Matt and Rachel Lydon are married!

Even though I try to keep this blog relatively free of personal entries, this is worth mentioning. The wedding/reception/post-reception were all par excellence, and a good time was had by all (as far as I can tell). Awkward social mix-ups were by-en-large (?) avoided even though there was great potential for such. Josh gave a wonderful toast and maintained quite well in general. Matt and Rachel seemed uncharacteristically relaxed (for a couple about to be/just married), especially Matt. Everyone drank much and I was the only person to commit a party foul, but only after the majority of guest had departed. Good luck you two (if you ever read this)!

There's nothing wrong with being gay...

...unless you want a rewarding relationship with your lord and savior!

www.loveinaction.org

After visting this site you will learn:

1) That 'homosexual' is commonly used as a noun (not kidding).

2) That alot of churchs in Tennesee hate queers.

3) That there is no such thing as a gay or homosexual person, only gay and homosexual behavior.

4) That walking down the beach of life in God's footsteps is worth the suppression of ones sexual desires.

5) That in the 21st century people are still trying to alter societies self-identity by implementing policies based on the 'infallible word of God.'

Allegedly I am a...

Prankster

(39% dark, 30% spontaneous, 27% vulgar)

Your humor style: CLEAN COMPLEX LIGHT

Your humor has an intellectual, even conceptual slantto it. You're not pretentious, but neither are youinto what some would call 'low humor'. You'd laugh ata good dirty joke, but you definitely prefer somethingclever to something moist.You probably like well-thought-out pranks and/orspoofs and it's highly likely you've tried one ofthese things yourself. In a lot of ways, yours is themost entertaining type of humor.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Conan O'Brian - Ashton Kutcher

(Hmmm...I'm not really into pranks that much...I do love Ashton Kutcher though [and sarcasm]!)

Things to do at a bachelor party...

1) Roleplay improv GURPS adventure about ourselves at the bachelor party.

2) Talk about how much better this bachelor party is without a stripper.

3) Loose track of time and space.

4) Have obligatory yet heartfelt discussions about the role of marriage in the rest of our lives.

5) Try and convince Matt to do wierd things.

6) Talk about people who aren't at the bachelor party.

7) Premptively reminisce about the good times we had at the bachelor party.

8) Discuss how many of the things I've listed here actually occured.

Lets talk about the status of causality!

In our philosophical understanding of the world, we have to juggle two contradictory notions of causal relationships. These two notions are determinism and indeterminism. A deterministic framework implies the neccessary connection of causes and effects into a linear chain. In this chain, every effect has a (temporally) antecedent cause, so effects without causes are not allowed. An indeterministic framework implies nothing more than that there may be effects without causes.

We need the deterministic framework if we are to theorize about the world, that is, insofar as reality IS deterministic, it can be captured by theory. This is clear if we notice that most theories (like physics, etc.) provide causal explanations. Insofar as the world IS indeterministic, it will be ungraspable by theory, since we cannot provide a causal explanation for a phenomenon consisting of uncaused effects.

We do need indeterminism to make sense of the notion of a volition, act, or choice. If the phenomenon I identify as a 'free' choice is in reality caused by antecedent conditions that extend back in a causal chain to a point prior to my existence, then I must concede that I really had no choice in the matter. My illusion of choice is really just a little part of the great cosmic domino chain.

So which one wins out? I'll only say this: If we ascribe to reality an indeterministic structure, we can then explain the emergence of approximately deterministic systems which we experience and study (scientifically). This explains how we can have free will and still live in a comprehensible, pattern following world, with relationships between things intuitively graspable by its inhabitants. If we assume that reality is deterministic in structure, there seems to be no explaination for the emergence of indeterministic phenomenon.