Trump plays the god card

Christianity / Cults / Evangelicals / Politics / Religion / Religious intolerance / Theocracy / US PoliticsOne Comment

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For a nation that allegedly separates church and state, Americans sure love to splash religion all over everything, their elections especially. So this week, Donald Trump made headlines by accusing the frontrunner, Joe Biden of being “against god.” Cue the angels with trumpets. Americans make big oompah sounds about their politicians having religion — Christian religion specifically and preferably protestant — although curiously, as Trump has proven, the voters don’t seem to give a rat’s ass whether that same politician has any ethics or morality. Trump didn’t say which god, of course. I’m pretty sure it would be accurate to ……… click below for more ↓

The day that reason died

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Creationism / Critical Thinking / Education & Learning / Internet & Social Media / New Age Codswallop / Political fads / Politics / Pseudoscience & Quackery / US PoliticsLeave a comment

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I’m not a believer in alien visitations and UFOs, but I’ll bet if an alien did swing by, after an hour or two observing us, checking out Facebook or Twitter, they’d lock their doors, hang a detour sign around our planet, and race off. They’d tell their friends not to visit us because we were all nuts. Scarily, dangerously crazy. Seriously. What sort of world can be called civilized when it has people touting — and believing — homeopathy? Reiki? Chemtrails? Anti-vaccination screeds? Anti-mask whines during a frigging pandemic? Wind turbines cause cancer? 5G towners spread COVID-19? Creationism? Reflexology? Alien ……… click below for more ↓

Whatever happened to conservatives?

Canadian Politics / International politics / Municipal Politics / Politics / Provincial Politics / US PoliticsLeave a comment

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It’s hard to believe these days, but in many nations, conservative political parties were once actually the defenders of the nation’s interests, of the greater good, of the public, and of the state. They weren’t always the corporate shills, protectors of billionaires, privatizing libertarians, lobbyist puppets, Talibangelist lapdogs*, and racists they all seem to be today. No, once upon a time they actually cared about their country and its people, not just themselves and the firms that own them. Look at the Republicans in the USA. It the Republican party under Lincoln that fought racists and went to war for ……… click below for more ↓

Shopping carts, masks, and morality

Culture / Ethics & morality / Musings3 Comments

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The shopping cart theory — or rather the S.C. hypothesis, since it really isn’t a theory in the proper scientific sense — is a test of our humanity and whether we have any empathy, or so the notion goes: The shopping cart is ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. But it’s more than that: it’s a test of civility, social conscience, morality, community, and ultimately our own level of selfishness. But none of these sites seem to bring up the outright theft of shopping carts for the sake of convenience by someone too lazy to ……… click below for more ↓

Why Science Fiction Matters

Books & Reviews / Daily life / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Pop Culture / Reading & Literacy / Scifi and fantasyLeave a comment

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In the past two years, we’ve watched all the Star Trek series (on Netflix) from start to finish, and all the ST movies (on DVD). We just started watching the Battlestar Galactica series on Blu-Ray this past week (which we had seen some years back, but with long gaps between seasons). Both of us love scifi. Although the first ST series was often more space opera than scifi (as the Star Wars series has been), it matured quickly into some complex, adult-oriented storytelling in the subsequent series (a sad failing of the first several Star Wars films was their failure ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, part 5

Daily life / Health & Medicine / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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The resilience of the human body is truly amazing. Here I am, three weeks after major surgery, and much of my daily life is back to normal. I can drive, walk the dog, unpack the dishwasher, cook meals, pour the wine, feed the cats, walk upright… a far cry from my crabbed old-man style of a week or two ago. Not that I am fully recovered. I have several weeks or even months ahead of me for that. My incisions are still tender, in particular the spot where the Hemo-vac tube had been inserted. The main incision from my navel ……… click below for more ↓

Juet’s Journal in Word format

Blog & Blogging / Books & Reviews / England and Britain / History & Biography / My Writing / Personal Reminiscences / Typography / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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For those readers interested in the voyages of the late-16th-early-17th century adventurer, Henry Hudson, or in the European explorations of North America, I have recently scanned and edited a copy of Juet’s Journal into Word format and placed it online here. Here is my website on Henry Hudson, too. I haven’t done much with it of late, but that may be slowly changing as I find I have more time these days, during my recovery. The journal documents how Hudson and his crew ‘discovered’ parts of North America and sailed up the river that now bears his name. For Americans, ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 4

