“Before we marry the guy next door, don't you think we ought to have a fling with a tall dark stranger and see if he can support us in the manner to which we'd like to be accustomed? And if he can't, we can always marry the steady beau who lives next door.” —Richard Land, in an NPR piece that aired January 13th [Richard Land is the president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.] The quote above was made in an effort to explain the need for a meeting that was scheduled to happen this weekend. At that meeting, 150 influential religious Conservatives ended up deciding [on the third ballot] that Rick Santorum is the Republican candidate that they want to support, collectively, as the anti-Romney. I found it absolutely fascinating that Dr. Land chose the words he did in making his analogy. I was all set to send him a letter congratulating him for finally facing his own homosexual tendencies. I was all set to thank him for ta...

As this ninth anniversary of September 11, 02001 approached, I spent a lot of time listening to "news" programming on the Sirius while I drove around for work. I have been deeply upset about the overt bigotry that's been dominating the discourse over the last several weeks. This past week, it occurred to me that it's been over a quarter of a year since I posted anything to my blog. That, in itself is a shame. In light of the mood that's overtaken the country, it seems especially a shame that my most recent post was about having participated in Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. Don't get me wrong. I am proud to have participated in Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. I think it was a meaningful event, and I think that it was, at least in my case [and, frankly, in its origins], a properly directed protest. Its aim had something to do with saying "intolerance is not welcome", "bullying is not acceptable", "threats against freedom of expression are ...

I participated in Everybody Draw Mohammed Day on May 20, 02010 by drawing Mohammed thrice…not because I am ignorant, immature, or xenophobic; but because I believe that while there is a universal right to be offended by substantially harmless things that other people do, the acceptable options as regards recourse to any such offense DO NOT include violence or threats of violence! "Stick Figure Mohammed" "Mohammed, In From the Cold", or "Mohammed Ponders a Cup" "Mohammed Basks in the Darkness" In order, these are the three Mohammed drawings I did today. The first is a pencil sketch, which I basically did to ensure that I would have something to show even if the rest of my day was unproductive. The second is the first charcoal drawing I've done in probably 15 years. The third is the second charcoal drawing I've done in the same time span.

The established pattern of my thought processes is that I get funny notions into my head and sort of let them stew in there for a while, for no apparent reason and with no obvious trigger. Such has been the case with what I present today. This won't be structured and it likely won't be pretty. Think of it as a philosophical doodle—just a sloppy sketch that may or may not contain a kernel of something worth pursuing in a more formal structure at some point. ----- Based on what we generally know about physics [not including quantum mechanics, which very few of us have any reasonable conception of], it seems to me that a perfectly sane person might reasonably conclude the following: If we could accurately model the position, spin, direction, and velocity of every particle in the universe at any given moment, it would be theoretically possible to plug that data all into an imaginary supercomputer and predict with perfect accuracy the exact state of everything at any future poin...