Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Art in Progress

Delightful Quotes on Religion and God

Delightful Quotes on Religion and God

September 14th, 2007 | Categories: Deep Thoughts | Tags:

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
~ Jean Rostand

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
~ Stephen Roberts

Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen.
Michel de Montaigne

Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?
Nietzsche

We, on our side, are praying to Him to give us victory, because we believe we are right; but those on the other side pray to Him, too, for victory, believing they are right. What must He think of us?
~ Abraham Lincoln

Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know this because they manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.
~ Steve Eley

All great truths begin as blasphemies.
~ George Bernard Shaw

Religion, comprises a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find in an isolated form nowhere else but in amentia, in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion.
Sigmund Freud

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.
~ Abraham Lincoln

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Albert Einstein

If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
~ Thomas Szasz

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
~ Napoleon

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
~ Albert Einstein

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
~ Susan B. Anthony

One man's magic is another man's engineering. Supernatural is a null word.
~ Robert Heinlein

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.
~ Gene Roddenberry

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
~ George Orwell

If child molestation is actually your concern, how come we don't see Bradley tanks knocking down Catholic churches?
~ Bill Hicks

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith … we need believing people.
~ Adolf Hitler

I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
~ Mohandas Gandhi

If god created us in his image we have certainly returned the compliment.
Voltaire

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.
~ Thomas Paine

I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion.
James Buchanan

When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.
~ Jack Gurney – "The Ruling Class"

Could a being create the fifty billion galaxies, each with two hundred billion stars, then rejoice in the smell of burning goat flesh?
~ Ron Patterson

Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
~ Jeff Burroughs

I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, ‘If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?’ ‘No,’ said the priest, ‘not if you did not know.’ ‘Then why,’ asked the Eskimo earnestly, ‘did you tell me?’
Annie Dillard

I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work.
Adolf Hitler

The most heinous and the cruelest crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives.
~ Mohandas Gandhi

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
Douglas Adams

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
~ Thomas Jefferson

All Bibles are man-made.
Thomas Edison

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own; a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms…
Albert Einstein

In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
Carl Sagan

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? It is because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.
J. Krishnamurthi

Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion, several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn̢۪t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother̢۪s path to happiness and heaven.
Mark Twain

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
~ Galileo Galilei

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
~ Bertrand Russel

I have examined all of the known superstitions of the world and I do not find in our superstitions of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all founded on fables and mythology. Christianity has made one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites.
Thomas Jefferson

If you believe in the existence of fairies at the bottom of the garden you are deemed fit for the bin. If you believe in parthenogenesis, ascension, transubstantiation and all the rest of it, you are deemed fit to govern the country.
~ Jonathan Meades

I know of no crime that has not been defended by the church, in one form or other. The church is not a pioneer; it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless.
~ Robert G. Ingersoll

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.
~Saint Augustine

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
~ Robert Heinlein

There was a time when I believed in the story and the scheme of salvation, so far as I could understand it, just as I believed there was a Devil. Suddenly the light broke through to me and I saw a silly story, and each generation nowadays swallows it with greater difficulty. Why do people go on pretending about this Christianity?
~ H. G. Wells

The state has not the right to leave every man free to profess and embrace whatever religion he may desire.
~ Pope Pius IX

To date, despite the efforts of millions of true believers to support this myth, there is no more evidence for the Judeo-Christian god than any of the gods on Mount Olympus.
~ Joseph Daleiden

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
~ Bertrand Russell

Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?
Epicurus

To use the term blind faith, is to use an adjective needlessly.
Julian Ruck

The establishment of Christianity arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for over fifteen hundred years.
~ Andrew Dickson White

The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.
Albert Einstein

Anyone who has two shirts when someone has none is not a Christian.
Lenny Bruce

The church tries to save sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.
Elbert Hubbard

I can't embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages; and that persecution still goes on today, all over the world.
Amanda Donohoe

If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.
Robert G. Ingersoll

If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers.
Steve Allen

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.
~ Gary Zukav

Religion is the end of love and honesty, the beginning of confusion; faith is a colorful hope or fear, the origin of folly.
Tao Te Ching

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
~ Sir R. F. Burton

All natural institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
~ Thomas Paine

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion, the religion which based on experience, which refuses dogma.
~ Albert Einstein

I do not believe that any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States.
~ Thomas Edison

If one were to take the bible seriously one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad.
~ Aleister Crowley

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.
~ Steven Weinberg

Mythology is what we call someone else's religion.
~ Joseph Campbell

Beware the man of one book.
~ Saint Thomas Aquinas

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Break Often & Leave Early for Best Results

Amplify’d from www.businessinsider.com

Why Successful People Leave Work Early

Try this for a day: don't answer every phone call. Stop checking your email every two minutes. And leave work early. You'll be astounded at how much more you'll get done.


