brainrow

There’s always a poll of some sort, called “QuickVote,” on CNN’s website.

A few days ago, they were asking whether the space shuttle was safe to launch. I didn’t vote in that one, because I don’t have the skills or the knowledge to make anything more than a wild guess. I’ll bet if I’d watched CNN’s reporting on the planned shuttle launch, I still wouldn’t have the skills or the knowledge to answer the question.

Yesterday, they were asking whether John Mason should marry his runaway bride, Jennifer Wilbanks. I didn’t vote in that one, either. I don’t know either of the people. I don’t know what’s been happening in their private lives. If you told me all their deepest, darkest secrets, I doubt it would shed any light on anything I should be worrying about.

Have we forgotten how to say, “It’s none of my business?”

North Korea is test-launching missiles. American soldiers are still being blown up in Iraq. We’re running up monstrous budget deficits. The economy is starting to sputter. Polar ice is starting to break up due to global warming. Uninsured Americans get sick and face financial ruin. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still out there, making plans.

The media should be shedding light on things we have a right to care about. Instead, they wallow in stories that are none of our business.

Now, here’s an interesting way to make America safer: not satisfied with just carrying a concealed weapon? In Florida, you can shoot first and ask questions later. The NRA promises to bring old Dodge City to other states, too:

A retired police officer in St. Petersburg, writing in the St. Petersburg Times, described the legislature’s bill as the “citizens’ right to shoot others on the street if they feel threatened” and asked, “Are they nuts?” That, we cannot answer.

We do, however, recognize a bad law when we see one, and any measure that increases the possibility of innocent people being killed or injured is a threat to public safety and does not belong on the books. This law, first of its kind in the nation, encourages people to be quick with guns, knives or fists. That’s scary. According to the Florida Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Inc., there are already “6 to 7 million untrained gun owners in Florida.”

Telling them that they need only feel threatened in a park or a hospital or a stadium or a domestic dispute to start pulling the trigger is tantamount to turning Florida into Dodge City.

That’s so macho!

Every couple weeks, it seems, I get a new flyer from my internet service provider asking me to sign up for their internet-based telephone service. And, for the past few months, my internet connectivity has gone flaky about once a week, usually for about a day at a time.

At the moment, I have very poor connectivity, but it’s the best I’ve had for two days. There is reason to believe it’s not going to get better until Saturday, at the earliest. I may not be able to post anything new here until these problems are resolved.

I didn’t know that Tom DeLay and Bill Frist knew enough about network configuration to pull this off, but I shouldn’t be surprised. The Amazing Dr. Frist can do anything!

Some fun George W. Bush videos, found via This Modern World.

Forty-four years ago today, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to fly into space.

It’s been reported that after he returned, he said, “I looked and looked but I didn’t see God.”

Apparently he looked out the window, saw the curving horizon, the deep black sky above and the earth, blue and white, below. He watched the sun rise and set. And he thought, “Nope, no God here!”

That kind of blind certainty can come only from unquestioning faith, I think. Atheism was the official government-sanctioned religion of the Soviet Union, like Islam in Iran and Afghanistan, or Judaism in Israel. Gagarin, apparently, was a True Believer.

Space exploration has come a long way since Gagarin’s pioneering flight. Men have walked on the moon. Robotic explorers have visited every planet in our solar system except Pluto. We communicate via satellite; our weather reports include photos from orbiting spacecraft, and we take that all for granted. The Hubble Space Telescope has shown us astonishing images of the universe around us.

The Bush administration is cutting money for the Hubble telescope from the NASA budget, but they will include funds in the 2006 budget to de-orbit the telescope, sending it to a fiery death in the earth’s atmosphere. Many reasons have been given for that decision — the Hubble Telescope is too expensive, a maintenance mission is too dangerous, new technology will make better alternatives available. I can’t help wondering whether there’s another, unspoken reason.

Biblical literalists can find it difficult to reconcile images of things a billion light years from earth with their certainty that God created the heaven and the earth about 6,000 years ago. Blinded by certainty, they can look and look at the Hubble pictures, but they don’t see God. So, down with the Hubble telescope!

This administration embraces the literalists on many issues. Was Hubble, too, sacrificed to blind faith?

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, on the beauty of a flower:

I have a friend who’s an artist and he’s sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say, “Look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. And he says, “You see, as I, as an artist, can see how beautiful this is, but you, as a scientist, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing.” And I think that he’s kind of nutty.

First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people, and to me, too. I believe, although I may not be quite as refined esthetically as he is, that I can appreciate the beauty of the flower.

At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean, it’s not just beauty at this dimension — one centimeter — there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure.

Also the processes — the fact that the colors in the flower are evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting — it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: Does this esthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it esthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which a science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.

That was from a 1981 interview on the BBC program Horizon. The interview was broadcast in the United States in 1983, on the PBS science program Nova. That’s where I saw it. It’s hard to pick one favorite Feynman story, but I do enjoy the first chapter of his memoir, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! The story is called “He Fixes Radios By Thinking!”

With science under attack from religious zealots, Feynman’s worldview is a breath of fresh air.

Andy Ihnatko writes about Johnny Carson.

