clarence thormas should apologize

to the people of the United States for accepting a seat on the Supreme Court without visible qualifications or contributions to the work of the Court. He has shamelessly given his proxy to Justice Scalia. He has published utterly no (zero)original opinions. He is complicit in the most shocking dereliction of judicial oversight in Supreme Gourt history. I might have accepted his performance only as the worst visible manifestation of the evils of affirmative action, had not Mrs Thomas, with astonishing effrontery, chosen the moment to urge Anita Hill to apologize to HIM for her testimony, in the confirmation hearings, concerning his sexual proclivities and his violation of Ms Hill's civil rights in exposing them to her. I believe you, Anita Hill.

The Beginning of Wisdom

Yours truly encountered the publoications of both Hugh Hefner and Chaeles Schulz at roughly the same time in his life. He arrived at the cow college of Michigan at age 17 and very quickly found a cigar store/magazine stand which stocked (until the supply ran out) a glossy new publication named "Playboy": as bait for the normally sex-obsessed teenage male, it contained a number of photos of busty young women. Shockingly, the writer observed there were also word articles on pertinent topics of the day and even clever cartoons, such as two hairy guys peering over a snow bank and one is saying,"here comes another one of those abominable moiuntain climbers". But the most famous scrap of wit casme from Mort Sahl, who almost invented standup comedy. He foresaw an entire generation of young American men who would arrive at the marital bed expecting their brides to have staples in their navels.
Schulz clearly absorbed a lot of scripture during his up=bringing in Minneapolis. It is heartwarming to people of faith to hear Linus quoting "There were shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. Still, he was frustrated by the existentialism of being his parents' second-born. "I didn't ask to be born second. I didn't even get to fill out an application!"
And so, a naive but voraciou-s reader of a boy arrives from the orchards of north-western Michigan and begins to learn unimagined beauty, unimagined sordidness and poverty and, gradually, the complexity of human society. Some boys (and girls) go where their hormones lead them, some are delighted to learn of philosophers and are attracted to a life of the mind. Some are so overwhelmed by the sheer number of human beings that they are ready to apply statistical mechanics to their behavior. We become more careful about choosing our gods; it was Albert Einstein who said "My God does not play dice games" and a Japanese named Esaki who said "Electrons trapped between two hills have a finite proabability of tunnelling out. If we believe that, what could we build? Tunnel diodes, anyone???

What hath Facebook wrought?

In a more pious age, Samuel F.B. Morae invented telegraphy; his first message was
"What hath God Wrought?" More than a century has passed and your writer and his erstwhile colleagues hath wrought vacuum tube signal boosters, teletypes, fake baseball broadcasts by the likes of Ronald Reagan, television, radar, the transistor and many other things including recently, Facebook. In connection with that last item, it is a little staggering how many people want to be a "friend" of an old geezer.
All of this leads inexorably to a very pertinent question, to wit; In God's Green Earth, How does Sarah Palin get on my Facebook page? The other night I checked to see my lastest Facebook requests, and there she was, the former governor of our largest and coldest state, over which Russian ICBM's would probably fly, on their way to kill us all.
It would be nice to hope for some rational thought from such a celebrity but it is not to be. The woman may look a lot like Tina Fey but has much less talented writers. It is not that I have any hopes if being hired for the gig. Just keep reading the blog; some good vibes will surely come to me.

It worked!!

By this time, you would have top be living on Walder Pond not to know that the rescue capsule that NASA furnished to fish the miners up that 2000 foot shaft to their patient families (and one mistress) was a success in getting all the entrapped miners out. Then the tv cameras were turned off and up came the heroes who voluntarily went down there to show the miners how to ride it up. So now,they say they will seal the hole and go elsewhere for gold and copper. Good Show to all. and thank your various deities and your ingenious human friends.

A moment in History?

As I start this, the crew is yet to send that rescue capsule to the trapped Chilean miners. We have very few eye-witness reports of history being made. I did see on tv the astronaut Neil Armstrong go down that ladder onto the surface of the moon. I do not remember any interviews with Frenchmen who saw Charles Lindbergh land in Paris. I suppose many thousands of us have heard the transcription of the fatal landing of the Hindenburg in Lakewood, N.J. It is very close to starting time; will it work? Tune in to tomorrow's blog.