I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
June 28, 2011 - 12:03 p.m.
I didn't go out yesterday and I should have. It was a beautiful day. I didn't take notes about what to write about even though I had some ideas. Writing today is going to be a challenge.
There are the old standbys like food. I made steak and French fries for dinner. That pretty much never gets old. I don't want a cook. I love cooking. What I want is someone to clean up afterward. That's the hard part.
Some men love buying tools. I do too but I can rarely economically justify it. I wouldn't use it enough. A good screw driver is enough for me. What I can just justify is buying kitchen tools. I cook every day. I was not satisfied with most of what my mother had and most of it wasn't no-stick safe. So I got two spatulas, (shouldn't that be spatulae), a fork, two kinds of tongs, my brand spankin' new slotted spoon, a French press, coffee grinder, ice coffee maker (that was a gift), and a set of measuring spoons. I use all of them often so they are worth it. I love little things that make life easier.
The Nashional Batnoses had a bad week. We are still in second place but are now 6.5 behind the hated Colonial Vipers. 
It doesn't help that my second hottest pitcher got hurt on Sunday. I don't think I've mentioned the best player on the team by far, Justin Verlander. I haven't crunched the numbers but I'm pretty sure he's the most valuable fantasy baseball pitcher. He leads the league in WHIP, Wins, and Innings and is fourth in ERA. His numbers the last four weeks is insane. 5 Wins an ERA of 0.86 and a WHIP of 0.619. If you doubled the ERA it would still be great. He pitched a no hitter. He seems to pitch at least 8 innings every game.
I always get excited at great performances. A great thing about sports is that when someone excels it becomes obvious.
And now I switch into curmudgeon mode. I love Move-on.org but hate this meme they are trying to start.
I'm proud to support equal rights but I find this way of doing it offensive. A list of heterosexual people acting like idiots is not an argument for same-sex marriage. If you replaced "same-sex" marriage with any of the ridiculous analogies the hard right uses, polygamy or marrying animals, the argument would be equally valid. It says nothing about same-sex marriage. Is the point that marriage is just ridiculous? If this was representative of marriages that would have some substance but of course it isn't. These are bizarre events and that's what makes them newsworthy. This is not an argument about anything actually. It is just inflaming emotions with irrelevancies then directing them towards a target. I don't like the target but I hate this tactic even more. As Michael Palin or anyone that watched Monty Python's Flying Circus can tell you; "An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition."
You want to make the world a better place? Start with arguing issues rationally.
Now I'm not saying there should be no emotional appeals. It's irrational to think that most people are rational. But there emotional appeals that are relevant, not distraction. You want to support same-sex marriage don't tell tales or heterosexuals marriages gone bad. Tell about loving gay couples that suffered because they couldn't get married; people not being able to visit their loves in the hospital; people denied basic services, people denied the hundreds of legal benefits of marriage. Give success stories from states and countries where it is already legal. Don't say, "Look at these terrible people now direct those feelings towards opponents of gay marriage."
Nothing makes me feel as alienated as people reject rationality. It isn't just a matter of not being rational, it is not seeing it as a virtue. Every time I catch a seen in a Star Wars movie and someone says, "Look at your feelings ..." to determine the truth I want to scream.
I get particularly upset when ideological allies do it because as Krugman loves to say, "The facts have a well-known liberal bias." If we stick to facts we win. The right likes to lampoon the left as the ones concerned with feelings but of course it's right that depends on emotional decision making. We live in a country where most people don't believe in evolution and most of those that don't are conservative. The basic Republican playbook since Nixon has been to play on people's hates and fears. They will protect you from the commies, blacks, immigrants, gays, and Muslims, and put them in their place. Is there anything as useless as making laws forbidding localities from adopting Sharia Law since no American town had or would and it would be illegal under the First Amendment anyway? But they've made laws like that.
The campaign to build support for the Iraq war was used the same trick as that Move-on ad. "9/11, Al-Quaeda, Terrorists. We are going to attack Saddam Hussein." Then they'd say, "We didn't say Hussein was responsible for 9/11." No they just constantly juxtaposed the two. If it was wrong for Bush to do it it's wrong for Move.on.
As I started to write this I took a survey rating how Miss USA contestants answered "Do you think evolution should be taught in the schools." Talk about feeling alienated. So few gave what I thought was a good answer. Evolution is not an abstract debating point. Exposing students to opposing viewpoints is like teaching theories opposing the heliocentric theory of the solar system. That too brought on a violent religious backlash and took many years to become accepted. Evolution is only a theory in the way that the heliocentric theory is only a theory and universal gravitation is only a theory. This is not something that has two reasonable sides. Science is not politics. The contestants clearly don't understand that. Most people don't understand that. That scares me.
Didn't I have a funny end for this? I thought I did. I do. It just isn't original.
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
Wise Madness is Now In Session - May 28, 2018
The NFL and the First Amendment - May 27, 2018
On The Road Again - May 26, 2018
Oliver the Three-Eyed Crow - May 25, 2018
creative commons
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Horvendile June 28, 2011
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