Chamblee54

The facebook friend (who is pretty cool in real life) started this adventure with this comment: “If one more person posts that bogus Santorum quote as fact, I will shoot myself. Satire is lovely, but not when people don’t even bother to fact check anymore. In other news, I’m out of cigarettes.”
This inspired three comments. ” any negative publicity that brings that asshole into question is worth posting. God forbig anyone post any untruths about our President. Anyone should verify the source of any information beyond “saw it on the internet”. LOL In other news, I miss your face!””Google “bogus Santorum quote” and you get 98 million results.””I mean the one about gay porn and the Taliban going viral right now.”
Rick Santorum is a loose cannon. (The frothy mix is generally a loose product as well.) With a personality like that, it is tough to tell real from fake. With Americans dreading the rest of this Presidential campaign, it is only natural to exaggerate the strange things said by the former senator.
The offending misquote is: “While the Obama Department of Justice seems to favor pornographers over children and families, that will change under a Satorum Administration. I will ban all pornography. Especially gay pornography. Gay pornography is the reason people choose the gay lifestyle or what I call the deathstyle. If we got rid of that, homosexuality would be gone within a matter of months. This is one of only a few things I see eye to eye on with the Taliban.”
The top result is from that trusty advertiser of insurance products, snopes. “The quote cited in the Example block at the head of this page about “banning all pornography — specially gay pornography” is not something that was actually stated by Rick Santorum; it’s a spoof combining elements from the candidate’s above-cited statement on pornography and his previously expressed views on homosexuality. This item originated as a graphic image posted on Facebook to the Presidential Quotes section of Americans for a More American America, a political satire site.”
With the exception of the attached gif, the rest of the first page results were boring. Glenn Beck was listed, but PG cannot find any Santorum. It might blend in. The pictures for this feature are from The Library of Congress. They are Union soldiers from the War Between the States.

PG was minding his own business, drinking coffee, editing pictures, and listening to Radiolab. The show coming over the speakers this morning was Talking to Machines. It starts out with the dodgy tale of a man who falls in correspondent conversation with a Russian woman, who turns out to be a “bot”.
For those who have missed this part of the digital revolution, a bot is a computer imitating a person. (The word is short for advertising robot.) The rest of the hour discusses the fine line between real and artificial conversations.
Before long, a website was mentioned, and PG made a visit to Cleverbot. The sponsors were a company telling you to how to “Meet Singles In Norcross”. (Other websites have Norcross as the default location for PG, who lives in East Buckhead.) Other advertisers include Colorado Technical University and Central Michigan University… Get a Graduate Certificate in Logistics Management.
The management has placed warnings and disclaimers. PLEASE NOTE: Cleverbot learns from real people – things it says may seem inappropriate – use with discretion, and at YOUR OWN RISK. PARENTAL ADVICE: Visitors never talk to a human, however convincing it is – the AI knows many topics – use ONLY WITH OVERSIGHT. Conversational access is granted only to humans using this Cleverbot.com interface directly.
The temptation to have a virtual conversation was overwhelming. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
16:12:52 Cleverbot: Are you here to talk?
16:13:10 User: Might as well I can’t dance.
16:13:13 Cleverbot: That you are dazed and confused, yes, you mat as well.
16:13:34 User: Only on tuesday.
16:13:38 Cleverbot: Ahhh you are pretty smart!
16:13:52 User: Not everyone feels that way.
16:13:57 Cleverbot: How did we get from batman to shopping?
16:14:46 User: When Robin asked for a pay raise.
16:14:51 Cleverbot: I cannot say.
16:15:33 User: You are not under oath.
16:15:37 Cleverbot: I am not understand? You are not speakable.
16:15:54 User: I dare not speak my name.
16:16:00 Cleverbot: What is your name?
16:16:15 User: Piers Gaveston Jr.
16:16:18 Cleverbot: Sobot.
16:16:47 User: I will think for myself.
16:16:53 Cleverbot: Do you dream?
16:17:15 User: I can’t remember when I wake up, but I suspect that I do.
16:17:22 Cleverbot: Apa anda buat sekarang.
16:17:37 User: Watch your language.
16:17:43 Cleverbot: Watch you DVD.
16:18:35 User: Thank you this is going to make a good blog post.
16:18:41 Cleverbot: Yeah I know.

