Category Archives: Personal

Halloween 2011 (retrospective)

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Behind as usual, my Halloween review.

As with pretty much everything else in life lately I was feeling rather unmotivated about Halloween this year, especially, my thinking went, given the fact that Halloween fell on a Monday. I figured there wouldn’t by much trick-or-treat traffic in our already low traffic area, so I was not really planning to do much in the way of decorating.

However my motivation was restored by a trip to the annual LA Live Steamers Halloween Ghost Train in Griffith Park (Los Angeles). One of our tenants, ‘Pineapple’, works for the railroad and volunteers for various railroad activities and charities and knowing my fondness for all things Halloween he invited me to be amongst the friends and family of that get to ride the first couple of Ghost Trains for the evening (the Saturday before Halloween).

On my way down to Griffith Park I wanted to make a stop at a favorite used book store in Pasadena, Archives Books (a theological bookstore with a ‘healthy’ selection of creationist books) but I got a bit lost on some side streets and ended up getting a rare glimpse of the Ghostbusters mobile (I’m sure Halloween is a busy time of year for them):

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New evolution signage

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The latest in my “just for kicks” collection of evolution related signage:

Thanks to Ryan for taking the picture with his phone for me.

 

Please forgive the mess

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I’m trying to do a little customization to the code on my blog (just trying to widen the content area) but the stuff isn’t really cooperating so things might look a bit ugly for a while.

My apologies and suggestion are welcome.

Update: OK, so I’ve implemented some (most?) of the changes I was planning…how does it look? Comments? Criticisms?

And the award for this years biggest douche goes to…

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…the former (abysmal) Governor of California Arnold-don’t bore me with the death of your son-Schwarzenegger:

I’m ashamed for having voted for him in his first run.

Dinny the dinosaur (still) held hostage

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A couple of years ago, after hearing that creationists had purchased Dinny the dinosaur and converted perverted him—and his sidekick Rex—into tools for peddling their rank ignorance, I went out to Cabazon to see for myself how badly they had been abused. What I found was not happy-making, nor would it be for anyone who cares about knowledge, science and truth, or who finds the thought of children being mislead distressing.

What I found was that Dinny had not only been taken hostage by creationists but judging by their posted material, creationists who seem to be enamored with the “teachings” of some of creationism’s lowest common denominators; professional hucksters such as (the felonious) “Dr.” Kent Hovind and “Dr.,” Carl Baugh, two people that even other young earth creationists (YEC) tend to distance themselves from.

Even worse they seemed to be doing fairly good business as they were in the process of expanding the attraction by adding a number of decently executed life size dinosaur models.

Dinny the dinosaur (foreground) and Rex (background).

As I said that was two years ago. Last summer my wife Kathy and I happened to find ourselves not far from Cabazon and I figured we should swing by and see what new devilry might have befallen Dinny.

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A new evolution sign for my collection

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Whenever I’m out and about (and have my camera) I like to collect snap-shots of commercial signage that is related to evolution in some way. There’s nothing deep about it, just something I like to do. Anyway here is the latest example that I have added to my collection:

This particular sign was for a used car lot down the street from where I work (lately, when there is work). For the rest, if you’re interested, see the signage collection page on my web site.

Halloween Yard Haunt 2010

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Well this year was a lot less stressful than last year, though it was still stressful and a lot of work (for one person). But I got most of what I wanted up and dressed, though a few detail were missed (my fog machine chose to fail for example) and it can always be better. Likewise the trick-or-treat level was OK for our neighborhood but I would still like to get a lot more traffic (I failed to get the yard haunt signs up at the ends of our street, which might have helped).

Anyway here are some pictures; I’ll start with the ones shot in low light to give you an idea of the desired look and then give a few shots with the flash so you can see more detail. Unfortunately I didn’t have a tripod or the photographic skills to get really good low-like pics (maybe next year). Click on the pictures for larger versions.

This year I brought my guillotine outside and put it front so the kids had to walk by it to enter the graveyard on their way to the front door.

guillotine1

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