All in one place for your weekend reading.
Category: Mind and Spirit
Spirituality, moods, feelings, and thinking free to live free.
Gunshot to butt helps … er, crack case. (H/T for the laugh to LA) No drugs, no alcohol. Just vast quantities of stupid found at the scene. Used to be, the more student debt you incurred, the more likely you were to own a house. ‘Cause after all, that debt meant you were better schooled, therefore better paid. Not so much any more. More on politically correct academia devouring its own. I liked Joel’s take better. Our Masters do not like being humiliated. (H/T Shel from comments) Susan Cain: TED talk on The Power of Introverts. Boy, is that the…
I’ve been meaning to write at greater length about several topics. But reality keeps getting in the way. (Very annoying thing, reality.)
So here are the short versions, plus a couple of mini-rants.
It’s funny how so many “bad guys” think they’re the “good guys.” Woman has neighbors’ home bulldozed because she doesn’t approve of them. National mortgage database: good for regulators, bad for the rest of us. Financial secrets of the Amish. (Never mind the wide-eyed yuppie tone; the info is good.) While I’m dubious about Bitcoin, the underlying problem is real. And speaking of people who helpfully fill in potholes, no good deed goes unpunished. (H/T MJR for 2) Why Christians may regret getting government endorsement for prayers at public meetings. Now there’s a question nobody should have to think about.…
Prophesy is a dubious business. The best-regarded prophets keep things vague enough to mean anything some follower wants them to mean. When that won’t work, there’s also the “just move on” method for handling the aftermath of more specific prophesies (which Gary North found handy after Y2K). Another fave of failed prophets is the “it actually happened just as I predicted, but nobody noticed” method recently favored by Harold Camping. (These both have multitudes of amusing variations.) Creative editing centuries after the fact often helps to ensure the reputation of a less-than-accurate prophet. H.L. Mencken clearly needs none of those…
It was one o’ them days today. But it was sunny. It was Stress, Incorporated. But Sol was beaming down on blazing green grass. And you know, that springtime green, it does blaze. So I drove the dogs out to a place in the woods where a landowner has set a picnic table in a grassy clearing beside a beaver pond. And I enjoyed a sandwich made to order at the grocery store down the road, which has a fine little deli. Ah. That helped. Driving home, two teenagers with shovels scooted out of my way. They were on the…
This is going to be another of those disjointed, self-revelatory, “pondering the meaning of life” things I’m compelled to post once in a while. If you don’t like those, don’t click on the “more” link. I’ll be back with something more “lite” soon enough.
Usually I do these later in the week, but a couple of conversations yesterday put this subject on my mind. So … What do you feel truly, deeply passionate about? And I mean passionate enough that you’ll leap in and go for it even when you see struggle ahead. Passionate enough that, when you’re pursuing it, the rest of the world goes away. Passionate enough that you live it and breathe it. Although this is a freedom question, it’s not necessarily about issues. But about anything you love that much. A cause, yes. But it could also be about a…
I’m supposed to be deadlining right now. And I am. I will be. I already know what I’m going to write; it’s only a matter of writing it.
But I’m grouchy and out of sorts and feeling generally useless, so I thought I’d get some of that out of my head.
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Like most here I’ve been watching the standoff at the Bundy ranch. I’ve had nothing new to add to the discussion, so I haven’t blogged about it. Like others, I was just trying to figure what to make of it. I only hoped it wouldn’t end up being another Weaver/Waco massacre.
Not this time:
(Image via Sipsey Street, where Mike Vanderboegh has some spirited things to say about it.)