Of Exhibitions and Psychics

Exhibitions can be boring things when not a lot is happening and you are manning a stand. And this was certainly true of me, a man, in the middle of the Every Woman Exhibition held in the Perth Convention Centre. My wife and daughter own a photography business here in Perth, and I was roped in to spread the load and talk to the prospective clients about the wonders of wedding and portrait photography.

Well you've got to believe that I seized every opportunity, any excuse at all, to get out and about; not just to check out the other photographers, but to see just what women do to themselves. Can't say that Mel Gibson of What Women Want fame didn't come to mind.

Anyway; over behind our stand was what I referred to as "psychics corner" -  the clairvoyant, fortune telling, astrological, healing, tarot reading, crystal believing contingent, with mystique and supernaturalness oozing from every bench top. Mysterious and not so mysterious women, looking concerned and poring over their readings/predictions while accepting money for their services. (Why a majority of women over men in this industry beats me... I'll ponder this another time)

But anyway, after a few rounds of the hall, here I was, standing at the coffee counter.  Psychics corner was just across the way.  And as I gazed across at it, a thought bounced into my head.  I turned to the woman next to me in line and asked – “Hey what do you think? If I went to all these people over there,  what do you think my chances would be of getting exactly the same prediction from each one of them? She just laughed and said  –  "get real!"  And that, I thought, said it all.

But anyway, two years later and it finally came to me. And I said to myself  "Ah!... there’s poetry in the air"  As you read, put the emphasis on the first word of each line to get the flow.

Psychics 

Psychics, psychics, psychics, psychics, what am I saying next?

Psychics? Yes! You are quite right, only you, I’m sure, could know

But please grant me this one doubt, for a while it’s been my quest

If I asked a bunch of you, who would my future show?

But now let’s not think a year, or even six months time

Let us talk about next week or even a fortnight hence

I’ll get back to you straight up with praises quite refined

If your forecast lines with truth I’ll know it’s no pretence

You must drop the flowery speech couched in the vaguest terms

You must speak specific things that only I could know

That’s not all, please hear me out, the rules now you must learn

Not just one, but lots of you, must clear my future show

Come now, be more reasonable, why set so high the bar?

You must not expect precise results, we feel that’s mean!

Hush now, you who say you know the future from afar

If you do this by the rules your merit’s clearly seen

But if you can not perform and tell it all so true

We ourselves can not be blamed for seeing through your fraud

If you’re game, come on, let’s go, the focus is on you

What? No way? It’s not for you? Can’t say I won’t applaud

About Evolution... and a Poem at the end

Evolution! I was taught evolution as a kid, and sat there in the classroom while the teacher emotionally bullied everybody into submission... "Every thinking person must agree...", "Every intelligent person can see that evolution has been proved... "; and so on. And I agonised over it because I just couldn't see it.

Well! I am pleased to say that any thinking person will agree with me on this one... :) just keep up now!...

Ever heard the old conundrum - what came first, the chicken or the egg? Well in evolutionary terms there is no conundrum... we could put it like this - What came first, the blueprint or the cell. Everybody knows you need a blueprint before you construct the building (cell)!

Let me flesh this out a little... and this is what simply does evolutionists’ collective heads in!!! - Say, just say, that trillions of atoms formed themselves into billions of molecules and these actually happen to form themselves into the essential amino acids... and these just happen to form themselves into complex chains made of of many different amino acids, and then, these fold themselves in the right way (that is, without the use of a folding machine that already exists inside a cell) to make up a protein that will take up its own particular role in the construction of a cell ... AND, (hang in there, we're not finished yet) it gets transported (without the aid of the little "trucks" that do the transporting inside an already formed cell) to the right place amongst all of the other billions of proteins that have similarly, amazingly, come into being through this chance process, and being in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time, they all just wonderfully happen to take (meld, stick together) by some wonderful laws of attraction... ALL you have is still only a dead cell. (Darwin knew nothing of this stuff, by the way, to him a cell was just a middle bit and the surrounding bit and the bit that held it all together... Nah! He didn't even know that much, to him it was just a blob).

...Oh! By the way, back in 1996 scientists around the world, “armed with their best computer programs, competed to solve one of the most complex problems in biology: how a single protein, made from a long string of amino acids, folds itself into the intricate shape that determines the role it plays in life. . . . The result, succinctly put, was this: the computers lost and the proteins won. . . . Scientists have estimated that for an average-sized protein, made from 100 amino acids, solving the folding problem by trying every possibility would take 10 to the power of 27 (a billion, billion, billion) years.”—The New York Times. And that is only solving the problem of folding for 1 protein... how many different proteins are in a cell?

So just dwell on this for a moment - the quotation from The New York Times above is talking about "solving the folding problem by trying every possibility"... with a computer. So the probability against it actually happening in real life, would be much higher right? Well yes! Evolutionists have acknowledged that the actual probability of even a simple protein molecule forming randomly in an organic soup would be 1 in 10 followed by 113 zeros (or 10 to the power of 113). But any event that has one chance in just 10 to the power of 50 is dismissed by mathematicians as never happening.

