Stan Taylor

A battered round plastic sled came along when we moved back to Austin from New Jersey in 1997. After a couple of years of no use, it made its way to the attic. When we moved to our current house two years ago, the sled, along with a couple of other unused items lurking at the back of the attic, got left behind.
Well, since we’ve lived in this house, we’ve had two opportunities to sled: a severe ice storm two years ago, and a little bit of snow on Valentine’s Day last winter. In both instances, we had to try our luck with cardboard or stand in line to use the sled that one family in the neighborhood dug out of their attic.
After last spring’s snow, I promised the kids that I would buy a sled before this winter. I used an Amazon.com gift certificate to buy this bad boy. But as Katie keeps telling me, having a sled pretty much guarantees that we won’t get any snow or ice for the foreseeable future.

Last week, Hannah had to do a report on an extinct animal of her choosing. Since she’s such a horse nut, we decided she would write about one of the ancestors of the modern horse. As I was helping her find sources via Google, I was amazed by the number of hits that were creationist challenges to the scientifically accepted theory of horse evolution.
I’m not going to dignify any of those pages with a link, but this page summarizes and debunks the creationist arguments.
But the biggest puzzle to me was why the creationists have targeted equine evolution. As near as I can tell, it’s not because the theory of horse evolution is particularly shaky. Rather, it’s simply because horse evolution is apparently covered in some public school science textbooks.
Side note: asking kids to write a report about extinct animals seems to be a good indication that Hannah’s school isn’t caving in to the religious wackos.

When I was a kid, my mother had a small poodle (toy size, I think) named Chanel. In the car, Chanel would ride on the back of the seat behind my mother’s neck–or, when cars started coming with headrests, wedged between my mother’s neck and the headrest.

Somehow I ended up at the web site for some movie that’s supposed to be released in 2006, and the geometric shapes at the bottom of the page caught my eye: mystery meat navigation! I know it’s still around, but I hadn’t thought about the term ‘mystery meat navigation’ in several years.

As I’ve read about gas/electric hybrid cars over the last couple of years, it’s stuck me that some of the energy- and emission-saving features that they tout aren’t specific to hybrids, specifically an engine that turns off when you stop and/or put the manual transmission in neutral.
In Switzerland, for example, the law says you must turn off your car’s motor at a stop light or when waiting for a train to cross. I’ve heard that is why European stoplights go red-YELLOW-green: to give motorists notice of impending green light so that they can start their engines.
This article, The Truth About Hybrids, addresses this issue:

[M]anufacturers try to…add to the hybrid’s headline-grabbing mileage figures by the extensive use of non-hybrid gas-saving technology. Engine shut-off at idle, electric power steering, harder and reduced rolling resistance tires (at the expense of comfort and traction), reduced option content, reduced engine performance, and, in the case of the Ford, a continuously variable transmission (CVT) all help raise the cars’ overall efficiency.
Of course, if gas mileage is the ultimate goal, all of these strategies could be applied to a ‘standard’ car. A non-hybrid model with the equivalent modifications would significantly narrow the mileage gap with its hybrid sibling. In fact, in normal use, the margin between truly comparable hybrid and non-hybrid cars could be less than 10%– hardly enough to justify the extra purchase price.

My conventional Corolla gets 30+ mpg in city driving and almost 40 mpg on road trips. Therefore, I’ve not been that impressed with the supposed mileage of hybrids. For all their technological advances, they only get a few more miles per gallon (and according to the article, actual mileage of hybrids is not as good as the EPA numbers). Add a few of those features to my car, and I’d be right up there, too.
Related rant: One of my pet peeves is people who leave their cars idling when they’re stopped somewhere: talking on their phone in a parking lot, running in to a store for a minute, etc. I can understand leaving the car running if you’re sitting in it in hot Texas weather. Otherwise, it’s just a big waste of fuel. This morning, I was sorely tempted to try to educate a fellow patron of my local bagel shop when she came out to get in her car that she’d left idling while getting her breakfast.

I replaced my Kerry/Edwards bumer sticker with this one that I created via CafePress.com (you can buy one for yourself):

Captured on my way home from work yesterday: proud resident of Pflugerville?

I’ve always maintained that Christians who believe gay sex is a sin shouldn’t be casting homosexuals out of their churches; on the contrary, they should be welcoming them in and praying that the transforming love of God will help them to see the error of their ways. (that’s not my view, but at least it would be scripturally consistent, in my opinion).
When Fred Phelps’ gang* showed up at an evangelical church in Oklahoma to protest because the church had a publicly acknowledged gay member (a young member of their congregation had been profiled in a Washington Post article about the struggles faced by homosexuals in the Bible belt), the congregation came together to defend one of their own–even though most members of the congregation felt that homosexuality is sinful. And in the process, it sounds like some of the congregation members even came to question that belief. It’s a powerful story about community.
* I’m not going to dignify the Phelps Klan with a link. If you don’t know who they are, suffice it to say they’re about the most hate-filled folks you’ll ever hear about.

I read this July 2004 inteview with author and evangelical Christian Tony Campolo a while back, but ran across it again today. Awesome viewpoint! An excerpt:

We ought to get out of the judging business. We should leave it up to God to determine who belongs in one arena or another when it comes to eternity. What we are obligated to do is to tell people about Jesus and that’s what I do. I try to do it every day of my life.
I don’t know of any other way of salvation, excerpt through Jesus Christ. Now, if you were going to ask me, “Are only Christians going to get to heaven?” I can’t answer that question, because I can only speak from the Christian perspective, from my own convictions and from my own experience. I do not claim to be able to read the mind of God and when evangelicals make these statements, I have some very serious concerns.
For instance, they say unless a person accepts Jesus as his personal savior or her personal savior, that person is doomed forever to live apart from God. Well, what about the many, many children every year who die in infancy or the many children who die almost in childbirth and what about people who are suffering from intellectual disabilities? Is there not some grace from God towards such people? Are evangelical brothers and sisters of mine really suggesting that these people will burn in hell forever?
And I would have to say what about all the people in the Old Testament days? They didn’t have a chance to accept Jesus.
I don’t know how far the grace of God does expand and I’m sure that what the 25th chapter of Matthew says is correct–that there will be a lot of surprises on Judgment Day as to who receives eternal life and who doesn’t. But in the book I try to make the case that we have to stop our exclusivistic, judgmental mentality. Let us preach Christ, let us be faithful to proclaiming the Gospel, but let’s leave judgment in the hands of God.