/* ?! wHAT bOX: 2009

Dec 5, 2009

The World Really Is Flat....Right?!

Its funny how that life seems to be nothing more than a rhetoric statement, and sarcastic label, and joke, a game and yet in the slightest of movements perspective can change and everything is seen differently. Its sad just how little has changed in such a long time. Since the 6th century BC, some Greeks held that the world was a globe, a sphere. Then some picked up the idea that the world had to be flat. And yet Columbus sailed to the other side of it. People argued for centuries that man could not fly. And yet science proved all of these wrong, empirically.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why people would choose a more ignorant view of anything and knowingly so. I certainly don't claim to have answers, but when someone can show you something to be true, prove it so...well, I simply can't process a person's willingness to ignore that truth.

We all think that we know best. And yet even the slightest bit of perspective can change everything.



The Hidden Tiger
“Groar!” This tiger is calling his mate. Yes, there is an extra tiger hidden somewhere in this artwork. It is not easy to find, but once found, is hard to ignore! A wildlife painting involving an optical illusion theme by the American artist Rusty Rust.





Change is good? Not always...not in its iteration of regression. Not when its backwards. And yet there are always groups and individuals who would like to ram bad information down the mouths of the masses.

Perhaps there are some that can accept bad information or ignore things all together, but there are some who cannot. There are some who can't scarf down the repeated mentions that the "world is flat". That doctors are witches. That scientists are evil.

And yet its a scientists research that makes that car you drive work. Its the doctor that you denigrate so often that performs that surgery that saves your life. And then perspective changes.

Yes...pigs can fly...and the Earth is round...and just maybe you're wrong - go figure!




By the way...no one said that the second tiger was an image...look at the strips on the single tiger and READ the stripes....perspective.

Nov 13, 2009

West Coast Roam

Uh, yeah, so I went on vacation...a real one finally - at least, I think it was, heh. I got snap-happy and took over 1500 pictures, so no complaints because I did get it down to only 80 shots and to quote a pretty cool friend [as loathed as I am to admit it:)] "Just sayin'".

Also, to be fair to Boise, Portland, Sacramento, Fresno, and a bunch of other cities that I blew through - um, I was about to throw my camera out of the window from taking so many shots and there were things to be seen in each of those, but gettig shots of state capitols at 3 in the morning kinda spooked the cops so, I skipped a lot of night stuff after a while since I really didn't want to go to jail for taking recon shots and using a fake accent...lol

Link to all photos in this set

Los Angeles -> Las Vegas, NV






Las Vegas, NV -> Salt Lake City, UT






Salt Lake City, UT -> Seattle, WA






Seattle, WA -> Mount St. Helens






Mount St. Helens -> Los Angeles



Aug 26, 2009

A Treatise On America's Color War (as I see it, at least)

I recently posted an image to a popular social exchange website and got some rather pointed responses. No one took offense to the image (it was a political suggestive image) nor did anyone respond negatively, but still, points did arise that we hardly my intention so I respond to them here. I thank all for the good humor that was consistent in all of the comments, but at the same time, I would still like to address my own stance on the issue.



First of all, I am no political scientist, find politics appealing, but amusing. I have little to speak of in the way of an opinion when it comes to politics, so I state little there. This, however, is not the case for what I do hold as an opinion of the views expressed by the people who view the politics themselves - the psychology of the people, as it were, not an interpretation of the politics directly.

Let me state my background and why I am taking up your time to do so: I simply and making a point as to why I am not taking a prejudicial stance on anything as the issue of "color" has been mentioned by myself and several others. A larger concern is actually race, not color, but most people will smaller exposure the other cultures and peoples fail to recognize the distinction - so let me use myself as an example. I am generally passed off as being African American, and yet nothing could be further from the truth. Certainly and obviously, I do have more melanin in my skin than many Europeans, but this is no direct distinction of race. How so? My ancestry, through all of my relatives can prove me to be all of the following: Scott's Irish (grandfather), Asian Indian and part African (grandmother), South American Mayan Indian (other grandmother), Honduran and possibly German because of name (other grandfather). To cap things off, I was borne in a country in Central/South America which technically makes me Latin American / Hispanic. My parents speak English and Spanish as does much of the rest of my family. The US Census terms me a "Non-White Hispanic".

