Craig's Blog of Destiny

We had turkey for Canadian Thanksgiving last monday, but because (as Jamie pointed out on the Cottle Family site) we had to work, we didn’t have the time to do a full blown dinner.  So we elected to have turkey sandwiches.  To make it special, I went with the following.  It’s not so much a recipe as it is a plan of construction – it sure was good.  (For those purists out there: yes, it is basically a Kentucky Hot Brown with gravy instead of the sauce – the last time I tried that particular sauce I was unsuccessful).

Step 1:  Toast a slice of your favorite bread.

Step 2: Place a thick slice of turkey breast on the bread.

Step 3: Place a couple of slices of tomato on top of the turkey breast – preferably tomatoes from your backyard garden like I used.

Step 4: Place a couple of slices of cooked bacon on top of the tomato.

Step 5: Smother the whole thing with gravy – I made my favorite poultry type seasoned with fresh rosemary, which also came from my backyard.

Since it was a Thanksgiving meal I had two of these, but I could have had even more.

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving!

In honor of this day, at our house we’ll:

• Have turkey, probably in sandwich format, but we’ll have turkey.

• Have pie.  Any excuse for pie.

• Watch football (Monday Night Football).

• Shell some nuts, probably peanuts that I can later put in candy.

• Have gravy with our turkey sandwiches, and in honor of my sister we’ll serve it out of a pyrex measuring cup.

Today is my Dad’s Birthday!

Have a great one, Dad!

Next week Bill Maher has a movie coming out, Religulous.  Unfortunately, it’s from the same director as Borat (I really didn’t like Borat).  Religulous is a documentary about religion, and as you can imagine, coming form Bill Maher, it’s a comedy and will probably be pretty funny.  I’m a little ambivalent about seeing it – I’m worried that no matter how funny Bill Maher finds some things, those religious fanatics he’s bound to come across will irritate me.

What has caught my attention, and prompted this post, is something Bill Maher said on Larry King back in August.  You can see the segment here.  He says a lot of interesting things, I particularly like the way he ends the segment (“At some point, mankind is going to have to shed this skin if he’s going to move forward.”), but something that really struck me is what he says about the number of “rationalists.”  He says they represent “somewhere around 16% of people” which he says is a greater percentage than any other minority, “bigger than Blacks, or Jews, or Homosexuals, or NRA members, Teachers Union, Hispanics….”  I felt compelled to check his numbers, and found that indeed that seems to be the case.  According to census results from 2000 (which have been compiled into a Wikipedia article you can see here) the percentage of those that list themselves as No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic is 15%.  The next closest racial minority was Hispanics or Latinos at 14.8% and Blacks or African Americans at 13.4%.  Interestingly, the Jewish percentage is only 1.4%.  There are roughly 4 million NRA members, so that percentage would be about 1.3%.  The numbers I could find on Homosexuals indicate somewhere around 1.5%.  The NEA (National Education Association) has 3.2 million members, or about 1.1%.  So indeed it appears that the rationalists outnumber just about any other minority. 

A larger minority than any other minority, yet they’re surprisingly silent.  That got me wondering:  if there are so many of these folks, why so quiet?  I believe there are two major reasons for this.  First, rationalists have no compulsion to convert.  There is no need. The universe, the world, America…, it all is what it is and our “beliefs” or the “beliefs” or those around us are irrelevant.  “The universe is, so far as I know, indifferent to what you believe or disbelieve.” Secondly, the very nature of the dialogue precludes any positive outcome.  When one side of an argument uses as its proof un-documentable evidence there is no way to have meaningful discourse either in favor of or in opposition to that position.  A rationalist will always think:  “What are the facts? Again and again and again—what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable “verdict of history”—what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!”  A religious or spiritual person will try to say that things are what they are despite the facts.

Encouragingly, the “rationalist” numbers are growing at a much more rapid pace than any other group, up 6.6% since 1990.  The total Christian categories are down 8.5%.  This becomes even more telling when you recognize that many of those Christian categories do have active proselytizing programs (LDS down 0.1%, Jehovah’s Witnesses down 0.1%) and the “rationalist” movement is noticeably quiet.  The largest increase among Christians was the “Christian – no denomination reported” which was up 2.5%.  That doesn’t strike me as real positive for the organized religions.

