QotD (for Truth)

Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

-Flannery O'Connor

For those who missed it - Sergeant John X's account of helping out, first hand.

Thoughts on an unwinnable war and meta-fors.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/engelhardt/engelhardt113.html

[cadged from jabber, who is a damn fine source of thought, commentary, and links]

Critical of both sides, and very well-considered.

I wish the flood of traffic the post that got metaquoted would continue to hit the other material linked up, because, while there's a lot of truth out there, only looking at part of it, while better than not seeing any of it, isn't as good as seeing more of it.

The hard part, for me, is knowing when to cut myself off, because (as was noted at the bottom of one of the links I was chaining along on Friday), I tend to read and chase to the point of making myself manifestly ill with stress and need to unplug altogether. There is simply -so much- quality information and commentary out there that trying to grasp even a fraction of it becomes overwhelming, and forces a shutdown.

Escape? Sure, there was some "Hooray, Death! The WoW Drinking Game" engaged in, and yesterday was spent in that finest of suburban male frivolities - parked on the couch while twenty-two big, fast motherfuckers ran into one another.

Saturday was spent doing a lot of yardwork, and a questionable decision to pay a crazy redneck with a chainsaw to climb onto my roof to prune the tree that overhangs the house (in retrospect, payment in full should have been withheld until he hauled all the debris away - I may need to rent a wood chipper to dispose of it, as well as his body. Fortunately, being a tool, he used my cel phone to call his brother, so I can track them down with a strategic application of technology if need be). To his credit, he did a pretty good job, and it really opens up that side of the property while still leaving plenty of shade for the roof.

Tonight is a dinner date with aishlynn, and Wednesday finds us lurching to TBBC to mock angel_sil for getting old.

Disgusted

In a nutshell, this country's problem with religious fundamentalism vs. rationalism

or

"why rafe took a short lunch"

Going to the sushi joint across the way from my office is a fairly regular occurrence. However, flying solo is far different than showing up with a couple of coworkers. For one thing, I don't get a menu, and am getting food dropped off at the table before I've even cracked the book I bring with me open.

Unfortunately, the Member's Club level of service doesn't make up for having still-functioning hearing, as I fail to ignore the conversation taking place behind my left shoulder - a middle-aged gentleman, a woman of similar years, and a pre-pubescent little girl are apparently meeting for lunch, and the topic du jour is creation v. evolution, with the guy as the proponent of evolution.

He got his ass handed to him. By the kid.

Not because he couldn't string together a coherent sentence, but because he was hampered by having manners. He conceded the "common ancestor for both apes and man" half-step, but the little girl was having none of it. Just before I got up and walked out (to enjoy 45 minutes of thinking of ways to make a point to someone like that[1]), she declaimed, "I'm sorry God's going to send you to hell for not believing in Adam and Eve." (At least her mother had the good taste to say, "Honey, you can't go around saying things like that.")

Mom seemed to think that both evolution and extinction were dubious, and specifically denied that "life evolved from single-celled organisms."

There's fundamentalism's strength in a nutshell - Religious fundamentalists are a nine year old who can't use chopsticks and won't listen, and rational scientists are a guy trying not to call her an ignorant, rude little bitch in front of her mother.




[1] Ask, "What color were Noah & his wife? Since they were the only two left after the flood, where did all the different-colored people come from? Either the flood didn't happen [which means The Bible isn't true], or those other kinds of people evolved from Noah and his children."

[2] Ask, "What's your favorite book? Okay, other than The Bible. Somebody made that up, to tell a story. How do you know that someone didn't do that for The Bible, too?"

Fearless Freak Forecast - Ophelia Edition [2]

Hey, looks like I got one right-ish, if the current projection by the professionals is to be believed. Up to this point, there's a pretty good correlation between this and this.

"100% Kosher"

More like "100% Trayfe"

http://www.theferrett.com/hunks/

I am going to go try not to think of painful places to stick a dridel now.