When I see the news with its talk of ruin, injustice, inequities (and iniquities) and failures in the world, it all seems very “gloom and doom”. Terrorism, the rise of militant Islam in the world, the impossibly high cost of health care, the high taxes, the unemployment, the failing educational system, man-made global warming etc., hurricaines, earthquakes, ad nauseum. The things that they are trying to get us to believe in so we’ll be too upset to resist their efforts at control because we’ll ASK them to come in and protect us from the bogey-men.

I try to keep my …

The group Downsize DC has put up a good quote from Thomas Jefferson about taxes, which I’m adopting and putting on my quotes page:

“We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the …

Global warming is happening - there’s little controversy over that (although with snow here in Oregon in mid April, it’s sometimes hard to believe that other areas are warming up enough to average it out). There’s a lot of controversy over how much, and to what degree it is caused by human activities.

Here’s a cute little test of your knowledge of Global Warming, in honor of Earth Day. How hysterical should we all be, and to what degree should we all be trying to shut down carbon emissions and cripple industry, in an attempt to “handle” the causes of global …

I rarely post humor. Something about Gaping Void (cartoons from Hugh MacLeod, a cartoonist currently living in Alpine, Texas) got me laughing. There’s not enough of some kinds of laughter in the world, and too much of the laughter out there is mean-spirited. This cartoonist seems to have done a good job of being — what’s the opposite of mean-spirited? — right, NICE!

I think I’ll keep this widget in place until he does something mean, rude, or in some other way offends my sensibilities.

Just a couple of weeks ago our grandkids were building little snowmen after what was probably the last snowfall of the season:

It seems like Spring only arrived yesterday, in that we haven’t had to have a fire going in the woodstove the last couple of days. That’s a lovely break as it seems like we’re always chucking wood in the firebox.

I was out trimming down some brush along the road to the top of the hill near our house, and took a couple of photos to document the lovely spring weather.

The little white dot in the bottom …

A new hard-hitting anti-psych video from CCHR, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, of which I’ve been a member since 1972, highlights the firm link between school shootings and the drugs that the shooters were on. Drugs like Ritalin and Prozac ARE the reason these school shootings are taking place. These drugs need to be outlawed and the criminal drug company executives and FDA officials that have conspired to keep the public in the dark so they can keep raking in their profits need to be tried and imprisoned for their complicity in these murders. The psychiatrists who have been prescribing …

Received a funny email today about Caffeine-related disorders.

In the clinician’s handbook for diagnosing mental disorders (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM-IV-TR), caffeine-related disorders are classified under the category of substance-related disorders. DSM-IV-TR specifies four caffeine-related disorders:

• caffeine intoxication
• caffeine-induced anxiety disorder
• caffeine-induced sleep disorder
• caffeine related disorder not otherwise specified

What a pantload of crap!

It’s true that caffeine is a mild drug with euphoric symptoms, which can be abused. Those who drink more than a cup or two a day are caught in some cycle of highs and lows. And over the long term, coffee is bad for your …

I have finished reading the book, “Unstoppable Every 1,500 Years Global Warming” by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery.

Dr. Al Sears, an MD from Florida, reports that:

Chances are you know of a child on Ritalin or some other prescription drug for “attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder” (ADHD). But did you know that these drugs can keep children from growing normally? Meanwhile, there are plenty of safe, natural ways to help these children that you won’t hear about from the mainstream medical community.

In a recently published study, a team of American scientists discovered that while Ritalin and similar prescription drugs like Adderall and Dexedrine might help some kids in the short term, over a three-year period they had no beneficial …

I am a big fan of Dave Barry in small doses. I can’t read his books for very long because once you figure out that everything is a setup for the punchlines, it stops being funny. But here’s a small dose that got me laughing today when I read it in The Patriot, the thrice-weekly newsletter of The Federalist. My all-time favorite news source put out by Marc Alexander. Anyway, here’s the quote:

“We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.”

—Dave Barry