Celebrate Diversity

Diversify yourself...Celebrate June 'Gun Pride Month.'

Imperial Forces - Troops Video

Stormtroopers are soooo cool!

Curly's Sweater

It's been awhile since my last post, but I'm back from several weeks of travel and field duty.

Dating for Dummies

And now on a serious note...

Do Christian singles have a rough time connecting with that someone special? I have no idea (but I did date my one and only for four years before we got married and we've been happily married for 15 years).

Dwindling congregations and a lack of experience in relationships have left many churchgoers struggling to find a partner, according to clergy.

There has been a sharp rise in the number of worshippers signing up to internet dating sites, but clergy are concerned that they are losing personal skills, such as flirting and reading signals.

Now hundreds of Christians are attending courses designed to make them more successful in turning a first date into a long-term relationship.

Here's some of what they're learning:

Lessons include how to greet someone, how to hold good eye contact and how to judge whether the other person wants to be kissed at the end of the evening.

"The workshops are all about giving people the confidence to make their date a success. They go through the whole process of what is acceptable to talk about and when it is appropriate to try to take things to the next level."

Mr Spalton (Peter Spalton, known as the dating doctor) said that chat-up lines can be a good way to make someone laugh and feel relaxed, but that some Christian jokes might not be well received.

And pick-up lines to avoid:

- 'Now I know why Solomon had 700 wives. He never met you.'
- 'You float my ark.'
- 'I didn't believe in predestination until tonight.'
- 'Let me sell you an indulgence - it's a sin to look as good as you.'
- 'How many times do I have to walk around you before you fall for me?"

Perhaps we need more workshops, seminars, Sunday school lessons to help the singles out. Do they teach this at seminary? If not, they should. I know this is easy to make fun of after all, I'm married.

NASCAR For Dummies

NASCAR Coach Reveals Winning Strategy: 'Drive Fast'

How to Prepare for a Deployment to...

This pre-deployment training/prep would have helped me immensely.

How to Prepare for a Deployment to Iraq

1. Sleep on a cot in the garage.

2. Replace the garage door with a curtain.

3. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry, wrong cot."

4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to chest level. Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning the toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet itself. Leave two to three sheets of toilet paper. Or for best effect, remove it altogether. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using your bathroom and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away.

5. When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.

6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head.

7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH" for that tactical generator smell.

8. Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.

9. Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.

10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

11. Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor's house. Laugh at him when he curses you.

12. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.

13. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker.

14. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.

15. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the garden hose.

16. Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it back together again.

17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or six hours before drinking.

18. Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them.

19. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.

20. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.

21. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night stand and bring it to the bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight.

22. Go to the bathroom when you just have to pass gas, "just in case." Every time.

23. Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry, it's for the other Smith."

24. Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.

25. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.

26. Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria.

27. Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.

28. Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.

29. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation.

30. While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.

31. Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a.m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.

32. Drink your milk and sodas warm.

33. Spread gravel throughout your house and yard.

34. Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door before they come in.

35. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4x4s are not 8 inches on center and make them rebuild it.

36. Continuously ask your spouse to allow you to go buy an M-Gator.

37. When your 5-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After two weeks, give your son the gum.

38. Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for disease and shoot it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dug in your neighbor's back yard.

39. Wait for the coldest/ hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/ air conditioner. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get cold/ hot.

40. Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this process for another 12-15 months to simulate the next deployment you've been ordered to support.

Military Rules by Service

More military rules (by service); I have to do this to get mentally prepared for a month at GTA, Germany. It's therapeutic.

Marine Corps Rules:
1. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one.
2. Decide to be aggressive enough, quickly enough.
3. Have a plan.
4. Have a back-up plan, because the first one probably won't work.
5. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet ­ even your friends…
6. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun whose caliber does not start with a "4."
7. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.
8. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral & diagonal preferred.)
9. Use cover or concealment as much as possible.
10. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.
11. Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
12. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.
13. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating your intention to shoot.

Navy SEAL's Rules:
1. Look very cool in sunglasses.
2. Kill every living thing within view.
3. Adjust speedo.
4. Check hair in mirror.

US Army Rangers Rules:
1. Walk in 50 miles wearing 75 pound rucksack while starving.
2. Locate individuals requiring killing.
3. Request permission via radio from "Higher" to perform killing.
4. Curse bitterly when mission is aborted.
5. Walk out 50 miles wearing a 75 pound rucksack while starving.

US Army Rules:
1. Curse bitterly when receiving operational order.
2. Make sure there is extra ammo and extra coffee.
3. Curse bitterly.
4. Curse bitterly.
5. Do not listen to 2nd LT's; they can get you killed.
6. Curse bitterly.

US Air Force Rules:
1. Have a cocktail.
2. Adjust temperature on air-conditioner.
3. See what's on HBO.
4. Ask "what is a gunfight?"
5. Request more funding from Congress with a "killer" Power Point presentation.
6. Wine & dine 'key' Congressmen, invite DOD & defense industry executives.
7. Receive funding, set up new command and assemble assets.
8. Declare the assets "strategic" and never deploy them operationally.
9. Hurry to make 13:45 tee-time.
10. Make sure the base is as far as possible from the conflict but close enough to have tax exemption.