Oh, yes, where were we? That's right! You still have only a dead cell. Let me put it this way, if I were to pluck a live cell out of my body (nowhere too painful) and put it on a slide under a microscope... I couldn't actually tell when that cell died... the exact, precise time, that is, when it ceased to be living. But I do know this! There is not a scientist or medical person on earth that can cause that cell to live once it has died. Nobody, but nobody, can breathe life back into it. And hey! This is the easy route! Having a cell fully formed, an, everything in place cell to work with... not the messing around described above... all of the components are already in place... just dead... hmmmm, that is a problem!

Well remember the conundrum from above? What came first...? Well in a cell we have a blueprint. A very, very, complex blueprint, the like of which you would never see in the entire world in actual print. In fact, imagine the detailed specifications for the biggest building built by man. Still doesn't hold a torch to the DNA blueprint in the nucleus of a cell.

Watson and Crick won the Nobel prize in 1962 for discovering the structure of DNA, and the human genome project took roughly 10 years (from 1990-2000) to actually map the 25,000 genes that are the human genome. Scientists have discovered what they believe to be a code superimposed upon the actual base coding of the DNA. I mean, this is mind blowing stuff, and here is roughly how it works in practice -

There is a need within the cell, or, for what the cell is specialised to produce (a hormone, a replacement part, or whatever), and so the double helix is un-zippered in just exactly the right place and a molecular machine copies the exposed instructions to form a strand of messenger RNA. Having duplicated the instructions the RNA is transported through a portal in the nucleus wall, to the factory floor beyond where a ribosome translates the instructions "inscribed" on the RNA. Amino acids are transported from other parts of the cell and assembled into the exact chain that is required for the protein that is to be constructed. The chain of amino acids is then transported to a barrel shaped machine, which is a folding station. This then folds it into the form for its specific role in the cell or body and then a little "truck" comes along and transports it to where it is needed. Isn't that just wonderful! Mind-boggling! But hold up! This process cannot continue without the blueprint and the blueprint is pure information with detailed instructions, sequences, everything. Now I don't know what you have been taught, but information like that does not come apart from intelligence. The book (blueprint) is necessary before the cell can produce anything useful, and is necessary for replication... now where would you get such a blueprint... the corner library? Only if you had a pick-up truck; because the information stored in the DNA in a single cell is equivalent to a 920 volume encyclopoedia! I think that is a conservative estimate.

Still, there is an interesting aspect here, however, and that is - despite scientific advances in peering in to the mechanics of life at the cellular level, people still believe evolution. It has been said many times by scientists today, that if Darwin had actually had the information about the cell that we have today, evolution could never, ever, have got off the ground as a theory. Er... It still is a theory isn’t it?

Now how about a poem? This was written for a friend who is a philosopher and likes to discuss these things.

To Mark - On Questions of Belief

Searching, wondering, listening

To feelings deep inside

Exploring possibilities

Bad theories thrown aside

Is there a God? Did we evolve?

Is worship just a crutch?

We ponder this quite endlessly

Being cynical overmuch

Those that claim a worship true

In actions oft’ betrayed

As nothing more than hypocrites

Their piety falsely played

In times of war it’s all so clear

They say “God is on my side”

But just the same their enemy

‘Neath God’s loving hand does hide

So some say, “I’ll be an atheist -

It makes just much more sense”

Then look closely at a flower

Or the universe immense

And start to wonder yet again

Was it all just happenstance?

Will we find the answer in a fix?

Or seek it in a trance?

But then, perhaps, a lucid patch

And think, “If there is a God…

We can surely find his fingerprints

Or where his footsteps trod”

I once read an ancient verse

The writer made no fuss

Just simply said to grope for God

He’s not far from each of us.

His fingerprints are everywhere

His footsteps clearly seen

Good grief! Just look at DNA

A blueprint in the genes

So what came first? I’m asking you

The blueprint or the cell

The truth can be quite clearly shown

I beg you; let me tell
1/7/09

The Story Behind "The Game"

This poem is about the basketball games that my son, Gareth, and I used to play out the front of our house when we lived in Marangaroo, a suburb about twenty five minutes north of Perth, Western Australia.

There were some of Gareth's mates living across the road in a corner house and they used to gang up on me in a game of basketball from time to time. Of course they were all little tackers, and beside the basic rules, we made up our own; as needed. Two I can think of, were, and this was because of the height difference between me and the tackers: I don't block them when they are going for a shot... but they had to yell "SHOOTING", and, on rebounds, I had to let the ball hit the ground before making a grab.

The hoop was at the top of the drive, and the drive sloped down toward the house, with a lavender garden bed on one side. So if you were throwing from the downhill side, the hoop was way higher than the regulation 10' and you had to compensate.

Incidentally, and this brings an ironic smile to my lips, we moved house and a friend of mine said he would buy the hoop and save me the cost of advertising. He was going to buy one himself, you see, and the $125 I was going to charge him was about a third the price of a new one. Only one problem... We had to dig it out of the ground first. So! Off and get a trailer, and let's get it out.
When we originally cemented it in place, we made it so it wasn't going move... that was the plan; it was not going to move or lean. So, Johnny (the guy that helped me install it in the first place), my friend who was buying it, and I, was just a bit perplexed as to why the thing wouldn't budge. Of course the 1/3cu. m. of concrete we put around the base didn't have anything to do with it, did it? So what to do? Well there was only one thing to do, and that was, unhitch the trailer, tie a rope to the tow ball, and pull it gently out of the hole using the power of the wagon.

