Veritas Forum

Skull and crossbones tattoo? How about a Miacis gracilis fossil tattoo instead? Clicky clicky.

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This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* torture (3x)
* pain (2x)
* sex (1x)

This can only mean one thing: Shawn is not posting frequently enough

Fox News has a story today on harsh treatment for detainees at Gitmo. Terror Suspect Claims Torture by Americans, Not Enough Entertainment at Guantanamo Bay. It reads like an Onion article.

WASHINGTON — An accused enemy combatant held at Guantanamo Bay told a military hearing he was physically as well as mentally tortured there by having to read a newsletter full of 'crap,' being forced to use unscented deodorant and shampoo and having to play sports with a ball that would not bounce...

That's what you get when you mess with the U.S. of A.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: His Most Serene Highness Lord Andrew the Erudite of Fiddlehope in the Marsh
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Well, BB Mckee says if I "knew what the h**l" I'm talking about, I should be able to explain the soul in terms a redneck could understand. I may not know what I'm talking about, but I give you "A Filosofikal Treetees on the Soul" by Billy Bob.

Peoples talk about us havin’ body and soul. Some think the soul is somethin different--somethin invisible like. But some folks think the soul and the body are the same thing. Now myself I think the soul is different, but very very closely related. Ya see, the soul and the body go together like stink on poop.

=> Read more!

My first college roommate, Toby, was a very picky eater. He subsisted on a diet of chocolate chip cookies and Pepsi. I tried cooking breakfast for him once--Dutch babies, fruit salad, and fried potatoes. He ate the fried potatoes.

=> Read more!

Hey Shawn, I’ve been mulling over your comments.

What really interests me are what our sensations will actually “feel” like. Thomas Nagel wrote a very famous philosophical paper “What is it like to be a bat?” His primary point was the difficulty in reducing first person experiences to third person knowledge (i.e. physically observable states). And that’s not the point of the article that relates to this discussion

Instead, I want to focus on the difference in qualia between our fallen sensations and our risen heavenly sensations. Just as there is a radical difference between our sensations and a bat’s sensations, there is a certain difference between our bodies now and what they will be. It is hard to imagine how a bat feels. similarly it is hard to imagine how a Heavenly human will feel.

When you speculate that our sense of “pain” may only be “minor discomfort” you may very well be correct. Or maybe we won’t actually experience “pain” in any way that we are accustomed to. Maybe Homer Simpson is right, when he hits himself on the head with a bat while in Heaven, “Woah, up here that feel good!”

That's right, 50 cent has decided to publish a coloring book for kids. His stated purpose was to bring "gangsta values" to preschoolers.

I wonder what he was thinking...

"Cuz ya know, kidz theese dayz don't know how to busta cap and dats important like if a playa hata comes around like they need to have courage and sh**. Boyz aren't being mentored, they don't know how to keep their hoes in line."

Greenpeace thinks that a video of a kid threatening us (i.e. adults) if we don't do something about global warming is going to win them converts. Yeah yeah yeah. The global warming alarmists are going the way of the previous scares: the coming ice age, overpopulation, scarcity of all resources, etc...

Via Angie comes this delectable bit of angst from a feminist who couldn't get a date.

Includes gems like this: "Romance does something far worse than merely further women's oppression, however. It turns them into bloodthirsty killers."

I'm surprised Nathanael missed this in his never ending series on the death of Western civilization. Apparently, a Dutch gym (no surprise there), will be instituting "Naked Sunday" for their nudist patrons.

I really do. It's the simple things in life I like and it's those things they are trying to take away.

Recently, some enterprising thieves in California made off with over $100,000 in rare wine from a private collector. Now, on the one hand this is a very silly crime, not as regards the thieves, who were cool and rational, but as regards the fact that 450 bottles could have such value. I'm sure that the prized $11,000 bottle contains a lovely wine, I'm also quite sure that it's ridiculous for any wine to cost a tenth of that. My own collection of alcoholic beverages could doubtless be bought many times over for the price of just one of these bottles. There is a temptation to think that anyone spending such lavish sums on wine deserves to have it taken away as punishment for such decandence. And I agree that such spending is wasteful and decadent.

And yet I think Chesterton was on to something in Manalive, where a character finally realizes that theft is really wrong when faced with what seems an almost identical situation, where it appears a burglar is about to drink port in a house he has just broken in to.

"'can you think of anything so base as a toy-stealer?...all stealing is toy-stealing. That's why it's really wrong. The goods of the unhappy children of men should be really respected because of their worthlessness. I know Naboth's vineyard is as painted as Noah's Ark. I know Nathan's ewe-lamb is really a woolly baa-lamb on a wooden stand. That is why I could not take them away. I did not mind so much, as long as I thought of men's things as their valuables; but I dare not put a hand upon their vanities.' After a moment I added abruptly, `Only saints and sages ought to be robbed. They may be stripped and pillaged; but not the poor little worldly people of the things that are their poor little pride.'
He set out two wineglasses from the cupboard, filled them both, and lifted one of them with a salutation towards his lips. `Don't do it!' I cried. `It might be the last bottle of some rotten vintage or other. The master of this house may be quite proud of it. Don't you see there's something sacred in the silliness of such things?'"

Anyone see that Southpark episode where the Scientologists tell Stan that he's L. Ron Hubbard reborn? Heh, yeah.

My sympathies rest entirely with the young man who sought to destroy the inflatable Frosty. I'm thinking I just might be able to get a Liberty Mr. Cynical out of this...

Hilarious piece on the quirks of some of the world's leading despots.

"It was brewed in the year that the Suez Canal opened, Charles Dickens embarked on one of his last literary tours and the Cutty Sark was launched in Scotland.

But the recently-discovered cache of 1869 ale should have been undrinkable, given the conventional brewing wisdom that even the best beers are supposed to last no more than a couple of decades. Beer experts, however, say the 137-year-old brew tastes "absolutely amazing"."

Did anyone else suddenly get the urge to stash a few brews away?

Behold Planned Parenthood's "video game" about Plan B. This is probably the worst I've ever played. I could code something more interesting in Visual Basic using only my nose to type in the code and my tongue to move the mouse. In five minutes or less. This is like having a fat white 50-year-old in a golf outfit trying to make it in the rap scene.
Come on, couldn't they rip off Pac-man and have Mrs. Pac-man (or is that Ms.?) going around eating up birth control pills while Catholic bishops and evangelical pastors take the places of the ghosts trying to catch her? Sure it might be copyright infringement, but it would be marginally entertaining.

Gaze in awe upon the only decent... nay, coherant... staff editorial published in the pages of the Daily Barometer in over a year.

Ok, it's still not great. I think my minimum expectations for the Baro committed seppuku long ago.

Clicky. (Be sure to watch the video.)