the sources of nothing

1. This blog is a excellent source of nothing. Or at least has been for several weeks. My spare time has been close to zero.
2. Nothing is also produced by the vacant stares of the people at Jiffy Lube. I won’t go into detail here, but the workers decided to pretend I was invisible, which [...]

protecting marriage from people who want to get married

Our local newspaper (not dead yet, but shrinking) published an odd letter to the editor the other day. A woman wrote in to explain that same-sex civil unions are okay, but not marriage. Why? Her answer is “just because.”
There are a great many of us who desire to keep the definition of marriage as a [...]

let us count the ways

Will the U.S. slide into oblivion because so many politicians don’t know what science is? Let’s count off a few of them:

Senator Tom Harkin helped establish the National Center on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) some years ago. Now he’s complaining because the NCCAM is spending too much time “disproving things” instead of “approving things.” [...]

another silly ploy

Speaking of the intelligent design creationism folks, they are trying another strategy to insert mythology into science education. Now they’re claiming that consciousness cannot be fully explained by the physical brain, therefore there is something mystical-spiritual going on. It’s the same old dumb reasoning from these people: whatever we don’t completely understand equals god. That’s [...]

am I the lowest form of life on the planet?

It’s a rhetorical question! Don’t be so quick to say, “Yes, of course!” (or “No, no!”). You may remember one of the most revolting moments of the recent political campaign. That was when Elizabeth Dole, U.S. Senator from North Carolina, tried to slime her opponent, Kay Hagan, by saying that Hagan had attended an event [...]

pulverize the planetaria pillagers

I let all kinds of ugly election-year stuff go by without comment, but I’m a science geek (of the non-scientist variety), so when McCain goes after something dear to my heart like a planetarium, I get feisty. I know this has been around the blogosophere a hundred times, but it bears repeating.
In the recent presidential [...]

a short, distasteful post

I’m sorry to dip into politics for a moment, but here are some unpleasant facts. Senator John McCain:
Promised to appoint Supreme Court Justices similar to Alito and Roberts if he is elected. In which case we would look forward to a future of unequal access to justice, erosion of civil liberties, and fewer limits on [...]

ode to unintelligent optimists

This is another curmudgeonly, crotchety, crabby, complaint post. In my postal mail I received a promo for a magazine called Ode. It’s “the magazine for intelligent optimists.”  As I read the multi-page ad, at first it sounded reasonably good. “While other magazines tell you what went wrong last month, Ode [features] smart reports on what [...]