Daily Fragments: Excellence, Slavery, UFO’s, Super-Spies and Pothead Pets

Daily Fragments for 10/09/2012:

Quotations

Excellence Has Become a Dirty Word!: “I’ve said it for years: With socialism, excellence is always set aside for shared mediocrity. The idea appears to be that since it’s hard to achieve excellence for everyone, it simply should not be attempted; everyone should be satisfied with something lesser.”

The Destruction of Slavery: “The destruction of slavery begins in the soul, with the resolute refusal to be a slave to anyone or anything but the God who makes you free. Christian: do not be a slave. It was for freedom that Christ has made us free.”

The Power of Labeling: “Teen pregnancy may be a social problem. Poverty is. Increasing inequality is. But unplanned pregnancy is not a social problem per se. At least not until it has become so in the mind of a critical mass.”

The Vanishing Act of Religious Freedom in America: “…many Americans are confused and think that there is no religious-freedom problem anymore, that the Obama administration fixed its attack on a longstanding bipartisan consensus protecting conscience rights. That’s not the case.”

America’s Moral Obligation: “I believe that if America does not lead, others will—others who do not share our interests and our values—and the world will grow darker, for our friends and for us.”

Interesting Stuff

The Dish on America’s Plan to Build UFO’s: “Recently declassified documents from the U.S. Air Force reveal a Cold War-era plan to build a round, vertical take-off and landing aircraft that can only be described as a flying saucer.”

Bond, James Bond: “But even when I got the chance to travel the world first class and stay at luxurious five star hotels, there were many things that Bond had that I didn’t.  Here’s 007 of them…”

“Stay Down, Rover!” Takes On a New Meaning: “As states throughout the U.S. have slowly moved toward relaxing their marijuana laws, there has been a disturbing surge in the number of incidents involving pets ingesting marijuana, either accidentally or after it’s fed to them by their owners.”

One Giant Step: (a follow-up to a post last week – this even was originally scheduled for 10/08, but had to be delayed due to poor weather)  “If all goes as planned, he will do a series of barrel rolls in the near-vacuum of the stratosphere and then plunge headfirst at more than 700 miles per hour, becoming the first sky diver to break the sound barrier.”