I still carry a green card, I am technically not an American though I've lived here nearly all my life. I pay the same amount of taxes as the next guy (maybe more, I need kids for a tax break :) ), I'm registered with the military just like anyone else, I have a social security number, just like any one else, and I worry about the neighbors' gangly looking grass and fluctuating gas prices, just like anyone else. The point is that I do not have the background that most people do. I have no dog in the color/race struggle of America; I have no chips to cash in on who wins or loses - I simply do not care all that much. I do not run around with signs screaming "viva la raza" or any other variation. I do not sign up with LULAC or other such organizations - I have no affiliations. This makes me the least biased and most objective viewer in the situation.

This is not to say that I don't understand that struggles of the different peoples of this country - I do, but understand that this country has seen virtually nothing as compared to the rest of the world. Stalin, Hitler, Chairman Mua, ideas from Lenin and Marx have dug mass graves which make the problems of American tiny in comparison. The lives lost by leader ship in Bosnia, Croatia, the Middle East, South Africa; children without parents and whole families wiped out from the face of the earth based on their last name being Lipschitz or because of the physical location of their homes. I understand the struggles of America, but in light of the rest of the planet who can't get in line for food stamps or demand of their presidents and leaders better support for the poor while they tear open their unemployment checks and turn up the AC while the remains of others lie unknown in graves with numbers etched into their arms or with bullet-riddled chests.

And yet what is news to this country is Twitter.com going down for 10 minutes...

...Back to the picture...
The color of the President makes no difference to me, his leadership abilities do. I do not think that the leadership of this country is an appointment light enough to make a political stance regarding race. I walk around my office and see posters and calendars up where none was before simply because of the color of the President's skin. I understand that this may be a step forward for this nation and a particular people specifically, but is the leadership of one of the world's most powerful countries the best place to play those games? If he ends up not being the best choice, then at least the voice of that particular community was heard, huh? Perhaps while the country is being flushed, at least a community of people were noticed, eh? I'm not being rude, but there is more to consider than just race and the race war of this country.

I do no side with nor defend white supremacists nor do I support "black power". In fact, most of my friends have to defend their statements, much as I do, in order not to offend people. Some times I think that the majority peoples have it harder than the minorities! They have to PC everything in order not to be sued by a single mother with darker skin based on a silly comment!

I have no right to be prejudiced in the least. I am mixed with nearly every continent of people (all except North American, ironically). If there is anyone more confused as to the race, I'd like to meet them :). I generally get lumped in with Indians in class and Mexicans at lunch. One of my closest friends is part Sri Lankan and part African American, and yet he was borne in Germany. I have known family in between 4 to 6 countries right now and all over the US. I have no right to be judgmental to any particular people and I am not. I do have preferences to culture yes, which is evident when I speak, lol, but none to race.

My point regarding the voting and the color of the President is hardly to refer to the actual numbers of the vote based on race - I have no idea if that affected the numbers at all. I am simply saying that I cannot see a less wise way of voting - forget the issues and base your vote on the candidates color? Its just as ignorant as basing the vote on the fact that your family has always voted a single way because of....well the fact that they always have voted that way!! Ignore the stances of the party and vote along party lines because you always have voted that way? Let's all throw caution to the wind and vote not based on reason, but on whim? Maybe we have the "lesser of the evils" as it has been stated, in the current President - but maybe we don't.

I'm not knocking neither the current President for his abilities, nor the former one. I'm simply looking for humor in it all; cynics have to, least they take a overly negative stance on things. I have to laugh or else I'll a less than happy view of things. My actions are to keep from being offensive, not the other way around.

