Not much change. Just a 215 number the past two mornings. Still a bit disheartening but I do understand that I really need to reduce my eating quantity, and lower my caloric intake, as well as exercise more frequently. My busy week is again stopping me from gym time. Work, kids, events - it all conspires to suck up my available time for that. I have to find other options.

Speaking of work, there's this odd phenomena, every Monday through Friday. Right around 10:00AM I look at the time, and think, "Gawd, it feels like I've been here for 7 hours already. How can it possibly only be 10:00AM???"  Conversely, at 5:00PM, the clock immediately changes to 11:01PM, and I wonder where the hell the evening went, every evening. 

Does anyone else feel that?

My stomach around 10:15AM tells me it should be lunch time, but I know I can't eat until closer to noon, otherwise I'll be hungry again around 3:00PM with hours to go before dinner. I try to snack light, but it's difficult to keep healthy snacks around in the office, so I opt to go without.

But I spend so much of my day here just waiting for the day to end. It's like killing time, which I hate. Time we can't get back. Time is our only resource that we own. We trade it for money in our economy, and leave ourselves with too little of it for ourselves, and this part of our society keeps deteriorating. We always have less, and less time. American culture emphasizes work ethic, but often to the detriment of the individual. Work ethic is not an equivalent to time spent working, and we seem to have confused those concepts. American work longer hours, and take fewer vacations, and it is expected. I see it so often, how other workers scowl at the idea of their co-workers taking time off, or taking time when they're sick to mend. The pissing matches over who has worked through the worst health ailments, or made it into work in the worst weather conditions.

I saw an online post about someone in the California wildfires who had to escape their home, and wasn't sure if there would be anything to come back to, texting this information to their employer so their employer would understand their absence. The employer's response? "Thanks for letting me know, but can you come into work today? We really need you."

No thanks. Count me out of this silly charade. I'll work hard when it is needed, but if my job doesn't allow for a balance, or an understanding that I have a life to live outside of the office, then it isn't the job for me.

I'm eagerly anticipating the next steps. There is light at the end of the tunnel here, again, but it seems far off, and the winter commute is not something that I relish.

Look At Things Differently

Steve Harvey wants to know where an Atheist's moral barometer comes from. There is this belief within religions that without religion, humans would have nothing to base morals on.

Let's look at that differently. Religions, worldwide, and throughout history have been as diverse as the cultures that celebrate them, and for the most part, many have similar moral codes. If god, or any gods don't actually exist, then religions themselves have been contrived by humans, and therefore those moral codes created by humans and passed up to their religions, not the other way around as the religious sects assume.

So yes, an Atheist's moral code comes from the same place yours does, Steve: our conscience, our empathy, our compassion, our understanding that we're here to make life, and support life, and without those concepts, humanity wouldn't have survived to evolve through those tens of thousands of years that pre-date silly religions.

We just don't need to justify being good people through some imaginary being, fairy-tales, or the threat of having an awful go of it after we die.

Doesn't it make more sense to credit humans with something good, instead of maintaining this "god is good - humans are flawed, and failures without god's blessings" baloney? Perhaps if we looked at it as we're actually in control of our own lives, we'd start being more accountable for the good, and the bad that we do, instead of hoping for some divine forgiveness on our deathbeds after being shitty people for 80-years. Or maybe we'd start to realize that we have only one planet to live on, and if we screw it up, we're done, and there's no going back.

The cosmos hold no forgiveness. We're not going to re-spawn on another rock. If we kill ourselves off by destroying our environment, that's it. Game over. And honestly, I blame how we view ourselves, and our lives through religion for many of our worst decisions.

World's Largest Disco

Big photography assignment from this past week was covering Buffalo's legendary World's Largest Disco. I could also be called the World's Greatest Disco, because I can't imagine a better one being had anywhere. Over 8,000 attended, and enjoyed a night filled with vintage fashion, vintage music, and performances, and appearances from the celebrities that made the disco era unique. Check out a few images from the night, and then see the entire album in my event photography portfolio.

 

Pro-Tips For The Season

Remember, your truck might be four-wheel drive, but it's not four-wheel stop. Nor is it four-wheel turn. This goes to you, big pick-up truck driver who slid off the entrance ramp this morning.

If your car is dark gray, and mostly covered in snow, congratulations! Your car is perfectly camouflaged for the environment you're driving in, and could be nearly invisible to other drivers! Please turn on your lights. You're not doing yourself any favors driving in stealth mode.

Notice that road conditions might not be conducive to quick stops, or sudden lateral movements. To avoid testing these laws of physics, maintain safe distances between vehicles, and don't change lanes into gaps of traffic that make for completely unsafe distances. The police have better things to do (I hope) than sit on the side of the road with you until tow trucks come for your wreck.

If people don't follow the previous tip, and they're on the other side of the highway, you can just keep driving. You're not really going to see much anyway, so focus on not becoming those people instead of trying to do accident forensics at 50mph from 100 feet away.  

Thank you in advance from the guy who doesn't want more mornings of a 25-minute commute turning into 60-minutes.

What Is Manliness, Anyway?

Interesting article in the Washington Post regarding how Donald Trump appeals to men with fragile masculinity.

Correlational data at best, and as any statistician would point out, correlation is not causation. We can't say that being a Trump supporter makes you more likely to be insecure about your masculinity, nor can we say that masculine fragility leads people to support someone like Trump. We can't even say that Trump himself doesn't cause men who support him to question their own manliness. What can be said though is, fragile masculinity, and Trump seem to shotgun from the same beer can, and then crush it on their heads before secretly crying about how their mom treated them unfairly.

Honestly, if you pay attention to Trump, and his own displays of fragile masculinity, you are probably asking yourself why any research needed to be done on this in the first place.

I believe I've already had many discussions with myself via my blog about gender roles, and expectations within our society, so I'm not sure I need to expand on the topic of fragile masculinity, or even toxic masculinity, which both seem to also shotgun from the same beer can. Research not withstanding, and only through life, and experiences, I find those who have the most fragile senses of their own masculinity tend to display the most toxic male behavior, but that's not an absolute.

However, I'm willing to accept other input on this.

I think that's about all I have this week. Sorry, this is being published late. As I said, it has been a busy week, but at least I'll get to the gym tonight.