Ok, I probably shouldn’t find this funny but this week a zoo in Denmark had too many giraffes so they killed the weakest one and fed it to the lions. People were outraged over this decision and even started an online petition to get them to not do it. Now news is out that a second zoo is about to do the same thing. To explain, I don’t find the killing funny or that they let people watch the lions eat the giraffe, what I find funny is people reaction to what is essentially how the giraffe population is managed in nature. If people believe that we are a world of natural selection how does nature handle keeping the animals strong, by having predators pick off the weak. If they were in the wild these lions would be stocking them and attacking them when the opportunity presented itself. This giraffe would have been taken down already, and not in a controlled way. But when it happens in an environment we control, everyone is up in arms. This is what I find really funny; people want to believe the world to be both infinitely kind and infinitely cruel at the same time. You can’t think the world is just random and everything is just chance, and believe there is a God that cares and intervenes at the same time. These two views are opposites so they can’t be both true. In one view for the world to survive the weakest have to be eliminated in a “natural selection”. If you don’t think this is the view of some just checks out the articles medical ethicists have written lately, especially from Ivy League schools. However if you believe that life has worth, above and beyond its value to improving our species, then taking life means diminishing the value of every life no matter the ability. I choose to believe that life is infinitely valuable, thou I don’t put the same value in animals as I do in humans, but that is a discussion for a different day!

America won the first metal ever in singles luge yesterday. The luge has been an Olympic sport for fifty years and we had never ever won a medal. The Germans on the other hand had won something like fifty-three of all the metals ever handed out in those fifty years. That is domination, not only domination but an all-out slap your grandma punishing of the rest of the world. So I want to know how it has stayed an Olympic sport for all those years? If the U.S. dominated sport like that they would pull it from the games. I am not crying foul here but just wondering how to get the rest of the world in on the winning in every sport. I like that we win the metal count most years, I like that we send the most athlete’s most years, but for it to be a real competition there has to be some sports we stink at. Cross-country skiing come to mind as something we rarely win, the Scandinavian seem to have a lock on that sport. Obviously, luge is a German thing, but nothing in my mind has been better for the sports as the Jamaicans having a bobsled team. I can’t say they will ever win, but a country with no history and no practical knowledge of the sport can get involved and work to achieve greatness is to me the message of the Olympics. Knowing that anyone has a shot at greatness is the point of sports, and what they all work for. I just like to see everyone have that shot.

I feel like I am in a de-motivational poster today. I am working on things but it seems like I am traipsing through mud. I got to sleep too late and woke up too early for no good reason. I really don’t know how to get myself out of this funk. I have ingested buckets of coffee, eaten an energy bar and thirty-two ounces of water, still nothing. Even writing this took me a while looking at a blank document before I started to type. I need to figure out just what, short of electrical shock will get my motor running today. It sure would be nice to figure out how to have the same level of energy every day. That just doesn’t seem possible thou, there are too many factors involved, how much I exercised, slept or if it was a chocolate cake kind of night. Yesterday I was full of energy until they sang happy birthday to our department admin. They served cake which was delicious but after the initial sugar rush, I could barely keep my eyes open the rest of the afternoon. I think we could use a corporate napping room which would allow for a quick break so people could return refreshed instead of spending the rest of the afternoon dragging.

When I was much younger a friend gave me tickets to a Stanford college football game. I don’t remember the game but I do remember the halftime show by the marching band. The announcer came on and said” the Stanford marching band halftime show is a salute to communism”. If you have ever seen the Stanford marching band they are a very disorganized group and never very serious so I found this comical. I was reminded of this during the opening ceremony for the Olympics last week. I didn’t expect NBC to slam the host country during the festivities, but to watch the revised history of the Soviet Union with a straight face was just as comical as the Stanford band. Even funnier is the story of the guy responsible for the Olympic rings that didn’t work during the ceremony, was found murdered. This was later found to be a hoax, but the reason it went viral is because we all could imagine it happening. I know we would not do an opening ceremony depicting the civil war or the Indian nations being rounded up or killed as part of it, but perhaps the announcers could have mentioned a little truth about the period in which they were depicting. I did manage to upset my daughter by asking every time I entered the room, did I miss the part where they killed the royal family? Or my other favorite, when do they get to the part where they send everybody off to work camps in Siberia?

