Doc Ott’s Apologia Blog

We ok, here are two pictures of me. One was taken in October of 1990 as I was getting my passport to travel to Haiti to do some missionary work. The other was taken exactly 15 year slater (october 2005) when I was renewing my passport and needed a new picture. It looks to me […]

Most of us would admit that society seems to be on a generally downward slope. We have all sorts of social ills that the federal government likes to throw money at, yet it gets worse. Crime, poverty and drugs are just symptoms of what I believe is the real problem, […]

I feel my most important job as a college professor is to teach critical thinking skills, not to teach complex one-use algorithms to students. The students I teach in my General Chemistry class want to go on to become doctors, pharmacists, engineers, etc. They need the skills to look at a problem, know what information […]

Ok, so this one is controversial, more so than some of my other posts, but try to stay with me here. For that to happen, you have to stop believing that the Earth is only 6000 some odd years old. Stop thinking that some almighty being (some people prefer to use the […]

I have always been a very independent person. My parents raised me to solve my own problems, and I was given the gifts to do just that. I was a problem solver, I got so good I could solve other people’s problems and I did that too. I was a go-to guy. If I didn’t […]

Some friends of mine asked if I was willing to cut down their 40’ pine tree. I happily agreed, knowing that it would be fun for me and an excuse to buy a chainsaw.
The tree so sentenced to death

Tying off the top before ‘topping’ the tree

What a show off

It was a lot of fun, and […]

Ok, so here’s a left curve for you. I just got done watching the movie ‘Fight Club’ with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. I thought I had an idea what the movie was about, but it turns out, I didn’t have a clue. I think that is why I enjoyed it so much.
I discovered […]

Ok, around the time I had my Awakening, I also made sure I wrote down things that were going through my mind. It is finally time to put these words (wisdom? Ha!) down for the record. Some of them were extracted from books I have read, other are all my own. I present them here […]

Ok, so I recently looked back at my recent blog entries and noticed a rather negative tone over much of the postings. I decided to go out of my way to write one that is positive and happy, although life recently has been hard for me to do that. I will try my best though…..
I […]

Don’t you just hate people who sit around and bitch for the sake of bitching? They just sit around and seem to complain. They MIGHT have some idea how to solve the problem, make things better, but that would require effort on their part. Most of them don’t want to make that effort, because bitching […]