Gadfly

Maxims

May 27th, 2015

“If You Don’t Know Where You Are Going…”

A reader recently sent me a marvelous computer -- animated video of our rover Curiosity landing on Mars in November of 2011. The depiction of the separation of various rockets, the bizarre complexities of the landing, the parachutes, the rover container bouncing across the sparse Mars landscape, the unfolding of the parts, and then the awakening of that marvelous creation of humans was simply amazing. Particularly for a young farm boy who…

Cold Showers

May 20th, 2015

Hot And Cold Showers For The Dirty Hapless Homeless

James Hilton wrote “Lost Horizon” in 1933 with the theme that World War I with the introduction of flying machines and the machine gun, the 1929 stock market crash, and the resulting Great Depression, would send the world into a disastrous maelstrom. So in order for a few to gain inner peace and a sense of purpose, Hilton created the mythical Shangri-La based in a Tibetan monastery in the Himalayas. Hilton hoped that after the…

The Great Mystery: How Our Brain is the Epicenter of Our Universe

May 13th, 2015

When 1976 Olympic decathlon champion Bruce Jenner, a real hunk of a muscular man, came out 39 years later with the statement “for all intents and purposes, I am a woman” in a rather spectacular TV interview, he also emphasized the mysteries of the brain. Jenner admitted his brain is more female than it is male. Why? Is it because of a wound? Is Satan playing games? Is it because of messed-up neurons and bad electrical connections? We don’t have a clue—yet. He was just a very young…

Babel Babble

April 30th, 2015

The Planet’s Tower of Babble

At last count the 7 billion descendants of Adam and Eve – or of Pithecanthropus erectus – who presently inhabit the earth try to communicate with one another through 7,000 languages.

Three billion use one of the top twenty languages in this order: Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, English, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese, Punjabi, German, Javanese, Wu Chinese, Telugu, Vietnamese, Marathi, French, Korean, Tamil and Italian. In contrast the…

Prisons of the Mind and Body

April 26th, 2015

Of Crippled Mice and Men

A few years ago conservative Republican judges on the US Supreme Court chastised their liberal counterparts for citing foreign legal cases in their written opinions because courts in other countries had nothing intelligent to offer American jurisprudence. We can learn nothing from civilizations that have lasted much longer than ours? The arrogance and resulting stupidity is absolutely astounding. The New York Times published an article recently that sanely and…

Imagine

April 15th, 2015

Imagine Being Gay In Grassy Butte Or Willow City

Memo to the North Dakota House of Representatives: The times they are a’changin.’

Science continues to rip away the shroud of ignorance surrounding religious beliefs. Perhaps baseball fans recall a player by the name of Billy Beane who played for the Dodgers, Tigers and Padres in his major league career. He has been employed by Major League Baseball to serve as an intermediary between the LGBT community and pro baseball. He came…

Christian Taliban

April 8th, 2015

March Madness Goes Way Beyond Basketball

I love watching the top 64 college teams trying to win the NCAA basketball championship. I only miss a few games. But watching the North Dakota Legislature and the U.S. Congress commit March Madness governance is also entertaining and very maddening at the same time.

And watching the Middle East March Madness erupting into wars among dozens of countries, regions, provinces, tribes, groups, armies and whatever, reminds me of a demolition derby with…

Dog Collars and Pitchforks

April 1st, 2015

It’s Time to Sharpen the Pitchfork Tines

The Walt Disney Corporation just raised the price of a day pass to the Magic Kingdom in Orlando to $105. This increase was made while one-half of our population is in poverty, and two-thirds of our families do not have savings enough to cover a $500 repair bill or a $1,000 emergency room charge. Over half do not have a month’s income on hand, and their retirement funds represent about four months of income.

In the last six years the median…

Animal Speech

March 25th, 2015

Will We Ever Parlay With Pachyderms?

According to the Bible—and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution—Adam and relatives of Pithecanthropus Erectus have dominion over all of the animals on earth. If Adam and Hannibal the Cannibal are the smartest of all the creatures on earth, why haven’t we learned the language of other animals? We usually try to teach other animals our language. Rarely do we try to learn theirs. In the song “Talk To The Animals” written and sung by Bobby Darin,…

Religion and Science

March 18th, 2015

Witches In Tanzania, The Yazidi Blues, And Living Lives Of Quiet Desperation

It has come to pass that when a minority religious group rules a majority religious group disaster will occur. Look at conditions in Syria.

About 200,000 Syrians have been killed in the two years of that civil war and millions have chosen to be refugees in neighboring states such as Turkey and Jordan. Former English Prime Minister Tony Blair, who joined with former President George W. Bush to create a similar…