One of my major peeves is when people dump on religion indiscriminately, and it’s been a good couple of weeks for people getting between my teeth. First, here at Thudfactor, was “Echolalias”:http://www.thudfactor.com/wordpress/2006/06/17/dark-christianity/. Try as I might, I still can’t see how her argument amounts to anything but a stirring defense of bigotry. And then there [...] Read more »

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!(headimg)http://static.flickr.com/65/174565666_c0ebbc75cb_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/thudfactor/174565666/
A wren has been nesting in the pot of impatiens on my father-in-law’s front porch. The mother wren wasn’t around when I took this picture, or I am sure I would have gotten an amazing lecture. Read more »

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I went to see _An Inconvenient Truth_ yesterday. I went into it thinking that I was the choir Al Gore was preaching to, but really not — there’s so much more than I thought. I knew the evidence of global warming was strong, but I still didn’t realize how damning it was. I was also [...] Read more »

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!http://static.flickr.com/27/50689507_7d0920dd06_m.jpg! I neglected this week to wish folks a happy Summer Solstice. This is always something of a bittersweet day for me, since — as the Solstice — it also marks the beginning of the long, slow descent into darkness.
While some pagans celebrate this day by dancing naked in ancient stone circles, Elf and [...] Read more »

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!http://static.flickr.com/54/141202585_a11fdd827a_m.jpg! And I thought it was Mondays that were supposed to be stormy. We seem to be on the tail end of a significant thunderstorm here in Northern Virginia — quite possibly the loudest _I’ve_ ever heard. For about ten minutes, it was almost like one continuous thunderclap, and the lightning very rapid. We’re talking [...] Read more »

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