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| Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011 | | 12:54 pm |
Rory's Thoughts on Politics
I recently got involved in a lengthy political debate on Facebook. Rather than let it fade into obscurity, I thought I'd post my responses and ONLY my responses here since they neatly encapsulate my viewpoints on several political points: -Why would you tuck your money under the mattress? You would make no profits that way, whereas by investing you only get taxed on what you make. So in a low risk investment you would be better off even being taxed 50% or more! That way at least you make some money on your extra cash, right? -Yeah, isn't the capital gains tax something individuals pay on their investments? So if I make most of my money through investments rather than being paid a yearly or hourly income for a job, I get taxed a flat 15% versus a scaling rate based on my income I would normally pay. From a common sense perspective, that just seems weird. -There are two ways to balance the budget: 1. Increase revenue. 2. Reduce spending. Our budget is not balanced, so over the long-term (not the short-term) we need to increase revenue or reduce spending (probably both). Balancing the budget using spending cuts alone probably means DEEP cuts in important programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These are time tested programs that do verifiable good to the people they benefit. In the case of Social Security, it has LITERALLY have paid for itself and will continue to do so for at least 25 years, so cutting that makes no sense since it is completely paid for by its own tax. Cutting it would essentially be stealing money from people who have paid into it. I am all for cutting the defense budget, by the way, though I'd prefer to avoid doing on the backs of veteran's by slashing their health care benefits, as was recently proposed. Furthermore, taxes are at an all-time low for the ultra wealthy, and the capital gains tax is the lowest it's been for decades. It's just silly to give the ultra wealthy (the people who most benefit from the capital gains tax) a pass on paying extra taxes; they are the ones who are least affected by paying higher taxes, since they make enough money to maintain their lifestyle even while paying large chunks of their income in taxes (something they are currently not doing). ( Read more... ) | | Monday, August 1st, 2011 | | 2:36 pm |
Rory's First Homily
I officiated my friend Laura and Henry's wedding on Friday. I did a lovely thoughtful homily. Alison helped me edit out the inappropriate bits and tighten it up. She was also kind enough to record it and post it on youtube. Check it out! | | Friday, May 13th, 2011 | | 4:31 am |
From Twitter 05-12-2011
- 23:41:51: My #inception #tweet: this is a #tweet within a #tweet within a #tweet. Not funny? Not all #tweets are funny. Sometimes they MEAN something.
- 23:44:02: "Why did you shave my head?" I asked the jolly (not at all creepy) clown. She just smiled, showed her rotten teeth, and tapped my head once.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com | | Friday, May 6th, 2011 | | 4:16 am |
| | Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 | | 4:14 am |
From Twitter 05-03-2011
- 01:34:17: Why did we have to take a #FIELD #TRIP to the landfill? I do not care how sophisticated and modern it may be; I am too disapointed to learn!
- 01:40:24: I hope I learn more from this #FIELD #TRIP than the structure of the penis. I crave much more knowledge. How else am I to #GROW as a person?
- 01:47:25: What kind of #FIELD #TRIP is this? A #planetarium with no stars? Is this a poetic reference to global warming, or are we all nihilists now?
- 01:48:34: All I can see here is the two of us. Wait a second, that isn't right. What happened to all the children? This #FIELD #TRIP is a real fiasco!
- 01:58:22: I didn't know this #FIELD #TRIP would involve so much work. I thought the apple press would be rustic, but instead it looks like a #factory!
- 23:51:41: How do you describe the #ocean? No one ever has. Does it have a #color? No, for it is made of #water. Does it have a soul? What an odd idea!
- 23:53:10: The #waves washed over me like #water. I opened my mouth and drank them up. Now there is nothing left but beach and a sad sort of dying man.
- 23:54:07: Can you hear that? It is the gull gull gulling of the #gull #gull #gull. Can you hear its wings flap? No? No wonder! It isn't a gull at all!
- 23:59:05: I adore staring at the #sun. Some people say it makes them uncomfortable. It hurts their eyes. But not me. If anything, it strengthens them.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com | | Sunday, May 1st, 2011 | | 4:15 am |
From Twitter 04-30-2011
- 00:09:14: Birds tweet all the time, yet NOT A SINGLE BIRD HAS EVER MADE A "REAL" TWEET. Don't believe me? Well, you should. I am a voice of authority!
- 00:12:41: "I am just #some #mother's #son," I said with a shrug. That hurt her very much. She began to break down in #tears. My mother is such a wuss.
- 21:46:12: "I am faster than you," she declared with a #yelp and a #hop. I had no retort. I can neither yelp nor hop. So sad. I am literally #hopless!
