Alabama Gov. to non-Christians: Go to hell

Our new Governor, on his first day on the job, speaking at an MLK day event, at MLK's church, had this to say about his non-Christian constituents:

"So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

While there is some context to the statement, it's pretty scary that when writing the speech no one thought someone might take issue with telling non-Christians that the Governor is not their "brother."

The good news for the Governor is that there aren't many Jews in Alabama, and I doubt any of them voted for him.

Unsealing Revelation's Mysteries

I received this in the mail the other day:

Unsealing Revelation's Mysteries

Unfortunately I've been out of town during some of the early seminars, but nothing is going to keep me from missing "How to Postpone Your Funeral."

It turns out that this church is local and they have podcasts. Listen to this one and be sure to listen for at least a minute. You'll see why.

Panic at the Supermarket

An inch or so of snow and some freezing rain was predicted for Sunday through today (Monday), and sure enough, on Friday people began clearing out certain items at the supermarket, most notably bread.



It doesn't take much snow to legitimately shut things down here in Alabama -- neither the city nor state have many plows or really any salt stockpiled.

But what I don't get, is the level of fear that is induced when people hear that it could snow.

People react like they're going to be trapped in their homes for days, maybe weeks, and will be completely shut off from food.

Let's pretend for a second that this really could happen. Why is that people think they can subsist on sliced bread? There are a lot of other things in the supermarket that have substantially greater nutrional value as well as a longer shelf life, like canned fruits and vegetables. If I thought that a snow apocolyspse was really imminent, I'd stock up on canned foods, not wonder bread.

The Check

Here's a cultural difference I've noticed between the Dixie and the North.

When a group of people receive the check for a meal up north, it's always a single check. In the South, probably 65 to 75 percent of the time the server either asks the table if everyone wants separate checks, or they go ahead and do it without asking. And this seems to be indicative of the people in the South. When I'm out with people and the server gives the table a single check, someone always ask if the table can have separate checks. Up north I find it is very rare that someone asks for separate checks -- almost everyone seems find calculating what they owe.

While I suppose that always having separate checks does make it a lot easier to calculate what you owe, especially when everyone at the table has ordered a lot, there's something anti-social about it. When you ask for the separate check, you're pretty much saying that you don't trust the people you're dining with to properly split the bill.

There have certainly been times where I knew someone calculated wrong and I had to over pay by a few dollars, but my philosophy is that it will all even out in the end. So maybe the folks up north are actually more friendly than people in the South?