Less Than Perfect Storm

In case you don't follow the news, it's snowing in the northeast US. Yes thats not only the top story, but its also pretty much taking up the ENTIRETY of all the newscasts today. As absurd as the local media can be, its really amazing that they can spend so much time covering something that they could have basically summed up with "look outside, see that foot of white stuff, well it's gonna keep coming for the rest of the day, be ready: moving on to the decade long war in the Congo that has taken over 4 million lives..."
I only watched the news because NY Governor David Patterson had just succumbed to over a year of pressure and mudslinging from his own Democratic party and announced that he would be dropping his re-election bid. After 24 minutes of snow "coverage", they spent about 33 seconds on the Patterson story before closing the show with a few minutes of recapping the previous night's Olympic results. They literally spent about 3 times as much time talking about the previous night's women's figure skating bronze medalist than they did talking about the capitulation of the Governor of New York, which had JUST HAPPENED. You know what they used to call important things that had just happened back in the good ol' days? NEWS!

Needless to say, waking up this morning the driveway had to be shoveled. My mom had to leave for work and my octogenarian strongman uncle had been out in the driveway already attempting to clean the area around my mom's car. I went out and realized that while the snow was very powdery and likely easy to scoop away, stepping on it compacted it quite effectively and made it exceedingly more difficult to shovel. My uncle had walked several times back and forth from the door to my mom's car, compacting the walkway, and then was walking circles around her car attempting to rub the ice off of the windshield with his hands, not wanting to use a tool that might scratch the windshield. I realized that I would have to immediately take over if this job was not going to continue to be made more and more difficult as he compacted more and more of the snow. Prying the shovel from him proved to be a very difficult task, as anyone familiar with the Iranian mannerism of Tarof would understand. When I did get the shovel and began working I confirmed my fears about the difficulty of shoveling the packed snow and likewise the ease of shoveling the unpacked snow. When my mom asked me to start her car and allow it to heat up I knew I had little time before the entire driveway would be marred by two lines of snow packed by the car's tires.
I'll break from this tale for a moment now.
Please enjoy the pregnant man.

One of my main concerns this year has been my health and weight. Taking a load of my fanny if you will. According to the digital scale at my mom's house I've lost 30 pounds this year, although according to the upright "doctor's office style" scale at the gym I've lost 50 pounds. While I would tend to consider a computer more fallible than the doctors office style, I don't trust the bastards at my gym as far as I can throw their 'roided up asses. I digress. I bring this up because I have found myself weighing myself often, often several times a day for no particular reason other than to see the crazy fluctuations in weight that happen throughout the day. So for some reason I had weighed myself just before heading out to shovel. And knowing I didn't have long before my mom rolled through the driveway and made my job much harder, I started shoveling like I was digging someone out of an avalanche.

I cleared the entire driveway in 10 minutes. It took me another 10 minutes just to clear the walkway which had been packed down by walking. When I came back inside dripping with sweat I weighed myself again. I had lost almost 3 pounds!
!!!!!BREAKING NEWS!!!!!
It's still snowing

Why?

While listening to a radio discussion about science and religion I found out that in the Tamil language there are 2 different words for "why?"
One references causation.
The other references purpose.

I love Dawkins' take on purpose. It's similar to his ideas on natural beauty. That is to say he is often hit with criticisms about atheism restricting his capacity for joy. If everything can be broken down and explained, then where is the joy in living? What he and I see as more accurate is that the very externalization of things like purpose and natural beauty to an Other is what threatens joy in life.
"Atheism is not a recipe for despair. I think the opposite. By disclaiming the idea of a next life, we can take more excitement in this one. The here and now is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The here and now is all we have; an inspiration to make the most of it. So atheism is life-affirming, in a way religion can never be. Look around you. Nature demands our attention; begs us to explore; to question. Religion can provide only facile, ultimately unsatisfying answers. Science, in constantly seeking real explanations, reveals the true majesty of our world in all its complexity...We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die, because they are never going to be born. The number of people who could be here in my place outnumbers the sand grains of Sahara. If you think about all the different ways our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here: the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privileged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world."