Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
—Mark Twain
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For an interesting read, try
The Logic of Suicide Terrorism
Its the occupation, not the fundamentalism
I wish I had more time to comment on this, but I’m inclined to broadly agree with the author. Does history repeat itself, with religion being the convenient vehicle to sell a secular agenda?
(Forwarded from email.)
God would like to thank you for your belief and patronage. In order to better serve your needs, God asks that you take a few moments to answer the following questions. Please keep in mind that your responses will be kept completely confidential, and that you need not disclose your name or address, if you prefer not to have a direct response to comments or suggestions.
1. How did you find out about God?
___ Newspaper
___ New Testament
___ Torah
___ Book of Mormon
___ Koran
___ Other Book
___ Television
___ Divine Inspiration
___ Word of mouth
___ Dead Sea scrolls
___ My mama done tol’ me
___ Near-death Experience
___ Near-life experience
___ National Public Radio
___ Tabloid
___ Burning Shrubbery
___ Roots on the River Festival
___ Other: Who? _______
2. Which model God did you acquire?
___ God of Israel
___ Jehovah
___ Allah
___ Higher Power
___ Just plain God
___ Krishna
___ Father, Son & Holy Ghost (Trinity Pack)
___ Zeus and entourage (Olympus Pack)
___ Odin and entourage (Valhalla Pack)
___ Gaia/Mother Earth/Mother Nature
___ None of the above; I was taken in by a false god
3. Did your God come to you undamaged, with all parts in good working order, with no obvious breakage, or missing attributes?
__ Yes __ No
If no, please describe the problems you encountered. Please indicate all that apply:
___ Not eternal
___ Not omniscient
___ Not omnipotent
___ His Will conflicts with my will
___ Finite in space/Does not occupy or inhabit the entire universe
___ Permits sex outside of marriage
___ Prohibits sex outside of marriage
___ Makes mistakes (e.g., Geraldo Rivera, Jesse Helms)
___ When beseeched, doesn’t stay beseeched
___ Requires burnt offerings
___ Requires virgin sacrifices
___ Plays dice with the universe
4. What factors were relevant in your decision to acquire a God? Please check all that apply:
___ Indoctrinated by parents
___ Needed a reason to live
___ Indoctrinated by society
___ Needed target for rage
___ Imaginary friend grew up
___ Hate to think for self
___ Wanted to meet girls/boys
___ Fear of death
___ To piss off parents
___ Needed a day away from work
___ Enjoy organ music
___ Needed focus on whom to despise
___ Needed to feel morally superior
___ Needed to feel Mother Superior
___ Graduated from the tooth fairy
___ My shrubbery caught fire and told me to do it
5. Are you currently using any other source of inspiration in addition to God? Please check all that apply:
___ Self-help books
___ Tarot, Astrology
___ Star Trek re-runs
___ Fortune cookies
____ Annie’s Mailbox
___ Psychic Friends Network
___ Dianetics
___ Playboy and/or Playgirl
___ Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll
___ Biorhythms
___ EST
___ Television
___ Mantras
___ Jimmy Swaggart
___ Crystals (not including Crystal Gayle)
___ Human Sacrifice
___ Wandering around in desert
___ Burning shrubbery
6. Have you ever worshipped a false God before? If so, which false God were you fooled by? Please check all that apply.
___ Odin
___ Cthulhu
___ Lottery
___ Baal
___ Beelzebub
___ The Almighty Dollar
___ The Conservative Right
___ Eric Clapton
___ Bill Gates
___ The Great Pumpkin
___ Ronald Reagan
___ A burning cabbage
___ Mushrooms
___ Fred Eaglesmith
___ Phish
___ Grateful Dead
___ Other:
7. God employs a limited degree of Divine Intervention to preserve the balanced level of felt presence and blind faith. Which would you prefer:
___ More Divine Intervention
___ Less Divine Intervention
___ Current level of Divine Intervention is just right
___ Don’t know; what’s Divine Intervention?
8. God attempts to maintain a balanced level of disasters and miracles. Please rate on a scale of 1 to 5, God’s handling of the following; 1 = unsatisfactory,
5 = excellent:
DISASTERS:
1 2 3 4 5 Flood/Tsunami
1 2 3 4 5 Famine
1 2 3 4 5 Earthquake
1 2 3 4 5 War
1 2 3 4 5 Pestilence
1 2 3 4 5 Plague
1 2 3 4 5 AOL
1 2 3 4 5 Republican Congress
1 2 3 4 5 Jerry Lewis
1 2 3 4 5 Dubya
1 2 3 4 5 My last relationship
MIRACLES:
1 2 3 4 5 Rescues
1 2 3 4 5 Spontaneous remissions
1 2 3 4 5 Crying statues
1 2 3 4 5 Water changing to wine
1 2 3 4 5 Walking on water
1 2 3 4 5 Stars hovering over towns
1 2 3 4 5 VCRs that set their own clocks
1 2 3 4 5 Clear and competent statements by the President
1 2 3 4 5 My present relationship
9. Please rate the following on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 = unsatisfactory, 5 = excellent:
1 2 3 4 5 Gods Courtesy
1 2 3 4 5 Answers to your prayers
1 2 3 4 5 Are your spiritual needs being met?
