A Sound of Sheer Silence

It was her idea to get certified for scuba diving.  Prior to her suggestion, I had never really thought about it, one way or the other.  I was not opposed to the idea, nor was I particularly excited about it.  She wanted to do it on the trip to Mexico, and I wanted to go on the trip.  So, I got certified. The first part of getting certified to dive is classroom stuff, followed by some dives in the pool.  Those were fine--the physics and biology of diving is interesting, and I didn't have too much trouble with the skills (one woman in our group panicked immediately upon going under water in the pool--claustrophobia). Getting into the ocean, on the other hand, was a different matter.  Twenty minutes into the first dive and I was hooked forever.  I just knew it.  It's a physical skill, but it is also relaxing.  There is an element of being alone, just you and the sound of your breathing, but it is an activity you do with other people--you an...

I have tried, with almost no success, to broaden the focus of this blog to include topics other than religion.  Don't get me wrong--I like talking about religion very much.  But I like a bunch of other things as well, and I want to have a more diverse set of topics to write about.  The question, of course, is what to write about. In the last couple of months, I have been getting in closer touch with my inner nerd.  He has always been there, but for a while I have tried to keep him under wraps.  I am a serious person, and so I need to put that stuff aside, or at least keep it hidden.  Well, the hell with that--no one cares, least of all me. But, here's the thing: there are major gaps in my nerd-dom.  The world of nerd-dom is basically binary--one is either a Star Wars person, or a Star Trek person.  I always viewed myself as a Star Trek person, but the truth is that I am a faux-Star Trek person because I haven't watched much of the prodigious S...

I have been meaning for some time to talk about things other than religion on this blog, but it seems like I can never quite get around to doing it.  So, I am going to try out a new series called "Pop Culture Mondays."  This will be a series of short or medium-size musings on something in the broader culture that interested me over the course of the week.  We'll see how it goes. *************************** According to the Billboard Charts, the Number 1 R&B/Hip-Hop song in the U.S. this week belongs to the woman shown at the left.  She goes by the name Iggy Azalea, and she is a 24 year old originally from Australia. Her song "Fancy" is clearly a big hit-- it was Number 1 last week on the overall Billboard Chart .  It is one of those classic "earworm" songs, in that it is incredibly catchy and sticks in your head whether or not you want it to do so.  For earworm songs, a discussion of whether the song is "good" or "bad" i...

The original idea behind restarting this blog was to talk about a bunch of stuff, not simply things related to religion.  So far, all of the content has had something to do with religion, so I would like to broaden things up a little bit.  Since it's Friday, I figured it's also time to lighten the mood a bit.  Thus, the first of our Friday Fun posts.  The topic (until I get tired of it)?  Classic music videos of the 80s and 90s, and how weird many of them were. We'll start with one of my favorites-- Heaven is a Place on Earth  by Belinda Carlisle (1987).