Tuck You in, Warm within, Keep You Free from Sin, Til . . . Santa He Comes?

I have to thank Khorbin for alerting me to . . . And Christmas for All! The Holiday Tribute to Metallica. It's just Christmas-sounding instrumental versions of ten Metallica classics. At first, I thought it was a travesty, a sinful desecration of some of the greatest compositions of all time.

Then, I started thinking, hey, if you have to listen to Christmas crap anyway during the traditional festivities and other such fun stuff, then why not make it some good Christmas stuff?

And then I heard it.

Don't waste your time with it. Whether you think it's a good idea or not, the result is terrible. The use of Christmas-themed instruments doesn't automatically change it to a Christmassy mood. But it did fundamentally alter the way it sounded. So what you're left with isn't Metallica, and it isn't Christmas either. It sounds more like ringtones or elevator music. It's just a waste of money. Stay away from it.

More Pictures of Link

8 Random Facts About Myself

Normally I don't do these kinds of things, but since it was SusieQ who tagged me, I think I'll do it--but I won't tag anyone else.

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts. 2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves. 3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. 4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. 5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Of course, as I said, I won't be tagging anyone else. I'm going to use SusieQ's 8 facts as my inspiration.

1. When I was very young, I was given a stuffed rabbit, which I named Harvey. I took him everywhere I went. One time, I left him in a local retail store, and we didn't discover this until after they were closed. I didn't sleep that night, and, needless to say, neither did my mother. We were there when they opened the next day to retrieve him.
Later, he was getting quite threadbare, so he was taken away from me so he could be saved in the cedar chest. I was told that he went to help the Easter Bunny do all his work, since this was around that time of year. A few months ago, I got him back, along with a very similar rabbit for my son.

2. In the 2000 photo of all the freshmen at Concordia University in Seward, which last I knew was hanging in the Student Life Office, you can spot me because I had sprayed my hair purple that day.

3. I was the 1996 Pierce County Spelling Bee champion. I was told that on the written portion I only missed one word, "excise," out of what I believe were 100 words. Everyone gasped when I correctly spelled the word "acquiescence" during the oral portion when it was down to me and the runner-up. We actually made it to the last word in their pre-selected list, and I won with that word: "cardiac." Kind of an anti-climactic word, yes. This was when I was in eighth grade. I made it to the top 10 the previous year, but was eliminated because I forgot the first "h" in "rhythm."

4. I had a band in high school, for which I played bass. We all were pretty terrible, as we were all just then learning our respective instruments. We played "Twist of Cain" by Danzig at our high school's talent show. Minutes before we were to go on stage, my friend who was supposed to do the vocals completely forgot the rhythm (won't forget how to spell that one) to the lyrics, so I took over, and played bass as well. It was simply awful, but not as bad as our original, meandering, aimless song, which was really a very simple riff overlaid with weird, simplistic guitar solos which were supposed to be interesting because of the cool effects pedal my friend had.

5. This past weekend I made, with the help of my wonderful mother-in-law, some peach rhubarb jam. It was made with 5 cups of rhubarb, a cup of water, a can of peach pie filling, 4 cups of sugar, and two packets of Jell-O. It ended up far too runny, so next time I'll drop the cup of water from the recipe.

6. I hate tomatoes with a burning, fiery passion. Yet, I enjoy marinara sauce, pizza sauce, and salsa. Tomato juice disgusts me, but my own recipe for Full Metal Chili (which I will someday share, when it gets colder outside) requires tomato juice as the base.

7. I have never experienced the negative effects of too much alcohol (i.e. passing out, vomiting, blacking out) because I have always drank responsibly (and I rarely ever touched it before I turned 21). I have experienced slurred speech and impaired motor skills, on occasion, but I use that as my signal to switch to drinking water or coffee. I have a high metabolism, so I experience the effects quickly, but they leave me quickly as well.

8. Right now, Laura and I are taking shifts at night for taking care of Link. I stay up with him until at least 3:00 a.m. (although I usually take a nap) and then she takes over. I then sleep until about 10:00 a.m.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed learning a little about me. I should post more often, shouldn't I? It was kind of enjoyable.

I've Never Tried This Before

But here goes . . . video on my blog.



Lily and Russell eating cupcakes. Enjoy!

