Year: 2006
Who Owns Your Facts?
Posted on September 21, 2006 in Internet Privacy Social Media
How much freedom we have lost due to the Net!
Chemical Reaction
Posted on September 20, 2006 in Reflections
We are chemical reactions spewing across the face of the earth, destined to end abruptly, our energy lost to the chaotic cosmos. The maddening part is that we have minds which can create the notion of a certain immortality. How cruel the indifferent Universe can be.
A year ago, I would have said the same thing in slightly different words and felt released.
I don’t want to die.
The Way Home
Posted on September 19, 2006 in Driving
The road smelled of dirt near the lake and methane by the stables. I loved it.
America’s Sane Are Violent
Posted on September 19, 2006 in Violence
An analysis published last month in The American Journal of Psychiatry found that people with severe mental illness committed about 5 percent of the violent crimes in Sweden, though they made up a small fraction of the population. The United States, which has higher crime rates, has a much smaller proportion of crime attributable to the mentally ill than Sweden, experts said.
This doesn’t say a lot for the sane in these United States.
Introducing the Denialist
Posted on September 19, 2006 in Paranoids
I’m spending much of the day reading science blogs.
A denialist might be described as a person so overwhelmed with the facts that s/he must invent counter-truths to feel balanced:
Topics of denial include the holocaust, HIV causing AIDS, global warming/climate change, evolution, the necessity of animals in research, cigarettes causing cancer, embryonic stem cells aren’t as good as adult stem cells, the government blew up the WTC on 9/11 not terrorists etc. Despite the incredible disparity between these areas of resolute denial and the motives behind them, the tactics used by denialists are remarkably similar. In today’s Guardian, for instance, George Monbiot has an excellent description of the methods used by high-priced denialists bought and paid for by Exxon Mobile to prevent climate science from being believed.
More at Give Up Blog.
Choice
Posted on September 19, 2006 in Journalists & Pundits Pointers
From Scientific American:
Another summer of record-breaking temperatures brought power failures, heat waves, droughts and tropical storms throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Only one place seemed to remain cool: the air-conditioned offices of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. As New York City wilted beneath them, they sat insouciant and comfortable, hurling editorials of stunning misdirection at their readers, continuing their irresponsible drumbeat that global warming is junk science.
Just wait until Schistomiasis shows up in Connecticut ponds….
Zero
Posted on September 19, 2006 in Folly Watch
From Scientific American:
Ask the Experts: What are the odds of a dead dinosaur becoming fossilized?
They’re extinct. So what do you think?
The Dope on the Pope
Posted on September 18, 2006 in Pontiff Watch
Pope Rat took an extraordinary — or what one scholar called an “abnormal” — step by apologizing for comments which characterized Islam as a religion of hatred and violence. (I know I am feeling better because I have been following and actually thinking about the implications of this controversy.) I have a few thoughts:
First, I knew it put him in a tough place. Popes are supposed to be infallible, right? So if the pope goofs, what is he to do? An apology is tantamount to saying that he is not infallible, even though the doctrine applies to statements which are made ex cathedra, which this one was not. That Pope Rat came out and said he erred reminds us of his humanity. Which Catholic conservatives are sure not to like.
I think he took big steps towards The Right Thing and that is a precedent that I hope will continue to be followed.
Second, will this apologizing become a way of resisting change within the Church? As in “He apologized, so what more do you want?” which is a favorite ploy of conservatives caught telling off-color jokes.
Third, notice the wording of his apology: “I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address”. Is this an apology at all? It suggests that the ones who are responsible for the outrage are the ones who couldn’t look past the words and see what the Pope held in his heart. “It’s not my fault for poor wording,” he seems to say.
I’d give it another go at the Vatican press release office if I were him.
Fourth, I am not really keen on the reaction from some Muslims to the Pope’s faux pas. Bombing churches and shooting nuns does not, I think, make for jihad, in the sense of just struggle. In fact, these actions are anti-Koranic, which stresses that people of the book are not to be harmed.
Reminds me of those Christians who conveniently forget chapters 5 and 6 of Matthew.
Baseball Cap
Posted on September 18, 2006 in Gyms
A man wears a baseball hat backwards. His mouth gapes.
Why not wear a beanie or a yamulke? Why aim for stupidity?
Bush Can’t Keep His Hands Out
Posted on September 18, 2006 in Morals & Ethics Peace Pontiff Watch
Oh great. The man who is perhaps the most hated by Muslims in the world now gets on the Pope’s bandwagon, insisting that the comments of the other day were a mistake. I believe this to be true, but sometimes some people should just shut up.
Deliberate attempt to deepen the divide between Muslims and Christians or just the same old hubris? You decide.
Advice for Parents of Bipolar Adults
Posted on September 18, 2006 in Bipolar Disorder
The object is not to create a clone of yourself or a wage slave.
Brought to You by The Republicans
Posted on September 18, 2006 in Campaign 2006 DBSA Support Groups and Conferences Social Justice
The government used to hand out scholarships so that clients could attend mental health conferences. No more.
At least we’re not causing the deficit.
