Reductio ad absurdum

lib·er·al \Lib"er*al\, Adj. 1. Favoring political and social reforms tending towards democracy and personal freedoms for the individual; advocating reform or progress in education, religion, etc. 2. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; not bigoted. 3. Open to new ideas for progress; tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Garmisch, Germany



Garvin took some classic pics whilst in Germany.

upcoming mayhem...

My bro is having a "White Trash" Keg party on friday at the cheeseblock. I will be attending along with some notable collegues. There are guaranteed awesome pictures to come. This was pretty funny...

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Classic TDS

Thursday, March 23, 2006

a little break

Just so everyone knows I'm still sucking in air I decided to post. Rabbi Steve grabbed this from somewhere and I thought it was pretty accuarate.


So, I was playing on Poker Stars the other night in a 27 man sit n' go(which I did win, but that's not what this is about.) When I play online, I'm usually a pretty tight layer. There are far too many overaggressive and loose players to start mixing it up with mediocre hands. I just sit back and fold until I hit a big hand and then make all the chasers pay through their teeth.

I was on a particularily long drought of good hands so my mind started wandering. I started to rethink about a question I had about God, which was "If God supposedly knows whats going to happen in the future but he has also given us freewill, how the heck does that work?" So I'm just kinda going over this vicious circle of thought when I had a realization. I started thinking about a deck of cards in a poker game.

After the cards are shuffled, the winning hand has already been determined. Think about it, after that last shuffle, the order in which the cards are dealt has been determined. The five community cards have already been determined. That 7-3 offsuit might be the best hand because the flop will bring a 7, the turn a 7 and the river a 7. It's already been determined, but you just don't know it.

Yet, the player holding that 7-3 may fold. Because he has been given a choice. He was dealt his 7-3, was the first to act, realized the likelihood that his hand wouldn't win and folded. Its the right decision based on the information he had at the time. In fact, poker is entirely based on acquiring as much information as possible each hand and then properly analyzing the information to make the right play. Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong. And sometimes you're right and lose. And
sometimes you're wrong and win. Its the way it goes. But the whole entire goal is to maximize your profits and minimize your losses each hand.

Perhaps this is how God works. Perhaps the deck has been shuffled and he knows what cards are coming. But at the end of the day, he gives us the choice to play our hands as we like. Some of us decide not to pay attention to the info, some of us decide to ignore the obvious signs that they are heading down the wrong path by continuing with a certain hand, and some of us fail to critically analyze the information we've obtained. Meanwhile, others try their best to obtain any bit of info, some of us try to analyze this info to the best of our abilities and some of us try our absolute hardest to make the right decisions, no matter how hard it may be or how little info they have.

The beauty of life is that, like poker, you can make the absolute worst decisions and every once in awhile the deck throws you your only out card. The only card in the deck to save you. And if you can learn from these mistakes and improve your game, you can rebound and turn it around. But if you continue making the same mistakes time and time again, the deck's not always going to be able to bail you out.

On the flip side, sometimes you can make the best decisions. You can make terrific decisions and turn a nothing hand into a big pot with a great bluff, or you can play your monster hand right and double or triple out. But, no matter how great you play, you will lose hands. Big hands. You'll come across some of the worst luck imaginable. You'll slip and fall. But if you continue to strive to improve and learn from what you may have done wrong in those situations, you'll bounce back and get on track.


Now, the purpose of this article is not to play every hand in a poker game because it MIGHT be the best one. It's generally a losing strategy. No, its just a neat little analogy I came up with when I had too much time on my hands.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Well Hello Children!

Issac Hayes has walked away from South Park due to the show's religious intolerance. Matt and Trey make some comments about Issac's timing and his strange definition of intolerance here.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Vegas Trip

Well it's booked. June 5-8. Still room if anyone wants to join us. Haven't named the trip yet but a few options are "Guy's trip to Vegas" or "Rest and Relaxation in Nevada". They might not sell alot of T-shirts but....but nothing. They suck ass. Any suggestions from the blogosphere?

