Bulletproof predictions for the 2008 Major League Baseball season. These are GUARANTEED outcomes.

After considerable thought, I hereby offer my predictions for the 2008 Major League Baseball season.   Unlike other prognosticators, I guarantee my predictions.  Therefore, feel free to bet large amounts of money that each of the following will occur, for certain, during the 2008 MBL season:

Unabashed optimism will surround the ritual of spring training.

Thousands of dignitaries and celebrities will show up at Opening Day baseball games to be seen.

Columnists will crank out thousands of articles on baseball, each of them suggesting that following Major League Baseball is important to the overall scheme of life.

Some young relatively unknown baseball players will impress the fans this year.

Some of the high-priced veterans will not do as well as the fans hoped and the fans will grumble, many of them expressing their displeasure at length on sports radio call-in shows, arguing that those players are washed up, on drugs, too old or slackers.

Millions of fans will go to the baseball stadiums, willingly paying thousands of dollars to attend baseball games and to buy outrageously over-priced beer and nachos (at least $170 for a family of four).  Thousands of these fans will be named Daniel, Robert, Michael, James, Mary, Susan, Karen, Linda or Donna.

During each MLB game, the fans will be subjected to an unending stream of advertising in the form of videos, posters and PA announcements.

Each team will play about 162 games, totaling about 2,500 games. [Note: Scientists have calculated that each team should play

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The quotes that started the so-called Iraq “war”

I refuse to use the term "war" when referring to the U.S. occupation of Iraq for these reasons. Do you remember the many politicians and news media personalities who assured us that we needed to go to "war" with Iraq and that it would be easy, fast and relatively painless for American…

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Obama on the meaning of “We the People”

Barack Obama has challenged Americans to rise above trite cartoonish conceptions of race. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU[/youtube] The full text of Obama's thought-provoking and impassioned speech can be read here. Are Americans ready for a candidate who dares to challenge them? Are they ready for a candidate who speaks comfortably of the complexities…

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A Martian anthropologist tries to understand Easter.

I enjoy chatting with Martian anthropologists.  They visit Earth without preconceptions and they ask obvious questions. 

Recently, I encountered a Martian anthropologist who was struggling to understand what Easter was all about.    I tried to explain it in simple terms.  I first tried to tell the Martian Anthropologist (I think it was a “she,” so I’ll use the feminine pronoun) about Good Friday. I told her that a magic fellow named Jesus dies every year on Good Friday and the Christians get all glum, even though He doesn’t really die every year, and we’re not entirely sure that there was a Jesus or that he was truly magic.

I paused, then explained further.  I told her that Catholics are my favorite kind of Christians because I was raised Catholic and because they strive so hard to not eat meat on Good Friday.  She asked why they didn’t eat meat and I said I didn’t know, especially since they eat fish and fish seems to be meat.  At church, it gets even stranger, I explained.  Catholics eat bread that they claim was “transubstantiated” into the actual body of Jesus (even though it still looks and tastes like bread.  The ironic twist is that this bread is supposedly meat and the Catholics eat it on Good Friday, even though they promise not to eat meat on Good Friday. 

Then, every year on Easter Sunday Jesus is said to rise from the dead and save us, even though we weren’t the one’s …

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The tempting beauty of orchids and Darwin’s insight.

“There is no evidence whatsoever that flowering plants evolved.”  

Answers In Genesis

I can understand this resistance to believing that orchids evolved without the help of God-the-Artist.  I understood this resistance while strolling through an extraordinary display of orchids today at the Missouri Botanical Garden.   

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It was like looking at fireworks.  Just when you thought you had seen it all, you would see yet another dazzling package of color and shape.  Why would “Nature” waste such time on crafting such masterpieces?  For those primed by a religious upbringning, the emotions would compel the thought that flowers of this type must be no less than “God’s” aesthetic gift to Humankind.

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Such thinking, of course, is prevalent among creationists.  Prevalent and wrong.   Not that orchids sculpted by natural selection are any less stunning in appearance that those that might have been crafted by an omniscent deity.   They are what they are.  They are compelling beings, those orchids.  They are beautiful and they are alive.   And they can be appreciated by anyone, of any world view, who comes to view them.  I imagine that, today, many creationists lined up with those who are convinced by evolutionary theory, all of them appreciating the orchids. 

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Viewing this orchid display reminded me of Darwin’s writings regarding the many versions of finches Darwin observed on his trip to the Galapagos.   Regarding those finches, Darwin concluded that, in geographical isolation, the various species of finches evolved from a small number of common ancestors so that each species …

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