A Prefectly Good Plane

March 14th, 2005 | 04:13 PM |by Ed "What the" Heckman

The topic of skydiving recently came up on one of the mailing lists I subscribe to. The following exchange was part of that thread:

I never understood why anyone would want to jump out of a perfectly good plane.

Nearly all airline crashes occur when the plane hits the ground. Leaving the plane while still airborne, greatly reduces ones chance of being involved in an airline crash.

[The trick is to know WHEN to leave….]

Reposted with permission

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! cheese 

Vox Apologia VIII

March 8th, 2005 | 12:20 AM |by Ed "What the" Heckman

Vox Apologia VIII is now up at Amy’s Humble Musings. This week’s topic is “The Least of These.”

I haven’t had time to read all the entries yet (as you may have guess by my lack of posting lately) but the few I’ve read so far have been very interesting. Go check them out!

Are They Trying To Cause An Accident?

March 3rd, 2005 | 04:48 PM |by Ed "What the" Heckman

I just have to rant here.

Today, for the second time in as many months, I’ve almost been involved in an accident because some idiot decided to cut me off from behind! In both cases, it was on an access road which provides access to and from the main highway.

In today’s incident, I made a right turn onto the road. To get to the highway you need to immediately move left across two lanes to the third lane. As I was doing this (using somewhere around 2/3 to 3/4 of my car’s acceleration to get up to highway speed), the woman who was behind me (she also turned onto the access road) went around me on my left, right where I was going! If I had not noticed her action, she would have either hit me, the concrete barrier or both!

In the previous incident, I was getting off the highway and I needed to move one lane to the right. I only had about 50 yards to do so due to traffic backed up at the bottom of the ramp. As I had my turn signal on and was already starting to make my move some guy doing roughly 80 dove around me on my right. (I was still doing about 40.)

In both cases, the only reason why there wasn’t the sound of metal being crushed and lives changed or destroyed was because I was observant enough to see their idiocy in time. Why are some people acting so stupid? Why is saving 5 seconds worth taking an action which will most likely cause an accident? Are they trying to cause an accident?

If the driver in my position had been someone who doesn’t routinely check the mirrors as I do, or if they were distracted for some reason, there would have been tangled metal. Period.

Drivers who take such unwarranted risks not only put themselves in danger, they also put me and my family in danger. And when someone puts those I love in danger, the ‘d’ is dropped, and ‘anger’ is the result.

If you drive like this, stop now before you get someone killed! If someone you know drives like this, please pass the message along.

Starting Lines — Mar 2, 2005

March 2nd, 2005 | 05:17 PM |by Ed "What the" Heckman

Jollyblogger on Chronicles of Narnia

Jollyblogger takes a look at issues surrounding Disney’s production of The Chronicles of Narnia.

Dan Rather Quotes

Dan Rather reports the news in a “fair balanced fasion,” or does he?

31 Days of Wisdom

Tim Challies has started a series he calls “31 Days of Wisdom (2005)”. On each of the 31 days in March he plans to study one chapter of Proverbs.

GodBlogCon 2005

A Christian Blogging Conference is planned for October 13–15 in California. More details can be found here.

Extreme Christianity

Swap Blog ponders the concept of Extreme Christianity as a lifestyle.

Vox Apologia VII Followups

March 2nd, 2005 | 12:23 AM |by Ed "What the" Heckman

IMHO, the recent Vox Apologia VII on whether the debate over evolution vs. creation has been a big success. There were even a few late entries which I’ve since added. The list is now up to 12 entries, so if you missed any, be sure to go read them. In fact, the comments on some of the posts make revisiting the contributions worthwhile.

One of the more interesting aspects of this VA has been the related followup posts. For example, Matt of Wheat and Chaff had a very interesting followup thought.

Myopic Zeal makes a very important observation in “Know Your Personal Bias”.

Revenge of Mr Dumpling (What a name!) had pointed to a series on “Evolution and Scripture” by A Physicist’s Perspective.

Shannon Love, while apparently rejecting creation outright, has an interesting take on how leftists tend to ignore the logical implications of evolution when they become inconvenient.

John Shroder of Blogotional follows up his earlier post with “It Just Doesn’t Matter…”

It’s apparent that there is still much to discuss on this topic. (I know I have more to say!) If you have a response to any of the posts, either through your own blog or via comments, please take time to do a trackback or post a comment here so others can follow the discussion.

Update: Evolutionists are now taking notice of this Vox Apologia. More here: Vox Apologia VII and The Panda’s Thumb