More Random Stuff

I realized a couple of new things yesterday about where we live.

1. Independence day is much more celebrated as a community here compared to Orlando. It's really neat to see so many people out and celebrating the holiday together as a neighborhood.
   
2. A large percentage of the population here are from one of the larger neighboring cities (San Jose, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe) and/or they visit them regularly. So when one of those cities, or their resident(s) are in the news for some reason, there seems to be an unusually large emotional attachment to it by association. For example, the recent fires in Lake Tahoe, accomplishments of nearby sports teams (Sharks, 49ers, Raiders) and even the victory of Joey Chestnut (from San Jose) as the new hot dog eating champion.
   

These are yet another couple of reasons why this big town, and the other nearby bigger towns, still somehow have a smaller town feel to it.
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FARK, one of my favorite web sites, actually linked to this story on the 700 club, about a man who first embraced Satanism, then ended up becoming a Christian. I thought it was pretty interesting, but FARK labeled it with a "Stupid" tag. So do they think the guy was stupid for heading down such a dark path, starting with using a Ouija board? Or are they saying that the article is stupid, perhaps because they think it's too unbelievable and just a bunch of B.S.? What do you readers think about the article and/or why FARK chose to label it as stupid?
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I read a great quote from Thomas Jefferson today: "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." How very true that is. The statement would have been really interesting if Jefferson would have accompanied it with some predicted numbers for the increase of government's size, like Gordon Moore (Moore's Law) did for transistors.
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A recent study discovered that contrary to the popular notion of women talking significantly more than men, the two genders are actually equally talkative. This really doesn't surprise me though, since in almost all of my dating relationships before Amanda, I was usually the more talkative one. So my life experiences had already taught me the article's revelation that "Some men are more talkative than others, and some women are more talkative than others."