Garry, just slightly odd in 1978 and more so in 1979, has these days become an unhinged creationist. It is one thing to take such a thing on trust, but quite another to come to it in spite of a working, educated mind. Garry does not accept that a train of logic based on the end conclusion as a starting point ("begging the question") is false. A number of exchanges have shown that it is impossible to reason with Garry on this. Conversation has become unpleasant since god as a topic won't go away.

Meanwhile... between 1998 and 2004 this Scott family web site steadily grew to its current 70MB, with sonic serving typically less than 25% of our monthly allocation of 1Gb in http requests. There were brief peaks around the births of Merinda and Edwin.

January saw the publication of Brendan Walker's book The Taxonomy of Thrill. The volume of data requested rose to about 15Mb/day or about 450Mb/month, almost half the limit after which we get charged extra, double what we previously saw. The extra volume went on pages associated with Brendan's work.

Then on January 30th, my Z-scale Suitcase Model Train Layout was mentioned on Carl Arendt's site...

To add insult to injury, April saw Carl's site named one of the 10 best model railroad sites by the main print magazine covering this topic in the USA, and up went the average volume. (Interesting to note that the print events are less sharp, but large in overall effect. Do most URLs arrive in a person's life via print? Hits on pages from Brendan's work sat at 16 in January, rose to 20 in March, 150 in April, and I project even larger numbers for May.)

The next assault came with Carl featuring another layout of mine in his May scrapbook, now with lots of print-based fanatics conscious of his site, and another hike occurred, as you see here, settng a new daily record. (Note the vertical scales change a lot, you have to compare carefully.)

As of now, Sonic predicts we will serve 4Gb this month, quadruple our nominal limit, sixteen times last year's rate. Normally I would be appalled at the thought of our internet bill doubling, but this is rather flattering.

This last couple of months has seen another significant event. My psychiatrist friend of many year's standing had got cross with me for things I have said in soapboxes such as Knock Your Socks Off (follow the link, look at the bottom). At first it appeared she could not tell when I was serious or if something was a facetious reflection upon history, but the details of the story change. She has now decided that it is not worth having anything to do with me at all. I am not sure how I should feel about this. I have to feel sorry for her axing parts of her past for what seem like rationalisations, and I am sad to lose a relationship in which I have invested for decades, but on the other hand I could take offense at getting slimed like one of her patients (it was she who taught me the rudiments of how to do it clinically in the first place, psychological martial art) and upon deliberation I am forced to acknowledge comments received in response to this news to the effect that she is a person with an unreasonably high opinion of herself (you can imagine I paraphrase here).

What makes one person defy logic, another happy to pay for total strangers to read about his personal activities, and a third willing to eschew an old friend on the basis of opinions expressed in a journal? I believe this potent force to be mortality. It gets stronger with the passing of the years.

Garry would have to admit to himself that he is going to die if he does not stick to the god story. His life is distinguished mainly by his having left little footprint, and this accentuates his need for something immortal in his life. He feels better if he carries on this fanatical crusade. My psychiatrist acquaintance once admitted to me that she had so intense an insecurity as to account for her doing things the wisdom of which was questioned by more than one of her friends. Since her complaints with me could be properly addressed by debate to agreement or agreement to disagree on personal values, as set out in Putting Out the Fire with Gasoline, I have to assume a deeper problem... it would be popular psychology for me to postulate a few of the possible outlandish motives. Of course I make the assumption that my personal values are not so offensive as to repel rational people.

And me? Part of my motive for having children, and for building this web site, is probably having a small shot at immortality, the chance to leave a footprint.
This is all you get.