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Christians are being terrorized and “ethnically cleansed� in Darfur

I think you are confusing Southern Sudan (and the civil war that ended there recently) with Darfur.

O’Reilly et al are funny (in a crazy sort of way), but I prefer saying Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays since “Happy Holidays” implies that it’s something all of us celebrate.

I’m not usually some one who is directionally challenged, but you are correct, Darfur is a region in West Sudan, and Sudan has had a decades long battle between northern Muslims and southern Christians.

As for “Happy Holidays,” my wife’s snide non-religious argument is that after Thanksgiving, it shouldn’t be plural. My snide non-religious response is “what about New Year’s Day?”

So we’ve come to agree that starting Dec. 26th, you have to switch to “Happy Holiday.” And up until then, this year we’re using the phrase … “Bah Humbug.”

I love this. But only because I prefer to have zealots leading the charge, rather than running the show from the background. It’s just more honest. From that perspective, this is encouraging.

This debate made me wonder whether there were more evangelicals than before. I went to the Census bureau to look up what the increase in worshippers actually was between 1990 and 2000.

I thought there had to be an increase, but I was wrong. In that 10 years, the population of the U.S. increased by 32 Million. The number of self-professed Christians decreased by 8 Million over that period. A drop from 87% to 77%.

This is particularly interesting when you consider that a secular person, like me, will often self-identify as Christian, because that’s my nominal religion. I wonder what portion of that 77% is like me and what portion is like O’Reilly. (actually, I am confident that 15% are like O’Reilly. I meant to ask what portion is truly devout.)

.

That said, I have to side with the fundies on the “Christmas tree v. Holiday tree” debate. Though I don’t see where any real debate is taking place. The only public official that I remember using the term “holiday tree” was Sonny Purdue. Anyway, it’s pretty clearly a “Christmas tree.” Maybe I’ll revisit the question once I see a “Holiday Candelabra.”

I’ve also long believed in your 15% rule (“Out of any group of people, 15% of them are assholes”), though with my own variation.

I think 10% of any group of people will be assholes. Like you said, be it preachers or pawnbrokers, assholes are amazingly well distributed among the populace.

It’s not even ruled by the usual norms of statistics, i.e., you’ve got to have a 1,000 to get a statistically accurate representation.

It’s there’s 100 people in a room, 10 will be assholes. If it is 10, one of them will be.

And what about the other 5%? They’re not assholes. They’re incompetent. And they are amazingly evenly distributed as well.

(Note: being an asshole and being incompetent are not mutually exclusive states, so there maybe some overlap in the numbers)

I just finished a Statistics class and for one of my projects, I asked 500 people how many assholes they worked with. I also asked if they thought they were an asshole (asshole was not defined, but was left to the respondant’s own idea). The results were interesting, because the results of the first question were a normal distribution with a bell curve while the second question showed that only 2% of the respondants thought they themselves were assholes.

This means that most people don’t know they’re assholes, because statistically speaking, a little under half of them are thought to be assholes. I also used this project as part of a Psychology thesis about the self-serving bias.

If I wanted to dig deeper, I’m sure I could prove that up to 90% of people are assholes according to other people/assholes, effectively proving the old saw that it takes one to know one.

I read a similar study about incompetents. Groups could easily collectively determine the incompetent individuals among them, but those individuals themselves not only didn’t see themselves as incompetent, they most often thought they excelled at the same task at which others viewed them as worthless.

One of the best lessons in life is summed up in a line from Dirty Harry … “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Not just to keep himself out of trouble. But to acknowledge the fact he has faults and limits.

Incompetents … don’t.

Assholes generally seem to be a little more aware. Some of us even wear a t-shirt with that word on it, because we believe in truth in advertising.

Can one, who liberally sends the words ‘ass hole’ with his ‘mouth-hole,’ imagine what he receives back could be ‘unacceptable in his home’? You are like other ‘headline-hores’, they dont know who their fathers are either. This is from a Democrat born and raised in NYC who fought a war so pansies like you could write this garbage anonymously! Quo Vadis? Don’t bother responding my trash can is selective.

My, how this thread has wandered off topic.

