A big part of the nature photographer’s job is to find grace and simplicity in the chaotic jumble of the natural world. We visit a bunch of straggly pine trees on a bluff overlooking the ocean. There’s a tangled mess of branches and trunks and needles pointing everywhichaway. Where’s the photo in that? Find a…
Why I am mean to anti-vaxxers
Dear Anti-vaxxer, No, I will not watch your three-hour celebration of stupid on Youtube. No, I will not read the latest screed on some obscure rightwing “news” site. No, I will not calmly, respectfully rebut every single point in your preposterous Gish Gallop. We’ve been through all of this over and over and over and…
A Complete History of the Biden Administration
January 20, 2025 On the eve of the inauguration of our next President, it seems like a good time to look back on the history of the previous administration. Joe Biden swept into power with a convincing victory in the election of 2020. His message of “I’m not Trump” resounded with the electorate so dramatically…
Joe Biden is an Inflatable Love Doll
Like an inflatable love doll, one can project whatever fantasy one wishes upon Joe Biden. He’s a climate warrior! He’s pro-union! He’s a life-long crusader for abortion rights! He has a great civil rights record! If you believe hard enough, if you cultivate your delusions strongly enough, if you click your ruby slippers together and…
Iowa Dumpster Fire
I’ve been a bad, bad blogger. I haven’t posted anything in a million years, and now I’m making a post with a relevant shelf life of a couple of days. Oh, well… I’m still perplexed about this whole Iowa dumpster fire. How could party officials be so spectacularly incompetent? Either they’re really crappy at running…
And now, some good news
Bernie can and will still win this thing. Roughly 60% of the convention delegates remain to be chosen, and the remaining states, by and large, favor Bernie, starting with key contests next week in Washington and Michigan. Biden has a small but eminently surmountable lead. The first reason for optimism: Biden is a craptastic candidate….
A Thought Experiment and Analogy Combination
Imagine you’re a project manager in a company. It’s time to submit an annual budget for running your little fiefdom. The company is notoriously tight with money, even though it’s doing well financially. Whatever budget you submit will likely be cut by about 20%. Do you: A) Submit an “honest” budget proposal, only asking for…
Seven Stupidest Anti-Bernie Arguments
There are many stupid reasons put forth by pundits and regular folk to justify their opposition to the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. I’ve picked seven of the most stupidest of them and pointed out the obvious problems with these arguments, despite the fact that rebuttal really should be unnecessary. I mean, the arguments are so…
Countering the rightward shift
Dinggummit! Nobody reads my best comments. I’ll re-post a little Facebook exchange here, so people can not read it in two different places. So, it starts off with this post from Somedude: Hi, I’m new here. in looking through the choices for the D nomination I’m not sure who the moderate alternative is to biden….
Newbie or Noob?
I recently joined a discussion listserve group. It uses an old-fashioned technology, email, to communicate people’s missives to the group. People are then free to comment. It mostly consists of people posting really stupid stuff, other people pointing out how stupid the stuff is, and then the posters of stupid stuff complain about how the…