The Nature of Existence: An Insane Prospect of Knowledge
I’ve been reading a book called Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments For God Just Don’t Add Up by John Allen Paulos. One particularly potent quote caught my attention, but not in the way you might expect: [W]hy did He create the particular natural laws that He did? If He did it arbitrarily for […]
Pentagon Shootings: A Quick Thought On “Crazy”
(If you don’t know what is going on, here’s the quick version: John Patrick Bedell showed up at the Pentagon with guns and opened fire on security at the security checkpoint prior to entry. Recent news indicates that he held particularly negative views of the U.S. government, to the point of questioning whether the Government […]
Anticipating Disaster: Our Obsession With Impending Doom
What draws us to the doom yet to arrive? CNN, pre-tsunami (in Hawaii), donates its screen time not to the already devastated areas of Chile (and elsewhere), but to the image of Hawaii’s beaches, from a distance, untouched, near-pristine. That’s the image that stays on the screen, the reporters anticipating–and building anticipation for us–the disaster […]
How (Really) Thinking About Star Wars Can Make You Feel Uncomfortable (i.e. Terrorists!)
How do you feel about terrorism? You don’t like it very much, do you? Most of us don’t, and for good reason. It’s bad, right? No matter what! Damn those evil terrorists! On the opposite end of things, there’s Star Wars. Most of us like that, right? Well, at least the originals. The prequels have […]
How to Fail At Podcasting: From a Listener’s Perspective
The great thing about podcasting is that just about anyone can do it. The bad thing about it is that a hell of a lot of people try it, but end up producing a product that is of low quality, even if top-quality equipment and top-notch audio editing skills are employed. Some of the below […]
Fascism (or How You Can Spot Fascist Thinking in Book Bannings)
You’d be hard-pressed to get me to argue my way out of this one; I’m using “fascism” to elicit an emotional response from you, my readers. A little pathos does us all a little good. But I have a reason. Throughout our short history (speaking of America) we have been remarkably vocal against any sort […]