Jamie made a comment on my last post (It’s….   A New Car!) that I should have gotten “the oldie” and that she would like to see a picture of me in it.  It’s still there for sale…  he’s only asking $5500 for it if anyone is interested;  however I’m not so comfortable going down the street and asking if I can get a picture of myself in it.  But that brought to mind this picture of me and Kristin in an old Model A.  There is a jump seat in the back with David, J’Neil and Sam sitting in it.  This was up at my Uncle Marvin’s place in Garland, Utah.  He had a couple of them and was fixing them up.  We drove this one up and down the road in front of his place, and as I recall, driving it was a little bit of a challenge:  all the controls were by hand.  You had to throttle up and down by hand: I believe it was on the dash.  Also you had to do all the shifting by hand, on the steering column.  I think it even had hand brakes.  I kept trying to step on controls like clutches and brakes and accelerators, and they weren’t there!

With Sam heading back to school this month and the truck going with him, and the fact that Kris was getting tired of me taking her car to work every day, it became time for me to look for another car.  I hate shopping for cars.  I wouldn’t normally use a personal shopper, but when it comes to cars, I’m tempted.

There was a time that I thought I may want a really older car, and I still think it would sure be fun to have one.  Like this 1950 Packard that’s for sale just up the street from our place.  But of course the reliability factor wouldn’t be so great.

The receptionist at my office is selling her car.  It’s a 1996 BMW 325i.  I drove it around some, took it to my mechanic and had him look it over.  His advice was mixed.  If I had to do any work on it – including oil changes – it would be expensive.  The parts are expense, and the labor is expensive.  However, he did say I looked pretty good driving it.

I’ve often thought that my next car might be a PT Cruiser.  Not sure why, just thought it looked like a car I might drive around in my advanced years.  It looks like a grandpa car to me.  But we couldn’t find one that we thought fit our  price and model year requirements .

So, we found a car down in Hermiston, Oregon.  The guy that had it actually purchased it in Hawaii while he was working there, then brought it home and parked it in his garage.  He said he hadn’t driven it for about a year, and it looked just as if it hadn’t been driven for a year.  It had relatively low mileage, and passed the inspection of my mechanic.  So, we offered him about 70% of what he was asking for it and was a little surprised when he accepted it without making a counter offer (but as I said, he wasn’t using it at all).  So, to see it, click here.

Last week  I went for my last visit to physical therapy session.  He told me that it looks like I’m at about 92% in my right arm, and that as long as I kept working it at home there was no reason to be coming back to see him again! 

A few weeks ago we watched “Across the Universe” at our house.  Since then:

• J’Neil has learned to play “Hey Jude” on the guitar while she sings it
• Kristin ordered and recieved the complete soundtrack
• Most all of us have loaded said soundtrack onto our computers
• Kristin also ordered and recieved the movie on dvd, which we watched on our drive to Montana
• I’ve been playing “Let it Be”, though I prefer to have someone else sing it with me
• There’ s been a great deal of dialogue in the house about how the Beatles wrote some pretty great music
• Also dialogue about how much better some of these folks from the movie performed those songs than the Beatles did
• 80% of my exersize time has been to the soundtrack of Across the Universe
• We’ve all decided that we really like Jim Sturgess, who plays the lead
• We had to watch “21”, which also starred Jim Sturgess (he was better in “Across the Universe”)

The great covers of Beatles songs really makes this a fun movie to watch.  If you’re a Beatle fan you’ll love the covers.  If you’re not a Beatle fan, you’ll become one and you’ll love the covers.  My favorite may be Joe Cockers version of “Come Together” during which he plays several different characters.  Although Jim Sturgess doing “I’ve Just Seen a Face” in the bowling alley is priceless.  Here’s a short bit of Jim from the opening scene of the movie:

Today is Sam’s Birthday!  He’s seventeen.

Seventeen.

Have a great one, Sam!

On my phone system at the office I have a voicemail program that will email me whenever I recieve a voicemail.  Of course, I can call in and listen to my messages on my phone, but the email also has an audio file of the message so I could listen to it on my computer.  But what’s really fun is that they use voice recognition to create a text of the voicemail that is also in the email I recieve.  Sometimes the text isn’t quite right.  I’ve copied some of that text, unedited, below.  Can you figure out what was actually said?  I’ll list the correct version in the comments section.  

Hi Craig, this is Cristina from Barren Genoble

I just jumble my menses computer and print about format

I was going to King Coast and radio shock in the hell lepton

I’m in the Malloy office today

I’m wondering a mostly

I have an eternal plan with this group

so I forgot crumb but hell of none of the marine arrested

Good morning Crai Godzilla

I need to find out when you guys are women

I was calling about your a wide x-ray

really any day they captured

their shifts are over cheating

King Coast is Quarrel Wilson

I was not then open

I’m here for 20 days more and then I will begun

I promises I’m gonna go with you anywhere

to the email that you send Eric Oarse

John spoke with her this morning at some links

I have a quick question about the hostile and complainants plan

I have planned to have nice abs but I don’t have regular abs