Slate carried a real gem today: You Can't Measure America's Grit: Hatred of sabermetrics comes to business and politics. There were several great quotes, but my favorite is reprinted below.
KFC president Roger Eaton is lashing out at New York City regulations that require restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus. "KFC's Famous Bowls and Big Box Meals are so much more than the sum of their ample calories and saturated fats," Eaton explained in an impromptu speech at one of the chain's Manhattan locations. New York's disclosure laws, the fast-food executive continued, ignore more subtle health factors, such as the impact of saying grace before you dig in and the salutary effect of eating in a booth.
—New York Post, July 6, 2011, as quoted by Slate.com.
I’m not usually much of a stats-guy when it comes to sports, but these guys have pretty much proved to me that you can tell almost everything you need to know about anything from statistics. You might hate it, but the truth is that the numbers don’t lie.
When did America become so anti-intellectual, anyway? I swear, ever since George W. Bush refused to stop saying “nuke-u-ler” instead of nuclear, it’s like I don’t have a country anymore. Have I changed that much, or have people just stopped caring about facts and instead started buying wholesale into their own personal delusions? Even my church has been off on a rant lately about “new Earth creationism” and how there couldn’t ever have been any real dinosaurs because there aren’t any dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible. Ugh. Try explaining that one to a six-year-old would-be paleontologist.
Honestly, it’s crap like that that’s been destroying my faith these last few months. And I don’t mean my faith in America; I mean my actual, spiritual faith. I want to believe, but it’s just so damned hard when you have these guys who refuse to believe in something as simple, mundane, and obviously factual as the existence of dinosaurs. We found the bones! How is this even a question anymore?
Enough.
Today’s gonna be one of those days when I’m glad my neighbors don’t read this blog. It’s Wednesday afternoon, and here I am wrestling with my faith. What’s the world coming to?
4 comments:
Hey there, check out "walk the same line" by Everything But The Girl, I'm singin' to ya my friend.
Okay. I guess I'll have to do that.
Just a little fun fact, didn't know if you knew this or not, but John Wayne Gacy was once married to "The Colonels' Daughter" and was actually like a store manager of like four KFC's or some crazy shit like that. Yup, nothing like hearing that a serial killer who had the bodies of 33 young boys pulled out from the crawl-space underneath his house, just served you a meal.
Tell your daughter that some scholars feel dinosaurs are mentioned in the bible. They're referred to as Behemoths and Leviathans.
I know one reference is in the Book of Job ( Job 40: 15-24):
Behold now the behemoth that I have made with you; he eats grass like cattle.
Behold now his strength is in his loins and his power is in the navel of his belly.
His tail hardens like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together.
His limbs are as strong as copper, his bones as a load of iron.
His is the first of God's ways; [only] his Maker can draw His sword [against him].
For the mountains bear food for him, and all the beasts of the field play there.
Does he lie under the shadows, in the cover of the reeds and the swamp?
Do the shadows cover him as his shadow? Do the willows of the brook surround him?
Behold, he plunders the river, and [he] does not harden; he trusts that he will draw the Jordan into his mouth.
With His eyes He will take him; with snares He will puncture his nostrils.
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