It's all good. Well, okay, it's only mostly good. There was that whole yellow jacket incident. The past 72 hours or so have been very interesting. Almost nothing has gone according to plan, but the best explanation for that is that I didn't really have a well-developed plan in the first place, just a convicted thought about needing to improve my productivity. For a guy who spends most of his time writing, I don't get nearly enough real work accomplished. I had the initial impulse to permanently delete my Facebook account primarily because of my own lack of discipline, as far as productive work is concerned. I announced this decision to the general public before discussing it with my wife, which rarely works out for the best because she's not as quick to jump to hasty conclusions. In case you haven't figured it out yet, she's the real brains in our family. Lisa's first concerns were the pictures of the grandkids our daughter posts on Facebook all the time. Didn't I still want to see them? She then asked, what about your high school English teacher and the friends you've made in Australia, and those connections you truly care about? She reminded me the problem with Facebook isn't the people as much as how I've been using the medium. I'll admit that I was more than a little surprised that her reaction wasn't anything but, "Thank God!" Changes had to be made, though, and changes have already occurred. Changes NEEDED to be made because I just can't spend the rest of my life arguing with idiots on Facebook. It doesn't produce income. Liberals and atheists tend to … [Read more...]
A Farewell to Facebook
Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Photo by GERARD JULIEN / AFP) Tomorrow, July 27th, I will be deactivating (or deleting) my Facebook account. If I actually know you in real life, I'm not dead, or even sick. I'm just fed up with Facebook. I'm sick of having Big Brother "fact check" posts with a liberal bias. I'm tired of wondering how in the hell Mark Zuckerberg knows I went to Ireland in 1998 (true) but think I got married to my wife when we became "friends" on Facebook (false). If you are one of my friends on that social media platform, there is a decent chance I'll miss you. Of the thousand-plus connections I'll be severing tomorrow there are a handful of people with whom I communicate on almost a daily basis that have made this decision more difficult than it should be. Some of my favorite connections on Facebook such as Jon, George, Paul, and Remo are people I've never actually met in person, but feel like I've known them forever. Most of the people with whom I'm connected through Facebook are kindred spirits, and I will truly miss them. I would hope that some might decide to continue our connection by subscribing to my website at www.southernprose.com, where I intend to be posting new material and my opinions on a more regular basis. If we lose touch, I will feel a sense of loss and miss them. But I have a lot of work that needs to get done, and when I'm not having a great time joking around with my social media friends or discussing our common interests, I'm wasting valuable time engaged in stupid arguments with complete idiots. I don't necessarily … [Read more...]
Vincible Ignorance
Physicist Sean Carroll An article at American Thinker about conspiracy theories and the moon landing caught my attention when the term vincible ignorance was introduced and defined as the "stubborn resistance to the truth and refusal to accept it, no matter how overwhelming the evidence in its favor is." Coined with the intention of being applied to various positions on Catholic dogma, the terminology has useful application in a more secular context. Invincible ignorance has been defined as an unknown that can never be known. A secular example of invincible ignorance might be the conditions that existed prior to the Big Bang singularity--we "know" the universe had an origin because we've been told evidence for the Big Bang exists, called redshift and cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). The consensus of physicists (although consensus is not science) is that a very small, highly condensed dot of material rapidly expanded to become this universe. We don't know what existed prior to the Big Bang. We can only guess and speculate. It would be an example of vincible ignorance to know about redshift and CMB evidence and still reject the Big Bang evidence in favor of the steady state (eternal, unchanging universe) hypothesis. While similar to the phrase I began using a while ago, the subtle difference between vincible ignorance and willful ignorance is knowing and rejecting the truth as opposed to simply avoiding it. The distinction appears to be useful, to be sure. For example several years ago, while participating on an internet panel to discuss his … [Read more...]
K9s for Warriors
If you've read my book Always a Next One, you know that I'm a huge supporter of our LOCAL Humane Societies because they help homeless animals find new homes. Typically I do NOT provide any sort of financial support national organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States because they are nothing more than professional fund-raisers, and they are raising money to pay six-figure executive salaries, not for helping animals in need in your local community. I also refuse to donate any money to PETA because the people in that organization can't even tell the difference between a dog, a rat, and a pig. I do make an exception for and donate to the ASPCA, because even though they are a national organization, the ASPCA operate the animal shelters in New York City and rescue abused and homeless animals. The reason I adamantly support our local Humane Societies over national organizations because THEY SAVE LIVES. Wonderful dogs like Ralphie the beagle would not be alive today if an organization like Angels Among Us didn't exist, with a small army of volunteers to provide temporary refuge when shelters are overcrowded. What could get any better than saving the life of a dog about to be euthanized, and finding him or her a perfect forever home? How about saving two lives for the price of one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up6Vg70RJnQ That's exactly what the program K9s for Warriors does--they rescue dogs from animal shelters, train them to become service animals, and then place them with military veterans suffering from battlefield injuries and post … [Read more...]
Liberal aggression
It's gotten to the point where I don't really like writing about politics because there is plenty of division and hate burning in America without my throwing any gasoline on the fire. If I publish this article and post a link on Facebook, I expect there will be some people perfectly willing to defend horrible behavior, as if the end can be justified by the means. Sigh. When I do post something on my blog with a political slant, you can rest assured that I felt like I have no choice but to write it. As much as I'd rather be working on a novel, a short story, or even watching paint dry than arguing about politics, occasionally I'll see something that makes me stop what I'm doing to press both hands over my ears in order to keep my brains from leaking out. And then I'll have to write another article like this one I'm writing now, because I can't witness evil in action and remain silent. Please watch this short video. It's truly astonishing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=75&v=3Qoc4ZVsS1M I really don't want to get into the pro-life versus pro-choice debate at the moment, because it's much more important to focus on the mindset of our social justice warrior, the "star" in this video. It's quite disturbing to realize this young liberal thinks his behavior won't have adverse consequences. He's stealing private property on camera, in broad daylight. The exchange caught my attention early, when an off camera pro-life person pointed out that stealing their personal property was illegal and the liberal's sarcastic response showed nothing but contempt … [Read more...]
