"When I do not want to say things in real life I often say them here." — Mimi Smartypants
It’s Easter, and my thoughts turn to faith. My faith is humanism. We humans have had one great idea, a universal one that both pre-dates religion and is common to all faiths: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That’s my religion, and it’s a fine one. Surprisingly, to me at least, […]
On Monday, one of the other air museum docents told me we had Amish visitors. I said something like “Really? Amish?” and he said, “Well, they’re definitely something. Maybe they’re Mormons.” I was bemused. Don’t the Amish consider museums frivolous? And unless a pair of them in neckties show up at your front door, how do you […]
Watching NBC and MSNBC reports on the Charlie Hebdo terror killings in Paris, I see very few depictions of the magazine’s cartoons. In print and web-based media, though, the cartoons … even the really offensive ones … are everywhere. You’d have to be a cloistered monk not to have seen them, which makes me wonder why our TV […]
… most atheists are not like that, and there are a lot of us. I think there are more of us than anyone knows. One reason for that is that few of us go out of our way to advertise it.
When I grew up merchants and advertisers respected non-Christian customers by using Xmas instead of Christmas. Today, Xmas has been replaced by “the holidays.” That’s the spirit in which I use the word, to acknowledge the fact that, in the words of President Obama, “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus […]
How’s that Nook e-reader I got for my birthday last year working out? Glad you asked. Over the past year my reading has been about 25% Nook, 75% book (I keep a record of the books I’ve read, and I actually counted). That strikes me as about right: e-books cost money and library books are […]
Blog neglect again? By way of lame excuses, I’ve been busy with historical articles for my hashing blog and working on recipes for my cooking blog. Fat lot of good that does you, dear Paul’s Thing reader, right? I’ll try to make up for it with some random Friday observations. ——————– I may not drink […]