I’ve put together about 1,050 quotes – with more on the way – that randomly surface every few seconds in the right hand column of this page. By now, certainly you’ve noticed them.

Some of them, narcissistic*, are my own words wrapped around my own thoughts. Others are from the great lights of mankind or from the Christian scriptures. A few were scavenged from the rubble pile of history before they could be covered completely over. They come from the little read, seldom quoted, list of thinkers.

And I have no desire to get ugly. But I cannot help mentioning that the door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly. — Ogden Nash, "Seeing Eye to Eye Is Believing"

I’m curious to know which of these have sparked an “aha” moment for you?

Click here to read on, my friend.

This is a ‘just gotta get it off my chest’ post. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps. – H.L. Mencken

In an ideal world, perhaps, the function of schools would be to teach children not only a limited set of facts, but how to expand on those facts; to cause algebra and poetry to merge into history and from there to take a leap forward into the future and beautify it.

In an ideal world.

What happened to American education? The growth of that great nation was fueled as much by her engines of education as by her steam-powered vessels and deep fund of natural resources. And now look … mired in wars that cannot be won against ideologies that cannot be killed by anything humans can throw against them, draining the blood of her sturdy citizens to feather the beds of those who have never known any other sort.

Click here to read on, my friend.

http://www.freeimages.co.uk/

I just Stumbled Upon Abstruse Goose where the linked cartoon is about an absurdity of time travel.

The thought that time travel might be a one-way street, though, got me to contemplating the potential consequences for embarking on such a journey Click here to read on, my friend.

The BBC posted this article about three recent violent events in the United States. Two appear to be the work of (so-called) right wing nut jobs and the other appears to have been comitted by a self-styled jihadist. As the BBC points out, the US allows its citizens the right to “keep and bear” arms in its constitution. That means, whether by accident or intent, there are about 30,000 gun injuries or deaths a year in the US. This is out of over 300 million citizens (according to Google, exactly 304,059,724 in July of 2008). You do the math.

The BBC, like American gun control lobbyists, points out that if guns in the US were controlled as they are in the UK, the US would have the same crime rate and level of civil liberties as in the UK. They are probably right. But that prospect is only appealing if you believe that Great Britain is a noticeably safer place to live than the US.

It is not. Click here to read on, my friend.

Let your voice be heard, whether or not it is to the taste of every
jack-in-office who may be obstructing the traffic. By all means, render unto
Caesar that which is Caesar's -- but this does not necessarily include
everything that he says is his.
      -- Denis Johnston, _The Brazen Horn_

At what point does submission to God and to the “superior authorities” part company?

Try to be specific in your comments. Give guidance, not shadow.