Things I've Learned This Week

I hope this week finds everyone well. I am currently reading D. Harlan Wilson's "Codename Prague", and Bradley Sands' "It Came From Below the Belt"(Hurry! It's out-of-print and Amazon has only 2 copies in stock as of this post!). D does not disappoint in this second book in the Scikungfi Trilogy (I'll review it in full when I'm finished), and contrary to what this e-anthology has to say Bradley Sands is not a dick. Well, maybe he is, but his writing is great.

And now for something completely different:

I may not be the most religious man in the world. In fact, as you can probably tell by the title of this blog and previous posts, I prefer to make fun of religion as much as I can. Does that mean I think your faith is ridiculous and stupid? No. Everyone believes in something greater than themselves (even atheists!) and that faith can be a good thing. Keeps one humble for starters, but I digress. The point I'd like to make is that no matter what foundation your faith is built upon you can agree with me that in all probability when you shuffle off this mortal coil, if there is a life hereafter the least you get to take with you is your life experience and knowledge. So for me, knowledge is more important than anything else.

With that in mind, I'd like to share some of the things I learned this week.

First, I got a five minute education in the details of the United Kingdom:

Feel smarter already? Well, let's keep the ball rolling! Shall we?

Next, a friend on Facebook posted a link to something on Moveon.org's site concerning a Republican congressman who wanted to change the definition of rape. Of course, being conservative, I was intrigued. It turns out that House of Representatives Bill 3: The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act is an appropriations bill, or rather a lack of it. Put simply: the bill wants to make sure that taxpayer dollars are not used to pay for abortions. I'm sure you figured that out from the title. The "rape definition" comes from Section 309-1 which is actually saying that they WILL pay for an abortion in the case of rape or incest. Now, in trying to argue that this was not a change in criminal law I learned a lot about the federal government's take on rape (namely U.S.C. Title 18, Part I, Section 109A). Seems to me that the feds have the same opinion of rape that most civilized people do, i.e. it's not a good thing and should be punished by death (or at the least a lengthy prison sentence).

In doing all that arguing I also learned that I hate women, that all women want to carry babies, and that I don't consider incest a form of rape. Hold on, no, that was somebody else somehow implying from what I said that I believed all that. Silly me. (And no, I will not repeat the conversation. It is long, drawn out, and full of ignorance.)

Well, I hope everyone has learned something useful from this. Class dismissed until next week.