Politics and Booze

No, i am not going to use my blog to try and convince you to vote for my guy. It wouldn't work anyway, and i'd rather keep my friends. But, i did have an interesting weekend of politics, friends, and essentially free beer.

No, i'm not talking about the party i wanted to have the night of the Vice Presidential debate where all present would have to drink every time Sarah Palin winked...

i'm talking about Barack-toberfest! Yes, you heard correctly, the Sedgwick County Democrats hosted a blowout bash and they called it... Barack-toberfest. It was held on South Commerce Street here in Wichita, apparently a trendy little neighborhood where progressive artists hang out and where the liberals of Kansas sneak around to their underground parties. When i pulled up i saw my friend walking down the street, and was immediately relieved because i thought i was in the wrong place. i asked him if this wasn't a little ghetto, and he said yes, and wasn't it great?! Apparently he is very familiar with this area... being a music teacher and a bit of an art snob. So i met up with him and the two of his friends he brought along. We went in and paid the $5 cover (that's where the essential part of the free beer comment comes in) and saw this...




This is how liberals in Kansas party, my friends... oh, yes. We were there half an hour late, which was apparently not late enough to be fashionable. So we hung out for a while, got first dibs on the keg, and just chatted it up, looked at the buttons and shirts for sale, and waited on the band. The building started to fill up and by the time the music started, it was as hoppin' as it was going to get. They fed us hot dogs and little cupcakes with the O symbol in the icing. Later we heard from the big shots at the Sedgwick County Democratic Party, and some local politicians stumping for themselves. i have to tell you, my district democratic candidate for the Kansas State Senate has a great butt.



Some other folks from school met up with us after the band and before the stand-up comedian and we decided to head out and catch the last showing of that new movie, W. It was definitely Netflixable (new verb) but not necessarily even mantinee worthy. On our way out after midnight, we ran into more people that my artsy-fartsy friend knew, and we hung out a bit outside the theater and critiqued the movie. So there we were... 1:00 on a Friday night (yeah, yeah, Saturday morning), a bunch of young people in our prime, a city full of lights and bars and dives waiting for us. Where did we go next?

Home. To bed. Heck, most of us were teachers. We were all yawning and had to shake our heads at ourselves for the silliness of it all.

i would be lying if i said i didn't go to this as a way of trying to keep myself busy. But in the end it became a pretty nice way to keep myself busy. And i made some new buds and had a few Buds, so i guess it worked well enough.

The next day i went out with a group of other friends, formerly mutual to Jeff and i. That was much harder, as everything kept reminding me of him, and i nearly cried at the restaurant and then excused myself to the bathroom later at my friends house and actually did cry. At some point during the evening, though, i found myself sitting in the living room engrossed in a good conversation 'gone bad' and laughing hysterically. i realized it was the first time in two weeks that i had done that, and it felt really good.

i got tired earlier that night, probably due to all the crying or trying not to cry. So i left around 11 with the express purpose of heading home and going to bed. But as i rode through the city with an old tape on, i found myself driving in circles around my block, and then out on the highways, and then out to neighboring towns. The cool October air was circulating through the cab of the truck and i felt somewhere between tears and hope. i couldn't just go home and go to bed, not feeling like that. So i drove and sang loudly to the music. At the same time i was thinking...

i told my mom about everything last week in an email. She sent back, "what did I tell you about moving for a man?" And i had to defend myself, so i said, "mom, it was an adventure... and i don't regret it... you have to take chances, you know... maybe they don't always work out, maybe they never do... but it's the chances you don't take that you regret... it's those moments when you look back and think, geez, i wonder what might have come of that..." Her response to me made me well up and smile. She said she admired my sense of adventure, and that so few people, of either gender, would have had the guts to do what i did... she said that despite everything that happened in our family, i had managed to develop a strong sense of self.

i thought about that exchange as i drove through and around the city. Thought about the past and about the future. i thought about myself on the last night of my life and tried to project how i would feel about this past two years at that point. i thought about risks and oppertunities, love and loyalty, failure and success.

i can't say that i came up with much in the way of wisdom. i kept thinking about that old cliche: "to love and win is the best thing; to love and lose, the next best." i drank in the cold air and reminded myself that living truly is the most thrilling adventure. Experience is everything. You take nothing material with you when you die and go... wherever it is you believe you're going to go. The only thing you can do is hope that as you close your eyes and look into the last abyss that you have truly known what is was to be alive. To feel, deep and thick, every moment and to embrace and know as many passions as you can manage in the time you are given.

It's nice to say, but in reality you can't live every day like it was your last. You have to plan for the future and try to anticipate tomorrows. But if i think of life like baseball, i know i don't want to trot across homebase easy and confident but rather come sliding in, dirty and bleeding in a cloud of dust, and shouting, "wow, what a ride!"

An ending, a beginning...

Jeff and i broke up last week.

Right before comments. Again. And of course i am here blogging and trying to find ways to work through the disappointment and sorrow and not doing my work.

