News notes kinda maybe

At work I get in each day's e-mail a publication called Business Record Daily. It's a digest ofvarious articles, mostly from the Des Moines metro area, and mostly about things that are of interest to the business community. It's a handy little paper, and it does reflect something about Des Moines: folks from Des Moines think that Des Moines is Iowa. Chicago does the same thing with Illinois, but more.

A headline in the Business Record caught my attention: "Report: Americans Spend 2.6 Hours Per Day On Mobile Devices." I find that just mind-blowing: 2.6 hours every day. I have known people that would be sitting five feet away from each other, arguing with each other on Facebook. I can't help but wonder how much time that leaves for other matters like, you know, talking with your family. Something like that.

Another headline today: "Developer Homesath to leave Tickly." OK, the imagery conjured up wa just. . .weird. "Don't go away mad; just go away Tickly." Saints pr'sarve us.

Cubs are 2-1. Cards are 1-2. Enjoy it for now.

And from Mark Morford in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Six percent of Americans believe in unicorns. Thirty-six percent believe in UFOs. A whopping 24 pecent believe dinosaurs and human beings hung out together." (We only missed by a cool 160 million years or so, but we didn't miss entirely. Descendants of the dinosaurs are still around. We call them birds.) "Eighteen percent still believe the sun revolves around the earth." (Sorry, Morford; I'd need your source for that one.) "Nearly 30 percent believe that cloud computing involves. . .actual clouds." (It doesn't?) "A shockngly sad 18% still believe the President is a Muslim." (My question: He's not - but so what if he is?) (And, yes - they are sad. To be pitied.)

"Roughly 48 percent believe in some form of creationism." Sorry, Mark. I'm one of the 48%. No, no, I am no fundamentalist. But the God I believe in is eternal, so if She wanted to use a ginormous explosion billions of years ago, well, what's a billion years to an eternal God? If God wanted to use evolution to create the magnificent scope of life, who am I to argue? (Although, had I been there at the creation, I may have had a suggestion about shoulders and knees.) Those who would teach creationism as a science, as an alternative to the standard science curriculum, fail to present evidence. They get so hung up on provng that this all took place in six days 6,000 years ago, that they lose something of the majesty of God in all of that. They require that the writer of Genesis (actually, writers and editors) write a scientifically valid account of the creation. This would be like requiring Archimedes to write an account of string theory.

If you read the Mesopotamian accounts of creation - the Gilgamesh Epic, for one - you understand what the writers of Genesis were after. Try it sometime.

Thanks for hanging out.