Gerry doesn't have the rumor of the shadow of the illusion of the reflection of the mirage of an echo of a case unless "case" is a kind of Mexican bat that eats tse tse flies. And I bet he doesn't have a bat like that either, but it's more… Read full post »

No ancient writer, moral teachers, or anyone else is on record for stating that slavery is bad, period: not Jesus, not Socrates, not Epictetus, who was himself a slave, no one. No one said something to the effect of "we know its bad but we can't imagine a world without it."… Read full post »

Sarah Palin's "refudiate" is particularly stupid because "refute" and "repudiate" are close but different. The vast vocabulary available in English is one of the great things about the language, that there can be many word with almost the same meaning, or close to  the same meaning but with diff… Read full post »

Let's say that when I die I would like my bones to fossilize. I don't want my bones and flesh to be preserved like the ice man in the Alps or a mummy in Egypt, that only preserves something of you for maybe tens of thousands of years. No, I want… Read full post »

Arizona type (if not the actual law) anti-illegal immigrant legislation is not necessarily incompatible with a controlled amnesty.

Look around the internet and you'll see "illegal immigrants" shortened to "illegals." It's not wrong: illegal aliens have broken the law of the state.

But they aren't the… Read full post »

This operation shows the dangers of conflicts that are less than all out wars but more than police actions. The US is involved in two such actions right now. This raid was half police action, half military and all around a bad idea. The flotilla had reason to deny Israeli authority.… Read full post »

I can't find the link now, but I followed one of the links that was at one time here on the BBC. But somewhere the BBC explained this situation like this:

 In the 1960s through the 1980s both parties, Labor and the National party, cleared slums and re-built the neighborhoods when they… Read full post »

Clouds: 

 If intelligence and consciousness evolved on a planet with an opaque atmosphere they would never have seen a star or even anything more than the ghosted outline of their own sun until they sent up some sort of satellite. They might have developed all kinds of technology wit… Read full post »

Since we cannot plug a leak in the ocean, what makes you think that we could design, build and successfully deploy a spacecraft to land on and begin to nudge an asteroid out of earth impact if we found one headed our way? Let's say we find one with a 70%… Read full post »