Archive for the ‘All’ Category
Martin Gardner on Natural Selection
REM dreaming surely serves some useful function, otherwise why would evolution have invented it? –Martin Gardner, Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2000), p. 216. Like any good scientist, and uncomfortably like many bad pseudo-scientists, I have my own share of crackpot theories that I believe in. One of […]
Newspaper Spin
I subscribe to "Outlet Wire" a daily serving of gay-related newspaper headlines from stories found on the internet compiles by Outlet Radio. In a recent listing, we saw the following two headlines, side by side: "Gay Marriage Plays Quiet Role in Elections" [AP via ABCNews], and "Gay marriage dominates US elections" [Navhindtimes] Which is it […]
Republican Lemmings
In an e-mail to me, my father asked the rhetorical question: Why do so many of the middle income people, who are the largest segment of the U.S. population, think they are so well off under the Bushies? I think the short answer is: greed. I believe this is related to a phenomenon about which […]
Faux Facts
An editorial in The Charlotte [NC] Observer (Oct. 17, 2004), while detailing very good reasons why these former supporters [i.e., the newspaper] of Bush will support Kerry in this election, makes the following statement: The president's tax cuts, combined with increased federal spending, did help the economic recovery. Stop press! I know that newspapers like […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
Gay Rights, Civil Rights
Margaret Kimberley, in her Freedom Rider: Gay Rights, Civil Rights column from The Black Commentator (issue #110), talked about comparisons between discrimination faced by gay people and that faced by black people, and how "the black experience" as an image has been co-opted by opponents and proponents of gay equality, lately in the "debate" about […]
World Poll on US Election
This article in La Press [Montreal] reports on a survey done by 10 newspapers around the world (and from outside the US). In the startling pull-quote In a world overwhelmingly opposed to the re-election of President George W. Bush and to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the United States [i.e., Republicans in deep denial] can […]
Maryland Drivers and Turn Signals
My friend and colleague, James Howard, asks in his blog: why don't Maryland drivers use turn signals? (The poor boy is originally from Ohio but then, I'm originally from Kansas, so perhaps that has no bearing.) At any rate, I once formulated an hypothesis about Mayland drivers and the use of turn signals. In the […]
Beginning the Blog
I have finally succumbed to continual questions about why I don't blog by starting this blog. I'm not altogether convinced that I am spontaneous enough to make it worth saying anything in this fashion; on the other hand, I find more and more that each day brings additional disconnected and disjointed thoughts, and that I […]