If I Could Have Dinner With Anyone Living Or Dead

Wouldn't it be great to get into a famous person's head for a few hours?

Who to pick? Jesus and Moses most probably never existed, but even if they did, I can always go to Toronto and go to Queen and Sherbourne and talk to just about anyone on the street to get the same out of a dinner with either of these fictional characters.

Since I'm married, and have this ridiculous notion that I must be faithful, it makes no sense to choose a sexy woman from past or present.

How about scientific discovery? Charles Darwin would be a pretty good choice, but he did have failing health much of his latter life, and it might be a turn off eating with someone who might have old puke stains in their beard (see, I'm thinking of everything).

The US Founding Fathers? It might be cool to sit with Jefferson and ask exactly what he thought about God and Christianity, and I could fill him in on Darwin and evolution, and then ask him "so what are you now? Deist? Theist? or Atheist? or are you going to cop out and say agnostic?"

But of all the people living and dead, I would choose Seth MacFarlane. Usually, I'm not one to put one person above everyone else, except for myself that is, but when it comes to Seth, I have to make an exception. Does this make me a weirdo? I don't care, we are all weirdos in some ways at least.

Oh, and apparently there really is a Peter Griffin:


H/T Joe's Big Blog (I took the picture from another site though, but check out Joe's blog, it has lots of funny stuff on it).

When Did Liberal Become Such A Dirty Word

Watching Fox News this morning, I've heard the word "liberal" being tossed around like it is a disease.

Lets look at the definition of "liberal:"

a. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
b. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

Why would anyone want to be anything else? Makes no sense to me.

I'm not talking about being a Far Left whack job who pushes tolerance of behavior of others to the extreme. There are limits. A rapist is a rapist is a rapist, and I don't care what drove him to become one. A suicide bomber is a suicide bomber is a suicide bomber and I don't care what drove him to blow up innocent people. Yes, the far Left has major problems because they can't identify who the perpetrator is and who the victim is many times. They are not open minded because they tend to blame the real victim or society. They are not true liberals.

The word "liberal" in its truest sense has nothing to do with political affiliation unless the government has policies that are not progressive. A liberal would be against anything that stifles progress.

What exactly is the opposite of "liberal?" Here are some examples:








I'd rather be a dirty liberal any day.

Atheists In The Arab World? You Betcha

There is a group on Facebook named The Intellectuals. It is full of atheists and/or freethinkers from the Arab world. There are 950 members currently.

I think this great, and it does quash a few misconceptions that I, and many others I'm sure, have about freedom of speech and atheism in Muslim territory.

I still don't know how much backlash an atheist in Egypt or Iraq gets from being a known atheist or how courageous, if at all, it is to be an open member of this group, knowing full well that one's Muslim friends would quickly find out that one thinks belief in Allah is full of crap.

I found out about this group because my blog happens to be one of the many GREAT atheist blogs linked on their Facebook site. They do have very good taste it seems.

I'm not courageous enough to join that group yet. What would my non atheist friends and family think? Do I need to explain myself that much to them? Besides, I'm not an Arab and I don't live in a Muslim country, so I'll use that as my excuse for now.

I stay away from my atheism on my Facebook site for the most part, though I do identify myself as a non believer and I have a few atheist bloggers as my friends.

I'm curious what the description of The Intellectuals group means. Maybe one of my readers can help me out. Here it is:

جروب لأرشفة أهم المدونات والمواقع والمنتديات الإلحادية واللادينية -والمناهضة لمظاهر الظلام الديني- على شبكة الإنترنت

Evolution Is A Fact, The Theory Is How We Understand It

Good job Rapid Ape:

Town Hall Nut Jobs Embarrass The United States

I realize there are pros and cons when it comes to the American health care debate. The main danger that comes with socialized medicine is that potentially the quality of physicians may decrease thanks to what would amount to caps on their wages and there could be less incentive to for research to happen as costs will need to come down, and in order to cut costs, drug prices need to come down.

As for the examples being thrown about using Canada, I'm sick of it. Personally, I do not know one person who went to the USA for any treatment. I know many people obviously have gone to the USA. But the stories of saved lives from doing so are few and far between. Yes, waiting times can be a bitch here, but does it really matter when we look at what is achieved collectively?

One stat that I just can't get away from is the fact that Canadians have a life expectancy two years greater than Americans. In fact, the USA ranks 47th on the list of countries in this category. Canada ranks 8th.

I don't buy diet or geography as being the reason why Canadians tend to live longer. I think Canadians eat just as much junk food collectively as Americans. And there are plenty of cold weather modern countries that have much lower life expectancies than Canada and even the USA.

America has more poverty pockets than Canada, at least right now they do. That contributes to lower life expectancy, as does gang violence and of course, the war doesn't help America's numbers, though we have lost quite a few Canadians in Afghanistan, America has lost a bigger percentage of their population.

Blacks in America have a life expectancy of around 6 years less than the average, and this brings down the average in the USA as well.

So lets say that when you take everything into consideration, lets just say that Canadians and Americans are expected to live the same life span, and expect the same quality of life as well.

The health care debate should just boil down to economics only. What system makes more economic sense when factoring in that as many citizens as possible need to be covered for anything that endangers their life.

As for the Town Hall bs. To me, all I see are a bunch of pissed off Republicans who have no clue what the issues are (I know, that there are a few that do know something). But for the most part, they are whining babies who can't cope with things like progress, a black Democrat in the White House, the thumping they took in the last election, Palin jokes, separation of church and state, and in probably most cases, EVOLUTION.

I'm convinced that 90% plus of the conservatives, who are making the USA look like a state full of mindless idiots at these Town Halls, do not accept evolution. I don't think that is a big stretch, since 45% of Americans do not accept evolution, and most of those are Republicans (the anti-science Party).

I'd like to see a few polls to prove I'm right. I know I am, but it would be nice to confirm it.