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W.W.J.D.?

So, Pastor Paul mentioned a month ago when Brooke and I visited Columbia that he’s looking for people to talk to the 9th grade confirmation class about “what Jesus means to you,” and as I understand it, in the context of where your life has gone since the 9th grade. He was shooting to get a relatively wide range of age groups represented, and needed someone in their mid-20s. Somehow, I got asked… 😛

Anyway, I’ve been contemplating how exactly to go about this. In all honesty, I’d never really thought about the issue, certainly not in recent years. It is further complicated by the fact that I’ve got that whole “go to church on Sunday” thing and then “do science and research” for the rest of the week – two things that don’t necessarily jive well with everyone, but is still certainly doable. There are certain things with Christianity and science that tend to not mix, but are rather key… For example, while one could argue that “Creation” occurred, the specifics behind how that came about would be looked at very differently if you asked someone on the street and if you asked someone with a heavy science background (i.e. me). Or, the immaculate conception…or many of the miracles talked about in the Bible.

Therefore, for the purposes of the discussion on Sunday, I think I’m going to steer away from those issues, but still acknowledge that it’s something that I struggle with frequently, even as I get older and learn more about life. It’s something that it’s O.K. to struggle with and, in my opinion, it makes your beliefs stronger when you feel that you can question them and that it’s alright to really think hard about the Bible and how things should be placed in the context of those that were writing it back nearly 2000 years ago…

So, I guess I view Jesus himself (as that’s really what I’m supposed to talk about…not Christianity as a whole…) as a representation of who we all should strive to be. Someone that taught by his actions. If someone was sick, he healed them. If someone needed defending, he defended them. It didn’t matter who you were, you deserved the same treatment as everyone else. And, at least according to the Bible, he didn’t scold you for being who you were, either.

The man lived by example, and that’s the thing that many Christians don’t do today, in my opinion. Many of them go to church on Sunday and then on Monday return to having the same prejudices against Arabs and homosexuals and unwed mothers that they had earlier. It’s as if many of us today took that message and forgot the “forgiveness” part, and that’s the key. Whether you believe Jesus actually turned water into wine, or died and rose again is a plus…but for me, it’s more important to know what he stood for and how he stood for it, rather than all the “neat stuff” he did, too.

So “What Would Jesus Do?” He’d show his beliefs by his actions, not by telling you you’re wrong. He’d lend his help to anyone that needed it, including his enemies.

And that’s what Jesus means to me.

Any thoughts?

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Sony Defense Force

For anyone that doesn’t care at all about the ensuing “console war,” you can stop reading now, as I’m quite certain you don’t want to read what I’m going to write next… Stu, Dave and Jeremy are probably the only readers that’ll care about this… 😛

So yeah, otherwise, you may (or may not) have noticed a link to “SDF” on the right-hand of the blog, which stands for “Sony Defense Force.” And yes, you simply must go by this site, as it’s possibly the best satirical site on the internet… 😉

If you aren’t keeping up with console sales and reviews, you’ll quickly notice that the Wii is practically printing money for Nintendo and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 enjoys pretty good success, at least in North America. The Sony Playstation 3, on the other hand, is doing neither. That, and it’s games tend to not be so well reviewed and it’s plagued by ridicule of the fan-base that Sony has built up since the late-90s.

Well, then comes along this site, and it’s unbelievably funny…and if it isn’t a satire on Sony Fanboy-ism, and the authors are actually serious, then they need to get their anti-psychotic medications checked… Case in point: they’ve done “reviews” on 4 games, including “Lair,” “Heavenly Sword” and “Warhawk” for the PS3, followed by “Bioshock” for the 360. If you go by Metacritic, “Bioshock” has an average 96% rating, while the three PS3 games are at 56%, 80% and 84%, respectively. SDF is adamant that all three PS3 games deserve 10/10 ratings, while “Bioshock” is only so-so with a 5/10… 😛

Another, more humorous “case in point:” they did a nice article about this months NPD reports, declaring Sony the winner in sales for the month of August. Hopefully, you quickly notice that it was the “Sony Family” that beat out the 360, the Wii, and the DS. That’s with something like 484k for Sony (PS2, PS3 and PSP sales, combined…) and 786k for Nintendo (Wii and DS, combined…). Regardless, it’s rather sad when you have to combine your current generation sales with the previous one’s…