- 21:50:43: What's this gooey mass doing stuck under my chair? Should I touch it more to find out what it is? Should I take a look at it? Smell it? Ugh.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com | | Saturday, April 30th, 2011 | | 4:16 am |
From Twitter 04-29-2011
- 23:36:59: Why do you care what happens to me? I am #literally a paper doll, and you are literally a pair of scissors. Wait, I meant that figuratively.
- 23:43:18: I've never met a #duck I couldn't eat. Then I met a statue of a duck carved out of #bronze. Now I don't have any teeth. What happened to me?
- 23:51:31: Look around you. Do you see anyone else here? Yes, I was talking to #you. And no, I don't actually think you have big #ears. I do apologize.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com | | Friday, April 29th, 2011 | | 4:14 am |
| | Wednesday, April 27th, 2011 | | 4:16 am |
From Twitter 04-26-2011
- 22:46:37: I don't want to go to your #party. The rotting bear will be there again. I hate that thing, Next time, either invite me OR the rotting bear!
- 22:48:30: I do not want to play spin the bottle. I am too good at that #game. I win every time. What? Oh, sorry, I was thinking of #Russian #Roulette.
- 22:49:46: You taste so sweet just like #candy. On the #ground. You should get that looked into. To be fair, I should stop eating candy off the ground.
- 22:55:47: Do you love me too? No? Oh, that's okay, Not everyone knows how to love. It is your deficiency, not mine. My heart is, if anything, too big.
- 22:59:48: I don't want to drink from your bottle of #wine. That is not a #euphemism for anything. Trust me!!! What would it be a euphemism for anyway?
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com | | Friday, April 22nd, 2011 | | 4:14 am |
| | 1:17 am |
Writer's Block: Available: 3 bedroom, 2 bath, with hot and cold running chills
(I was inspired to post by Alison's answer!) This is a tough one. There is hard empirical evidence that ghosts are real (as real as EVOLUTION anyway, since the evidence for both relies heavily on Carbon dating). And there's good money that if a murder took place in a house or apartment, it's going to be haunted for at least a generation. However, the evidence is shaky as to whether ghosts can actually hurt you. Sure they can whisper to you during the night, giving you nightmares. And yeah, if they gather their power they can release agonizing wales to frighten your children. But can they actually, say, strangle your pets when you aren't looking? Can they tie a rope into a noose and force you to hang yourself with it? I'm not so sure. The evidence is anecdotal at best! So considering that I am brave and already have nightmares, I am going to go with a tentative YES! Free rent AND a kidney shaped swimming pool? Sign me up please. | | Wednesday, April 20th, 2011 | | 4:17 am |
From Twitter 04-19-2011
- 19:02:53: You're #inappropriate. I can't believe you kissed my #mom. Now you have to marry her! The last thing I want right now is another stepfather!
- 19:04:21: You're #inappropriate. How do you even kill a #cat anyway? I thought they always land on their feet. You are either very inept or VERY mean!
- 19:06:54: You're #inappropriate. Racist jokes are so 1999. You know, back when the #BEATLES were popular. How old are you?! Aren't you in grad school?
- 19:12:33: You're #inappropriate. You gave me a back-rub and now you want to charge me for it? Do you know what that makes you? A #prostitute, I think!
- 19:16:38: You're #inappropriate. You made such a spectacle at Water World. You ruined the lazy river. And then it began to rain! I was so embarrassed!
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com | | Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 | | 1:54 pm |
Ask an Atheist Day!
TODAY is Ask an Atheist Day! I am an atheist. So go ahead. ASK ME ANYTHING! | | Sunday, April 10th, 2011 | | 10:26 pm |
Regarding Informal Fallacies
I was having chicken with my friends JUST A FEW MINUTES AGO and we got to discussing the difference between morals and ethics. My stance was that in philosophical circles there is not a big difference. The difference is pretty technical and they are used kind of interchangeably. My evidence: all the philosophy classes I have taken, specifically Intro. to Ethics, where we talked about morality and ethics A LOT. One of my friends called me out for "appealing to authority", a well know informal fallacy. The thing is, informal fallacies are informal, which means just recognizing that someone is appealing to authority (in this case mine) does not automatically refute their argument. In this case, it seemed like my knowledge of basic philosophy should have been sufficient to settle this point. There are tons of times when appealing to an authority is justified, especially when what is at stake is a VERY simple fact. For example, if you wanted to know how tall the Empire State Building is and looked it up and wikipedia, it would be a little silly for someone to accuse you of "appealing to authority" when you gave that as your reason for believing it's 1,250 ft tall. In fact, we settled this argument a similar way, by looking it up on wikipedia, which sure, has more fact checkers than my memory, but in the end is just another intermediary passing along the information. When "appealing to authority" becomes really dangerous is when someone white washes a complex argument by appealing to authority. Example: "Abortion is wrong because the Catholic Church says so." There are a lot of reasons to doubt the Catholic Church on this point, since they don't have any particular lynch hold on ethics, and in this case you'd really want to see what the rest of their argument looks like. Other informal fallacies are pretty similar. For example, the classic "ad hominem" attack is not justified when we're considering whether someone's mathematical proof is correct, but is VERY relevant when discussing whether they'd make a good role model. "Because they steal and kill" is a great premise in an argument for why someone would make a terrible role model! At the end of the day, informal fallacies due to their very nature are not always applicable even when it seems they might be. Further consideration of the context of the nature of the argument need to be considered! | | 4:16 am |
From Twitter 04-09-2011
- 13:29:55: The sky opened up and swallowed me. Imagine that. The sky, a nebulous beast of zero consequence, swallowing me, a human being with a soul!!!
