exposed to homosexuality - then they certainly can't handle complex theories like "Intelligent Design" and "evolution".

Oh, I see. You want your kids to be able to chose on the topics you find fitting - but not on anything else.

Ahh, I get it.

(As a side note, every time I typed "Intelligent" in this entry, I misspelled it. Thank god for real time spell checking on my Mac. Does spelling ability have anything to do with "Intellegence" ?)

And no, I don't think all Christians fit my description here. It is just we never hear about those *good* Christians because they are all out, you know, being Christians - instead of trying to piss off the rest of the planet. I think most *real* Christians secretly wish that these crazy extremist annoying hypocritical people who call themselves "Christian" would just disappear - or at least re-brand themselves. Only a *real* Christian will never admit that because they are too loving and tolerant to discriminate like many of the "so-called Christians" do.

Common sense is not common.
-Voltaire

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
~Seneca the Younger

Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.
~Chapman Cohen

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
~Pascal

There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs.
-Barry Goldwater

**Well at least it was interesting to me.

Getting around Portland

There has been a little bit going on with Transportation around Portland recently.

One cool thing that I found is ByCycle. They have made a really cool trip planner that supports Portland. You can use it to find and map bike routes. It contains the Metro "Bike There" map, mashed up with Google Maps and a route planning algorythm. Pretty cool, check it out and play with the trip planner a bit.

The funding for the new Willamette bridge from Riverplace (area) to OMSI (area) for the Milwaukie MAX and Eastside streetcar loop passed. The new bridge will also have very good bicycle and pedestrian access. This will be very good for southeast Portland, and eventually the MAX line is to run to Oregon City. I am sure we will be seeing more on this in the short term future. This comes hot on the heels of news about MAX exceeding ridership records.

Good job legislators, now lets get the Sellwood bridge rebuilt.

I came across a site called GoLoco which could be a great tool for carpooling. It allows you to set up routes, manage fund/cost sharing, review and rate carpool partners, and manage travel profiles. This could be a really handy tool for carpooling for school, work, or events!

Portland ranks high in the USA for bicycle trips. We have the highest percentage of bicycle commuters in the country, and we are ranked in the top 5 for bicycle friendliness. We are #1 in the USA for number of trips made by bicycle. The city of Portland is working on improving that ( even if the Portland Police Bureau thinks otherwise), and so is Metro. But despite all that, we are REALLY behind most european cities.

And finally, starting August 15th, every diesel pump in the City of Portland will be pumping 5% biodiesel blended with 95% regular diesel. This will clean up some of our diesel emissions, and help keep some of our fuel money local. The law has strict requirements about how much biodiesel must be made locally, and what it may be made from. Most of the biodiesel required to meet this demand can be made from recycled restaurant fryer oil. But displacing 5% of our imported fuel is a good start, and the cleaner emissions doesn't hurt either. As long as biofuels are produced locally and sustain-ably, they are a good thing. Portland is on the right track by not only using the fuel but being careful about how we get it.

Portland Police target bicyclists disproportionately.

Portland police have lately been operating "stings" against bicyclists. They have been watching for things like not staying within bicycle lanes or not coming to complete stops at stop signs (including putting your foot down).

They have been targeting areas like SE Clinton around 26th, Ladd's Circle, the area between OMSI & the Springwater Corridor, the area on the east side of the Broadway bridge, and several others.
(Google "Portland bicycle enforcement action" to find lots of reports).

I have personally seen the ones between OMSI and the Springwater corridor, including one tonight. Often these "stings" will use massive amounts of manpower, the one at Ladd's Circle had at times six to ten officers on motorcycles and in cruisers. Tonight there were two motorcycle cops issuing citations.

According to Jeremy Van Keuren, Public Advocate for the office of the Mayor Tom Potter:

"In an average month, the Traffic Division will issue approximately 1500 to 1800 citations. About 100 to 150 of those go to bicyclists (though that number may increase during
the warm months)"

Since almost all of these stings took place during commuting hours, and commuting numbers are the easiest to find - I am going to focus on them.

Here come my "back of the napkin" calculations:

According to the US Census Bureau, 62.4% drive to work and 3.5% of Portland commuters commute by bicycle.

257,510 total commuters in Portland daily, which assuming an average month of 20 commuting days that works out to 5,150,200 commuters per month. 3,213,724 of them are by car, and 180,257 are by bicycle.

