Are All Religions Identical? Not Quite… Phil Mole, a frequent contributor to Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer, explores the pervasive fallacy that all religions are identical … which he says is held especially by people who’ve “taken a world religion course in college or read a Joseph Campbell book.” A little knowledge is a dangerous thing… […]

The Jesus War (New Yorker Piece on Mel Gibson, “The Passion”) A really excellent, in-depth story on Gibson, his movie, his religion and how The Passion controversy came about… long and well worth the read.

Makes Me Sad: Harold Bloom Whacks Stephen King I like Harold Bloom’s work on Shakespeare. I like Stephen King’s page turners. I don’t think they are necessarily great literature, but I do think they are examples of great storytelling. Harold Bloom feels that King is blight on literature and is horrified by his receipt of […]

News: Firm Bans E-mail to Boost Production My assistant and good pal Clint popped into my cube the other day to tell me about this article. I said, “nice, but couldn’t you have just e-mailed it to me?” (Get it? Because the article is about how e-mail can hinder communication…) Actually, I’ve long thought that […]

The Sounds of Silence Astronomers at the Institute for Astronomy in Cambridge have heard the music of the universe. That music, they say, sounds like B flat, a B flat 57 octaves lower than middle C and unlikely to ever be useful in a rendition Journey’s “Faithfully.” The big, low note is rolling out of […]

New Images of the Womb Show Expressive Babies It’s very difficult to look at pictures like these and imagine that “life” has not already begun for these babies, despite the fact that they aren’t born yet. Of course, even seeing the grainy black and white ultrasound images of David in Kristen’s womb, with his hand […]

This One Would Definitely Be Published Under a Pseudonym So I’m working on my noir detective horror novel (novelette?) again this afternoon. It’s so much fun that I almost don’t feel guilty about setting aside more “serious” (money earning) non-fiction and fiction to write it. Here’s an excerpt: “Last time,” I said. He nodded and […]

Two years of gibberish Asked to contribute to “Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War,” George Orwell responded: “Will you please stop sending me this bloody rubbish… I am not one of your fashionable pansies like Auden and Spender…” Too bad a few more of America’s literary lights didn’t respond in similar fashion after 9-11.

Some think icon in Russian museum is deadly WHAT??? “An ancient icon depicting Christ has been removed from display at the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg after claims that its “energy field” is killing staff.” Energy field? I assume they’ve measured the energy, determined its wavelength, it general properties … oh, they haven’t? Now that’s […]

Pulp Fiction: The death of God and the Royale with Cheese. Mark T. Conrad looks at the vacuum that exists in the character’s moral centers in the movie Pulp Fiction. Interesting take on pop culture symbols being used by the characters to make sense of their lives, in the absence of real, Aristotelian frameworks. A […]