Ebonmuse looks closely at the religious trends at Daylight Atheism. The recent rates of growth/decline are especially interesting. It turns out that the fast growing "religion" is secularlism. I have to wonder how much more quickly attitudes would change (away from systems involving supernatural claims) if the mainstream media would stop walking on…
The best justice money can buy. Pretty amazing. The story was covered on Alternet.org: The following article is by the lawyers representing the families of four American contractors who worked for Blackwater and were killed in Fallujah. After Blackwater refused to share information about why they were killed, the families…
I collect my favorites from various sources, though I was reminded of many of these quotes by The Quotations Page (which offers quotes of the day). There is a condensed book in every good quote:
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948)
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Steven Weinberg (1933 – ), quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999
I’ve always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position.
Pat Conroy (1945 – )
It’s not a matter of whether or not someone’s watching over you. It’s just a question of their intentions.
Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive, 03-24-07
In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.
Johann von Neumann (1903 – 1957)
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)
To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 – 1799)
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961)
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Einstein
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.…
This crisp summary screams U.S. incompentence and corruption.
I am cynical about the day called Father’s Day. For most of my life, I have seen it as yet another store-sponsored holiday. America traditionally “celebrates” Father’s Day by buying trinkets from a store. I can’t think of a better way to degrade any occasion.
Father’s Day has become something much more meaningful to me since I became a father, but it is not about receiving trinkets bought at stores. I write this fully aware that there are other, more comprehensive, ways of interpreting the trinkets.
What is it to be a father? Like most things in life, being a father is not about being brilliant. It’s mostly about pacing yourself. It’s about staying reasonably focused over the long-haul. It’s about dealing with fatigue. It’s been about repeatedly saying “no” to one’s momentary desires in order to accomplish something much more important in the long run.
I envisioned this blog to be a place for ideas. For that reason, I’ve minimized revealing much information about my family. It’s not that I’m not crazy about my family. I am. I adore my wife and children. It’s just that I’ve tried to respect their privacy. Then again, writing about events from six years ago doesn’t quite seem quite so invasive. Therefore, I’m using this post about my real life children to illustrate the idea of parenthood.
It is true that being a father is about bringing home a paycheck to feed and clothes little children. Therefore, being a father can sometimes …