- 13:33:08: I caught a fish the other day. It spoke to me, promising me a wish if I let it go. It was true to its word. My wish: a delicious fried fish.
- 13:36:58: I rode the horse through the center of town. It was old, dying of #tuberculosis. What? Horses can't die of tuberculosis? You're very wrong.
- 13:38:24: I can shoot and kill a man from #five yards. What, not particularly impressive? How does #six yards sound? I can't do any better than that!!
- 13:40:13: "Welcome to #Narnia," said Harry Potter. "You're dead!" I put the book down, disappointed. The eighth #Harry #Potter book wasn't very good.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com | | Friday, April 8th, 2011 | | 4:15 am |
From Twitter 04-07-2011
- 22:36:11: "What am I, some kind of legume?" Paul Hughes screamed to his loving wife. She replied, "You are my husbean. Nothing more and nothing less."
- 22:39:43: "But I'm not a #hupie," Paul Hughes cried. "A #hupie is as a #hupie does," she replied cryptically. Paul resigned himself to his sad fate!!!
- 22:42:49: "I dub thee P. T. Hugheser," she whispered to him solemnly. "What does the T stand for?" he asked. She replied ferociously, "Tyrannosaurus!"
- 22:52:38: "Listen, hupes, what kind of husby doesn't buy his wife #popky at the movie theater?" she asked. Paul wept to see his wife in such distress.
- 22:56:37: They talked about hanging "boils" from the Christmas tree. A clever pun. Paul Elizabeth Hughes felt only disappointment. A Christmas ruined.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com | | Thursday, April 7th, 2011 | | 1:27 am |
UP!
Just watched about 2/3 of UP! Such a wretched sentimental mess of a movie: - Boring: You wouldn't think a movie could drag that much if it's only 1.5 hours long, but Up managed it! - Sentimental: To borrow from Alison, it's as if you took 20 marshmallow peeps, stuck them together, and called them a movie. - Stupid: What's with all the talking dogs? That was dumb. Generally every piece of the movie had me hitting my head with how stupid it was. - Colorful: Yep. Most of it kind of hurts your eyes to look at. The above is just a summary of my general impressions during the entire movie. Specific Points: - The Aesthetic: Typical Pixar aesthetic, but maybe even more colorful and distorted? I just can't get behind it. It feels like something made for a 3 year old. My friend Anna pointed out how Pixar makes all their characters using basic shapes that kids can recognize and identify with. I saw it here. Big boxy old guy. Big rolly-polly round boy. Great. - South America Trip: Seriously, no time to fit in your lifelong ambition during your entire life? Yeah, I saw them smash the jar a couple of times when they were in their 20s and 30s, but seriously, a single couple can't find the time and money to travel at any point before they hit their late 70s? I can understand that certain families, due to serious economic hardship, really can't manage that sort of thing, but my sense of this from say their late 30s to their late 70s was that they just kind of forgot about it while they focused on other things in that way that always seems to happen in corny movies but less so in real life when two people are deeply deeply passionate about something. Pathetic. - The House in the Middle of a Construction Site: I can swear I've seen this before. Pretty annoying trope. - The Mailbox Incident: Seriously? Some old guy gets a little heated after another guy knocks his mailbox over and then won't stop grabbing it and suddenly he's getting deported to a nursing home? Seems a little harsh. And something that shouldn't be a throw-away thing to keep the action going. This is the sort of injustice an entire movie should be based on (a more interesting one, at that). Stupid. - The Kid: What a wretched annoying kid. Also, I understand that some kids are chubby, but I get a little annoyed that it's clearly being played for some laughs. What's funnier than a chubby annoying kid? Nothing! - The Balloons: Yeah, I get it. It's a stupid kids movie, so stuff like this flies (literally!). But what am I, a 26 year old MAN, doing watching this kids movie? I don't know! - The Bits Where They Are Just Kind of Looking Around: After they kind of landed on that cliff, the movie really slowed to a crawl. I'm not interested in an old man and annoying kid engaging in idle banter while nothing much happens. It's not funny, and it's pretty boring. They look around a bit, they try to climb up the hose, they're in the jungle looking around... This was probably only 15 minutes or so, but for a 1.5 hour movie, that's a significant chunk of nothing