who reads this? by Andy J. Biery

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Moved!

Filed under: General Update — Andy @ 10:13 pm

Currently watching: The Sopranos-Season 6 pt 2 Product Details

we survived the 90+ degree heat yesterday and moved 3 trailers-full and numerous car loadings of stuff from both Abbie and I’s places to our new home(technically i’m still gonna be living at my parents till after the wedding if i haven’t mentioned that before).  especially brutal was the 1990 grand caravan i was using to pull the trailer we rented..it had no A/C.  Needless to say I had my shirt off most of the day.

As for the house itself, its actually quite nice for being 60 years old.  all the walls and trim have been repainted and the carpets were clean.  the bathroom is basically completely redone and the kitchen has a new hardwood floor and some newer appliances too.  outside isn’t quite as nice but honestly i could care less.  there were a few issues upon move in, mostly little things.  a few tree limbs had fallen in the yard due to recent storms and hadn’t been taken care of yet.  the doorbell doesn’t work and a number of lightbulbs were out.  also because of all the new painting inside a few of the windows didn’t latch correctly.  this should all get fixed pretty quick.

as i said it was really hot yesterday and when we arrived with our 2nd trailer loading apparently someone had mowed the yard while we were gone and they severed a wire to the A/C outside and of course inside it had warmed up to like 86 degrees.  i didn’t have any phone numbers handy to call about it…fortunately my dad was able to splice the wires back together and it ran fine after that.  what kind of a tard just runs over electrical wires?

on a disapointing note, due to how the house is constructed with the entrances and fairly narrow openings we are unable to move a couch into the house!  everything else we got in there, though my tv was a chore (no way that wasn’t getting in).  so now we gotta figure out something to replace the couch…anyone have a loveseat they don’t want?  we could probably get that in there ok. Goodwill should enjoy the couch we have :(

hopefully sometime in mid-august we should have everything setup for guests, don’t even think about it before then though.  moochers.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Authoritarian lawrence schools to obama dissenters: no job for you!

Filed under: Politics — Andy @ 3:14 pm

currently playing: 2006 Fifa World Cup Soccer (Gamecube)Product Detailscurrently listening to: Ween-Chocolate and Cheese Product Details

http://kansasliberty.com/liberty-update-archive/2009/01jun/conservative-teacher-fired

well leave it to the little blue outpost in our lovely state to suppress free thinking and personal political opinions.  this should honestly be a national news story…imagine if the situation were reversed…the teachers union would probably strike (rather than leave this guy out to dry like they are in this case) and smelly protestors lined up around the block.    But alas it doesnt even make a ripple in local papers, just in online blogs and some local radio shows.

This man wasn’t even pushing conservatism in his classroom (God forbid they teach principles aligned with our country’s’ founding), he just committed the crime of not assimillating to what his fellow teachers/administrators all think—again, outside the classroom!  I mean i have certainly gotten into it with some people i work with at the railroad in the break rooms and such, but i’d never fear getting fired for expressing my views.  And this is a man with 20 years experience teaching!

It would be nice if someone came to his legal defense to get his job back, his constitutional rights have been violated here.  It would be difficult because in kansas, a teacher w/ less than 3 years teaching in this state (he transfered from arkansas) can be fired with zero cause or reason.  he had perfect evals and his students loved him.  this could only happen in lawrence.  only in non-tolerant, conformist, statist, authoritarian, dictatorial, ultra-left wing, hippie town lawrence.

**Update 6/27** dude got his job back…see comments that pat posted for article link.  glad to see the good guy win here.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Staying busy

Filed under: General Update, Job, Politics — Andy @ 2:24 pm

Just finished watching: South Park-Season 12 Product DetailsNow watching: Sopranos-Season 6 pt 1 Product Details

haven’t updated in almost 2 weeks but been pretty busy.  saw the big lebowski on the big screen at liberty hall in lawrence with jake last weekend.  such a great movie, glad to revisit it with a nice big crowd while drinking a few beers.  went to yet another wedding last weekend, a friend of abbie’s.  that makes 4 weddings i’ve gone to in the last 8 weekends.  that better be it till mine cause i’m tired of em for now.

