My Speech to the News Camera in my Head

I don’t know how many times we have to hear this until it means something. It’s probably true that Thomas Jefferson would be appalled how ill-informed or uninformed we are. It’s up to us to read, watch and listen to everything we can to make up our minds about issues that affect us. We allow our beliefs, religious and otherwise, to cloud or tint or filter out all or most of the critical information that is available to us, and all we absorb is the biased news and advertising that sits well. We need to work a little, to do our own research and critical thinking. But that takes time, and the values and priorities in our society are wrong because they no longer allow for the time we need to do that kind of work. And that needs to change.

How It Happened

Training with DNA

I was curious about something at work yesterday, but I kept it to myself until now. I wondered, why should office politics and pressure get me down when all I am is a passenger train for deoxyribonucleic acid?

…so little of (our) DNA has any discernible purpose. It starts to get a little unnerving, but it does really seem that the purpose of life is to perpetuate DNA. The 97 percent of our DNA commonly called junk is largely made up of clumps of letters that, in (science writer Matt) Ridley’s words, "exist for the pure and simple reason that they are good at getting themselves duplicated.” Most of your DNA, in other words, is not devoted to you but to itself: you are a machine for reproducing it, not it for you. Life…just wants to be, and DNA is what makes it so.

- Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

Brief Apology

When I posted the cartoon in Poor Taste for TV Geeks, I had no idea that it would cause such riots. I'm sorry I've inflamed the Moslem world.

Remember how we used to spell Moslem?

No Comment, Mr. President

Yes yes there's so much to discuss sir. However, as I'm sure you're aware, there's a movement afoot the goal of which is to ban comic sans. Okay, I admit that this is a diversionary tactic. I'd hoped to steer you away from the fact that I have no incendiary comments at this time, thereby rendering this paragraph pointless.