Bicycle commuter volumes are 5.6% of motor vehicle commuter volume.

According to the mayors office, 6.66% to 8.3% of citations are issued to bicyclists, and by their own admission - the percentage issued to bicyclists during the warmer months may increase.

Which means that if you only look at commuting numbers, bicyclists are receiving citations at a rate 1% to 2.7% more often than motorists.

Now lets consider the fact that my numbers are only looking at commuting. If we were able to somehow quantify the total number of bicycle miles ridden in Portland verses the number of motor vehicle miles driven in Portland, I would seriously bet that the percentage of bicycling drops way below 3.5%. Especially when you factor in all possible miles travelled within Portland.

If that is the case then the Portland Police are issuing citations to bicycles at a drastically higher rate than they are motorists. This is consistent with the anecdotal evidence that the bicycling community has been compiling.

This is disturbing to me because motor vehicles kill far far more people than bicycles do.

Which would imply that these "stings" are a massive waste of police resources.

Of course, none of this is scientific, or even guaranteed accurate. Use this info merely as a starting point for further inquiry.

This post is NOT to debate laws, or bicyclists habits. Go somewhere else to debate that. I will simply say that there is no excuse for anyone, motor vehicle or bicycle to not obey the laws and if the laws are broken citations are legitimate.

The purpose of this post is both to highlight the disparity, and to postulate that if *real* safety was the *actual* concern of Portland Police, they would work on education and warnings for bicyclists, and issue citations to the people in the 4000 pound killing machines.

I don't think this sort of selective enforcement actions against bicycles will help Portland achieve Platinum status.

More than meets the eye.

There are only two options really.

Either the greatest movie in the history of mankind, or Micheal Bay is forced to leave the country.



Where will you be on July 3?

Robots in disguise.

Every bit of plastic ever made still exists.

If you have ever crate trained a pet dog, you will have found that dogs will do everything within their power to not shit where they sleep.

A dog will hold it until their face turns blue. Unless of course they are already blue, then they will just get a darker shade.

And if you (and the dog) have had the misfortune of getting stuck a little to long, and the dog HAS had to go in their crate, the minute the poor canine makes eye contact with you - you know it. The dog will feel as though they have betrayed the universe by pooping in the crate.

Well, humans are assholes. We could learn a thing or two from our dogs.

We only have one earth. Only one. No "fall back" or "plan B" exists despite what you may see in the Star Trek movies or read in the Cristopher Stasheff or Orson Scott Card novels.

I imagine that some day some poor wasted species - a distant relative to the Human - who has had to survive underground or in bubbles without being able to breathe air freely or some such crazy "12 Monkeys" like scenerio - might be looking for clues as to what turned the world into an inhabitable toxic wasteland. They come across a time capsule buried toward the end of the human species span on Earth - and open it. It contains one solitary word inscribed in a piece of plastic: "Sorry."

You see, we are filling the planet with a substance that is less than 150 years old. And it is changing, killing, and destroying everything we can see and things we cannot.

Our oceans are turning in to plastic ... are we?

Recently I was at Fred Meyer (a store chain we have here in the northwest) and I bought one small bottle of ibuprofen. (Yes, it was a plastic bottle). The lady put the one small bottle into a plastic bag when she rung it up. I said "Oh, thanks, but I don't need a bag. Save it for the next person." and she said "Oh, OK". Then she proceeded to take the small bottle out, set it on the counter, and THREW AWAY THE BAG.

I envision a future - if we don't kill ourselves off first - where there is a significant industry built around mining for plastic. Perhaps the "plastic rush" will make all of those old landfill properties really valuable...

Even if you don't subscribe to the doom and gloom, at least answer to me why we have to make disposable products out of material that lasts thousands of years? And what did human kind do before we had plastics?

Couldn't my 30 count ibuprofen come in a small paper envelope?

Do we need a completely new straw EVERY time the waitress refills the soda?

Why does every restaurant now give kids a completely NEW set of crayons for them to doodle with for the 7 minutes between ordering and getting the food? And why do those crayons need to be hermetically sealed in a plastic wrap?

Sometimes I really believe that humans are lazy, inconsiderate, shortsighted, stupid assholes.

And I include myself in that list as well.

But I am trying to change, and teach my child as well.... Perhaps the 1.8 people who read this might be working towards that goal as well.

Or - maybe not.