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Yesterday, I complained that it was 36 degrees when I rode my bike in to work.

Today it was 29.

That’s enough for me to declare “correlation”!

Speaking of correlation, along a similar thread, it’s been a couple of months since school started, and I have to ride by one on the way in to work. And my conclusion, having been past it nearly every school morning for two months, is that people who drop their kids off at school couldn’t drive to save their life. Like, there’s a 2-way stop sign there that magically becomes a 4-way stop because people just decide to not drive through it and block traffic, and then everyone else stops–even though there is clearly no stop sign at the intersection.

But this brings a dilemma too. What do I correlate that to? Is it that parents dropping off kids are poor drivers, or is it more general, since roughly 80% of the drivers there are female. So maybe it’s women make poor drivers. But then, I have to acknowledge that every single person I’ve seen there has been white, so maybe white people just make poor drivers. Finally, there was an over-representation of SUVs and minivans, so the correlation clearly is that drivers of said vehicles are poor drivers.

Clearly, all of these things are correlated. And therefore, Global Warming is true. Proof of Global Warming is found in the fact that it was 29 degrees this morning when yesterday it was 36. Clearly such a wild swing in temperatures can only be caused by massive global climate shifts….

Okay, so a 51-year-old guy, Doug Hutchinson, marries a 16-year-old girl named Courtney Stodden. There’s a lot of weirdness that could be pointed out here. For instance, she claims to be a Christian but acts like…um, well, sadly, 90% of Christians in mega-churches. And she’s the oldest looking 16-year-old I’ve ever seen.

But she is actually just 16. She has, after all, shown her birth certificate to some news agencies, and if there’s anything that liberals and the media (but I repeat myself) has taught us regarding our current president, it’s that birth certificates can never be faked.

So I have wonder about Anderson Cooper here. Because when you boil this video down, all it really is, is a “news” anchor mocking a 16-year-old girl on national television. I mean, it’d be one thing if he was poking fun at Doug Hutchinson and calling him a pedophile or something (even though he broke no laws in marrying her); or Cooper could go more after the girl’s parents for letting this happen. That would be fair, because these are adults that are being skewered in the news.

But instead, he goes out of his way just to mock the 16-year-old. Now, I’ve never been one who actually cared much for Cooper, so my bias against him makes me presume that he had to go after the 16-year-old because he’s not sophisticated enough to go toe-to-toe with an adult…but hey, this video gives me more confirmation for my confirmation bias, Cooper!

But you know, as I think about it a little further…maybe it’s not that big of a deal after all. I mean, sure, Cooper went out of the way to mock a 16-year-old girl, but it was on CNN. It’s not like anybody saw it.

Sometimes, I think that the evil machines that write spam must think the average person is really stupid.

Then I remember who’s in the White House.

The machines are right.

I’m feeling somewhat meh today (yes, that is a scientific medical classification), so I’ve decided that if there’s one thing the world does not have enough of, it’s cults that have been started by me. So I’m going to quickly remedy that problem.

Of course, any whacko can start a cult. That takes some of the fun out of it. See, cults in America have become so stereotypical that they get kinda predictable. Essentially: some ugly man wants to have plural wives, invents a religion where he’s the authoritative figure, provokes the establishment, dies horrifically. Death can be anything from Kool-Aid to spontaneous combustion due to government tanks shooting gas through your plywood fortress.

But I’ve decided all of that stuff is too cliché for someone as awesome as I would be, if I were an authoritative figure. I want my cult to be special and unique, something you can’t find every day. So I’ve thought about it for at least 2 minutes, and have come up with my solution.

My cult has one rule for membership: Anyone who does not want to be in my cult is automatically a member of my cult until such point as he or she wishes to be in my cult.

I have one rule of behavior for members in my cult that is compulsory for all members: you must give me all your money.

For those who no longer wish to be a cult member, then it’s simple. Anyone who wishes to be a member of my cult is no longer a member of my cult. To prove that you want to be a member of my cult, all you have to do is willingly give all your money to me—the willingness to do so constituting proof that you want to be in my cult, and therefore proving you are no longer a member. If you do not wish to give me your money, it is constituted as proof that you do not want to be in my cult, which necessitates your membership in my cult, therefore requiring you to give me all your money.

Now this is a cult I can stand behind.

John Loftus once assured us that part of the proof there is no God is that bird-men do not exist.