Aug 10, 2009

...how does a bumblebee fly??


The Butterfly Effect: Chaos at Work



So I know that most people won't care but I'm posting this anyway...ha!

So, I read Jurassic Park 2...again. I recommend it for all to read as an introduction to Preschool...helps to open the mind to a ridiculous amount of vaguely related theoretical rambles of a mathematician and biologists.

From wikipedia:
Chaos theory is that branch of mathematics which studies the behavior of certain dynamical systems that may be highly sensitive to initial conditions. This sensitivity is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of error, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random. That is, tiny differences in the starting state of the system can lead to enormous differences in the final state of the system even over fairly small timescales. This gives the impression that the system is behaving randomly. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully determined by their initial conditions with no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

Chaotic behavior is also observed in natural systems, such as weather. This may be explained by analysis of a chaotic mathematical model which represents such a system. Quantum chaos investigates the relationship between chaos and quantum mechanics.


So the mathematician rants on about the meaning of the universe - really that there is not meaning and but complexity theory explains the more the "how" of a thing, if not the why. Scientist generally reject the idea of a "how" as it means that a "higher power" or some sort of extraterrestrial being was involved in the creation of and determinative reasoning (e.g. god(s), aliens). Complexity theory is a subset of the original chaos theory as finds order in complex systems (e.g. the universe, animal societies, sand on the beach). He rambles in a drug induced stupor about how questionable an anatomical stance to evolution would be, but evolution can not simply be of a physical concept but of a behavioral one as well.

This I accept. We evolve everyday in our behavior. We learn to stop at red lights, we learn not to touch the iron, we learn what is takes to survive in the corporate world. Human intelligence is the one thing that defines us from most other animals though I don't have the highest respect for homo sepian.

The mathematician continues with the following thoughts: Who says that we're sentient? Who says that we are self aware? The one defining characteristic equaled to our intelligence is our inability to use it. Most people do not think for themselves. They follow the leader, the look for the alpha dog, they do as they are told. Understanding that to a point, one must do what they are told in order to keep at least a small semblance of social order, but not to the extend that one cannot think for themselves. Most people swallow the dogma that is shoved down their mouths. Most cannot process ideas or concepts for themselves and rely on others to spoon feed concepts to them.

Certainly this is a very cynical view of humanity, but perhaps true. And yet this does nothing to prove complexity theory wrong. The problem is that science can deduce the how, where, when, what, but seldom the why of many complex systems.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. - Albert Einstein


Enter religion - the science of man's attempt to understand God. Many try to avoid this box by using the term "this is not religion, this is salvation" - only that completely voids the definition of the word religion, so to keep a level of accuracy, we'll stick to Webster's word instead of the dogmatic view and expulsion of generally used words at the whim of a someone who can't figure out how to explain them.

Religion attempts to explain the why of things. Tries to give meaning to all, tries to provide a reason for the rhyme. This then requires the creation of the "God Concept". Again, the higher power, man upstairs, supreme being or multiples of these. This is a far easier concept to create rather than believing that the universe created all that we know today. The argument is that something had to create what we see today. Something cannot come from nothing.

Well, I'm still not sure what "nothing" is. So speak about "nothing" or "no thing" you are defining that the opposite can exist (thing). So that makes no sense. However, it seems more accurate to say that the universe has always existed as a "thing" because it is simply a concept that does not expend on time. Big bang theorist can escape their problem of answering for the creation of the original "whatever" that "big-banged" into what we see today by saying that the "whatever" was energy and not matter. The problem with matter is that it is spatially defined. To have the matter in the 3rd dimension, we are forced to also have dimensions 1, 2, and 4 (4 is time). So, if the universe contained no elements that extended into the 4th dimension, then the universe had nothing that had to do with time, which escapes that argument altogether, giving the Big Bang Theory more credibility and minimizing that of the Creationism Theory.

