A Curious Little Blog

I like gadgets.  My grandfather did, too.  Of course, in his time, there were a lot fewer shiny gadgets to play with, and virtually no electronic ones; but he did have the first answering machine I ever saw.  I try to justify my gadget purchases with the idea that they will make my life easier, but I know a lot of the time that isn't the case.  Many times they just cause frustration.  But you never know if you don't try, and I love the trying part, so I don't mind experimenting with new things even if I know many of them will not work out as expected.  Every so often, though, I like to stop and think about the things I have bought and ask myself whether they lived up to expectations and whether they were worth the money.  Since other people may also be interesting in knowing how gadgets worked for me, and may perhaps learn from my mistakes and my successes, I thought I would post some of the results for everyone to see. (I don't have any affiliate re...

The intersection of religion and politics is complicated, but not so complicated that we can't make some sense of it. Some people think that "religion" means anything you want to call your religion. And while it is true that the heart of religious freedom is the right to believe whatever you want about eschatology -- the meaning of life, if you will -- this is among the least disputed aspects of religious freedom, and therefore the least interesting. No one will argue that you should have to convert to another religion to live freely in the United States. If you believe in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster with all your heart, that is your right. If you are an atheist, that is a form of religion and no one will claim that you should be forced to believe in a god. They might wish you did, but I have not seen any serious arguments that you are required to do so. But religion is not synonymous with whatever an individual believes about religion. ...

You know, if I thought anyone actually read my blog, I'd probably be a lot more careful about what I write here.  I guess that's part of the thrill of blogging:  you never know when you might suddenly become a teen pop idol, or get sued for defamation, or something else exciting. My first surprise was that someone responded to my post about the Mann vs. Steyn case to defend Michael Mann.  Since the person remained anonymous, I wonder if it isn't Mann himself; I've heard he spends a lot of time patrolling the internet looking for derogatory statements to defend himself from. Then someone responded to the anonymous poster, saying pretty much exactly what I would have said:  that the case for being compared to a child molester seems pretty weak, and I thought the focus of the case centered on the use of "fraudulent" to describe the hockey stick graph. And then the real surprise:  Mark Steyn himself cited my post over on his blog .  I have to admit, my fi...

I admire Mark Steyn.  Even if you disagree with everything he says -- and I'm sure a lot of people do -- he is a remarkable person.  A few years ago, Michael Mann, climate scientist and creator of Al Gore's famous "hockey stick" graph showing drastic warming in the last century, sued him for libel.  Steyn had called the hockey stick "fraudulent," among other things.  This is not the first time Mann has sued, although I'll be honest I'm having trouble finding other examples because these things don't get covered much in the mainstream media. Steyn's co-defendants, National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, are trying to get the case over with as soon as possible, which is a predictable reaction.  Steyn, on the other hand, views the suit as an aggressive attempt to shut down the debate, so he has no intention of settling.  In fact, he counter-sued Mann under anti-SLAPP legislation, which as I understand it seeks to defend peopl...

If you follow politics at all, you have probably heard people complain that our political discourse has become dangerously rude and argumentative.  Whether this is actually true is open to question; at least members of Congress haven't started beating each other senseless in the Capitol.  But I don't deny that many people today substitute ad hominem attacks in place of arguments, and this does nothing for the health of our democracy. The good news is, I have an easy solution to promoting civility in politics:  whenever you discuss an issue with someone, don't say anything you would not say to your best friend.  If you were arguing politics with your best friend, you would assume that his intentions were good.  If he was wrong about the issue, it would be because he misunderstood the consequences of his position.  You would not assume that your best friend had a secret motive, that he or she really did not want the best outcome for the countr...