Mangers Endangered

No one else here has yet mentioned this foo-fah-rah that emerged in the Washington state capitol in Olympia, and is spreading to others. Several governors have allowed Nativity scenes to be erected in their Capitol rotundas. In Washington state, the regional atheists got permission to put up an adjacent sign…

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Frank Rich: Rod Blagojevich is a small fry in our metastacizing culture of corruption

Rod Blogojevich is not a big fish by any means.   Most of the big fish remain nameless and free, according to Frank Rich of the NYT: What went down in the Land of Lincoln is just the reductio ad absurdum of an American era where both entitlement and corruption have…

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Just Looking

The story is famous and might be just a bit apocryphal, how Galileo turned his new telescope on the sky and offered to show many important people what he had found.  They refused to look, afraid to compromise the world view that bound them to their place and time.  Afraid,…

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The Current Bailout Plan in Graphic Perspective

We've tried to make sense of the huge barely-vetted amount allocated to bailing out failed financial companies. Here is a good view, comparing it to other government programs (adjusted for inflation), such as the Louisiana Purchase, Viet Nam, and the NASA all-time total budget: Chart from VoltageCreative.com Of note to…

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CNN Gives Science Short Shrift

Do you remember when CNN brought us 6 hours of live coverage of a war before the White House admitted that we were in one? Gulf War I forced a change in the relationship between official truth (Pravda) and media observation. Now, in the aftermath of Son of Gulf War,…

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