Chaos Theory

Good point.

"In Massachusetts, familiarity with same-sex marriage bred the opposite of contempt. In Maine, as in California last year, voters didn't give themselves time to get used to the new unions."

Awww.

Taking a little girl away from breast cancer.

Um.....

"On Sunday, November 8, atheists will launch a coordinated prayer attack against God. Nonbelievers around the world will hurl a bevy of meaningless prayers at God, coordinated by Facebook, in an effort to inundate God’s prayer receptors and force them offline. 

In true nonbeliever fashion, athiest blogger PZ Myers responded, “I won't be able to join in, because whatever I have planned for that time, whatever it may be, will be far more interesting and productive than babbling to an invisible man.”

If any prayers go unanswered on November 8, this coordinated attack could be the reason why."

You people are perverse

So I'm listening to This American Life on Hell Houses, and....well, apparently none of the good Christians want to EVER play Jesus or any other good Christians, they just want to act like the bad kids. HMMMMMMMMMM.

Oh, and then they have "Hell House Oscars" afterwards for stuff like "Best Abortion Girl." Worst speech ever: "Well, I couldn't have done it without my rapers... But it ended up being a lot of fun....I ended up meeting a lot of people I didn't know..."

Also, it is incredibly creepy that they re-enact that girl getting shot in the head at Columbine. DISGUSTING.

Religion:

a flowchart. Heh, it nailed mine down.

Yay.

A heartwarming story.

Oh, irony

Leviticus doesn't like tats either.

Heh heh heh.

"You don't understand -- if I'm not there to receive these ideas, God might give them to Prince."

"I don't think God would give the ideas to Prince. I think Prince is going door-to-door in search of ideas, as God directed."

No, you don't want to be Don Draper

"I don't want to be Don Draper, just the old time masculinity he represents."  Don Draper doesn't represent that, he's faking it.  Look at the show: how come in a show set in those "old times," there aren't any other "real men?"

"Ok, fine, but he is masculine, strong, suave..." You're saying something you don't even believe.  If you met Don Draper at the company picnic, would you think he was a real man?  Would you want to emulate him?  Would you want to take over his body and life? 

"Well, certain characteristics..."  Now you're almost there.  You want to be an a la carte version of Don Draper.  You want to pick and choose the good parts.  When he's voted Most Influential, they mean only the iceman, suave, sly, creative, "masculine" Don Draper.  That's not a person, that's a brand image.   If you hired an engineer from Dell because you like how they built the monitors, you hired the wrong guy.

When you say you want to be like Draper what you are saying is you want to be the person Draper is pretending to be in a specific context.  That's not real.  Given that Don Draper is a character acted by Jon Hamm, then you're saying you want to be what an actor is pretending to be pretending to be.  If you try to be this for Halloween, you're going to be spotted as a fraud.

What you want, really, isn't to be Don Draper.  What you want is to live in Draper's world: where it is almost acceptable to have affairs; where you can drink all day and not get drunk; where you can say whatever is on your mind and not have it offend people; where creative men have some outlet for their ideas, and at least get paid really well instead.  Where you can eat any kind of food you want and not get fat.  Where you can act like you want to act, act like what you think a man acts like, and people will admire you.

In other words, what you want is to be the main character in your own movie."

So much for "don't ask, don't tell."

"However, I chose to put service above my personal life. My understanding of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy was that if I kept quiet about my sexuality and didn't break any rules, I would face no punishment. I was wrong.

Shop talk in the unit revolved around sex, either the prostitute-filled parties of days past or the escapades my comrades looked forward to. They interpreted my silence and total lack of interest as an admission of homosexuality. My higher-ups seemed to think that gave them the right to bind me to chairs, ridicule me, hose me down and lock me in a feces-filled dog kennel.

I told no one about what I was living through. I feared that reporting the abuse would lead to an investigation into my sexuality. My leaders and fellow sailors were punishing me for keeping my sexuality to myself, punishing me because I wouldn't "tell."

It gets worse. (Washington Post) There's also a chat.