A reformer given to lecturing on the evils of liquor finished off a performance by exhibiting two bottles to his audience, one filled with water, the other with liquor. He put some worms in the water bottle, and they swam about; he put some others in the liquor bottle, where they wiggled briefly and then …
DAYTIME TALK SHOWS Daytime talk shows, where pedophiles, Nazis, and husband-batterers roam free, may have social repercussions costlier than the entertainment value. The parade of deviants who hop from Oprah to Phil to Sally are corrupting our sense of normalcy, argues Vicki Abt, Ph.D., a Penn State social psychologist who scrutinized 60 episodes each of …
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PROGRESSIVE DEMISE Speaking of our New York, remember, when civilization falls apart, we were way ahead of you. — David Letterman
NOTHING WID OUT We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its…scar…Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. — William James
PRIDE ON THE HEART Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig. From The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, pg. 163
GHANDI ON SIN Mahatma Ghandi’s list of deadly sins: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle.
A LITTLE IMPURITY POLLUTES Schopenhauer’s Law of Entropy: If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel of wine, you get sewage.
ENIGMA OF LIVING Man is an enigma. He wants to live a long time, yet is constantly threatening himself with annihilation. He desires the enjoyment of good health, yet regularly ignores the basic rules for it. He longs for immortality, yet lives a life not fit to live forever. He loves liberty, yet steadily makes …
BAD PRAISE “America’s slide into the sewer is greased by praise. Yes, praise. When journalism flinches from presenting the raw reality, and instead says only that 2 Live Crew’s lyrics are ‘explicit’ and ‘controversial’ and ‘provocative,’ there is an undertone of approval. Antonyms of those adjectives are ‘vague’ and ‘bland’ and ‘unchallenging.’ America today is …
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GOSSIP HERE “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, sit right here by me.” Alice Roosevelt Longworth
GAMBLING GROWTH Gaming is such a pleasant name for gambling. But regardless of what it is called, it’s a boon to the economy! And here is yet more proof: A few years ago, prior to the introduction of legalized gambling, Kansas City, Missouri had only five pawn shops. At last count there are over seven …
Addictions | Economy | Gambling | Greed | Lost | Money | Vice Read More »