I grew up with an uncle some of us swear, was trying to kill us. He built a tree house high up in a tree with a big slide to the ground which some of us fell out of. He would build jumps for us to ride mini-bikes off and allowed us to walk on the roof and large brick wall. I was his nephew so I wasn’t in the direct line of fire but my cousins have some great stories of harrowing events. I frankly look back with fondness to all the crazy things we did. Riding our bikes off of the roof into the pool in or backyard is a highlight of my childhood. Yes I broke bones and got bruised on occasion but was it really “bad” for me as a person to have done all of those things? These days we put rubber bumpers, helmets, and safety warnings on everything and I am not convinced it is for the better. I learned that some of my fears were unfounded and that I can do way more than I think I can. The lesson of doing things I fear and even sometimes getting hurt made realize what I am capable of. The other day a young man was on trial for killing four people while driving intoxicated. He used Affluenza as his defense. Basically he said he was so coddled and spoiled it prevented him from connecting to his bad behavior. While I don’t agree this kid should get off because of this, I do believe there is a point to his defense. The more we remove the consequences of our actions and the bumps and bruises we get from going past the “safety zone” in life the less we respect it. Those bumps and bruises and even the scares are reminders of just how much I can do, and they make me respect what I can’t!

Yesterday I went to the dentist office for a cleaning. I do like the feeling of running my tongue over my teeth after the hygienist is done, but I have not always been fond of the person who does the job. Some hygienists are over the top kind, like the one I have. Any time she pokes my mouth she apologizes and asks if everything is ok. Sorry about the taste of blood she said, sorry if it is hurting; let me know if it is hurting? It is almost as if she is sorry for the way I take care of my teeth. I know if I flossed and brushed like I should it would make the experience better, but I won’t so I pay her to do the job I don’t. The thing is she is the gentlest hygienists I have ever been to. I used to go to a guy who would just about stand on my chest with a chainsaw grinding away, making disapproving sounds telling me horror stories of good mouths gone bad. He always told me I needed deeper cleaning and would take the little probe thing and jam it so far into my gums that my leg would jump up in some involuntary spasm. His chair needed a seat belt to keep me in it while he tormented me in a little shop of horrors kind of way. I mentioned that to my current one and she shakes her head and says she doesn’t know why some do that? I think I do, you can’t get into cleaning people’s teeth without a little sadistic tendencies. Sticking sharp objects into soft tissue and expecting it to not hurt is not reality, getting off on it allows them enjoy the job! The guy I used to go to, really liked his job!

The other day I could find nothing on TV so I went on to Netflix to see if there were any movies I would be interested in watching. I found one I thought might be interesting that I had missed when it was in the theaters so I started it playing. Within the first ten minutes I knew that I didn’t like it and I wasn’t going enjoy watching it. Instead of turning it off I continued to watch for a few more minutes until my wife walked into the room, I said “this movie has no redeeming qualities” and she said something profound “turn it off then”. I don’t know about you but I have watched way too many movies in which I didn’t really like them yet I watched them. When I was a kid we called it “West Disease” it was a family curse to stare at the TV and never look away even if someone was talking to us. Someone would have to get my attention because I would be so engrossed that I couldn’t hear what they said or even acknowledge they had entered the room, it was so bad that I swear I drooled at times. Now thirty years later I may have not stopped the drool but I can turn off a movie that isn’t worth watching. Perhaps I have made some progress!

Have you had any of these energy drinks that have popped up over the last couple of years? I am not a big fan of using them all the time, but every once and a while when I am dragging I will try one to see if it will help. They have all these crazy names Red Bull, Rockstar, Monster and Animal rage! And they all cost about three times more than a regular soda. Here is the list of ingredients from the one I just bought called Go Fast! Carbonated water, citric acid, natural flavors, honey, sodium citrate and sucralose. Also added into these drinks is caffeine but that varies by brand some of them less than a soda some of them five times more than an espresso. So what I see here is about a nickels worth of ingredients being sold to me for two dollars and fifty cents. They also publicize that it contains Milk thistle and Guarana extract, like I would know what those are? I guess I am supposed to be impressed by the amount of weeds and grubs they are able to put in the can of glorified soda because the label tells me I should be! This is all a really great marketing campaign by the same folks who bring us sodas. They have figured out we will pay more if we think it has some medicinal purpose. They used to call these people snake oil salesmen, now they call them executives!

Every prediction I saw for the Super bowl yesterday said the game was going to be close. The number one offense against the number one defense was supposed to be a classic. Yet from the first offensive snap it was pretty easy to see it just wasn’t the Broncos day! Give a lot of credit to the Seahawks for seeing blood in the water and going off, they made the most of the situation not letting up until there was no doubt in the outcome. I feel for the Broncos not just because I live in Colorado, but because we have all had one of those days! Days like that make you want to go back to bed and hope you can sleep it off. On those days you think to yourself, can anything else go wrong? They would make a good reception then fumble the ball. You can’t blame it on just one guy either; collectively they had a bad day.

Like Alexander from the children’s book it seems some days just pile on till all we want to do is move to Australia. I can take comfort in my worst day, frankly we all can take heart in that we may have hard days but it isn’t on television in front of one hundred million people. Too much? Too soon?