Archive for the ‘Common-Place Book’ Category
Behold Capybara: Fish!
Most rodents are mouse-sized, but they range up through marmots, beavers, agoutis and maras to the sheep-sized capybaras of the South American waterways. Capybaras are prized for meat, not just because of their large size but because, bizarrely, the Roman Catholic Church traditionally deemed them honorary fish for Fridays, presumably because they live in water.* […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Food Stuff, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Anti-Rational Politics
Politics in America will get more and more pathetic unless and until rationality and the natural world, as it is understood by science, get some respect. The anti-intellectual tradition in America is part of the cultural bedrock supporting right wing power, but the Left also has a version of it. The corresponding phenomenon on the […]
Radical Christian Cleric Faces Consequences?
CARACAS, VENEZUELA – Venezuela's government has temporarily suspended permits for foreign missionaries after a U.S. televangelist [extremist radical cleric Pat Robertson] said Washington should assassinate President Hugo Chavez. [Patrick Markey, "Venezuela halts missionary permits: Action taken after comments by Pat Robertson regarding Chavez", Reuters via Houston Chronicle, 26 August 2005.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Splenetics
Clam Names
Because sometimes just knowing the names (finally!) is useful, if not necessary: All hard-shell clams on the East Coast are the same species, Mercenaria mercenaria, and their common names connote their sizes. The quahog (pronounced CO-hog) or chowder clam is the largest, followed in descending order by the cherrystone, top-neck and little-neck. [Erica Marcus, "Hail […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Food Stuff
W and Nixon
Richard Nixon must have spent much of his life after the presidency wondering what went wrong — why such an insignificant matter in the grand scheme of things ended his career. I suspect he never fully appreciated how the cultivation of an environment in which the ends justifies the means infected those associated with his […]
In: All, Common-Place Book
Rangel on Fundamentalist Terrorism
"I don't even know who that person [Robertson] is," said Chavez, standing next to Cuban leader Fidel Castro at Havana's airport. In Venezuela, however, Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said the U.S. response to [Pat] Robertson [who called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez this past Monday] would be a test of its […]
In: All, Common-Place Book
Who Supports Whom?
It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect's mom greeted him wearing an American flag T-shirt. "I want you to know we support you," she gushed. Rivera soon reached the limits of her support. "Military service isn't for our son. It isn't […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Real Reality
Senators George Allen and Trent Lott both continue to insist we’re winning in Iraq. Don’t bet on it, bubs. “Winning” isn’t a subjective term like it is here in the United States. Hijacked voting machines won’t do anything against an insurgency, I’m afraid. [Shakespeare's Sister, "Gee, Ya Think?", 22 August 2005.]
In: All, Common-Place Book
Haldane on Creationism
The plants generally compete by pushing, rather than biting. […] If the world of Nature is God's plan, then attempts to banish pain are contrary to this plan. So are attempts to perfect human society by eliminating the various evils which men inflict on one another. […] Darwin made it reasonable to reject the argument […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Eureka!
Steal This Vote
I'm blogging this bit from Krugman's piece mostly because I want to make a note to read the book sometime. As Krugman hints elsewhere in the piece, simmering election scandals is merely one pot of many that's going to boil over once we see regime change in the US. In his recent book "Steal This […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Splenetics
The Evolutionary Epic
The biologist E. O. Wilson wrote (in On Human Nature): "The core of scientific materialism is the evolutionary epic. Let me repeat its minimum claims: that the laws of the physical sciences are consistent with those of the biological and social sciences and can be linked in chains of causal explanation; that life and mind […]
In: All, Common-Place Book
Not For Our Kind of People
Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, 26, a Marine recruiter in Pittsburgh, went to the home of a high school student who had expressed interest in joining the Marine Reserve to talk to his parents. It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect's mom […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
A Better Answer
To be sure, there are plenty of scientists who believe in God, and even Darwinists who call themselves Christians. But the acceptance of evolution diminishes religious belief in aggregate for a simple reason: It provides a better answer to the question of how we got here than religion does. Not a different answer, a better […]
In: All, Common-Place Book
Mystery and Creationism
Someone pointed out this fascinating article in the DC Examiner, in which Robert Vanasse discusses the current ruckus between fundamentalism and (rational) science and points out that it hasn't always been that way ("old time religion" is not so "old time" as fundamentalists would like to imagine), but is instead a rather recent development. Read […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Eureka!
The Coming Convergence
Isaac is reading a biography of Isaac Newton (while I sit at the computer) and, incredibly, laughing aloud while doing so. Here is one of the moments that inspired the guffaws, indicating that wacky fundamentalist types are not only a present-day scourge: As it evolved into a new orthodoxy, Newtonianism became a target. … It […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Plus Ca Change...
Notes from Waxman's Office
With some regularity I get these interesting little statements from U.S. Representative Henry Waxman's Government Reform Minority Office. Here are the two most recent ones. Permanent Estate Tax Repeal Would Save President, Cabinet Millions of Dollars Monday, July 25, 2005 — Rep. Waxman has released a new fact sheet showing that a permanent estate tax […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Pink Lemons
The inimitable snopes.com, on their "Unanswerables" page, lists these two items one after the other: I just read a blurb that pre-packaged foods can cause people to turn gay because of too much estrogen. If I was only allowed one question for snopes, I would ask if this is true. Is it? Does the color […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
"Struggle" vs. "War"
WASHINGTON, July 25 – The Bush administration is retooling its slogan for the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, pushing the idea that the long-term struggle is as much an ideological battle as a military mission, senior administration and military officials said Monday. In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald H. […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
An "Uncle Bruce"
Meanwhile, Rick Santorum, perhaps the most intolerant member of the Senate, turns out to have a gay chief of staff/communications director. When asked how a gay man could speak for someone with Santorum's record of homophobia, Robert Traynham said "Senator Santorum is a man of principle, he is a man who sticks up for what […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
No Telling How Much
It used to be that the federal government prohibited brewers from listing the percentage of alcohol on the labels of beers to discourage people from choosing their beverages based on alcohol content. But that's not true anymore. In 1935, two years after the repeal of Prohibition, the Federal Alcohol Administration (FAA) Act prohibited the labeling […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Plus Ca Change...