My last words to my two "helpers" were, "Hey watch it fellas, don't let it come down and hit the car." Well, I just knew what was going to happen. And the dent in the roof of the wagon cost $250 to fix. So for that basketball hoop we pulled a bad deficit.

Now before we get to the poem, and I know that this is turning into a ramble, but it has to be told. We had a little Jack Russell come Pomeranian cross named Buffy. He stood about the same height as a Jack Russell but he had a beautifully soft face, a bit like the Luck Dragon in Never Ending Story. Well he had a way of bringing the most serious and hard fought game to a standstill when he started humping the lavender bushes that lined the drive. Yep! They were about dog size, and nicely rounded, and here was this little buff coloured thing going for his life. Now you can imagine the effect that had on the kids, can't you? We just couldn't have a serious game after that.

Now I can hear you asking yourself - "Why on earth would a dog hump a lavender bush?" Sounds crazy! And get this... he had a zero tattooed in his left ear, and so, in a manner of speaking, his pockets were empty, and that sort of act perpetrated on even the most curvaceous lavender bush, should not even have entered his little doggy mind.

There are reasons behind simply everything, though, and this went back to when we doggy sat a friends Dachshund. Gus the Dachshund was hung like a single tyned ripper as would be towed behind a huge tractor. Now stump rippers don't usually come as single tynes, usually three or more, but you get the picture. And as the size of his equipment was, so was his preoccupation.

We gave up fighting him off Buffy after the first week. Buffy, virginal Buffy, seemed to be coping and able to defend himself. Al least, he was faster than Gus. Not only did Gus have little Dachshund legs, but, like a racehorse that is handicapped with lead weights when racing, Gus had this huge appendage that slowed his running style quite considerably.

Well, wouldn't you know it? Sometime into the second week, Buffy gave up running, and the tables were turned; a clear example of learned behaviour. So here we were, treated to the amazing spectacle of these two dogs running themselves ragged, running in circles, like a dog chasing its own tail, trying to climb on the others hind quarters. Neither would give up, and neither clearly won the contest.

Gus came and went, but the learned behaviour stayed... lavender bushes can't run, and they can't hide.

Anyway, here's the poem...

The Game

There stood out front, and boasting hard the two opposing teams
There was Gareth, Chad and Cameron with faces mighty mean
The other side was just as bold, but stood there just one man
It was dad in business shirt and tie with basket ball in hand

“Who’s to start” we argued and the choice came down to shots
“The first to get a foul line score when the other side does not”
That important matter settled, the game could now begin
The three determined shorties felt for sure that they would win

Fast and furious was the pace as each ball found the net
The rules were altered constantly and dad’s business shirt was wet
There were long shots, short shots, jumps and fades and tricky footwork too
And lots of stops for passing cars and neighbours not a few

After fifteen rugged minutes of the struggle to and fro
The boys were one point from a win and then came dad’s free throw
He took the shot from centre court just by the lavender bed
The shot described a perfect arc and hit nothing but the net

So now the scores were all tied up at twenty points each team
The boys foreboding silence caused dad’s sweaty eyes to gleam
Cameron threw in from the side a tricky pass to Chad
He passed it on to Gareth but it was snatched away by dad


A short sharp dribble in the key an underarm upload
Saw the ball bounce off the board and roll on to the road
Old Mr Clancy driving by was waving as he sang
And the scores were still at twenty all when the basketball went BANG!

Well... how to kick this thing off?

How about my grandson Addison? I mean, it's a subject that fascinates me. I can't get enough of the little tacker and believe me (and this is not the ravings of an amazed grandfather), he is really something.

Get this... 2yrs 9mnths old (born 2/11/2006) and as sharp as a tack! I'm sitting in my office doing stuff, and I hear in the background the light scrape of kitchen chairs being dragged across the tiles. Quietly, mind you, so as not to arouse too much concern on the part of anyone in earshot. So right away, I know what's happening, but decide just to leave it a bit longer... no great rush... while the chair is scraping, it's not being put to any dangerous use... just scraping across the tiles.

Well the scraping stops and I almost got up to have a look... but... after about 15 seconds, it starts again. Same deal... let it go, don't worry, and then after a little bit, when its gone quiet, we'll see to it then. Well, the scraping stopped and I though - "time to have a look", and I was amazed. Here he is; little Addi, just over 2 1/2 years old, with a kitchen high stool right next to the fridge, his little play chair (1/4 size) on top of the high stool, and... with another high stool right behind the first!

The objective? Well after some careful study, he realised that the cupboard above the fridge was the one that hid the jellybeans.  The jellybeans were his treat if he did his business in a potty and not in his nappy. I thought I was on top of things, but blew that one! He'd already been up, grabbed the jellybeans and was already back down.  His face, split with a smile, was proud as he showed me his prize.  All I could do was shake my head in disbelief and laugh.