Melissa Etheridge’s Dangerous New Age Babble
Angelina Jolie has been in the news recently for choosing to have a double mastectomy, even though she does not have breast cancer. She does, however, have the BRCA gene mutation which could lead to breast cancer, and although a voluntary double mastectomy is a radical choice, it's also a reasonable one. This is not an abstract issue for Jolie: her mother died of the disease at age 56, and the odds of her getting it are very high. The decision is not an easy one, and I think it's fair to say … [Read More...]
Egypt to Tourists: Don’t Come Here
On November 17th, 1997, the Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya terrorist group massacred 62 men, women, and children--4 of them Egyptians and the rest foreign tourists--at the famous Deir el-Bahari ruins in the culturally rich city of Luxor, one of the most important archaeological sites in the world. This week, Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi named Al-Gama'a member Adel Asaad al-Khayyat as the new governor of Luxor. The group allegedly renounced terror in 1997. Before the attack on Luxor. They … [Read More...]
Disqus and Combox Blacklisting
It looks like it's time for my quarterly reminder that there is a combox policy, and that dialog with trolls is not part of my job description. I know a lot of bloggers just have a free and open comment policy: anything goes! I don't. If you're too tired to check out the whole combox policy post, here's the quote from Augustine that starts it off: The time at my disposal does not allow me to linger on all the questions that may be raised by men with time on their hands and with a curiosity … [Read More...]
See How Mel Blanc Did All Those Voices
Courtesy of OpenCulture, here's a look at the voice of Mel Blanc, whose amazing vocal range and skill at characterization brought most of the Looney Tunes characters to life. How do you "see" a voice? You stick an optic laryngoscope down Mel's throat and have him talk, which is just what one clever ENT did. The result is an oddly fascinating look at a man who had complete mastery of his instrument. Each voice has a different shape and motion, and Mel's control is as absolute as that of any … [Read More...]
Let Me Get This Straight…
In the midst of revelations exposing the worst violations of our 1st and 4th Amendment rights in the nation's history, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is, for the third time in his presidency, authorizing military aid and action in a country in which we have no direct interest and without consulting either Congress or the UN. This military action is coming in the form of weapons and air support for a group allied with terrorist forces we are fighting all around the globe, and which were … [Read More...]
A Face From the Past
You can be excused for thinking the face pictured above is a modern mugshot of some dude who just robbed a Piggly Wiggly. In fact, it's an archer who died in the sinking of the Mary Rose, a ship from the fleet of Henry VIII (spit). The Mary rose was sunk in 1545, discovered in the 1970s, and raised in 1982. Her recovery and preservation was a groundbreaking effort for its day. The reconstruction was accomplished with a mixture of old and new techniques, from 3D scanning and printing to more … [Read More...]
Happy Bloggy News
The wonderful Simcha Ficher has moved to Patheos because she knows we get all the best money and glory and trolls here. You can find here her, and she even retained her Willendorf Venus-in-a-lounge-chair header image, guaranteed to freak out 98% of the readers of Spirit Daily on sight! SCORE! My first dose of Simcha was when she teed off on PANTS!, and I've enjoyed reading her ever since. Go, now, read. And welcome to our wretched hive of scum and villainy, dear Somechop. … [Read More...]
And Your Orwellian Phrase of the Day Is …
... "least untruthful." It sounds better than "lying to Congress" or "perjury," doesn't it? Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is really struggling to explain why he told Congress in March that the National Security Agency does not intentionally collect any kind of data on millions of Americans. His latest take: It's an unfair question, he said, like "When are you going to stop beating your wife?" And it seems to depend on the meaning of "collect." "I responded in what I … [Read More...]
Transhumanism’s “Futurama” Future
Every child who grew up in the 1970s knew for a fact that Walt Disney's head had been "frozen" to await a future in which science has progressed enough to heal his cancer-ravaged body and restore him to life in order to provide joy for future generation. None of that was any more true than the flights of fantasy transhumanists continue to sell like techno-new-age hucksters with university posts, but that doesn't keep them from trying. Witness: Nick Bostrom, professor of philosophy at the … [Read More...]
PRISM, Tech, and Trust UPDATED
"If people can't trust not only the executive branch but also don't trust Congress, and don't trust federal judges, to make sure that we're abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we're going to have some problems here." Barack Obama "Unfortunately you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all of our problems. Some of these same voices do their best to gum up the … [Read More...]
Packing for the Final Journey
Last week my father asked me to plan his funeral. He's dying, he knows he's dying, and he just wants to get on with it already. He's a practical man, and doesn't want the burden to fall to my mother or anyone else at a time when everyone is already upset. I waved him off, telling him we were just planning to put him on flaming ship and set it adrift. He told me not to waste the ship: a rowboat would do fine. When my mother scotched the rowboat idea, I made the arrangements for the … [Read More...]
A Quick Reply to Dr. Peters About the Scouts
My thanks to Ed Peters for the link and comment to my post about the Boy Scouts lifting the ban on openly gay scouts. Dr. Peters had this to say about what I wrote: Update, 29 May 2013: But for one sentence, I basically agree with Tom McDonald’s take on the Boy Scout matter. The one sentence that stands out–nay leaps out–but is completely unsupported by everything else McDonald wrote, is this: “The shift in policy shows that the BSA is willing to concede moral high ground.” Huh? How? … [Read More...]
Are These Beams From the First Temple?
Reused for millennia, discarded, forgotten, left in a padlocked storage space: these rough chunks of wood hewn from cedar, cypress, and oak up to 3000 years ago may once have been part of the First Temple. Building materials routinely were recycled throughout ancient times, but these are important because they were removed from the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount during renovations. They were never really subjected to tests until 1984, when a dendochronologist interested in their age and … [Read More...]
A Small Gift For You Today
We live in uncertain times. It can be difficult to know what's true and false. Doubt reigns over so much that we hear and read and even experience. Thus, my gift to you today is the gift of certainty. It will be at least one thing you read today that you will know is true without any doubt, and it is this: This man is not Jesus. A man claiming to be Jesus is gaining followers and causing concern among cult experts in Australia. Former IT specialist Alan John Miller, or AJ as he … [Read More...]
The Boy Scouts: Caught in the Culture Wars
I tend to draw the stories on scouting for the National Catholic Register, so I've been watching as the BSA tried to revise their policies for dealing with boys who publicly proclaim same sex attraction. It's important to note that the BSA does not ask about sexual preference, operating on an unofficial "don't ask, don't tell policy" that quite reasonably kept the private sexual habits of people--particularly minors--out of the organization. The gay lobby and their allies, however, have made it … [Read More...]
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