It's almost certainly for the best but that's a difficult thing to admit when you're letting go. People are just so different, and even though you always have to make adjustments when fitting your life in with someone else's, there comes a point when you realize you're doing too much adjusting and it's not comfortable for anyone.

i won't talk about why it happened as i am certain he would consider that too personal for a blog. But i will say that i will miss him tremendously and wish him nothing but happiness and love.

He was the only person i ever thought about marrying, the only person for whom i would drag my frigid butt halfway across the country and back in an ice storm for one kiss. Likewise, i don't think i have ever had anyone love me as thoroughly as he did. And he taught me so much about love, sacrifice, family... and limits. He told me this past spring that i could post this and i just never got around to it, so here he is, my big dorky librarian, and my last words on the subject... at least as far as the internet goes.




Every ending is a beginning, except for the very last ending of course, and so even as i grieve i am beginning to wonder about the future, what it will bring and where i will go. Admittedly, i am now free to consider just about any option i could dream up. i don't think i can find a teaching job in Alaska and i don't think i am willing to give up teaching just yet. Plus the flights home would be wicked expensive. But perhaps Maine. i've always loved Maine. i remember driving through the interior of the state and winding my way among the very northern Appalachian foothills, from little town to little town... and the faint mineral smell of the lakes... the depths of the woods were remarkable...

i am also thinking about a cat. Might as well go ahead and become Cat Lady. But isn't that one of the cutest little faces you've ever seen? C'mon, admit it.... i sent an email but haven't gotten a response yet. i think if i don't hear by Tuesday i will call. Sombody is going to snatch her right up!

Danger, Will Robinson!

Ok, so I’ve been very careful on this blog. Given that it is read by so many of my old friends and I want to keep up with them (rather than royally piss them off) I have been censoring myself on certain topics like religion, politics, and global warming. But I had an experience this week with a student of mine that has really gotten me thinking.

So, I beg you a favor… if you are a creationist and don’t like being challenged on that or hearing evaluation of your theories, please, skip this post and know that I love you and that we must agree to disagree.

The story begins with one of my favorite students this year. Yes, teachers have favorite students. No, we don’t admit it to them.

This kid took all my electives last year (astronomy, cosmology, conservation biology). He is signed up for KJAS (Kansas Junior Academy of Science) this year which only 5 other students have… two of them 6th graders who can’t even compete. Last year he had some serious issues on which I will not elaborate, but has grown up so much since then and matured past them. It’s been wonderful to watch. All his teachers are proud of him but none more than I because he is such a talented science student.

A few weeks ago the kids wrote their first lab reports, and an awful lot of them used the phrase “the hypothesis was proven correct” during their data analyses. The day I gave them back, I decided I needed to nip that in the bud. See, you can’t prove anything in science. You can disprove something, but you can never prove it. You can only support a hypothesis with evidence. Given overwhelming evidence, the hypothesis becomes theory. Given more overwhelming evidence (and a mathematical equation doesn’t hurt), the theory becomes a law. But the beauty of science is that we are all open to being proven wrong. Any law, no matter how deeply rooted in the scientific community, can be overthrown with one repeatable, elegant, expertly executed experiment. One verifiable measurement of light bending around a massive star toppled the Newtonian concept of gravity. It would take only one mammalian skull lodged in demonstrably Precambrian rock and the whole theory of evolution would topple down. General relativity, evolution, thermodynamics, the electron cloud model… all these theories are supported by massive amounts of evidence. But it would only take one.

Anyway… I was ranting on and on to my students in this manner and after class this kid came up to me and shocked my socks off. He said, “Miss K, evolution is just religion.” I blinked for a few minutes trying to remember if, of all the criticisms of evolution I had heard from non-scientists over the years, I had ever heard it called religion. Most creationists, I thought, would be highly offended by this invasion of their personal space. But he was insistent. I told him that I would not argue with him about the correctness of evolution and creationism, but that I had to firmly disagree with the assertion that evolutionary biology is religion and not science. If for no other reason than the fact that I studied it as a scientist for seven years!

He would not relent. He asked me to watch a video he had on the age of the earth by a dude named Kent Hovind. I told him I would be glad to watch the video in order to take in his perspective but that he would need to read a book of mine in return. (Later, Kent Hovind informed me that this act of asking my student to read would send me to hell… but what the heck, I was headed there anyway.) I then e-mailed his parents to inform them of the exchange. The response I got back was nothing like what I thought, and I wish I could clone these parents and give them to all my other students. What they said boiled down to: my son is old enough to read anything he chooses and to make up his own mind about what he thinks about it. Would you mind reading a book of mine as well?

Dr. Kent Hovind

I said sure. So I have this book and this video on creation science. The book will have to wait until I’m done reading about the 2012 Mayan apocalypse. But nonetheless, I will read it. I did, however, start watching the video. It’s 2.5 hours long and I am about 1.5 hours in. It has taken me about 4 hours to watch the first 90 minutes as I pause every few moments to make notes. I now have 7 pages of objections. For instance, he claims that the star Sirius was red during the time of Jesus and is now a white dwarf. Well, that’s not entirely true, no. Sirius is actually a star system composed of, yes, a white dwarf, but also a white main sequence star. It is this latter star and its proximity to Earth that makes Sirius so bright, not the dwarf.