last week i had my requisite 2 days a month of classroom training with the railroad.  at least they are doing something with those 8 days a month they are paying for.  not really sure how much longer that will last me though, i’m hoping a few more months cause once it goes away i lose my health ins (and will rely solely on railroad unemployment).  business is picking up a little bit (more a result of typical seasonal boosts), just enough to hold off more furloughs, but nowhere close to getting me back to full-time.  i completely blame the current administration for my continued lack of work.  railroads are one of the chief indicators of economic activity/recovery and our CEO here at Union Pacific RR has basically said (in a very telling video interview) they expect things to be slow till 2011 and they have seen no impact from “stimulus”.  sigh.  hope you all are happy with your “hope and change”.  things are still projecting to get worse in this country.  inexcusable.  cancel your retarded stimulus, quit roadblocking companies, cut corporate and capital gains taxes, and lets get this s%#t moving again (see below).  sorry, can’t help it.  it just pisses me off that this country got so caught up (and still is, though its eroding slowly) in a personality rather than logical fixes to things.

other than that i’ve been helping abbie with some wedding plans, mostly i’m focusing on planning our honeymoon to san antonio/gulf coast.  gonna spend a week down there, we are driving down.  we are pretty excited for it.  the other thing we have been trying to finish planning is the rehearsal dinner.  its about done now.  next week is gonna be all about moving into our house, which happens on friday.  technically i’m not moving, but a lot of my bigger things will move there.

after next week’s moving, abbie has her wedding shower and for me it’ll be fireworks/golf week with my family, usually my favorite time of the year!

if u have free time….watch these.  educate yourself.

the rest of the series…http://www.youtube.com/user/EIBNetRocks

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Signed lease…amongst other things

Filed under: General Update, Job — Andy @ 10:00 pm

Currently listening to: Grizzly Bear-Veckatimest Product Details

Last week Abbie and I signed a lease for a house at 7501 Rainbow in Prairie Village, KS (5 min south of the plaza).  Its a 3 bedroom/1 bath ranch house with a 1 car garage, a fenced yard, an attic (but no basement), and included all appliances (yes washer and dryer too).  I think it will suit us just fine, though we’ll have to sort through a lot of furniture and things that Abbie and I both own to fit it all in there.  Most of my stuff will probably be given away.  heh.  Abbie moves in on June 26th and I’ll move in after the wedding.    We are excited to finally have our own place, and we will have it for at least 2 years.

This past weekend Abbie and I flew to Denver for my younger sister’s wedding.  We were just there for a day but it was a nice wedding at a country club in the mountains.  they did it outside on a deck so there was a nice background.  we also go to go on the coors brewery tour.  i’ve never done a brewery tour so i was happy to get to do that and get my free samples.  Did you know blue moon is made at the coors brewery?  I didn’t.  one of my favorite beers.

other things…still part time at the railroad, though they have been bringing me in for training a few days a month now.  I still don’t expect to be back to work full time anytime soon, probably not till next year with the way things are looking.  I’m keeping my head up on all this.

wedding planning is going ok so long as i take things one at a time.  we are on schedule.  hopefully it all comes together nicely and everyone has a good time.  I found out this week that my high school 10 year reunion is the same day as my wedding.  doh.  kinda wanted to see everyone for whatever reason.  maybe at the 15 or 20 year one lol.

oh i almost forgot…here is the link to Abbie and I’s “official” newspaper wedding announcement.

http://www.columbusdailyadv.com/articles/2009/06/01/people/doc4a1eae50afa2c795966263.txt

Monday, June 1, 2009

Barack Obama-The underpants gnome of politics

Filed under: Humor, Politics — Andy @ 4:17 pm

Currently watching: The Sopranos-Season 5 Product DetailsCurrently playing: Mario Party 6-Gamecube Product Details

Currently listening to: Spiritualized-Ladies & Gentlemen We are Floating in Space Product Details

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124329131991652291.html

This will easily go down as the most brilliant and hilarious article written this year.  Its a must read because IMO it summarizes almost all of liberalism.  First, here’s the diagram from South Park that the gnomes use:

File:Gnomes plan.png

Basically, you first decide the goal you want for phase 3.  Then you tell everyone that phase 1 is the way to do it.  The peeps feel warm and fuzzy.  Problem is no logic or reasoning or proof or plan for how phase 1 gets you to phase 3.  but everyone wants phase 3 so…  Examples from the article:

Phase One: Order Guantanamo closed. Phase Two: ? Phase Three: Close Gitmo!

