• What I find occasionally odd is that so many conventional bits of theology like this are so controversial if someone actually mentions them in public. God permits evil. My faith is the only true one. People of other faiths are doomed to spend eternity in Hell. Etc. There’s a lot of stuff like this which is either explicit or implied in sects of all kinds, and at an abstract level we all know it. Somehow, though, when someone actually says it, it’s like they farted in church. Weird.

    —

    [Richard Mourdock Gets in Trouble for His Extremely Conventional Religious Beliefs Mother Jones](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/10/richard-mourdock-gets-trouble-his-extremely-conventional-religious-beliefs)

    The obvious explanation is that most Americans don’t actually believe what they say they believe, making those that do seem very, very strange.








  • Pocono Environmental Education Center, October 2012.

  • There’s no doubt that some U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost to China. But you can’t bring iPad and iPhone manufacturing “back here” for the very good reason that it was never here in the first place. Ten years ago, approximately zero Americans were employed in manufacturing tablet computers and smartphones and that’s still the case today.

    […]

    Americans never had any jobs manufacturing iPads. But thanks to the fact that Chinese factories are churning out iPads, lots of people have jobs that wouldn’t exist if the iPad wasn’t available as a hit product.

    —iPad manufacturing jobs: You can’t bring them back because they were never here.






  • Bought an Olympus XA2 at a sidewalk sale this summer. Worked like it was brand new, even with old, abused film.

  • Roughly speaking, liberals and conservatives have the exact same “glass jaw” in American politics, which is that they want to change things and the voters don’t. The political press seems to have a hard time admitting this, but all evidence points to the complete opposite of a widespread hunger for change anchored by bold plans and courageous thinking. What people want, overwhelmingly, is a politician who’ll promise not to do anything.

    —Change we can’t believe in: The amazing complacency of the American voter.