The greatest threat to Islam is…

…Islamists.

Islamists have probably killed, maimed, kidnapped, or threatened more Muslims than any other group in the world, be it Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or secular.

Islamists are among a long line of the supposedly devout that think they know better than anybody else what God/Allah wants.

Islamists have strengthened the hand of militant “Christians” who want to constrain all Muslims, regardless of how well they fit in or stand apart from the society they are in.  Anti-Muslim parties are springing up in many countries, including Sweden and France.

The number of Muslims who actively oppose Islamists far exceeds those who support Islamists.  The problem is that most anti-Islamist Muslims do not have AK-47s and do not blow themselves up; they only have their cell phones.

If you have a twitter account, see #notinmyname.  If not, see https://twitter.com/hashtag/notinmyname.  As could be predicted, a wide range of views are expressed, from Muslims who just want to go about their lives in a secular society to those who want to tar all Muslims with the actions of a few.

My followers increase by 25%!

I had a major increase in the followers of this blog this weekend.  My followers went from four to five!  Thank you to the newcomer and the other four.  I hope you find something interesting here often.

Hey, Roger!  Are you still a follower or was that a one-time thing as you showed off your iPhone?

This "dramatic" increase of followers reminds me of a mathematical joke another friend told.  A car dealership says its sales increased 50% from the previous month.  My friend then asked if that was from two cars last month to three cars this month.

Leon, do you remember telling this joke over forty years ago?  If so, drop me a line.

Unlimited with restrictions: corporate doublespeak

Ad on Facebook:

Want to be Unlimited
sprint.com
Switch to Sprint for unlimited data, text and more.  Restrictions apply.

Duh!  If there are restrictions then the service cannot be unlimited!

I have Virgin Mobile on my iPhone, which uses Sprint towers.  True, I don't worry about how many phone calls I make, how many people send me unsolicited texts, and how often I am online.  In fact, accessing the web with the iPhone through a tower beats using sporadic wi-fi hotspots.

On the other hand, Sprint has dead spots where one wouldn't expect them, like on I-35 at mile 175 between Duluth and the Twin Cities.  That is a restriction and a limitation.

Thought for the day: hyperbole

When you engage in hyperbole will you dig yourself a hyper hole?

Or if you want a rhyme, sort of:

When you engage in hyperbole, are you being hyper holy?

Official announcement of Human 2.0

God is pleased to announce the release of Human 2.0, code named Eve. Eve has over 250 new and exciting features that should make life easier for all. The only known problem is that Human 1.0, code named Adam, has a hard time understanding Eve and why she keeps pointing out his shortcomings.

Why this blog has no comments

I just had my decision to not allow comments reinforced.

Yahoo Finance had an item: Is President Obama anti-business?  Or are the CEOs just looking for a scapegoat?  Click here to join the discussion on Facebook and then scroll down to the discussion.

I didn't see any entry that discussed the issue based on facts, either way.  The entries were sweeping generalizations, innuendo, name calling, and other personal attacks.

Comments might make my blog more popular, but I don't want to spend my time wading through comments, deleting the worst, and responding to others.

Some people get hyperbolic about hyperbolic humor

My wife was on the phone with our daughter and mentioned her wisdom teeth surgery tomorrow. I blurted out, "She's going to lose what little brains she has."

My wife laughed and repeated it. She knew I didn't mean it because she knows I know it's not true. In fact, in some ways she's "smarter" than I am, and in other ways I'm "smarter" than she is. Vive la difference!

Unfortunately, there are people who take way too much way too seriously. I remember in graduate school when three of us who worked in the computer lab were discussing something or other with the assistant director about access to each other's desk. I remarked that one fellow kept his desk locked. I blurted out as a joke, "I don't know why he locks his desk, none of his programs work."

Later on, he berated me about insulting him in front of our boss. He just couldn't see that it was hyperbole about his locking his desk. It took me decades later to realize that I should have asked him, "You mean your programs really don't work?"

Was my April Fool's joke too believable?

If you do a search for "Duluth" and "Billionaire", you will get in the top ten:

Billionaire Duluth Native Buys Northland Reader
Silicon Valley billionaire and Duluth native Nessuno Jarnowski Ingenvik announced today that he is buying the Northland Reader for an undisclosed price. ...
cpinternet.com/~mdmagree/april_fool_2000-04-01.htm - Cached - Similar

This particular web page gets at least one hit every day. I don't know what is so interesting about this page over some of my more profound Reader Weekly articles. Are people looking for get-rich-quick schemes? Are they looking for successful Duluthians? I don't know.

I do know that twice I got a call from somebody who wanted to reach Bob Boone, the publisher of the Reader Weekly. I could only refer him to the phone number listed on the mast head. The second time he asked me about Ingenvik, as if he really existed. Didn't he see the April Fool in the URL for the web page? Didn't he catch that three different people had different memories of him under different names?

I tried to come up with "nobody" in three different languages, but only could do so in Italian. My article has a footnote about my difficulties doing so in Polish. "Ingen" is "nobody" in Swedish, but that doesn't have the right ring for a surname. I tacked on "vik" meaning "bay, inlet, or cove", but now, nine years later, I realized I could have used "Ingensson", "nobody's son".

Oh well, as my first April Fool article for the Reader Weekly, it is doing better than all the others. See the sidebar of the billionaire article for other humor articles I wrote for the Reader Weekly.