I think this proves beyond all doubt that the non-existence of bird men proves the existence of God…

The most common form of essay writing on scholastic campuses is the five-paragraph essay. Consisting of an introductory paragraph bearing a thesis statement with three points (each of which is expanded in numerical order for the next three paragraphs) and ending with a concluding paragraph that recapitulates the thesis statement, five-paragraph essays have long been a staple of academia. This unfortunate practice should be abolished because following strict formal guidelines stifles creativity, some things cannot be summed up in three points (necessitating poorly linked final points that are only superficially related to the thesis statement), and because school administrations only use the five-paragraph essay to force adherence to dictatorial norms.

To demonstrate that five-paragraph essays stifle creativity, one only need to examine the fact that our greatest heroes in literature are precisely those authors who manage to break the mold, transcend the rules, and demonstrate their greatness through the application of style. This is the essence of creativity, the genius inside a man or woman that enables him or her to soar to heights only slightly lower than the angels can attain. Yet if one attempts to do this in a five-paragraph essay, one finds one’s grade significantly lowered, thus stifling any creative spark that the author may have originally carried.

This follows through to the fact that some subjects simply do not have three points and attempts to add in the third point come across as being ham-fisted or, what is worse, nonintellectual. The fact of the matter is that some subjects can fully be explained in only two points, while others require four or more points to develop. Adherence to the strict guidelines of the five-paragraph essay therefore result in forced attrition via the deletion of relevant data (i.e., the fourth, or higher, points) or, more commonly, forced inflation via the insertion of a third point that stands out like a hippie in a Presbyterian church.

It is inevitable that five-paragraph essays are used by school administrations, therefore, simply to force adherence to dictatorial norms. No concern is given to the fact that students did not decide what these norms should be, or why their essays must be five hundred words in length, or why they must contain five paragraphs arranged in a specific manner. Obedience is demanded, like an anti-proletarian government decreeing obedience from its subjects, where any nonconformity is punished swiftly by various actions of the administration (viz., the reduction of grades, public mockery in the classroom, detention after hours, and sometimes the forced repeating of an entire year’s worth of schooling). Such tactics belong to political dictatorships, not to the realm of academia.

All of the above makes it quite obvious that the five-paragraph essay format is prone to abuse and should be abolished as soon as humanly possible. It is time to evolve. Indeed, there is nothing that is stated in a five paragraph essay that could not be stated without stifling creativity, rigid adherence to three points, or the use of dictatorial tactics.

I have written this important blog post to inform you of the existence of this important blog post. Without my having informed you of its existence, it is quite likely that you would have never known it existed.

That is all.

Seems my tactic of ignoring the honest publisher’s summary, the online videos, the other sermons that the fellow has preached, the folks who’ve read a book before saying the author was dangerously close to hypocrisy, or any number of other ways one could state a prima facie ignorant assertion about the hoopla surrounding the hoopla surrounding Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins, keeps catching the attention of some. In fact, one of my posts on the Bell fiasco so far may best be expressed something like this: a bunch of words pretty much unrelated to the content of anything remotely similar to the topic at hand. And, it seems to naturally follow from that: if you ignore the evidence for something that other people do not ignore then they are the fools, not you.

Truth be told, my granddaughter, who is but 3 years old, has a higher IQ than I.

On the other hand, your average band of “scare quote” websites which specialize in reason and rationality instead of hating on James White, has this to say:

But the Bell kerfuffle was just a trap which Schultz cleverly set to ensnare the grand muftis of modern Arminianism: Ben Witherington, Peter Lumpkins, Scot McKnight, and Roger Olson. He knew they’d take the bait, rushing to the defense of Bell.

What is there to say? Some people read to understand and write to clarify. Others–unfortunately, like so many Internet apologists named Peter Lumpkins–read but do not understand and write but only confuse. But just because a post starts pretending to be from the National Enquirer as reported by Mitty Muckraker in no possible way could indicate this column could possibly be satire.

We know who is really behind it. James White*.

With that, I am…

Peter

* Some unaccomplished theologians** insist White embraces what is known as historic Hyper-Calvinism

** These are collectively known as “Peter Lumpkins.”

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO — Protests erupted today in the ultra-conservative city of Colorado Springs, CO as thousands lined the streets to protest James Frey’s new book, available on Good Friday.

Frey’s book sparked controversy when he decided to write a biographical account of a man smoking pot and sleeping with prostitutes. The problem, Christians say, is when Frey decided to portray his biography as if he were the Messiah.

“This outrage is outrageous,” said one protestor, after he fired shots into several businesses along the I-25 corridor from the back of his moped. No one was injured in the exchange.

The scene is reminiscent of the riots of March 2, 2007, when four people were seen being slightly miffed at James Cameron.

The Associated Press contributed nothing to this report.