John Stewart’s Parting Thoughts on Bullshit: If You Smell Something, Say Something

Wake up and smell the bullshit…

Marching to be Equal

Dining with Lesbians

And so we went, together, holding hands. Marching for gay rights might sound ordinary to many of you but it’s very special to us, to me. My partner has never, I say never, joined a rally, march or demonstration of any sort. The closest she ever got was dropping me off two blocks away from the site I was going to hold IDAHOT at, and she was very shy about being seen even at that distance.

The rally itself was alright, about 1,000 people turned up.  I loved how one sign said “I am straight.  I support Gay Marriage” (too bad I couldn’t get it clearly on camera).  It was peaceful along the way and the police were nice, too (we had to ask for directions and were politely shown the way by a middle-aged policeman who showed no signs of negativity towards the gay rally).

On the way to…

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No, We Are Not Civilized. Or, Why the 21st Century is Still Stuck in the 12th (The Persistence of Middle-Ages Mentality in the Modern Age)

With the tragic murder reported today of US journalist James Foley by Islamic extremists ISIS, one has to question how civilized we really are…

That is but one act of madness in a world plagued by countless acts of religious, political, social, economic and cultural insanity.

Preparing to come out

Strangely, I didn’t anguish about it. It just seemed like a natural progression.

Recovering Agnostic

It all started with the best of intentions.

First, there were a lot of issues that were flying around my head. My previous beliefs were becoming ever less secure, but I’d been through this before. Most people find their beliefs wax and wane, so this wasn’t anything I was going to bring up out of nowhere to people who I wouldn’t normally be discussing my theological positions with. It was just business as usual.

Then I started to drift away, losing my fear of unbelief and increasingly exploring those areas and imagining a life without religion. It was different, but possibly no more than increased empathy and openness to different arguments. I stayed put in the church, and nothing really changed. Still nothing that was worth specifically mentioning to anyone.

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Trailblazing Space Pioneers: The Mercury 13

An amazing discovery…

Stardust and Steel

Working at a library, I often come across some incredible books. I came across this book recently:

“Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream” by Tanya Lee Stone

As a woman and as a space geek, I was amazed that I had never heard of these women. I of course had to check out the book and read about these amazing trailblazers of the early space industry.

It all started in the thick of the space race, and the Mercury 7, (Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and Gordon Cooper) were chosen to pioneer the US adventures in space. Dr. Randy Lovelace II was the head of NASA’s Special Committee of Bioastronautics, and was a bit of a forward-thinker for his time. He believed that women should be considered for astronaut candidacy. At the time, women could not get bank loans, could not play professional…

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Since being on the high school chess team, I haven’t played much over the years. What a pity! However, I did not ever think about chess quite like this blogger, so thought I’d reblog this here…

Utterly disgusting, especially as it seems that the common denominator in these attacks on women, is religious fundamentalism.

Don’t you notice that the only people still making great music are those who play REAL instruments? All this monotonous electronic drivel is rather nauseating. Seems all you need these days is a pretty voice and a pretty face (men too!)…

Spacial Fray

The answer, undoubtedly, is yes.

I have had this argument with my boyfriend a few times, and he just can’t come to accept it. It’s not fair, he said, to compare the music industry as we know it today to the music of the past, because we see all the bad music around us today whereas bad music of past decades has faded out of history and we don’t even know about it today.

This is a good point. However, if you take a cross section of the most popular songs of each decade, you can see from the top five hits of each year how the trend is really going. Take this list for example. It begins in 1946. We have jazz standards, some silly pop songs. Then we move to The Beatles, who, let’s be honest, were some of the finest pop music of the century. In the…

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I don’t often reblog posts, but every once in a while when one comes across something special worth sharing, it’s a necessity.

I guess this post makes me feel nostalgic as I used to do new things with regularity, until recently. Could be old age… but that’s a poor excuse, right?