Roseyland

Around three years ago, my Grandma gave me a cigar box full of old pictures. I’m just now getting around to scanning them into digital form. In the process, I’ve learned a little bit about how to use GIMP, which is totally cool. You should check it out if you haven’t already. This post contains a few of the pictures I have scanned so far.

This first picture is from the summer of 1977 and is the earliest picture of me I have. This would be a great picture of me, if someone’s giant hand wasn’t in the way. Silly Grandpa.

I’m guessing that I’m about 4 years old in this picture. I loved cardboard wrapping paper tubes. Come to think of it, I still do. I’m not sure what is on my head, but I know it was important.

This is my Kermit the frog Halloween picture from 1982. I wore this costume to a Halloween party at the zoo, and this 3 year old girl was fascinated with me. The costume was really hot though, so I took it off my head and the girl ran away screaming. I’m pretty sure I scarred her for life. My bad.

Ahhh, Excellence in parenting. Here I am playing lawn darts with my Dad. That must have been safe. This picture is from around 1983. They banned lawn darts in 1988. What’s freaky about this picture is that my Dad actually looks a lot like me today. Weird.

In second grade I moved from Nebraska to Oklahoma with my Mom and Step dad. About this time I started wearing camouflage and pretending to shoot things. We moved from Oklahoma to Colorado the next year, that’s probably a good thing.

After moving away from Nebraska, I spent a lot of time flying back to visit my Dad and his side of my family. Here is a picture of my Dad, my Grandparents, and me at the airport.

I’m not sure what this picture is all about. This is me and my Dad doing some sort of pose. The consensus seems to be that I’m adorable in this picture. I actually think I look a little gay, not that there is anything wrong with that, but I hope it’s not the look I was going for.

There were a lot of dinosaur fossils where I grew up in Colorado. We also had this museum with animatronic dinosaurs. This is me pretending to be a dinosaur. I think I’m in fifth grade in this picture, which would be around 1987 or 1988.

This is my childhood cat. He was a great cat. See that collar he is wearing? That is a chain dog collar. He would chew through any other collar we put on him. If I had realized how unsafe a collar like that is for a cat, I would have never let him wear it. He never had any problems though, he could slip out of it easily.

Look! It’s me in a speedo. I think this is from my sophomore year in high school. I was a pretty good swimmer, I even had a school record in the 200 yard freestyle. Also, I have to say, I had a nice butt.

Here are the fronts of my high school IDs. Go Wildcats!

Here are the backs of my high school IDs. Notice that the IDs for my Freshman and Sophomore years contained “Rules To Live By”. The first rule was: “Do what is right and proper, avoid what is wrong… If you have any doubt, look it up in the Good Book!”. I’m surprised they got away with that. I bet those guidelines had been on the ID cards since the 60s.

Here is a picture of my Mom, Dad, Step dad, Aunt, and both sets of Grandparents at Pizza Hut after my high school graduation in June 1995. Actually, my Grandpa on my Mom’s side isn’t in the picture. He must be taking the picture.

This is a picture from my first day of college in August of 1995. I’m at some sort of orientation event, and this picture is so weird because I ended up becoming pretty good friends with a few of the people in it, but I had no idea who they were when this picture was taken.

Here is a picture of me and my Dad at my college graduation in May of 1999. Did we change any through the years? It doesn’t feel like it.

In case you are wondering, here is a picture of me today. Today as in May 2008. I know I was cuter as a kid, but weren’t we all?

There are more pictures in my Flickr set. I’ll also be adding pictures to the set as I get them scanned. I have over 100 left. Ugh! I think there will be a few more blog post of these pictures too. I want to do one post of family pictures I have from before my time, as in the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, and most of the 70’s. I also want to post all of my class pictures from elementary school and up. I don’t have them all, but I have a bunch. Stay tuned

I spend a lot of time thinking about the true nature of reality. Is that weird? Probably. The thing is, reality is weird. First, there is observable reality. This is not so weird. Observable reality is basically the physical universe and the laws that govern it. Things like apples and trees, and apples falling from trees. Also, rocks, cats, mountains, beaches, the human body, etc… Nothing can compete with Science when it comes to explaining how the physical universe works. However, science can not tell us why the physical universe works. Most people don’t even think to ask why, but why is a really important question.

