• When an alleged comic or satirist says, “I’m an equal-opportunity offender,” it’s a sure sign they don’t understand their own jokes. Punching up is funny. Punching down is not. Punching indiscriminately is just dumb.
• I tend to focus on the economic aspect, on the absurd price difference between buying a pound of coffee and buying a bunch of K-cups for a Keurig-type-coffee-thing. The latter is 15-10 times more expensive. But then there’s also the matter of waste and the environmental cost of billions of those little plastic cups:
• Former Phillies pitcher Curt Schilling thinks he’s getting snubbed by the Hall of Fame because of his outspoken right-wing politics and his conspiratorial creationism. Schilling was a terrific pitcher, but set aside the debate over whether he belongs in Cooperstown (and whether it’s smart for him to be telling everyone he’s entitled to be there).
My point here is Steve Carlton. Schilling spent 10 years in Philadelphia, so he knows about Steve Carlton. So, therefore, Schilling knows that right-wing politics and bugnuts conspiracy theories won’t keep a deserving pitcher out of the Hall of Fame.
• Orichalcum? Cool. (But probably not from Atlantis.)
• In addition to musing about confounding optical illusions like the one pictured here, Phil Plait also gives us a calendar of astronomical events to watch out for in 2015, plus a link to Universe Today’s huge schedule of the “Top 101 Astronomical Events” in the coming year.
I’m bookmarking those, although if my luck continues the way it has with recent eclipses and meteor showers, this may turn out to be a list of the “Top 101 Cloudy Nights in Pennsylvania.”
• Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, doesn’t seem to understand how the Constitution works. Or the courts.
Rubio is upset that Florida’s same-sex marriage ban has been overturned, and he said: “If they wanted to change that law, they should have gone to the legislature or back to the Constitution and try to change it. I don’t agree we should be trying to make those changes through the courts.”
No sense can be made of that. The law was overturned by the courts because the law was unconstitutional. There’s no need to “change” the Constitution to overturn a law that the Constitution has just overturned. The senator is deeply, deeply confused.
• RIP Andrae Crouch. In school chapels and Sunday evening services, I sat through innumerable bad renditions of Crouch’s showtune-y Gospel anthem, “My Tribute,” but that’s OK, because in those same services I also sat through dozens of beautiful, soaring renditions of that song too. Here’s my favorite Andrae Crouch composition, “Soon and Very Soon” which showcases both his knack for combing pop and Gospel and his knack for combining the escapism of white evangelical eschatology with the liberationist themes of black American Christianity. Plus it’s catchy as all get out.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In