Thursday, March 02, 2006

A modern, progresive place to live....


The mastermind behind cheap cardboard tasting pizza has come up with another hum-dinger of an idea. Create a town in Florida that will strictly adhere to Catholic doctrine, no porn, no birth control, no abortions and probably not much fun either. This article gives some more details.
I wonder if pizza man will allow women to hold office, doubtful since they apparently won't be in charge of their own bodies. I'm sure a council of clerics... I mean pharasees... I mean priests will let everyone know how to configure a largely irrelevant body of text into a political and legal system that is in accordance with both state and federal law while still keeping a giant stick planted firmly in their ass. How are these people not denounced as Un-American religious fanatics who seek to usurp the liberal democratic tradition that was the basis for the consititution of the United States?

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Wow, that's some good plastic surgery...

I was flipping channels and happened across Meg Ryan on Oprah. WTF happened to her face? Try and guess which one is a comic book character and which one is an actress.





If that's what expensive plastic surgery looks like what does the cheap stuff look like?

Red State myopia

click to enlarge...

an email

Matt Good posted this on his web site, pretty cool.

“Mr Good,

I had an experience a few days ago that really scared the shit out of me, and for some reason I feel like there was a little bit of your music involved, and figured I’d let you know what occurred.

I am a pilot for a freight company here in the states. I fly a larger, single engine plane at night, single pilot, hauling bank checks around the east coast. Its not fun, pretty work, but I’m doing something I’ve always wanted to do: fly. Because I am alone up there, the nights do get boring, and I luckily have my ipod with me, connected to the plane’s intercom to help me get through the night.

This past Tuesday, I was flying late, over Georgia at 7000 feet, when my engine quit unexpectedly. I didn’t know it at the time, but a major component of the engine that controls the distribution of power had exploded. My plane, having only one engine to begin with, turned into a glider. It was completely dark out and I was trying my hardest to keep things under control by alerting air traffic control and keep flying my plane, which felt like a rock falling from the sky. I was descending through 6000 feet when Air Traffic Control gave me a heading to fly to try and search for a tiny, private airport in the dark Georgia countryside. After trying unsuccessfully to turn the airport lights on, I gave up on my search, as I was descending through 3000 feet, and close to being on the ground. I saw a small river and aimed for that. I opened the door and got ready for a water ditching. I turned on my emergency locater beacon and kept thinking about how the impact was going to feel. Out of the corner of my eye, at 900 feet, I saw this tiny strip of pavement and a small white hanger. I made a steep bank while lowering my landing gear at the same time. I came down hard, since I my sink rate was pretty bad. I managed to keep the plane on the short runway for a few hundred feet until I ran out of runway and stopped just off the end in a grass area. I had no injuries other than my wrist being sore from banging on the door to open in flight for my potential water ditching.

You’re probably thinking this is pretty random for me to write you about, and I actually haven’t even told anyone in depth, about this many details, but there’s a reason I felt like telling you.

For most of those horrible moments of my life, “haven’t slept in years” was playing though my ipod, still connected to the planes intercom. I didn’t even think to turn it off because I was so involved with doing other things. But today I was rethinking the entire incident and remembered as I was gliding that plane down, doing everything to keep cool and not loosing it, I was in my head, singing along to your song. It kept me cool. I had something on in the background, something familiar and comforting that kept me from completely loosing my cool. With no engine, the only sound you hear is the wind. Its eeiry. That is hard enough, but I had something on to help me stay somewhat relaxed and under control to do what I was trained to do and eventually saving the plane and my life.

To some, having a song playing during all of this wont seem like a big deal, and they wont think it would have made a difference. But being in that situation first hand, it definitely had a effect on the entire situation/outcome, and I’m glad it was a song on from one of my favorite artists. I’m glad to be here tonight writing about it. Thanks for the music Matt.

-Sean”