phenomena

Every single time the republicans get excited at the convention, they start chanting "USA USA USA." It's like the sheep are following their leaders again, and the only tangible reality to them is American flags, American flag pins, saluting and...wait, am I describing America or Nazi Germany?

I am just knee-deep in fifteen tons of stuff right now and don’t really have any time for anything but the HAVE-to stuff right now.  That’s my explanation for the quiet.

Barack Obama strikes back at John McCain’s attempt to make the phenomena around his candidacy look like empty celebrity worship:

"Down and out; it can't be helped but there's alot of it about" Roger Waters and countless artists and philosophers before him have struggled to reconcile two immutable but paradoxical phenomena: the inevitable unification of mankind, and his stubborn willingness to allow war, schism, and the corruption of religion to impede unity...

Social networking technologies develop a momentum of their own which takes individuals beyond the point of counter productivity at which they become self-defeating.
While the phenomena of networking technologies appeals to some of our basic human needs it also appeals to human weaknesses and reveals our insatiable appetites for “new”.
The Hidden Game Appeal

The NYTimes new columnist, Bill Kristol, is off to a great start in being yet another factor in the continued diminishment of the paper's prestige and reputation.

I watch and I consistently enjoy watching HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, whether I agree with the expressed viewpoints or not. About the only time I don't enjoy it is when Maher puts on his soft lifestyle atheism. And this week, with one of his guests Christopher Hitchens (also a soft atheist) he was in that ranting mode once again.

Per the KNS today...NASA is having a contest to name the new GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope) telescope. Here's your chance to become part of space exploration history!