1)  Hug/Thank a veteran (or some useful equivilent)

2) Send an active-duty person a letter and/or gift.

3) Speak your concience.  (Yes, even if you disagree with me)  (^_^)

4) Inform yourself.

5) Vote, act and contribute according to your concience.

Everyone have a good forth of July.  And remember:  Freedom isn't free...but bullets and blood are not the only legal tender.

I'm adding Alan's blog to my blog roll:

SciFi fan, Christian, sciency-type, non-fundie, non-wacky...

...and more than a little bit gay.

His current post is an informational post about fireworks informed by time he has spent working with them.

I'd like you all to meet Fred.

Grasshpper and I were spending our semi-weekly mom/son day together.

Every other week, my fiddle lesson falls on the same day as his Cello lesson, so we combine the trips as well as my trip to the Allergist to get my allergy shots.

We also take the time to stop at one of our favorite coffee shops for sandwiches, and talk about whatever.

Today, we saw a poster about Fred.  He's a six-year-old with inoperable brain cancer and 18 months to live if he doesn't get treatment.

Any treatment he gets is strictly pallitive, and will not cure him...but it will buy him both quantity and quality of time.

Grasshopper has pledged to donate three weeks worth of allowance, and I told him I would match his donation.

If you've got an extra few bucks hanging around in your pocket...consider donating it to Fred's fund:

Friends of Fred: c/o TCF Bank 3118 Lake Street East  Minneapolis, MN 55406

I know I bring a lot of these sorts of things to your attention, and we can't all donate to everything, but I'm pretty sure Fred would like to receive encouraging notes and having a cheering section on his Caring Bridge page, too.  So if you don't donate, think about clicking the link above, and it will take you to his home page.  There is a link there to his Careing Bridge Page.

You too can be a Friend of Fred.

An open letter to Ms. Schlafly and family:

Dear Family Schlafly,

Yes, it’s true that we live in a universe of infinite mystery , wonder , terror , possibility and what should probably be terminal silliness .

Deal with it.

Unfortunately, attacking the people who describe said universe will not change the nature of the universe itself.

Controlling the study of art and literature that describes the variety of the human condition within that universe will not change the fact that sometimes people break, and can’t be fixed.

Blaming the victim only works in a situation where most of the society is made up of perpetrators.

You can create your own authoritative references.   You can try to force God into a 6,000-year-creation schedule.   You can even edit your own controversies .

But it won’t make you one iota safer, give you one minute bit more control over God or the universe…won’t even  shed a single lumen of truth on the nature of existence.  Nor, in the fullness of time will it even grant you more than a place as a useless name in the bone-pile of history.

Just thought you should know, so you can quit wasting your time and ours, and get on about the business of living constructively in the world as it is.

Sincerely,

Teresa

Not all that glitters is gold...

Not all who wander are lost...

And not all that is "gay" is homosexual.

(Hat Tip:  Pharyngula)

"Thumpin' the mellon"

"squeezing the mellons"

That episode of "Ellen" Where Ellen admits she's gay, turns around in the super market to see the one super-model cradeling a pair of actual mellons...

Apparently...we didn't need to work quite so hard to sexualize mellons.  God!  All that wasted effort! 

When will we learn?  I ask you...when will we learn?

Nature does so much better than our poor attempts and scribblings.

(Hat Tip: Erudite Redneck)

I just realized something.

When I write in this blog it is usually because I FEEL something and want to make a note of it.

The words that best describe the emotions I most often have when I write are:

Surprised

Wondering

Confused (one of my favorite emotions!  It means I've got something to learn right in front of me!)

Joy

Interested

Curious

Perplexed

Elated

Amused

A lot of people have read this blog.  A few people have commented on it.  Some of those people have commented on the blog itself, many have just sent e-mail.

Sometimes those comments are along the lines of "Why do you let this bother you?"

They read me as:

Annoyed

Bitter

Angry

Crabby...

Well...you know.