1 2 3 4 5 How are your shrubs doing?
10. Do you have any additional comments or suggestions for improving the quality of Gods services?
Want proof that Jesus was single?
This is a thread on a Jewish forum that I bookmarked well in the past. I reread the thread recently and almost replied over there, but then thought better of it.
I don’t know if I should be relieved or disappointed to find the same prejudice, misconceptions, fallacies, and rhethoric than can be found on Christian forums.
I was searching through blogs and reading CNN attempting to learn more about the potential Supreme Court nominee. I ran across an article that indicated that two female employees sued their employer, because their boss was having affairs with some of their female counterparts.
The California Supreme Court summarized the issues as follows:
(1) When a male supervisor repeatedly grants favorable treatment in promotions and other employment decisions to female employees with whom the supervisor has had a consensual sexual relationship, may such conduct support a claim of sexual harassment under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) by female employees who have not been involved in such a relationship with the supervisor? (2) Even if plaintiffs lacked a viable claim for sexual harassment under FEHA on the basis of the foregoing conduct, do the anti-retaliation provisions of FEHA prohibit an employer from subjecting plaintiffs to adverse treatment for making such a claim?
The court ruled favorably for the plaintiffs. This is crazy. Okay, the boss getting some action in the office is not a good idea for a number of reasons, but it happens everyday in every office building in every city. The sex this guy was having was not forced.
Moreover the boss never hit on the women that brought the suit. So, in essence what the court has said is if your so ugly that your boss with an active libido doesn’t want to do the horizontal bop with you, by golly you have a claim. Being ugly is now compensable.
Lesson to the employer: Make sure you only hire women with which you will have sex.
I haven’t had much time to even read SEB in the last months, but there is something that I do notice. Ever since the elections, there appears to be an influx of conservative posters that all follow a common modus operandi - enter the site with either guns blazing or start out with posts that are calculated to be flamebait. Invariably, the bait is taken and then these posters sulk, complain that they everybody is so rude to them, while at the same time dishing it out like there’s no tomorrow.
Odd.
After cleaning up some spyware and adware off of my computer a couple of weeks ago, I seemed to have rid myself of a recurring BSOD problem. And I’ve had MS Anti-spyware running checks nightly, not finding a thing.
Then, this morning, after I rebooted after installing this week’s Windows Updates, I got another BSOD.
So, I ran Adware and then SpyBot Search and Destroy. The 2nd program found 21 items.
So much for the MS Antispyware program ... sheesh ...
end of rant
This topic has come up in the past, in at least private conversations.
To state the obvious, picking a hosting provider largely depends on your requirements. However, I thought it might be useful to post a short review of those that I’ve used.
I don’t really want to talk about FeaturePrice - they’ve literally bankrupted a few customers, while they caused me just lots of inconvenience. Anyway, they’re gone and their assets have been resold at least twice. The lessons to learn for anybody are:
- Do not allow a hosting provider to manage your domain name for you. Ever.
- Make absolutely sure you have recent backups of the hosted files and databases in your possession at all times.
Between these two, you’ll avoid having a hosting company holding you hostage.
Now, I very much liked Lunarpages and Hummingbird Hosting, but I simply outgrew their offerings.
Somebody looking to host a large number of domains will need to turn to a reseller host. While I have no issues with the technical competence of Dathorn, they talked themselves out of a customer. I cannot recommend them unless you can comply with their unwritten policies. I moved my sites to ResellerZoom, but it’s too soon to draft a review.
So I was driving home yesterday with both girls in the car. While going down a long and very steep hill, doing the legal speed limit of 60mph (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it), the asshole driving right in front of me lost a medium-sized box off the back of his pickup. It’s not like you sit back and think, but I have long made up my mind that I will not swerve or brake for anything that will not make me lose control of the car if I hit it. The way the box fell didn’t give me the impression that it was filled with anything heavy, so I simply ran over it.
I didn’t see any debris in the rearview mirror, though, pulled over and found the remains of the box wedged under the front fender. No damage to car that I could see.
Still, I’m mad. This asshat didn’t secure his load and another driver may have panicked and gone off the road - or worse, into oncoming traffic going the other way. And it’s hard to believe that he or she didn’t notice a thing, but the pickup certainly didn’t stop. There was a cop a minute behind me; had they been a bit earlier, I might have flagged them down for all the good it would have done. With my luck, they’d have ticketed me for littering - I sure didn’t pick up what was left of that box after I kicked it off my van.
Looks like it’s now London’s turn. I hate terrorists and worry about the people we still know over there.
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