According to a study published in the Psychological Review conducted by Dr. K. Anders Ericcson, the key to great success is working harder in short bursts of time. Then give yourself a break before getting back to work

The trick is staying focused. Ericsson and his team evaluated a group of musicians to find out what the "excellent" players were doing differently. They found that violinists who practiced more deliberately, say for 4 hours, accomplished more than others who slaved away for 7 hours. The best performers set goals for their practice sessions and required themselves to take breaks.


Looking at the chart, you can see that the best violin students practiced with greater intensity just before the lunch hour and then took a break before starting up again at 4 p.m. -- whereas the other students practiced more steadily throughout the entire day.

chart

The researchers found that successful people in other professions had similar habits:


"While completing a novel, famous authors tend to write only for 4 hours during the morning, leaving the rest of the day for rest and recuperation. Hence successful authors, who can control their work habits and are motivated to optimize their productivity, limit their most important intellectual activity to a fixed daily amount when working on projects requiring long periods of time to complete."


Timothy Ferriss gives similar advice in his New York Times bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek. He stresses the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 law, which is that 80 percent of outputs come from 20 percent of inputs. So stay focused, and you'll do more in less time.

Read more at www.businessinsider.com
 

Monday, June 20, 2011

Always get the Exit Aisle when Flying

Amplify’d from www.airfarewatchdog.com





























































































Advance booking 



Charge 



At the airport



Also of note:



AirTran



The airline operates a first-come, first-served program; request when buying your ticket



 $20 each way (includes all legs of each journey)


 



Sure — if there’s anything left.


 



AirTran is notorious for its stingy seat pitch in its regular coach seats — as little as 30 inches on its Boeing 717s. $20 is a small price to keep the blood circulating down to your toes!



Alaska



Elite MileagePlan members, Full Flex fares and awards. Everyone else, nice try, but no.



No



Have a look when you check-in, either online 24 hours before departure or via kiosk. If there's anything left, it's all yours.


 



Want to feel like a second-class citizen? Fly Alaska without status. (Hope you enjoy the middle seat, all the way to Anchorage!)



American



AAirpass members, AAadvantage Platinum and Gold members, British Airways Premier, Gold and Silver members, those traveling on certain unrestricted fares



None



First come, first served — passengers may assign themselves exit row seats using the self check-in kiosks as well as by request in person from an agent.


 



Before you congratulate American on not charging for seats at the airport, consider why – they don't want them being bought out from under their prized elite AAdvantage members. (Without these guys, they're nobody.)



Continental



By next year, they'll be part of the same program as United, but for now, OnePass Elite members get in for free, while others can upgrade to an exit row after purchasing their ticket as part of the "Extra Legroom" program. 



Varies – $59 per flight is a typical average additional fee. (It's not cheap.)



No more freebies at the airport – they'll sell you one if any are available on the day of travel.


 



As on Alaska, it's often difficult to squeeze your way into the exit row at any price, thanks to the demand created by elite mileage program members.



Delta



Used to be a free-for-all, now only SkyMiles Medallion members and those traveling on unrestricted fares get to choose seats right away.


 



None



First come, first-served – get there early and look at the seat map at the check-in kiosk; if no dice, ask an agent and cross your fingers.



Become a SkyMiles member, even if you never intend to fly Delta ever again – you may get lucky and find some open seats before they are available to the  general public.



Frontier



EarlyReturns Ascent and Summit members, plus those traveling on Classic and ClassicPlus fares may book in advance.



No charge



Request at airport.



Like any other airline that follows this policy, the early bird gets the worm on the day of departure.



