Category: quotes

Always loved a good quote
beggs

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quotes

Hegemony through holy genocide

My concept of God does not allow for God’s blessing of genocide as a means for one country’s hegemony over the earth.

Andrew Sullivan in Exceptional and Unexceptional America [theatlantic.com]

He is obviously not a fan of the Old Testament God of Deuteronomy and Numbers.

When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them

Deuteronomy 7:1-2, King James version

Sounds like hegemony through genocide to me. And it’s not even the worst thing in the Old Testament; remember the Moabites and Midianites?

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quotes ranting

Secular Socialist Islamism

Could somebody slap Newt with a limp herring?

“I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9,” Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

Jonathan Chait in Gingrich Reductio Ad Absurdum on The New Republic [tnr.com]

Huh? I mean; What. The. Fuck?

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quotes ranting

Asserting their presence

“So, you can call anyone you know at any time, and that’s so convenient for you, right? Well, it isn’t. Do the math. How many numbers do you have stored in your phone? Fifty, a hundred, more? Well, they’re the people for whom your phone is a great convenience—they know that they can call you and wherever you are, even if you don’t pick up, they have asserted their presence as a part of your day. You are one person with one person’s communication needs; they are legion, and they want and expect answers now. Want to know real convenience? Leave a message on my machine, or email me, and I’ll get back to you when I damn well feel like it.”

Dana Albarella James, in My Life Without A Cell Phone: An Amazing Tale Of Survival [theawl.com] published at The Awl [theawl.com]

I do have a phone —I had one back in the mid-90’s and was, on at least one occasion mistaken for a drug dealer due to said cell phone, trench coat and dark glasses but that’s a story, about fish and their exorbitant electricity consumption, for another day— but I can sympathize with the sentiment. I don’t talk on my phone much. I much prefer SMS or email. I’ve never really liked to talk on the phone…. But I’ve said all this before… [confusion.cc]

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quotes

The Tribe Mentality

“It is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his tribal identity depends on his not understanding it.”

Michael Bérubé, quoted by Judith Warner in the New York Times [nytimes.com] article Fact Free Science
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quotes ranting

Science Speak

In other news…

It’s a nice piece of speculative work, but it is speculation

Matt Visser, quoted in Stellar Wormholes May Exist [seeker.com] on Seeker

… is scientist speak for “that’s bullshit, what’s this guy smoking?”

Of course hindsight is 20/20.

Also, if memory serves, that’s a key plot element of The Algebraist [wikipedia.org].