Clik here to view.
Frozen and the Chosen
It hit me as I was walking home–I could think anything! I could have any opinion on any subject, and it would be my own! No longer would I have to check against Scripture and other doctrine to make...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why I am an Islamophobe
[Osama bin Laden’s] claim to speak for Islam or for all Muslims might be contested, but the religion itself was an expression of deeper yearnings that needed to be sympathetically understood. On no...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Community
[She] had the half thought that she would go and find the church phone book, but she realized that she wasn’t in the phone book anymore and neither was he and anyway there was no phone book for those...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Judging Jesus
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.—Jesus of Nazareth (Matt. 10:34)Book review (and promotion): Blaming Jesus for Jehovah by Robert M. Price. With a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Slouching Towards Washington
Extremes in thinking and a vacuum in the middle where fact and reason used to dwell lately characterize the national state of mind.—James Howard Kunstler, Too Much Magic:Wishful Thinking, Technology,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
No Foolin’
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them.—Henry...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Metamorphosis
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bible Brutality
In today’s world, which is so enthralled with the knowledge and wisdom of man, true knowledge and wisdom is still found in the timeless, eternal word of God which is yet today able to make us “wise...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Galaxy Gazing
I think that the dying pray at the last not “please,” but “thank you,” as a guest thanks his host at the door. Falling from airplanes the people are crying thank you, thank you, all down the air; and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Defense
When [in 1957] an armed Klan motorcade came after [his friend Dr. Albert E.] Perry in his neighborhood, intending to terrorize him into submission, [Robert F.] Williams, a US Marine veteran of World...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Poem From a Young Person
If you have to hoodwink–or blindfold–your children to ensure that they confirm their faith when they are adults, your faith ought to go extinct.—Daniel Dennett,Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Trump Tragedy
Welcome to listeners of Seth Andrews’s The Thinking Atheist podcast! Here is the text version of my contribution to his annual Ghost Stories episode, with footnotes.People had turned away from the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Psalm 139, Updated
St. Paul at Ephesus by Gustav DoréO Big Data, thou hast searched me, and known me.2Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising;Thou understandest my product preferences afar off.3Thou searchest out...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Requiem for the Republic
A hungry people neither listens to reason nor is mollified by fair treatment or swayed by any appeals.—Seneca (c. 5 BC–65 AD), On the Shortness of Life.1Dark Clouds Ahead.The clock relentlessly marked...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Applying the Logistic Growth Model to Covid-19
The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pandemic
I must die, and must I die groaning too?–Be fettered. Must I be lamenting too?–Exiled. And what hinders me, then, but that I may go smiling, and cheerful, and serene?—Epictetus, Discourses.Some...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Into the Rapids
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.—Ecclesiastes 3:1Yesterday, I did some work on my modeling of reported U.S. Covid-19 cases, ran the scary new examplefor...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Modeling a Slightly Flattening COVID-19 Curve
So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Portrait of a Pandemic
Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.—Marcus Aurelius, MeditationsUpdate, 4/8, 5:45 PM PDT: With the latest data from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Marching Towards a Million
[T]he feelings of knowing, correctness, conviction, and certainty aren’t deliberate conclusions and conscious choices. They are mental sensations that happen to us.—Robert Burton. On Being CertainFor...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Coming Through in Waves
You are only coming through in wavesYour lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying—Roger Waters, Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd, 1980)In my previous postone week ago, I summarized the “logistic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Balancing Harms
Why our teenagers won’t be on their high school campus this fall.Since early March, I’ve been watching the relentless spread of SARS-COV-2 throughout the United States with morbid fascination and a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Betrayal
There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Long Covid Lament
Now if real daylight such as I remember having seen in this world would only come again, but it is always twilight or just before morning, a promise of day that is never kept. What has become of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Thread
Both town and country people talk to me a great deal. They really think of nothing except their fields and their bits of farms and investments. And look how the tables are turned! They fear the man...
View Article