Brian Palmer reports on this statement of a USMC training officer, a captain: "Over the last 12 months or so we killed about 1000 Iraqis at blocking positions and checkpoints," the captain told the grunts. "About 60 -- six zero -- we could demonstrate that, yeah, he was a bad guy.…
In my opinion, these are two topics that should always be discussed together. I’ve collected these quotes over the years:
Heaven: “a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.” –George Bernard Shaw
Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name. –Willard R. Espy
“We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.” — Thomas Alva Edison
“I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with the sense, reason, and intellect, had intended for us to forgo their use.” –Galileo Galilei
“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.” –Frank Lloyd Wright
“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” — Susan B. Anthony
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” – Albert Einstein
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. –Bertrand Russell…
Would we harm our selves in ways that we would never let others harm us? Yes, actually. We do this all the time. This common occurrence has long intrigued me.
About fifteen years ago, I was trying to lose weight. A diet book I was reading presented a hypothetical, which I have embellished:
…Imagine that a gang of strangers repeatedly broke into your house. Each time they broke in, they brought a large basket of food with them. Each time they broke in, they tracked you down and forced you to eat food that you didn’t need or want. “Stop that!” You would yell. “I’m not hungry. Go away!” Nonetheless, the strangers forced you to eat food that you didn’t want. They returned every few hours and repeated his attack on you. Every time you tried to exercise, the strangers appeared and made you sit on the couch to watch television instead.
Over the course of months, the excess food the strangers forced you to eat caused your body to bloat larger and larger. Your clothing stopped fitting. It became difficult to get in and out of your car. Most of your acquaintances gossiped about how you had become “fat.”
And it got even worse. You became diabetic. You got depressed. You constantly cursed those strangers for making you obese and unhealthy. You bought special burglar-proof doors and windows (but they didn’t work). Because this gang repeatedly violated your rights, you even considered buying a gun to defend yourself from
For those of you who are nostalgic for the good old days of . . . oh . . . six years ago, check out this work by Dean Friedman.
We all know the story of the League of Nations. An early, botched attempt at international diplomacy, history tells us it collapsed due to its own lack of authority and under the chaos created by a body of countries all fighting for individual interest, rather than global good. In history classes, we read that the League of Nations proved totally ineffectual, doomed from the start by its own design.
In recent years, such criticisms have likewise fallen upon the League’s replacement, the United Nations. Citing failures such as Iraq’s 17 ignored resolutions since 1991, the corruption behind the Oil for Food Programme, and more recently, the UN’s inability to respond to crises such as the genocide in Darfur and the nuclear development of North Korea, the UN’s critics see the body as both powerless and bogged down in bureaucratic corruption. The UN either needs massive reform, critics say, or we should take John Bolton’s suggestion and blow ten stories off the UN Secretary Building and rid ourselves of the mess.…