Unbelievable!
Whenever I think the world is getting a little less insane,things like this show up.
I was speechless on this one for the longest time. Why are we in the UN again?

Why so few Watusi jockies?
One of the failures of people who cry "rascism" is the inability to examine in depth the individual issues. They prefer to do what they accuse others of (am I doing it here? maybe) pidgeonholing something they don't understand into a hole of their own devising. Steven Den Beste illustrates another, fact based way to understand the natural inequities that occur

Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.
- Bertrand Russell

Dumb guy of the week

this guy is pretty dumb. Nature doing it's job, weeding out the stupid.

Practice Random Acts of Intelligence and Unpredictable Acts of Logic
Kevin McGhee
Had to post this, without permission tho, sorry!

Don't drink while reading this

I've been on vacation, but this got me snickering

Meditation on faith
Lileks published an interesting meditation on the nature of religion. Personally, I've gone through a lot of the spectrum of religious orientation, and I find his distinction between types of religions interesting. but this is in my wheelhouse so I have something to add to it. I have read a lot of Lutheran theology, and I don't remember in which thick volume this distinction was made, but I find it telling; (paraphrasing from memory) "...there are many kinds of religion in the world: all of them save one are concerned with what you are to do to make yourself right with God. The Faith of Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Luther teaches you how God has done, is doing, and will do to make you right with Him." Islam is simply the most blatant example of (works righteous) people who, aware of the call to holiness assume a hugely erroneous thing: that they are Able.

When (and if) you really hear what God is saying to people about what he wants, you realize he wants something totally alien. Actually this last sentence has a seed of deception in it - reading it you might get the idea that if you meditated long and hard enough, you might come to the Enlightenment. The truth is this, humanity has no natural understanding of God or ability to obey him. The classic mantra is that man is a "Blind, dead enemy of God" The deception that we are in is fed by the fact that we are constantly being upheld, enlightened and empowered by Him. There may be some moral ability evidenced in our actions, but it is roughly analogous to watching a puppet move and thinking that he can leave the stage and direct his own actions.

The functional error that all work-righteous religions fall into is this: if we just get enough rules out there and make the punishment onerous enough, we will change men's hearts. The original Cargo Cult! It doesn't work.

Crop circles
I saw "Signs" over the weekend and found it a wonderful tale that I can't say too
much about without spoiling it. But I will say it addresses more issues than just
the crop circle phenomenon. It may be too leisurely for some peoples tastes,
and there no "horror" cliches are used. It's alternately scary, funny, and deeply
thoughtful. It also portrays the death of loved ones very realistically, the characters
are devastated and scarred for life.This link
looks at real life crop circles from the inside.