Welcome to the Party Pal!

Where to begin ... where to begin ... ah, yes! We shall start with some excuses for why there has been a void on my blog as of late. Some valid, others less valid. But I leave it to my readership to decide which is which.

Life, man. Life has been good. Life has been busy. Two year-olds have an enormous amount of potential energy bursting at the seams. Yet, for all their energy, they also can be extraordinarily expressive, which is certainly true of my Molly Jane. She will say something like, "Daddy! You're here! I'm so glad you're here and that we can be together, Daddy! I miss you today while you're at work!" The cuteness reigns supreme. She is almost three years old, and Emily and I find ourselves asking where the time went?

Did you hear that we're going to have a son?! Yes, Connolly (spelling to be confirmed by my wife later, to be sure) Kevin Ryan. The Ryan name was already well preserved through my younger bro's, but it does make me happy to know that the clan will spread throughout the earth now also directly from me. The line shall be preserved: Death before dishonour! So October will be a month long remembered. It has seen the birth of one Ryan, and will soon see the birth of another.

"Here's where the fun begins" -- Anakin Skywalker

At the tail end of 2013, I was intrigued by astronomy and bought and worked through an astronomy 101 textbook by Alex Filippenko. As a result, I became more and more interested not just in astronomy but also physics. I decided that I would like to have a workable understanding of Super String Theory, which means that I must also have a grasp on Special and General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics. It wasn't long before I realized that to meaningfully comprehend these areas I would need to adopt some advanced mathematics. Since January, I have worked through three math textbooks, covering basic arithmetic (hey, I had to start somewhere), geometry, trigonometry, number theory, statistics, and algebra. Next on my plate will be pre-calculus, and then calculus.

During all of this, I have read some books on physics for laymen: Beyond Einstein by Michio Kaku and The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. It seems to be the story of my life that the list of books I want to read increases in length at a never-ending rate. There are at least 5 more books on physics for lay-people that I hope to get to by the end of 2015. Also, thanks to Audible (seriously, thank goodness for Audible!), I've listened to multiple 24-part lectures by university professors on most of these topics. The more I learn the more I WANT to learn more. For example, who knew that the Standard Model of particle physics went substantially deeper than protons, neutrons, and electrons? I didn't, until recently. Kind of crazy actually. And of course, if String Theory proves to be true, even these fundamental point-like particles are actually made up of even more subatomic objects: strings. But time will tell.

A friend of mine, who is not a Christian, recently asked me why I was so interested in studying this subject since I believe God is ultimately responsible for it all? I told him that it is a demonstration of the creative power of the God that I worship, that such an all-powerful God could imagine and then design a universe such as ours! So mysterious, so complex, so incredibly breathtaking! It proclaims the majesty of His glory everywhere you look! He went on to ask why I was spending so much time studying the work of physicists who believe in things contrary to Christianity? I answered that just because I take issue with their worldview, and therefore, many of their conclusions, this does not mean that I cannot learn from what they get right.

Many, many, many, many, many more topics have been on my mind lately, each of which deserve their own blog article. The LGBT movement, the President, SCOTUS decisions, Michael Brown's new book that just arrived (!!!), and to a much lesser degree: video games.

Scott and I recently discussed our renewed plans to begin a YouTube channel: combined videos, and individual videos. More to come on that shortly! Stay tuned! Thank you for reading, and my apologies for not posting more regularly for a quarter of an entire year. Epic mcfailsauce.

Until we meet again, at last,
Rusty