Here's wishing everyone a good time today, but remember that even though zombies can be fun, they can also be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Always have an adult present when attempting to raise the dead, in case something goes wrong and instead of a harmless dancing skeleton you accidentally summon up a horde of terrifying revenants bent on consuming the life force of all humanity. Please be courteous to others and always dispel your zombies when you're done with them. It only… Continue

At one time the United States had something called the Office of Technology Assessment. Renowned futurist Newt Gingrich killed the OTA in 1995, apparently out of fear that the OTA might help bring about the future. Now, at last under a President who values empirical data and a rationalist's approach to problems, there is a chance that the OTA might be resurrected with full hit points and an Acuity buff.…



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Vermont has become the first state in the US to legislatively permit same-sex marriage without being first forced to do so by a court order. Vermont, unlike every other state so far, didn't need to be shamed or chivvied by a court decision into behaving like grownups toward same-sex marriage. Instead, the Vermont legislature took up the issue directly, and not only passed legislation guaranteeing marriage equality to all adult, pair-bonded humans in the state, they did so with a sufficient… Continue

It's great to finally see people treating the US military's "don't ask - don't tell" nonsense as the irrational woo that it is. The other night Colin Powell and Clifford Alexander separately addressed this issue on Rachel Maddow, and I thought Alexander in particular laid out the despicable illogic of the military's standing position.





I'm not a military specialist, so I can't address that side of this issue. But I do think this whole issue of gays in the… Continue

I hate when non-clerics apply the word "heretic" to a scientist. Clerics at least have an excuse, albeit a catastrophically wrong and childish excuse, but when journalists, say, call scientific dissent heresy it makes me cringe. Too many people already think of science as some kind of secretive, dogmatic society, and combating that incorrect view is already hard enough. Last Sunday's cover article of the New York… Continue