The physical universe consists of many different and apparently independent things. Things like galaxies, planets, animals, plants, cells, proteins, DNA, atoms, photons, etc… Science does an excellent job of explaining how these things work, but it is amazing that these things happen to work in such a way that allows life to exist. Planets and DNA do not have much in common, but both are required for life, and both are governed by the same laws of physics. If you really dig into the details, like those crazy scientist do, you would find that the laws of physics are insanely precisely tuned toward the existence of life. The most minute changes to the laws of physics would result in a completely different and lifeless universe.

Science has acknowledged the fine tuned nature of our universe and has struggled to explain it. Mainstream science seems to have settled on the concept of parallel universes. The idea is that there are actually infinite universes out there, each with unique laws of physics. Only an infinitesimally tiny set of these universes are capable of supporting life, but since those are the only universes we can live in, our universe is one of them. This explanation is probably true to an extent, but there is no evidence to support it, and personally I don’t find it to be a sufficient explanation for the uniqueness of our universe.

There are many other explanations for the fine tuned nature of our universe. Some people believe that conscious observation causes the quantum wave function to collapse, which in effect creates our universe. Some people believe that we live in a computer simulation like the Matrix. Other people believe that life is just one big collective dream, and of course many people believe that God created everything.

All of these explanations are possible, but the problem is they are completely untestable. I think the only thing we can say for certain is that there is a level reality beyond our observation, and in this unobservable reality, life and/or consciousness is fundamental. So while we appear to live in a reality where life is a mere fortunate side effect of the physical universe, the truth is that there is a deeper level of reality where life is fundamental. Since life is fundamental in the deeper level of reality, it is only natural that life is possible in the derivative levels of reality.

I think on some level we all know that there is a deeper reality. This is probably where religion comes from. I also think a lot of our fears are ultimately fears that there is no reality beyond the physical universe. We are in an awkward situation here. To get the most out of life, we need to have a connection to this deeper level of reality. However, we will never ultimately know what this deeper level of reality is. How can you have a relationship with something that is completely unknown? When you figure that out, please let me know

The image in this post is “Spring on the Prairie - Biplane” by Teo and is licensed under creative commons.

Being a single guy, I’m not big on cooking. Actually I love cooking, I just don’t like the time required or the cleaning up. This has led me to create a few super quick and reasonably healthy recipes. I’m not talking 30-minute meals here, I’m talking 2 minutes or less and you eat out of the bowl you made it in. Are you judging me? Stop that. I created this recipe when I was looking for a way to eat more beans. Beans have a ton of health benefits. They are high in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and soluble fiber. Go beans. You might be thinking that peas are a vegetable, but you’re wrong, they are a legume, and legumes are actually fruits. That would make this a fruit salad. Here are the ingredients:

As you can see, I do a lot of my shopping at Whole Foods. You are probably thinking that I’m some sort of only eats organic health food hippie. Well, no, not really. Please note the bacon bits. I do like Whole Foods, but I mostly shop there because it is convenient. Whole Foods does have good produce and the only healthy bread I like, but I’m not sure I’d drive more than two miles to shop there. Anyways, the ingredients are: 1 can of peas, shredded cheese, bacon bits, and ranch dressing. I’d make sure to get low sodium peas. Sometimes canned foods contain insane levels of sodium, and I hear that’s bad. First step: put the peas in bowl and heat in the microwave for 45 seconds. You don’t have to heat the peas, but I find it feels more like cooking if you heat something up. Once the peas are heated, add 1 or two handfuls of the shredded cheese and a couple tablespoons each of the bacon bits and ranch dressing. It will look like this:

Now mix it all up. This is another step that feels like real cooking. After mixing it will look like this:

Mmm… Pea Salad. I have this about once a week and it makes a good dinner. It is filling and reasonably healthy. Here is an in depth nutritional analysis: 470 calories, 38g of carbohydrates, 24g of fat, 27g of protein, 18g of sugar, and 10g of fiber. You could use light dressing if you wanted less calories, and it would be great with a little chopped red onion. I never have a red onion laying around though, and chopping an onion might require a little too much effort. Some people use mayonnaise instead of ranch dressing, but mayonnaise is gross, don’t do it. There you have it, a two minute meal. You can now look forward to future two minute meal post such as: tuna fish sandwiches and spicy cheesy black beans.