-
About
- Yeah, in a Minute... is the personal dumping grounds of Paul Landry:
- NAME AND PRONOUNS:
- "Paul" / "he–him–his"
- FIND ME ON:
- The Fediverse:
- and pretty much everywhere else via [About.me]...
- PHOTO BLOG:
- LASTLY:
- But not leastly, [Fuck Facebook!]
- And Royally [Fuck Twitter!]
-
News Gathering vs. Confirmation Bias
- Remember, if you do not have at least one source of news that you turn to regularly, with which you routinely disagree, then you are not practicing news gathering! You are practicing [confirmation bias].
-
Search
-
Science
-
[S]cience is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996) at p.32.
-
[S]cience is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
-
Subscribe
-
Top Tags
-
Most Recent Entries
- 📌 Mastodon
- 📌 Science is more than a body of knowledge
- Happy Festivus
- Don’t Talk on Cell Phone While Driving, Just Don’t Do It
- Trump Contradicts Himself Regarding Sidney Powell’s Role
- R.I.P. Jimmy Buffet
- Project Street Vet
- The Best Way to Spot an Idiot: Kindness as a Signifier of Intelligence
- Wasn’t even a Nazi in his youth.
- Twitter Limits Backfire
- Oh no! The “Woke” Police are Going to Have to Cancel Their Precious Chick-fil-A
- Why Prince May Have Been the Greatest Guitarist Since Jimi Hendrix
-
More Recent Entries
- Twitter Limits Backfire
- Oh no! The “Woke” Police are Going to Have to Cancel Their Precious Chick-fil-A
- Why Prince May Have Been the Greatest Guitarist Since Jimi Hendrix
- Smokin’! Gary Clark Jr. Performs “The House Is Rockin”
- Fox News Settles with Dominion for $787 Million, Averting Defamation Trial Over its 2020 Election Lies
- How Tennessee Became the Poster State for Political Meltdown
- Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire
- Trump’s Arrest and Republican Outrage
- Nashville School Shooting and the Metro Nashville Police Department
- Nashville School Shooting
- All right, what’s next?
- Elon Musk puts $20 billion value on Twitter
- The One Thing Every Influential Guitar Tone Has In Common
- Extreme are Back, Baby!
- It’s Time to Ban “Right Turn on Red”
- Tucker Carlson texts reveal he hates Trump “Passionately”
- End Daylight Saving Time and switch to Standard Time all year
- Trump Visits East Palestine, Conveniently Forgets Own Record
-
Etc.
- Gunga Galunga. Gunga—Gunga Lagunga.
- For another grand, I'll let you take me out to dinner.
- Sippin' on booze in the House of Blues.
- Dude! Stop saying that—it was just a party!
- It's not exactly rocket surgery.
- Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
- Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock!
- iPhone, Bitch!
- 6EQUJ5
-
Meta
Tag Archives: government
On the National Debt
At this late stage of the game, if you can’t stand up and lay out in two minutes more than a few VERY SPECIFIC details about precisely what you’d cut in order to balance the budget – a prerequisite for paying off the national debt – and balance it fast, then you have no business […]
Let Gary Johnson Debate!
Gary Johnson is polling at 10.6% in the “battleground state” of Ohio. No wonder “the system” is so afraid of letting Gary Johnson debate… Jesse Ventura knows about polling low and winning elections, and he says, “Let Gary Johnson Debate“! When Jesse ran for Governor in 1998, he was polling at 8%… UNTIL he appeared […]
Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama
Conor Friedersdorf writing for The Atlantic: Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama — The case against casting a ballot for the president — even if you think he’s better than Mitt Romney I don’t see how anyone who confronts Obama’s record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they […]
Also tagged libertarian, opinion, politics, reason
Comments Off on Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama
What? Tea Party Republicans are Facing Serious Re-election Challenges?
AP Campaign 2012 (@APCampaign) on Twitter: Tea Party Republicans caught between promises to cut spending and demands of constituents back home: apne.ws/QUHRxk #Election2012 What? Tea Party Republicans are facing serious re-election challenges? Even those who won by double-digit margins just two years ago? Please -– please — take a moment and picture, if you will, […]
Also tagged libertarian, opinion, politics, reason
Comments Off on What? Tea Party Republicans are Facing Serious Re-election Challenges?
A few thoughts on “Voter Photo ID”
I understand the purpose: to help prevent voter fraud; and while reasonable opinions vary as to any supposed secondary or non-stated purpose(s), I don’t feel that reasonable opinions can vary on the importance of eliminating voter fraud. That being said, you have to admit it seems a little peculiar that you need a Photo ID […]
Also tagged opinion, politics, reason, skepticism, society
Comments Off on A few thoughts on “Voter Photo ID”
A Message for Ron Paul Supporters
RON PAUL SUPPORTERS: Don’t listen to anyone who gives you the bullshit line about how not voting for Romney is the same as voting for Obama. That is fuzzy, childish thinking and is, in fact, known to grown-ups as the “either/or fallacy” (and to educated grown-ups as the fallacy of “false dilemma” or “false dichotomy”). […]
Also tagged freethought, politics, reason
Comments Off on A Message for Ron Paul Supporters
Thurston Howell Romney
Conservative columnist David Brooks takes Mitt Romney to task in The New York Times… Sure, there are some government programs that cultivate patterns of dependency in some people. I’d put federal disability payments and unemployment insurance in this category. But, as a description of America today, Romney’s comment is a country-club fantasy. It’s what self-satisfied […]
The real problem with Romney’s ’47 percent’ gaffe
W. James Antle III writing at The Daily Caller: The problem is that Romney isn’t basing that figure on dependency on government programs. He’s using the rough percentage of people who pay no federal income tax. There are two reasons the percentage of Americans who don’t write checks to the IRS has spiked in recent […]
States Vary Widely in Number of Tax Filers with No Income Tax Liability
Scott A. Hodge writing at TaxFoundation.org back in 2010: Southern States Have Highest Percentages of “Nonpayers” Generally speaking, the most populated states have the most nonpayers. More than 6 million tax-filing Californians paid nothing to Uncle Sam for the 2008 tax year. That was 37 percent of the 16.4 million tax filers in California. The […]
Gary Johnson on the Stossel show
Gary Johnson on John Stossel’s show this past Thursday. Damn, what a president Gary Johnson would make! I wish they had posted John Stossel’s wrap-up segment, “Stossel’s Take”, but fortunately I was able to locate it on YouTube. This isn’t the best video quality, but John Stossel in his closing remarks to this past Thursday’s […]