matthearn.com

An “Aha Moment” on the subject of tangible forgiveness. Video’s about 2 1/2 minutes, but it’s worth it. Key description:

When I was pregnant with my twins, I had the realization of being forgiven for the abortion I had in the past and didn’t have to explain it anymore.

Whatever your feelings are about organized religion or abortion issues, the thought of unloading a heaping helping of guilt appeals to anyone, I think.

Here’s something oddly frightening: did you know that The Prohibition Party still exists? That’s right: there are people so out of touch that, despite what happened from 1919 to 1933 and what’s happening now with the “drug war,” they honestly believe that making alcohol illegal is a good idea.

The website is pretty priceless (animated gifs! lulz), and includes links like “See what the Bible has to say” (warning: immediate sound, like it’s 1997 or something). There’s another site, marginally more professional looking, at prohibitionists.org; it contains a veritable wealth of information about what kind of crazies still live, work, and vote in this country. You know, just in case you hadn’t seen Fox News lately and had forgotten.

Time Magazine produces a simple poll:

I post this without comment, so that you can admire it and draw your own conclusions. (Blatantly stolen from Matthew Yglesias.)

Over at Andrew’s blog, his fill-ins (particularly Patrick) have been talking a lot about atheism, and posting replies from readers with their own thoughts. This one hit particularly close to home:

Maybe there is a god. Maybe there are many gods. Maybe there’s no god at all … Maybe in the end it doesn’t matter, and I’ve just got to lead the best life I can, as I see it, and if that’s not good enough in the end — if there be an end instead of a simple fading away — then as far as I’m concerned, any god that would condemn me for doing my best to be the best person I can isn’t a god I’d want to believe in, in the first place.

I completely agree. I’m not sure what I believe at this point, but I do know this: if there is a God, and He thinks homosexuals should be treated as second-class citizens or says that I can’t eat bacon, then eff that guy.

Here’s a lengthy commentary on the state of the “drug war,” why it’s always been doomed to failure, and why the administration is legally prevented from even discussing stopping it. Interesting fact:

Since 1998, the ONDCP has spent $1.4 billion on youth anti-pot ads. It also spent $43 million to study their effectiveness. When the study found that kids who’ve seen the ads are more likely to smoke pot, the ONDCP buried the evidence, choosing to spend hundreds of millions more on the counterproductive ads.

Let’s just cover everything in rapid-fire list form, ’cause that’s how I be rollin’ fo sho. (I don’t understand many of the things I just typed.)

• I’m down to 249 as of this morning, despite drinking more than I should have over the weekend; I attribute the continued weight loss to constantly working on my house and not eating much. Saturday I was 750 calories under where I should be, which is roughly the equivalent of a cheeseburger. I compensated on Sunday by sharing half a Bobbie and drinking a lot of beer.


• How about that old Tom Watson yesterday? I wish he’d made that last putt on 18. Perhaps he should borrow my new putter; I am a horrible golfer, and yet the first time I used my new clubs I was dropping 8-12 footers like what. I was an unstoppable putting deity. I’m just saying, if Tom wants some pointers, he should totally call me.


• Progress on the purchase of a new house and sale of the old one continues apace; the home inspection on the “new” 150-year-old home revealed that, in the words of the inspector, the house is “totally rockin’.” We also discovered that the radiators, which we thought had been disabled in favor of a modern heat pump, are fully functional and heated by a boiler in the basement. My new house has the same heating system as Harlan Elementary School, and in no way is this a bad thing. Apparently the boiler is just about the best one money can buy, it’ll last for 40 years, and it was installed just three years ago. Acres and acres of win.

  
  On the current home front, we’re cleaning and scrubbing and patching holes and just generally making the place look less like the family home of 4 dirty people and more like Felix Ungar lives up ins.



• Why don’t people name their kids Felix anymore? If HW and I have a third kid I’m totally pushing for that.

I haven’t updated everyone on the status of my gut, so here’s the lowdown: still fat. Lost 19 pounds in a little over 5 weeks, though, so I guess I’m doing something right (not eating; occasionally running until I throw up).

I’d like to lose about 38 more. That’s gonna be tough; even in 2004, when I was about as skinny as I’ve been since high school, I bottomed out at around 225. Getting down to 215 would make me positively hott, methinks, but it’s gonna be really, really hard. Particularly since we have a long vacation scheduled in a month or two. I’m going to try and run or ride every day while I’m beachin’, but who knows. I highly doubt I’ll be paying much attention to diet.

Annoyingly, I ha’en’t had much time to exercise, because we’ve been so busy; my usual lunch hour spent running through the woods or lifting weights hasn’t happened in nearly two weeks. You might be wondering what’s kept us so busy, and to that I reply: we bought a house. It was all very quick, mostly because we’d been admiring the house from afar for literally years, it came back on the market, and we found out somebody else had put an offer in. We overbid those folks and got it. Home inspection is tomorrow, after which I should be able to post a few photos.

Now I just have to be able to, you know, pay for it. And sell our current dive, which is really what’s keeping us busy; we’re throwing stuff into storage and doing Xtreme Kleening 2009. There’s a little bit of touch-up painting to be done, plus the basement where Veronicat (aka The Cheat) has made her litterbox, i.e. the entire basement floor. That’s the biggie; we won’t even let our realtor come look at the house until we get the basement cleaned up. But keeping the basement clean requires keeping The Cheat from peeing and pooping on it, which unfortunately for her means she becomes an outside kitty. So tonight I’m getting her vaccinations up-to-date, we’ll be getting her groomed, finding her some kind of shelter, and then her ass is on the streets, son. (Well; the fenced in backyard. I’m not letting her roam free, for heaven’s sake.)

So that’s what be happ’nin’. More updates on the subject to come.

People sometimes ask me, “Hey, didn’t you use to be a Libertarian? What happened with that?” (Okay, nobody asks me that. Anybody who knows I once subscribed to Libertarian principles is probably unaware I’ve changed. So I should probably say: I no longer consider myself a Libertarian, but a Liberal, albeit with certain caveats, such as the fact that I think people should still be allowed to pack heat.)

This article taking Governor Palin to task on cap-and-trade doesn’t really have much to do with Libertarianism, except for one excerpt:

My decision to drive creates traffic that imposes a cost on society. A company’s decision to fish in the ocean imposes a cost on the world’s common stock of fisheries. A banker’s decision to take on a huge amount of risk creates danger for the economy as a whole. The problem is that none of these private actors adequately bears the cost of their decisions.

(Italics mine.)

The short version of why I no longer consider myself to be Libertarian is that “Every man for himself” doesn’t seem like particularly good public policy.

New auto-tuning of the news! I am excited. Really! Feel my nipples!