Feeling Better (FINALLY); Mario Kart Wii!

Posted May 26, 2008, 7:32 p.m.

I’m finally starting to feel a bit better, which is good because I think I just bankrolled Vicks’ existence for the next six-months-plus. As many of you know, I generally shy away from medicines since they generally just treat the symptoms (which, in many cases, actually help to kill the virus). But, after the first week or so, I gave in and have been ingesting a steady diet of chicken soup, Dayquil, and Nyquil.

Let me state, for the record, that the phenylephrine decongestant they’ve put in most medicines to replace the now-tightly-controlled pseudoephedrine (in a classic example of ‘punish everybody for the sins of a few’ syndrome) doesn’t work even half as well. It is worth the annoying trip to the pharmacy counter to get your hands on the old-fashioned stuff, even if you ludicrously have to show ID and be entered in a database for it. Nyquil D, most especially, was the only thing that let me sleep and stay somewhat sane over the last week.

Anyway, we actually left the apartment for part of the afternoon today, including a trip to Target where we picked up Mario Kart Wii. That should keep us occupied for a while now ;-). And I should be getting back into a regular pattern of posting now that I’m conscious again.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

Forced compassion always short-circuits the human heart and destroys the integrity of true and loving charity.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Holy steadfastness is not intolerance.

I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time for every matter, and for every work.

The problem is not repenting of our sins, not being ashamed of what we have done.

Men talk most about health when they are unhealthy. So too they talk most about freedom when they are in danger of losing it or when they are enslaved.

Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

If I didn’t know, from my own case, that I’m conscious, my knowledge of your neural processes would give me no reason to suspect that you are.

The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed . . .

[The First Amendment] requires the state to be a neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers and nonbelievers; it does not require the state to be their adversary.

People who talk incessantly about ‘change’ are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people.

When you’re right, you don’t have to worry too much about stinging political defeats. All you have to do is sit back and let the winners enact their policies. If you’re really right, and they’re really wrong, their policies will fail.

The spirit, if it truly stirs, never brings peace, but always brings a sword. Submission to the spirit may bring peace. But the spirit itself, aroused in man or nation, is a blade that exists to divide the truth from untruth, the living from the dead, the conformist from the Christian.

Let the wise man guard his thoughts, for they are difficult to perceive, very artful, and they rush wherever they list: thoughts well guarded bring happiness.

The fault of others is easily perceived, but that of one’s self is difficult to perceive; a man winnows his neighbor’s faults like chaff, but his own fault he hides, as a cheat hides the bad die from the player.

When men are uniform in their opinions, it affords evidence that they are sincere. When they are shifting, it gives reason to believe, they do not change from conviction.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.

Part of the beauty of me is that I am very rich.

In all that follows I adopt the standpoint, therefore, that the inclination to aggression is an original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man, and I return to my view that it constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.