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Moriarty

by Moriarty (Abbot)
on Jul 25, 2003 at 12:03 UTC ( [id://277846]=user: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

Since there are plenty of people who now know my RL name, I figured it was time to fly a different banner. For those that would like more information about me, pay a visit to my blog (you may even see my RL name there :)

Welcome to Moriarty's Fine Food Emporium

This is where you can make a purchase of Cheese, Chocolate or Marshmallows before wandering the hallowed halls of the monastery. It is advised that you make your purchase now, especially if you intend to enter the Chatterbox, as there is a dragon that frequents this monastery and she is in the habit of eating newcomers but will allow them to pass if they are in possession of an appropriate offering.

For those that prefer their treats to be a little colder, you could always visit bobf's Ice Cream Shoppe :)

Please excuse the state of this establishment as it is under constant renovation


Place of Birth:
Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, UK

Citizenship:
Australian (by choice)

Languages - Spoken:
English, Esperanto (Mi lernas) & Strine1

Languages - Written (in order of competency):
C, English, IBS2, Perl, Modular 2, BASIC (various dialects), HTML, Esperanto, C++, Java, Z80 Assembler.

Current Employment Status
Unemmployed, looking for work.

Religious Affiliation & Position Held
The Salvation Army, Soldier3, bandsman (Trombone, although I still play baritone music)

Notable achievements on PM

  • Level 10 - Saint: 8 February 2005 at approximately 9:00am AEDT
  • Level 13 - Curate: 31 October 2005 at approximately 09:30 AEDT (Levels overhauled at this time)
  • Level 14 - Priest: 22 January 2006
  • Level 15 - Vicar: 25 July 2006 (which also happened to be my 3rd MonkDay :) )
  • Level 16 - Parson: 16 March 2007
  • Level 17 - Prior: 20 November 2007
  • Level 18 - Monsignor: 19 November 2008

Other Achievements

  • Qualifying for the ACT ATBSO Restricted Team in 2006
  • Getting two seconds and a third the first time I enter my craft in the Royal Canberra Show (see my craft page for the pics).
  • Qualifying for the ACT ATBSO Restricted Team in 2008
  • 2008 ATBSO of ACT Men's Restricted Masters Champion
  • 2008 ATBSO National Men's Restricted Masters Runner-up (Winners)
  • Getting a first and a second in the 2009 Royal Canberra Show (see my craft page for the pics).
  • Qualifying for the ACT ATBSO Restricted Team in 2009
  • Qualifying for the Darrell Holt Restricted Team 2009 (actually, I came 8th, but one of the other bowlers pulled out to concentrate on the Classic Challenge).
  • Qualifying for the ACT ATBSO Restricted Team in 2010

1The question was asked 'what is strine?', so here is the answer (as best I can describe it :-).

Strine is a way of speaking rather than a separate language. The idea is to say as much as possible using as few syllables as possible. Hence the 3 syllable word 'Australian' becomes the single syllable word 'strine'.

The other method of shortening speech is to take out the spaces, eg 'How are you this fine day, my friend?' becomes 'Howyagoinmate?' or 'did you have a wonderful weekend' becomes 'didjahavagoodweekend'.

2IBS (Intelligent Billing System) is an in house markup language developed by the company I used work for.

3For those interested in knowing part of what is involved in becoming a soldier in the Salvation Army, reading our Articles of war may help.


Unfinished Projects

  • Rug - latchhook - 75% complete - Next in the list of projects to be completed
  • Jug Covers - crochet, No.10 & 20 cotton + plastic beads - ongoing - a friend bought me the beads & a couple of pattern books so I make them in my spare time.
  • Wine Glass Coasters (aka Wine Glass Socks) - crochet, No. 10 cotton - ongoing - My sister-in-law has some friends that want some like ones she has and I am the only person she could think of that might be able to make them.
  • Coasters, doilies and sundry other items for sale on a craft stall - Cotton, wool and anything else that takes my fancy - ongoing - friends at my new corps have a craft stall that was originally to raise funds for a disabled girl and I thought I might try to contribute. The young girl has since passed away at the ripe old age of 9½, and the funds are now planned to go to the special school that she attended as a memorial to her.
  • Conversion of Win16 game to Linux/Win32 - Currently in C Maybe C++/QT or PerlTk - 1% (stalled due to a lack of time/interest) - Started programming in Perl, will add GUI later. Restarted in Java (see http://www.javajunkies.org/index.pl?node_id=4844&lastnode_id=717)
  • Recording of LPs onto CD - Gramofile/audacity/cdrecord - ~9% (stalled due to a lack of time) - Quite a while as we have quite a lot of LPs
  • This Home Node - HTML - Never ending - An ongoing project that will always be changing.


