Friday, March 30, 2007

Anti-Mormon Nonsense

I like to think I'm tolerant of other people's beliefs. It goes back to the ol' Golden Rule. I'll believe what I want to, you believe what you want to, let's not force our beliefs on each other and everybody wins.

So as the LDS general conference approaches and the corresponding spike in anti-Mormon propaganda, it just leaves me scratching my head a little bit as to what these people's motivation could possibly be. Take "too small shirt with bullhorn" guy, for example. Anyone who has taken the stroll to the Conference Center to attend a session knows just who I'm talking about. I guess what he's trying to say is "your religion is false, you're all going to hell". But whatever his message is, in whatever form he tries to deliver it, it completely escapes me. The only thing I think, in those precious few moments as I walk by, is "my man...it's uncanny how astronomically insignificant your life is." And then a split second later I am thinking about what's on the menu for dinner afterwards. :)

Basically my model of the belief spectrum goes like this...on one end you have people who believe good things. Next comes the people who believe bad things. And at the crap end you've got the people who only believe that what you believe are bad things...and for some inexplicable reason even take action on that belief. It's ludicrous.

Hey bullhorn guy...what are you doing?? What's the point? Life is too short for this. Go watch a sunset and play with a puppy. And get a shirt that fits for crying out loud...

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Grand Canyon Skywalk

When I first heard about this, and saw the artist's conception drawing of it, I thought, "Oh boy, what an ill-conceived, tourist-trappy, sellout idea." Well apparently they finished the monstrosity and had the grand opening ceremony yesterday. Here are a couple pictures, first the conception drawing, and then an actual photo of the finished product:




Is anyone surprised that the conception drawing, while still a horrible idea, at least makes an attempt to be at harmony with the environment, while the finished product looks like some kind of hastily constructed Evel Knievel publicity stunt, completely desecrating one of the most serene and beautiful places on earth, yea, even one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. Just shameful.

And what really gets my goat, is that while I think it's a bad idea from top to bottom, at least if it did end up looking like the conception drawing it would kind of be a trip standing on a platform that stuck that far out (relatively). But they didn't even accomplish that. The finished product looks like it sticks out maybe half as far. All that effort and hoopla and fanfare for what? This thing is overflowing with anticlimax.

And one more thing. :) Even if it did stick out as far as in the drawing, the view from the floor (it's got a glass floor so you can look down to the canyon bottom) could not possibly warrant the $75 they are asking for one measily stroll around it. I may be going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing the view of the canyon is not that different from the rim, and from 65 feet from the rim.

Nice work, Hualapai. Way to completely sell out. What happened to all the "the land is sacred" BS that we get force fed in the movies these days? I hope it never makes back its unbelievable $30 million pricetag and sends a message to other would-be sellouts...