The good Dr. Bob talks spiritual turkey in Justification, Sanctification, and Grace "This little liberation will cost you, ummh, pretty much everything you now value. Your self-will. Your selfish, self-centered pig-headedness."
Free 2 year reading project: "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy in 675 installments Delivered by email or RSS from DailyLit: Read books by email and RSS. (You could give it as a gift.... to somebody you really hate.)
Sake White takes a backwards glance at what we could learn from history if we were into it. "Germany is still around and so is Japan, but their defeats changed them as much as our victory changed us. Some for the better, some for the worse, but they are no longer world powers or military powers because they have lost the right to such. They can reclaim it, as the EU is trying to do for their former Imperial and Colonial historical glories, but as with all things, it requires effort. Incompetent and feckless effort on the part of the EU or bloodthirsty and suicidal effort on the part of the Islamic war on goodness. There may not be such a thing as Divine Right behind the power of monarchs and dynasties, but there is certainly a score card kept by someone for entire nations, cultures, and civilizations. Score too low and you'll end up like Carthage."
Cuddle in comfort:The Love Mattress "This mattress allows you to hug your loved one intimately without any wrist or arm weakness." (Important to preserve strength in these limbs lest others go limp.)
Hi-tech voting machines, my Canadian ass! "Forget touch screens and electronic voting. In Canadian Federal elections, two barely-paid representatives of each party, known as "scrutineers," are present all day at the voting place. If there are more political parties, there are more scrutineers. To vote, you write an "X" with a pencil in a one centimeter circle beside the candidate's name, fold the ballot up and stuff it into a box. Later, the scrutineers AND ANY VOTER WHO WANTS TO WATCH all sit at a table for about half an hour and count every ballot, keeping a tally for each candidate. If the counts agree at the end of the process, the results are phoned-in and everyone goes home. If they don't, you do it again. Fairness is achieved by balanced self-interest, not by technology."
In praise oftapeworms. "The tapeworms that live in humans can get up to sixty feet long. They feed on our food, despite the fact that they have neither a mouth nor a digestive tract." The fellow wrote a book about parasites so I can't blame him for loving them.... much.
Speaking of those in need of advanced medication: Gruesome lawsuit by crazed and incarcerated moron with too much time on his/her hands. "Upon eviscerating the testicles, plaintiff tied off and ligated the epididymus on each bare testicle with hair ties and two rubber bands," the lawsuit says.... It gets worse.
"Mr. Murdoch, tear down this wall!" All Wall Street Journal editorial and opinion columns are now available for free.
Kevin Kelly, infonaut, finally knows what he wants: I want a database-centric personal publishing platform. The front end is sort of like a word processor. But it is really a database. It has little tools that allow one to quickly assign fields. In fact it suggests fields, tags, etc as you write text, sort of like auto-complete." You'll want one too.
Politics vs. Blogging -- Freeberg on how we live now: "To inject your personality into an official occupying a high office with virtually unlimited power, specifically for the purpose of marginalizing others who are not like you, is entirely acceptable. To inject that same personality into words, that are simply to available to be read — optionally — by strangers, is an activity looked upon, by many if not most, as repugnant and loathsome."
"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper
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Looking at the photo accompanying your Map Tattoo link, I am wondering.....
Are your implying that South Africa is the Asshole of the World????
Posted by: Hangtown Bob at January 13, 2008 2:36 PM
On that same topic I'm wondering; if the subject of the photo gains a substantial amount of weight, does the tattoo turn into a map of Jupiter?
Posted by: Alan Kellogg at January 13, 2008 4:36 PM
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