A recent line of text caught my eye. It read FLORIDA COURT SETS ATHEIST HOLY DAY. Intrigued, I had to read more.
In Florida, an atheist created a case against the upcoming Easter and Passover holy days. He hired an attorney to bring a discrimination case against Christians, Jews and observances of their holy days. The argument was that it was unfair that atheists had no such recognized days.
The case was brought before a judge. After listening to the passionate presentation by the lawyer, the judge banged his gavel declaring, “Case dismissed!”.
The lawyer immediately stood, objecting to the ruling saying, “Your honor, how can you possibly dismiss this case? The Christians have Christmas, Easter and others. The Jews have Passover, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah, yet my client and all other atheists have no such holidays.”
The judge leaned forward in his chair saying, “But you do. Your client, counsel, is woefully ignorant.”
The lawyer said, “Your Honor, we are unaware of any special observance or holiday for atheists.”
The judge said, “The calendar says April 1st is April Fools Day. Psalm 14:1 states, ‘The fool says in his heart, there is no God.’ Thus, it is the opinion of this court, that if your client says there is no God, then he is a fool. Therefore, April 1st is his day. Court is adjourned.”
Of course, as I read this, in the form of an email, I couldn’t help but think about the disparity between the two sides of the house, if you will. On the one side you have a group of people that vehemently and adamantly deny the existence of God and attempt, at every turn, to dissolve any potential for anyone to believe there is a God. They tend to call those that believe in God fools, dependent and weak because of some cosmic need to have a higher power to lean on.
Then on the other hand you have a group of people that vehemently and adamantly declare belief that there is a God and, at every turn, attempt to convince everyone else that God is not only very real but loves them very much. These people often refer to atheists as fools or weak or rebellious.
So as cute as the little story was I am left with this odd feeling that it misses the point. At the end of the day will there be a place for name calling in heaven? Is there a place for it now? If you are an atheist and you have no God to pray and you do it all on your own what business is it of yours to place a label or judgement upon those that believe in their God?
And if you are a Christian then there is no place for judgement at all among you. Judgement is reserved for the Lord.
Yes, I know I let my tongue get the best of me from time to time. But I honestly can’t but think that God doesn’t want us to call those that do not believe like us “fools”. No, instead I think he wants for us to pray for everyone on their behalf. After all, if Christ is the son to God the father, and God is love, and Jesus’ message was a message of love, shouldn’t we show some of it? Just a thought, to chew on a little…
I got this from my sister-in-law this morning and had to share it. There are some expletives starred out (*) so if there are kids reading you might want them to not read this entire post. You have been warned.
Here is a prime example of “Men are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” offered by an English professor from the University of Phoenix.
The professor told his class one day, “Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his /her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also emailing a copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely no talking outside the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.”
*** The following story was actually turned in by two of his students, Rebecca and Gary. ***
THE STORY(1st paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn’t decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.(2nd paragraph by Gary)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. “A.S. Harris to Geostation 17″, he said into his transgalactic communicator. “Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far…” But before he could sign off, a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship’s cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychologically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. “Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel” Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. “Why must one lose one’s innocence to become a woman?” she wondered wistfully.(Gary)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anudrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty, Anudrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid Laurie.(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.(Gary)
Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered tedious neurotic ! whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. …”Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F**KING TEA???! Oh no, WHAT AM I to do? I’m such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels!”(Rebecca)
A**hole.(Gary)
Bitch.(Rebecca)
F**K YOU – YOU NEANDERTHAL!(Gary)
Go drink some tea – whore.(TEACHER)
A+ …….I really liked this one.
I could totally see myself having this same interaction with my wife. In fact I could see just about any man having this same interaction with just about any woman over email. Even moreso if they were dating.
Way back when I ran across a comic at xkcd.com that outlined the funny things that can happen when developers forget to escape input:
This brought a tremendous amount of laughter to everyone that works in my department (since many are database people and a few are developers) and from that point on I had the lovely nickname “Little Bobby Tables”.
In an effort to try to rectify that I found a LOLCAT picture that sums up a little better what my position is on the name “Little Bobby Tables”:
Little Bobby Details has spoken.
There are many a wife that has been widowed by the World of Warcraft craze that has swept the world. And plenty of men, women and children have fallen victim to the craziness of the addiction to this violent, expensive, wasteland generating game.
However there is an entire class of people that are being overlooked in our zeal to cast judgment on the yayhoos that have gone WoW-stupid. These folks are largely overlooked because they are the ones that missed the boat. That’s right, these poor people have missed the hit parade of early adopters and are now forced to work twice as hard, some times three times as hard, to accumulate the WoW wealth needed to really impress the female gnomes and imps trolling about the WoW.
But I have good news for these people. Blizzard Entertainment, the same folks that brought you World of Warcraft have recently announced plans for World of World of Warcraft, a game that allows those that missed the first rush of WoW freakiness to pass them by to easily integrate themselves into that world by gaming themselves into it.
Have a look:
So it appears that you can now put yourself into the game even if you are not in the game. How cool is that? No more being an outcast, outsider or freak that doesn’t know what a level 3 gnome rogue is. No way Jose. Now, you can be one of the cool folks associated with World of Warcraft, in your own World of World of Warcraft.
Now go play.
Of all the funny things that could have happened…
Wouldn’t you know it? I found myself in need of an encabulator. And not just any encabulator either.
Read More …
While digging around for news on Digg today I ran across a blog post that offers some brilliant tips on how to take care of your baby.
I wish I had seen these tips when I started having kids.
Read More …
The following piece graciously donated by my mother-in-law via my wife.
Anyone that has ever been to the south knows that you can always count on a few things when you are there. One is the hospitality. I mean you can literally have a two hour conversation with a complete stranger and actually feel at home doing it.
Another thing you can count on is the food. It will always be fattening and it will always be delicious. No matter what you are eating, it will just be good eats. Its the south, so you can count on it.
One thing that I can speak of from experience is the state bird of Louisiana. No, I am not talking about the Brown Pelican. I am talking about the mosquito.
Those little buggers are the size of the airplanes that fly you from Fort Worth to Lafayette. They are big, strong, aggressive and relentless. They don’t back down and when you finally smack one of them into oblivion, five of his cousins come back for you.
So it was no wonder that this footage spoke to me as loudly as it did. I have never seen this before, but it does not surprise me. How much farther will this torment known as the mosquito go?