Bible Bears

I just learned a Bible story about bears. It's in Kings 2: 22-23. Here's how Skeptics Annotated Bible summarizes it: God sends two bears to rip up 42 little children for making fun of Elisha's bald head. Here's the passage:

2:23 And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. 2:24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

[BTW, "tare" means "to pull apart or in pieces by force, especially so as to leave ragged or irregular edges."] I don't remember hearing any sermons based on this passage.

Continue ReadingBible Bears

DEA Chief evades simple questions

WTF . . . the head of the DEA can't say whether meth, crack cocaine or heroin are "worse than marijuana." And she looks not quite right (probably for reasons other than marijuana) as she struggles with this really basic line of questions. Oh, I get it. She's not actually saying what she thinks. She's being political, meaning dishonest. She is not going to help American exorcise its long-running and horribly destructive drug war demon. Addendum: Check out the low-wattage amoral head of the DEA. I would have enjoyed seeing Steve Cohen grill her for another hour. And then we should fire her. And then the DEA should publicly apologize for all of the pain they are causing users of medical marijuana.

Continue ReadingDEA Chief evades simple questions

Bicyclists mowing down pedestrians

I often commute by bicycle, so this article caught my eye. In three separate incidents, three cyclists in San Francisco have killed pedestrians by running into them. This most recent example suggests flagrant and reckless conduct on behalf of the cyclist. I sometimes tell people that I prefer riding a bike to driving a car, because although I might get myself killed, it's not like I'm going to kill someone else on my bike. Well, I need to rethink that.

Continue ReadingBicyclists mowing down pedestrians

Onion: Elder offers terrible advice

The Onion "reports" on this grandfather's terrible advice. This resonated with me. How often do you hear someone claiming that, "Of course I know what I'm doing. I've been doing it for 45 years." Really? You should be deemed proficient because you've been hacking away at it for a long time? It's certainly true that a lot of people who are excellent at an activity have been doing it for a long time. This is not the same thing as claiming that one is excellent because they've been doing it for a long time. This sort of claim violates basic rules of logic. Just because this is true: "If it rains on me, I'll get wet", it does not follow that "If I'm getting wet, it is raining on me." You could be in the shower or at a swimming pool.

Continue ReadingOnion: Elder offers terrible advice