Well, Jim, you’ve obviously read my “comments policy,� since you certainly stepped up to bat on two counts: “personal attacks, ad hominem.�

I’m not sure which of your straw men to take on first, but I’ll start with “anonymous.� Perhaps you didn’t see the link in the left column that asks who is this guy? Or the part at the bottom of every single page on this site where it spells out my name in full. Or my first name, with a link to my e-mail address, appended to every comment I make here.

I put my name behind everything I say here. As I have for just shy of a decade at this URL. It’s R-e-i-d S-t-o-t-t, since you seem unable to find it anywhere else.

I do apologize if you found the word “asshole� so terribly offensive that it forced you to spew so. But I would suggest it is among the tamer of cuss words you’ll find on many weblogs, and in this thread, it’s been descriptive, not slung as a slur.

Like “pansy,� for instance.

My guess is that some other burr is under your saddle, because if you spew in this manner at everyone you encounter who uses the word “asshole,� or “damn,� or other words I won’t even suggest here, then you’ve had a pretty long and hard life, haven’t you?

So what’s really on your mind, Jim? Are you trying to offer proof of emcee's theory?

So what’s really on your mind, Jim? Are you trying to offer proof of emcee’s theory?

We haven’t hit 10 yet, but I bet he’s probably one of the 98% who don’t realize what they are, but that’s rushing to judgement (which is wrong). For all I know, he could just be a dickhead.

For the record, I’m a smart-ass and my mailbox isn’t very selective about what it allows to get shoved into it. It’s a filthy little slutbox, that’s for sure.

Merry Xmas.

post number 7.

1/7 = 14.3%

A little too perfect?

Imagine my surprise at checking in here for my daily-’Reid’ and seeing Jim Meffen!

I KNOW Doctor Meffen from here in ATL and I know he is now in Australia.

While I understand from reading other blog’s what both sides are saying, I’m hoping that Y’all don’t get too far off on a ‘wrong foot’.

I hope both of you read this & I hope to see many, many more exchanges between you. Dare I think it, you are far more alike in my eyes than you are different.

Reid, I hope you’ll welcome Doc, and Doc, I hope you’ll get a little more on Reid’s backgrounder.

Goes without saying that I take both of you as valuable each day I’m awake.

PS: Doc is one of the VERY “Few, Proud & Brave” who can claim the title(s) of both USMC and USAF; he just doesn’t have the same forearm tattoo that I do.

emcee: “A little too perfect?’

It’s enough to make me wonder if I should update my formula. I’ve been using the 10%-5% rule for a very long time, over two decades (I had a perfect focus group, in that I managed a rotating staff of a dozen DJ’s for five years). And it is very likely the numbers have grown. I don’t know, I haven’t checked the 2000 census to see the number of people who self identified themselves as assholes and/or incompetent.

It could well now be closer to a 15%-7% rule. Which would mean that one in five people you encounter are incompetent, or, well, you know, that word that makes Jim sputter. Or both.

More real world observation maybe required. Let’s see, this thread so far has comments from five people…

Dan: “Reid, I hope you’ll welcome Doc”

Dan, I welcome anyone, but my first impression is that “Doc,” if he is who you think he is (I haven’t a clue myself) introduced himself by walking into my place and crapping on my couch. Over a relatively innocuous conversation amongst three or four people who have them regularly here. And I’ve been quite tame in response.

Maybe he’ll come back with a pooper scooper, I don’t know. But if he were out in public, is he the type of guy who would walk up to a group of friends whom he doesn’t know, who are talking, and jump down one’s throat?

I kinda doubt it. But that looks like what happened here.

It’s really OK. This is the Internet, it happens all the time. And one of the rules of posting on the Internet is “the first person to get mad … loses.”

And it looks to me like Jim rolled over with his first post here.

Dan: “I know he is now in Australia�

The IP from which the comment was posted does indeed resolve to Australia. So I guess he is your “Doc.�

If so, I don’t know how he got through all those years in the Air Force and Marines without hearing people talk about assholes, and perhaps even more strong language.

I guess he must have insulted a lot of fathers along the way, like he did mine.

And someone with that level of education ought to at least be able to spell their slurs correctly … it would be “headline-whore.�

Well, what do I know. I’m just a pansy.

Yeah, I was a little put-off myself at the tone of his first comment(s) here.

I think it may have a little to do with the ‘attack on Christmas’; as for myself, it will be Christmas here at our household ala John Lennon’s “And so this is Christmas”.

