When al Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 they thought they were doing God’s work. When they upped their game on September 11, 2001 they thought they were doing God’s work. When ISIS beheaded American journalist Danny Pearl they thought they were doing God’s work. When ISIS murdered the staff of Charlie Hebdo… [read more]
We’re A Very Entertaining Species & BHB
Here’s a Fourth of July message, because this is how we define ourselves. This is how we do things. This is how we plan for the future. Be advised that we can be a very entertaining species. Read this from Wikipedia: The oil depletion allowance in American (US) tax law is an allowance claimable by… [read more]
I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This
The violent far right people with AK-47s and AR-15s and basements full of ammunition don’t see themselves as domestic terrorists. They don’t think January 6 was an attempt at insurrection and they see the desecration of the Capitol Building and their causing 5 deaths as righteous fulfillment of Thomas Jefferson’s dyspeptic rant about the refreshing… [read more]
Just Read This
Thom Hartman’s post last Wednesday is an excellent summary of why we desperately need political reform. It is a cautionary tale focused on Texas, but you can extrapolate his analysis to all red states and today’s Republicans in Congress. I leave it to him to explain this clearly. Just read this. And good luck to… [read more]
Chutes & Ladders, Knives & Guns and Karma
Most of us are taught to play by the rules from a very young age because human relationships and even civilizations require rules in order to prevent chaos and the breakdown of society. So we play Chutes and Ladders pretty much according to the rules. Robert Frost said it best: Good fences make good neighbors…. [read more]
Legislation Republicans Will Champion – The KBL Act
It seems so obvious that I just don’t understand why no member of Congress and no state legislature officials have proposed this. It comports perfectly with today’s Republican Party and its policy of having no policy other than obstructing all progress and stoking cultural wars to aggregate power for itself at the risk of our… [read more]
Serendipity
The word “serendipity” stems from the ancient Persian tale, Serendipity and The Three Princes. It’s sometimes called The Three Princes of Serendip.* It was translated in 1557 into Italian as The Peregrinaggio. It is a tale of “the gift for discovery by accident and sagacity of things . . . not in quest of [it].”… [read more]
Crap! A Friday Extra
One of the features of watching a YouTube video is the line up of additional videos presented to tantalize us. YouTube captures what we’ve watched before and provides links to videos with some similarity to them in order to keep us watching. As you know, what commonly results is an enormous time suck. I haven’t… [read more]
If It Feels Right
This is a special time. It is a time when magical thinking has washed over the land, drowning our world in hyperbole, fiction and venom, and leaving so very little grounded in the observable. The waste of the neocortex imperils the people like oxygen deprivation, with hypoxia choking the rational. Left behind is rigorous critical… [read more]
Proper Names
Ed Note: This post begins in a dark way, because there is substantial darkness over our democracy. But keep your hopes alive, because we may be at the start of a new day. Read to the end for the unmistakable rays of sunlight of the dawn. ————————————— Trump has gotten away with an enormous dung… [read more]
