You mean deer can’t read?

Some time ago, I came across an amusing audio clip of a woman calling a radio talk show to complain about the fact that she had collided three times with deer within the past year near places where there were deer crossing signs. She said that she couldn’t understand why the state placed those signs in high traffic areas instead of places where there were fewer cars. It began to slowly dawn on the radio hosts that the woman thought that the deer chose their crossing points based on the signs. [Read more…]

Parting fools from their money

I have written extensively about the fact that the Republican party is increasingly out-of-step with what the country is thinking, especially as a result of demographic changes and that its main problem is that its base has been fed a steady diet of rhetoric against women, minorities, immigrants, and LGBT groups for so long that taking that food away from them is likely to provoke howls of anger. [Read more…]

Interesting theological discussion

Given my disdain for the entire field of theology, I did not think that I would write such a title for a blog post but author Gary Wills and Stephen Colbert, while both Catholics, had quite a difference of opinion on what their church should be like. While I liked what Wills had to say, I continue to be a little puzzled by why such people still want to be considered Catholics when they have so little in common with it. [Read more…]

All celebrity interviews should be like this

Offbeat comedian Zach Galifianakis has an online show called Between Two Ferns where he interviews celebrities. In this two-part special, he interviews some of the people who have been nominated for Oscars this year, in which they are given roughly the same amount of time to speak as Oscar winners get at the ceremony. I think this is a wonderful idea that should be adopted by all talk show hosts. [Read more…]

Orwellian Obama

The Daily Show had two good segments on the US policy of using drones to kill people. It looks at the so-called legal rationale that the Obama administration created to justify its own actions and how the language in it is designed to deceive rather than clarify. The memo is a deliberate exercise in the cynical use of language and reveals the utter hypocrisy of the Obama administration on this issue. [Read more…]

Upside Downton Abbey

I watched a lot of Sesame Street with my children when they were young. I particularly loved their parodies because they work on two levels, teaching simple lessons to young children while at the same time entertaining their adult companions by riffing off adult films and TV shows and music. Now that my children are grown I no longer watch the show but once in a while come across a new good parody. [Read more…]