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As an American, I condemn hateful anti-Muslim rhetoric, whether in a film or otherwise. But I also condemn violence, including the embassy attacks. Fear that your religion has been insulted is no reason to hurt or kill anyone, ever, especially when the victims had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

Religious haters of all stripes: If God (Allah, whatever you want to call Him) actually exists, then He has the resources to defend Himself. Don’t assume you know the mind of God.

I am not religious myself (although I do have occasional bursts of the spiritual, in the widest sense.) I don’t like religions because they concretize very old ideas as unquestionable, and many of them are bad ideas. However, there are many good things that come from religion and the religious as well, and it is a huge happiness, comfort, and foundation for many people, so I try to remember that, too.

Oh, and something else I forgot about. Leaving the religious part of it aside, the more a culture marginalizes its own members, whether women, the sexually “other”, minorities, political opponents, the more it is going to struggle to keep up with the world of the future. (It is also, in my opinion, morally wrong, but I’m talking pragmatism here.) Where religion contributes to that, then religion is certainly worthy of blame.

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Guys, if the first hundred or so Google sources for your rumor/factoid/claim are all private blogs, and not a single respectable information gathering operation has reported it, not even Fox, then you might want to look a little deeper before you share it with everyone. Nothing personal, just a suggestion to cut down on the meme pollution.

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There. Don’t you feel better now?

You know the old expression, “apropos of nothing”, right? Well, I’ve got a tip for you — it’s usually apropos of something. Word to the wise.

I’m dealing with the heat-death of the universe today. Y’all have fun!

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This it totally my mood, you guys.

Stuart Smalley’s famous quote

Solid day’s work, thus chirpy mood. Bit the largest part out of a short story, bunch of other stuff, Giants picked up a game on the Dodgers. Sorry, LA, but in Northern Cali we call that a Good Day.

The volume’s been set a bit low on this, so give it a crank. It’s supposed to crackle. Accept the crackle. Love the crackle.

Charlie Patton – Shake it and Break it

Remind me to avoid arguments with hateful and hating people, will you? A real waste of energy that could be better put to use hanging with my kids, or even kicking rocks.

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A query: over dinner tonight, my wife and son suggested that “bull” — as a word meaning untruths — is no longer considered as harmless as other watered-down versions of what used to be curse words, like “darn” and “dang” and “heck”. They both said on the internet and in the classroom it’s considered a negative word, pretty close to swearing in a way “dang” and others are not. I didn’t agree, but I can’t pretend to be an expert on all contemporary usage. Anybody else want to weigh in?

Good lord there are a lot of news services these days set up by right-wingers, for right-wingers. I’m just been exploring Newsmax (specifically MoneyNews). No wonder the right has so much bulletin board fodder when they’ve got so many tailor-made propaganda sources with no interest in even-handedness, but which look semi-professional.

Oh, a follow-up on the Carville pseudo-quote. Here’s the message I got back from his website:

“Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Apparently the quote was falsely posted by an unknown user to a quotations website called thinkexist.com. We have contacted the website and asked them to take the quote down. There is no truth to the quote.”

Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien, better known as Dusty Springfield. Our Mary etc. could sing a bit, couldn’t she?

Dusty Springfield – Son of a preacher man