Completed Projects (within last 12 months)

  • Lots of stuff, see my blog for more info.


CAUTION: What follows was started after seeing the reaction to an anti-evolutionist comment I made on the CB and the willingness of some to debate the details with me and stems from my belief in a God who is powerful enough to create the universe and everything in it in the blink of an eye, even making it look as if it had been around for millennia, but chose instead to create it in six days, pronounce it "good", and then rested for a day, rather than a god who is limited to manipulating genetic codes and natural phenomena over millions of years.

Semi-Random Thoughts & Quotable Quotes

  • I find it amazing that evolutionists will defend their beliefs with more vehemence than creationists.
  • The main difference between creationists & evolutionists is that creationists have the knowledge that their beliefs are based on belief whereas evolutionists believe that their beliefs are based on knowledge.
  • "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." --Winston Churchill
  • "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd." - Bertrand Russell
  • "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances... could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." --Darwin (I have heard that this quote is taken out of context, however, it is how I first saw it so it is how I'm leaving it.)
  • "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." -Rich Cook (I finally found the correct quote).
  • I have read that there was a witness, who had her story published, that Charles Darwin converted back to Christianity towards the end of his life, even saying that he regretted writing the Theory of Evolution as he had "created another religion". So it appears that the followers of evolutionism put more faith in the theory than it's author may have.
  • For those that recognise that the witness spoken of in the previous statement as Lady Hope, Dr James Moore was one of the main people trying to recant her story, however, he conclude that Lady Hope did visit Charles Darwin on several occasions between 28 Sept and 2 Oct 1881, and that her knowledge of the house and the layout of the land, and Charles' mode of dress, indicate that she was more than a casual visitor. This brings a new question to mind - Why did Charles Darwin invite an evangelical christian into his home if he had no interest in Christianity?
  • There is no proof, either for evolution, or for creation, only evidence which is open for interpretation. How that evidence is interpreted, or which interpretations are accepted, depends on the bias of the person concerned. Those that are biased toward evolution cling to those interpretations that back up their belief and call them "proof". Those that are biased toward creation believe those interpretations that that back up their belief and strengthen their faith in God. I quite like the way Scott Adams puts this in his blog (Thanks to Tanktalus for the link).
  • I have the evidence of God's existence in what he has done for me, in me and through me, and also in answered prayers.
  • I also have the testimonies of the witnesses to Jesus' life of ministry, death and resurrection.
  • "There are only two kinds of fools: those who can't change their opinion and those who won't" - Josh Billings
  • "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." - Albert Einstein
  • "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
  • "Let us weigh the gain and the loss, in wagering that God is. Consider these alternatives: if you win, you win all, if you lose you lose nothing. Do not hesitate, then, to wager that he is." -- Blaise Pascal
  • "On the one hand we're supposed to believe that the Darwinian mechanism converted a proto-insect into a stunning array of radically different life forms ... well within the space of 400 million years. But on the other hand, when we actually do the math we find that a single insignificant conversion of binding sites would reasonably be expected to consume all of that time." Biologic Institute
  • "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." -William James


Questions for Evolutionists

  • It is my understanding that evolutionists believe that there were millions of years between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the coming of man. It is also my understanding that cavemen didn't draw anything they hadn't seen with their own eyes. I would therefore like to know how evolutionist explain the existence of cave paintings which depict dinosaurs as described here and here and pictured here?
  • I read that a T-Rex bone had been found that had only been partly fossilized, the part that hadn't been still contained hemoglobin. How long does hemoglobin survive in a recognisable form after death?*
  • I have heard that the oceans are increasing in saltiness at a measurable rate, and that, if you extrapolate this rate of increase backward in time, you find that the oceans were freshwater approximately 4,500 years ago. What happenned at that time to cause the oceans to become salty.
  • I have seen a documentary (and a Web page) on how an iceage could come about, and how such an iceage could only last about 700 years. Could someone give me the evolutionist version, explaining in detail how such an iceage could last longer than 700 years?

* It seems that the jury is still out as to whether or not the substance found in the bone is hemoglobin, however, there are other questions that arise from find a bone that has supposedly been buried for a long time that hasn't been fully fossilized. Since it has been discovered that it takes such a short time for objects buried to become fossilized (less than 50 years), how could this bone be buried for so long and not be completely fossilized?


Debating Evolution V Creation

dragonchild and I have been having a small debate and I have decided to put my main arguments here, but first, a couple links.

