Monthly Archives: June 2011

The Problem of Pure Consciousness

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              . Sunlight rivers through the shimmering  Sycamore tree, pools on the ground, Makes of shadow a living shoreline.  I vibrate there. The juggler’s balls are Frightfully high in the rarified air. Eight Sheriff’s deputies in four cars came, but They did … Continue reading

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At Last, an Honest Budget: Why I’m Glad Jerry Brown is Governor of California

When Jerry Brown ran for governor last year, I voted for him. One reason I did so was because I believed that he would be likely to keep everything above-board, budget-wise. He has delivered in spades. After recently vetoing a budget … Continue reading

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In a Michelle Bachmann Administration, Would She Entertain the Idea of Making Glenn Beck Her Press Secretary?

Knowing that, at the end of this week, Glenn Beck will no longer be with Fox News, I watched the full hour of one of his parting shows. I wanted to see what impression he might leave me with—something to recall about him—and what struck me was his … Continue reading

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Advice for Dying Fathers (Contra Dylan Thomas)

_____ Leaves cling, do not go gently, but go just The same. The signal is yellow; the alive Are always downcast before being cast down. Look! The green team winning all summer Is starting to lose badly, going bald in The stunning … Continue reading

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Are Science and Poetry Compatable? Do We Want Them To Be?

It’s sometimes suggested that science and poetry are two ways of looking at the world that really don’t have many points of contact. But, curiously, below is one of the world’s greatest living literary critics, Helen Vendler of Harvard, explaining how her early training … Continue reading

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Which Germany would you like to live in? Luther’s, Hitler’s, or Habermas’s?

In thinking about what worldviews are broadly contending for the human future, it occurs to me that Germany, over the past 500 years, has basically passed through the three key ones: The religious civilizational vision. This is embodied today by contemporary fundamentalists … Continue reading

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Catnip for Poetry Readers: T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” Gets an iPad App That Breaks New Ground

The iPad app for T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” is $13.95, which is a bit pricey as apps go, but what a bargain for poetry lovers! I downloaded it yesterday and started to play with it. The app really represents the … Continue reading

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Keith Olbermann is Back! Al Gore Attracts Keith Olbermann to A Current TV Nightly Gig

And the new show starts tonight. Dude, where’s my pony?

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Dear Photograph: A Fascinating New Website

Contributers to the new site called “Dear Photograph” align old photographs with their points of origin, then retake the images. The achieved result is the display of people ghost-haunting, as it were, places in which they are no longer present (either because they have … Continue reading

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Not a Flash Mob, but a Flash Rob

Demonstrating the double-edged sword that technology so frequently represents, and the human propensity to make use of it for both good and evil, this new form of theft—shown in the below video—is, apparently, coordinated using cell phones.

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Right Ring: Perry-Bachmann 2012?

The Herderian religious conservative governor of Texas, Rick Perry, at the recent Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, appears to have wowed the Christian fundamentalist dominated crowd. This is from NBC News: Of all the speakers of the three-day confab, Perry was … Continue reading

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Stuxnet Explained

Stuxnet is more than a computer virus, it’s a code weapon. It was deployed last year, probably by the Israelis, against Iran’s nuclear centrifuge program. The below must-see YouTube, made for Australian public television, succinctly and intelligently explains what Stuxnet is and the code … Continue reading

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Finger Tutting: From Dorm Room Horsing Around to the Corporate Big Time

In Western culture, Egypt seems to be the best place to trace lithe, high glamour, iconic posing, and so it seems fitting that a certain style of freeze frame dancing would be dubbed as “tutting” (as in “King Tut” or … Continue reading

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Critical Thinking Watch: A Lot of Conservatives Still Doubt Barack Obama was Born in Honolulu, but Few Doubt Jesus was Born in Bethlehem. How Come?

Barack Obama has released his long form birth certificate showing that he was born in Honolulu, and yet many Republicans still don’t believe that President Obama was born there. Curiously, those very same Republicans, in the absence of any good … Continue reading

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Ask the Whale Question of the Republican Presidential Field!

For the 2012 primaries, I’d like to see the following question asked of the Republican presidential candidate field (during a debate): Do you believe that, five days after the universe began, there were whales in it? Genesis 1 says that there … Continue reading

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The Evolutionary Universe 1, Genesis Literalism 0

Question: Five days after the creation of the universe, were there whales? Answer: Obviously not. Why? Because the earth was not here five days after the universe began. And, for that matter, it was not here a billion years after the universe began. The earth … Continue reading

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Eugenics Revival Watch: What’s Richard Dawkins’s Position on Eugenics?

He wants an open discussion concerning the subject. Below is the full text of what he wrote as a contribution to the book, What is Your Dangerous Idea? (Simon & Schuster 2006). Richard Dawkins’s statement also appeared in the The Herald of Scotland in November … Continue reading

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The Evangelical (and Republican) Cult Explosion

Karl Giberson is an evangelical, a biologist, and an intellectual. And he’s fighting the “good fight” against that (larger) cultic part of evangelical subculture that is epistemically closed to secular scholarship. By calling the mass of evangelicalism cultic, I mean that it has created … Continue reading

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Toy Helicopter with Camara Buzzes Venice

The beach. The one in California.

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The United States vs. China: Who Will Win the 21st Century’s Outer and Inner Space Races?

The writing is on the wall, Nebuchadnezzar. This little tidbit was in the Washington Times late last year: The median age of NASA’s manned space engineers is now over 55. Over a quarter are past retirement age. Meanwhile, China’s average … Continue reading

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