Creationists

Self-deluded ideologues, they seek to brainwash children, hamstring rational inquiry and force humanity kicking and screaming into the thirteenth century.

While it is tempting to dismiss them as outright stupid, the fact is that they are quite intelligent. They ignore or distort evidence by choice and deliberately discard every intellectual principle of the post-enlightenment world. Their world view is not simply the product of botched education. In point of fact, it is something much more insidious that must be corrected and resisted at every opportunity.

Tomorrow is National Hangover Day

I have a toast that I have made every New Years for most of my adult life. I didn't write it, myself, I ripped it off from a song, in fact, but it's appropriate and poignant nonetheless.

"A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last."

Here's to 2009.

Door May Voo.

"Have you heard of the artist Sister Louisa?" Rawksta'hr asked me.

"Is she like Grandma Moses?" I replied "Or Mother Teresa? Or perhaps like Brother John, who might be sleeping; we shall inquire?"

My humor would be lost on most people but she laughed.

So Everyone Knows

You will not make your space colder, faster, if you set the air conditioning below the desired temperature. AC units are not sentient and will not work harder upon seeing how much further they have to go.

All you're going to do is end up wasting energy when you forget to adjust the thermostat come your desired temperature. The air conditioning will then continue to needlessly crank out cold air.

Collectors' Editions

Needlessly expensive and offering little added value, these soulless artifacts of claptrap salesmanship clutter store shelves, complicate retail inventories and foul the shopping experience.

Whist swindling legitimate enthusiasts, producers of these products cheat casual consumers by omitting otherwise standard features from the original package in order to falsely ascribe value to the pricier counterpart.

Yule Blessings

I sat at the Junction last night, as I often do on idle weekend evenings. Weatherman was in rare form, testing new material and keeping his audience cheering in a way that only really happens at Irish pubs.

Most of the way through "Rare ol' Mountain Dew" he stopped short.

"Throw away your pills
It'll cure all ills
Be you Pagan, a Christian, a Jew -- "

He took his hands off the guitar and rubbed his brow, "Y'know, I don't know how many times I've done this song but this is the first time that I've sung that line and looked out," he gestured to my table, full up with friends and regulars and indicated me, Old Scot and New York Friend, each in succession "and seen a Pagan, a Christian and a Jew."

Everyone smiled and the song went on.



May your fire burn bright through the longest night of the year;
May you weather all the storms of winter;
and May fortune smile upon you with the lengthening of days.
Brightest Blessings

Great Faith in Fools

Trust, as we like to think of it, is a fundamentally flawed notion. Much like love, we take a family of similar but still different emotions and tendencies and label them as a single thing.

"I trust you with my life," is a nearly meaningless statement. The fact is that most people, rightly so, have faith in the basic goodness of individuals.

Let's say that I was to suspend myself from a block and tackle above a forest of razor sharp spikes. Let's also say that I did this in the middle or Times' Square on a busy Saturday. Let's also say that you are the one holding the other end of the rope and that it is only your grip that keeps me from falling to my impalement. I'm confident that you could grab virtually any passer-by in the metropolis of New York City and then, after showing them my predicament, force the rope into their hand and they would not drop me. Insomuch as this, I am willing to trust any stranger on the street with my life.

This example is melodramatic in the extreme but the fact remains, virtually any sane person, when put into a clear cut situation of 'do X right now or Y person will die before your eyes' will act, at huge inconvenience and even danger to themself, to preserve the life of stranger Y.

Put more succinctly, there are many more people that I will trust with my life than I will trust with my wallet.