In Full House (1996)  Stephen Jay Gould, evolutionary biologist to the people, laments the passing of the heady days of multiple .400+ hitters in American baseball.  His explanation for this, resting in a biology text (yeah!), is that creatures in the evolutionary systems they are in (… Read full post »

Wow the times are rich for speculation on human limitations and their effect on American democracy!

Whenever my heroes are at odds with each other I, like Gene Lyons' horses, get a little scared.¹  I agree that people behave this way.  But they don't have to and they sho… Read full post »

Early CNN speculates (the graphics - I can't hear it in the bar where I eat breakfast) on the thing so many of us have been begging for:  the White House may actually propose something and try to get it through sans Republicans.

Was Kathleen Sebelius' unscripted leak actually scripted? &nbs… Read full post »

The Hoover Dam, a controversial (mainly over division of the anticipated benefit) giant federal project, was completed under budget and two years ahead of schedule.¹  People with names died; enough concrete was poured (24/7 for over two years) to pave a highway from Seattle to Miami.  A dog… Read full post »

I apologize to my reader( s ) for disappearing without a trace into the desert last week.    

Heading west from Durango on US Highway 160,  one soon comes upon the name of the great Moctezuma, imprisoned by the Spanish and later stoned to death by his own people, now memorialized… Read full post »

No research, just me:

I spent some time in central america (Guatemala and El Salvador) and I observed that what the common Catholic person there gets is fear (females) and a guilt that leads to alcoholism (males).  The both get a massive, continuous dose of mindfuck¹ that it seems makes… Read full post »

I'm supposed to be explaining my remark that my girlfriend is a "european" catholic.  That one will have to wait until we get in the desert tomorrow.  It is pure ignorant theorizing anyway, so I can get it out at the motel breakfast table.

1.)    David Sirota of Salon&nb… Read full post »

So my Catholic¹ girlfriend cringes when I get my Kurt Vonnegut on.  You know:  "We are just here to fart around..." and such about there not really being any purpose to our existence.  She just gave me Man's Search for Meaning so I guess, once I have the latter read, I will… Read full post »

Since I am just about as atheist an evolutionary biologist as they come, I'm trying to figure out why my favorite song in the whole world right now is The Rising, Bruce Springsteen's description of human brotherhood in the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Overtly christian, it's just not the messag… Read full post »

Dear Bank of America:

I reject the Annual Percentage Rate Increase Amendment.

Timothy J. Stark  Acct# xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx  exp. 00/00

Please change this card’s status to “pay only”.

As you can see from my record with you, and my credit report, I… Read full post »

Look at the opening leaders in the current print edition of The Economist.  The first asks our President Obama, repeatedly, to descend into the fray and start telling us what we need to do about our domestic policy (health care) disaster.  The second, ditto, on the perennial foreign po… Read full post »

Some youngsters just hit my dad's perfect Buick.  My father is relatively wealthy and could afford a nice place, but he wants to "wait until things get settled" with his divorce and thus he lives with the bohemians in the same block I lived in 20 years ago (in my twenties),… Read full post »