Lisbon/Dublin: back on track

So after taking the long route around sevilla on the C3 local bus (there are two bus stations, one serving international destinations and the other regional ones. I had to change stations) i made it to the international bus station. After getting a testy reply to my question, "what's the best city to go to tonight so i can go to lisboa tomorrow? Faro or Lagos?" i decided to take her advice and go to window 11 for the answer. There, instead, i found a bus to lisbon at 4, getting me there at 8! What a surprise!

Original arrival was 6. I guess everything worked out after all...

now if the bus would only get here....

Lisbon/Dublin: inauspicious debut

Just got on the bus to Sevilla from Cádiz, about 5 hours later than I'd originally planned. The plan was to catch the 7am to Sevilla, change bus stations, get lost, and finally get on the 11am direct bus to Lisbon.

Considering it's 12:05 now and I'm still in Cádiz, i don't think that plan's happening.

I finished teaching yesterday night at 10:30pm, and after talking to karenne (a consultant friend) about her job, casually eating dinner, and getting into a discussion with my roommate about religion, i decided it was time to pack.

But since I won't be returning to the states again until the end of the Grand Finale® in August, I basically needed to get everything out of Spain that I won't need on my 6-week tour. This made packing a little more stressful.

By 4:15am I was done packing and procrastinating and talked to Becka, making her promise to not let me fall asleep.

By 5am, I changed my mind and decided to sleep for an hour, making her promise instead to call me.

She held up her end, but I whuffed. So did my alarms.

Now, I think I'm gonna try to get a 4:30 bus from Sevilla to Faro, a city in the famous Algarve region, stay for the night and take an early morning bus to Lisbon tomorrow.

At least, that's the plan. And that's assuming our bus driver doesn't dump our luggage out the side as he pulls away from a stop with the luggage door open again.

Updates forthcoming from my cell at least until the border...

Biblical miracles explained by science

and now for something controversial....

This professor at FSU, Doron Nof, recently published a study claiming that frigid blasts of air could have descended upon the Sea of Galilee and could have created blocks of ice strong enough for a man to stand upon. This would give a scientifically plausible explanation for Jesus's walking on water. Full article here

In 1992, the same scientist made waves with his explanation for how the red sea parted. The crossing of the red sea, he claims, could have been possible due to a ridge across the sea and high winds that blew the water over the ridge, exposing the terrain. Napoleon actually did it too, and barely made it across before the winds died down and water rushed back with tremendous force and speed. 8 minute documentary about this here.

This brings up an interesting topic, a Pandora's Box. Why is it that miracles were so abundant in Biblical times and so apparently absent today? Modern day Christians will claim that miracles exist everywhere - an alcoholic abusive father gives up the drink and turns into a devout family man, a born-again Christian survives a horrendous car wreck without a scratch, etc. But where are the burning bushes, parting seas, wines that come from water, and never ending baskets of fish and bread?

We have come to understand that the world was created in more than 7 days, that Adam and Eve symbolized rather than were the first homo sapiens, that man really did evolve. We've learned that the early people were "told" these explanations by God because they couldn't understand the complexities of evolution and science. We must also, however, recognize the human influence over all of these explanations: one man was usually "told" by God what to do, what to say, what to believe. He then relayed this message to others. Who's to say that man ever actually spoke to God? Who's to say he wasn't any different than David Koresh, Mohammed (according to Christians), or Joseph Smith (according to non-Mormons)?

Obviously the answer is faith. You have to believe things that you can't see, hear, or feel. But if humans have had thousands of different religions throughout time and even now and faith has been a part of all of them, who's to say they're not all wrong? Who's to say they're not all right? Who's to say that what Fadwa al-Addam believes is wrong and what John Sullivan believes is right?

Mr. Sullivan believes in what he believes because that's how he was raised, or someone came along at the right time in his personal development and told him that Jesus was the way. Ms. al-Addam believes in what she believes for the same reaons. When someone comes in with guns, swords, books, or money telling Mr. Sullivan or Ms. al-Addam to believe what they believe, are they going to?

The answer is it depends. If things are going well and they feel that their God, their faith, is taking care of them, and they have a choice, they probably won't turn from their religion. If they feel confused and are looking for answers and a missionary comes along, loves them and tells them that the way is through his God, then they might convert. If force is used and they are given the choice to die or convert, well, some will die and some will convert. But is their new religion any better than their old religion? What is the difference between one religion and another?

We could fill books with the answer to this trivial question, so the better question to ask is fundamentally, what is the basis for any religion? Faith in the unseen. What is this faith? Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. If there's no logical proof or material evidence, what's the proof that Islam, Hindu, Christianity or any other religion are the one true way to heaven? Obviously, there's no proof.

Thus, we must admit that there is a possibility Muslims, Jews, and anybody else are 100% right and we are 100% wrong. We can believe that the only true way to heaven is through Jesus Christ. But we must admit our own fallacy. We must admit that the best we can do is trust that this is true, and we will never know it to be true. And if we cannot know this to be true, we cannot know it to be true that everyone else is wrong.

Because they are really no different than we. They too are searching for explanation in a chaotic world. They have come across it by chalking unexplained events up to an invisible God. As time goes on, we learn that more and more of these unexplained events can be explained through science. Our faith evolves. But the fundamental question remains the same: do you or don't you believe? I do, but I'm not so sure that my God is any different than the Muslim, Jewish, or Greek gods... I'll leave that for a follow up.

Comments welcome

Virgin sacrifice to the baseball gods needed

Seriously, this has got to be a joke. My internet quit on me 10 minutes before Pettitte's first pitch. It's still out, and we're 30 minutes into the game. It cut out on me yesterday too: in the bottom of the eigth with the 'stros up 1-0 and Oswalt throwing darts.

