Archive for April, 2005
Patriotic Atheists
It's amazing how easy it is for some people, let's say some political "leaders" — okay, let's make that presidents and their presidential fathers, simply to write off big chunks of their citizenry. This exchange is reported as taking place between G.H.W. Bush & Robert I. Sherman (a reporter for the American Atheist news journal) [...]
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A Star Explodes in Slow Motion
I've thoroughly enjoyed reading this book by Peter Atkins (reference below), and I found his slow-motion description of the process that leads to the creation of a supernova uncommonly gripping and dramatic, as well as enlightening. Stars bigger than about eight Suns have a violent future. The temperature in these giants can rise so much, [...]
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His Humpty-Dumptiness
Watch in amazement as top US military spokesmen try to maintain that we are most definitely winning the war in Iraq (and have been for some time — probably averaging in our military successes for several years before the invasion). Here is Donald Rumsfeld helping the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff maintain his [...]
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Microsoft's Tarnish
More about what one dispassionately hopes is a growing scandal for the Evil Giant (Microsoft): Microsoft Corp. is paying social conservative Ralph Reed $20,000 a month as a consultant, triggering complaints that the well-connected Republican with close ties to the White House and to evangelist Pat Robertson may have persuaded the company to oppose gay [...]
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Christian Soldier Sexuality
It's about Jesus. But the fact that so much of the language used to discuss Christ is homoerotic is no coincidence. The first miracle of Jesus to believers is that his appeal crossed so many boundaries of the ancient world. Rich and poor, Jew and gentile, men and women — every kind of person loved [...]
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Quantum Theory & GNP
I am reading Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science, by Peter Atkins. It's refreshing reading. Anyway, as I continue to fret about the current faith-based insurgency attacking science in America, I was struck by this comment of Mr. Atkins' about the effect of science on society: …No exception to the predictions of quantum [...]
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NPC ID "Debate"
Bob Park, a physicist who writes the brief "What's New" reports for the American Physical Society with a great deal of wit and withering obervation (archives here, subscribe here), apparently attended a recent press "event" at the National Press Club put on by the irrepressible [so-called] Design [so-called] Insitute: EVOLUTION: DISCOVERY INSTITUTE FINDS A SCIENTIST [...]
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Whose Pyramid?
For one thing — probably because I'm one of those radicals who tend to think that MicroSoft is the evil empire (recently confirmed) — I've always turned my nose up at anything quaintly called "My_____", since it always sounds to me like an unwarrented intrusion into already decaying standards of discourse by the evil empire's [...]
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Toxic Homo Fungus
The following tidbit, saved from an article I read some weeks ago, reinforces two well-known facts: 1) homosexuality is common in nature; 2) homosexuality can be toxic. The new spin on the old trick is that this time the guys (or gals) can have kids: Same-sex mating found in toxic fungus An infectious fungus has [...]
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Manifesting the Human Experience
Even as the heartland state [Kansas] was enshrining bigotry in its constitution [by passing an anti gay-marriage amendment], a bipartisan legislative majority in Connecticut this month approved same-sex civil unions — and, unlike the laws allowing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and civil unions in Vermont, this one was not in response to a court order. [...]
Share on FacebookMy Pointy Ears
I'm such a sucker these days for personal validation — I suspect it's a condition brought on by this over long period of being ungainfully unemployed. So, I could hardly resist the temptation to follow someone's pointer to the "How Logical Are You?" quiz. I took a few minutes and answered the 8 questions (which [...]
Share on FacebookNo One Expected the German Inquisition
I have no more reason to talk about the new pope really than I did to talk about the previous one (they can always make more, no matter what happens), despite the fact that Isaac was convinced that this particular Bavarian homophobe would never be elected. (Sound familiar to any other elections we've been through [...]
Share on FacebookPoseur Presidents & Prime Ministers
And, are there any Great Men in the world today? Where — this is a question I've been asked by several readers recently — are the Churchills, the Roosevelts, the Trumans, the Eisenhowers, the Titos, the Lloyd Georges, the Woodrow Wilsons, the de Gaulles and Clemenceaus? Our present band of poseur presidents and prime ministers [...]
Share on FacebookAntonin Scalia: Judicial Activist
Justice Scalia likes to boast that he follows his strict-constructionist philosophy wherever it leads, even if it leads to results he disagrees with. But it is uncanny how often it leads him just where he already wanted to go. In his view, the 14th Amendment prohibits Michigan from using affirmative action in college admissions, but [...]
Share on FacebookToo Rich for Democracy
In a letter to Joseph Milligan on April 6, 1816, Thomas Jefferson explicitly suggested that if individuals became so rich that their wealth could influence or challenge government, then their wealth should be decreased upon their death. He wrote, "If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective [...]
Share on FacebookDon't Ask!
This statement confuses me: At a crowded news conference, Mr. DeLay said he would not entertain questions about his political activities. ["DeLay Asks House Panel to Review Judges", by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, 14 April 2005.] Since Mr. DeLay is a politician, what else would he talk about? Share on Facebook
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What a Slime-Mold Beetle!
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are now species of slime-mold beetles U.S. President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may not all get a library, airport or highway named after them. But each has a slime-mold beetle named in his honor. Two former Cornell University entomologists who recently had the [...]
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Friendly Links / Dirty Pix
Arthur Silber, with personal finances on his mind, says (in "Dirty Pix Means Cable!") …Anyway, that’s my pitch about this for today. Hit the tipjar, send a check via snail mail (write me for my address if you like), send positive thoughts my way, whatever works for you. … And when I can get cable [...]
Share on FacebookWisdom of Old Jokes
Old jokes seem to embody enduring truths for me, and sometimes their punch lines become mental summaries for many of the categories (conceptual file folders) into which I slot this and that bit of ridiculous information. (I was just talking yesterday with someone about the gag that ended a McDonald's TV commercial once: "Feet! You [...]
Share on FacebookThe Crow's Ear
I am now certain that Avedon Carol (of The Sideshow) is a person after my own heart for pointing out this gem from The International Herald Tribune Just 15 hours after he died on Saturday night, the great pageantry around the death of a pope began Sunday morning, with a huge public Mass in St. [...]
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