Tidbits
"I sympathize with Arabs’ horror at what [happened] in Lebanon, but I wish they were just as outraged when Muslims slaughter Muslims in Darfur." - NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
"Israel spent the last six years preparing for Warren Buffett, while Hezbollah spent the last six years preparing for this war." - THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Referring to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway's recent investment in a very large Israeli metal-working company.
While I would never advise any nation to not prepare for war, only preparing for war leads to the current situation, where most Arab nations are rushing to fling themselves on history's ash heap, instead of wising up and copying the world's success stories to ensure a bright future for themselves.
Exceptions include Jordan, Morocco, the UAE, and possibly Bahrain and Qatar. Iran is doing more to position themselves for the future than are Arabia, Kuwait, or Syria, for instance, but their latest bone-headed decisions and policies are so foolish that perhaps apathy and inaction would actually work out better for them in the long run.
“Al Gore announced he is finishing up a new book about global warming and the environment. The first chapter talks about how you shouldn't chop down trees to make a book that no one will read.” - Conan O'Brien"When somebody tips back a glass of wine, they should be thanking caterpillars." - DAVID L. WAGNER, an ecologist, noting that plants have created compounds like caffeine and tannins to defend themselves against caterpillars.
Which means that coffee, tea, and cocoa drinkers should also be thanking caterpillars, right ?
I'm certainly mighty grateful for caffeine and chocolate.
posted by Oroborous at 9:25 AM
6 Comments:
You are? I thought stimulants were verboten.
Not really.
Coffee and tea are - but we don't know why. Some speculate that it's because of the caffeine, and so they avoid caffeine from any source, but that's a personal interpretation.
Given that Mormons have only the letter of the law, and not the intent, with regard to coffee and tea, it seems to me to be both foolish and egotistical to assign an intent, instead of just following the simple instructions.
More interestingly, eating meat is also forbidden to Mormons in the same passages, unless there are no other foods available, but almost every Mormon ignores that so completely that they don't even have a rationalization for why they're doing so.
Why Mormon culture decided that only half of the instructions should be followed is a mystery.
My brother the bishop was greatly inconvienced by the tea rule. He used to travel a lot in the USSR and Japan.
In the USSR it wasn't safe to drink anything that wasn't boiled -- tea -- and in Japan it was hard to get anything but tea.
Half his suitcase will filled with cardboard boxes of apple juice.
Your brother is a bishop?
He was. Among the Mormons you can move up and down per assignment. He was a bishop for about 5 or 6 years.
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