And yet, complexity theory screams for notice to be given to a simple example. The building of a building. The architect, the buyer, the bank, the construction company, all the contracting companies, the city inspector, the electrical engineer, the mechanical engineer, and many others working together to make a building that is hardly perfect. Corrections and modifications made to fix the many mistakes and structural tests made to make sure that the building stands. Thousands of hours and millions of dollars going into it with hundreds of thousands of working parts all fitting together to make it all happen even with all its faults and imperfections, its fixes and corrections....

....and yet the fly that lands on the workman's lunch is perfect. Its millions of millions of interactions within each cell. Each cell becoming one of hundreds and fitting just when the development of that fly requires it. And in the end that disgusting maggot, becomes a revolting fly. A revolting fly whose intricacies we cannot replicate...a fly whose beauty we can only dream about.

We little humans think that we can understand or know the God(s) that created this all or define the evolutionary process that brought it all to be. We are a funny, arrogant bunch. Backward, non-thinking, and yet determined to believe that we do. We building a pyramid and marvel at it. Go into space and think highly of it. Cure a disease and applaud ourselves for it...

...and still can't figure out how a bumblebee can fly :)

So what does everything all mean? What's the point of it all? Great question...so, what's for lunch?

Jul 4, 2009

Belize

Yeah, so i'm just a little late...heh heh. Uh, it was hot, a bit hot, and just a little hot. I 'exfoliated' more pores, which I think is 'spa-speak' for sweating in a steamy room for an hour while trying not to pass out. Mine was just the sweat part, but all day.

I took the long way to belize from dallas because some very nice people had to knock me off the flight. I ended up flying to fort lauderdale , fl -> driving to miami, fl -> sleeping in miami over night and leaving the next morning. my little homeless shelter :) sleeping with one eye one my bag and another on the dude behind me was a bit weird tho.

when i finally did get there we had blast with bro. white's young people. besides laughing out my appendix and eating 10 pounds a day and having to drag my grandmother off of the bus, ahem, i had fun. did i mention that it was hot?? yeah, there was that. click on the pictures to see all of them.




















May 31, 2009

Graduation de Elizerbeth

So people grow up, it appears. My cousin decided to graduate from high school and I had the fun of shooting it. This was the night after the grad when we took her to eat at some fancy Italian place, the pain is still fresh from the bill, and running around downtown in a bus of a limo. Um, also, this was my first time using a speed light and I over exposed everything trying to compensate..sniff sniff. Oh, the pain...


























May 8, 2009

Nashville

I had to fly to Nashville, Friday to sing one song that night and then fly back out the next morning at 6 for work after staying up most of the night! Ahem, some of my more ... anti-albert-whining friends tell me to make the best of this trip, so here's my attempt.

My cereal! And enormous bowl, ha! From Nashville


Relative to a normal-sized bowl. That joker took 30 minutes to eat. I was sick of the mushy...um, whatever it was by then. From Nashville


Very high quality shaking, you know. From the stage at AMC, held at...um...lemme check...aha! Opryland Hotel in Nashville. From Nashville


I'm not sure what Joel's thinking right now, but its not about the song. Might be lunch...From Nashville

Mar 24, 2009

Dallas: Urban Life

Sssoo, its been a while, ha! You know you're in trouble when people actually tell you to update, ahem! :) j/k

Anyway, I spent about 3.5 hours traipsing around Downtown Dallas yesterday with my camera - hopefully it wasn't completely wasted...

I found some funky looking churches that I didn't know were downtown and kept myself from getting abducted my homeless people and robbed by lawyers so I am in one piece still, though the whole sanity business gives me pause. Either way, it was fun - least not too hot. Let me know what you think...

Click on the sideshow below for the full size images.