When the time comes for me to explain to my nieces and nephews why Johnny was so terrific, I think I’m going to pull out that tape of the Letterman show and then I’ll ask them what a man needs to accomplish in a lifetime to receive in that sort of welcome.

The great Will Eisner, creator of “The Spirit” and long-time advocate of comic books as a real art form, has died.

I met him once. I said I’d wanted to meet him ever since I’d discovered The Spirit in a reprint book in the mid-1960s. He said, “Why didn’t you send me a letter?”

Good-bye, Will. I’m glad you were here.

Okay, I think I know what happened.

The Republicans sent out a flyer — or maybe it was a television ad — and it got a great response. It said something like this: “You can tell a lot about a man by the enemies he makes.” And then it showed Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and me.

They may have shown me wearing a John Kerry campaign button. If they didn’t have a photo of me with a button, they could easily Photoshop it in. They probably explained that I’d given money to John Kerry’s campaign and to the Democratic National Committee. Maybe they quoted some of my political blog entries.

Anyway, the flyer or ad or whatever must have been a huge success, pulling in big contributions from Republican fat-cats, or persuading undecided voters to vote for Bush because I was against him. That’s the only way to explain this letter I’ve received from George W. Bush, thanking me for my “great help on my campaign in Ohio.”

“Your state played a critical role in this election, and the Vice President and I were fortunate to have your help in campaigning in Ohio.” Bush writes. Gosh, this looks hand-written. He addresses me as “Dear Michael E.” George W. and I are on a first-name-and-middle-initial basis now.

This explains the White House Christmas Card. I feel sick that Bush carried Ohio, and even worse to think I might have played a role. And yet, it’s nice to be recognized as a major player.

There’s only one other explanation I can think of for George W. Bush sending me a letter of thanks. Incompetence. But these are the folks shaping the nation’s defense against international terrorism. They’re the people selecting federal judges. They’re the people shaping national health, educational, environmental and science policies. They’re the people making the key decisions about when and where to send American soldiers into harm’s way. They’re going to reform the tax code and fix Social Security. Surely, such people can maintain an accurate database of the names and addresses of their political supporters.

So let me apologize to my fellow Kerry voters for my role in getting Bush elected. I’m so very, very sorry.

But if, by some strange chance, I should soon be appointed to a federal judgeship, then it wasn’t my fault. (I’ll try hard to do a good job.)

Q: How many Bush Administration officials does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: There is nothing wrong with that lightbulb!

(Joke swiped from The Bush Survival Bible and hacked up by me. It seemed appropriate in light of the recent news that Donald Rumsfeld would be staying on as Secretary of Defense.)

I got a White House Christmas card yesterday. Quite a surprise — I’ve never received one before. It’s a pretty card, with a painting on the front depicting the Red Room of the White House decorated for Christmas.

The card was mailed from Crawford, Texas, and paid for by the Republican National Committee. I’m sure they mail out millions of them, but I don’t think everyone gets one. So, why me?

Have I ever, by word or deed, given the RNC any reason to believe that I would want to hear from them? What have I said or done to lead anyone to believe I’m a supporter of George W. Bush?

I feel dirty. I have some dreadful sin on my conscience, and I don’t even know what it is.

Via Hetty Litjens: here is Dubya, the Movie.

Only one actor can play him.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. Then you’ll really cry, when you realize that this is our president.

Predictions: Colin Powell will write a book.

Shortly thereafter, the White House will launch a program of character assassination against Mr. Powell. They will object to certain passages in his book. What those passages might contain, no man can say.

My mystic psychic prognosis: the objectionable passages will raise doubts about George W. Bush’s honesty, his competence, and/or his intelligence.

Okay, I confess. I’m not really psychic. I’m just imagining a repeat of the White House response to books from former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill and former anti-terrorism chief Richard Clarke. This White House has a limited playbook, and they always go back to the classics.

As the pundits keep pointing out, George W. Bush won the election thanks to the Religious Right, and it’s time for disappointed Democrats to stop pouting and start obeying the Big Guy.

The Bible has replaced the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, and all those trial lawyers that President Bush hates so much are scurrying around in confusion. Clearly, we benighted souls who have lived our lives under secular laws need to seek guidance from those whom God has chosen to rule over us.

I was emailed an open letter asking President Bush for help in understanding how to apply some of the laws. One of the many important questions:

I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2. clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

I hope President Bush (or perhaps his new Attorney General) will answer these questions. They have been asked before — a Google search showed me the same questions being asked of Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Rev. Jerry Falwell, but I haven’t been able to find any indication that either of those arbiters of morality has responded. We need their wise guidance. Without it, we’re in danger of living our lives just as we choose. Too dreadful to contemplate.

The Moral of the Story: If you’re going to be selective about which Biblical laws you observe, maybe you shouldn’t characterize your own choices as God’s immutable law.

Good questions from Mark Schmitt, discovered via Earl Bockenfeld:

The right question, I think, is not whether religion has an undue influence, but why it is that the current flourishing of religious faith has, for the first time ever, virtually no element of social justice? Why is its public phase so exclusively focused on issues of private and personal behavior?