My school's library has put Darwin's Black Box on display in the science section.

This annoys me greatly.

HAY, FLIST.
So, I got a bunch of books from a thrift store yesterday. Eighteen in total, actually. Most of these were textbooks (on biology, chemistry, psychology, sociology, economics, history, and politics), but I also got four plays by Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar) and The Republic by Plato. They are all currently residing on my bookshelves, which I fear will break under the sheer weight of all the textbooks. I keep telling myself that I really should start reading them, since it'll be such a monumental task, but instead, I'm typing an inane post on LJ that nobody cares about. That would be usual...

It's funny how I used to loathe thrift stores. I hated them -- for their faint aura of dirtiness and disorganization, their boringness and their aisles full of broken baby toys and grandma-style dresses. Maybe they're just better now, or maybe I've developed more of a curiosity for small, old things that have been given up and shoved to the back of a stained shelf. Maybe both.

My parents finally took me to the library. I actually found The End of Faith by Sam Harris there (astonishing). I am, admittedly, only fifty-three pages into it, but I'm not sure whether I like it very much. It seems overly simplistic, and I find myself doubting a lot of what's in it. The back cover tells me that Harris is a graduate in philosophy, but, I don't know, it doesn't seem to be what I would expect from a philosophy graduate. But then, I'm definitely not a philosophy graduate, so who am I to judge?
...Besides, maybe the rest of the book is different. *shrugs*

There's an ad on the side of this page telling me that God loves me and has a plan for my life. I find this strangely amusing.

He just has no limits.

We live in an era when public high schools and colleges have all but banned God from science classes. In these classrooms, students are taught that the whole universe, including plants and animals—and humans—arose by natural processes. Naturalism (in essence, atheism) has become the religion of the day and has become the foundation of the education system (and Western culture as a whole). The more such a philosophy permeates the culture, the more we would expect to see a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness that pervades people’s thinking. In fact, the more a culture allows the killing of the unborn, the more we will see people treating life in general as “cheap.”

[...]

Jesus was reminding people that every person will one day die, and that they need to be ready! Those who were killed by this tower in Luke 13 didn’t know that when they arose that morning, it would be their day to die. The Lord Jesus, in saying “unless you repent,” was reminding everyone that they needed to be sure they were ready to face eternity.

This is disgusting on so many levels.

Thirty-three people dead. Thirty-three individuals, with their whole lives ahead of them, murdered. However, Ken Ham apparently thinks this is the perfect subject to use in the pursuit of supporting his ill-informed ideology. Where's his basic sense of human compassion? Did he just not think about the pain that others must be going through right now?

He's going too far when he implies that science education is somehow a catalyst for this shooting. Sure, he qualifies the paragraph by stating that he isn't saying that belief in evolution was what drove the attack -- but he definitely implies it. He slaps atheism, materialism, science, evolution, and abortion together, and suggests that schools need more religion in them. How can he so callously use this tragedy to promote his politics?

Then he ends the article with a talk about how everyone will die, and how they really should convert to Christianity. It's a classic conversion tactic -- get people while they're mourning and afraid.  He supplies whoever will listen with the perfect targets to blame for society's troubles -- atheism and science. It's emotional blackmail.

I just can't believe it. I just can't. Is there anything that he won't abuse, put a misleading spin on, or outright lie about in order to further his agenda?

Yay! *tackles and hugs flist*

So, I went to Manhattan for about a week, over spring break. Now I want to move to New York. Assuming I don't move to Canada, I mean.

( Poorly-written summary of trip )

So, how have you been, dear denizens of LJ?

As I was walking in a park near my house, I saw a car with a most deliciously heretical adornment of bumper stickers. They included:

--The Darwin fish
--"I'm pro-choice and I vote"
--"Come the rapture, we'll have the whole Earth to ourselves"
--"You can't kill for peace" (and several others along those lines).

I must know who the owner of this vehicle is. Opinions such as this are virtually unheard-of in my area of Georgia. Perhaps I'm not the only infidel around here. Or, at least, the only non-Christian around here. (I suppose atheists are too much to hope for...)

Hay flist, I have returned! :D

Hopefully, I'll have some interesting things to say over the next few days. That's rather unlikely. But still.

