CBS News made an interesting, if little noticed, announcement almost two weeks ago: Add another creation to the strange scientific menagerie where animal species are being mixed together in ever more exotic combinations. Scientists announced Monday that they had created mice with small amounts of human brain cells in an effort to make realistic models […]
Entries from December 2005
Scrambled Eggs
December 25th, 2005 · No Comments
Tags: Science
Hopping Along
December 20th, 2005 · No Comments
I’m not feeling much up to writing right now. As anyone who read my previous post knows, my grandmother recently passed away. The funeral is Friday. Feeling a little morose, I’ve not done much more than work a little on fixing some parts of the website (including the links on my curriculum vitae page and […]
Tags: Personal Life
Goodbye, Grandma
December 19th, 2005 · 6 Comments
[T]ime is not like space. And when you put something down somewhere, like a protractor or a biscuit, you can have a map in your head to tell you where you have left it, but even if you don’t have a map it will still be there because a map is a representation of things […]
Tags: Personal Life
Civil Liberties & National Security
December 18th, 2005 · No Comments
If —without requiring a warrant — we allowed law enforcement officers to search people or their homes whenever they wanted, or intercept their mail, or listen in on their phone calls, crime rates would go down. There would be less murder. There would be fewer robberies. Burglaries would drop significantly. The so-called “war on drugs” […]
Tags: The Bush Regime
Christian Compassion
December 14th, 2005 · 5 Comments
I am not the most politically-astute guy sometimes. That’s probably just one of a few reasons it’s good I’ll never run for any political office. And probably posting what I’m about to post is further evidence — if I had one political neuron in me, I’d probably never do it. On the other hand, for […]
Tags: Balaam's Ass
A Diet of Words
December 13th, 2005 · 1 Comment
This morning, I started working on an article about tinkering with nature. But I’m off to San Francisco today, running an errand for a friend, and I don’t want too late a start. While trying to find something I wrote back in the late 1980s — I’m a pack-rat, so I know I have it […]
Tags: Old Journal Entries
Arrogant America
December 10th, 2005 · 2 Comments
I don’t know, I could have put this one under “Stupidity,” since it really requires all Americans for this to work — or not work, as the case may be — but since it is an outgrowth of the unilateral decisions of the Bush Administration and the oil executives with whom they work, it’s another […]
Tags: The Bush Regime
Hasta La Vista, Baby: The Passion of Neo-Pharisees
December 8th, 2005 · 1 Comment
Two stories about Mel Gibson caught my attention this week. I think it’s wholly appropriate that I was standing at a urinal when I saw the news about one of them…
Tags: California
Yes, I’m Defending President Bush, Sort Of
December 7th, 2005 · No Comments
The other day, in “Butt-kickin’ Christians,” I wrote about the fundamentalist “christian” movement targeting stores like, well, Target, for presumably not doing their god-given duties with respect to evangelism. Nevermind that such stores don’t have a god-given duty to evangelize. Jerry Falwell and his ilk will brook no excuses based on the idea that Target […]
Tags: Religion
No Remedy for Lack of Time
December 5th, 2005 · 1 Comment
After the damage done to my blog by Aplus.net, I’ve tried to start writing daily again. I really haven’t had time to detail what happened, so those readers I still have are left wondering about my cryptic references to what happened. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to remain that way for at least a week. Suffice […]
Tags: Social Issues