My Personal Credo

I play by the rules, mind my own business, and expect others to do likewise.

Follow the Leader

"Is Rush Limbaugh the new leader of the Republican party?" I suspect (and hope) that Limbaugh leads only Republican rabble.

If I were King, I would launch a fleet of crop dusters spraying Fabreze to mask the acrid stench of putrefaction.

"On God: An Uncommon Conversation"

Reading Norman Mailer's personal theology was like listening to a tedious (and witless) joke.

The fool asks unanswerable questions; the priest compounds the foolishness by answering them.

Ideologues of every stripe share a common disdain for independent thought.

The Art of Compromise

Every compromise is a partial sacrifice of the Best to the Least--the Least is enhanced, the Best is diminished.

Jekyll or Hyde?

The most chilling aspect of monsters like Mengele and Eichman is that they really weren't monsters at all.

At his war-crimes trial, the architect of the Final Solution looked frail and frightened, his expressions contorted by a nervous tic. Alone, stripped of support and symbols, he inspired more pity than hate.

I fear most the Nobody desperate to be Somebody.

Language-cop Citations

Did anything besides nomenclature change when the War Zone became a "non-permissive environment"?

A military "variance" that kills is still a deadly fuck-up!

Memo to Judge Joe Brown: The conflicting testimony may be contrary or contradictory, but it is not "contradictorary." (And the defendant's residence is his premises, not his "premise.")

Memo to Today's Natalie Morales: Barack Obama's election may have been momentous, even monumental--but it was not "monumentous."

Human Rights Watch urged NATO to discontinue use of cluster bombs, because children might pick up an unexploded canister and "find themselves killed"!

Exorcism & Self-actualization

Reliance on outside forces, be they spectral or earthly, for self-actualization is disempowering and dehumanizing.

We can fully actualize our humanity only by exorcising our demons and angels.

Other-wordly fantasies diminish the exquisite majesty and mystery of life and death on Earth.

Religion is on the rise. god help us.

In a world of Rationalists, the distinctions are clear, absolute, and mutually-exclusive: the murderous attacks cannot be both a perversion and an expression of god's will, a savage act of terror and a holy act of selfless devotion. In a world of Theists, contradictory concepts thrive, "truth" the sole possession of whoever most-successfully suppresses disagreeable dogma.

Religious hegemony is achieved by killing, converting, or out-reproducing the infidels.

I will accept Man's charity as evidence of god's beneficence if you will concede Man's sinfulness as a manifestation of god's iniquity.

'Tis a puzzlement.

Why would a liberated slave embrace his oppressors' religion? Why would a liberated woman accept a patriarchal fiat that endows a two-celled conceptus with unalienable rights?

Her son was killed in Baghdad last month. Then her mother "was taken." Now her home has been swallowed by the floods. Thank god it's finally stopped raining.

Irreconcilable Differences

Despite agonized attempts to "get along," religion and science are fundamentally, at their cores, incompatible: religion provides immutable answers, issues eternal prescriptions and proscriptions--a static condition of closed-mindedness; science poses questions, pursues and promotes evolving hypotheses--a fluid state of inquisitiveness.

Science searches for answers, religion invents them.

Dependent on proofs, science is dynamic; contrary evidence is welcome. Independent of proofs, religion remains static; contrary evidence is heretical.

Challenge scientific dogma and you may earn a Nobel Prize; challenge religious dogma and you earn eternal damnation.

Whenever science contradicts scriptures, believers insist that what the bible says isn't (necessarily) what the bible means; theologians simply (conveniently) reinterpret the offending passages. Odd that god has had so much difficulty making himself understood.

As science advances, religion must retreat (or at least detour).

If religionists would leave science to scientists, I'd wager that scientists would (gladly) leave religion to religionists.

Language-cop Citations

Presidential historian, on the Monica Lewinsky affair: "She almost caused Bill Clinton to lose his presidency." Yeah, like Nicole caused O.J. to lose his Heisman Trophy!

"Hillary cares about her zone of privacy." Translation: She has more to hide.

Lifetime Achievement Awards should be bestowed posthumously; otherwise, they're only Up-'til-now Awards.

For his first crime, he was condemned to death; for his second, he received 25 years in prison. According to the News, "He'll serve the two sentences consecutively"!?

Lactaid is "100% lactose-reduced." Is it safe to assume that means it's lactose-free?!

I am responsible for what I say, not for how it is received.

Show or Tell

Unless you're an accomplished terpsichorean, don't try to dazzle me with your footwork.

Trying to be clever is like trying to look beautiful--a failed attempt can render one less attractive.

Don't tell me, show me; then I'll understand.

REALITY is not your enemy; besides, you can't kill it.

Turn your back, REALITY will kick your keister; resist, REALITY will flatten you like a pancake.

REALITY is Reality stripped naked of wishful thinking.

As one's own Reality approximates REALITY, one approaches Enlightenment.

The Reality of the dung beetle is as valid as the Reality of the butterfly.

Each owns his own Reality and is primarily responsible for its care and maintenance.

REALITY always laughs last.

REALITY Check: Don Quixote was a crazy old coot!