happening. This is around the point where I understand my mother walked out of the movie theater. - The Bird: A cheerful eccentric non threatening wild animal. Oh, and it's every color of the rainbow. And it loves chocolate. Stupid prepackaged toy of a bird. - The Talking Dog: What? I must have forgotten this from the previews. The idea of a talking dog is kind of dumb. It felt really out of place with how the movie was going up until this point. What started as a whimsical (though stupid) romp in a balloon house, culminating in a whimsical (though boring) romp through the wilderness, suddenly turns into some bizarre story with a lot of sci-fi dogs in it? Seriously? Oh yeah, they talked about that bit at the beginning with the explorer and his dogs. Honestly forgot about that until now. Classic stupid setup, where you mention something in passing at the beginning of a movie and then make reference to it later after a lot of people have forgotten about it. - More Talking Dogs: Seriously, there are more talking dogs? Ridiculous! Can I turn this movie off now? - Jokes: The squirrel bit with the dog? Borrowed from every other movie with talking dogs in it. I guess kids liked it. The other jokes? I honestly don't remember what they were! I didn't laugh once during the whole movie. I don't know if I ever cracked a smile. Mostly felt like rehashed jokes from previous Pixar movies with a healthy dose of extra sentimentality. One thing I will give it, though, is that there were virtually no jokes I could see that were aimed at the adults in the audience. But again, what am I, a 26 year old man, doing watching this movie? - The Sentimental Confessions: Specifically, the bit by the campfire. Aww, the kid comes from a sad pathetic broken home. Aww, old people have empathy too. Aww, I feel better about myself seeing this basic beautiful moment unfold. No, I don't. I am incapable of being manipulated so crudely. This scene is so simple and un-nuanced and hackneyed that it loses all real insight or value. All it succeeds in doing is pulling the heartstrings of weaker audience members than myself. It was around the bit with the dogs and the heart to heart when I skipped to almost the very end. - More Dogs: Seriously, the talking dogs are a major plot point? Ugh. - Biplane Dogs: Why are the dogs flying biplanes? Seriously, dogs, stop flying those biplanes. You look ridiculous. - The Other Old Guy: Wow, that old guy is shooting a lot of bullets at that child. Not that I think the child is in any danger. After all, this is a Pixar movie. No one is going to die. No one is going to get hurt. Oh look, he fell off the side of his blimp, clutching 2-3 balloons. I guess through cartoon physics we are supposed to believe that's enough to keep him alive? I don't buy it. May he rest in peace(s). - No Dad For Fatso: Still sucks that the kid doesn't have a father. And his father said he'd be there for that big event, too! What a bad dad! Also, what gives, why did it take the kid so long to move up? He has like 3X the merit badges of everyone else. I thought he needed the elderly badge to be promoted, but it looks like maybe that was a big sham. FINAL VERDICT: Up is a kids movie. It is not for adults. It had kid art, kid-like characters, kid themes, and kid jokes. I remember watching movies like Up when I was a kid. I remember thinking that they were a little silly then (think the Brave Little Toaster) but generally enjoying them. I would not enjoy those movies now, and I didn't enjoy Up (what I saw of it) this time around. Movies like Up make me glad I'm not a parent. | | Saturday, April 2nd, 2011 | | 4:14 am |
From Twitter 04-01-2011
- 21:47:09: When they extracted the #bullet from my chest (2 mm from my #heart), they found a note carved into it: "#April #Fools!" Good one, #stranger!
- 21:53:13: Why do they call it #April #Fools when that's when I pull all my smartest pranks? It literally makes no cents. Unless... they're fooling me!
- 22:04:01: I was stuck in the hole all alone so I had to pull of my #April #Fools pranks on myself. I'm out of practice. I didn't fall for any of them!
- 22:07:18: They laughed and laughed and laughed. But little did they know that every #tweet was #true! And they all happened to him! Poor @Rory_Madden!
- 22:32:42: I recently saw this stunning #Pixar movie. It has beautiful art work and a moving story that transcends #age and #gender. #Cars is the best!
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com | | Thursday, March 31st, 2011 | | 4:18 am |
| | Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 | | 4:14 am |
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