Anyway, the fanboy-ism is rather sad. They frequently talk of how bad “Halo 3” is and how PS3s are just flying off the shelves, while Xbox 360s sit around collecting dust. They really only pick on the 360 and leave the Wii alone, but still…it’s rather hilarious… I guess enough PS3 fans became pissed with the likes of Joystiq and Kotaku constantly making fun of Blu-Ray and the Sixaxis that they just started making stuff up. It’s like a “Weekly World News” for Sony’s PS3…

So yeah, if you want a good laugh, and you hate the PS3 and all of what Sony stands for, you should check it out. It’s pretty funny…

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Grounded

Well, Grounded was last night… Since I haven’t mentioned this on el blog really, I’ll give a brief description:

We go to church at Webster Hills UMC win Webster Groves, MO… There are two “traditional” services and one “contemporary” service every Sunday, the latter of which Brooke and I play music for and/or set up the altar, make food, organize stuff, etc. Being there for over 2 years now, we’ve noticed that people our age (i.e. ages 20-30) are somewhat hard to come by. Therefore, we decided to try something along the lines of a “coffee house” on Saturdays at 6:30 and called it “Grounded.” Again, we wanted acoustic music, some eats, and some fellowship, so the format was essentially 30-40 min of music and no lyrics projected, so everyone could chit-chat with each other, or play some board games that we had dispersed amongst the tables. The idea is to be in a “worshipful environment” yet encourage interaction amongst the attendees, rather than sitting in a seat and following along with a service. This allows for everyone to get whatever they want from the experience, rather than have it spoon-fed to them. From my perspective, that general mentality seems to connect more with people of that age group moreso than sitting in rows, singing with the bouncing ball on the screen, and listening to a 20 min. sermon…

Well, we didn’t advertise all that much (but we’ve got some nice flyers, and a neato logo, designed by the little sister…thanks!), but we’ll get on that more for the next one (October 20th!). We’ll be having it once a month on the third Saturday, so this way, we can rotate musicians and activities as much as possible. Yanela and I did the music, which included about 40 minutes worth of Switchfoot, Waterdeep, Ginny Owens, Relient K, etc…songs that are a bit too complicated for Sunday morning, but work well in a “coffee house” feel. We’ve also got coffee, tea and cocoa from Latin America (Fair Trade, yo…), all of which are quite good!

Anyway, we ended up with a relatively decent turn-out of 14 for that hour period, three of which were from Hannibal and knew Brooke years ago…she invited them via Facebook, not really expecting them to come, but they did anyway… Nice people! Kinda funky how that worked out, but rather cool, just the same. Either way, once we get our advertising together, we expect to get more people there. We’ve already got a musician lined up to play next month, and I think I’ve got another one ready for November (after I call him… ;-).

So yeah, it was a good time. If you’re in the St. Louis area and wanna stop by next time, it’ll be 6:30 pm at Webster Hills UMC on October 20th. If you have questions, ask Brooke… 😛

Grounded

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Andy’s a teacher?!

So, I got my first taste of teaching recently… As I may have explained before, the Pharmacological and Physiological Science Department at SLU (of which I’m a member…) runs a class for undergrad non-science majors every Fall titled “Drugs We Use And Abuse.” It accepts 50 students a semester and tends to be pretty popular, mostly because instead of learning basic biological principles, you learn more about specific drugs and their effects on people and society.

This is my first time teaching the class, and teaching in any form for that matter… I got to teach the Alcohol section, which consisted of two lectures, the first of which was Alcohol and the Body (i.e. mechanisms and physiological effects) and the second was Alcohol and Society (i.e. alcohol on campus, alcoholism, Prohibition, etc.). The first lecture was infinitely more interesting for me, and for the students too, I think. I talked about how alcohol works on the body and had a decent number of questions… The stuff today was pretty straight-forward and largely consisted of things the students already knew (as in, heavy alcohol use tends to lead to drunk driving, violence, skipping school, etc.).

