A Romantic Rationalist

I am often surprised by the stuff I know that others seem totally ignorant of. It is not as though I deliberately set out to stuff my head with trivia to impress people around me, or, as I have more than once been accused of, make them feel stupid. Even when not suspected of being deliberately uncharitable in my opinions of my fellows, others feel obliged to remind me that not everyone is “interested” in the same things I am, and usually revolve around doing something useful with a computer. We all have the right to allocate such resources as we can afford–in terms of time, money, and energy–to the leisure activities of our own choosing or inclination–provided they are legal, of course. In developed countries, at least for those not mired in poverty (generational or otherwise) or burdened by a cognitive disability, there are a wide range of leisure pursuits available to them. Those that whine about being “bored” or that there is nothing that “interests” them immediately to hand, ...

Happy Thanksgiving to All! Whatever our personal beliefs, no one is an island‒we all depend on the kindness, generosity, hard work, and sacrifices of our fellow human beings. If a neighbor foolishly fails to thoroughly read the directions on their new turkey fryer and sets fire to their house, but the fire is extinguished before it burns down their house (and possibly spreads to yours), and you feel a need to thank (insert preferred higher power), go ahead‒after all, reciting the right words in the right order demands very little us in the way of thought, reflection, or labor. However, (you just knew this was coming) a far more sincere, tangible, and morally praiseworthy way of expressing one's heartfelt gratitude would be to do something for the firefighters and other first responders that gave up their holiday to protect the lives, safety, and property of their fellow human beings. Bring a meal to the station house, or ask if there are any that are without families nearby...

Well, here we are again, pawns in yet another game of “chicken” that puts the economic well-being of the United States of America at risk. The current situation is the result of many things, but I want to point out the complicity of my fellow citizens, because without their ignorance and intellectual laziness, we might not be in the mess we are in. What galls me the most, is how many people do not know that the Affordable Care Act (ACA‒a.k.a. "ObamaCare"–a label that sounds like it was made up by a 7 y/o playground bully–which seems about right given the apparent cognitive capacities of the right-wing rank-and-file) is already a law! It was passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law on 23 March, 2010 by President Obama . It then withstood a challenge that went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States (ScotUS)! Check it out yourself–there may be a quiz later. The coup de grâce of the whole thing is after all the wrangling, all the far-right rheto...

I was recently asked two questions by a long-time family friend – who also happens to be an ordained Assembly of God minister. One was how an “intellectually honest” atheist could deny the “historical fact” of the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth? The other was one atheists have heard (and answered) too many times before: “How is atheism not a faith too?” Intellectual Honesty There is nothing “intellectually honest,” at all, in asserting that any miraculous, supernatural phenomena is a “historical fact.” This is so obviously wrong – and on so many levels – that it was difficult to know where to begin. Here is a partial (and abbreviated) list of what is, and is not, intellectual honesty: Intellectual honesty... does not allow one to ignore evidence that goes against whatever it is that they want to be true (e.g. “So, Mr. President, what was it that made you think Saddam had all those WMDs in the first place?”) is implacably opposed to compartmentalized thinking (...

I love to read. I love books and the written word in general. One of the greatest pleasures of my life is to curl up on my couch or stretch out on my bed with a good book‒a real book, with a binding and pages made of paper‒no batteries required. I like having good books on my shelves, and when invited into someone else's home, the presence or absence of tangible, physical reading material, and when present, the subject(s) of the reading material can often, fairly or unfairly, inform my opinion of those whose home it is. I am not rich, or even well-off, by any measure, but I am proud of the depth and breadth of the works in my library of bound books. As long as there are at least some people that like to collect things like stamps, baseball cards, music and motion pictures recorded on a physical medium (i.e. CDs and DVDs/Blu-rays), I suspect there will also be those that will enjoy, and continue to purchase physical, bound books. From a marketing standpoint, if book publishing w...

In my most recent post introducing my on-going series on the 2012 elections, I went on at some length about “doing one's homework.” I hold myself to that same standard ‒ with at least some consistency, I hope. A reader might have noticed that I cite my sources in many, if not most, of my posts and thought I should give a brief account of my thinking regarding citation styles. As an undergraduate I took upper-level classes from many different disciplines: physics, engineering, geology, biology, and political science...to name a few. The default citation format I cut my teeth on was the venerable Modern Language Association (MLA) style. This makes sense when one considers that most undergrad's are introduced to writing “scholarly” papers not within their own major, but in courses taught by faculty from the English department. One of the things I like about the MLA style is that it is set up to handle a very wide range of sources, from peer-reviewed journals to on-line vi...

Election years in the United States typically feel long, and 2012 is shaping up to be a very long election year. Indeed, one could even say it began as soon as the last polls closed on November 4 th , 2008. This post was originally intended to be a one-off, however, like so many other posts, as I wrote it, I was constantly saying to myself "If I cover this fact or concept here, I also need to mention that supporting (or contrasting) bit from over there"‒and the whole thing snowballed from there. The original impetus for the stand-alone piece was the blow-up over Rush Limbaugh's juvenile, schoolyard bully-style attacks on the character of Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke following her testimony before Democratic members of a House sub-committee. The subject of her testimony was contraception availability and the impact it has on women's reproductive health. Not surprisingly, as I noted above, instead of challenging the factual claims made in Ms. Fluke...