Apparently incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes, isn’t up on who’s who in the world of terrorism. I realize congressmen spend most of their time soliciting, dining and getting drunk in Washington’s ultra-overpriced bars and restaurants, golfing with their rich buddies, and having sex with the attractive young people on their staffs. Maybe, though, Reyes could take, say 15 minutes a day or so, to read the newspapers, now that he has his hands on the reigns. We overlooked Bush being an ignoramus, and to our peril. Reyes needs to get with the program or just get.

Science fascinates me. Not real science like goes on in a lab. More the kind you might catch on PBS’s Nova. I tend to interpret the world symbolically so I’m not much good at the practical. Additionally, I’m mathematically challenged, and like all math challenged people, I’m locked out of the world of the hard sciences almost completely.

I like Michael Crichton. His books don’t do anything for me. Neither do his movies or television shows. Periodically, though, I’ll catch him on Book tv or elsewhere on cable, and I always enjoy his talks. Yes, he’s supercilious and a little weird. He’s wry, though, and I like that.

Crichton seems to hate bullshit even more than I do. He calls clowns — be they scientist, journalist, or congressman — on their crap and that’s pretty damn cool. He doesn’t have to do it. He just does. He graduated from Harvard Medical School so he has the background to digest real science. Additionally, I tend to trust him because he’s already rich and doesn’t have any reason to manipulate me. (Unlike, say, someone who is jockeying for grant money or running for office.)

Anyway, if you hate bullshit and are frequently bored, make an effort to catch Crichton on cable sometime. Better yet, click over to his site and read a couple of his speeches. “Aliens Cause Global Warming” is pretty good.

Here are a few more posts I found interesting, amusing, whatever.

• How About Punishing The Owners
• Update on “Times says we’re getting away with murder”
• Funding Terrorist note: As far as I can tell, the title and the actual post are utterly unrelated. Nevertheless, it’s a good rant.
• Military Strength v The Will to Win
• Rodriguez playing Alabama to stay at WVU?
• Enough!!!
• Robert Plant Records in Nashville
• Brownback 2008
• Science, Skeptics, God, and Magick
• Cherokee County, GA Passes Anti-Immigrant Ordinance

Slide by and leave a comment. You don’t have to agree with ‘em. It’s just blogging.

Here are a few posts from around WordPress.com.  I’m linking to them because I enjoyed reading them and thought maybe somebody else would too. They aren’t in any order, other than how they popped up in my aggregator , or the order I found them via their tags.

• A Broken Promise Under the Golden Arches
• What’s Your Favorite?
• Rainforest Catastrophe: Chevron’s Fraud and Deceit in Ecuador
• Metropolis: The Vanishing Class
• Oregon Fiscal Recklessness
• Agents, landowners killing more wolves
• Evangelizing Atheists
• New York City Trans Fat Ban is No Good

That I liked something doesn’t mean I agree with it, believe it, or anything else. It just means I liked it.

We need to rename the “War on Terror”. Maybe we should call it “Guarding Against Terrorism”. I don’t know, but I’m open to suggestions.

9/11 scared the bejesus out of me. I realize fear is unbecoming of a middle-aged Southern boy. Nevertheless it did. Still does. It’s time to put it in perspective though.

I never thought twice as the US embarked on the “War on Terror”. It was obvious something had to be done about al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I’d have nuked ‘em, but nobody asked me.

To hear our government tell it, we’re still waging the “War on Terror”. We will be, they promise, for a generation. Our leaders want us to believe our way of life is under attack. It may be, but not from the terrorists. The politicians want us to be afraid so they can usurp our rights and do things like invade other countries in our name. It’s worked well for them so far.

The fact is, though, being afraid of Muslim fanatics is just ridiculous. Yes, 9/11 was a horrific event. If terrorists could pull something similar off on a somewhat regular basis, then it would make sense to fear them. But to fear them, in light of who and what they really are, is ridiculous. (But flattering, I’m sure, for the terrorist themselves).

Oil is the only thing we need that is produced in the Muslim world. It seems safe to surmise that if the western oil companies shut down their operations, dismantled their wells, storage facilities, and pipelines, the oil would stay right where it is, under the sand, until someone from outside the Muslim world extracted it. Muslims lack the technology to do much of anything for themselves. Sadly, the only things they are good at making are terrorists and WMD. Such a people don’t constitute much of threat to our way of life.

Consider tiny Israel. They are some six million strong, surrounded by a billion Muslims, most of whom profess to want Israel wiped from the face of the earth. But they’re still there, right in the Muslim’s backyard. The US is infinitely more powerful than Israel, not to mention exponentially further removed from the apex of the threat.

It’s time to rename the “War on Terror”. It’s time to tell the government we expect them to protect us, not scare us to death, and certainly not infringe on our rights. In reality the politicians are a much greater threat to the American way of life than are the terrorists.

I ran across a fascinating post at The Big Picture about the surveillance society in Britain. Apparently Britain is well on its way to becoming a police state. Could the same thing happen here in the US? It’s inevitable if the politicians get their way. Power is their drug and there’s never enough of it.

Click over to Doug’s Darkworld and read his entertaining but bleak assessment of some of what’s going on in the world. I’m a regular reader now. If you’re not an ideologue you’ll enjoy his writing.

If you need to shut somebody up, and duct tape is too short-term, consider Polonium 210. What is Polonium 210? Click over to A Quantum Diaries Survivor for the nasty facts.

As a matter of policy, I don’t link to online newspapers. Those links turn to broken links, usually in about two weeks. Nevertheless, I’ve made an exception. Go forth and read Senator Chuck Hagel’s (R – Nebraska) letter to WAPO.

Could Chuck be presidential timber?

(Hat-tip to The Lady Speaks)

Is the US government covering up the truth about the 9/11 attacks? Worse, was the government somehow involved? A large number of otherwise-sane citizens think so.

I’m a product of the times I live in, namely, the Age of Bullshit. As a result I’m naturally suspicious. Nevertheless, I haven’t seen or heard one thing that causes me to believe there’s more to the 9/11 tragedy than immediately meets the eye. The attacks were orchestrated and carried out by Muslim religious fanatics. End of story.

Why do so many people buy into senseless bullshit like conspiracy theories? Isn’t the sad state of affairs that is reality bad enough for them? I don’t know, but I have three possible reasons for people believing the unbelievable.

• Our government has so thoroughly discredited itself with its ongoing shenanigans that people are willing to believe it’s essentially the root of all evil.
• We’ve done such a bad job of educating our citizens that most don’t have the critical thinking skills necessary to differentiate the true from the false.
• Many of us are ennui-crazed and will believe anything we gain a moment of amusement from.

It makes no difference to me if you believe Elvis is still alive or that Jesus is en route. Delusions are healthy. I like to think I’m smart and good-looking. But wasting time on conspiracy theories about 9/11 when the truth is so glaringly obvious? It’s mental masturbation.