It's 4am in the morning and I'm only now settling down to go to sleep. It's nights like this that make me wish I had a different job. I can't seem to get to sleep earlier than 2-3am anymore.

I've been following the Cookware Debate (Instapundit 1 & 2, VodkaPundit) with some interest. Part of my christmas this year was gift of a nice, at least for a 20 something single guy, set of cookware. It's interesting that out of all the things that get brought up by Prof. Reynolds, it's a discussion on cookware that causes him to do the rare thing of opening comments. I'm definately happy with the items that I have now, without a doubt. And it's a new experience for me to learn to use stainless steel cookware instead of whatever was cheapest at insert random Walmart type store. It's definately given me a lot of things to remember in order to get better results.

Another one of the Christmas gifts I received this year was a Garmin eTrex. My mom still doesn't understand why I wanted this I think, but basically I've been wanting to get back into hiking/backpacking and felt I needed something to augment my rusty orienteering skills. At one point I could have taught people how to use a map and compass to find their way anywhere, anymore I wouldn't trust my own skills to get myself out of the forest as it's been so long. An added bonus, among many, of this gift though is I can now participate in GeoCaching. I had the opportunity when the rain let up a little bit to go for my first find. Sarah seems to be interested in this too, so the two of us will probably start doing this together, especially after the weather gets better this spring.

Due to the server downtime there was actually quite a bit of stuff that I had time to write about around Christmas that I just don't feel like going back and getting into at this point. There is one thing though: UofL 65 - UK 56. That's right, UofL knocked off a #1 (ESPN/USA Today) ranked team and ended UK's winning streak that went back a good 27 games and 364 days to their last encounter with UofL. Though I know that this ruffles some UK fans fur, it's just going to get worse for them in coming years as we all know Pitino is doing for us now what he did for UK in the early 90's. I'm really happy that this ends the streak of whichever team wins the football game losses the basketball game, especially as UofL winning both is how that ended.

Well, the site went down to problems with the file system a few days ago. It should stay in working order for the forseeable future. I've lost a few posts and I might try to re-create them as well as a few posts that I wrote while the system was down.

Got to do something yesterday that I haven’t had a chance to do in a long time, horseback riding. Spent the day in Somerset with my girlfriend Sarah and her family. The experience was definately something different for me. Not riding a horse, but riding a horse that no matter what, the saddle just doesn’t want to stay on right. I spent about half the ride just leaning one way or the other to straigthen out the saddle. It was a lot of fun though and I hope that Sarah will want to go down there again sometime and go riding some more.

Ok, I've heard of a lot of reasons for not having Nativity scenes on public property, but this is the first time I've ever seen reasoning like this.
FOXNews.com - Top Stories - Town Says 'No' to Nativity Scene, 'Yes' to Menorah

The town of Palm Beach, Fla., told a federal judge Thursday that he has no authority to demand that they come up with a good reason why Jesus Christ in a manger should not be displayed next to a menorah on public property.

...

What Donnell and her co-plaintiff want is for the the menorah and the Nativity scene to be displayed next to each other.

But Palm Beach town attorney John Randolph said case law shows that when a menorah is placed next to a secular symbol -- such as a "secular holiday tree" -- it isn't considered a religious symbol.

Ok, I'll give them that a tree is not inherently religious, even when decorated for a specific holiday season. Even though the decorating of a tree in modern American culture has always been associated with Christmas and Christianity. But to say that a menorah is not a religious symbol is one of the dumber things I've heard out of an lawyers mouth when it comes to issues that relate to the 1st amendment and the establishment clause. And I've heard some pretty stupid statements, it's called 1L.

For those of you out there that don't understand what a menorah is, it's used to celebrate the Chanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. It's a distinctly religious symbol that's used to commerate the Temple lamp staying lite for eight days on one day's worth of lamp oil as one of God's miracles for the Jewish people. How you can seperate it from it's religious significance is beyond me.

Even the local Courier-Journal editorial board seems to understand how this has become a ridiculous trend:

No wonder serious Christians are so outraged by the assault on religion in civic life. It takes such outrageous forms.

The latest example is a decision by the American Civil Liberties Union to menace this year's Grace Baptist Church crèche on the Oldham County Courthouse lawn. The ACLU says free speech and separation of church and state may be endangered, because this tradition of more than a decade continues. Bah. Humbug. The crèche is no threat, December 19, 2003

If a paper as liberal as the C-J can understand this basic issue, one would hope anyone reasonable would be able to as well. Of course, we're talking about a town that didn't know how to vote in the 2000 elections.

Well, I took what should be my last final for my MEng degree today. Now, just to finish that stupid thesis.

Chuck Colson recently wrote an article on the supposed conflict between science and Christianity. The article, We've Been Lied To: Christianity and the Rise of Science, discusses some of the most common misconceptions regarding scientific thought, Christianity, and the Enlightenment. Modern science was only possible in Western Civilization, through the changes brought about by the Renesaince and the Enlightenment, because of Christianity.

That’s because Christianity depicted God as a “rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being” who created a universe with a “rational, lawful, stable” structure. These beliefs uniquely led to “faith in the possibility of science.”

Colson also correctly points out the reason why science and Christianity have been put at odds with each other.

So why the Columbus myth? Because, as Stark writes, “the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical device used in the atheist attack of faith.” Opponents of Christianity have used bogus accounts like the ones I’ve mentioned not only to discredit Christianity, but also to position themselves as “liberators” of the human mind and spirit.

However, this perception has been made worse by Christians. Many of our fellow Christians have denied the connection between science and faith. The perception that science is anti-faith is perpetuated by us just as much as it is by athiests. Remember, the God of this world created our ability to reason and to discover how this world works. It's time that Christians bring a balanced viewpoint back to the interaction between faith and science.

While working tonight I discovered that someone in the sports department must have been stressed tonight. Nearly every night I get a file with the HS sports scores for both Indiana and Kentucky. I take this file and put it into a standard page, so the readers don't get to see the filenames. Usually it's something that makes sense. Tonight, the Metro Edition (KY) HS scores had the following file name:

spt-6-xhelpmelord-7370.html

So, I'm guessing someone was having "fun" tonight.