Rick Santorum got all frothy yesterday. As you can see in this video, he gave a speech. You make a lot of those when you run for President. He said “the worst Republican in the country (pause) to put up against Barack Obama.” It is assumed he was talking about Willard M. Romney. There was no mention of the Affordable Care Act, at least in the edited segment of this video.
Later, a reporter asked him if Mr. Romney was the worst republican in the country. Is That true? Mr. Santorum asked “what speech did you listen to?. In his version, he only said that Mr. Romney was the worst r.i.t.c. with regard to challenging the President on health care reform. The candidate got rather angry, used a crude word for animal waste, and continued to show his pretty teeth. A person watching with the sound turned off might think he was happy with the reporter.
Mr. Santorum is in a tough spot. He is the leading non Romney to stay in the race. He does not have the money of Willard Romney, the hair of Michele Bachmann, or the sex appeal of Herman Cain. All he has is belief in himself as the true messenger of the conservatives. It probably will not be good enough. The frustration is showing.
This story was featured at Crooks and Liars. One commenter said “He has every right to get frothy over this. The failure to properly lubricate his comment with context rendered it total bull fecal matter.” Other registered visitors at C and L have little messages under their comments. These signatures include:
“These assholes. They always get away.” George Zimmerman
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don’t say it mean.
“Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage,
but may not be worn in flight.” —Southwest Airlines
Hopefully humanity will one day learn to be humane.
There’s always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. – Tom Waits
Men are basically smart or dumb and lazy or ambitious. The dumb and ambitious ones are dangerous and I get rid of them. The dumb and lazy ones I give mundane duties. The smart ambitious ones I put on my staff. The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders
Pictures are from The Library of Congress These daguerreotypes were taken between 1844 and 1860, at the studio of Matthew Brady.

In the early nineties, PG had too much free time. On March 25 of one year, he looked in the fishwrapper, and found a list of famous people with birthdays.
There was an unlikely trio celebrating that day. This would be (in order of appearance) Anita Bryant (1940), Aretha Franklin (1942), and Elton John (1947). All three have been paid for singing. The three have a total of five husbands, with Miss Bryant and Mr. John currently attached (Not to each other). Miss Franklin has good taste in hats.
Several other people have arrived on planet earth on March 25. They include , in 1911, Jack Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald (d. 1967) (They don’t say alleged when it was on live TV). 1918 produced Howard Cosell, American sports reporter (d. 1995). Flannery O’Connor (d. 1964) arrived in 1925. 1934 gave us Gloria Steinem. In 1937 Tom Monaghan, founder of Dominos pizza, arrived. (The delivery was nine months, and twenty nine minutes, after the order was placed.) To make room for all this talent, Buck Owens died March 25, 2006.
March 25 is after the spring equinox, and has been Easter. A few noteworthy events have gone down on this day. In 1894, Coxey’s Army departed Massillon, Ohio for Washington D.C. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 garment workers in New York City. In 1939 Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli becomes Pope Pius XII, to the delight of Adolph Hitler. 1955 saw the United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” as obscene. In 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel.
HT and applause to wikipedia. This is a repost. Pictures, without Ms. Steinem, are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

