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babe said:
In November of 1995, I had a pickup, and my Chow Chow dog riding shotgun. A windy day, I had been driving into a headwind fighting to keep my speed up, then turned so the wind was pushing me. I think I was doing 90 or more, and reached for something, looking down. I pulled the wheel just enough my right tires went off the pavement, and I took out a reflector along the road, then sorta hurried to get back on the road. Too fast. Transition jerked me and I went straight across the road. I went into the soft ground and sage and almost kept it straight and upright, but not quite. A sage tripped me over end over end. My dog smashed my hand on the steering wheel and then went out the back window, landing about one foot from the place where the truck landed next. I found the round indentation of where he hit, but he had taken off, and I never found him. Some kids from a little desert commune found him and hid him because they were not allowed to have pets, and when the adults discovered the contraband dog, they just shot him.

At any rate, I was wearing a seat belt, and I had for some uncanny impulse removed some heavy tools like wrenches and sledge hammers from the cab of the truck before I started out. A dope peddler found me upside-down, strapped in, in the overturned pickup. My hand was smashed, lacerated. Apparently, the dog had snagged on the rear-view mirror and taken part of it with him and impaled it in my hand. The dope peddler used a cell phone to call the highway patrol, and stayed with me for an hour. I was that far from help. He found a clean shirt in his travel bag and dressed my wounds and stopped the bleeding, and found my radar detector and thoughtfully confiscated it, saying it wouldn't help my case. Then when he saw the ambulance and the cops coming he hopped back in his SUV and drove on to I'm sure San Francisco.

The think that what sticks most in my recollection of this is how when he approached the truck, his voice sounded doubtful he'd find me alive. "Anybody there?"

I have made a roadside shrine of the spot, as I go by it frequently. I began a new life from that time. I remember explaining to the local sheriff who also went out to look at what happened, how the cause was inattention. All my accidents have been "inattention". Well, I have fallen asleep while driving, too. But when I have done that, somehow, I've slowed down to a stop. Still, waking up in the road, stopped, is pretty scary, too. At any rate, since I've been married, I've gotten my driving thrills from my wife. If I get drowsy I pull off the road, well off the road, and just sleep. I look for deer, and don't overdrive my headlights. In daylight, I make it a point to be defensive. Other cars I count as unpredictable and I try to keep a good space around me, if I have to slow down for a while and just stay behind that truck.

I preach to myself all the time when I drive, about how I want to die like my grandpa did. In a peaceful sleep at home in bed, at 103 years old or older, after a nice day of sitting on the front porch.
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Counting other drivers unpredictable is the way to drive around. Pray you a long life.
 
addictionary said:
Counting other drivers unpredictable is the way to drive around. Pray you a long life.
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It's like the gunfighters of the Old West, it's the split second that can mean everything. Driving 7mph slower, like the actual speed limit and not the "allowed overage", will also give you a split second, and both better maneuverability and a significantly lesser impact if you do collide with anything. Of course, with a Semi, at 60,000 pounds versus your 4000 or so, you'd still be grease on the road headon. Those little cars are more dangerous to be in overall, and I think insurance rates reflect that.

Ask Trout which vehicle costs more to insure, a Toyota corolla or a full size truck. Sit high in the saddle so you wont' be run into the ground.
 
addictionary said:
Riiiigghtt!..
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So why assume anything?

When you assume things, I'm told, something else will happen. Possibly embarrassing. I had a boss once who wrote in on a blackboard to be sure I understood.

AS2 U ME. Sorry for the little typo number.

Still, it's a reality of life we have to assume almost everything about the world and people around us to make decisions efficiently. Only it is good policy not to do it unnecessarily.
 
I'm a man of strong faith, but man is this situation in Nepal making me sad...



Babe, do you have a reasonable answer to what is happening there?
 
ONE LOVE said:
I was after a more philosophical take on it... one may ponder why a loving God would let 5,000 innocent lives perish? (if he exists)
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The definition of a loving God, imo, would not include never "letting" people die. How many billions do you want on this planet if no one ever died? That would be the very definition of a sadistic God to never allow people to die and therefore cause unimaginable grief in overpopulation.
 
ONE LOVE said:
I was after a more philosophical take on it... one may ponder why a loving God would let 5,000 innocent lives perish? (if he exists)
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One of the claims of the Christian faith tradition, more so I think than any other faith belief/theory, is that there is a better life beyond.

The so-called "atheist" is paying tribute to Christianity to base the argument for "social justice" on the axiomatic claims of Christianity. In short, the atheist assumes that since "God" has apparently not done His job right, we need to do it for Him.
 
For example, if we have a huge ecological problem say in the Pacific Ocean, and birds, fish, or marine mammals are washing up on the beach, we try to find out why, and worry about the impacts we are having on the global ecosystem, and we make an effort to clean up the mess. And preach great sermons to the masses of humans, and formulate new laws. And while no one needs to be an atheist to care, or try to make things better, the atheist assumes no one is more competent to deal with these things than himself.

It didn't take six chapters in Genesis for the authors of the Bible to delegate to Man the responsibility to care for the earth, and all the living things in it, but it took a hundred years for the atheist to get that far in his social conscience.
 
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LogGrad98 said:
The definition of a loving God, imo, would not include never "letting" people die. How many billions do you want on this planet if no one ever died? That would be the very definition of a sadistic God to never allow people to die and therefore cause unimaginable grief in overpopulation.
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I might have told this tale above somewhere, but there was an incident within my hearsay universe a few years ago, of an LDS mother with terminal cancer who wrestled with this issue, knowing she would soon die and that her young children would thence have no mother. She took occasion to intercept my wife on one of the very worst moments in her life, to tell her about it.

"I can see from your hairstyle that you're going through what I went through. . . .," she began, trying,and succeeding, to show empathy. Then adding that her cancer had come back and that it was beyond help now, and that she had. . . . I think. . . . five children. A "moderate" number by Mormon standards of yore. She was younger than my wife, and her children were still children.

She said she was grieving for them, having a hard time of it, when an "answer" came to her in the words, from a loving Heavenly Father, "But they're My children, too."

It conveyed to her a parent's caring for them, and a parent's torment about the fact that those children were away from Him.
 
Log, I didn't notice the small print in your sig line.

The coin pics, of the two sides of the coin, is great. In my world, though, the currency might be shaped different, mayble like a cut diamond or something, with a lot of interesting facets, but the simple statement that you realize there are two sides to a coin is a huge advance from some JazzFanzers who struggle with a one-dimensional take on any issue. . . .

But those small words: "The path to heaven runs through miles of clouded hell.", well, . . . . . a helpful little thought, maybe even "hopeful" to some.

I'd say, though, that we should hope for those miles of clouded hell in life, considering the alternatives.

What would we learn from dancing in the sunlight through the tulips, or strawberries, even.

uhhhmmm. . . . I could write a book here, that is not my point at the moment.
 
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They go better when done in an obscure, if not obtuse, thread, than. . . . say. . . . under a hot sun on the plains of Spain.
 
how many of you even know what the word "sociopath" means? I have a friend who is anti-LDS, a political liberal, in Long Beach, CA. She works as a social scientist, MSW, with prison inmates. A pretty depressing slice of life I guess. For sheer altruism, she contributes to some charities that try to help kids from some of the more problematic fundamentalist, that is to say, polygamist, LDS families. Safe houses, help finishing GED requirements or job training, finding good friends as opposed to the gangland sort. She observes that Mormonism has a distinct trend, if not a selection or training for, sociopaths. It's the "I AM GOD" notion, somehow, derived from a teaching that we can become like our Heavenly Father.
 
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