wrong ball, coach

Anyone know if you can really do this?

ante up

Feel like you're paying too much for your cell phone? You might want to try bluffing your way to cheaper service. I remember when I canceled my Verizon contract last year they offered me some deals that I normally would have taken had I not switched to the Treo. Matt Haughey recently experienced the same thing when he tried to cancel his T-mobile contract. Apparently cell providers are quite willing to make a sacrifice for your business, but you've got to "ask" for it.

woo hoooo

In a couple of hours Mary Pat and I are heading up to Tennessee for some fun in the Smokies. We'll be spending days trekking through virgin wilderness, eating berries and wildflowers, slaking our thirst at crystal mountain streams lots of money at the outlet malls near Pigeon Forge. I really do need a completely new wardrobe for work so we're mixing business and pleasure, staying at a rustic little cabin on the mountain behind Gatlinburg. We might even get matching sweatsuits and walk around town holding hands. Country kitsch, here we come.

lyrics of the day

"Robot Rock" -- Daft Punk

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

lest this post smack of criticism, the authors hereby proclaim their sincere digging and grooving of the Daft Punk scenario.

The man doth protest too much, methinks

Coy Privette, one of the most outspoken Christian opponents of immorality, has been arrested on prostitution-related charges in North Carolina. Mr. Privette has the distinction of the following titles and positions:

• former trustee of the Christian Life Commission (now Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission), the Southern Baptist Convention's moral-watchdog agency
• former trustee chair of the SBC's Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
• former president of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina
• retired pastor
• former state legislator (1984-1992) and county commissioner
• strong opponent of liquor, gambling and illegal immigration
• president of the Christian Action league, which lobbies legislators to consider a Christian perspective in pending legislation
• former member of the National Consultation on Pornography

Not so coy is he.

nice knives

Anything called "Son of Prything" has got to be useful.

watch your speeding in Alabama Aug. 13-17

Alabama Department of Public Safety Director Col. Chris Murphy announced this morning a plan to "Take Back Our Highways" by putting an additional 200 state troopers on state roads in order to show Alabama lawmakers how much safer state highways would be with additional troopers.

they're not joking

Visit the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA)

like puzzles?

Then you'll appreciate Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles, Tricks, and Conundrums (With Answers).

finally, a beginning

Although I recently took serious issue with the Pope's stance on the primacy of the Catholic faith, I must give him credit for introducing at least a hint of logic and reason to the debate over evolution. While speaking in Italy last week, he stated that evolution and religion can coexist, even calling the debate an "absurdity":

"They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other," the pope said. "This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such."

He then pointed out the obvious fact that evolution does not answer all the questions, such as "Where does everything come from?" which is accurate because the theory of evolution does not attempt to answer such an unanswerable question.

It is remarkable that the Pope, whose very power and influence stem from the belief that the Bible is the authentic word of God and is historically accurate, would make such an admission. And of course his statements will have little influence over millions of Protestant Americans who insist on the historical legitimacy of the Bible and allow themselves to be threatened by scientific discovery. But it's a start.

Nicholas Gurewitch

If you enjoy reading the offbeat and wacky Perry Bible Fellowship, you'll be pleased to know that you can pre-order your copy of The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories now on Amazon.

old, yet still funny, Redneck Haiku

Beauty
Naked in repose
Silvery silhouette girls
Adorn my mudflaps

Remorse
A painful sadness
Can’t fit big screen TV through
Double-wide’s front door

Options
Unemployment’s out.
Hey, maybe I can get on
Disability

Blaze
Distant siren screams
Dumb-ass Verne’s been playing with
Gasoline again

A New Moon
Flashlights pierce darkness
No nightcrawlers to be found
Guess we’ll gig some frogs

Exuberance
Joyous, playful, bright
Trailer park girl rolls in puddle
Of old motor oil

Alone
Seeking solitude
Carl’s ex-wife Tammy files for
Restraining order

Desire
Damn, in that tube-top
You make me almost forget
you are my cousin

Offerings
Tonight we hunger
Grandma sent grocery money
To Jimmy Swaggert

Drama
Set the VCR
Dukes of Hazzard Marathon
At 9 O’Clock

Deprived
In Wal-Mart toy aisle
Wailing boy wants ’rassling doll
Mama whups his ass

No Signal
White noise, buzzing static
Call Earl; satellite dish
needs new descrambler

Impounded
Sixty-five dollars
And cyclone fence keeps me from
My El Camino

Gathering
In early morning mist
Mama searches Circle K for
Moon Pies and Red Man

Pride
Grinning, he displays
The nine hundred beer cans
Filling pickup bed

babel

for the Buddhist who has everything nothing

A timely reminder of the moment at hand

quote of the day

"Bono doesn’t need to tell us that we are poor. We know we are poor. All these concerts come and go and nothing changes in Africa."