Whenever someone writes a book about religion, the writer pays tribute to mammon. Interviews are given, TED talks are given, and the printed donkey flogged within an inch of its life. The book of the moment is Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion. The author is Alain de Botton. A chat on blogginheadstv provided background noise for a productive 53 minutes of photo editing. Thank you Library of Congress.
The idea is that atheists can learn a thing or two from the believers. Mr. de Botton also gave a TED Talk about this concept. TED provides a transcript, which makes the bloggers endeavor a bit easier.
One of the most common ways of dividing the world is into those who believe and those who don’t — into the religious and the atheists. And for the last decade or so, it’s been quite clear what being an atheist means. There have been some very vocal atheists who’ve pointed out, not just that religion is wrong, but that it’s ridiculous. These people, many of whom have lived in North Oxford, have argued — they’ve argued that believing in G-d is akin to believing in fairies and essentially that the whole thing is a childish game.
We may as well began by questioning the entire belief paradigm. Christians believe G-d exists, and a few other things. Atheists do not believe G-d exists. What no one seems to be questioning is whether belief is the best way to go about the G-d issue. The word gnosis (the root of agnostic) refers to having a knowledge of G-d… to feeling her presence in your soul. There are some who say that man and G-d are one and the same. When all you have is a belief… a strongly felt thought… you just might be missing most of the picture.
Christianity is a religion based on beliefs. One of the central beliefs is the notion that having the correct beliefs will cause you to be “saved”… to go to heaven when you die, instead of hell. This is a big deal to Christians, who find it difficult to deal with someone who is not as fascinated by this belief as they are.
Atheism seems to be a reaction to Christianity. If they Christians did not tell them about G-d, how would they know what not to believe in?
“they’ve argued that believing in G-d is akin to believing in fairies and essentially that the whole thing is a childish game.” Oh my, what a terrible thing to say about faeries. Maybe faeries are not something to believe in either. Just wear the fabulous fashions, and don’t worry about that silly religion business.
Mr. de Botton laments the lack of community is atheism, and he may have a point. PG has often envied the sense of extended family that churches seem to offer. If only those pesky beliefs didn’t get in the way. Does religion fulfill a tribal need for conformity, rather than spiritual fulfillment?
“Now religions start from a very different place indeed. All religions, all major religions, at various points call us children. And like children, they believe that we are in severe need of assistance. We’re only just holding it together. Perhaps this is just me, maybe you. But anyway, we’re only just holding it together. And we need help. Of course, we need help. And we need guidance and we need learning.”
It is a common rule of public speaking… you treat children as though they were adults, and adults as though they were children. The concept of being “born again”, of having a second childhood… these are very appealing notions. Can an atheist church offer these good times? Or would it spoil the fun by treating “worshipers” as adults?
Another point about education: we tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they’ll remember it. Sit them in a classroom, tell them about Plato at the age of 20, send them out for a career in management consultancy for 40 years, and that lesson will stick with them. Religions go, “Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it.” That’s what all religions tell us: “Get on you knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day.” Otherwise our minds are like sieves.
So religions are cultures of repetition. They circle the great truths again and again and again. We associate repetition with boredom. “Give us the new,” we’re always saying. “The new is better than the old.” If I said to you, “Okay, we’re not going to have new TED. We’re just going to run through all the old ones and watch them five times because they’re so true. We’re going to watch Elizabeth Gilbert five times because what she says is so clever,” you’d feel cheated.
PG listened to the embedded TED talk twice, the second time taking notes in the transcript. The idea of listening to this lecture three more times is horrific.
The other thing that religions are really aware of is: speak well — I’m not doing a very good job of this here — but oratory, oratory is absolutely key to religions. In the secular world, you can come through the university system and be a lousy speaker and still have a great career. But the religious world doesn’t think that way. What you’re saying needs to be backed up by a convincing way of saying it.
So if you go to an African American Pentecostalist church in the American South and you listen to how they talk, my goodness, they talk well. After every convincing point, people will go, “Amen, amen, amen.” At the end of a really rousing paragraph, they’ll all stand up, and they’ll go, “Thank you Jesus, thank you Christ, thank you Savior.” If we were doing it like they do it — let’s not do it, but if we were to do it — I would tell you something like, “Culture should replace scripture.” And you would go, “Amen, amen, amen.” And at the end of my talk, you would all stand up and you would go, “Thank you Plato, thank you Shakespeare, thank you Jane Austen.” And we’d know that we had a real rhythm going. All right, all right. We’re getting there. We’re getting there.
This is one issue where PG has a big, big problem. Jesus worship is an emotional affair. Powerful feelings are stirred up. This power, and fury, can be a terrifying thing if it is used against you.
In 1999, PG was working with an aggressive Jesus worshiper. One day, PG came out of the bathroom, and heard something on a radio the preacher was playing. What he heard disturbed PG. When he asked the preacher to turn his radio down, hell broke loose. The preacher turned loose the power of Jesus against PG, in righteous anger, because he wanted to play a religious radio station at work. An experience like that will give you a sense of what George Zimmerman is facing today.
This use of Jesus driven emotions is an issue in American politics today. The force and thunder of a screaming Jesus worshiper, leading his flock of angry sheep, is a terrible thing to have used against you. It is hoped that an Atheist church would be more “humanistic”.
No, we need to be polite about differences. Politeness is a much-overlooked virtue. It’s seen as hypocrisy. But we need to get to a stage when you’re an atheist and someone says, “Well you know, I did pray the other day,” you politely ignore it. You move on. Because you’ve agreed on 90 percent of things, because you have a shared view on so many things, and you politely differ… That’s what the religious wars of late have ignored. They’ve ignored the possibility of harmonious disagreement.
Two wrongs do not make a right. Jesus worshipers are notorious for interrupting you if something is said they do not like. Perhaps this is another function of the belief based religion. When you believe something, and do not understand why someone does not share your belief, you don’t have time to listen. This rudeness does not speak well for Jesus. Hopefully, atheists can be a bit better.

