- Police negotiators have a rule: Never tell a paranoid to "calm down." #
Twitter: 2010-09-28
God in America
Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion.
The article describes a study in which researchers phoned up 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about religion.
On average, respondents got half the questions wrong. Breaking down the results by faith (or lack thereof), the highest scores were registered by atheists and agnostics, closely followed by Jews and Mormons.
Some of the knowledge gaps are amazing:
- Fifty-three percent of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation.
- Forty-five percent of Catholics did not know that their church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols, but actually become the body and blood of Christ.
As Nietzsche used to say: If you want happiness and peace of mind, believe. If you want truth, investigate.
You can test your own knowledge of religious lore with an abbreviated, 15-question version of the survey, available here.
Thomas Jefferson on Christine O’Donnell
For all of you pussies out there making fun of her, just know that I would bang her, and if I would bang her, then she’s hot.
EppsNet at the Movies: Wait Until Dark
“Did you know they wanted to kill me? I did. I knew even before they did. They were awful amateurs, and that’s why you saw through them.”
“I saw through you too. ”
“No, not all the way, Suzy. Even now, not all the way. The lovely thing was the way I let them set it all up. All that silliness of meeting in the parking lot, the whole thing, they had comic book minds. So, I let them do it their way, right up to the very end. And then, topsy-turvy. Me topsy and them turvy.”
Haha . . . what a fun movie!
High School Senior
My son, dismissing the need for parental advice in his senior year of high school:
“You only know what people tell you. I know what’s going on.”
Twitter: 2010-09-25
- RT @eddiepepitone: My gaydar was disabled by a hockey player making a pass at me last night. #
Here Ya Go, You Fat Bastards
MLB is rolling out an app that will allow fans at games to order concessions on their iPhone and have it delivered to their seats. I thought that option already existed, and it was called a wife.
I’m Worried About My Boy
He’s killing himself with schoolwork and college applications. He doesn’t sleep anymore, just keeps himself going with 5-hour energy drinks.
All of the college apps are due by Nov. 1 so if he makes it that far maybe he’ll be okay . . .
Twitter: 2010-09-24
- Time flies whether you're having fun or not. #
3 Rules of Politics
- When you control Congress but not the White House, blame the White House.
- When you control the White House but not Congress, blame Congress.
- When you control the White House and Congress, blame your predecessor.
Enlightened Perseverance
Your own passion and dedication have to be bigger than other people’s attachment to the way things have been, their fear of change and losing control.
Twitter: 2010-09-23
Well-Meaning but Without Understanding
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of
Guys at the gym who blow-dry their ass . . .
Burn it Down
I have waited all my adult life for an election in which voters have the fire to reach up and burn those who have been running the show for decades. But I didn’t know it would come from the right and center.
If the plan of those in power is to raise a ton of cash and run nasty TV ads saying you can’t vote for this new person, that he or she is flawed — I expect the voter will say, “Are you telling me I have no choice but to vote for you? Are you saying that I, this little voter out there, dare not take a chance on someone who has not yet let me down as you have? If that is what you’re telling me, that I have no choice, well, Mr. Big Stuff, you just have to wait — stay up late election night and see what I have done.”
Twitter: 2010-09-18
- USC earns top polls among “College Bests” | Daily Trojan http://goo.gl/cAAV #
- The only limits are, as always, those of vision. — James Broughton #
What You Might Be
You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspaper that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes you.
This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.
Twitter: 2010-09-17
- RT @SteveMartinToGo: OMG. President Lincoln has been shot! Wait, whoa, my internet connection is SUH-LOW. #
Twitter: 2010-09-16
- RT @serafinowicz: Tea = Gay Coffee #
- Amplifying Collaboration with Guerilla Facilitation http://t.co/ZJNXzVz #
- RT @eddiepepitone: This new car better be the answer to all my sorrows and regrets. #
Woody Allen
Q. How do you feel about the aging process?
A. Well, I’m against it. [laughs] I think it has nothing to recommend it. You don’t gain any wisdom as the years go by. You fall apart, is what happens. People try and put a nice varnish on it, and say, well, you mellow. You come to understand life and accept things. But you’d trade all of that for being 35 again. I’ve experienced that thing where you wake up in the middle of the night and you start to think about your own mortality and envision it, and it gives you a little shiver. That’s what happens to Anthony Hopkins at the beginning of the movie, and from then on in, he did not want to hear from his more realistic wife, “Oh, you can’t keep doing that — you’re not young anymore.” Yes, she’s right, but nobody wants to hear that.