So, I just REALIZED this.  My emotions are not coming through.  Some of you get that I'm worked up...but you attribute the worked-up-ed-ness as negativity.

I'd just like to say for the record that I am a student of the universe.  Not, perhaps a particularly apt one, and maybe one prone to some flights of fancy once in a while (I do love me my Scifi)...but EVERYTHING and ANYTHING will seize my attention and focus...no matter how trivial it may seem to you, I can find it fascinating.

I might think about the obnoxious behaviour of someone days later, and people say "just let it go"  because they think I am still stinging from ill treatment.

In fact, I am still just trying to figure out what happened, trying to fit it into my world-order...

...understand it.

I can continue to worry an idea long after the life has left it for most people.

Like Eyore playing with the burst balloon and the empty honey-pot.

It might cut for some a gloomy figure...but trust me:  I'm perfectly happy.  Don't worry about me.

...b ut you have to admit that it would have only been improved by the addition of Captain Jack...they could have worked him in there a number of different places, like maybe hitting on the penguin or in between the two Replublicans with a thought bubble that declares "Man Candy!"...somethin' like that.  Doesn't matter what, as long as he's shirtless...

(Hat tip:  Saveau)

At Denialism.com I got a link to this map.

It shows the links to all the major players in evolution denialism.  Fun for all.

For those of you who worry that someday Phyllis Schlaffly will eventually die (hopefully at a ripe old age surrounded by a loving family, and at peace with her time and efforts on Earth) and leave us without entertainment...

...fear not!  Her son Andrew is apparently taking on Evolution much as his mother spent her life batteling feminism.

His tactic appears to be to repeatedly demand raw data from researchers:  Data he is not qualified to understand, is demanding through the wrong channels, and ultimatly, data that is largely already public.

A bold tactic, one must admit.  Not as bold as making the statement that women are to blame for their own sexual harassment...but often the next generation fails to live up to the audacity of their elders.

Dobson freaks out at Obama's remarks regarding separation of Church and State...and proves Obama's point.

If Biblical priciples are going to be running America...whose priciples do you want them to be?

Dobsons?

RJ Rushdoony's?

Obama?

The infamous Phelps clan?

And don't give me that BS about "Sound Doctrine".  People were arguing about "Sound Doctrine" before Jesus came along (Pharasees and Sadducees anyone?)

And Jesus came along and tried to "clear it all up" and people have been killing each other over it ever since.

Luthers "Sound Doctrine" wound up with him recommending that Jews be stripped of their rights and property, condemned to forced labor, and/or expelled from the country...and he declared that all the trouble German people suffered because of them was because they should have killed the Jews and didn't.

I also love how Dobson comes right out and says that faith-based public policy should not have to be amenable to reason.  Ya know, come to think of it, Luther said the same thing.

I actually sort of admire Dobson's honesty.

Crazy, rambling, nut-bag book award contestants:

1.  John Coleman (leading AGW denier, weatherman, and founder of The Weather Channel) is nominated for his book: One World Order:Socialist Dictatorship.

2. Rev. Scott Lively is nominated for his book:  The Pink Swatika

I nominate these two books to compete against each other, because of their flamboyant style of historical revisionism, their bold cherry-picking of facts, the virtuosity of the authors in re-interpreting both the significance and meaning of the events they cite...and their nearly identical stylistic choice of running through a dizzying number of unrelated or tenuously related names and unsupported assertions in the first chapter. (ie:  Beatix Potter was in on it!  She was married to that dude, who knew the other one, who went to school with this guy who once said something that sounded communist!  and she wrote books for CHILDREN!  the children!  Oh dear God, won't someone think of the children?) - Sorry...couldn't resist.  Beatrice Potter - Webb... not Beatrix Potter.  :-)

The catagories are

 1. Crazy (unfounded in rational order and scholarship)

 2. Rambling (unfocused in argument and approach)

 3. Nut-bag (dependant upon conspiracy).

You can vote for one or the other in each catagory.