Doug Bolden's Rules of Life

Always stop to pick up pieces of paper you see on the sidewalk or laying in the grass. Sure, it is trash, 9 times out of 10, but it can still be neat to see that someone spent a $1.50 on novelty wax lips.

Never trust authority more than its due. I don't care who that professor is, they still are human. Most of authority is a combination of having more time to learn a field, having more practice in a field, and being able to act like an authority. With that being said, they probably are better than you at all three things, so trust them a little.

The more America gets these "easy diets", the fatter we become. This is not a coincidence. Nor, I expect, does this occur in the order that would seem appropriate.

It WILL hurt. It MIGHT seem worth it.

Never turn cash into lost and found. Never turn in jewelry. Leave a note to contact you if someone comes asking for it. Do not even show it to the person behind the counter. They will steal it.

Never make fun of someone for their beliefs, unless they are really funny.

Sex really should be taken down a notch. It will neither send you to Hell nor make you a man.

When you are a child, everything is amazing. You also don't know a hell of a lot. Consider it a trade off.

If you ever tell a scientist that he or she needs faith as much as any Christian to believe that the laws of physics will hold up and have validity, then you have more or less lost the argument. While it is true in some ways, it is not true in the exact same way. For instance, you can make honest predictions with science that will probably not involve invoking God's "ineffableness". Also, science does not have a history of burning you alive at the stake because you wonder if the Universal Law of Gravitation is valid or not.

On the flip side, if you think you are being clever for chastising a Christian for not being "loving" or "forgiving" enough, then you have probably lost the argument. Not that the argument isn't valid, it just seems that they don't care.

Growing up in the South, I have learned one important lesson: people are racist and homophobic everywhere. Somehow they point fingers at the South and feel better about themselves. C'est la vie.

Just because someone has done some total crap-things in their life, does not mean they are wrong for saying that the president is doing a bad job. This is called ad hominem when we judge people's characters over their action. At the same time, if my alcoholic and occasionally abusive uncle was to give me political advice, I am sure that I would pick the opposite.

I think a huge amount of problems would be solved if people could just admit that they don't remember things as well as they think they did.

Marijuana, Peyote and Ecstacy can have some bad side-effects. However, who are we kidding? Crack, Heroin and Crystal Meth almost guarantee the end of the user's life in a few years. We should never these two lists in the same light, ever. Sellers of the latter three might honestly deserve to get the death penalty if we keep such a thing around.

Speaking of the death penalty...at least six thousand years of use and it apparently hasn't deterred anything. So stop using that argument. Just admit that its revenge and a bit of bloodlust. The truth will set you free.

If someone really likes a movie that you hate, it probably isn't because they are a retard. It might have something to do with different tastes. Ditto for books, music and haircuts. If they really like a perfume or cologne that you dislike, well, feel free to tell them to tone it down a notch.

There are no miracle cures. There are no get rich quick schemes. There are no shortcuts. There is simply that same ole slow processes as always. Its like they say, if the shortcuts were easy, they would simply be the way.

If your definition of "trying to see where God thinks I belong" is "which of the five Southern Baptist churches in this community should I be a tithing member of", well, I have one suggestion of where you can go.

If the government makes the statement that fast food resturaunts need to decrease serving sizes and the fast food resturaunts do decrease serving sizes but keep prices the same, it probably wasn't your interests that the government cared about.

Saying that we can't accept a god-theory to explain the universe because we would then have to explain god is a bad argument. Saying that if we are going to put a god as a first cause, we might as well put the universe as a first cause and be just as likely, is a good argument. We science minded people are pretty mum about pre-Big Bang physics, I am not going to stand around and let us try to sound clever when it comes to other things.

The next person who says "but evolution is just a THEORY" may honestly get slapped by me.

Stop misusing the word irony while you are at it.

The government tends not to back up any claim about an herbal supplement. While it is true that this is partially due to the amount of money that pharm comanpanies pay them, it is also due to the fact that a good number of "old country cures" don't work.

It is a failing of humanity to think that everything happens for a purpose. Some things just really suck. I am sorry.

Anyone who thinks that the Geneva Conventions really make war and its accruements more humane is probably, deep down inside, really hoping for a Santa Claus.

At the same time, it is a start and they are there for a good reason.