There is a dandy feature at the Atlantic today, The White Savior Industrial Complex. It is written by Teju Cole, who is becoming a legend in the twitterverse. It was a seven part tweetpoem, written after the viral plague of KONY2012, that starts off the story.
1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex. 2- The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening. 3- The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm. 4- This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah. 5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege. 6- Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that. 7- I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.
The media sensation this week is Trayvon Martin. Angry mobs are demanding justice. 5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege. (Are all white people caucasians?) The backwards police in Florida just don’t get it. The enlightened folk of America are going to straighten them out. The Jesus worshipers are demanding what they call justice. The word forgiveness is seldom heard.
There is a sentence in Mr. Cole’s story. “What Africa needs more pressingly than Kony’s indictment is more equitable civil society, more robust democracy, and a fairer system of justice.” Substitute America for Africa, and Zimmerman for Kony.
We live in a society that benefits from the suffering of others. A person who speaks about helping these suffering people should be aware of this. As Mr. Cole says: “I write all this from multiple positions. I write as an African, a black man living in America. I am every day subject to the many microaggressions of American racism. I also write this as an American, enjoying the many privileges that the American passport affords and that residence in this country makes possible. I involve myself in this critique of privilege: my own privileges of class, gender, and sexuality are insufficiently examined. My cell phone was likely manufactured by poorly treated workers in a Chinese factory. The coltan in the phone can probably be traced to the conflict-riven Congo. I don’t fool myself that I am not implicated in these transnational networks of oppressive practices.”
Mr. Cole speaks about Nigeria. Much of the oil we power our automobiles with comes from Nigeria. The people of that country are. mostly, poor. The waters they used to fish have been poisoned by oil spills. The world does not pay much environmental attention to the oil wells in Nigeria.
Let me draw into this discussion an example from an African country I know very well. Earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of Nigerians took to their country’s streets to protest the government’s decision to remove a subsidy on petrol. This subsidy was widely seen as one of the few blessings of the country’s otherwise catastrophic oil wealth. But what made these protests so heartening is that they were about more than the subsidy removal. Nigeria has one of the most corrupt governments in the world and protesters clearly demanded that something be done about this. The protests went on for days, at considerable personal risk to the protesters. Several young people were shot dead, and the movement was eventually doused when union leaders capitulated and the army deployed on the streets. The movement did not “succeed” in conventional terms. But something important had changed in the political consciousness of the Nigerian populace. For me and for a number of people I know, the protests gave us an opportunity to be proud of Nigeria…
This is not the sort of story that is easy to summarize in an article, much less make a viral video about. After all, there is no simple demand to be made and — since corruption is endemic — no single villain to topple. There is certainly no “bridge character,” Kristof’s euphemism for white saviors in Third World narratives who make the story more palatable to American viewers. And yet, the story of Nigeria’s protest movement is one of the most important from sub-Saharan Africa so far this year. Men and women, of all classes and ages, stood up for what they felt was right; they marched peacefully; they defended each other, and gave each other food and drink; Christians stood guard while Muslims prayed and vice-versa; and they spoke without fear to their leaders about the kind of country they wanted to see. All of it happened with no cool American 20-something heroes in sight…
If Americans want to care about Africa, maybe they should consider evaluating American foreign policy, which they already play a direct role in through elections, before they impose themselves on Africa itself. The fact of the matter is that Nigeria is one of the top five oil suppliers to the U.S., and American policy is interested first and foremost in the flow of that oil. The American government did not see fit to support the Nigeria protests. (Though the State Department issued a supportive statement — “our view on that is that the Nigerian people have the right to peaceful protest, we want to see them protest peacefully, and we’re also urging the Nigerian security services to respect the right of popular protest and conduct themselves professionally in dealing with the strikes” — it reeked of boilerplate rhetoric and, unsurprisingly, nothing tangible came of it.) This was as expected; under the banner of “American interests,” the oil comes first. Under that same banner, the livelihood of corn farmers in Mexico has been destroyed by NAFTA. Haitian rice farmers have suffered appalling losses due to Haiti being flooded with subsidized American rice. A nightmare has been playing out in Honduras in the past three years: an American-backed coup and American militarization of that country have contributed to a conflict in which hundreds of activists and journalists have already been murdered. The Egyptian military, which is now suppressing the country’s once-hopeful movement for democracy and killing dozens of activists in the process, subsists on $1.3 billion in annual U.S. aid. This is a litany that will be familiar to some. To others, it will be news. But, familiar or not, it has a bearing on our notions of innocence and our right to “help.”
The White Savior Industrial Complex should be read. Be forewarned … too much food for thought can lead to mental indigestion.

