(no subject)

Well the past three days have been pretty busy. After the the trip to CA (and the associated limited sleep) I had an all day training event yesterday with an early start. After work last night, I endured visiting a mall to wrap up most of my holiday shopping. Afterwards was a relaxing evening hanging out with jeliza and divinemisso in Shoreline for a few hours.

As I was coming home I realized that I should definitely empty my mailbox and when I opened it, I found a number of great items: a holiday card from some online gaming buddies, the title to my car (which I officially paid off as of this month), and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King special edition. I also had about 10 minutes before heading to bed to take a quick look at Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Wars which looks like it is going to be great fun.

Work is dead quiet, so I'm just checking e-mail from home and then heading down to Tacoma for a Living Greyhawk slot 0--my hope is to minimize the amount of time I feel compelled to be at New Year's Eve of Loser Fun this year...

(no subject)

I saw a sign in San Diego that read "Jesus is the reason for the season"--a sign I've seen many times before, but mostly in the South--and I thought, "actually, I think the Earth being in the apogee of its orbit about the Sun is the reason for the season."^*

Science is not in opposition to religion. It is often in opposition to dogmatic literalism. I realize my science background colors my perception of the world, and I don't have much patience for the "Christian America myopia" that political forces in our society seem to relish. There's plenty of room for spiritualism or even being deeply religious, but in my opinion faith should be reserved for the unknown and the unknowable rather than things pretty cleverly deduced from observable facts that can be verified independently.

^* Having been too many years since I studied astromony, I forgot a few details. The correct statement would be "Earth approaching the perihelion of its orbit about the Sun and precession of the planet's rotational axis is the reason for the season."