In my quest for the perfect moustache, I stumbled upon this. What is this? And why would someone buy one of these “used”?
Any ideas for potential moustaches. Hitler and Borat moustaches are automatically out. Anything else is a go. Let me know.
This is hilarious and saddening all at once. A teacher is sued for “ranting” about how “When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can’t see the truth”. Instead of being thankful that his teacher, traditionally a source of truth and wisdom, is opening his eyes to the eternal swindle that is religion, some kid is suing him.
The article goes on to say that the student accuses the teacher of :
Corbett causes students who hold religious beliefs to feel like second-class citizens because of their protected religious expression, beliefs and conduct.
Well, I have a confession to make: this is my full-time job.
They further accuse the teacher of saying “inflammatory” statements like:
In the industrialized world the people least likely to go to church are the Swedes. The people in the industrialized world most likely to go to church are the Americans. America has the highest crime rate of all industrialized nations, and Sweden has the lowest. The next time somebody tells you religion is connected with morality, you might want to ask them about that.
Since when is the truth inflammatory? My guess is that people who need to insulate themselves from the harsh realities of the world by immersing themselves in some absurdly hypocritical Middle Eastern religion will find anything that lets in a glimmer of truth “inflammatory”.
They say the classroom isn’t the place for this. If not the classroom, then where? The television sure doesn’t provide any truth, it’s sole purpose is to make you stupider so that you’ll be a more docile worker bee: get a job, spend money on useless commodities, consume, breed, have kids so their body parts can be harvested for future wars, worship $chosen_deity, pay taxes, die. Throw in a few more useless articulations and you’re set. The radio is destined for junk heap, no? The Internet is perhaps our last hope, and even it contributes more distractions than any other medium. Books are always great, but you’d be hard pressed to find one man in a hundred who’s read Dickens, Kipling, Thoreau…ad infinitum, for pleasure.
Anyway, all that aside, this man’s name is James Corbett. If you don’t realize the significance of that name, let me enlighten you. One James Corbett was the world champion in heavyweight boxing. Yet another James Corbett, by far the most legendary was a big game hunter who killed man-eating tigers and leopards. On his own, in the dark jungles of India at night, without aid, helpers, machine guns, helicopters, safari guides or what have you that the namby-pamby big game hunters of today consider essentials.
He remained unrivalled in the British Empire for his marksmanship and daring. Also, the most important fact is that he did not hunt for sport, unlike your average dot.com millionaire from Milwaukee who spends his first million bringing home that Serengeti pelt. Conversations probably went like this in the distant jungles of north-eastern India:
“Jim, we need you. A man-eating leopard has defied all efforts and actually EATEN 400 people so far”
“Alright, I’ll bring my trusty Enfield”
Well, at least James Corbett has his name going for him. We all know he can’t win, the forces of evil and stupidity and misogyny and racism and hatred are far too strong for one good teacher. But it was a good shikar and one that made all the stolithropists cheer!
Original news article here.
Just a gentle reminder that Christmas isn’t jolly for everyone. I’ll still take mind-numbing consumerism over religious drivel anyday, it’s the lesser of the two evils.
Look at Gonzalo Otalora. Is this just a gimmick, or is he really angry about the advantages afforded beautiful people. Or should he just get plastic surgery and join the ranks of the plastic? No no, that would be a monstrous denial of one’s principles, betrayal to the maximum. But what about the conflicting maxim: If you can’t beat them, join them. Anyway, here is Gonzalo Otaro’s crusade, summed up in three delicious words: Tax The Beautiful.
Gonzalo Otalora, for instance, is downright ugly, and he is not embarrassed to admit it.
In fact, he is fighting back on behalf of all those Argentines who don’t fancy themselves as film stars or models.
I went out with him on a grey day in the Argentine capital. It was raining and windy which can cause havoc if, like many Argentines, you have spent hours dressing and making yourself up to join the ranks of the beautiful people on the streets of Buenos Aires.
Ponces.
It’s not about making yourself look beautiful, he says, but about coming to terms with and being positive about who you are and what nature has given you.
“The most important thing is not to feel so insecure,” said Gonzalo. “The difference between being beautiful and ugly is not aesthetic but is inside. And if someone has high self-esteem then you can compete in any area in this society on equal terms with a good-looking person.”
This is true. But he makes an even better point. If you add up all the seconds and minutes spent by people, men or women in primping themselves, in being deeply shallow, you’d get millennia wasted on essentially pfaff. Some might argue that it’s worth it on a biological level, since being better looking invites more interest and hence a better chance of getting your genes passed on and all that rubbish. Tell that to the first caveman, seconds before he brings his antelope femur down on your head and starts ripping your entrails out as you’re still alive and can only watch in glazed shock.
Taxing the beautiful won’t work, several beautiful people are poor, despite Gonzalo’s protestations. Perhaps we should doubly tax the rich and beautiful, after all, they’ve reaped the benefits of beauty and are in a position to pay it. Or maybe more Argentines should listen to this man:
Of course, failing that, he can always
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months, are so complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so as to make coherent mental reckoning in time all but impossible. Indeed, had some tyrannical god contrived to enslave our minds to time, to make it all but impossible for us to escape subjection to sodden routines and unpleasant surprises, he could hardly have done better than handing down our present system. It is like a set of trapezoidal building blocks, with no vertical or horizontal surfaces, like a language in which the simplest thought demands ornate constructions, useless particles and lengthy circumlocutions. Unlike the more successful patterns of language and science, which enable us to face experience boldly or at least level-headedly, our system of temporal calculation silently and persistently encourages our terror of time.
… It is as though architects had to measure length in feet, width in meters and height in ells; as though basic instruction manuals demanded a knowledge of five different languages. It is no wonder then that we often look into our own immediate past or future, last Tuesday or a week from Sunday, with feelings of helpless confusion. …
— Robert Grudin, Time and the Art of Living.
Taken from, believe it or not, the documentation for the GNU date input formats. Now you know where the bitterness is coming from.