Can I “Borrow” This?

At the beginning of the school year, I asked my biology teacher if I could borrow his Planet Earth DVDs. He went ahead and let me take it home for the weekend and I never brought it back (actually I returned it to him today). This is because I have a huge crush on Sir David Attenborough (the real reason is that I just had no time to finish watching it and I didn’t want to give it back without seeing all of it).

Anyway, I remembered to give it back to him when I stumbled upon and old chat log from September which ended when I told my friend that I had to finish watching Planet Earth so I could give it back to my biology teacher. A quick glance at my Planet Earth calendar hanging on the wall told me that it was now May so I went ahead and posted that on Twitter like so:

Found a message dated 9/13/2008 that I sent to a friend saying that I need to return Planet Earth to my biology teacher soon. I never did.

Shortly after posting this I got several messages from three other Facebook friends telling their stories of how they “borrowed” something and never gave it back. Finding them too amusing to restrict to the confines of comments in my Facebook status message I decided to post them here for your enjoyment.

I have a stapler from the eighth grade.

On my last day at the middle school, one of the people in the office lent it to a group of us to make paper chains to decorate the cafeteria. Somehow, I got stuck with it at the end of the day, but the office was closed for the summer by the time that I got to it.

It’s sitting on my desk. I plan to keep it in my classroom whenever I start teaching.

Katherine

My teacher once let me borrow a book about “divine suffering” or some such Catholic thing, along with some pamphlets about bread and wine turning into actual flesh and blood. She really needed them back eventually b/c they were precious to her, and irreplaceable.

Then Hurricane Katrina happened.

Jason

I stole a tenor recorder and a whole lot of library books when my primary school closed down. It wasn’t like they were going to be using them…

Wazza

Interesting stuff happens on Twitter sometimes.

Logic

It all started with ghosts.

Actually it started with 9/11 conspiracy theorists, but then it moved on to ghosts. A friend of mine from Atheist Nexus, Edwin, said that he believe in ghosts. When asked why he basically cited anecdotal evidence. When it was explained to him why it was not the case that anecdotal evidence is good evidence he simply said “I’m just not as nihilistic as you guys”.

My friend Chris continued the conversation with him…

Edwin (Lahash) says:
you don’t know my logic
Nerdfighters [rawr] says:
that doesn’t mean anything, you’re just firing back comebacks so you won’t have to deal with me telling you the truth
Edwin (Lahash) says:
what truth?
Nerdfighters [rawr] says:
that your critical thinking skills are astronomically nonexistant and your logic is honestly severely flawed
and that sometimes, like now, you’re a moron
Edwin (Lahash) says:
no, they’re there
if you haven’t realized by now, I’m highly misanthropic
I try not to be though
but it usually doesn’t work
Nerdfighters [rawr] says:
what does hating the human race have to do with logic
what the fuck

I took over from there.

[23:10] Elles: K. Well if the Bible’s the word of God it’s true, and the Bible says that it’s the word of God so we know that it’s true.
[23:10] Edwin (Lahash): no its not
[23:10] Elles: Why not?
[23:11] Edwin (Lahash): something cannot prove its credibility by referencing itslf
[23:11] Elles: In my logic it can.
[23:11] Edwin (Lahash): well you’re logic is flawed then
[23:12] Elles: How do you know? It’s logical to me. What’s logical to me may not be logical to you but it’s logical to me.
[23:12] Edwin (Lahash): but it’s illogical in general
[23:13] Elles: What do you mean, “in general”? Do you mean to suggest that the same rules of logic applies to all people in all places?
[23:13] Edwin (Lahash): I don’t know
[23:13] Edwin (Lahash): well, I do, I just don’t know how to explain it
[23:13] Elles: Now you know how Chris and I feel.

So ends lesson one in critical thinking.