A happy web of lies and hate, it's...
T H E J U I C E A N D G I N
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Term XXXVIII, Issue 17 (#162)
Weather outlook:
Conductive.
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* Contents *
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- Editor's Blurb
- Ongoing Events
- Photographia
- Greg's DTK
- Humour
- General Info
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* Editor's Blurb *
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Hey all
Okay, so this week's J&G is going out at the regular time. That's just
the way it is. But I'm still pretty sure that next week's issue is
going to be delayed, probably a day. Maybe two. At this point it's
difficult to say. Mostly because those words are hard to pronounce.
The Pool League is definitely back this fall, and there will be practice
days the next two weeks out. So anyone thinking of attending, now's
your chance to get in on the ground floor. And there's no place to go
but up up up.
Until next time,
The whole planet is one big pie!
Michael (mailto:nutsinfo$yahoo.ca)
And now, the rest of the story...
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* Ongoing Events *
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[See the Event Calendar on the web site for full descriptions.
--Ed.]
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Pool League
===========
Mondays
Starts again in September!
Practice days before then!
http://www.solutionsatsource.com/pool
Contact: Jason and Michael (mailto:pool$solutionsatsource.com)
View the current players' statistics at:
http://nutsevents.topcities.com/events/pool/index.html
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Indoor Rock Climbing
====================
Monday evenings some weekends
Contact: Claire (mailto:Claire.Mettier$alcatel.com)
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* Photographia *
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Holy crap, new event pictures this week! Photos from the Pool League's
Summer 2005 Tournament Invitational. Motto: If you didn't play, you
weren't invited.
http://nutsevents.topcities.com/pictures/index.html
http://torpedo.ca.newbridge.com/mirror/pictures/index.html
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* Greg's Deep Thought Korner *
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Now I know I've harped on, time and time again, about the importance of
public education. There is no benefit in leaving children uneducated,
or improperly educated, in order to save tax dollars. Ignorant children
become ignorant adults. Ignorant adults are far more of a burden on
society than the tax dollars it would have cost to educate them. Not
only do such people end up sucking up welfare and jail time, they also
support the most asinine and dubious propositions put forth in our
democratic system.
Witness, then, the rather fabulous belief of many of the credulous that
the world is but six thousand years old. All of geology, apparently, is
a lie put together by their deity; the stratified layers of fossils laid
down in a single calamitous flood. The light we see arriving from stars
millions of light years away was apparently sped up to reach us in
shorter periods of time. And, of course, biological evolution - the
nemesis of such people - would have to be utterly false.
Now I've always held it to be true that people should be allowed to
believe whatever they wish, and to teach whatever they wish to their
children. If you want to believe that a man-god died to expunge your
immorality, or that god doesn't want you to eat pork, or that space
aliens are clinging to your brain to prevent you from becoming a
superbeing, or that ants excreted the earth from their bowels, or even
that an Invisible Pink Unicorn controls your destiny, so be it. That's
cool. You've got your thing, I've got mine. My kids will learn about
science and reason, and yours can learn that wishing makes it so and all
that glitters is gold.
My difficulty comes when the religious people want their beliefs placed
within the public education system. One of those beliefs is a thing
called "creationism", or "intelligent design", which I outlined above.
An ardent, emotional desire for evolution to be untrue and for their
religious beliefs to be proven has led a large movement in the United
States to demand that religion be taught in the classroom as an
"alternative" to what they refer to as "Darwin's theory". This movement
has extended to the very top of their government, and I can't imagine
the U.S. doing something like this without Canada soon to follow.
I could go on, at length, to explain the sledgehammeringly powerful
evidence in favour of biological evolution, but this very rarely does
any good. Religious belief is seldom about evidence, but rather about
faith and emotion. Pointing out that evolution doesn't involve a
chimpanzee giving birth to a human, or a cat to a dog, or that changing
a gene pool over time says nothing about morals, does little to fix the
debate.
And yet, here we are, facing the idea of religion being injected in to a
high school biology lesson as if there were some scientific evidence for
the changing of the speed of light, the coexistence of dinosaurs and
men, the variability of radioactive decay rates or any of a number of
fabulous arguments necessary to make the earth six thousand years old.
At some point, we may have to act to prevent similar damage being done
to our own education system. It may only be a matter of time.
Greg.
[Send responses to DTKs or new Editorials to mailto:nutsinfo$yahoo.ca]
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* Humour *
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[Forward any good jokes or interesting web sites you see to
mailto:nutsinfo$yahoo.ca]
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42 Games
========
Thanks to Greg G. @ Alcatel
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy meets a fast clicking Flash game.
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/hitchhikers/swfs/42gamepopup.asp
(Flash game)
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Prison vs. Work
===============
Thanks to Linda G.'s Grey Bar Hotel And Vacation Spa
Just in case you ever get these two environments mixed up, this should
make things a little bit clearer.
IN PRISON.... You spend the majority of your time in an 10 X 10 cell.
AT WORK...... You spend the majority of your time in an 8 X 8 cubicle.
IN PRISON.... You get three meals a day.
AT WORK...... You get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it.
IN PRISON.... You get time off for good behaviour.
AT WORK...... You get more work for good behaviour.
IN PRISON.... The guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.
AT WORK...... You must often carry a security card and open all the
doors for yourself.
IN PRISON.... You can watch TV and play games.
AT WORK...... You could get fired for watching TV and playing games.
IN PRISON.... You get your own toilet.
AT WORK...... You have to share the toilet with some people who pee on
the seat.
IN PRISON.... They allow your family and friends to visit.
AT WORK...... You aren't even supposed to speak to your family.
IN PRISON.... All expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work
required.
AT WORK...... You get to pay all your expenses to go to work, and they
deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.
IN PRISON.... You spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get
out.
AT WORK...... You spend most of your time wanting to get out and go to
bars.
IN PRISON.... You must deal with sadistic wardens.
AT WORK...... They are called managers.
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* General Info *
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Contact the NUTS Committee:
mailto:nutsinfo$yahoo.ca
The NUTS Website is:
http://nutsevents.topcities.com
http://torpedo.ca.newbridge.com/mirror (for people within Alcatel)
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