These are articles in an email newsletter from Koinonia House

Did Life Evolve? Defining Evolution

The Supernatural Origin of Biblical Texts

Genome Scientist Finds God (For people interested in statistics there are some that may be of interest at the end of this article)

I have heard some people include the breeding of certain animals (dogs, cats, etc) in evolution, and then extend that to an explanation of how modern man 'evolved' from single celled animals created in a 'primordial soup'. This is the problem I have with this, you can breed all sorts of animals, for example dogs, and all you end up with is more of the species but with particular attributes. Dogs can be bred in all shapes, sizes and colours, and can even be bred for temperament, but the resultant animal is still a dog and can still be bred with other dogs (of any breed). No new species is developed by this sort of breeding.

To extend that to “macro-evolution”, and believe that an amoeba can change into a fish into a lizard into an ape and then into a human, requires a leap of faith that I'm unwilling to take, especially since there is no direct evidence in the fossil record.

Continuing on with the fossil record, what does it take to create a fossil? When I went to school, I was taught that the normal forces of nature covered the remains of the dead animals over a period of time and they then remained buried for millennia.

The first problem I have with this teaching is that the normal forces of nature that move dirt around are very abrasive and would destroy the remains before burying them.

The second is that these forces of nature tend to try flatten the landscape by pushing (blowing/washing) the dirt (and anything it contains into the valleys and out to sea. Why then are so many fossils found at relatively high altitudes and at some distance from the sea?

I went on a school excursion to place where many fossils could be readily found in a road cutting. Most of the fossils we found appeared to be marine based (seashells, tiny fish, etc) yet we were 1500+ feet above sea level, and there was no evidence of dramatic upheaval of the land. How did they get there?

Recent discoveries indicate that a relatively short time is required to fossilize something (fossils of things buried by the last eruption of Mt St Helens were discovered a mere 20 years after it erupted, fossilized miners hats have been dug up from mines that had been flooded some 50 years previous) and that rapid burial is the main requirement.

Some of the possible means by which rapid burial can be achieved would be a meteor strike kicking up large quantities of dirt, volcanic eruptions, & floods, so I will examine this a little closer.

Since not all fossils are buried on a single level, one might assume that there were several events that happened over a period of time, however, I understand that several of the larger fossils actually overlap (especially petrified trees), which would seem to indicate that they were buried at the same time, which in turn would indicate a single cataclysmic event.

The fallout from a meteor hit or volcanic eruption would tend to bury everything at ground level, only a flood would allow the remains to settle a various levels along with the dirt.

The recent hurricanes that devastated so much of America flooded low lying areas (I hear that much of New Orleans is below sea level), mainly in the delta regions of the rivers, whereas fossils can be found miles inland at elevations in excess of 1000 feet. If a flood of the type caused by hurricanes and other natural phenomena had occurred that far inland, surely the fossils would have been washed into the delta regions of the rivers that flooded, and therefore be found closer to sea level.

Some of the fossils are of trees. I have heard some say that these were buried over thousands of years as new trees grew next to them only to be buried with the older trees (is there anywhere on earth where this is happening?), thus forming petrified forests, however, a study of these petrified trees shows that they weren't growing where they now stand as there is no root ball on any of the trees. The ring structure of the trees also indicates that the trees were all growing at approximately the same time. Add to that what is happening to the forest of trees that Mt St Helens knocked over and deposited in a nearby lake, all the bark has been rubbed off and deposited on bottom (possibly to form a new coal deposit) and most of the logs, as they become water logged, are sinking to the bottom in an upright position. Some scientists are now saying that this is how the petrified forests were formed.

Studies of the Himalayan mountains indicate that the movement of the continental plates is pushing them upwards. It would be logical to assume that somewhere under the oceans a trench is getting deeper or wider. This would seem to indicate that the oceans may have been much shallower and the sea levels somewhat higher (1000+ feet? I don't think so.) than they are now, making it much easier for a world wide flood.

To me, the amount of dirt deposited in various places around the world, the fossils spanning multiple layers and over-lapping, and the placement of the fossils so far from the sea indicate a flood of such cataclysmic proportions that, if it didn't cover every piece of land on the planet, it came damn close.

Ultimately, whether you believe that the fossil record is a evidence of evolution over a long period of time, evidence of a world wide flood or other natural disaster, or evidence that a bunch of marauding aliens invaded earth, wiping out a peaceful civilization of dragons, so that they could use the planet for a dumping ground for the unwanted members of their society (criminals, phone sanitizers, advertising gurus, etc), is completely up to the individual. I will continue to believe the Bible.


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