Searching for Meaning

In a world filled with labor-saving technologies, home shopping, 24-hour news cycles and easy access to information, we like to think we have it pretty good. One thing which all of our advances have thus far failed to provide, however, is a sense of meaning. Of purpose. We have become accustomed to the easy and [...]

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From Plus To Minus: The Purpose Of God

Since the dawn of time, humankind has felt that, despite a lack of incontrovertible, tangible evidence, there is a higher power at work in the world. Whether we name it God or Gaia or the collective unconscious or any of countless other names, most of us believe in something greater than ourselves. For the purposes [...]

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It’s beginning to look a lot like pre-school…

I know that the use of language in today’s mass media is geared toward a fifth-grade (or thereabouts) comprehension level. Surely, though, the folks we elect to serve in the highest offices should be at least a little smarter than a fifth grader. Perhaps we should have Jeff Foxworthy come and test the entire lot [...]

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Laodicean musings

Well, perhaps musings re: “Laodicean”, since neither meaning of the word applies to me. I have to congratulate 13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar for winning this, especially with an obscure word that I didn’t know the meaning of until I was into my 20s. The word in question makes me wonder, though, about the inclusion of such [...]

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On Eternity

(Note: This was actually written in a paper notebook (you know, those $1.19 laptops) about a year and a half ago, and I just recently refound it. I’m posting it here to test a theory.) One of the strangest things about being dead is how long it takes you to become aware of it. You [...]

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My soul must be in dire need of saving.

This has showed up on a few of my friends’ LiveJournals this morning, and I found I had something to say about it. Copy this sentence into your livejournal if you’re in a heterosexual marriage, and you don’t want it “protected” by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow. I have a [...]

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Anyone got a coin I can flip?

Perhaps the only silver lining to the twin catastrophes of Ike and Lehman is that the media dust is finally settling on McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin for running mate. With that in mind, I’m going to try to look at both tickets with as strong a hype-filter as I can muster. First of all, [...]

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What do you know?

Throughout its history, Western science has had one major failing – its inability to ‘think outside the box’. Each passing day brings a new theory or discovery, most of which are ignored or derided by ‘orthodox’ scientists who cling to their safe, comfortable dogma. In the 1860s, chemists refused to acknowledge John Newland’s idea that [...]

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Evolution vs. Creation

I’m just about sick of this evolution vs. creation debate that seems to pop up every few decades when the writers of educational policy have nothing better to do (or want to divert attention from their continued inability to stop fucking things up). There is room for both in the world, and in the textbook. [...]

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On Religion and Peace

Having discussed in a previous post what it means to be America, let us turn our attention to one of the most divisive global issues of the present day: that of religious affiliation. For all of the technological sophistication we have attained, for all of the nuances of civil discourse we have evolved, in matters [...]

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