Swimming!

Say Hello

Say hello to Lincoln Donald Hoffart, born on Wednesday May 23 at 4:19 p.m. by cesarean section, and weighing 8 lbs, 6 ozs at 20 1/2 inches long.





We think thus far that he has my eyes, toes, and skin tone, but Mama's cheeks and legs.

Genetic Engineering and Natural Selection

I have for a long time been concerned at the fact that as humans we have all but removed ourselves from the process of natural selection. It turns out that since chimpanzees and humans split from our common ancestor, chimpanzees have had more (in terms of quantity) beneficial mutations than have humans, providing proof that this is the case. Our technology has allowed this to be so, and as technology advances, it becomes more and more the case.

Last night, Laura was reading an article about allergies. They are increasing in prevalence at an alarming rate. There's even an Eskimo (I believe in this case it's an Inupiat) boy who is allergic to bearded seal and something-or-other whale, two staples of their diet. This trend certainly can't be attributed to anything in the environment--it must be that nature would weed out these traits in an unhappy way, by killing off those with the trait before they get a chance to reproduce.

But today this doesn't happen. Now, people die more from unhappy circumstance than from having undesirable traits. I don't believe that we should change this. It seems wrong to let people die when we have the technology to save them. I, for one, would be dead without our advanced medical technology, since I needed an appendectomy at a young age. If you think about it, there's a good chance you would be dead too, even from something as minor as a flu. Plus, I have imperfect vision, which would not be a good trait for a hunter.

I've begun to think of our removal from natural selection as a natural selection strategy in itself. I think about cockroaches and how they've been removed from the process for millions of years simply because there's no reason for them to evolve. But we are different from cockroaches because our technology has actually caused us to deteriorate our gene pool rather than to stagnate it. But what if technology ceases to work as a crutch?

I had previously thought of a partial solution to the problem. I advocate the illegalization of reproductive assistance technology. You know: in vitro fertilization and the like. This would serve the purpose of eliminating from the gene pool those who can't reproduce naturally. I was discussing this with a law school friend about a year ago, and she pointed out that it's not really any different from any of our medical life-saving techniques, at least if applied before reproduction takes place. And as far as that goes, she's right to an extent. It is only a partial solution to the problem. Even so, I still advocate this position for the moral purpose of encouraging adoption. But what is the solution?

Enter the science of genetics. People cringe at the idea of genetic manipulation and the term "designer babies." There's some kind of sense that it's wrong, that it's playing God. But there's nothing we can put our fingers on to say, "Here! This is the reason it's wrong!"

But what if we used this technology for the very limited purpose of eliminating unwanted traits from the gene pool? Instead of engineering the prettiest babies, we'll only be concerned about engineering the healthiest and the fittest babies. Allergies will be a thing of the past. Cancer will be rare. The field of optometry will be an unknown, and spectacles will be curiosities of an age past. Is there anything wrong with that? It's the same thing as what we're doing already by fixing all of our problems, only it's one step better because we're preventing them from happening in the first place.

Now, I'm not really sure how you do this without using the reproductive technology that we already have. Perhaps you can't, and in such a case I would consider changing my position on that. But if people accept this position on moral grounds, then we may see the solution to one of mankind's biggest upcoming problems, and by the end of my lifetime. Before that we of course need to solve our energy issues and global warming, and then after this we can send people off to colonize other planets (I was pretty excited about the discovery of that possibly-inhabitable planet a mere 23 light years away).

So, is this moral position correct?

Edgar to be in the News

Well, it sounds like my wife's hometown of Edgar, Nebraska, is going to be in the local news. In this small town of 500, there was a murder-suicide in the bar just last night--and the victim lived across the street from my in-laws. As I understand it, the motive was that the victim was messing around with the perpetrator's wife.

The Internet Sure Is Faster These Days

I finally got this e-mail that was sent on December 17, 1960 (which, incidentally, was my negative 45th anniversary). I guess back in those days the Internet was a lot slower, and when it has to cross the Pacific Ocean it took even longer. It also appears that the 'net is going to get even faster in the future--I've gotten a lot of e-mails today that won't even be sent until January 18, 2038. Isn't it amazing how much technology can improve in just 78 years!

Happy Twenty-Fifth Birthday . . .

. . . to me!