June 22, 2014
“[The U.S. income tax is] a disgrace to the human race.” — President Jimmy Carter [Editor’s note: I would probably get more mileage out of this post if I published it during “tax season”. On the other hand, it is a perennial topic, so maybe it will pique someone’s interest….] We all like to complain […]
Tags: Alvin Rabushka, burdensome tax system, federal income tax, inefficient tax system, lost productivity, post-card tax return, Robert E. Hall, tax reform, The Flat Tax, U.S. tax code, unfair taxes, unnecessarily complex tax regulations and forms, wasted hours
Posted in Politics |
June 15, 2014
Lately, it seems like every week we read about another Christian in America being told by his (or her) employer and/or the courts that he either has to do something that goes against his religious convictions (e.g., photograph a same-sex wedding ceremony) or must stop doing something that he *thought* was protected under religious freedoms […]
Tags: Captain Paul Fields, Deputy Police Chief A. Daryl Webster, establishment clause, First Amendment rights, free-speech retaliation, freedom of association, freedom of religion, Islamic Society of Tulsa, Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, Muslim proselytizing, Police Chief Chuck Jordan, police forced to attend mosque, religious discrimination, Tulsa Police Department
Posted in Politics, Politics & Religion, Religion |
June 15, 2014
Have you ever been posing for a picture and the photo-taker tries to elicit smiles by announcing, “Everybody say, ‘Fuzzy navel!’”? Or, maybe you or someone you know ordered the mixed drink — usually, peach schnapps and orange juice — called a “Fuzzy Navel”. Ever wondered where the name came from? Me, too. I haven’t […]
Tags: belly button fluff, bellybutton lint study, Fuz Rana, fuzzy navel, Reasons to Believe
Posted in Science |
June 8, 2014
Growing up, I always had a fascination with “human oddities” (among other things). I would read about them in the latest Guinness Book of World Records and Ripley’s Believe It or Not books. From dwarves and giants to Siamese twins, people with blue skin, 14 toes, a third arm, skin like tree bark, or their […]
Tags: baby born with tail, bad medicine, bad science, birth defect, Casey Luskin, Darwinist assumptions, Discovery Institute, Dr. Michael Egnor, evolutionary throwback, false atavism, genetic deformity, Jerry Coyne, Karl Giberson, medical research, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, pseudotail, true tail, vestigial tails, when philosophical presuppositions do harm
Posted in Science |
June 6, 2014
Date: June 6th, 1984 Place: U.S. Ranger Monument at Pointe du Hoc, on the northern coast of France where Allied soldiers stormed the shores and scaled the cliffs to liberate Europe from the grip of Nazi oppression Who: U.S. President Ronald Reagan, speaking to an audience of D-Day veterans and various heads of state We’re […]
Tags: 40th anniversary, Boys of Pointe du Hoc, commemoration ceremony, D-Day, honoring the military, honoring veterans, June 6 1944, Normandy invasion, Normandy speech, Reagan speech, Ronald Reagan, U.S. Ranger Monument
Posted in Politics |
June 1, 2014
Tomorrow, the Obama administration is supposed to announce its new plan, as drafted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to fulfill the President’s original election-year promises for fighting climate change. (Or, was it “global warming”?) The new standards will be finalized in June 2015, after everyone has had a year to react & respond. States […]
Tags: alternative fuel and energy sources, anthropogenic global warming, APW, Cap-n-Trade, carbon emissions, climate change, electricity companies, energy costs, energy independence, environmental alarmism, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, fuel costs, Obama Administration, renewable energy
Posted in Politics, Politics & Science, Science |
May 25, 2014
“[T]he world tells us that it will take our practical advice (of course, weighing it with other spiritual and moral therapies) as long as we stay away from the scandal of Christ and His atoning death for sinners.” — Dr. Michael Horton, author, editor, podcaster [5/31/2014, Prefatory notes: After publishing the original version of this […]
Tags: Bible as a moral guidebook, Christian Smith, Christianity, Christianity as a code of ethics, Christless Christianity, corrupted and diluted Christian doctrine, heretical teaching, heterodoxy, Michael Horton, moralistic therapeutic deism
Posted in Religion |
May 18, 2014
Today was another one of those days, blog-wise. I just could not get inspired to write on, like, anything. I already published a smaller piece yesterday, so I figured I would just do another small one tonight. But, nothing appealed to me. Then, I remembered Joseph Gervais. Yes, Joseph is another Facebook friend of mine, […]
Tags: agri-chemicals, Assessing Toxic Risk by Trautmann, chemical toxins in food, dosage of toxic substance, food toxins, glyphosate, importance of dose, Joseph Gervais, perceptions of risk and danger, Round-Up, short-term vs chronic toxicity, synthetic chemicals vs natural chemicals, the dose makes the poison
Posted in Science |
May 17, 2014
The bill, recently approved by Connecticut’s General Assembly, was meant to reduce the sodium intake from beverages served to public school students. (Part of the national “fight against obesity”, of course.) An amendment disallows any drink with sodium added to it. Chocolate milk wasn’t targeted, but since it does contain about 60-90 milligrams of added […]
Tags: chocolate milk ban, Connecticut General Assembly, fight against obesity, food police, Gov. Dannel Malloy, pending legislation, public school menu, silly laws
Posted in Politics, Politics & Science, Science |
May 11, 2014
I take no credit (or blame) for what follows. It is the result, following a discussion on Facebook (which I was not involved in), of the reading, observation, and analysis by a friend of mine. I’ve mentioned him before on a couple other posts. That friend is the inimitable Eriku Mironasu (aka ECM), and the […]
Tags: A.I., AI, artificial intelligence, brain science, defining intelligence, Eriku Mironasu, limitations of materialist explanations, machine intelligence, materialist predictions, neuroscience, philosophical materialism, scientific predictions, scientific reductionism, Terminator
Posted in Religion, Science, Science & Religion |