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A home is not a sterile environment. Not mine, anyway. With two cats, a dog, numerous houseplants,  rooms full of books, and my sometimes lackadaisical attitude toward cleaning, our home will never be sterile. Not to mention the microbiome we all carry around with us: 100 trillion microbes live on or in each one of us: only 10% of the cells we carry around are our own. Most of these colonists are benign, but a few species are opportunistic and will invade our territories when they can. Plus there are viruses around and on us, too. Coming home after surgery ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 3

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The operating room was cold. Not merely cool: winter cold. In my thin hospital gown, I felt the chill and shivered a bit. The nurse told me it’s kept cold to help discourage bacteria from thriving. I wanted to ask her about this, to chat about bacteria and their lives. I’d been reading about microbiology and the microbiome a lot of late, so I’m curious. But this was not the place or time. I was helped onto the table, and a warm blanket wrapped over me. Very comforting. My arms were splayed out from my body on small side panels. ……… click below for more ↓

Can an atheist be a good citizen?

Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Ethics & morality / Faith / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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The answer to the headline’s question is no, at least according to the late Catholic priest Richard John Neuhaus in a podcast in the Socrates in the City series (Sept. 22, 2004; I came across it as one of the chapters in the 2012 book from the podcast, Life, God, and Other Small Topics. Neuhaus’ talk was actually based on a 1991 piece he wrote.) To which response I must respond: codswallop. Not that I expect religious employees like Neuhaus to defend atheism, but to suggest people can only be good under the influence of the supernatural — and even ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 2

Daily life / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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There was an episode in the original Star Trek series called The Deadly Years in which Captain Kirk and some of his companions aged rapidly. At one point, the ship’s computer pegs Kirk’s age at between 60 and 72: he stumbles around clumsily, bent, shuffling, is forgetful, has anger issues on the edge of senility. He’s a caricature old man. Watching it recently, we laughed at the cartoonish portrayal of someone who could be a decade younger than we, yet behaved like he was much, much older. But there I was, a few days after surgery, bent and shuffling like ……… click below for more ↓

Reading Catullus

Books & Reviews / Classics / Language & Grammar / Style & usage / Translations & translating / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

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With the extra time to read on my hands these days, I’ve been dipping again into the poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus, Roman poet around the time of Julius Caesar. I’ve written in the past about reading Horace, a somewhat later Roman poet whom I greatly admire. I like to pick up a translation of Horace’s Odes or Epodes and read a few lines, maybe a whole poem, every now and then. Horace can be quite insightful and inspirational. Not so much Catullus for me. He’s entertaining in so many different ways. If Horace is a letter to the editor ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries Part 1

Daily life / Family history / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Stoicism & classical philosophyLeave a comment

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I should have started this a while ago. Perhaps when I received the first news something as wrong. But it took a while to really sink in. And then it was upon me. Although this is personal, I wanted to share it, in the hope others might find it useful. There’s a psychological process called the Kübler-Ross model, or the Five Stages of Grief, which is often applied to cancer and other diseases, but at least for me, it didn’t work that way. Her stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. But for me, the first thing was ……… click below for more ↓

How the pandemic defines who we are

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Political fads / Pseudoscience & QuackeryLeave a comment

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, wrote Charles Dickens in the opening of his novel, A Tale of Two Cities. Those words seem eerily prophetic when read today. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought out the best and the worst in humanity. Every day the news brings us stories of people rising to the challenges to save their communities, to show courage, spine, and care for others; and yet many others falling to their lowest, succumbing to wild conspiracies and imaginary threats, and protesting even the mildest restrictions. Balanced against the sacrifices made by frontline ……… click below for more ↓

The new normal

Behaviour & Psychology / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Manners & Civility / Political fads / PoliticsLeave a comment

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“Oh, the humanity,” cried Herbert Morrison, as he watched in horror as the giant airship, the Hindenburg, burst into flames at its mooring. The year was 1937, and Morrison’s words still echo down the decades. As the disaster unfolded in front of him, Morrison exclaimed, “…it’s falling, it’s crashing! Watch it, watch it, folks! Get out of the way, get out of the way! … Oh, the humanity… This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.” Eighty-three years later, uttering those words of anguish and disbelief wouldn’t be out of place in an eyewitness account of the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. ……… click below for more ↓

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