Reality?

I just had a heated conversation with an officemate. Actually, it started as a group discussion and quickly deteriorated into a debate between the two of us. The original subject was the death penalty, but tangent after tangent carried us far off base resulting finally in this dialogue:

Officemate: I base my morals on my Christian background, while you have nothing to base your morals on. (referring to the fact that I am agnostic)
Nicholas: You seem to enjoy saying that because I do not subscribe to an organized religion, I have no moral base. My moral base comes from what I perceive to be right and wrong.
O: Exactly! What YOU perceive! How do you know that it is right?
N: I don't - and I never claim to. I have faith in my moral beliefs in the same way that you have faith that the foundation of yours is the word of God, but you can't prove your foundation to be right anymore than I can prove mine. My 'religion' of one is no less valid than yours of two billion.
O: Except that mine maps to reality.

'Mine maps to reality' - I would very much enjoy an argument showing that to be true.

Olivia?

From animal-world.com:

The sex of most conures is difficult to determine by physical characteristics alone even if you are an experienced breeder...[It] must be determined by either a surgical probe...[or] by DNA testing, usually a blood sample or a few plucked feathers sent to be diagnosed in a lab.

Since I now live alone and have no roommates to liven up the house while I'm away, I have decided to get Ollie a mate. Green cheeks don't reach sexual maturity until 3 years of age so I won't have to worry about having little Ollies for a while, and if/when they do lay eggs, taking them away typically upsets them for only a few hours (fortunately, birds have very short memories). When I bought Oliver, the guy at the pet-store said he was "almost certain" he was a boy - but just to make sure, I plucked a few feathers (a process which Ollie did not like at all) and sent them off to Avian Biotech International to be DNA tested.

Guess what - he's a she.

Yup - Oliver will now have to be Olivia. Fortunately, I always refer to him (I mean her) as 'Ollie', so I won't have to change that practice. Poor Ollie - I hope she doesn't grow up all butch because I raised her as a boy ;-)

Are you marching?

This weekend is Houston's Gay Pride Parade - a yearly event with a turnout of over 150,000 people. Despite the fact that I do indeed like women (a lot as it turns out), I like the idea of supporting my gay brethren, so when I found out that Planned Parenthood was going to have a banner in the parade, I quickly volunteered to help march it. So here are the critical points to understand before continuing:

Point A: I'm not gay
Point B: I am marching in the gay pride parade
Point C: Most people at least wonder if I could be gay

Ok - so here goes. I drive up to the entrance of my workplace this morning and show my badge to the guard - a guy who now that I think about it, is a bit on the effeminate side. As I show him my badge this is the conversation which ensues:

Guard: So, are you marching this weekend?!
Me: In what?
Guard: In the parade!
Me: (pause) The gay pride parade?
Guard: Yeah!
Me: Actually, yes I am.
Guard: Great - I'll see you there!

I drive on wondering how he could have known that I was helping to carry the Planned Parenthood banner...then it hits me.

Ok - so I apparently have made the transition from 'guy who everyone thinks might possibly be gay' to 'guy who is so obviously gay that to verify it would be a waste of time and effort.' Sheesh!

Click-click-saw

This is so amazing! A friend sent this to me and I was certain that it was a hoax, but everything I am reading seems to indicate it is legitimate. In the forests of Australia lives a species of bird called a 'lyrebird.' They have the most intricate vocal chords of all the songbirds and are known to imitate even incredibly complex sounds made by humans and machines. In this video, a lyrebird imitates a camera clicking, a car alarm and the sounds of loggers sawing trees in the forest.

Before anyone asks, no - my Ollie cannot do this, but he can fix printers.

A picture is worth twelve pages per minute

This weekend, Ollie decided to explore the innards of my printer:

I was tempted to print something right then, but I decided that would be mean :-)