We just had a huge thunderstorm blow through the city. These are three shots I was able to get out my window looking south towards Central Park and the Empire State Building. The large building in the foreground is part of the development that Beth and Brandon live in.

Baby Update:
Still no baby, but it's going to be any moment now. The next post will be the announcement of his birth. In the meantime I leave you with an UBER-POST!

Honduras Mission:
If you are interested, here is a short video (QuickTime file) of our trip to Honduras. It's really just a preview of a larger movie that's to come in the future. I took all the pictures with my new to me (read used) digital camera with a 20mm - 200mm lens (Jeremy you will have to show me how to use it).

Music:
Wondering what the best album I've heard recently from a band you've never heard of is? It's a band called The Nobility (formerly known as JetPack) and their new album The Mezzanine. If you want to say "I've been listening to that band before they were big," you should definitely plunk down $9.99 for this album. It's really a fantastic album, and I highly recommend it to people who like Indie Rock, The Beatles, Sufjan Stevens, etc. But you don't have to take my word for it. If you are in Nashville check them out live, and it appears they are coming to NYC August 6th and I will definitely be there.

Let's get political:
Do you have a need to do some easy political activism today? Click on the previous link to help motivate our Senators to pass The Dream Act.

Nature Doesn't Love You:
You know those shows on Discovery called "Man vs. Wild" and "I Shouldn't Be Alive?" I love watching them, but every-time I do I seem to be pushed further and further into thinking that nature isn't as cute and cuddly as it's made out to be. The truth is, given just the slightest chance, nature would like to eat you for lunch (yes you should click the link).

The director of "Rescue Dawn" Werner Herzog is famous for portraying nature as an enemy or obstacle for his characters to overcome. "Rescue Dawn" is no exception. There is even a line in the movie that goes "...don't you get it, the jungle is the prison". Check out this video of Herzog discussing his feelings about the jungle. Warning, it's kind of intense, but I think he inadvertently articulates the crux of Romans 8:19-22.

Nature is often portrayed as this fragile thing that needs coddling and protecting by humans. I think that misrepresents the fundamental nature of nature! Nature is a powerful wild beast that couldn't care less if you were stranded in the woods on a zero degree night without coat. It would have no qualms about freezing you to death. And for most of human history people really struggled to live against the power of nature, and a lot of the world still does to some degree. Remember the short story by Jack London called To Build a Fire (taken it back to 8th grade English)? That story is a great example of nature's ruthlessness.

I realize this is hardly a profound thought, and I like another person I know am not nearly as articulate about this as a whole host of other people would be. However, I think it's a valuable frame of reference to have that our survival in nature depends on us maintaining a balance between both using and maintaining nature. We must use all of our expertise and technology to take advantage of everything that nature has to offer, without upsetting the environment that is conducive for us to survive. If we continue to alter the natural world in ways that force nature to adapt, then the ways that nature might change could prove to be existentially devastating to how we have grown accustomed to living. Which is pretty obvious right?

Nature can be wonderful and awe inspiring, but it doesn't need to be viewed as such. However nature does require us to respect it and if we don't then we stand to loose much more than nature does.

This was taken from the latest issue of WIRED Magazine. This particular issues deals with Things We Don't Know, and it is completely fascinating. This particular mystery feels pretty applicable to me right now.

How does a fertilized egg become a human?
Imagine that you place a 1-inch-wide black cube in an empty field. Suddenly the cube makes copies of itself - two, four, eight, 16. The proliferating cubes begin to form structures - enclosures, arches, walls, tubes. Some of the tubes turn into wires, PVC pipes, structural steel, wooden studs. Sheets of cubes become wallboard and wood paneling, carpet and plate-glass windows. The wires begin connecting themselves into a network of immense complexity. Eventually, a 100-story skyscraper stands in the field.

That’s basically the process a fertilized cell undergoes beginning with the moment of conception. How did that cube know how to make a skyscraper? How does a cell know how to make a human (or any other mammal)? Biologists used to think that the cellular proteins somehow carried the instructions. But now proteins look more like pieces of brick and stone - useless without a building plan and a mason. The instructions for how to build an organism must be written in a cell’s DNA, but no one has figured out exactly how to read them.