There’s a word for taking animal’s body parts and implanting them into humans for medicinal purposes, like taking a pig’s or a cow’s heart valves and doing heart surgery with them. It’s xenotransplantation. I had never heard of that word before. I learned it in tonight’s church small group lesson. We’re going through a worldview curriculum called “Understanding the Times” (already somewhat familiar to me) and started the bioethics videos tonight. Xenotransplantation is just one of the several bioethical issues that will be coming up here soon. Another is a combination of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. As the video speaker pointed out: What’s scarier than invisible robots that can think like you? Not much. This new series of random observations is inspired jointly by my sister and my dad. Abby suggested that I blog about stuff I learned each day, and Dad used to ask me and my siblings every night at dinner—“what did you learn today?” We often responded with “nothing,”

Yesterday was a fantastic day. I got a big writing project accomplished, cooked something healthy for supper, was told I was an answer to prayer, and got to talk about some serious theological matters via IM with a friend from college. And today was also quite lovely—very, very productive (with laundry and grocery shopping all done), plus a fruitful trip to both a moving sale and a library booksale. Anyhow, I realized this evening that a good portion of the links I had open in my Internet browser had to do with singleness in one way or another (despite last week’s tab cleanup). Thus unfolded the following collection: Via a link posted in a comment thread on some blog somewhere, I meandered through the Internet to a blog called The Sexy Celibate (so named, says the author , to give an ironic, interesting twist on the somewhat cliché single-Christian theme). It’s one of the best blogs I’ve read in a long time. The most recent posts take the horns of a huge issue in the Christian singl

ShopVacs are cool. Like bowties. I got into watching new episodes of the British sci-fi show Doctor Who this past year. Blame my brother. No, blame my mother. She’s the one who raised me on recordings of Star Trek: The Original Series and the British show The Avengers ( the show starring Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg that had nothing to do with superpowers ). Doctor Who is basically a cross of those two, with better special effects. In the most recent two seasons, the title character (who’s actually just “The Doctor”) is constantly defending his right to wear a bowtie. He says “bowties are cool” with an inimitable (by me) British accent and a slight flair for the ridiculous that only he can pull off. It amuses me to no end. I bought a ShopVac this weekend in order to do my cleaning. ShopVacs are cool, you know. It was also cheap and made sense, for me, since I have carpet and a need to vacuum out my little car sometimes. Ever tried vacuuming a car with an upright? It only works

Well, a ton has happened this week that’s blog-worthy, and yet, I sit here thinking, “oh! I have a huge bunch of tabs open that I should link to!” I guess clearing my poor computer’s tab bar is uppermost in my priorities this evening. The Exchange – the senior pastor of this random Texas church followed me on Twitter this week. I don’t have a clue why. I’ve never even been to Texas. Has higher education stiffed its most important client? A question that The Atlantic asks, and answers, intelligently. Also some good reasons to think through grad school rather than considering it a given for a smart undergrad. Don’t make these grammar mistakes! Please!! (Infographic, via a friend from college.) Pew for One? – I found this to be an interesting, but not particularly groundbreaking, article about being single in today’s churches. The author is completely correct about someone like me looking for the same basic things in a church that any married folks would want… solid theology, invo

I wonder who the first primitive chef was that decided, “hey! I’ll whack an avocado until I get Martian mush! And maybe I’ll dump in a little lemon juice so it stays Martian green! Hmm, I wonder what it would taste like?” and dipped a stale tortilla into it. It makes me question the sanity of the human race. So I discovered a few weeks ago that my local Aldi’s sells packets of real guacamole, made from real avocados. (Hopefully not made by a primitive chef.) It’s most likely my favorite chip dip, so I was quite ecstatic to find that. And I bought some. In fact, I believe I had guacamole and chips twice for supper. Not after. For. After a while, it dawns on me that chips and guacamole probably don’t make the healthiest meal. But I love guacamole. And I have about half a packet getting kind of brown. You know how apples turn brown if you leave them in the air? That’s what the guacamole was doing. Only the brown on the green looked worse than a browning apple. Still tasted good, th

I'm so unimaginative when it comes to food. (Except if guacamole is involved. I shall write that story later this week.) Every day for lunch for the first three weeks at my new job, I packed... a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an apple, and a handful of baby carrots. I think I may have substituted applesauce ONE day for the apple, but only because I ran out of apples. So I finally decided to switch it up this week. I made tuna salad with my cousin for supper Saturday night and sealed the leftovers in some plastic container which I'm pretty sure isn't Tupperware. I love tuna almost as much as I love peanut butter and jelly (almost, not quite equally), so I figured it would make a good week's worth of sandwiches. Yeah, I'm still stuck in sandwich mode. But at least it's not peanut butter. I'm sure I must have eaten peanut butter for 60% of my lifetime lunches. If not more. The only thing with tuna is that it's drippy. I opened the tuna on Monday

