Rose
Played a short dice puzzle game called "Petals Around the Rose." It supposedly stumped Bill Gates for a while (but he eventually figured it out) as it's not a gauge of intelligence. To people it's either gimmicky or frustrating.

AMD & ATI are merging. Two chip powerhouses join forces to take on other chipmakers. Just in time as Intel releases Core 2 Duo. Woohoo more fireworks!

We happened upon the largest cross in the western hemisphere.











BBQ Texas.

In Texas we called it a night at Vega. "I love tech-no-lo-gy." Cell phones are useful since my friend's father tracked us periodically by Google Earth (awesome software if you have high speed connection). We never felt lost with the GPS. No only that, all the hotels we stayed at had wireless Internet.

Anyways, the clerk at the Comfort Inn welcomed us to the "edge of civilization" because we were on the border to New Mexico.

We stopped at a town named Amarillo which was along our route. This town has an airport and a rodeo. We ate at the Big Texan Steak Ranch which was interesting for the atmosphere but disappointing in terms of food. The outside had a huge sign, bright lightbulbs outlining the building (tacky but maybe it draws unsuspecting tourists). When we walked in we heard loud yee-hawing and a trio playing "You Are My Sunshine" on the guitar, fiddle, and bass. We saw cowboy hats and a plethora of mounted animal heads on all the walls. The restaurant's claim to fame is a 72 oz. steak that is free if you eat it within 1 hour. That's 4 pounds of meat. (Kobayashi where are you.) A newsarticle on the wall reported the record time as several seconds above 9 minutes.

We ate some steak, but taste was lacking. "Steak tomatoes" were just tomatoes cut in half with black pepper sprinkled on it. "Steak onions" were raw rings of red onion. "Steak fries" were fried from processed frozen stuff. My ribeye steak was decently grilled but my friends were quite disappointed with their sirloins. "You Are My Sunshine" played a few more times in the background. Overall: limited effort in preparation. (For the same price, Chicago steakhouses far surpass this place in taste.)

Near the end of our meal a couple got up and started dancing while the trio played away. The waiter was a nice fellow who sat down and chatted with us. We commented to ourselves that this is part of the southern hospitality where strangers readily strike up conversations with you.

We drove across Oklahoma today and stopped in Texas. Oklahoma is hilly and the soil is interesting because it is like red clay. When we hit Texas, I noticed 2 things: the price of gasoline going up and the landscape turning to shrubbery. The cheapest gas prices were in Missouri and Oklahoma. You would think Texas with all its oil refineries would have cheaper gas. Shrubbery stretches from Texas to California. You wouldn't have much use for a lawnmower and mowing shrubs would be difficult and if you removed the shrubs all you would have is dirt. Here are some interesting plants.

The first picture shows one of the weeds, they're like dark hairy fists.





"They came from pods!!!" Actually, I believe these are the fruit of the yucca.















Here is a plant with pink wisps and white flowers.

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis. I rode up the south side and down the north side in a 5-seater pod.

 

Bales of hay in Missouri. 

Blazing Cool Chip
IBM & Georgia Institute of Technology have created a silicon-germanium semiconductor chip that can run at 500 GHz when cooled to -268 degrees Celcius and 350 GHz at room temperature. Compare that to current computer chips that run at most at 3-4 GHz, it's a giant leap. They say that such technology would reach consumers in about 1-2 years and could potentially support near the frequency of a Terahertz at room temperature.

I attended a graduation ceremony today. Some observations from the graduation:
The guest speaker said his psychiatrist friend was asked why he went into psychiatry. His friend responded: "Surgery was not invasive enough." Delving into the mind is more invasive. Why? Because our thought betray our hearts. Such exposure is something people fear. The Bible says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" Jeremiah 17:9

Still, what a strange response from the psychiatrist... there must be more purpose to direction than the sake of being invasive. Is it then ultimately a grasp for power and control? So banal.

When nonmedical* people meet a psychiatrist, they often wonder if the psychiatrist is analyzing them -- as if psychiatrists can read minds (they can't). I'm told the punchline is the psychiatrist responds, "No, I could analyze you for a fee."

There was something uneasy about todays speaker, he seemed bored and nervous from the getgo: leaning on the podium, slouching to one side, unsure of where to place his hands - often placing his fingers together like Mr. Burns of the Simpsons. Perhaps he was jetlagged or came at short notice.


*Concerning the use of the word "nonmedical": In roles of service there is a distinction made between the service provider and others as in [Military/law enforcement vs. civilian], [clergy vs. laity]. However it is not quite encompassing to say medical vs. patient since not all people are patients. Is there a better word for nonmedical?

"Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." Philippians 2:4

I am selfish. Living alone it is easy to forget the interests of others.

Thanks to A/C, I slept fine.

I went to my first outdoor wedding yesterday. Daytime temperature was ~95°F. People were sweating. The local was scenic and everything was quite classy. Mike & Alice are honestly adorable. Pictures to come later if they come out alright (That's right, I use my trusty analog). As an aside, it seems my camera is getting bigger every year.

Pixar to Head Disney Animation
In a strange turn of events after Disney & Pixar separated "bitterly." Disney acquires Pixar with Pixar to helm Disney's animation studios. John Lasseter was once fired from Disney and now he will head Disney's animation department. Fortune Magazine likens this change in leadership to Nemo swallowing the whale.

