Muslims who died on 9/11

I wonder if Ms. Palin will ever cite this list.

Free-Will

A semi-friend on Tumblr  posted this quote today:

“It appears that a belief in free will may make people smarter, better at learning, better on the job, more ethical and more helpful to others. If more people believed in free will it appears the world would be a better place. So maybe we should be putting more energy into a question of greater utility than whether free will is ‘real’ or not, and trying to work out how to get more people to believe in free will? Unfortunately, a lot of activity in science and religion seems to be working in the opposite direction.”

—	David Rock (via Psychology Today) Thoughts?

 It's a good thought, but I think history shows that humans care more about knowing Truth and being Right than making the world better for everyone. The part of my education that I still need to learn is how humans fall short of the ideals, and how to build governments and policies that treat people as people instead of angels.

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Palin's Tweets

A moment of partisanship:

Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real 12:58 PM Jul 18th via Twitter for BlackBerry®

"Refute?" What? Yes, the pain at the Twin Towers site is probably raw, but that has very little to do with the rights of Americans to worship. Furthermore, the "Ground Zero Mosque" is a community center that's a block or two away - not even visible.

Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing 1:57 PM Jul 18th via Twitter for BlackBerry®

The subtext is that Americans (who happen to be Muslim) as responsble for America's "healing," and should accommodate people who are scared of their fellow citizens' right to worship. Building a church is not provocation in foreign countries where Christians killed people, right? This is the same way. It's xenophobic & wrong. I will acknowledge that there are Americans who equate all of Islam with 9/11, but Gov. Palin's role should be showing people what freedom of religion is all about.

"Refudiate," "misunderestimate," "wee-wee'd up." English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it! ! 3:38 PM Jul 18th via web

New words are cool when we don't have words that already mean the same thing. Switching out an f for a p does not a decent new word make.

Rant over.