When I was a kid, I saw a commercial for a little worm thing that moved as if by magic. They weren’t pretending that it was alive or something. They presented it as a great trick. The commercial said, “are there strings? I don’t see any!” My little self took that to mean that there […]
Archive | Humanity
Fire and Madness
In Australia, in my wife’s hometown, temperatures have reached over 115 degrees Fahrenheit. But worse than that are the fires that have killed more than 80 people. The most shocking line in the article is this one: “…police suspect that in at least one case fires have been restarted by arsonists after being extinguished by […]
Do You Believe
Many times, I’ve argued that we can’t choose what we believe. It’s such a simple fact, but we still hear all the time that people choose this belief or that. People frequently say, “I choose to believe that people are good.” Or something like that. Nope. You may be able to choose tuna or chicken […]
Mr. Spock Was Unloved
I ran into a friend today who’d been through a terrible car accident a couple of years ago. Through the vagaries of insurance weirdness, she received a lot of money from one insurance company, which she then was supposed to pay to another insurance company. She understands this and expected it and it’s no problem. […]
Regret
XKCD is a very good geek-math-science-love-humanity comic strip. (Not like all the geek-math-science-love-humanity comic strips out there that suck.) This one says it all about regrets. As everyone already knows, regrets are usually about what you didn’t do. But it’s so hard to remember that when deciding whether to take the risk.
Slaves
Today I read an article in the Wilson’s Quarterly about modern-day slavery. The author, John Miller, calls for action: First for laws and enforcement of those laws, and second, for education. Two examples of education: 1. He spoke in Japan about the thousands of Japanese work visas given to Female filipino “entertainers.” Within a couple […]
Average-Looking
A friend of mine recently said that Ellen Barkin used to be on his list of the hottest of hot women. To me, she’s not the slightest bit pretty. This brought to mind a bit of a tangent: What does it mean to be average-looking? I used to think it meant that on the bell […]
Drowning
Christopher Hitchens is always deeply thoughtful even when he’s wrong (like agreeing with Bush on the Iraq war). I can’t find it online, but he’s been accused of regarding waterboarding as a sort of not-that-bad thing that Americans do. He was challenged to try it for himself, and he recently agreed. There’s video of it, […]
Sexualization (Part 2)
A year ago, I posted about a report on the “sexualization” of young girls. My post rocks, of course, but here’s a link to the page for the actual Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. Now there’s a book out, called “The Lolita Effect,” which gets a middling review in […]
Pissed
I have a friend who was robbed at gunpoint last year, a couple of friends who narrowly escaped a mugging a week ago, and another couple of friends who moved out of the city because they were sick of the crime. So this is small potatoes and non-violent, but it hurts. I was strolling down […]