Good Deed!

Little PSA here... Our troops are in desperate need for e-mail storage space. Many of our men and women overseas use either hotmail or yahoo accounts to keep in touch with friends and family back home, and as we all know neither of those services offers much storage for pictures etc.... Well google has started an e-mail service called Gmail, which offers 1 gig of storage space! Currently it is by invitation only. So please, if you get an invitation sign up! After signing up you will be offered invitations to pass on, at which time you can visit http://www.gmail4troops.com/ This website allows you to donate your gmail invites to the troops stationed over seas. It's a great site, and a great thing to do for the troops risking their lives. Thanks!

A Day for Humour (or humor or whatever....)

First, I had the second U/S, and A looks great! They were able to get a good shot of his spine and it looks normal. See I'm not just fat, there is a baby in there :D In other news, the need for laughter (because I've given up spelling humour) is because my darling son is in his full contrary 3 year old glory :/ His room is now carpeted in kleenex. He stole my brand new box (of course brand new, it wouldn't be any fun if there wasn't a magnitude of destruction!!) and proceeded to pull every last one out and throw em all over his room. Now he won't pick them up because they are 'pretty' sigh.... And soon there will be two....Boys are fun :D

Now I've debated posting this, but it's bothering me, it's my blog and if you don't like it don't read it... I have never seen a bunch of grown people act like immature 12 year olds than I have today. Good lord. Oh no, someone said they didn't like someone! Let's lynch her!! I'm sure everyone out there likes everybody all the time. (hint that was sarcasm) I'm also sure that if anyone had the bad taste to disagree with or dislike someone they would *never* say so (yet again sarcasm) Grow the frig up people.

**Edited to Add** I think I'm going to track down the guy who invented ice cream trucks and that annoying repeated music and hurt him. Severely....

Woo Hoo!!! (Philosophy)

I love Descartes!!! Or maybe it's just after the sheer incomprehensible wordiness of Aristotle I'm relieved I actually understand something I've been reading =) Anyway I just read Descarts 1st meditation, and here are some thought that popped up:

1. pg. 461 second column 1st paragraph: "For whether I am awake or asleep, two plus three make five, and a square does not have more than four sides. It does not seem possible that such obvious truths should be subject to the suspicion of being false." Yet, the best lies are based on the truth, and are also very simple. Is this assumption logically sound?

2. pg. 461 second column, 1st full paragraph (this entire paragraph is applicable, but for the sake of brevity I'll quote only a small part): "But perhaps God has not willed that I be deceived in this way, for he is said to be supremely good. Nonetheless, if it were repugnant to his goodness to have created me such that I be deceived all the time, it would also seem foreign to that same goodness to permit me to be deceived even occasionally." Yet how is there proof of the existence of a God? Futhermore, how can you prove that is there is a God he is benevolent? The records of God are provided by man (the bible, while supposedly handed down by God, was transcribed by man), and according to these very same records man is inherently flawed! (Descartes later shows that to make this assumption was false, so far anyway =) )

3. It is like the writers of the Matrix series stole Descartes' meditation!! I also find it kind of funny to look back at my first 'philosophical musings' in light of this reading. (See entries titled Random thoughts and Random Thoughts Part II dated 6/15) Apparently, I had an affinitly with Descartes and didn't know it =)

A-HA!!! (Philosophy)

Before I get started, for those of you interested I have added my Philosophy teachers blog to the links on the right (Subject to Change) If you check it out, look for the post on Comic Books, good stuff there.

Now on to my a-ha moment :) While in class tonight, I had a true a-ha! Philosophy is the religon (sp?) of the athiest. Stick with me here... The ancient Greeks invented the 'myths' as a way to explain the world around them. Their religon provided explainations for why the seasons changed (Persephone), why there was thunder (Zues), for wars, for love, for hate etc etc etc. As human beings, we feel a need to have an explaination for the world around us. For some, religon does not fill that void. It doesn't make sense to some people that things happen because the God's willed it, or a tree is there because God put the tree there. Thusly, in order to compartmentalize the world into understandable sections, Philosophy is born. Take the four causes of Aristotle...While very very general, they offer a convenient way to neatly package the world around us. A tree's material cause is wood (or earth if you prefer), it's formal cause is to reproduce itself (or again to take another view to synthesize carbon dioxide into oxygen for the purpose of providing things with air), its efficient cause is from a seed falling on the ground or someone planting a seed, and it's final cause could be shade or reproduction or providing lumber. Because of the four causes you are able to package the world of why. In my opinion, as humans we need to know why. It almost seems built in. For example my son, who just turned three has hit the why phase (oh please let it be a phase!) For everything I tell him, his reply is why. From what I understand every child does this. So it seems that it is built into us to have a need to understand the world around us, to have compartments that let us seperate information into to help make the world a more understandable place to be in. So in a way, Philosophy can be viewed as an evolution of religon. If I don't like the way religon (the most common form of explaining why) then I can turn to Philosophy to answer my why. This would also explain why my great books professor often used philosophy to explain literature. He said that in the classical world view, God was the reason for everything. When we turned to the modern view, and 'killed' the God figure, we had to find some other way to explain things. A-Ha!!

Why I *hate* the 4th of July

Ok, so I really don't hate the holiday in and of itself. As of now, it is 11:26PM. The city fireworks were over an hour ago. Yet the people in our neighborhood are *still* setting off fireworks. And not the little itty bitty ones either. Nooooooo that would be to easy. I have explosions going off that are so loud they are literally shaking the house. I don't live in a tiny house. I'd call the cops but they are so useless in this city. Last year we tried calling when people were still setting off the big ones at 1 am. We were told it was the 4th and there was nothing they could do. What a load of crap. Besides the fact that M-80's are extremely illegal, does this city not have noise ordinance laws? I miss living in a real city. Then again this is the same police force that said that we should just leave our car doors unlocked to the theives wouldn't have to break our windows, because it's probably just kids doing it. Lovely. I feel so safe. They'd probably tell me if I'm being raped to lay there, because it would be over quicker. The biggest reason it pisses me off is it's scaring the hell out of my son!! Now do I expect the city to ban all fireworks? No, of course not. I think the city shows are beautiful, and I enjoy them. They also end at a reasonable time. Bah. I swear, as soon as we can afford it we are so moving out of the city. Build our dream house on nice secluded acerage. With no fireworks!!! End my fussy mean spoil sport rant.

general news.

Well I'm now feeling the baby move more regularly, so I'm guessing the placenta is moving (it was smack dab in the front, and I wasn't feeling anything!) It's kind of funny to notice the differences in the boys so early. A seems very reticent. Very timid kicking, if you poke my belly he runs. B was very very...prominent. Every time someone dared to poke his 'home' he was very clear he didn't like it :) When I had to go in for non stress tests with him we would have to stay twice as long because he would kick the fetal monitors so hard they couldn't get a reading! Believe me, his personality has only gotten stonger since he's been born :) Lets hope A is my quiet little peaceful boy! DH is in the hospital again, luckily this time it seems minor. They tried diagnosing him with a stroke (again, you know I'd really like to know why they keep trying to say my 29 year old husband is having strokes...) but it turns out he has a ripped tendon in his leg. Yea stroke, ripped tendon, I can see the similarities. Granted I don't have a medical degree, but one would think that common sense does not dissapear when one is bestowed. Maybe I shouldn't get my doctorate after all. I kind of like having a semi functional brain. Good news, he should be home tonight. I think that's pretty much everything for now. Hope y'all have a great holiday.