Feb 22, 2009

brit and steve's wedding

Ok, so, I didn't get as many pix as I'd have liked to because the wedding photographer asked everyone not to take pictures so we'll have to wait for the "official" ones. He was actually a genius so mine will look like finger painting next to the Mona Lisa, but we all try right? :)

Anyway, I don't know much about weddings, but I think it was a really nice one. Great chapel with perfect lighting (probably not the most normal comments for a wedding!). Either way, it was good. Oh, and as soon as my sis decides to be nice an share her pics I can share the rest. Brit looked stunning and Stephen was bawling so it all worked out, lol. That and I got to ride in a Porsche...

Finally added my sisters pictures - some strange ones there...



Feb 16, 2009

Ok, so I'm back...

Welp, I've returned and neither any of the plane flights crashed nor did the boat sink, so my karma is good - me hopes. Um...it was a long week, to say the least, but I've survived and am here to tell the tale...only I'll save everyone the sob stories and just show some pics. So anyway, we went to the Cayman Islands and Cozumel for a week. It was stupid hot and sandy...I just want to curl up in a ball and weep because of the sand - never again, never again....






Feb 5, 2009

practice....supposedly

Ok, so I think that this is the first time that anything like this has ever gotten out...we have a tape that is insanely old, but I can't find it so this will have to do. Half of this is our group practicing a few days ago...I don't think that one second if it was serious, lol. If you have a bunch of goof balls staying up too late with work the next morning then we tend to lose it....Tim - remember that days...O and yes, I know that "someone" is going to kill me for this, but its funny anyway. ha! We're doing our very best to remain pitchy and keep our bad timing. Should I die, this blog is to be updated by my sisters until I say otherwise.

here ya go - the Real Apostolic Boys
(and for plugging purposes, the website is www.apboys.com)

Jan 29, 2009

Yeah, so I'll need you to slide into work today...

Sssooo, yesterday was fun :D In Dallas, we don't get much snow, but we do get ice! The roads below don't look too bad, but they have easily at least 1/8 to 1/4 inch of ice on them. Simply put, I was the only retard flying into work at 7 in the morning while it was 22 degrees, doing 70 mph. Lol, needless to say everyone got out of my way so I actually did better time than on normal days. O and I stole some of the pictures below from NBC so hopefully I don't get in too much trouble by mentioning that little fact. O, and six people died so far....from a little ice!!! I'd hate to see what people do when they open their freezers...

Um, and also...I'm doing my best to figure out the physics including necessary speed, angles, and required lack of brain power to end up with a car in a tree like that, lolol. How does this happen!!?? Texas has a strange bunch, I tell ya!





Jan 23, 2009

am I in trouble?

*Let me preface all of this by saying that I am not denying my own belief system, only posing questions, only questioning history. Please do not read unless you can think independently and pragmatically outside of your belief structure without allowing this to modify your own ideas. My wish here is not to 'convert' anyone to or dissuade anyone from any particular concept. I am only typing what's in my head. Good luck :) *

Hope — it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness.
* The Architect The Matrix Reloaded

Every religion, as far as reason will help them, makes use of it gladly - and where it fails them, they cry out: "It is a matter of faith, and above reason!" ~ John Locke


Faith is a wondrous thing; it is not only capable of moving mountains, but also of making you believe that a herring is a race horse. ~ Arthur Koestler

Ok, so here's a serious post for once :)

Religion would have us to believe that hope is a requirement for human life and that faith is a requirement to see God. Humanism would tell us to believe that man is, at his root, good and therefore hope is inherently existent in him. Psychology would demand of us to agree that the human psyche is fragile enough to require certain things of which one is hope - that a mind cannot survive without a reason to. Optimism begs us to know that hope is an acceptance of yesterday, a willingness to live for today, and yet a dream that tomorrow can be better. Faith is not so different, but where hope is a wish, a dream, faith is a believe that a thing is or can be.