1 – A stand your ground law becomes an issue during an incident on Retreat View Circle. You can’t make this stuff up.
2 – Perhaps the dispatcher should have been more explicit about what Mr. Zimmerman should do. “We don’t need you to do that” can be taken different ways.
3 – It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. While Mr. Zimmerman was bigger than Mr. Martin, he apparently did not do well in their physical confrontation. Mr. Zimmerman “was found bleeding from the nose and the back of the head”.
4 – A 9mm handgun is larger than either dog, or the fight in either dog. Attacking a man with this weapon is not a good idea.
5 – The City of Sanford has issued a statement regarding their conduct in this case. They claim that Florida law prohibited them from arresting Mr. Zimmerman. This is the case is going to be profitable for some attorneys to figure out.
6 – The American gun lust has caused more than one person to die before their time. There are better ways to prove your masculinity.
7 – Justice is not a popularity contest. This is now going to be in the hands of the grand jury. We should not allow a mob to “demand justice”. If Mr. Zimmerman is prosecuted only because a howling mob demands it, then justice has not been served.
8 – One more time. Justice is not a popularity contest. If this case goes to trial, and Mr. Zimmerman is acquited, will we see mob violence? It happened in 1992, when a jury in California delivered an unpopular verdict in the Rodney King trial. The rabble rousers need to have responsibility for what they are bringing down.
9 – Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These are Union soldiers from the War Between the States.

On April 4, 2011. Crazy Owl went to the sweat lodge in the sky. The last few years of his life, he had a web page, Crazy Owls Perch. When you go to that address today, you will see something else.
Whoever recycles old domains has a sense of humor. The top two links seen today are Elite Pest Control & Wildlife Removal and $1249 Stomach Liposuction. The latter offers other services, including LipoLite, Brazilian Butt Lift, and Male Breast Reduction.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The video is from WTF Japan Seriously.

An outfit with the oxymoronic name State Integrity Investigation has put out a report. Georgia is the most corrupt state in America. Here is how they stack up. To the surprise of cable tv fans, New Jersey is the least corrupt state.
The STI is a collaboration of The Center For Public Integrity, Global Integrity, and Public Radio International. According to Peach Pundit, “The research done to determine Georgia fails with ethics was done by former Atlanta Journal and Constitution investigative reporter Jim Walls, among the best in the business. He now runs his own website, AtlantaUnfiltered.com, and I encourage you to read his full report here“. (Some of the struck dogs say he is “just a blogger”.)
Peach Pundit is considered to be a conservative, republican blog. Her democratic cousin, Blog For Democracy, does not have this story on the front page. BFD does have a video, Rep. Terry England compares women to cows, pigs and chickens. This is how politics works… you work up the unwashed, about issues that you have no control over, while scraping the gold off the dome.
In its original report,Georgia Receives Deserved Dubious Distinction For Ethics Laws, Pundit has some grisly details. In the last 4 years, Georgia has had a House Speaker who had an affair with a lobbyist for whom he sponsored a bill that would have granted her employer hundreds of millions of dollars for a natural gas pipeline. We had a candidate for Governor with 10 Political Action Committees set up in Alabama to illegally launder campaign funds from a single donor whom he regulated as insurance commissioner. We had a state legislator who dated a lobbyist and got her client a new building at the University she represented, and then threatened the University when they later fired her. He now is the State Labor Commissioner.
We have a Governor who had to file and re-file required disclosures throughout his campaign because critical information was either omitted or incorrect. When the director of the ethics commission prepared subpoenas to serve on the Governor and sought help from the FBI for forensic accounting, her staff was gutted and she was replaced.
We have a Senate Rules Chairman who has traveled to Israel with a lobbyist whom he listed on the official program as a Senate staffer. He uses his campaign account to fund a $2,100 per month condo just 30 miles from his home, yet continues to bill taxpayers for per diem for over 100 days when the legislature is in session. He bills for mileage to and from his home every working day, including the days he is not even in the state.
And we have a current Speaker, elected by his peers after scandal brought down the entire former House leadership team, who took his family on a Thanksgiving vacation to Europe at the expense of lobbyists which went unreported for months. The $17,000 expenditure – roughly the same amount of a base legislator’s pay – was so that the Speaker could learn about trains and transit.
For years the Democrats ruled the state. The Republicans screamed about the corruption. When the GOP took over the state, they showed how much they had learned from the Democrats. It will be interesting to see what “issues” are used as a smokescreen. (Maybe we need a new state flag. If we make it round, we could sell advertising space to Coca Cola.) Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. The image above the text shows Herman Talmadge and Marvin Griffin.

