Gotta feel sorry for right wing columnists and shock jocks. Well, I do anyway. Arguing a leftist/progressive viewpoint is easy. You just check out the facts of the case, and of course since facts have a liberal bias, the column or blog just writes itself. You sit there, at the...

There I was, nearly having a near death experience the other day. Became intimately acquainted with intimations of mortality. They say there are no atheists on operating tables, but there I was, putting my trust in a competent surgeon and hundreds of years of science and medical technology rather than...

I have taken to re-reading many of my old books, something I used to laugh at my grandmother for. Sometimes they are old favorites read a number of times, sometimes classics that I haven't picked up in 40 years. Times change, culture changes, society changes, technology changes (and the price...

Usually when we use Titanic metaphors in relation to global warming we find ourselves up on the bridge speaking to the Captain who, blind eye to the telescope, is signaling full speed ahead, and saying "Icebergs, what Icebergs?" Or perhaps in the ballroom with the rich, dancing the night away,...

Beautiful mind, Stephen Hawking. Saw a question from him the other day - if there is life elsewhere in the universe, why haven't we stumbled across alien broadcasts by now? An alien "Wheel of Fortune" comes to mind, for example, or a radio soap opera starring lovelorn little green men...

I was re-reading a book (Steve Jones "In the blood") the other day that I first read a decade ago. I came to two sentences that I had obviously read then without really noticing, and did the same again, for a moment. Then something struck me, and I read again...

The rulers of Burma, and Zimbabwe, have recently made sure, if there was a shred of doubt remaining, that they don't run civilized countries. And they are not alone of course. Got me to thinking more generally - how do you recognize a civilized country?

1. The military-industrial complex plays...

When I was a young fellow a few decades ago (oh, all right, half a century plus) I greatly desired a model train. No money in a very poor family for such a thing, so I set about saving up. I had a jar to put money in, and on...

A recent post by Mayhill Fowler attracted a lot of attention in relation to the race for Democratic nomination in Pennsylvania. But I was struck by something else - "The ravages of mining and old-style manufacturing have been unable, after all, to break the bond Pennsylvanians have with the...

When the subprime crisis began in America and people began to lose their homes, I was stunned by the reactions to any suggestion that the government might come to their financial rescue in any way. Indeed might consider any kind of regulatory response to try to reduce the chances of...

Frank Luntz wrote a memo for the Republican Party in the year of '02, preaching, among other things, that instead of using the term "global warming", Republicans substitute "climate change" because "while global warming has catastrophic communications attached to it, climate change sounds a more controllable and less emotional challenge".

My lovely friend Pamela (of Frogblog fame) brought this item from Illinois to my attention.

"Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) interrupted atheist activist Rob Sherman during his testimony Wednesday afternoon before the House State Government Administration Committee in Springfield and told him, "What you have to spew and spread...

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" said Isaac Newton, imitating Robert Burton and Bernard Chartres. Not true of course. Newton wasn't often wrong - except of course about the way the universe actually worked - but this time he was. It is...

In Russia they have a custom of diving into the river in the middle of winter, ice blocks floating, and then jumping out and rolling in the snow. In Sweden, the sauna experience involves sitting in a small hut shoulder to shoulder with naked sweaty men, pouring water on to...

Three months ago, while Christmas shopping, I saw a man walking backwards. There we all were, shoppers in the Mall, all hurrying along to the next purchasing decision, all hurrying the right way, and there he was, walking backwards, the crowds parting to make way for him. I could see...

Let us just imagine, for a moment, that the intelligent design people were right (they're not, they're not, but just suppose, ok?), and that the flagellum of some bacteria couldn't have evolved. Picture yourself like a detective interviewing a burglar caught red-handed at the scene of a crime, who anyway...

I imagine Mike Huckabee, relaxing after giving up on his dream of ruling America under Christian law (and having Chuck as VP, how cool would that have been?), listening to a little Christian rock music, and reading a newspaper in which there is an article on the new Encyclopedia of...

We often try to give examples of evolution occurring right now, in order to answer the proposition from creationists that no one ever saw evolution happening. The commonest example we give is the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. However I recently saw a comment on a blog as follows:...

The Beethoven piano sonatas, pianist Louis Kentner once said, should be presented to the first Martian visitor to our planet as proof of what human civilization is capable of. Here, friend, we should say to the little green men. This is the best of us.

And I wondered what else...

You all know about my belief in the supernatural, and this week I have been communicating with Charles Darwin in a seance. He doesn't have access to a computer in the part of heaven he is in (no computers, no rap music, no reality TV - heaven), and he has...