May 2011
“I have religious friends, and they’re like, ‘Well if you look, it’s proven.’ And you’re like, ‘No, it’s not proven.’ Don’t try to tell me that you can prove this stuff. Just say ‘I believe it,’ and I’m down with you. Don’t mix the two together. Because you can’t logically say, ‘We know that Jews came from Jerusalem and settled in America and turned into Native Americans.’ That just doesn’t make any sense. But at the same time, if you say ‘I believe this,’ I say ‘Okay. Cool man.’ Because at the end of the day, we all have certain beliefs and deeply held things that probably don’t make a lot of sense to anybody else.”
—Trey Parker, on religion. [full interview here]
“
Some people when they look for a job in journalism ask themselves, What do I like to do and Who can take me there? Who can get me to a war zone? To a ballpark? To Wall Street? To politicians, to movie stars? Who’s got the vehicle? And you send them your resume and you say, “I want a seat in your car.” … And you wait.
But there are some people, who don’t wait.
I don’t know exactly what going on inside them; but they have this… hunger. It’s almost like an ache.
Something inside you says I can’t wait to be asked I just have to jump in and do it.
” —Robert Krulwich’s commencement speech at Berkeley’s School of Journalism.
“
“The official Church response was something along the lines of ‘The Book of Mormon the musical might entertain you for a night but The Book of Mormon,’ — the book as scripture — ‘will change your life through Jesus. Which we actually completely agree with. The Mormon Church’s response to this musical is almost like our q.e.d. at the end of it. That’s a cool, American response to a ribbing — a big musical that’s done in their name.”
“Before the Church responded, a lot of people would ask us, ‘Are you afraid of what the Church would say? And Trey and I were like, ‘They’re going to be cool.’ And they were like, ‘No they’re not. There are going to be protests.’ And we were like, ‘Nope, they’re going to be cool.’ We weren’t that surprised by the Church’s response. We had faith in them.”
” —Matt Stone talks about the feedback his musical The Book of Mormon has gotten from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
“What we’re probably looking at down the road is a situation where there will be extreme hunger in some of these countries where the investments are being made and people will simply resist — and try to block — the trucks that are hauling the grain from the fields to the ports. … It’s a new situation and quite unlike any that we’ve faced before.”
—Countries like Saudi Arabia, China and South Korea have all leased land in Africa, where the governments lease irrigable land for as little as $1 an acre. On today’s Fresh Air, environmentalist Lester Brown explains how the land leases are creating huge conflicts between local populations and investors.
“I talked to one scientist and I mentioned this as synthetic meat and she got annoyed. She said, ‘This isn’t synthetic. It’s organic. It’s meat. It’s two meat cells growing to become more meat cells.’ And depending on what your definition of any sort of life is, this is as fundamental as any animal is.”
—New Yorker science writer Michael Specter, on test-tube meat, on today’s Fresh Air.
Listen
The audio for Terry’s interview with Annie Jacobsen about Area 51 is now up. Enjoy!
I just got my free buttons from NPR! I requested them forever ago, so long ago in fact I requested more yesterday! Now, I don't want NPR to think badly of me, so how do I tell NPR that "hey guys, it's all cool, I got my buttons, disregard that last email?"
I believe they may have run out of buttons, based on a comment on yesterday’s post. So I think you’re good, button-wise.