There are scores of examples… the use of the moon’s escape from earth as a timeline and the expert use of the inverse square law to calculate the gravitational force of the moon on the tides but the complete disregard of the same law to calculate the gravitational pull of the earth on the moon slowing its escape. It really goes on and on… for 7 pages. So far.




The point that really stood out to me was the one that my student kept repeating over and over again: evolution is just religion. Dr. Hovind made this point about 30 minutes into the program. He says that cosmological science and the theory of evolution are religion because even though there is evidence for the Big Bang, and for the timing of the Big Bang, nobody can say where all the matter came from.

This latter point, I concede. Science can answer some amazing questions these days. It can tell us that we are one of trillions of galaxies in the Universe. It can tell us what the temperature of the Universe was at only 10^-30 seconds! It can tell us that all that we see and all that we are was once in an area so tiny that it had no dimension whatsoever, and that that singularity burst into being around 13.7 billion years ago. But it can’t tell you why. As a scientist I can’t even tell you what triggered this event. And that’s where this all breaks down. The moment of the beginning.

Dr. Hovind says that because science cannot explain the moment of the beginning then it can’t explain anything. And that I find both logically unsound and incredibly ignorant.

There’s a lot that science can’t explain.

A lot.



A lot.




There are plenty more questions than there are answers. But that doesn’t mean that none of our answers are correct. For instance, no scientist can tell you what causes gravity. Is it an exchange of particles between objects? Is it intrinsic to all mass? Who knows! But that doesn’t mean that we throw out the theory of gravity altogether.

I have no problem with creationists. If you look intelligently at both ideas but you sincerely decide to believe in the literal translation of the bible instead… then that is your choice and I respect it. But you must, as I must, recognize that the literal translation of the bible and the understanding of modern science are in opposition.

But I dislike a man with a Ph.D. in Christian Eduction telling me what science is and is not. Study science. Learn science. Do science. Then, when you can critically evaluate data and analyze statistics and develop sound experimental design… then you can discuss what is and is not science. But of course, most everyone who does study science for 10 or more years becomes convinced of it.

Why, why is it so offensive to understand the bible as an analogy to a people who would not at the time have understood the genetics, biology, and chemistry of evolution? Why is it so hard to imagine that god gave the creation story in the way that best suited the time in which it was given? Why is it offensive to imagine that maybe now god is speaking to us through the intellect that he gave us? Why is it so frightening to so many people to think that god created the Universe, the Earth, and life itself through the mechanisms we are now uncovering??

I always say I don’t believe in god. But as I said to Jeff last night, I guess if you really whittled me down I would probably be better classified as an agnostic. Because while I don’t think there is a god, I cannot say for sure. I do not discount the possibility but nor do I believe it to be true just because it might be. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t thousands of faithful scientists out there. There are, and I have known plenty. In fact, as a member of the scientific community, I would say that I am probably in the minority even as an agnostic, let alone an atheist.

While you should never practice them in tandem, science and religion can coexist. As Einstein said, “the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it can be comprehended.” If you believe in god, you believe that he endowed us with intelligence. Why then would he be offended by its use?

Oh, and by the way, Dr. Kent Hovind is currently serving 10 years in federal prison.

The Riverwind Casino

Kansas and Oklahoma, but mostly the latter, were and still are the final resting places for many Native American tribes. Their presence is touted for tourism purposes, but if i'm being blunt, there are not a lot of tribes who live in places that everyday rich white people would want to go and tour.

There's so much more commentary to be made on that score, but this is supposed to be a post about a very funny man, and if i go down that road it will absolutely set the wrong tone! Many tribes have done fairly (but not very) well by building and maintaining casinos on their land. One such is the Riverwind Casino just south of Norman, Oklahoma. Norman is a suburb of Oklahoma City and the home of the University of Oklahoma. So there's an awful lot of traffic in the area and the casino gets some big names. Two weeks ago, Jeff went to see Charlie Pride play. As he was getting ready to go, he asked me to look up the casino and write directions for him. In so doing, i came across and annoucement for the following week's performance: Frank Caliendo.



i immediately knew that i wanted to go see him, so i jumped up screeching, and told Jeff we WERE going to this show the following weekend. He didn't instantly know who i was talking about, so i explained... you know, they guy who does Bush? Gobble, gobble? Ohhh, yes, he says, I think I know who you're talking about. So i called and they only two seats they had next to each other were in the VIP section. i snagged them and began waiting until Friday.

For those of you who haven't heard of Frank Caliendo, here's a clip for you.



Over the course of the show, he did George W., Charles Barkley, Bill Clinton, Kermit the Frog, Dr. Phil, Jim Rome (my personal favorite), John Madden, Seinfeld, Al Pacino, and Robin Williams. i am certain that i'm missing some. On Jim Rome, i was maybe one of 35 people in the audience laughing, since not everybody knows who he is i guess, but in Frank's own words, "i was totally wetting myself." The guy was outstanding. So damn funny. And at the end i got a picture with him! Here he's doing "the Bush face."