I am looking forward to my next vacation.  I have about 9 days left to use this year and I am axious about making it good.  I would really love to fulfill an old fantasy and get one of the vacation rentals of a log cabin with a stone fireplace somewhere in the woods.  Kathy and I could go out cross country skiing and walk on trails and just really enjoy the winter life.  We have done great vacations in the summer and even last spring but I want to have that secluded setting in the woods with a roaring fire going.  It would just be really romantic and dream fulfilling.  Maybe something like this.

Well today I hit my old goal that I had a year and a half ago for my excercise routine.  I did 50 push-ups and 50 sit-ups.  That is not my goal now though.  I think part of the reason that I quit back then (and got so out of shape again) was that I hit my goal and didn’t set any new ones.  I have new goals this time.  First of all I want to be able to do 50 of each 2-3 times a day (which is a long way off, my arms feel like rubber) and I would love to get back into my 32 waist pants.  I can probably get into my 34’s right now if I squeeze but I want to seriously reduce the waist size.

Last Spring we were given a nice digital camera by my wife’s uncle and we took it on vacation with us.  We took lots of great (we thought) pictures of us at the lake and on the sailboat only to find that it got damaged and none of the pictures came out.  It’s OK though because my nephew got a lot of great ones with his digital camera.  I am really in need of a new one.  They are so much better than the old film ones because of the ability to do so much with them.  The best thing is that you can see the picture right away and if you don’t like it you just delete it.  Nowadays (and I saw this coming a decade ago) they have digital picture frames that look like a regular frame but you can load a bunch of your favorite pictures in and it will rotate through on a slideshow.  How cool is that.  I have got to get a new camera and then pick up one of these frames.

So just today I started something that, should, help reduce my waist size while also helping out some good causes.  A few minutes ago I had a desire to go down and get a pop.  I decided that instead of doing that I would plop the 50 cents into a mason jar and get something better for me to drink, like water.  When the mason jar gets $15-20 in it I will donate it to some worthy cause that I believe in, like our local Pregnancy Care Center.  That way, I don’t take in those 120 calories and someone gets the money I would be wasting.  (don’t tell our youth group though because they get the proceeds from the pop machines here at the church).  Ask me how this is going in a week or so to help keep me on track.

Reprinted  from the original article on www.reasons.org

The Fact and Theory of Evolution

You don’t need to be a scientist to know that there’s a big difference between physics and biology. But you probably do need to be a scientist to be familiar with a subtle, but critical distinction between these two disciplines.

Physicists are very quick to challenge the central theories and assumptions of modern physics. Biologists, however, are unwilling to do the same.

As Jeff Zweerink described yesterday in his TNRTB entry, physicists recently tested one of the fundamental assumptions of general relativity, the Lorentz Invariance principle. Even though general relativity is considered by many to be one of the best-established principles in all of science, physicists seem to delight in any opportunity to prove it wrong.

This situation stands in sharp contrast to the way that evolutionary biologists interact with the theory of evolution. They steadfastly refuse to even entertain the possibility that this paradigm for life’s origin and history might somehow be unfounded.

Evolutionary biologists, in order to avoid any critical evaluation of the validity of biological evolution, hide behind the statement attributed to the famous geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky that

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

Yet, one could maintain that nothing in physics makes sense except in light of general relativity (and quantum mechanics). Somehow this doesn’t prevent physicists from ruthlessly pursuing ways to falsify one of the cornerstone ideas in their discipline.

Evolutionary biologists, most certainly, would protest any characterization that intimates at their reluctance to test biological evolution. They maintain that the theory of evolution is subjected to ongoing, critical evaluation.

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