-- Femi Kuti, Nigerian music star

magnificent

Top ten spacewalks. With stunning pictures.

extremes

The Google Earth community brings you an updated list of the highest, deepest, strongest, windiest, snowiest, longest, shortest and oldest places on earth. Who knew the tallest man-made structure in the world is a television transmitting mast in North Dakota?

old school

Sing O Muse
Sing to us of the glorious gods
Who ruled the land and sea
And tell us
Of the fair beauty of the goddesses
Who dwell in eternal Olympus

Sing to us, O Muse,
Of ages that have come to past
Of those mighty warriors
Weilding their deadly spears
From the lores
Of our timeless myths.

Yo, get your Classical, Norse, and Celtic Mythology and Arthurian Legends on.

comrade Santa

Interesting article on Russia's attempt to claim the North Pole. Even though the polar region is technically frozen ocean, the terrain below the ice contain billion of tons of oil and natural gas. Under internation law, a country's territorial boundary can be extended if it can prove that the continental shelf into which it wishes to expand is a natural extension of its own territory. So Russian scientists recently spent almost two months researching the "Lomonosov ridge", an underwater ridge which they claim links Russia's Arctic coast to the North Pole. Controversy has, of course, ensued.

religious right

Good list of the World’s Stupidest Fatwas. My favorite: Rashad Hassan Khalil, former dean of Islamic law at al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, ruled in January 2006 that for married couples, "being completely naked during the act of coitus annuls the marriage."

word of the day

Richistan.

And to this I say go dolphins, go.

spectrum

Martin Klimas takes amazing high-speed phtographs. David Doubilet takes amazing slow-speed photographs.

because they're not hard enough to walk in as it is

I love this stuff

Origins of familiar phrases.

Non Causa Pro Causa

I've posted something like this before, but The Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies is a fascinating voyage into the thicket of errors in reasoning. It's actually quite helpful if you can learn to recognize the all-too-common ones. For example, the "Masked Man" fallacy is one that occurs frequently in jury trials. The formula is where a = b, and C is believed to be a, C is also (and erroneously) believed to be b. The popular example is this:

• The masked man is Mr. Hyde.
  
• The witness believes that the masked man committed the crime.
  
• Therefore, the witness believes that Mr. Hyde committed the crime.

For one trying to convince you (erroneously or not) that Mr. Hyde committed the crime, this inference is highly desirable. The opponent would need to expose the fallacy by proving that there could have been another masked man on the scene. Understanding this distinction can be crucial.

Other fallacies aren't necessarily logical per se. Another common one is the "Appeal to Nature" fallacy which plays on the (natural) supposition that anything natural is good and anything unnatural is bad. The best example is on food labels. Everything is "all-natural" these days, even though it is clear that the word natural has a very specific meaning when it appears on a label. It think it's safe to say that most of these fallacies appear in or on advertisements every day of our lives. Read the list, get hip. Or better yet, buy a book:

tragedy

Earthquake Sets Japan Back To 2147.

um

No. Well maybe. Nah.

poem of the day

History of the Night

Throughout the course of the generations
men constructed the night.
At first she was blindness;
thorns raking bare feet,
fear of wolves.
We shall never know who forged the word
for the interval of shadow
dividing the two twilights;
we shall never know in what age it came to mean
the starry hours.
Others created the myth.
They made her the mother of the unruffled Fates
that spin our destiny,
thev sacrificed black ewes to her, and the cock
who crows his own death.
The Chaldeans assigned to her twelve houses;
to Zeno, infinite words.
She took shape from Latin hexameters
and the terror of Pascal.
Luis de Leon saw in her the homeland
of his stricken soul.
Now we feel her to be inexhuastible
like an ancient wine
and no one can gaze on her without vertigo
and time has charged her with eternity.

And to think that she wouldn't exist
except for those fragile instruments, the eyes.

- Jorge Luis Borges

well done, sir

Famous Poems Rewritten as Limericks

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
There was an old father of Dylan
Who was seriously, mortally illin'
"I want," Dylan said
"You to bitch till you're dead.
"I'll be cheesed if you kick it while chillin'."

quote of the day presidentiary

"The budget should be balanced; the treasury should be refilled; public debt should be reduced; and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled."

wait for it..







- Cicero. 106-43 B.C.