I’ve been remiss in keeping up with Bunnies4Buddha’s book reviews. She’s had a couple new reviews up on her book page. The most recent are for The Turkish Gambit by Boris Akunin, who B4B describes as “the James Patterson of Russia – writing popular series books about the same character.” The second is a collection of interviews with Edward Gorey called Ascending Peculiarity. Karen Wilkin edited the collection. Be sure to read her reviews of both.

Since writing those reviews, she has read a few other books. For the Series of Unfortunate Events books, she’s waiting to finish all of them before reviewing. She’s also finished two Neil Gaiman books, Neverwhere and Stardust, but is waiting to watch the TV/Movie adaptations before she reviews those. So be alert for more excellent write-ups from her.

Meanwhile, I have finished The Bible Against Itself, which turned out to be an eye-opener to me. I plan on posting about it as time permits. Since finishing that, I’ve gone back to reading more of Thomas Paine’s writings. Currently, those include the The Forrester Letters that Paine wrote in response to ones written against the war for independence. The letters critical of the war were written by someone going by the name ‘Cato’ and are directly critical of Paine’s Common Sense which I read earlier this year.

Hi All,

In case anyone was feeling like this blog was getting a bit too philosophical and intellectual here’s something for those animal lovers out there.

This is from The Museum of Life and Science in Raleigh, NC and it is their MUNCHCAM!

I could tell you more about it but you should see for yourself – I have given you a preview with the exceptionally cute tobacco hornworm but be sure to check out all 9 MUNCHCAM! “episodes”.

Bunnies4Buddha

“What now?”

That’s this weeks question. It was also the question John Brockman asked for the World Question Center immediately after the September 11th attacks.

Sadly, we already know the answer given that context. The attack was used as a pretext for a war we are still fighting. Now what? Now we bomb the shit out of people who had nothing to do with it! Now there have been over 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers and at least ten times that amount in Iraqi civilian deaths. Now we have spent…

…on the war.

Since the original question has already been answered in the context in which it was asked, we must put it into a new context – today’s context. Since no major world event has occurred recently, this question is wildly open-ended. Answer anyway you like! My answer appears in the permalink.

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This week’s “question mark” (and variants) search stats:
Year-to-date: over 950
Last week: 159 (it slowed down this week!)
Strangest in the last week: “burning question mark”

So when you have a burning question, it gets its own punctuation symbol?

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This is the sort of stuff everyone should know by the time they finish grade school.

Hello Everyone,

I’m having quite a busy week, but wanted to take some time to share some things with you. First, I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing. Work has become very busy. A new regulatory environment is going into effect January of 2009 that impacts pretty much everything we do. Now I’ve spent the last three years helping the group prepare for the change. Still, on Monday, my boss calls me and my counterpart into his office and basically says, “You know that well-tested, stable process you’ve built up? We need you to change it. All of it.” Apparently the last phase of making sure we are ready is to make us consistent with other departments. The change has to do with a fundamental inconsistency.

Then on Tuesday, North Carolina had a runoff primary election. I worked the polls again. There was only one contest to vote on: the Democratic primary for Labor Commissioner. The polls were open for 13 hours. In that time we had 15 people come in to vote. One was ineligible as a registered Republican. Three of the votes consisted of myself and the two other registered Democrats working. Two more were spouses of the workers (B4B and one one other). So, in the final tally, there were 9 votes cast by people who were not affiliated with the Board of Elections. In my precinct, the turnout was about 1%, statewide, is was about 1.8%.

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This weeks question, once again from the World Question Center, is subject to some interpretation. Interpret and answer as you will just be sure to have fun with this one. My answer appears in the permalink.

What Questions Have Disappeared?

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This week’s “question mark” (and variants) search stats:
Year-to-date: about 800
Last week: 187
Strangest in the last week: “christian question mark”

I didn’t know question marks had religions.
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The above comic is created and licensed by Rudis Muiznieks of Cectic.com.

Happy Friday!

Scott’s podcast novel, Archangel is up to episode 8. Be sure to listen to the entire story!

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8

I’ll promote his novel after every few episodes are released. It would be much easier for you if you subscribed via iTunes or through Scott’s RSS Feed. If you enjoy it, leave a review on iTunes, or leave a comment on his website.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
-Epicurus

I didn’t intend to write a Part III for this topic, but it seems I have started a bit of a trend. Five days after I published Part I, the New Yorker publishes this article about the Problem of Evil (PoE)! I had no idea that their writers read my blog!

Okay, the article is a review of a book (Bart Ehrman’s God’s Problem) on the subject and it’s more likely that the PoE was on their minds for the same reasons it was on mine – the recent natural disasters in Myanmar and China that killed about 200,000 people. Regardless, James Wood wrote a great article on the topic. For those of you who prefer more of a narrative style to my philosophically-centered writing, I recommend giving it a read. Here’s an excerpt:

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This is what can happen when people take psychics seriously. A Canadian School Board made accusations of sexual abuse based on a psychic’s ‘vision’.

Leduc said they advised her that Victoria’s educational assistant (EA) had visited a psychic, who said a youngster whose name started with “V” was being sexually abused by a man between 23 and 26 years old.

For some reason, I’m unconvinced. You?

I found this story by way of this Skepticality post.