There are 365 days in a year, except leap years. Normally I'm proud to be a Georgia Bulldog fan (and alumnus) for at least 350 of them, I'm guessing on average. As for those other days, well, the problem isn't my alma mater. Nor has it been the football team, the basketball team, swim team, or tennis team that embarrassed me. Instead, the problem tends to be a minority of others who also call themselves Bulldog fans, but fail to understand the concept of winning with integrity and losing with dignity. In the spirit of full disclosure, I will confess that I haven't actually watched the LSU game yet because my oldest nephew's wedding was in California last Sunday. While Georgia was on the field in Baton Rouge, I was flying coast to coast from Atlanta to L.A. for the rehearsal dinner. Even so, I don't need to watch the replay to know most of what happened: turnovers, mistakes, a couple of bad calls by the officials, perhaps a key injury or two, penalties, and missed opportunities. Of course, that also pretty much describes every agonizing Bulldog loss that I've watched over the course of my lifetime. By the time I'd landed in L.A., a friend of mine had killed the battery on my cell phone with text messages giving me score updates as I navigated my way from LAX to Malibu. So without watching the replay I already know we stopped LSU on fourth down but the home team got the call. But no matter how you try to spin the tale, that one bad call didn't make the difference in a game lost by three touchdowns. These days, it seems that without any rules or restrictions, any idiot … [Read more...]
The sigil of Baphomet
You probably won't recognize his name, but in late September Jordan Hunt was the man caught on video kicking a woman while she peacefully protested against abortion. If you haven't seen the clip already, I've embedded it below for your convenience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkrNVol0UAo If you just watched the video, I hope you noticed how Hunt prepared himself to strike that the 34 second mark, but didn't actually deliver the blow until two full seconds later. He took his time and telegraphed what he was doing. Hunt immediately claimed it was an accident and that he only meant to kick the phone from her hand, but it's difficult to give this repeat offender the benefit of the doubt. You see, this wasn't the first time Hunt physically assaulted an abortion protestor. One month earlier he had been identified on another video as the man aggressively charging into the street to attack a different female abortion protester over a sign she was holding. Hunt has been arrested by Toronto police and charged with eight counts of assault. He'll have his day in court. However, I don't want to talk about the assaults or the motivation for them (abortion) at the moment. I want everyone to look at the necklace Hunt is wearing in the video. It's a pentagram. Coincidentally, the official symbol of the Church of Satan is an inverted five-point star called the sigil of Baphomet, as shown below. The sigil also adorns the cover of The Satanic Bible. It's a very important symbol to Satanism. Granted, Hunt may not even realize what he's wearing. The camera never gets … [Read more...]
Anger management
Writing is cathartic. I express my thoughts and emotions with my fingers using the keyboard, not using my fists to rearrange someone else's face, even though the thought does prove tempting at times. It's okay to be unhappy when things don't always go your way. There's nothing wrong with getting angry when you feel an injustice has gone unpunished. It's even okay to peacefully protest an grotesque injustice and try to inspire others to motivate necessary change. Remember the TEA Party? However, it's not okay to scream like a jackass at the top of your lungs six inches from the face of someone you don't like. Nor is it okay to hit that person when his or her back is turned, like a coward is often tempted to do. And it's not okay to destroy private property belonging to someone who disagrees with you...in fact, that's criminal behavior called assault, vandalism, theft, and whatever the legal term is for felony destruction of private property. Oh...I guess the technical term would be arson. This is how liberals "disagree" with other people. It's also not okay to stand in the middle of the street forcing traffic to stop and redirect in order to avoid you, while you scream profanity at the people in the car. These people have completely lost their minds. Like a virus, this irrational, out-of-control anger coming from liberals, progressives, radicals, and anarchists has been threatening to spread out of control because the response from rational and reasonable people has been rather calm and understated, which only emboldens these crazy people. In November … [Read more...]
Evolution destroyed by a six-minute video
(Hat tip to Sean and Will for their conversation on Facebook that inspired this article.) The evangelists for evolution make a lot of strange and contradictory statements. I am routinely ridiculed and characterized as some sort of anti-Darwinian nutcase who doesn't understand the basic concepts of evolution theory because I tend to paraphrase what the "experts" have written and said with dripping sarcasm. One of my more vocal critics was asked his opinion about this six-minute video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyTcINLKq4c Prosanta Chakrabarty Sean replied, That's the kind of explanation I would have given. I only have a couple of provisos:(1) I would disagree that there are lots of <<theories>> of evolution. I would say there was one overarching theory with lots of associated hypotheses.(2) I'd disagree that birds are reptiles. I think reptiles are a paraphyletic group, which excludes aves. Other than that, I think it was a good overall summary. Hmmm. Was that video really a good summary? Professor Chakrabarty began his speech with a joke formed as a loaded question frequently attributed to creationists: "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" And the punchline? "Well, because we're not monkeys. We're fish." The really funny thing was Chakrabarty wasn't joking. According to the theory of evolution, humans are directly related to fish primarily by descent with modification via sexual reproduction, by isolation of a breeding population, over long periods of time. It seemed to me that Professor Chakrabarty was making a number of … [Read more...]
A bargain at any price
Okay, so the people who have followed my blog are probably asking themselves, exactly what will we be getting that we haven't been getting already, that we weren't getting for free? The short answer is: a lot. The slightly longer answer is: now that I'm treating my blog like a business instead of a hobby, I'm going to be posting frequently. Probably not multiple posts every day like I've been doing the past week or so, but almost certainly I'll be writing between four and five posts per week minimum, unless I'm offline from the internet for some reason. I haven't taken a vacation in about ten years (I don't count taking the grandkids to Disney World as "rest and recreation" but it was fun) and have no plans for one in the immediate future. I'm not going to commit to a specific number above one or two blogs per week because I've learned the "art of the deal" from Donald Trump. The secret to a happy customer is to under-commit and over-deliver. Promise less and give them more. Photo by J.E. FitzGerald. Reproduced by permission of J.E. FitzGerald, ©2001. One of the benefits of my new attitude and approach to the blog is that when I learn about something cool, you'll be the first to know. Until about five minutes ago, I'd never heard of a marble statue called "The Veiled Virgin", sculpted by an artist named Giovanni Strazza. My wonderful and talented musical friend from Down Under, Brad Luke, shared a photo of this exquisite masterpiece with me on Facebook. The photo took my breath away. It is one of the most beautiful sculptures I've ever seen...and I became … [Read more...]