But as mentioned by both Locke and Koestler, there is a point where faith becomes an excuse to believe a thing. How can one know that there is a God? One cannot prove it, yet many believe while others do not...enter the age old argument of the confrontation of the 'Big Bang' theory as well as the 'Creation' theory and including any and all hybridized versions of the two. How can one prove the existence of an after life? Religions spanning from Judaism to Roman and Greek mythology to Christianity to Buddhism and Taoism and more modern religions of Scientology and other like sects hold that either there is a heaven or paradise or underworld. Many hold that there is a 'crossing over'. Christians quote that crossing over Jordan is a figurative meaning for entering heaven whereas ancient Greek held the same belief, but substituted River Styx for the River Jordan. Most religions have some sort of semblance of another. Judaism, Greek and Roman mythology fed into Christianity - the latter two because of the timeline of the emergence of the religion and the former as the base of the belief system.

So in light of the slight blending that each religion appears to possess with another, should all be abandoned? The fact that one possess faith in a thing or hope in a future does not make it true...if so, every religion in the world must be accepted as valid and workable and yet each claims that it is the 'one true religion'. Each leads inexorably to a point where it must assume a dogmatic approach to any opposing region. Some flavors of Christianity slam others withing their own religion, particularly at the 'Church' of the middle ages causing a revolt and a spin off of the religion spawning into quite a few sub-regions (denominations) and yet most Christians hold a Bible that was developed on the political whims of this split off.
Unfortunately, despite its popularity - particularly among conservative Christians - the King James Version is one of the most error-prone translations available in English. The texts used by the translators are known and have been known almost since the time of the translation to have been inferior and full of scribal mistakes. source
True?

The problem again remains and the question still stands...what does one do in light of the possible errors in region or perhaps that fact that your particular flavor of region or specific coloration of the concept of God is entirely incorrect? Should all become willing to disassociate one's self entirely from a theo-centric belief structure? Should we all become agnostic or atheistic? Or can one truly be an atheist anyway? Perhaps it is its own belief system with its own concept of 'God' which then proves a disillusion of the term 'atheist' in the first place and denies its possible existence outside of a conceptual level?

or.....

Or should we continue to have faith, the kind that moves mountains and feeds thousands and commits genocide as a holy war. (Please note that Islam does not actually allow Jihad as some extremist elements have used it, but also know that the Christian faith in the Middle Ages headed one of the largest Holy Wars in history - the Crusades. So before one starts nailing Islam for region-based terrorism, one must check ones own history. I've found quotes that estimate that the Christian wars left between 150,000 to 9 million dead. Kind of makes the deaths of Islam pale in comparison, doesn't it?) Should we continue to believe in God? (Everyone does is same shape or form.) Should we continue to pray and visit our holy buildings? (Muslims pray more like the Old Testament 'church' than Christians do currently...so at least their manner of prayer can be viewed as somewhat more 'Biblical' than that of the modern Christian.)

Though all of the questions above and many more rage on spurring hatred and violence, spilling the blood of many, messages of peace that deteriorate into the destruction of buildings by planes. Claims of a fervor for God that hangs a man on a cross.

Yet we still believe. We continue to retain hope. We demand of ourselves to retain our faith.

Jan 20, 2009

I'm still confused...

Okey dokey...as long as we're are all aware that I have absolutely no idea of what I'm doing...um, I can't think of any terms to provide a more clear picture as to the discomfort of my sharing a very private moment with just myself and my computer and the >7 billion people on the planet as well as any little green men who suff our web from mars...hello to you, by the way (that's to the martians, not the earth people....hi to you earth people).

ok...um, I bought a new lens! That's very cool, I think. Super wide angled 17 - 30 mm. It touched my heart and warmed my liver....also it hurt my backside....well, my wallet at least. Oh the pain, but hey, anything to support the arts.

I'm trying to include some photos that I shot of my cousins a few weeks back and ran through photoshop...only I can't get them online here *scratching head*. Ssooo, maybe I'll get luck....later!