Phase One: Talk to Iran, Syria, whoever. Phase Two: ? Phase Three: Peace!

Some of my own:

Phase One: Carbon taxes  Phase Two: ?  Phase Three:  Preventing Climate change!

Phase One: Print trillions of dollars we don’t have  Phase Two: ?  Phase Three:  Economic Recovery/Create new Jobs!

Phase One: Bailout/Takeover failed industries  Phase Two: ?  Phase Three:  Industries return to profitability!

Phase One: Demand socialized medicine  Phase Two: ?  Phase Three:  “Free” Healthcare for all!

Phase One: Redistribute wealth  Phase Two: ?  Phase Three: Utopia for all!

Sunday, May 24, 2009

LOL some funny musings or whatever

Filed under: General Commentaries, General Update, Humor — Andy @ 1:38 am

currently watching: The Sopranos-Season 4Product Details

–oh man i just was looking through some blog stats and currently the top search to find my blog is “andy biery schmuck”

LOLOLOLOLOL i can’t stop laughing ahahahahahahaha i’m totally proud of that.  lol and whats great is i’m 100% certain i’ve never used the word schmuck on my blog.  fwiw, the 2nd most popular search to find my blog is weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee because i titled a blog post as such when i bought my nintendo wii.

–so this week the news centered around barack and cheney arguing about gitmo.  if you ask me and if i was a terrorist, i’d much rather remain at club gitmo than go to a federal “pound me in the ass” prison here in America.  seriously, where would u rather be, amongst your own on some island resort or sent to a federal prison with other American prisoners and guards???  which is likely to be more humane?  eh??  lol

–i’m rarely into celebs at all, but since i’ve been watching sopranos i’d have to say that jamie-lynn sigler def moved into my personal top 10 female celebs.  of course all of these top 10 fall far behind my lovely fiance’ Abbie.  :)   (is that enough to cover myself?)

–one of the better things that happened to me today was i won an ebay auction for mario party 6. mario party might go down as the only video game u can get chicks to play with u.  jake and i decided to get this cause the only mario party we had was the 1st one, the N64 one where you rub your palm raw when you try to win certain games (still awesome)…we wanted a gamecube one to play

–boring stuff…moving out of my apt next weekend back to my parents place till I get hitched…i’m going to denver 1st weekend of june for my youngest sister Bekah’s wedding…Abbie and I are still trying to find a house to rent though we are crossing our fingers on a place we looked at yesterday….Abbie and I’s parents were gonna meet for the first time today but it didnt work out cause my mom got sick…it looks like our families won’t meet till the wedding now…lol i find that funny

well thats it prob time to pass out and go to bed or stay up and watch sopranos or play rock band by myself

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Absolutes

Filed under: Philosophy — Andy @ 9:51 pm

Just finished: The Sopranos-Season 2Product DetailsNow watching: The Sopranos-Season 3Product Details

In taking a bit of a break from talking about evolution, I wanted to briefly discuss something even more foundational than “origin” philosphies.  That is what people hold as absolutes.  I break it down like this:

Christian Absolutes

1. the existence of God/Jesus Christ

2. God’s Word expressed through the Bible

3. God’s Laws/Commands/Moral Codes

These Christian absolutes, as should any absolute, hold firm (for Christians) in any setting at any time or place or universe or whatever.  they exist because God is and always will be…independent of anything we as humans comprehend.  There is peace in knowing of the promise that something beyond this earthly realm and life exists.

Pagan/Atheistic Absolutes

1. our life on earth followed by Death

2. Science

In trying to understand humanism and the general rejection of Christianity as a whole, these are what I came up with as absolutes for non-Christians.  death is finite and absolute.  so then with this human existence being all there is, science is the only system that at least attempts to explain life (in what is assumed to be a rational way).  Though I personally, as a Christian, debate whether science can be any kind of absolute for a non-Christian for various reasons, I will give science (and pagans) the benefit of the doubt that their absolutes in science exist (for this universe as we know it) whether they have been discovered or not.