...well, I'm not sure who. Blogger's Overview tells me I have 1,005 published comments. But when I go to the Comments section to review them, it says I have 1,009. So, either Carol or Abby posted the 1,000th comment. Carol's was : It is UNKNOWN to me why I am listed as "Unknown", but I don't know how to fix it, so please be advised that I am "Unknown"! Carol M. And Abby's : So that like 167 comments a year...that not a whole lot thought is it? Hers comes up if I go by the 1,009 number. And I thought that was an appropriate comment for a 1,000th comment. Don't you? At any rate. I love my readers. Thanks for sticking through six years and an undetermined number of months of my blogging on Blogger. Come to think of it, most of you will remember back when I had the KB blog... El Cuaderno... *relapses into reminiscence*

This blog is very, very few comments away from number 1,000. I can hardly believe it, but you all must be a loquacious (not to say eloquent) bunch of readers and friends! And I'm not going to say how few. That way you can't just count the comments and quick post one just to be the 1,000th. Not that I think any of you would do that. ;)

Things I'd want to roll my eyes at. That was one of the suggestions of what I should post. Since I've had a fairly uneventful day today and my brain is halfway to mush, I just might make that list. Here goes: dumb smart-alec comments sale prices that are higher than Aldi's regular prices for a comparable product a college student's insistence that they know a better way to change the world than anybody else children's having cell phones the singing fish (and it's SUCH an earworm!) people who know the words to the Ferret Song by heart (yes, that includes you, J) ten-year-olds with boyfriends and girlfriends hypocritical statements made by the same person in the same breath paisley skirts anything else paisley movies that make super-overstated claims about their own ingenuity or emotional power writers who make the mistake of equating correlation with causation lapdogs any animal in an outfit not worn on Christmas or Halloween, or possibly in a para

I'm taking my sister's advice to tell about what I've just been doing the past several days. Not particularly enthralling, I warn you, but here goes. I learned today that it takes precisely 8 seconds to cross a two-lane, one-way street downtown, walking at a rate of two steps per second. That is, one complete set of steps per second, one right-footed and one left-footed. If that makes sense. And yesterday, I checked five books out from the library. Three of them were related to journalism: "Letters to a Young Journalist," Sam Freedman "Newsonomics: 12 new trends that will shape the news you get" "The Best Business Stories of the Year: 2004" "Studies in Words," C.S. Lewis "Spanglish: The making of a new American language" I've already read bits out of "Letters" and the business stories compilation. Quite interesting. Once I get my laptop back up and running, I'll write a little more about the bo

See that? I immediately made you think of a salesman without even trying. I was happily Skyping with friends in Ohio and Boston on Friday when I noticed a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing: My laptop wasn't charging. Even though it was plugged in, and none of the cords had come loose. Well, it was 10:30 p.m. anyways, so I explained the situation and bid my friends au revoir. (In English.) On Sunday, my cousin checked the power pack with his nifty little volt checker... or whatever it's called... and determined that yes, it's the power pack. Thank goodness my computer is still all right. Amazon is sending me a new power pack. But it won't arrive until sometime next week. In the meantime, I'll be spending a lot of time with my books and some movies. And at the library.  So, much as I enjoyed getting all that reader interaction... and as good as those ideas were... I'm afraid we'll have to wait on a few of those posts. Unless I want to be spen

Hey, you! Abby, Mom, Jonathan, Alicia, Carol, John, Sam, Rachel, maybe Angie, and Wesleigh if you still read this! And anybody else who reads: What should I blog about next? Any suggestions welcome. Sometimes I just don’t know where to start when so much new stuff is happening to me. I think the diagnosis is writer’s block. Zaniness encouraged, as well.

OK, I know I halfway-promised a real update to come last weekend, but better late than never, right? I’m officially moved into my apartment-with-stained-glass-windows. The windows are ever so gorgeous, especially in the evenings. Unfortunately they still can’t tempt me to do dishes more than a couple times a week. Mind you, the sink never truly overflows—it just gets full. That’s because it doesn’t take any dishes to eat a sandwich. And I like sandwiches. I painted my bookcase this past weekend, probably part of the reason I didn’t actually sit down and write a blog post. It took more spray paint than I bargained on. See, I didn’t want to have to get that dumb spillable of black paint and a brush to paint the thing. I wanted something that would dry quick. Well, spray paint dries quickly, but it takes an awful lot of coats to get the bookcase looking pretty. Took half the morning and a good bit of the afternoon. And a bike trip to Big Lots and a quick car trip to Wal-Mart in betwee

My poor, neglected blog. You must feel terribly missed. Anyhow, I’m settled into my new apartment (the one with the stained glass windows), have gotten to meet several people at church and via interviews for news articles, and am generally enjoying myself. Just so you’re aware that I’m not dead. I will try to post a real blog tomorrow. In the meantime, let’s go see what Matt Smith is up to as the Eleventh Doctor….