Proud Papa

I have what could best be described as a love/hate attitude towards our government. On the one hand, I get annoyed at the seamingly endless number of politicians and beauracrats that seem to think that they know how I should behave within the privacy of my own home, or that my tax dollars would be better spent on a new piece of artwork in a government building instead of on my family's needs.

On the other hand, I'm truly appreciative of services like the police and the fire department, and I sure do find these roads they keep building to be awfully convenient.

This brings me to the subject of government schools. I didn't realize it when I was a kid, but the public school system in this country really does a good job of teaching kids that the great and glorious government is the answer to all of life's problems. Indeed, it wasn't until late in my teenage years that it even ocurred to me that the government could be wrong. I simply learned the perspective that they taught me.

In my late teens, I started becoming quite the history buff, and I was truly shocked and awed when I started learning "the rest of the story". It turned out that our glorious government sometimes does some pretty terrible things. I started to realize that, at worst, government can be downright evil, and at best it's full of beauracratic incompetence.

Flash Forward

All of this brings me to today. Munchkin goes to a government school, and in the grand tradition of government subjugation, he had this as part of one of his assignments...

"Write which part of the government you would like to work for and why?"

What would you guess that Munchkin, aka The Boy Genius, wrote as his response? That's right, he answered...

"I don’t wanna be part of the government."

*sniff* I've never been so proud.

(As a side note, I'm not sure where he got the "wanna" from. I'm wondering if he's been sneaking off to the computer in the middle of the night and instant messaging people.)

A Breakthrough in Quantum Physics

Sometimes the most random of conversations can accidently unravel some of the greatest mysteries of the universe.

Shnoogs - Have you ever noticed that skinny people walk really fast?

Eric - Nope, I've never noticed it before, but it makes sense since they are more aerodynamic. I bet they corner better too.

Shnoogs - I think it has a lot to do with WHY they are thin.

Eric - Yeah, I guess that makes sense too.

Eric - It makes me wonder, if they walk faster because they are thin, and they are thin because they walk faster, and the speed and thinness kept reinforcing each other, eventually you would have something almost infinitely small moving at the speed of light. Maybe that's what a photon is. It's a really really thin person walking really really fast.

Shnoogs - Just Wow.