I'm a writer, so it should be no surprise that my preferred means of communication is to put it in writing, especially for any really important information. You can't edit a conversation. It's easy to forget a crucial point to be made when the words are allowed to flow freely from our mouths. When we speak, we might say too much, or not say enough. We might choose our words hastily and only create more confusion instead of clarifying a point. We might make the same mistakes in written form, but we have fewer excuses because the act of writing (and especially proofreading) gives us the best opportunity to organize our thoughts into concise and clear rhetoric that is coherent and persuasive. By nature I'm a very verbal (and often verbose) person, and have little problems giving a speech or presenting arguments in formal debate when the situation calls for it, but I will painstakingly prepare and organize my thoughts even to the point of scripting the jokes, for one simple reason--my mouth often gets me into trouble. Even though I'm a Southerner and speak with a drawl, the words can come out of my mouth considerably faster than my filter's capacity for screening them. The problem has never been getting me to speak, but my knowing when it's time for me to shut up. Like Clint Eastwood famously said in a scripted line for a movie, "A man's got to know his limitations." This brings me to attorney Lin Wood, who recently has been shown encouraging Georgia Republican voters to boycott the runoff elections unless David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler call for a special … [Read more...]
Enemy of the People
Everybody's read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, right? The mainstream media today reminds me of the marketing department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, which Douglas Adams described as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes." Okay, so maybe the "against the wall" bit was a little harsh, but "mindless jerks" is right on the money. The mainstream media have forgotten what their jobs are: to report the news. Instead, the media have been acting as the marketing department for the Democratic Party. And the phrase "mindless jerk" does conjure up a mental image of CNN's Jim Acosta. Without any corroborating evidence for the infamous dossier produced by Christopher Steele, the media pretended for most of four years that there might be some substance to the idiotic "Russian collusion" conspiracy nonsense that was used to undermine the Trump administration. Yet when evidence of compromising behavior by Hunter Biden was revealed shortly before the election, the media refused to investigate the story. Ideally, the media should be non-partisan. Yet they behave like ravenous wolves in pursuit of conservative politicians, and obsequious boot-lickers to liberals. No reporter complained when Joe Biden mysteriously disappeared for days at a time from the campaign trail; the toughest question he was asked in the days leading up to the election was not about Hunter's laptop or the emails suggesting he'd received millions of dollars in Chinese money, but what flavor ice cream he'd purchased, or what sort of cat he … [Read more...]
Abiogenesis: The Origin of Life Problem
The two greatest mysteries in regard to our existence are the origin of the universe and the origin of life. The origin of the universe posed the problem of how something as large and complex as our universe could have been created out of nothing, and the origin of life the problem of how inanimate matter became a living cell. Scientists understand how living cells create new cells (technically known as biogenesis), but the question of how all the building blocks necessary for the creation of a new cell came to exist when they were needed has been (and remains) a virtually unsolvable problem. The scientific term for any hypotheses about the chemical origin of life is abiogenesis. In his book The Way of the Cell Molecular biologist Franklin Harold wrote: "Prehistorians, with little more than scraps, shards,.and analogy, to go by, do not reconstruct the past so much as imagine a plausible version of it." Harold, Franklin. The Way of the Cell. Page 244 Also known as synthetic chemists, one problem is these "prehistorians" must guess about the environment on an prebiotic Earth. And even if they guessed correctly, assembled all the necessary ingredients, and created an environment that allowed for the creation of a living cell de novo, it wouldn't be exactly the same as if nature did it without any intervention, would it? How would that be any different that the scientist playing the role of a creator god, just not "the" creator God? We cannot create an artificial universe in a lab as a proof of concept. We cannot create life in a lab. The closest science has … [Read more...]
Fair-Weather Dawg Fans
One of my favorite exchanges in the movie Young Frankenstein begins with Gene Wilder complaining about how awful it is to be in a cemetery in the dead of night, stealing a corpse from a fresh grave. His accomplice Marty Feldman replies, "I don't know...it could be worse." "How?" "Could be raining..." mere seconds before a torrential downpour floods the grave. Given a choice between serving as an administrator with two other people on a social media forum with a little over twenty-thousand (alleged) fans of Georgia Bulldog football and trying to herd twenty-thousand cats, I'll take the cats every time. Why? Both have equally bad attitudes most of the time, but cats can only howl and hiss. If cats could write and verbalize idiotic thoughts like humans, the decision would be much tougher. Earlier this morning I began reviewing the most recent posts in this "fan" forum and couldn't help but notice the negative attitudes that pop up like mushrooms in a cow pasture after a hard rain, and like mushrooms, some were poisonous and others seemed to be hallucinating. People who demonstrate no real knowledge of the game feel compelled to express their opinions anyway. It never fails--if Georgia loses a football game, some people are going to start losing their minds, and that's okay as long as you keep it to yourself. But when you start talking crazy in front of an audience of twenty-thousand people, you're setting a really bad example and somebody will need to intervene. Barney Fife only had the only bullet for his pistol and kept it in his pocket, but I can nip it in the … [Read more...]
Jesus and Socialism
Some of the strangest experiences I've had on social media was finding myself arguing with other alleged Christians on the subject of whether or not Jesus was a socialist. Because Jesus once said we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's (meaning pay our taxes) and frequently preached about giving generously to the poor, my more liberal-minded Christian friends have interpreted those examples to mean Jesus was a socialist. For the record, both points are undeniably true. Jesus said a lot of things that would lead one to believe the accumulation of material wealth wasn't a healthy preoccupation. Jesus once told a rich man that he would only have to sacrifice all of his wealth if he wanted to follow Him, and the man couldn't do it. However, would taking all of his wealth by using the force of government have made the rich man righteous? I don't see how. Portrait of Jesus created by Akiane Kramarik More importantly, do any those examples prove that Jesus was a socialist? No, of course not. Jesus was a strong advocate for charity, not the Roman Empire, which of course was not governed by any form of socialism. Ever. Jesus preached about the human relationship between individuals and an individual's relationship with their creator, not the role of government in society. He was about as apolitical as a person can get, and that was probably due to the fact Jesus was not just any ordinary human being. He was the Messiah promised to the people of Israel, and God incarnate. But if socialism didn't even exist as a political philosophy when Jesus was alive, how … [Read more...]
