December 21st, 2007 at 11:08 p.m. MST is the winter solstice.
My eyes glazed over and I couldn't follow the article at all. I've had high school geometry and nothing further but I'm feeling a bit daunted at the prospect of exploring these mathematical concepts.
Near the top shelf nestled between two other books was a book on "intelligent design". lolwut? Okay it's a fucking store and they're just out to make money not to differentiate between science and fantasy. I'm in Colorado Springs which has its share of religious fanatics. The morning guy on KCMN is a self-righteous creationist. Such a mistake could happen because folks don't know any better if the author happens to have abbreviations and letters after their name which aren't "Jr." or "the III". One could say that such a situation is charmingly folksy in its naïveté like a child drawing cavemen living with dinosaurs.
Still it made facepalm. Why don't they put those Llewellyn astrology books under the physics and astronomy section? They have math, ephemeriseses and complimacated charts! How about I take all the bibles from the religious section and move them wholesale into fiction?
Why do I bring this up here at heptapod.org? Am I going to launch into a tirade on the virtues of secularism and the separation of church and state?
No. raddidge got annoyed with me because I mentioned my annoyance to her. The subject was quickly dropped and I actually moved on. Mmmmaybe not as much as I should have but I did better than I would have a few months ago where raddidge would flip her hair at me and give me the silent treatment because for the rest of the drive I wouldn't let the topic die and attempt to compel her to agree that placement was sheer stupidity.
Right now I take the situation as a learning experience. The best way to maintain my personal philosophy is to completely ignore the subject of religion, deities and other fairy tales. How can I really do this when I want to play roleplaying games featuring dragons and dwarves, maintain superstitions, believe that dreams might actually mean something beyond filler for heptapod.org and still feel urges to cast ye olde spelles with my ʃilver bowl as a pretext to burn things.
I was on a steam train with my parents. My father was the engineer and my mother was thankfully ignoring me and I ignored her staring out at the blurred landscape racing past us. I started feeling relieved because the tracks were clear and no one was walking along them that afternoon but I knew up ahead was a bridge and tunnel where people could be found at strange times.
Up ahead I could see there were a bunch of people on the tracks. As the train approached I saw that the crowd was getting denser and denser as it barrelled along the tracks. Dad sounded the horn but didn't slow down at all. Obviously there was carnage.
The screams didn't bother me because they were cut off so quickly but the train started shaking and shuddering as the bodies piled up. I thought the train would have a smooth ride but there were too many bodies. I started crying and the train didn't stop.
