The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Wattree’s Pearls of Limited Wisdom

    By Wattree on Thu, 06/16/2011 - 1:03pm |

    Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

     

    Wattree’s Pearls of Limited Wisdom
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    *The greatest lesson in wisdom, intelligence, and class is the understanding that one doesn't corner the market on any of them.
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    *Efficient thought requires that we first, see life as it is, and only then, as we would have it.

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    *Intelligence rises to accommodate one's level of curiosity.
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    *Some of the greatest mind's I've ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores.
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    *Some of the weakest minds I’ve ever known roamed the halls of academia giving the pursuit of credentials priority over the pursuit of knowledge.
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    *Before you point your finger at another, you should smell it first.
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    *The great institutions of learning can only certify that one was present in an environment where knowledge was shared. But no institution can confer either intelligence, character, or common sense, nor can it certify that the knowledge shared was absorbed.
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    *Man's innate thirst for knowledge will someday overwhelm his passionate lust for stupidity.
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    *Show me a man who believes that Moses parted the Red Sea, and I'll show you one whose grip on reality can't be relied upon.
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    *Never give anyone else's ability to think priority over your own.
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    *More often than not, the happiest moments in your life won't cost you a dime.
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    *The only difference between you and Socrates is that you're still capable of correcting your erroneous beliefs.
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    *State's Rights: We demand our constitutional right to lynch whomever we wish.
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    *Libertarian: I demand my individual right to abridge the rights of whomever I please.
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    *Tea Party: Liberals are un-American - they're engaged in a socialist plot to protect my family.
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    *Religious Bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.
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    *We accept that the Bible is the word of God because the Bible says it is. Go figure it.
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    *Question: When we're ask us to "have faith," are we being asked to have faith in God, or to have faith in what man tells us about God?
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    *Question: Can one believe in God, yet have no faith in man?
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    *Question: If we can only be "saved" though Christ, did God condemn everyone born in non-Christian nations before birth?
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    *An efficient thinker gives truth priority over ideology, while ideologues give ideology priority over truth.
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    *Question: If God knows all, and he knows before Billy is born that Billy is going to Hell, can Billy do anything in life to make God wrong?
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    *Every experience is a source of knowledge, so having to endure adversity makes one more, rather than less.
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    *One should take great pride in being the product of adversity, because your mere survival provides you with unassailable credentials.
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    *Unfortunately, man is most generously rewarded for his collusion in the conspiracy against mankind.
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    *God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think - but fish have sense enough to adhere to their nature.
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    *If one can’t find happiness in poverty, wealth will prove to be an ineffective mentor.
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    *It is always gratifying to win a debate, but losing one is of much more value.
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    *We’re Black and we’re proud - right up until we escape.
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    *Question: Why is it that we allow our children to watch murder and mayhem all day long, but if a woman's breast is revealed we feel they've been irretrievably damaged?
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    *I love you madly - until you succeed.
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    *Black people are the product of the very same racist environment as White people. Thus, we're just as racist toward other Blacks as any Hillbilly.
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    *Smiley and West: 21st Century pretexts for 19th Century thinking.
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    *It is always a delight to take so much credit for what so many others have done.
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    *Older women aren't quite as frisky as young ones, but at least I have someone to talk to when I'm done.
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    *You know that you're aging when you've got the hots for the lady in the Depends commercial.
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    *An epiphany: The triumph of common sense over wishful thinking.
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    *A personal epiphany: Never publish without running spellcheck.


    Eric L. Wattree
    http://wattree.blogspot.com/
    [email protected]
    Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

    Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

    Comments

    Show me a man who believes that Moses parted the Red Sea, and I'll show you one whose grip on reality can't be relied upon.

    I love your rules or epiphanies. This one gets to me because God would not only have had to part the waters, he would have had to use a blow dryer of the greatest magnitude and power to dry the underlying land enough to allow carts and thousands of people to traverse the distance. I never understood it. Of course it is a myth involving symbols deeply embedded in the Hebrew cranium.

    Oh and spell checking....half the time I double check with Wiki--especially for names and places. I have a very challenged spell checker.


    by Richard Day on Thu, 06/16/2011 - 4:11pm

    That's a very good point, Richard.

    When will people begin to realize that God's greatest miracle was making the laws of nature immutable? an you imagine what it would be like trying to live in a universe where the laws of nature just changed on someone's whim? I sure wouldn't take a chance on flying - well, boating either now that I think of it.


    by Wattree on Thu, 06/16/2011 - 5:55pm

    Why do people limit God to their understanding of how things work?

    Are the laws of gravity immutable? If man were meant to fly God would have given them wings?

    I have read reports that all God would have had to do, is split the waters with strong winds.

    A Riddle? …..…NO  ………..How could someone walk on water? …….When it’s ice.

    The report I read, also suggested these winds were able to freeze or semi freeze (gel) the side walls of the Seas.

    How strong of winds does it take to make Ice, could God produce the affect/effects?  Do you presume to know the answer?

    These same winds could dry out the bottom or maybe even freeze to ice? You’re not suggesting people couldn’t walk across sand and ice? Or that the molecular structure of the water wasn’t changed, by using the natural laws?

    Anything is possible and still be within the laws of Nature.

    It wasn’t that long ago, who could have thought, mankind could split the atoms, the building blocks of all things and by breaking the band, which holds the molecules together, an enormous release of energy is produced.

    Why should we assume the laws governing this bond couldn’t possibly be changed?  We changed them when we broke this bond.

    The real awe inspiring thing to reflect upon is this; we know of the power that is released when the band is broken; but who has the power to put the band around the molecules in the first place?

    Only a fool believes it just happened. You looked at the physical laws and assumed the Red Sea could not part, and then you say the energy it takes to hold the atomic bonds together just happened. Really?   

    Go ahead Earthling man, put the atomic genie back in the bottle, since you know so much about his laws of Nature   

    Limiting God’s ability because, we assume we really know all there is to know about the laws of nature.

    We don’t know much, but we’re learning more everyday. Someday we’ll discover how the Red Sea was split.  


    by Resistance on Thu, 06/16/2011 - 7:15pm

    Well that is the giant blow dryer I was talkin about!


    by Richard Day on Sun, 06/19/2011 - 5:17pm

    Resistance,

    Yes, the law of gravity is immutable. The laws of nature don't change. We simply use one law of nature to adapt to another. Thus, the law of gravity just because we built an airplane.

    As for your other suppositions, maybe God made the Easter Bunny a chicken just long enough to lay Easter eggs. I mean, wouldn't it be a lot easier to just recognize that the Red Sea story was a lie?  They had their share of Glenn Becks during Biblical times too.  In another two thousand years they'll have Dick Cheney parting the sea and Ronald Reagan walking the water too. They've already started rehabilitating George Bush. 


    by Wattree on Tue, 06/21/2011 - 3:33pm