So yeah, I think I enjoyed the experience overall. I had to write a quiz for my section, then wrote a few exam questions that will be administered in a week or so. Perhaps next year I’ll expand a bit and run more of the class, and more lectures. It’s team-taught, meaning that we each get a section to work on and all contribute to the exam for each section.

Regardless, I’m still planning on the “going into industry” route after graduation (in three years…), but teaching wasn’t bad! Maybe I’ll get more into it later on? Who knows…

More and more craziness, I say…being on the other side of the desk for once… 😛

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Andy's a teacher?!

So, I got my first taste of teaching recently… As I may have explained before, the Pharmacological and Physiological Science Department at SLU (of which I’m a member…) runs a class for undergrad non-science majors every Fall titled “Drugs We Use And Abuse.” It accepts 50 students a semester and tends to be pretty popular, mostly because instead of learning basic biological principles, you learn more about specific drugs and their effects on people and society.

This is my first time teaching the class, and teaching in any form for that matter… I got to teach the Alcohol section, which consisted of two lectures, the first of which was Alcohol and the Body (i.e. mechanisms and physiological effects) and the second was Alcohol and Society (i.e. alcohol on campus, alcoholism, Prohibition, etc.). The first lecture was infinitely more interesting for me, and for the students too, I think. I talked about how alcohol works on the body and had a decent number of questions… The stuff today was pretty straight-forward and largely consisted of things the students already knew (as in, heavy alcohol use tends to lead to drunk driving, violence, skipping school, etc.).

So yeah, I think I enjoyed the experience overall. I had to write a quiz for my section, then wrote a few exam questions that will be administered in a week or so. Perhaps next year I’ll expand a bit and run more of the class, and more lectures. It’s team-taught, meaning that we each get a section to work on and all contribute to the exam for each section.

Regardless, I’m still planning on the “going into industry” route after graduation (in three years…), but teaching wasn’t bad! Maybe I’ll get more into it later on? Who knows…

More and more craziness, I say…being on the other side of the desk for once… 😛

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A good weekend for one and all…

…well, hopefully… 😛

So yeah, Yanela was out of town at church this weekend (our Worship Leader), so I got to run the show this weekend…and as I got to be in charge, I got to recruit the people I wanted to…and Mom and Kristen got the call (Dad, you would have too, but you don’t play the recorder all that well…sorry! ;-)). Brooke played bass (of course), I played guitar, Mom played piano and Kristen sang. We did some old songs and some new ones, all of which seemed to turn out pretty well! Thanks, family!!

Otherwise, Mom and Dad left on Sunday (after a lovely brunch at Norton’s…great place…we should go again sometime…), and then Kristen, Brooke and I tried going to Fast Eddie’s in Alton, IL. This place, apparently, Alton Brown went to in his “Feasting on Asphalt” show on the Food Network. Well, they’ve got really cheap eats and a nifty biker atmosphere (where I don’t exactly fit in, needless to say…). And, they were rather packed. As in, not a seat available in the house. And a long line for food. And lines of people watching for empty tables. We ended up leaving, unfortunately, so we’ll have to try going back some other time. We ended up just going to Joanie’s (after we tried going to Ferraro’s Pizza…which wasn’t open, dammit…).

We went to the zoo the next morning, saw the penguins (w00t!), and then Kristen went home… And today, of course, we’re back to the real world…

Guess I’d better prepare my lecture for this Friday… I’ve gotta shape young minds!

Edit: Oh yeah, and by the way, the Kansas City Royals have a better record than 9 other teams in Major League Baseball. Just wanted to throw that out there…. 😛

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Craziness…

Yeah, this past week got pretty nuts at work/school… While I’m not taking classes, per se, I’m still required to get a few things done…namely, my Prelim… At this rate, I need to have the 8-page treatment done by mid-October so it can be approved before doing the 25-page version for mid-November. After it’s approved, I can do my Oral Defense in early/mid-December and life will be good. I chatted with Dr. Macarthur earlier in the week about where I stand thus far and I think I’m in decent shape, but there’s a lot of research to do.

