He said it was okay, he could go now — the things I was writing were saying what he wanted to say to the world. A little over a month later he was dead.

My father called me for Christmas 2019. He lived half a world away and we didn’t talk as often as I would have liked. Distance in who we are, distance in our world, losing touch with each other — all of that played a role, but I think the time difference was the biggest element. It was hard for us to talk to each other at…

Driving Forces

I like driving stick. Manual transmission, it’s a thing — it feels more connected, like you have more control over the car. Many years ago my then-partner and I decided to buy a car together. She had never driven a vehicle with a manual transmission, so we talked about whether to get an automatic or a standard. She really wanted to learn to drive a stick shift, so we decided to go with manual transmission. …

Late Diagnosis

I was diagnosed with ADHD in my forties. I don’t think it was much of a shock to anyone who knew me, but it was still a long time coming. After 4 decades of struggle, of failing to quite fit, of not being able to do the sort of thing that leads to success in life, suddenly it was possible. When I take my medication I can sit down and work, I get interrupted and it’s not fatal. It changed my life completely… except it didn’t.

There were still things that weren’t working for me. I wasn’t able to get…

Hot take here: CUTIES is pretty good. Not amazing, but quite good.

The objections to CUTIES seem to take two forms. First: by showing the clearly sexual dance routines the movie is catering to pedophiles and second the actresses were too young for the material. I’m going to tackle the second one first.

The director took enormous care to prevent negative impact on the girls. She involved a child psychologist the whole way through shooting. That’s the first part. Now for the second part: children dance like this. It happens, it happens a lot. Mostly girls… 11-year-old boys usually find…

Digital Manufacturing

3d printing isn’t what most people think it is… it’s slow, it’s hard, and most of the time you need to baby your printer, maintain it far, far more than you think you will have to. It only produces plastic things, and often they aren’t all that good. Certainly, they aren’t as good as the injection moulded plastic things we get from China.

A few months ago my tripod broke. Not a big deal, just a little plastic catch. It holds the camera in place and it’s easy to take off. My tripod is older and replacement parts aren’t exactly…

Run for your life

I lift my foot, again, forcing it to come off the ground, just one more time. As my toes drop I do the same with the other one, just one more time. The sun beats down on me, I gasp for air. “Come on, just one more minute. I can do anything for one more minute” runs through my mind.

Five k. It’s not that much, people, many of them, run more than that on a regular basis. For me, it’s a milestone, a major accomplishment. …

“If you study science deep enough and long enough it will force you to believe in God”
Lord William Kelvin

So, Lord Kelvin, clearly a great scientist, believed in God and thought that science confirmed his belief.

That’s something that gets trotted out from time to time. It’s one of many arguments that are often used by creationists to promote the idea that science and god are compatible.

It’s also not an argument.

See, science doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t work from authority — yes, education is important in science. You should probably believe Stephen Hawking over Martin, the guy who works at the gas station when it comes to physics most of the time, but not because Stephen…

If a Watch Require a Watchmaker…

There is a common screed among creationists. They look at the world and say that the parts work together so well, fit so well, that it’s clearly the work of a designer. It’s like a watch, perfectly aligned, and if you saw a watch lying in the sand you would not ask how it developed, instead you would think it was made, that someone designed it.

There are many, many, many issues with that argument… but one that I haven’t really seen is this: We know what a watch is for. A watch exists so a human can tell what…