I’m Special

My first “I’m really a student” look at the campus as I left the parking garage on Monday night. Credit: Me Now I’ve gone and done it. I’ve gone and enrolled at the University of Nevada Reno as a Graduate Special student and have dipped my toe in ever so slightly. Don’t let that “Graduate Special” [...]

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Credulity is for children

“Thinking is skilled work. It is not true that we are naturally endowed with the ability to think clearly and logically – without learning how, or without practicing.” ~  Alfred Mander, Logic for the Millions, 1947 First off, let me apologize for being such a slacker lately.  I want to continue the blog, but I think this [...]

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Quote of the Day

I believe that I exist at random, but I do not exist alone; and that as long as my quarks cohere, my entire function on this hurtling planet is to give what I can to the other extant things.  ~ Marya Hornbacher My Faithlessness: The atheist way through AA   (H/T:  Friendly Atheist)

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Lovely.The Military-Entertainment Complex

No, you weren’t imagining it. David Sirota: As Mace Neufeld, the producer of the 1990 film “The Hunt for Red October,” later recounted to Variety, studios in the post-“Top Gun” era instituted an unstated rule telling screenwriters and directors to get military cooperation “or forget about making the picture.” Economics drives that directive, Time magazine [...]

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Just SAY it!

I. Love. This. This is precisely what infuriates me. We have a functional moron running for the presidency, and a small crop of presumably pro-science people are busily trying to shush the opposition up so they can work their clever psycho-mojo and gently enlighten Perry by…I don’t know, wiggling their fingers, thinking happy thoughts, or [...]

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Of course, the Republicans will welcome Dawkins’ scorn

Attention Governor Perry: Evolution is a fact In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. [...]

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We “can’t win” but we must fight?

Russ… You know I like you. But hooboy, you are confusing the hell out of me. You just sent me an email from Progressives United with the subject line “Let’s Fight.” Carissa, Part of the reason I founded Progressives United is that we badly need to break the limits of our debate. Nowhere is that need exposed more [...]

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How Do You Know? Or, Critical Thinking is Hard

The problem isn’t that we aren’t in the street, or that the Tea Party is. The problem isn’t merely with the people we’ve put into office. The problem is that too few of us engage in critical thinking about the world around us, much less about the society we live in and would like to have. We [...]

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Missing

In every video and picture coming out of Libya: Women. I haven’t seen a single one.

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I’d really rather just be taking pictures

I have grown increasingly despondent over the state of politics in this country. Just when I think I can’t get any more discouraged, something else comes along to send me further into the pit. The latest is Barack Obama’s Magical Mystery Bus Tour. Yeah, I know I’m late to this. Yeah, I know he’s already [...]

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