Biggest problem/question I have for Non-Christians:  what of the consequences of moral relativism?  I don’t think society and humans in general would ever function without moral absolutes.  if we evolved by chance from animals where did we develop that code?  what happens if morality continues to slide further into individually defined ideals?  Its happening at an alarming rate both worldwide and in America–and who would argue society is better for it?

Summary: Absolutes are where the real debate lies.  Evolution is certainly a tremendous philosophical tool used to try and destroy Christian Absolutes (as I will discuss in future posts), but it isn’t the root issue.  What one holds onto–and everyone has to hold on to something less they be always questioning their existence–defines someone.  If all you hold on to is your life here and now and elements of science…is that enough?  is that all you want?  Its hard for me to fathom just accepting this life on earth.  if nothing else it appears totally depressing.  fortunately there are answers…

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Less than 3 months to go…

Filed under: General Update, Job — Andy @ 11:15 pm

Just finished: The Wire-Season 5 Product DetailsNow watching: The Sopranos-Season 1 Product Details

Currently Listening to: Super Furry Animals-Dark Days/Light YearsProduct Details

Currently Playing: Resident Evil Zero-Gamecube Product Details

july 25th is fast approaching, in a lot of ways it can’t get here soon enough.  wedding planning is almost the least of my concerns of late.  i’m in the midst of moving stuff back to my parents house as my apt. lease expires at the end of may.  Abbie and I have been searching out places to live for July and we thought we found a house to rent but it fell through so we are back to square one.  ideally we’d like a small 2 bed house with a garage and yard and such in northern joco for less than $900/mo.  something that can tide us over for a few years while i’m waiting to get back to a sturdier job situation and we can pay down debt and save for a house.  we’d like to avoid apt life if we can.

speaking of job stuff, i’m still on part time, but my 8 days a month is going to switch from Thur/Fri to Mon/Tues, apparently to make it easier for them to call us into training.  i have yet to really get called in since i went to this part time thing.  It appears things are very very very slowly turning around, but i couldn’t tell if its because business just normally picks up this time of the year of if the economy has finally bottomed out and might be on its way back up.

k thats my little life update for this month.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Evolution: The Atheist’s Religion-Part 2-The Great Chain of Being

Filed under: Philosophy — Andy @ 3:03 am

currently watching: The Wire-Season 4 Product Details

currently listening to: Dan Deacon-Bromst Product Details

The Great Chain of Being

Picking up from where I left off, from the fall of Rome till the renaissance, the Catholic church had taken hold and generally dictated philosophy/cosmology.  Origen, Augustine, and Aquinas all managed to push a mishmash of Creationist principles and pantheistic ideas (like that of Plato, Aristotle, “The Great Chain of Being/Scale of Being”, but also like some theistic evolution you see today) to the forefront while atheistic/naturalistic ideas were pushed underground.

With the “Scale of Being” concepts dominating the time, many evolutionary precursors sprung forth from it.  Remember, the original idea behind the scale of being philosophy was that it worked “top-down”, sort of a devolution (i.e. From God, or a god, came about successive lower forms of life–not necessarily directly from each other, but rather conceptually so everything could be ordered in a way to be better understood).  It was quasi-theological at best, and certainly not Biblical.  Though in fact all that separated the scale of being from evolution was a conception of time in vast quantities added to mutability of form.  In other words, a universe not made but being made continuously.

One of the first to look at the great chain in a more modern evolutionary approach was Comte de Buffon (1707-1788).  His work, Histoire Naturelle, while leaning heavily on Scala Naturae (great chain of being), managed to put forth many of the ideas used in later works by Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and ultimately Darwin himself.  His writings included precursors to comparative anatomy, long time scales, and biogeography.  He did, however, still believe in the immutability of species.  Darwin himself gave Buffon some credit in early pre-”Origin” writings and Ernst Mayr said of Buffon ” He was not an evolutionist, yet he was the father of evolutionism.”

Alongside Buffon, rose other ideas based on the scale of being.  “Progressionism” (and sometimes catastrophism), developed by Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), probably helped reverse the top-down scale of being approach more than anything else.  Cuvier believed that catastrophes (the last being the Noahic flood) brought about new assemblages of organisms with each group being progressively more complex than the preceding (bottom-up development).

