Rational Crank

Here is something that won’t surprise you. Sometimes I get tired of the stupid. So I’m having a good time in Mexico, when I come upon the disturbing reminder that almost half the people in the world have a below average IQ. This disturbing reminder was in the gift shops, in the national parks and on the T-shirts and its number is “2012.” I saw it in the books made for tourists with titles like “the idiots guide to 2012.” I saw it in the eyes of the poor Mexican tour guide as we stood at the base of the great Mayan lighthouse in Tulum. He patiently tried to explain for the thousandth time how the calendar worked. “No, there was no significance to the end of the cycle. The Mayan calendar just turns over and starts again, like the odometer on a car. No, the Mayans did not write any prophesies of disaster. In fact, Mayan writing refers to dates after their calendar turns over. No, you can’t stand on top of the lighthouse to have your picture taken. You’ll break your neck.” (Ok, I admit it...

Sorry, I haven’t written in a while. The wife and I just got back from our vacation in sunny Cancun. When I stepped off the plane in Orlando, I wondered if we had flown into the wrong airport. Had the plane been diverted to New York? Christ, its cold! This morning, there was frost on my car. FROST? In NY we keep a windshield scraper in the glove compartment for ice, (along with gloves imagine that). Do you know what I keep in my Florida glove compartment? Suntan lotion… also salt and lime in case I have to make an emergency margarita. I ended up scraping the ice off my windshield with a Cracker Barrel gift card that I found in my wallet. It worked out, because I certainly had no intention of ever eating at the Cracker Barrel. This is the coldest winter I can remember, and I live in a state wear Hawaiian shirts are mandatory. I don't know how it works in other places but here in Orlando we are constantly being pulled over by the Florida Highway Patrol for shirt flower density chec...

Are you a critical thinker? I have a simple test for you. No, it is not a riddle involving a dead guy hanging in an empty room locked from the inside. (He was standing on a block of ice) The way to test whether you are a critical thinker is even easer then that. Have you ever heard of the following terms: a straw man argument, moving the goal posts, the Barnum effect, confirmation bias, Occam’s razor, false dichotomy, or an argument from final consequence? If you have ever said you are a critical thinker and are not familiar with at least some of these terms, then the chances are, you are just talking out of your ass. (It’s ok. I do it all the time.) But to be clear, a person who calls himself a critical thinker and is not familiar with at least some of these terms is like a guy who calls himself a Christian but has never heard of that Jesus guy.

When someone says to me “You cannot prove there is no God,” I agree with him whole hardy. Why do I bring this up? Partially because I’m writing drunk again, but also, because someone wrote me and said my “Lex Luthor” post was a poor argument against the existence of God. I am sorry the piece was unclear. It was not intended to disprove God. Believe me if I were setting my sights on God I wouldn’t bring up a comic book character. I might mention drowning children in tsunamis, but hey, I’m silly that way. As brilliant as I imagine I am (usually directly correlated to how much wine I’ve consumed), I still would not be able to prove there is no God - because I cannot prove a negative. I cannot prove there are no blue polar bears, either. In order to prove there are no blue polar bears, I would have to track down every polar bear in the world and hold a color chip up against his fur. Not only would this be logistically imposable (and dangerous), it still would not prove there were no...

Lets start off 2010 with something good -  Monkeys eating Jello-O.

The following is the elegy I delivered at my sister, Angela’s funeral this year. It’s not original. I lifted a lot of the ideas from all those grumpy web sites I’m always reading. HEAVEN Is there a Soul? Is there a heaven? I don’t know if there is a soul. I don’t think what is essentially us leaves our bodies when we die. I think that what is essentially us leaves our body at all times - while we are still alive. It’s always radiating out, into the universe, every time we interact with other people. It’s like raindrops in a pond - the ripples we make spread out in all directions and affect all the other drops, made by all the other people around us. These make little waves that come back and lap up against us, and those in turn are changed again by more of our ripples, and on and on. This is an old idea, call it karma. Call it the interconnectedness of all things. Call it, just being nice. I think the world is one giant soul-soup, in which we all make big and small ripples, and all the...

I found these and many more on Buzz Feed . They are a collection of Virgin Mary sightings for 2009. The phenomenon is called pareidolia, the act of seeing specific images in vague shapes or smudges. We all do this when we look at a cloud and imagine a dog or fire truck. We are also doing it when we look at a satellite image from mars and see a human face. And yes the one at the end is a condom. I am so sorry.

I remember watching this cartoon a while back where Lex Luthor built this super powerful mega intelligent robot to destroy Super Man. As with all super powerful mega intelligent robots, the machine became sentient. Lex could no longer control it, so to get it out of the way; he sent it to the other side of the galaxy. But, the robot fought its way back from the edge of space and headed straight for Earth. Being a man of means, Lex, persuaded all the Earths space agencies to confront the machine. Lex even talked the Justice League into helping protect him from the Robot. After all, he argued, the Justice League had pledged to protect all humanity (even Lex.) But nothing could stop the robot. The machine smashed all the defenses Earth could muster. Even the Super Heroes themselves were no match for this juggernaut. In desperation Lex barricaded himself in a cement and steel re-enforced bunker, deep under LuthorCorp. But the robot crashed through the walls, effortlessly. Stone and meta...