“Xmas” was explained to me when I was about 7 as a newspaper way of fitting more advertisements onto a given-sized printed page. I accept that as what it is.

Christmas was explained to me as a cold dawn with a small family seeking a place to give birth. That too, I accept as what it is.

I was about to write something further, when “The Serenity Prayer” just overwhelmed my thoughts.

Season’s Greetings and a very Merry Christmas to you and all your Reader’s!

Dan: “I think it may have a little to do with the ‘attack on Christmas’”

By whom? Certainly not by me. I’ve specifically attacked Bill O’Reilly and those who are loudly trying to convince us all that there’s a vast organized liberal conspiracy to remove Christ from Christmas.

One would think that “a Democrat born and raised in NYC” might find such a conspiracy ludicrous as well.

It ought to be clear to anyone who can read, this was not an attack on Christmas by me. We will be celebrating Christmas in our home. As I have my whole life. It will even be called “Christmas.” No Happy Holidays, no Seasons Greetings, not even an “X” in Christmas.

But Jim made no mention of Christmas in his comment. He just made a drive-by ad hominem attack on a stranger, and claimed it was because I used a word that offended him.

And that’s what happens today when you have a weblog…

No, I didn’t mean to imply that you attacked Christmas (I’ve been reading you long enough to know where you stand on Christmas); but the contretemps over the tempest in the teapot regarding what PC-folk consider a proper greeting that seemed to come up out of nowhere this year.

but the contretemps over the tempest in the teapot regarding what PC-folk consider a proper greeting that seemed to come up out of nowhere this year.

PC-folk? Out of nowhere? This is turned into something of a Christmas tradition for O’Reilly and the usual blowhards with their annual, “O Noes! Christmas is under attack!” TV Specials. Some networks show Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer every year, while others show angry middle-aged white men contorting their faces in anger and threatening to “bring the horror” if people don’t pay proper homage to the Prince of Peace.

I agree it is a tempest in a teapot, but hey, whatever scores book sales and increases ratings, which is what this is really all about. Of course, anyone who gives the history of Christmas celebrations even a casual glance would realize that it’s never exactly been the holiest time of the year. The Puritans even banned it.

A legitimately troubling proposition:

If they close church on Christmas, doesn’t that automatically reduce by half the number of times that many Americans go to church every year?

If they close church on Christmas, doesn’t that automatically reduce by half the number of times that many Americans go to church every year?

Statistically speaking, that would be correct. Of course, those mega-groups seem to think that since ‘we believe that you worship every day of the week, not just on a weekend, and you don’t have to be in a church building to worship’, the statistics are irrelevant.

I found it interesting that our assistant pastor, who runs our contemporary services (designed to reach the same people that those mega-groups profess to be serving), was appalled when she read the story – the more so when I pointed out that a lot of the music she likes for us to use comes from one of the groups mentioned (specifically Willow Creek). (I should know – I’m the one in charge of putting the song lists together each week.) I foresee an abrupt change in our music ordering practices with the New Year.

My husband pointed out that the megas may lose more than just sales from this. If someone does happen to be truly interested in finding Christ (or a new church home), a smaller local congregation with a regular service schedule might very well fill the bill on Christmas morning.

And wouldn’t that be a kick?

I suppose you are correct about the number of times ‘Christians’ go to Church. And Paul is certainly correct about sales & ratings.

Ours is a giving household; we give of ourselves, our time, our treasure and our talents.While my Wife & Son go to church on a regular basis (3-5 times a week), my Daughter and I stay away from organized religion-services. She & I subscribe to something Thomas Jefferson once said:

“I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man”.

When they take out the tyranny, I usually enjoy religious services.

Whatever.

Nonetheless, we coach, we counsel, we take in refugees, we give away fully 50% of our income, and surprise of surprises, we are WAY happier than our denominational friends & neighbors.

And yes, we have lots of “stuff’ and new cars and all of those temporal things like outdoor big-screen TV’s and swimming pool and 2 hot tubs and houses with more rooms than we can even use. We don’t even have locks on our doors (well, we do, but the keys have been lost for over 15 years now). We are messy and honest and of genuine care for each other and for all of those we meet & interact with.

In short, when we ‘need’ something, poof! it appears.

One tiny problem: I can only sleep for, at most, 3 hours at a time. I suspect that has something to do with alcohol between the strict hours of 10pm until 2am. The rest of the family sleeps.