It seems like everyone and their uncles have read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, even my friends from Japan. Amazingly, because people are ignorant of history, they believe what they see in print even if it comes off the FICTION shelf. Many Christians are making a fuss about this because they are astounded by the gullibility of the masses. Those who are not Christian ask, "What's the big deal? The book is only fiction." Then why do you treat it as fact? Dan Brown created a mish-mash of facts, fiction, speculation, and outright lies.

Why are people so ready to receive Brown's message? If our hearts are already set against God, convincing doesn't come hard. Don't most people wish to live in a world without God --who holds them accountable for their actions, choices and thoughts?

My dog passed away, Sad. She was sick and I thought she was getting better.

My dog is old and sick :(

Curse of Comfort
Comfort makes you complacent and forget who you are and why you're here.

Newsweek 'warns' of how India and China (and South Korean and Singapore) are extremely driven and only getting started in their economic escalation, especially technologically. Contrast the United States where people are so use to being first and having the best, compounded with a general unawareness of shifts in the world; there is a lack of drive to grow or innovate. Though we have the best universities and best resources, our students lag behind in international rankings for math and science. Newsweek writes, while our students are playing video games, their counterparts in China are studying their forth books. The frontiers of future innovation will not be the U.S. unless we change.

More eternally affecting the U.S. is the oppressive spiritual complacency. Contrast this with India and China. In India, Hindus in conjunction with local police daily threaten Christians, imprison them, threaten their lives, destroy their churches; and children are disowned by their parents. In China the government-sanctioned "Three-Self Churches" was started by a Communist party member who claimed to be a Christian but did not believe Jesus did any miracles. When the Three-Self system was set up, all house churches were deemed illegal gatherings. Because so many Christians refuse to register with the Three-Self churches, refuse to stop gathering, and refuse to stop sharing the message of the Cross; they are continually persecuted, publically humiliated, imprisoned repeatedly, and tortured. Such trials have managed to keep those Christians sharp and remind them that their citizenship is not here but heaven. And in these nations, the kingdom of God is rapidly advancing as thousands turn from lives of sin, trust in Christ, train and go out themselves to reach the lost.

The United States has the most freedom of religion, Bibles coming out of our pores, the best seminaries, and a glut of great books and sermons; but what is that to us. We do not care about the souls of our neighbors or our own personal growth. I say this as admonishment to myself too.

What has happened to us in the U.S.? Do we still believe God acts? Or are our blinders on to God; as to our education/economy. Do we no longer hunger and thirst for righteousness, but instead just superficially live to enjoy this life?

Do we still believe God will one day call us to account for how we used the time He gave us? It scares me, and you?

Politics of Gems
My college fellowship staffworker got engaged a few days ago, not by a diamond ring but by an emerald. (I'm not sure if it's emerald, but most likely, since she noted that it was a green stone). Why emerald? She has cultivated a ministry of social justice and cultural diversity. In light of this, not getting a diamond is a protest and safeguard against the abuse in diamond mining practices.

A note to ponder: using diamonds as a gem for engagement ring has been much of an American phenomenon and not a global phenomenon historically. The use of other gems is not that unusual. Then again, in our age of proliferated American culture (80's culture especially, surprisingly) and heavy marketing by deBeers and such, diamonds could now be the default global engagement bobble. In fact, many gemologists estimate the value emeralds as more than diamonds. Although you should also investigate emeralds for potential abuse because much of the world's emeralds comes from the dangerous mines of the volatile nation of Columbia (and Venezuela? Are Venezuela's mines dangerous?).

A means of bypassing the diamond trade is to purchase man-made diamonds which are more pure, cheaper, and less blemished than mined diamonds. To build up the reputation of synthetic diamond, such gems are touted as "cultured diamonds" just as there are "cultured pearls." This fairly new diamond industry has been a growing threat to the conglomerate of diamond mining/monopolizing families. Such families have worked to develop machinery to distinguish mined diamonds from made diamonds; and the distinction is the cultured form is "too perfect" and splits a beam of light at a particular spectrum and diffraction. But does the populace care? Those families only want to protect their businesses. Would you want a diamond that was synthetic but pure or natural but possibly obtained through abusive practices or avoid diamonds altogether?

Why diamonds at all? I think they represent purity and strength, right?

Orphan Man
From a talk by William Lane Craig:
Loren Eisley said, "Man is the cosmic orphan. He's the only creature in the universe to ask, 'Why?' Other creatures rely upon instinct but man has learned to ask questions. 'Who am I?' he asks. 'Why am I here? Where am I going?'"
Ever since the Enlightenment, when modern man threw off the shackles of religion, he's tried to answer those questions without God. The answers that came back were not exhilarating but dark and terrible: "You are the accidental byproduct of matter + chance + time." "There is no reason for your existence." "All you face is death." "Your life is but a spark in the infinite darkness, a spark that appears, flickers, and dies forever."
Modern man thought that by divesting himself of God, he had freed himself from everything that stifled and oppressed him. Instead, he found that in "killing" God, he had only succeeded in orphaning himself.