Stan Taylor

I’m a creature of habit. Almost every morning, I get one breakfast taco at Taco Cabana on my way to work. One taco costs $1.07, and I try to give exact change whenever possible (my OCD). Yesterday, I followed my routine.
On the way home from work, I stopped at the pharmacy to pick up a medication. When I got to the register, I was surprised to find that I had no cash–I remembered that I’d gotten a $20 bill the day before. While staring blankly at the pharmacy cashier, I quickly went through my routine. Suddenly, it hit me: yesterday morning, I’d given the Taco Cabana drive-through cashier $20.07, but because I was so accustomed to giving exact change, I didn’t think about my change. Apparently, the cashier is also a creature of habit.
I figured the money was lost, but this morning I mentioned it to the Taco Cabana drive-through cashier. She immediately called over the manager on duty who said that the register was indeed about $20 over yesterday. He took my name, address and phone number (in case the corporate office checked it out, he said) and instructed the cashier to give me my $19 change. I drove off with my missing cash and today’s taco (eggs and cheese, if you’re wondering).

Fred Clark’s blog post A Surge of ‘More’ is, to my mind, a brilliant insight into the mind of people who still support President Bush and his actions with regard to Iraq. Go read it.

I’m happy to report that Eliot Gelwan, one of my favorite bloggers, is blogging again after an unexplained hiatus that started last fall.

We just returned from a winter vacation in Red River, New Mexico. We got stuck for two days in Santa Fe during the biggest snowstorm in decades, and had to drive home almost 1000 miles in one day. Stay tuned for vacation photos.

I caught this morning’s This I believe essay by Episcopal priest Richard Rohr. In his essay, Rev. Rohr explains that his “religious belief has made [him] comfortable with ambiguity.” He continues:

Whenever I think there’s a perfect pattern, further reading and study reveal an exception. Whenever I want to say “only” or “always,” someone or something proves me wrong. My scientist friends have come up with things like “principles of uncertainty” and dark holes. They’re willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of “faith”! How strange that the very word “faith” has come to mean its exact opposite.

I read that as a more eloquent statement of what I always say: for me, faith is about the journey, not the destination.
Ironically, at the end of the essay, Rev. Rohr makes an absolute statement:

People who have really met the Holy are always humble. It’s the people who don’t know who usually pretend that they do. People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind. It is a litmus test for authentic God experience, and is — quite sadly — absent from much of our religious conversation today. My belief and comfort is in the depths of Mystery, which should be the very task of religion.

So, according to Re. Rohr, if you think it’s about the destination, not the journey, then you just haven’t had a ‘genuine spiritual experience.” This is where my belief differs from that of Rev. Rohr. I’ve thought long and hard about how a belief in God can mean such diametrically opposed things to different people. My conclusion is that there must be some reason that I can’t comprehend. For me, that remains a mystery.

From NPR news:

A fence-building company in Southern California agrees to pay nearly $5 million in fines for hiring illegal immigrants. Two executives from the company may also serve jail time. The Golden State Fence Company’s work includes some of the border fence between San Diego and Mexico.

A New York Times Magazine article ponders why the ‘hidden fee’ economy works–why, for instance, consumers put up with hotels charging outrageous sums for items in the mini-bar.
The article summarizes the explanation theorized by some economists. But I’ve long felt that a big factor in the case of hotel fees and other travel-related fees is the expense account. Consumers are more willing to pay an unreasonable charge if the company foots the bill than if they had to pay it themselves.
The effect of expense accounts may not explain the ‘hidden fee economy’ as a whole, but it’s bound to play a big role in the travel-related sector.
As a side note, on the few business trips I’ve made over the years, I was so outraged by the fees that I refused whenever possible to incur them, even though my company paid the bills. Maybe if I traveled regularly, I wouldn’t be so diligent. Who knows.

I’ve noted for a while a lot of misunderstanding about hydrogen fuel cells as a possible solution to our dependence on fossil fuels. This article correctly points out that since we have to manufacture hydrogen, it is really an energy storage mechanism, not a fuel.
The manufacturing process uses electricity to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. The resulting hydrogen is collected, and distributed. Then fuel cells combine the hydrogen with oxygen again, producing water and electricity. It takes more energy to create, collect, store and distribute the hydrogen than is regained when it is used to create electricity–which makes hydrogen a very inefficient energy storage mechanism.

When I walked into the office kitchen the other morning to get my coffee, several of my coworkers were huddled in front of the snack vending machine, talking excitedly. It seems that one of my coworkers, let’s call him Ray, wanted to buy a Pop Tart for breakfast, but the Pop Tart in the front had slid to the side and looked like the coiled steel thing might not push it all the way out.
The group discussed whether they thought “Ray” could shake the machine enough to make the Pop Tart fall if it didn’t come out, whether he could possibly get his arm through the slot up into the machine, etc. I thought they were going to take bets.
Finally, “Ray” deposited his coins. There was a tense silence in the room as the Pop Tart moved toward the edge but not all the way. “Ray” shook the machine a few times and it fell. The group cheered.
That drama was the highlight of our day at the office.

In case you’re wondering, O N E L is this year’s spelling of the mantel stocking hooks, created by Katie.