This week we Catholics celebrate Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. A lot of good Catholics were slightly hung over from too much Mardi Gras on Tuesday, but never mind: The idea is that “there is a time to party and a time to fast”, and now the time to fast has arrived. Traditionally, at [...]

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The Aliens are coming! The Aliens are coming! Or maybe not…. One of the amusement of studying ancient history is how all those sophisticated Yanks seem to think “primitive” people are stupid, so anything they don’t understand is attributed to “Aliens”. As Chesterton once quipped: Once people stop believing in religion, they start believing in [...]

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We were told, point blank, that we don’t, by a local government employee. Here’s the story. In the tiny town we live in, apparently there have been an increasing number of code violations regarding, among other things, people parking cars on their lawns, off the driveway. My wife, returning from our town’ s annual Christmas [...]

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In school I was reasonably good at math, I can’t say that it was my favorite subject, I hated them all with varying levels of vehemence. For example I could see no good reason to learn Latin, it hasn’t been spoken for centuries. Unless you were planning on becoming Pope, it seemed a waste of [...]

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YouTube is full to the gills of cats, dogs, and children doing strange things. They are amusing, but I have a video that makes them all seem boring and mundane! My wife claims that I know the strangest people, I disagree, doesn’t everyone know a few ex-mobsters, FBI and CIA types, musicians, and a few [...]

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I spend most of my time with Authors, Musicians, and Film Makers. I think it is fair to say that they are mostly eclectic and eccentric. The creative process is not an easy road. I live in rural Mississippi, so how on earth I managed to bump into Washington State inventor Mack Burleson is still [...]

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When you turn on the TV and tune into any of the ‘news’ networks (I do use the term news loosely) all you hear is doom and gloom. The Middle East is like a huge Whack-a-Mole booth. Fix one problem, and two more rear their ugly heads. The US news is just as depressing, the [...]

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The Ig Nobel awards have been a great event for many years. They offer the chance to celebrate the hard work of really smart people. The world is used to the Nobel prizes, these accolades are handed out (mostly) to men and women that have made a major contribution to the world as we know [...]

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“So JFK is going to be the new president. Right? Not so fast. Some goober decides to drive up to the Kennedy compound with dynamite in his car….” I have a long memory, so I’m still unwilling to bet that Mitt Romney will win or keep the Republican nomination, much less the election. I know [...]

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I’ve always been a little nervous of those elevators where you have to manually open the door. They creep me out. But, it was nearly one hundred degrees and Gramercy Typewriter was on four. In the end, I would take the elevator. And, I’d end up with a newly refurbished Olivetti Lettera 22. In this [...]

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This morning I rose and read the “sermon of the day” before I went to church, and sure enough, another highfalutin sermon on the Good Samaritan. For those who are not Christian, this is one of Jesus’ stories about a man beaten by robbers who was helped by a passerby who belonged to a rival [...]

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This year’s presidential campaign has been going on forever, and it still has five months to go. But silly season is here: The dog days of summer are still to come, but we already see the campaign going to the dogs. First, we had Romney putting his carsick dog on the top of the car, [...]

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My apologies for stealing the title from the late Sandy Denny and her fabulous song Who Knows Where The Time Goes, but it seemed fitting. Who does know where the wind goes? Every TV station in the country has a Weatherman, likeliest the most unpopular star of the station. Most are about as exciting as [...]

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I see the anti Asian mafia have a new scalp on their belts, with the conviction of an Indian born student for a “hate crime” and invasion of privacy. But lost in the homophobia meme of the politically correct is a question: Do students have the right to privacy in one dorm’s room? Because in [...]

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It is written in oh so politically correct language, but it should set off alarm bells. A US government appointed ethicist at the National Institutes of Health just wrote an article in the Journal of Medical ethics (which can be read at the British Medical Journal website)  proposing the handicapped should be killed for organ [...]

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It would appear that presidential wannabe Mitt Romney is fighting a similar battle as Rick Santorum on the internet search giants Google and Bing. Santorum’s anti gay comments led to the web site SpreadingSantorum.com being created. To say the least the site is not very flattering. To make matters worse a Google search on ‘Santorum’ [...]

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In the introductory article I made mention of the well known Russian psychic Nina Kulagina. There is enough black and white film evidence that still survives today that begs the question, did she really have the powers to remotely control objects? Do photographs and video prove facts, or not? That is a very deep question. [...]

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A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by author p.m.terrell, asking if I’d like to take a peek at the galley for her upcoming book Vicki’s Key. Having worked with Patricia in the past on some of her other books I readily said yes. She is an accomplished author of thought provoking novels. Vicki’s [...]

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As if there are not enough wonderful ways to fritter the day away online, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to name but a few, Google has now got into the act. In a glorious piece of high tech nerding they have rolled out a truly amazing piece of nerdery with the latest upgrade to Google Analytics. [...]

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For many years people have flocked to Las Vegas for the opportunity to ‘get rich quick’ on the gaming tables, and get ‘hitched’ in one of the many Wedding Chapels that adorn the city.For those in a rush, there are even ‘Drive Thru’ options. In less time than it takes to order a couple of [...]

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I thought I had seen it all, but Pakistan has decided to take ‘net censorship to new lows.  It would be amusing if it was not true. You can read the whole article here. And just for fun, here are a few Tweets that will not make the grade! My family sold the OX and [...]

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London Broil (part 2) If you missed part one, you can read it here. In the late 1980′s I took my BBQ destruction techniques to sunny San Diego. Here was the perfect climate for the year round tormenting of Sears BBQ’s. I was ‘headhunted’ to join a large and complex computer project, the computers in [...]

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Yum! Mushrooms. Who doesn’t like them (if cooked properly, even kids will eat them). The problem? Well, the Epicurious blog has an article on the joys of mushroom picking. It seems that a lot of yuppies in the Pacific Northwest have decided that the economic downswing is a good reason to take up this hobby. [...]

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The latest “Western” movie from Hollywood, about aliens and starring a petulant British actor, was a bomb, and that led many “experts” to again predict the demise of the Western as a film genre. Of course, the real reason for the problem is the nihilism of Hollywood, not the lack of stories. So could I [...]

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It was a cute photo, so I place it on my blog. a great photo of a happy young teenager holding a water sprayer, somewhat wet herself, and smiling happily. There is enough bad news in the world, so I like to post stuff that reminds us that not all of life is war and [...]

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 The man was well until his wife baked him a “healthy recipe” from the NYTimes “Healthy recipe section: Fava bean and artichoke stew. He soon became pale and jaundiced, and it took awhile for the ER doc to figure out why the man was sick. He had an acute hemolytic crisis, where his red blood [...]

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I spend a good deal of time combing through press releases, most are boring. Lets face it who cares that Joe Blow has been promoted to chief engineer of the Freds Widget Company? I am sure that Joe likes the attention, and that he richly deserves the promotion. The chances are that Freds make the [...]

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The “meme” in much of the press is blaming right wing political talk for the tragedy in Tucson. Well, this is not new: I remember a similar paranoia against the right after JFK was killed in Dallas, never mind that his killer was a communist who had earlier tried to kill General Walker, a real [...]

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You have survived the insanity of Christmas and New Year’s, you are back to work, and likely still nursing a hangover from over indulgence. January for many is a Blah month. Worse than that, it is a month of regret. Regret over the credit card bill that you know is headed to a mail box [...]

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I was joined by my good friends the writing and research team of Mannie Barling and Ashley F. Brooks for another 90 minutes of radio madness and mayhem. I never fail to be amazed at what some people do. This week we were joined by a very special guest Jose Escamilla. There is a TV [...]

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