The last time it went out on me? During the World Series. I had trouble all throughout the playoffs, but as soon as the season was over, I haven't had a snick of a problem. Coincidence? I think not. The baseball gods are obviously asking for something from me. I just need an oracle to tell me what cause I can't come close to figuring it out...

I'm gonna venture to say that in the four months since baseball season ended, I've been on the internet at this time of night (2 am) 5 nights a week for all but 4 weeks, when I've been traveling or visiting someone/something. Sometimes I've returned from going out, sometimes I've just got on after eating and showering, who knows. But I've been on the internet a lot at this time of night. I'm gonna say it's my prime time. So I would notice if it normally was spotty, or had issues this time of night. But no, it's been great since the WS.

And now, it's not working. For the first time since the World Series, there is baseball on. For the first time since the World Series, my internet has decided to stop working. Nada. Zilch. I'm getting less heartbeat than Ted Williams in his cryogenically frozen state.

The most perplexing part is, I can use skype! It's not like my connecion's gone bad or i need to reboot the router. those things I know how to fix. But having skype work (clearly showing there's a connection somewhere) and the web not? The only explanation is the baseball gods are frowning upon me.

Update: The only consolation was that Pettitte got shellacked and the astros lost 11-2, which would have been nasty to watch... I just hope it's not a harbinger of an injury, b/c normally studs like that don't get roughed up unless something's wrong with them...


Update 2: I think I may have the problem resolved, but we won't know til we have a problem. A friend suggested that the problem is with my DNS lookup tool: it can't translate the www.astros.com to the 147.183.191.21 IP address where the page actually exists. Apparently these DNS lookup tools go down often in non-US countries. Now I have a backup, so hopefully this will solve the problem. hopefully.

Dubbed movies

So I saw "Crash" tonight, dubbed into Spanish. It was a pretty good movie, as best I could tell, but what really struck me was the quality of the voice-overs of the Spanish actors.

I probably couldn't distinguish between bad Spanish acting and good spanish acting when I first came over here, but I can now. And there's nothing worse than hearing that whiny Spanish woman voice that gets substituted for almost every B-movie white girl.

And I think that's why I enjoyed Crash so much. All of the voice actors - save the Chinese woman at the beginning and end of the movie - were completely believable. At times I forgot I was watching an english movie dubbed into Spanish. Even the Arabic guy spoke with an Arabic accent, something that was crucial to his character. I couldn't tell as much between the well-spoken black director and the street-talking Ludacris, but could notice a slight difference. I'm sure that for a fluent Spaniard they spoke as differently as Snoop and Carl Lewis...

But the dubbed movie, besides its obvious commentary on race relations, brought up an interesting thought. Which actor should be marketed to Spanish audiences that only see the movie in its dubbed form? Don Cheadle, Brendan Fraser, and Sandra Bullock? Or should it be the voice actors that read their lines in Spanish? While I'll concede that the body language and movement of an actor is important, his primary tool is his voice. Give someone else the power over the character's words and, in my mind, he becomes the actor.

This, of course, leads to the logical conclusion: Spanish people (and anyone else who watches only dubbed movies) cannot really have favorite actors, nor can they judge quality acting. The performance is so dependent on the voiceover that the two must be taken as one. In this sense, I think the voiceovers should be marketed to the Spanish.

"Manuel García es Tom Hanks en El Terminal" should really be the pitch.

Furthermore, are studios spending money to translate their movies? Yes, of course. Are they spending money to hire better actors to read the parts of certain actors? I imagine the answer is yes. But what happens if the German Tom Hanks doesn't want to read a certain movie, or he wants more money than the Spanish Tom Hanks? On the whole, the actors stay consistent - Manuel García plays Tom Hanks in all his movies. But who ensures this? Do the studios shell out big bucks to pay these voiceovers of their actors?

I have a ton of questions about this issue, and if I find answers, I will post them here. It's certainly an interesting topic...

Breaking news: I've decided on a profession

I haven't maybe made everyone aware of the dilemna i've been going through recently in regards to the direction my professional career will head, but it's been like having Andy Sirkus in his latest offering on my back. I've felt chained and inept without knowing what i wanted to do upon my return to the states, but I think I have finally made that impulsive yet iron-clad decision that has come to be a trademark morgan over the years.

I'm going to be a consultant. I imagine I will want to do something in management consulting or strategic consulting, but I'll have to investigate it more thoroughly. For now though, I'm very pleased with what a consulting job at a large firm (if, of course, I can find one) will offer me: great training for entrepreneurial and/or C-level work with reasonable pay, great opportunites for advancement and something that will provide me with a creative problem-solving challenge. Those were sort of my biggest three 'wants' in finding a career.

In fairness to my decision-making process, this was hardly a decision made with little forethought: I've considered a myriad of careers recently and even read a book called "Do What You Are" about choosing a career based on your personality type. I just hadn't found anything that really struck my fancy until I caught a glimpse of the job description for Mercer Management Consulting on my daily job posting summary from Monstertrak and thought, gee, that sounds like exactly what I've been looking for.

I had considered being a consultant when I was a junior, but brushed off any long-term plans because I wanted to go to Spain (another iron-clad impulsive decision made after freshman year) and just wasn't prepared to make that decision at the time.

Now, I have direction in my job search and feel more confident asking people for help. I can now say, "I want to be a consultant" instead of "I'm looking for a job, but I'm not real sure what i want to be. Can you help me?"

That will focus my search enough that I think I just might end up with work next year after all....