US Navy Rules:
1. Go to Sea.
2. Drink Coffee.
3. Deploy Marines

Rules of Combat:

20 Rules:

1. Friendly fire - isn't.
2. Recoilless rifles - aren't.
3. If it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid.
4. Never forget that your weapon was made by the lowest bidder.
5. If your attack is going really well, it's an ambush.
6. Five second fuses always burn three seconds.
7. The easy way is always mined.
8. Never draw fire; it irritates everyone around you.
9. When you have secured the area, make sure the enemy knows it too.
10. No combat ready unit has ever passed inspection.
11. No inspection ready unit has ever passed combat.
12. If the enemy is within range, so are you.
13. Military Intelligence is a contradiction.
14. The one item you need is always in short supply.
15. Interchangeable parts aren't.
16. The worse the weather, the more you are required to be out in it.
17. Field experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
18. No matter which way you have to march, its always uphill.
19. Every command which can be misunderstood, will be.
20. There is always a way, and it usually doesn't work.

Sometimes fellas learn them the hard way...

US Army Hospital Emergency Room

I'll see you back here in a few days; I'm off playing in Grafenwoehr.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

Motivational Santa

Meinem Profil hinzufügen | Mehr Videos


and he lives in the North Pole in a van down by the river.

I Think, Therefore I am (Cogito, ergo sum) or "I know you are but what am I"

Have you ever taken a formal logic class in the past? To be honest, I’ve never taken a formal philosophy, critical thinking, or logic class until recently. It was worth it as I improved my critical thinking skills. I found learning and identifying logical fallacies to be interesting and fun.

Everyone who has taken beginner's logic knows the old school fallacies - Non sequitur, Ad hoc post proctor ergo hoc; and in English: Appeal to Emotion/Fear, Begging the Question, Red Hearing, Slippery Slope, Straw Man, etc. Knowing the names of logical fallacies seems to make us smarter, however; knowing them in Latin, no doubt makes us seem brilliant and sparkles up our repartee.

It's not too hard to find examples of logical fallacies as impassioned people debate the hot issues: Iraq War, abortion, stem cell research, evolution, and intelligent design. I' ll have to take a closer look at the presidential candidates' debates. Anyway, I will periodically post recent examples of logical fallacies as I find them. If anything, it will help improve my critical thinking skills by learning, identifying, and avoiding the logical fallacy trap(s) that folks can fall into as they argue a position.

In the mean time here are a few new logical fallacies I came across. Learn these nifty phrases and start deploying them in all kinds of mundane household discussions; use them on your friends and family:

1) Plurium Stupidium: Fallacy of Much Stupidity. Consists of several stupid comments improperly grouped into one. Often, a single refutation is expected against all the nonsense.

Examples:

"Gas prices are so low today that I think I'll fill every container in my house to make my own strategic oil reserve by stockpiling all the gas in that nook next to the fireplace."

"We should let women rule the world because they drive cars better."

2) Petitio Kapowio: Fallacy of Begging to get Socked in the Nose. Consists of defending a position in a really irritating way, such that the opponent has no choice but to point out the logical error in a very physical and satisfying fashion.

Examples:

"Bring it, punk."

"Well, I'm right, and that's just how it is."

"Why are you REALLY arguing with me? Is it because you're scared?"

3) Consensus Minoritum: Appeal to Minority. The inverse of Appeal to the People (Argumentum ad Populum). Consists of an argument supported by its own lack of support.

Examples:

"That's what they all say. I can't believe you fell for it, too."

"The court ruled 8-1. The dissenting opinion, however, has some very choice arguments in support of my position."

4) Argumentum Dementum: Fallacy of Arguing from a Position or State of Dementia. Consists of arguments which accidentally make no sense and are not the fault of the arguments themselves. Argumentum Dementum is a very hard fallacy to spot.

Examples:

Major Premise: All cats are animals.
Minor Premise: Ginger is an animal.
Conclusion: Teeheehee!

"Due to my incredible good looks, remarkable intelligence, contagious charisma, discriminating good taste, and skill with a joystick, I will take over the world at this time tomorrow, and anyone who wants to stop me can ... teeheehee!"

A = B
B = C
Therefore, A = Teeheehee!

5) Refutatum ad Mortem: Fallacy of Arguing a Point to the Death. Consists of an argument issued from the mouth of one who has been arguing so long he no longer knows what he is saying.

Examples:

"I'm not sure what you just said because my ears are ringing so loud from all the caffeine, but I'm sure it's wrong."

"Just oooooooooooooooooooone more jelly donut. Then I'll stop. This time I mean it. I'm really going to stop."

"Medicare, Medicaid, and the environment ... Medicare, Medicaid, and the environment ... Medicare, Medicaid, and the environment ..."

6) Argumentum ad Baculum Squidium Magnus: Fallacy of Fear of Giant Squid. Consists of an emotional appeal involving a giant squid; this fallacy typically involves said squid falling from the sky. Also known as Secundum Squid.

Examples:

"I would love to get a driver's license, but I don't want to risk having a giant squid fall on me in the middle of the test."

"You're so obsessed with people starving in Africa. What about those poor people in Kansas City? Why, a giant squid could gobble them up at any moment!"

Why I Love Opera

That Bugs Bunny, what an actor!