Also, it's my birthday. But I don't feel any different.

As I'm sure is pretty obvious, I haven't had much to say for a while. In fact, lately I just haven't been feeling like writing anything at all. Whenever I get a comment, I just let it sit in my inbox for ages before I finally make myself reply. It's not that I don't like you guys, it's just that I simply can't make myself write. I guess I'm just feeling too worn-down to really contribute anything. And I keep feeling that since I don't really know that much, perhaps I shouldn't be ranting on at all.

So...

PO-TA-TOES!

Stuck.

In.

My head.


::claws face:: Arrghh...

But does bring back fond memories of the potato jig. ::pokes life_question::

No words can describe.

Remember to cover your hammers before you put them in smelly shoes, guys!

I'm bored. Therefore, I demand you all fill out this little meme so that I can pretend that somewhere in the Big World, I am lurved. O.o

( Gimme the goods, kthnx )

It is far, far too cold for Georgia.

18 degrees Fahrenheit. 18 DEGREES.

Watch This, and Turn Up the Volume:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3CdNgoC0cE

An article on the incident:
http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=38958

( Article Behind the Cut )

...And two more:
http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=38960
http://cbs2.com/local/local_story_319101652.html

The former is from the same source, but the article is more in depth. It says that the student was shot at least four times with the Taser, even when he was already handcuffed. A study published in the Lancet Medical Journal in 2001 showed that a Taser shot lasting three to five seconds can result in immobilization for five to fifteen minutes. What does this mean? The student may not have been physically able to get up, even though the officers were demanding that he do so.

But just listen to the video. Words can't describe the feeling I got as I listened to those screams...
I was so furious that my eyes filled up with tears. I thought I was actually going to cry. How could someone do this? Why didn't anyone stop them?! Why did they just form a circle around the scene?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200611140008

MICHAEL SAVAGE: And I want to tell you something, and I'm going to say it to you loud and clear. The radical homosexual agenda will not stop until religion is outlawed in this country. Make no mistake about it. They're all not nice decorators. You better get it through your head before it's too late. They threaten your very survival. They went after the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is now caving into the homosexual mafia. They will not stop until they force their agenda down your throats. Gay marriage is just the tip of the iceberg. They want full and total subjugation of this society to their agenda. Now, if you want that and if you don't think it's a threat -- believe me, that is what's going to occur in this country.

Funny, I never seemed to realize that gays and lesbians wanted to destroy all religion, force everyone into gay marriage, and murder us. I also never realized that they were a branch of the Mafia. And all this time, I thought that they just wanted to have the same rights and recognitions as married heterosexual people! You learn new things every day, isn't that right, flist?

Newsflash: "Gay" and "lesbian" are NOT synonyms for:
--Murderer --Baby-rapist --God-hater --Child molester --Bigot --Religion-hater
--Uncontrollable monster --AIDS carrier --Dog-fucker --Puppy-kicker
Etc., etc., etc.
However shocking that may be.

There is. NO. "Radical homosexual agenda". This is the ridiculous and hateful invention of a small group of bigots with far too much political influence for their own good. I challenge any moron who believes that there's a "radical homosexual agenda" (not that there's any of them reading this) to provide actual proof of said agenda. I haven't heard of a mass movement wherein gays and lesbians are clamoring for rights to murder children and ban religion. However, I do hear all the time of a rather large movement for denying recognition to gays and lesbians. It also seems to be that gays are the ones getting murdered in hate crimes, not the other way 'round.

People like this enjoy screeching, "I'm being persecuted! Make the evil gays go away!" The reason that they're so insistent upon this is because they want to mask their own agenda. They want to force their religious rules on everyone else. Apparently, since they "can't" (or shouldn't be able to) limit people's civil abilities based on sexual orientation, they're the ones who are being limited and persecuted.

/rant

omgz, I haven't updated in forever. : \

Sorry for the long absence, LJland. I'm running out of things to say, and finding more things to read. Posting feels pointless.

But to make up for that, here's a shrimp on a treadmill. Sadistically amusing.

Scientists teleport two different objects.

I wish that I could understand this. I feel so pitifully incompetent not having any idea what they're really talking about.