Another important idea developed from the great chain of being was ontogenetic recapitulation.  This theory (now completely discredited) became a cornerstone for “proof” of evolution by Darwin himself. What it says is that embryonic development of humans is in itself a representation of going from the bottom of the chain to the top. Friedrich Kielmayer, amongst other German “nature philosophers”, originated this idea going back to the late 1700s.  More on this theory later.

So, now we have connected the ancient greek philosophical idea of the Great Chain of Being as a profoundly influential concept in the development of evolutionary theory.  Next up: A look at those most influential to Darwin

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Evolution: The Atheist’s Religion–Part 1–The Why and the Background

Filed under: Philosophy — Andy @ 10:35 pm

currently watching: The Wire-Season 3 Product Details

currently listening to: Cymbals Eat Guitars-Why There are Mountains Product Details

Having discussed Atheism/Humanism and Liberalism going hand in hand, I’d now like to venture into how Atheism/Humanism has managed to infiltrate into the minds of people today.

The Why

Since the creation, those opposing God have sought to discredit, disprove, and ultimately destroy the idea that man did in fact originate in perfect form from a god, most often the God of the Bible.  Paganism and its many offshoots are as old as Jewish history.  Like I wrote in my description of Humanism, man opposes God because he does not want to submit to His will, does not want to admit sin, and desires to live entirely for himself.  James 4:4 …whoever chooses to be a friend of the world takes his stand as an enemy of God.  Romans 8:7 The mind of the flesh [with its carnal thoughts and purposes] is hostile to God, for it does not submit itself to God’s Law; indeed it cannot.

So why is evolution so important to Atheists?  Its perhaps best summed up by Atheist Richard Bozarth in an article “The meaning of Evolution” published in the American Atheist:

Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of god. Take away the meaning of his death. If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing!”

The Background

Evolution itself is Paganism, and it originated long before Darwin published the “Origin of Species”. Upwards of 2,500 years before Darwin in fact.  Some early cosmologies included a concept of God or a form of intelligence, and some were strict Atheism.   I’ll detail both, and I’ll start with a few more well-known figures.

Plato (422-347 B.C.), of whom we have a ton of writings from, combined purpose and chance as an explanation for the cosmos.  He talked about a form of “devolution” (that from God came about successive emergences of lower and less worthy forms) and used descriptions for the universe that defined it as a “Living Creature” (a form of pantheism).  Plato’s successor, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), began to remove aspects of the Biblical God by referring to God as a more impersonal “Prime Mover” that simply set the pre-existing and uncreated (eternal) cosmos in motion–then leading to devolution (summarized in his “Great Chain of Being” theory).  While these two had some concepts of evolution, they were not what was surmised by Darwin.

To get closer to the Atheistic/Darwinian views, you actually have to go back further than Plato and Aristotle.  Around 6th century B.C.(about the same time other “rationalistic” religions like Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Vedanta Hinduism were beginning–not a mere coincidence i’m sure) in Asia Minor the father to Greek philosophy, often called Milesian or Ionian philosophy, began.  Thales was its creator, he was the first to introduce naturalistic and materialistic lines of thinking to describe the world rather than supernatural.  From Thales’ thinking developed Atomism (5th century B.C. philosophy developed by Leucippus and Democritus) which simply said that there were invisible building blocks(atoms) making up anything that exists.  Ultimately this lead to the philosophy of Epicureanism.  Epicurus (342-270 B.C.; who today would be an absolute champion of the Humanists) believed that everything that occurs is the result of the atoms colliding, rebounding, and becoming entangled with one another, with no purpose or plan behind their motions.  From this you would have little trouble conforming it to modern “sciences” and evolutionary ideas.

So as you can see, the original line of thinking (that we developed from random and chaotic chance) began in and around Ancient Greek philosophy.  From there evolutionary thinking was broken down and redeveloped many times, often by people in the church trying to mesh it with Christianity (see Origen, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas for some examples).  Then in the 19th century Charles Darwin published “Origin” and the same atheistic philosophies developed 2000 years earlier were finally accepted as “science”.  Though before we get to Darwin, we still need to look at the more immediate precursors to “his” theories.

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