Recent Comments

1. about 1 hour ago on Non Sequitur

    Rather, just asserting the simple truth that right deeds are motivated by proper intention and motivation, making for a healthy society.

   You refer to the “simplicity and truth of that relationship” as if they’re inextricable, but the fact is that they are very definitely extricable. And the extrication occurs regularly and on a massive scale. Good deeds almost always have “proper intention and motivation”. But the reverse is not true; “proper intention and motivation”, all by themselves, are essentially worthless, like all those “thots and prayers” that get offered up with varying degrees of sincerity after some mass shooting or other tragedy. It’s the doing, not the thinking, that makes for a healthy society.

   The fact (yes, fact!) that nothing fails like prayer is something that seems to have eluded you.

2. about 9 hours ago on Non Sequitur

    Sorry, separating action from motivation is not a credible move.

   Spoken like someone who thinks thots are more important than deeds.

   Math problem:

   Given: Religion + Good Works = Good Works

   Solve for Religion.

3. about 9 hours ago on Frazz

   As long as we’re plugging books, let me put in an excellent word for An Immense World, by Ed Yong. It’s about the way animals sense the world. It does indeed cover ants, termites, bees, and other colonial insects, and their perceptions and means of communication are intriguing.

4. about 9 hours ago on Frank and Ernest

   I think road-crew workers are probably a migratory species. They head south for the winter, then return north in the summer.

5. 1 day ago on Non Sequitur

    Religion has done much to serve “the least who shall be first.” You choose not to acknowledge such efforts and accent the far-outweighed negatives because it serves your agenda.

   As I mentioned above, there are some things about both Communism and capitalism that I admire and other aspects of each that I deplore. The parts about religion I admire are the parts that could easily stand on their own without all the woo-woo trappings of superstition. Those are the ones I choose to concentrate my criticisms on, most particularly on the idea that religion has some kind of absolute lock on the truth, when it’s so obviously and blatantly wrong so much of the time but still encourages people to just shrug it off and pay no attention to reality. That’s a dangerous habit of mind to get into, and I deplore any institution that promotes it.

6. 1 day ago on Frank and Ernest

   Since I didn’t name any names (nor did anyone else other than Alec Baldwin), which name sprang first to your mind? Obviously someone’s did!

7. 1 day ago on La Cucaracha

   Isn’t there a Vero Beach somewhere? Florida? California?

8. 1 day ago on Doonesbury

   Actually, 100g isn’t even a kilogram.

9. 1 day ago on Non Sequitur

   No, I was only joking. Obviously the Secret Service’s #1 protectee is the current president.

10. 1 day ago on Non Sequitur

     Please, in no way do I no accuse you of advocating force, but your dismissive “Bible is just fairy tales” talk is too remindful of the rhetoric of exhibit texts.

    Guilt by association? Using that same approach, I could well be accusing you of wanting to burn people at the stake.

    Look, I have a number of things in common with Communists, starting with the simple basic fact that we’re all human beings. I also favor society in general (and government more particularly) organizing itself to make life better for common people. We’re also pragmatic materialists; if the crops are suffering from lack of water we’d rather build irrigation systems than just wish for rain. I also have a lot in common with capitalists, again beginning with that basic fact of our shared humanity. But I believe that healthy competition is good for promoting progress, and that people deserve to be rewarded materially for hard work, innovation, or both.

    The idea that I share some ideas with either Communists or capitalists, however, doesn’t automatically mean that either I buy into the entire package or that I’m a representative of either system in its pure form. I loathe the autocracy that official Communism turned into as well as the plutocracy that rampant capitalism run amuck produces. And the defining feature of both is that too much power got concentrated into too few hands.

    That’s also a primo characteristic of religious hegemonies such as the Catholic Church for much of Western civilization and Islam in today’s Mideast. And I’m alarmed at the vision that the nationalist Christians (or nat-Cs, as I call them) have for the United States, especially as laid out in detail in their Project 2025 master plan for subverting democracy.