Homage to Icarus

As some­one who used to attend an Assembly of God church in Illinois, this struck me a pure gold:
The Assemblies of God churches are not going to come up with any­thing to help with global warm­ing, alter­na­tive energy, new med­i­cine, new repro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies, new dis­cov­er­ies, new ideas. Losing the sense of the argu­ment, PZ Meyers

At the gates of Hell, in Dante’s Inferno, there is an inscrip­tion which is typ­i­cally trans­lated as “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here”
For some rea­son, I always recall that par­tic­u­lar cliché as “Abandon Hope, Ye Who Enter Here” instead. When acronymized, as one would do for short­hand tech-support slang  —  such as PEBKAC  —  to indi­cate the “fourth-hand walkthrough” […]

The second-biggest Shia spir­i­tual leader (who, per­fectly enough, I’ve never heard of) was quoted on NPR today from some­thing he said last Friday (2006−09−22) as say­ing that there is no “con­flict of civ­i­liza­tions”, only a “con­flict of igno­rance”.
Which is as near to cor­rect as any state­ment yet on the cur­rent West vs. Mid-East “blow each […]

“It’s not enough that you sell your wak­ing life for min­i­mum wage, but they get your dreams for free”
Monday night, I had my first C# dream.
I later dreamed I ran into an old friend of mine from High School, who I haven’t thought of recently. Charcoal grey and white tiling, just pass­ing her by, until I noticed […]

[Redacted because it wasn’t fair to loved ones.]