Month: September 2005

I guess we need a happy after that

From The Panda’s Thumb The Intelligent Designer’s Prayer Our Intelligent Designer, Who art in the unspecified-good-place, Unknown be Thy name. Thy flagella spin, Thy mousetraps snap, On Earth, as it is in the Unspecified-good-place. Give us each day our unchecked apologetic. And forgive us our invidious comparisons, As we smite those iniquitous Darwinists With rhetoric. And lead us not into… Read more →

Oh good: depressing and cynical

So, I’m happy about old Tom, but let’s do a quick pass over some other news: * * * Colorado parents burn books – Wikinews Norwood, Colorado parents recently burned copies of Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima after having them pulled from the area high school’s curriculum. Millie Davis, of the National Council of Teachers of English, said “I’m flabbergasted… Read more →

Insert your own “bringing the Hammer down” joke

It is unreasonable how much of an optimistic lift this has given me: U.S. house majority leader DeLay indicted, steps down temporarily – Wikinews U.S House of Representatives majority leader Tom DeLay was indicted today by a Travis County Texas grand jury on conspiracy charges. DeLay announced that he will step down temporarily from his leadership position. … The Wikinews… Read more →

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

If you read the preceding post and thought I was being too worked up about a bunch of people being dumb, I refer you to the The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, specifically the Fourth law: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under… Read more →

As I suspected

Track 14 Yesterday’s Times brings an article describing of a new study looking at how the degree to which a society is religious affects the moral and ethical foundations of a society. The results are no surprise to me. The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing… Read more →

Even More On Evolution

The Reuters story on the PA (here it is at Yahoo) case contains these depressing facts. New evolution spat in U.S. schools goes to court At least 31 states are taking steps to teach alternatives to evolution. A CBS poll last November found 65 percent of Americans favor teaching creationism as well as evolution while 37 percent want creationism taught… Read more →

War is Bad, Peace is Good…

…and Harlan Ellison is, well, Harlan. Anyone who knows anything about science fiction knows about Harlan, up to and including the fact that he once kind of took out a hit on an editor of his (well, actually a comptroller) over cigarette ads (it’s a funny story when he tells it) Apparently the Penny Arcade guys, didn’t know about Harlan. Read more →

Expanding My Vocabulary

I love the idea of concepts that other languages posses words for, which my native language does not. The kinds of things you can express in a language tells you something about the way native speakers of that language see the world–this can reveal concepts to you that you previously literally could not think about (or at least not think… Read more →

Darwin has a posse

OK, I can’t believe I’m writing about this stuff again (put “evolution” in the search box and you’ll get lots of other posts with related rants), and we’re still in the 21st century. Why do so many people just want to throw their hands up and give up on trying to understand the world… ‘Intelligent design’ taken to court Eighty… Read more →

Bush appointed dictator

Okay, so maybe that’s a bit hyperbolic, he’s not quite Sulla yet (and I doubt he will be returning his powers to the more general government at the end of his term!), but apparently the courts have decided (again) that he has the power to abrogate the Constitution more or less at his whim, and hold American citizens without habeaus… Read more →

Margaritas ante porcos

I am happy to report I have just pre-ordered my copy of the Subterranean Press limited edition of Tim Powers‘ new book. (Not the lettered one–I’m a rabid Powers fanboy, but not to the tune of $600US. Maybe if they double my salary.) Ordering of the book by the general public (I am so a laminate, sweetie) will open soon,… Read more →

BOOM – Server Crash!

Well, my ISP had a server crash yesterday, which anyone trying to access the blog surely noticed. Part of the crash recovery involved restoring from their last backup, which was apparently long enough ago that all my September posts are lost. Fortunately, I have local copies of the postings in my RSS reader (yes, I subscribe to my own blog–for… Read more →

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
This work by Chris McLaren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.