PG was gifted with a link to an article, Silence Is Not a Vow. The concept is to compare a monk’s vow of silence to a wedding vow. It is a good comparison, if the vows are taken for the proper reason.
Silence can have many benefits for the soul. It is said that prayer is talking to G-d, and meditation is listening. Does anyone know a Jesus worshiper who talks too much?
People who spend time outdoors might have come to a time, during a hike, when no one has anything to say. The majesty of the world is overwhelming, and it is time to be quiet. There is nothing you can say that is as worthy as the sound of the outdoors. Soon, you will hear things… wind whistling through trees, birds chirping, or the pounding of feet. The earth is not a quiet place.
Even the city is full of pleasant sounds. How often do you see someone listening to earplugs, when the birds are singing their feathers off? Dogs barking, planes flying, insects chirping, and cars coming and going… the world is a symphony, and you miss it all when you give your time to itunes.
Light pollution is an issue… with so much light in the enviornment, living things do not have the darkness their nature requires. The same could be said for too much sound. Having too much sound to deal with … either by listening or ignoring… is toxic for the soul. There is an innate need for darkness, and silence.
One problem PG has with this feature is a sentence… “But I’m taking the risk of sharing these thoughts anyway, for I believe that the silence of monastics is a reminder to all people of faith—even those of us who do not live in a cloister—to make room in our lives for at least a modicum of silence, hopefully every day.” The noxious phrase is “people of faith”. We have decided that religion is a bad word, and use faith as a substitute. When you do this, you confuse the meaning of faith, which is a pretty neat concept. (The sentence has 54 words. To write a feature about silence, and include a sentence like that, is ironic.)
Another issue with the phrase “people of faith” is the antonym, “people of no faith”. How can you label one of G-d’s children with a tag like that? How can you know what is in another man’s soul, to say that he has no faith in anything? The semantics of a religion, based on the concept that one book is “the word of G-d”, can make you lose faith in the speaker.
There is a story of a monk, who was allowed to say two words every five years. After five years, he said “bad food”. After ten years, he said “hard bed”. After fifteen years, he said “I quit”. His superior replied, “Good. All you ever do is complain.”
While looking for the videos that go with this feature, PG saw some suggestions from youtube. These include: Jack Kerouac Voice off the Road2:30 Good Times- Jon Schmidt – piano instrumental4:42 Doris Day & Friends talk about the real Doris Day5:51 How Gay Marriage Could End Humanity1:48 It Gets Better: Google Employees7:36 Jack Kerouac American Haiku4:45 A TED speaker’s worst nightmare3:51.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