This process is different from a more classical undergrad “research paper” in that there’s a lot more critical thinking involved. You have to determine whether your science is sound, whether there is evidence to support the ideas you’re putting forward, and whether they’re even do-able experiments. At Truman, all I had to do was look up a subject and write about it – there wasn’t very much “opinion” needed… Now, theoretically, my opinion matters and I have to defend it on paper…and then to five professors… So yeah, while 8 pages doesn’t sound all that hard, there’s a lot of thought that goes into it…that I need to really get started on.

That, and I’ve got two lectures to deliver, one on September 7th and one on September 10th…both on alcohol (I know…no first-hand experience there, right?). I’ve got last year’s PowerPoint presentations to start from, but I’ve still got to update them a bit and learn the material before the 7th. I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on the science that goes into it, but some refreshing would be useful…

On top of both those things, Dr. Macarthur wants me to start putting together all my data from the last year (plus a bit more…) so it can be published. I’ve got some decent data, but there’s a little more I’d like to get… I really need to get started on the Prelim, though, so I’ll likely shut down all experiments for a few weeks while I get started, then fire them back up toward the end of September. That way, I can do additions to my Prelim (’cause it’ll already be pretty far along) and I won’t have lectures to accomplish anymore… If all goes well, I should be able to get a paper done for publication by the end of the year, and that’d be sweet to get a paper out already, ’cause I’ve still got a few years left…

Anyone else busy already? The school year has barely started!!

Shenanigans, I tell you…

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Sling Wing!!!

Ok, when we were kids, we played with these contraptions, thanks to my Uncle Bob’s brother.  They’re called Sling Wings and until a few weeks ago, I thought everybody had them, but apparently, they weren’t that well known outside of the Poor family.  Anyway, Mom found one in the garage and brought it to me when Rachel came to visit this weekend, so we headed to the park with the dog to show Andy how real kids have fun…here are the results of this outing:11.JPG

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If you look closely, you can see it in flight (it’s yellow…with red, blue, and silver stickers, in case you were wondering).

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Me, imitating the Sling Wing.

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Rachel.  You use a rubber band to shoot the styrofoam piece like a sling shot.

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Andy gives it a try.

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Something was funny…

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I shot myself and bled…I’m cool like that!

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Last, but not least, Edie.

I’ll now take orders…I’m sure Bob will give me the patent…you know you all want some!!

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Review: The Bourne Ultimatum

Well, I saw the third (and likely final) installment in the “Bourne” series, following “The Bourne Identity” and “The Bourne Supremacy.” For those that remember, Matt Damon plays Jason Bourne, a CIA assassin that is still recovering from amnesia and trying to piece the remainder of his life together. For the previous two movies, the CIA was out to get him and take him out, as they a). weren’t sure what he remembered about how they screwed him over, or b). just wanted to close the door on a bad chapter of their operations overseas.

“The Bourne Ultimatum” picks up generally after “Supremacy” with Bourne inching closer and closer to the truth behind what he did for the CIA and why they were after him. Of the trilogy, I think this one is by far the strongest. The first one was very cerebral, and got kinda boring occasionally… I just watched “Supremacy” again yesterday and, as I remembered, it was a bit more fast-paced and more interesting to watch. “Ultimatum” really brings in the best of both the previous films, where it shows Bourne staying a few steps ahead of his predators, while also getting information he needs to really bring them down once and for all.

I won’t say much more about the story, as you probably shouldn’t know if you’ve seen the previous films. It’s almost required that you at least see “Supremacy” before seeing “Ultimatum,” but “Identity” is still worth watching. The action, on the other hand, I will comment on…and it’s rather awesome… The complaint I’ve always had about the “Bourne” films is that the fight scenes are very close-range, as in, you’ll be focused in on Matt Damon’s shoulder and fists during the scene, and you wish they’d just zoom out a bit to get a better feel for what’s going on. I think “Ultimatum,” while still not quite the way I’d like it, was better than the previous ones in that regard. Everything was well choreographed and a pleasure to watch, like they were dancing through all the dodges and punches.

So yeah, Rotten Tomatoes has “The Bourne Ultimatum” ranked at 93% (as of 8/12/07), and it’s pretty well-deserved. If you like spy movies and action, check it out. Matt Damon, again, proves what he’s capable of…

…now, if only Ben Affleck had some talent…