JetBlue



Seats are sold as part of the airline's "Even More Legroom" priority seating program; there are no freebies.



The cost is steadily rising -- $30 for shorter flights, $65 transcontinental



Can purchase on day of travel or at online check-in if any seats remain.



Passengers buying these seats have priority boarding privileges – essentially, this is JetBlue's version of First Class. (And we've seen attendants boot freeloaders with no apologies.)



Southwest



No



N/A



First boarded, first served



Southwest doesn't assign seats, but if you buy a higher-priced "Business Select" fare you get to board the plane in the first portion of the 'A' boarding group, so your chances of grabbing an exit row are greatly enhanced. You also get a free cocktail and other perks.



Spirit



Available for purchase any time.



$20



First come, first served



For $5 more, stretch out (well, all things being relative – this is Spirit we're talking about) in the comfort of their $25 Big Front Seats.



United



 Elite Mileage Plus members (Premier, Premier Executive, and 1K) get automatically upgraded to the Economy Plus seating, which includes exit rows. Everyone else pays.  



No fee for elites, charged based on distance traveled, sometimes over $100 per leg.


 



Economy Plus is sold until it’s full — you may buy all the way up to the gate.



On many flights, even Premier MileagePlus members can't get near the exit rows or the Economy Plus seating, so don't feel bad if you strike out.



US Airways



Exclusively reserved for Dividend Miles Preferred members.



No charge



Any remaining seats are made available at the airport.



Sign up for Dividend Miles; non-Preferred members can access Preferred seats 24 hours before scheduled departures. You never know.  .



Virgin America



Exit rows are part of the "Main Cabin Select" section; fares are significantly higher than economy.



On a recent flight from LAX-SFO, economy was $89, Main Cabin Select was $190.



Can purchase at airport based on availability.



Not worth the extra money, unless you need lots of leg room on a transcontinental run. JetBlue's a much better bargain, though. VA throws in more bells and whistles, but the fact is you're overpaying for an economy seat. No amount of free movies can take the sting away.








Read more at www.airfarewatchdog.com
 

Online Poker Legalization?

Amplify’d from www.pokernewsreport.com

Online Poker Legislation in USA Set for This Week




US PokerAs online poker in the USA appears to be stuck in some form of limbo, Republican House of Representatives member Joe Barton is determined that clarification relating to online poker play is moved along swiftly – maybe even this week.


Texas representative Barton has composed an online poker bill by making use of information provided to him by poker players who follow his page on social networking website Facebook – and has made their opinions incredibly clear.


Barton – a senior House Energy and Commerce Committee member who also enjoys poker – believes there is an inconsistency between online poker play being considered legal and that processing payments for online poker are illegal.


The 61-year-old’s bill would legalise poker in all 50 of the USA’s states, although online poker sites could only operate in states where gambling is currently legal to allow for licensing through present gaming commissions.


Any state could opt out of the law and therefore forbid online poker via referendum or a state legislature vote, while the bill would also result in the setting up of a federal agency to supervise the game.


If you are from the United States and looking for a place to play online poker, be sure to check our list of US poker sites here.

Read more at www.pokernewsreport.com
 

Duck, Duck, Go - A Different Search Engine

Amplify’d from dontbubble.us






Escape your search

engine Filter Bubble!

An illustrated guide


by DuckDuckGo.com












When you search the Internet,




search engines now show different results to different people.



(Click here to try a Bing search for "climate change")



Results are tailored to who you are,




based on your search history



(Click here to see your Google search history.)



and your click history.




Since you often click on things you agree with,




you keep getting more and more




of what you already agree with,



(Click here to try a Google search for "barack obama")



which means other stuff gets demoted (effectively filtered).




This begs the question: what are you missing?



(Click here to try a Google search for "guns.")



In other words, you are living in a Filter Bubble




that promotes things it thinks you'll like,



(Click here to try a Google search for "egypt")



and demotes (effectively filters) out some of the rest,



(Click here to try a Google search for "Is Osama really dead?")



which may limit your exposure to opposing information.




Unfortunately, it's not easy to pop your filter bubble,




because the technology is used so much




across the Internet.




We offer you an alternative:  a search engine





that breaks you out of your Filter Bubble by default,





Read more at dontbubble.us