The Introspective Spiral

A friend of mine recently wrote a post talking, among other things, about trees. This of course led me deep into thought and ultimately to the ultimate question: "If I Were a Tree What Tree Would I Be?" You can imagine the introspective spiral that followed.

My personal answer to that question is the Weeping Willow.

But I decided to do some research into the matter courtesy of Google.

One web test confirmed my own intuition. At first I was a little concerned about the site's assessment of the Willow (and my personality): "You are a Weeping Willow. You are a huge crybaby and no one likes you. Everybody wishes you would go away and leave them alone." But upon reflection I realized this was impossible. I could think of at least 3 people who had never told me to go away and leave them alone. I also realized that whatever answers you gave the quiz told you the exact same thing. Slightly suspicious.

Back to the drawing board...

I found another sight which tells you what tree you are based on your date of birth. Because I was born between September 3rd and 12th I am in fact... A Weeping Willow! Normally I do not approve of such random, arbitrary systems of ascription. But I approve of things I find flattering. Check this out:

Weeping Willow (the Melancholy) - likes to be stress free, loves family life, full of hopes and dreams, attractive, very empathetic, loves anything beautiful, musically inclined, loves to travel to exotic places, restless, capricious, honest, can be influenced but is not easy to live with when pressured, sometimes demanding, good intuition, suffers in love until they find that one loyal, steadfast partner; loves to make others laugh.

That sounds close enough to me in a vague, interpret yourself into it, selective reading kind of way. Except for the negative qualities. Those don't apply. Demanding? I don't think so.

So in conclusion I am a Willow. And if I fell in the forest and no one was around I would make a lot of noise and curse my friends for abandoning me. And I would still like to know why the sky is blue.

Fear and Trembling

It's past midnight, which means today is officially the day I'm speaking at Church. I feel like I have bitten off more than I can chew and I'm nervous about fitting everything in without rushing through anything. To be clear and complete: that is what's hardest of all. I still need to tweak a few things. But I've said my prayers, and know there are a lot of dear souls praying for me. I trust in God. I believe there is a reason for all happenings, even those as seemingly ludicrous as me addressing a congregation. A lot of good people have given me a lot of good advice. I have received some very supportive last minute phone calls and I am so grateful to those people and to God for those people. In less than twenty four hours I'm sure I will be elated, but the next eighteen hours will be psychological torture and I really ought to sleep. It is just hard to sleep with all this fear and trembling. And how did this all happened anyway?

Psalm 55: 4-8
My heart is in anguish within me;
the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling come upon me,
and horror overwhelms me.
And I say, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest;
yes, I would wander far away;
I would lodge in the wilderness;
I would hurry to find a shelter
from the raging wind and tempest."

Something Rotten in the State of Minnesota

Who is Goldy Gopher? The simple answer to the question is that since 1952 Goldy has been the mascot of the University of Minnesota. Goldy appears at more than 1000 events every year, including virtually every university home game. In 2004 Goldy made the Capital One All-American Mascot Team. He has also competed in the UCA Mascot National Championships for years, regularly making the top 10. In 2005 Goldy had his best year to date, placing 3rd in the country. Goldy is not only the mascot of the University of Minnesota, but represents all of Minnesota which is known as the “Gopher State.”

But do we really know who Goldy Gopher is? Can we even be sure Goldy is in fact a gopher? In a recent comparison study done between Goldy and several members of the rodent family, including the gopher, it was concluded that Goldy in fact bears the least resemblance to the gopher. An apparent hybrid between a squirrel and beaver, it is impossible to tell exactly what Goldy is. Perhaps this is because the artist who first drew Goldy did not even know what a gopher looks like.

Goldy has long prided himself on his ties to the community and family connection to the State of Minnesota. He often boasts that most of his family still resides at the State Fair. However, when asked to comment on Goldy’s ambiguous origins his family was completely silent on the issue. What is one to make of such defensive posturing?

Goldy may have made it close to the very top of the mascot profession, but by what means and at what cost? In a society that places value on success at any cost Goldy has sacrificed everything in his bid for mascot supremacy, even his own identity. It is time we recognize that the ends do not always justify the means. Can we really allow this gopher to represent the mascots of an entire nation?

This message supported by the Bucky Badger for UCA Mascot of the Year campaign.

Missing my Grandad

Today was the Army AirForce football game. My dad and I decided to root for the AirForce since my grandad served in the RAF during WWII. Talking with my dad I learned a few new things about my grandad. Apparently he wasn't a tail-gunner, which I had always assumed. He was actually a gun and bomb technician. It was his job to adjust the fairing rate on guns and the aiming systems of bombers. This brought up the issue of his capture. After all, how do you get captured if you are a technician? It seems my grandad got board working on bombers, so he volunteered to do some bomb drops. It was on one of these missions that he got shot down. It is nice knowing that my grandad was a brave man. He passed away when I was eleven, so I don’t have very many memories of him. All I do remember is a friendly old man who loved to work in his garden and never stopped smiling. It is nice being able to think of him in a different context: as a soldier signing up for a dangerous mission and as a survivor of the Burmese death camps. Incidentally AirForce beat Army 43-7. I doubt my grandad would have cared, but I was happy.

Determinism: Bound to be Funny

Today I managed to make my philosophy professor laugh. We were studying David Lewis who argues that freedom and determinism are compatible. For most of the class I felt like I could not wrap my head around his theory. As far as I could understand he was arguing that we have freewill even though we are casually determined because if the laws of physics were different we would be ‘able to do otherwise.’ I assumed I was just not getting something because it all seemed so ridiculous. After class I went up to my professor and told her what my understanding of the theory was. I asked her if I was missing out on anything. Amazingly I wasn’t. I then asked the obvious question: so his definition of freewill is the ability to be determined differently if the laws of physics change? She just laughed and nodded. Talk about a meaningless argument.