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LAST FRIDAY’S BLOG ENTRY

We were on a mad dash job interview trip for my wife in Vancouver. We drove over and back in rain, snow and slush through the gorge of the mighty Columbia River. Good for us that we didn’t take the passes which were buried in snow during the weekend. See the snow at higher elevations in photo.



MCCAIN ESPOUSES CREATIONISM

I know it can be popular among libertarians and others of open mind to support a McCain type, but look what a corndog McCain is. Read the whole thing, and you’ll see he’s a sloppy flipper flopper.

[SNIP]
McCain To Deliver Keynote Speech For Creationists

Today is Darwin Day, commemorating the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and of the publishing of On the Origin of Species. The National Academy of Sciences, “the nation’s most prestigious scientific organization,” declares evolution “one of the strongest and most useful scientific theories we have.” President Bush’s science adviser John Marburger calls it “the cornerstone of modern biology.”

Yet, on February 23, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) will be the keynote speaker for the most prominent creationism advocacy group in the country. The Discovery Institute, a religious right think-tank, is well-known for its strong opposition to evolutionary biology and its advocacy for “intelligent design.” The institute’s main financial backer, savings and loan heir Howard Ahmanson, spent 20 years on the board of the Chalcedon Foundation, “a theocratic outfit that advocates the replacement of American civil law with biblical law.”
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In addition, last night I heard McCain’s coming out for the overturning of Roe Versus Wade. He’s damn desperate to become president, isn’t he? And some people, even I, thought he had character. Solly Cholly, no can vote for you.

CONTEXTLESS COMMUNICATION

Heard a kid the other day on some TV show about text messaging claim that “you” can communicate better by test messaging because people can’t hear your “voice tones” and confusing “stuff like that”. Yeah, don’t want people to get mixed up by the real stuff you’re communicating. No way, Jose! Do you think he knows that 90% of communication is non-verbal? Now we’re seeing why liars and cons can work the Internet so well—you can’t get the real 90% communication that’s hidden behind the words. Poor kid. He’s got it all backward.

FROM UNION TO MUSHBALL

The other day, while reading a biography of poet Walt Whitman, I came across an interesting insight. In Whitman’s preface to one of the first editions of his “Leaves of Grass”, he wrote, “The United States need poets.” Now—how would you say that? In this day and age, I’d say, “The United States needs poets.”

Forget about the plethora or dearth of poets in the U.S. I’m trying to call your attention to the fact that Whitman, little more than 150 years ago, would think of America as a collection of states and use the plural form of the verb “need” while I routinely use the singular form of that verb. Almost unconsciously, I no longer imagine that America is a collection of states. I think of the U.S. as one unity, undivided and separate. Thus, Whitman, “The United States [they] need poets.” And me, “The United States [it] needs poets.”

HELEN THOMAS SAYS

“I think reporters should pin down the candidates and get them to almost sign on a dotted line that they’re going to give regular news conferences. It’s the only institution in our society where a president can be questioned on a regular basis. If he’s not questioned, he can operate solo, as a dictator.”


URBAN CAMPUS

This is where I go to school, amid freight trains and auto parking. Actually, if you would turn your body about 95 degrees, you'd see a nice central campus area with lots of trees and nice landscaping. It was a cold winter morning when I took this.
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