Where Has God Gone? US Church Membership Plummets.

Religion & Atheism / UncategorizedLeave a comment

Yesterday, as I write this, anyhow, a friend popped up in chat and said the following. “Looking at the posting regarding the drop in church membership. I noticed that The highest rate of decline took place from 2010 – 2020. I think that many good folks said goodbye to the church because of the evangelical support for Trump. It was for many, the last straw. It would be interesting to see the statistics from 2015 – 2020. The unholy trinity of Trump, Franklin Graham, and the Falwells & Pool Boy.” He was referring to reports, like this one from The …

You Are Your Avatar. Sort of.

UncategorizedLeave a comment

On our lunchtime walk, Sally and I were discussing so-called “Zoom fatigue” and how some people just would rather not turn on their cameras. The result are people who follow protocol (as opposed to hard and fast rules) and they then experience a heightened level of fatigue because they are unable to properly (intuitively?) feel the conversation. If anything, there’s additional pressure because the people on camera get no visual feedback from those initials staring back at them on the screen. This is normal and it is, frankly, human nature. We look for visual cues when we’re in a face-to-face …

Heroes Like You

Brain Farts / LifeLeave a comment

It seems so cliche to say it, but these are difficult times and 2020 has been one difficult time after another. Rather than provide a laundry list, I’ll let you fill those blanks in for yourself. Even as you try to ‘fight the good fight‘, it starts to seem hopeless and you may even find yourself questioning whether there’s any point in trying. It’s good to step back and consider that there always needs to be an island of sanity in the raging sea of madness. Sometimes, it just seems so hopeless and you become convinced that the bad guys …

The True Story of Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer

UncategorizedLeave a comment

You know Dasher and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen. You also know about Comet, and Cupid, and Donder and Blitzen, but nobody really cares about any of those others, even Olive (the other reindeer). The only reindeer anyone cares about is Rudolph. You may not know the actual and honest-to-goodness true story of Rudolph, but lucky for you, I am here to tell you. So, sit back, gather your kids, hug your Christmas tree, light a fire in the fireplace, and enjoy the true story of Rudolph.

Money Has Officially Jumped The Shark

COVID-19 / Life / OpinionLeave a comment

One of the hard truths of our world is that money is really just a collective fantasy that only works because we’re all in on the game. There’s an expression, “suspension of disbelief,” that is usually reserved for written works of fiction, movies, or television shows, where the person enjoying the fiction is willing to temporarily accept the fictional premise as real for the same of entertainment. If you pause in the middle of a show (let’s use Game of Thrones” for fun) and you decide to note every place where this or that can’t possibly be real or make …

What’s Your Contribution?

COVID-19 / Life / OpinionLeave a comment

As this pandemic drags on, it raises questions about the value of what each of us does for a living, when compared to the amount of money that we make for those jobs. There isn’t a day that goes by right now, or somebody doesn’t talk about the heroes who are working in the medical field, or the heroes who are working on the front lines, or the heroes working in the grocery stores and providing us with essential goods and services, but the question that needs to be asked whenever we discuss all these people, is how we assign …

The American Ethos of “No Man Left Behind” During COVID19

OpinionLeave a comment

The American ethos of “no man gets left behind” is an enduring one. There are countless stories and movies built around that very theme: in America, no one gets left behind. No challenge is too great, and no price is too high, when it comes to making sure that our brothers and sisters come home safe. It’s amazing then, to consider how quickly many Americans are willing to sacrifice “a few hundred thousand people” for the sake of the economy. How do you get from “no one” to “a few hundred thousand people” as Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert opined …

No Man Is An Island

LifeLeave a comment

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. — Poem by John Donne, published 1624

This is Just a Dress Rehearsal

COVID-19 / OpinionLeave a comment

As we struggle with #COVID19, emotionally, financially, socially, & with our lives, we should consider that this pandemic is a dress rehearsal for something bigger, and we’re failing. Old, bad, ideas need to be retired. Spoiler alert: we have a lot of those old bad ideas to retire. America has shown that its desire to make a buck on everything by refusing to adopt Universal Healthcare, is killing its own citizens and making a dreadful disease worse for the entire world. For profit hospitals, health care, education, justice, etc, is hurting us all. Ayn Rand and her idiotic ideas be damned, …

Linux, Open Source, and Civil Disobedience

Linux/Open Source / OpinionLeave a comment

When I was still arguably a kid, there was an old TV show that my friends and I all watched called, “Baretta.” In the show’s theme song, “Keep Your Eye on the Sparrow,” voiced by the great Sammy Davis Jr., we hear the words, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” The show starred one Robert Blake, an actor who, as it turns out, would later be charged with murder. He was acquitted but later charged with “wrongful death” in a civil suit which he lost, despite the criminal murder acquittal. But I digress . . . …