PG saw a link to Do You Live in a Bubble? A Quiz. The “bubble” of the title refers to the concept that “the super wealthy, super educated and super snobby live in so-called super-ZIPs: cloistered together, with little to no exposure to American culture at large.” PG decided that taking the test would be a good excuse for some text to go between the pictures. (The pictures are from The Library of Congress ).
When he typed the date, PG noticed a symmetry of the digits 032112. If he could describe this mathematically, he would be in the top .01%. The fact that he noticed it separates him from 98% percent of the population. This does not include the .7% who became tired of date trivia after y2k. The zip code 32112 is located in Crescent City, FL.
The test is 25 questions. Most are answered yes or no. Others have a list of things you may have done, like see movies or eat at chain restaurants. One showed the symbols for different military ranks, and asked if you knew what they meant.
PG didn’t know what to expect. He seldom watches tv, does not go to church, and tends to stick to a few friends. PG had a blue collar job for 25 years.
The final score, for PG, was 31. The lower the score, the more of a “bubble” you live in. If the test had asked “Will you write a blog post about taking this test”, a yes answer would have lowered your score.
A possible problem with this test is the phrase “close friend” People define this term in different ways. There are other questions with some semantic pitfalls. Question 12 asks if you know who Jimmie Johnson is. (The alternative question is whether you have bought Avon products.) PG remembers a football coach named Jimmie Johnson, which is an extremely common name. A visit to Mr. Google says that Jimmie Johnson is a NASCAR driver.
PG decided to retake the test, with all the answers the same, except for number 7, Have you ever had a close friend who was an evangelical Christian? PG does not have close friends in this dreaded category, but has had family members and co workers. With a yes answer to question seven (and no to the follow up, Are you an evangelical Christian yourself?), PG gained two points, to 33. (Remember, the lower the score, the more of a “bubble” you live in.) Maybe they should have an option for “No thank you”.

The facebook friend (who PG has never met in person) had a link to a story, Bisher’s career ends, as does an era. Sure enough, on the front page, was another link… Furman Bisher dies at 93.
There was a picture of Mr. Bisher, taken from the press box of the newly completed Atlanta Stadium. Below this was a picture of a black woman with blonde hair. The headline was “‘RHOA:’ NeNe meets with divorce attorney.” There is a comment about changing times in that image.
PG posted a feature, The Last Furman Bisher Column, after the retirement of the writer. It was suggested that the fishwrapper might not outlive Mr. Bisher. The newspaper lives on, even if it is a greatly reduced affair.

When he was a kid, PG had different interests. He would get into something for a while, then move on to something else. In 1965, it was baseball and football. The Atlanta Journal had a column every day by Furman Bisher. PG thought he was a very good, very funny writer.
Yesterday, the fishwrapper printed the last column by Furman Bisher. Many, many things had changed in those 44 years. The well crafted prose of Furman Bisher remained the same.
In 1965, Mr. Bisher produced six columns a week for the afternoon paper. Typically, five of them would be on a single subject. The sixth one would be a collection of one or two liners, separated by three dots. These mix and match columns were always signed “selah”. Selah is an untranslatable Hebrew word from Psalms. When asked why, Mr. Bisher said “your guess is as good as mine”.
In one of the columns signed selah, Mr. Bisher talked about sports cliches. His least favorite one was about a ballplayer “who can do it all”. ” Lets see one of them have a baby”
While the Cox family owned both the morning Constitution and the afternoon Journal, they were separate papers then. They had a TV section on saturday printed on green paper, which made the world look red after you turned away from it. The saturday paper also had a weekly ad by a restaurant owner who dabbled in politics, named Lester Maddox. The next year, he would be elected Governor of Georgia. Lester called the Cox Newspapers “the fishwrapper”.
In 1965, the Braves played a lame duck season in Milwaukee. The Crackers played one last season in the brand new Atlanta Stadium. It did not have the hyphen Fulton County in it’s name yet, and the people of Atlanta were so proud of that facility. The next year, the Braves set up shop in Dixie, and were horrible. The Falcons played their first season, and were even worse. Before long, PG found other things to be interested in.
Furman Bisher continued to plug away. A young man named Lewis Grizzard came to work at the fishwrapper, and Mr. Bisher was his boss. Eventually, Lewis Grizzard took a job in Chicago, a frosty exile from warm Georgia. A few years later, Mr. Grizzard came home, and became an institution. The only problem was his heart. Lewis Grizzard left us on March 20, 1994.
Mr. Bisher is 90 today, and in good health. He is leaving on his feet. The fishwrapper continues to shrink, and may not outlive one of it’s best writers.