Quick Roundup 271

My belated thanks...

... go to Karl Martin Mertens for his support in last week's blogging contest.

I don't speak the language, but ...

... according to this quiz, ...

Your Inner European is Spanish!

Energetic and lively. You bring the party with you!

The food questions did it. Of the choices, I liked seafood best as an entree. And then there's dessert....

I lost my sweet tooth ages ago and generally don't do dessert. Flan was simply the one I found least repellent. I prefer my sugars fermented, in beer. But since I like the taste of beer, I prefer not to have it with meals, which excludes one of the otherwise obvious-looking dinner choices.

But if I interpret the dinner question more liberally, and select that obvious choice (the "meat, potatoes, and beer"), I pop up Irish.

Except for that blurb about "drink[ing] everyone under the table", I like that outcome much more. After all, my wife is Irish!

Notable Quotables

Myrhaf beat me to the punch, but I like these so much I'm going to repeat them here anyway.

First, Rick "Doc" MacDonald shows the following quote from Benjamin Franklin on the upper portion of his blog's sidebar:

The Declaration of Independence only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself!

And then, Joe, commenting on a particularly asinine remark by Ann Coulter, quotes Thomas Jefferson on religion:

The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites...

I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth... [bold added]

This quote reminds me a bit of a turn of phrase that someone near and dear to me in my youth would sometimes use to describe Southern Baptists. (I was born and raised in Mississippi.) They weren't "practicing Baptists", but "practicing hypocrites".

A Fitting Tribute

I see that the "Palestinians" recently honored the memory of Al Gore's fellow Nobel Laureate, Yasser Arafat, in the most fitting way possible:

At least six people have died in gunfire at a rally in Gaza City organised by Fatah to mark three years since the death of Yasser Arafat.

The violence occurred when Fatah supporters began taunting Hamas police and throwing stones, witnesses said.

The Hamas security forces reportedly responded by firing towards the crowd.

The only sympathy I have here is for the innocent children who were in attendance.

Heinlein Archives and Concordance

Ian Hamet: "This is what the internet was created for!"

-- CAV

Updates

11-27-07: Corrected two typos. (HT: Adrian Hester)