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Now that Howard Zinn is dead, plenty of excellent critiques of his work are sprouting up across the Internet. And some older pieces are getting more attention. One fantastic bit of criticism comes from Dissent Magazine’s Michael Kazin in a 2004 review of Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. The Kazin review is remarkable not...
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Last Saturday, I took the family downtown for a joyous jaunt through our lovely sustainable city. We gazed in awe at Portland’s inarguably wonderful mass transit system, and our mouths watered when we walked past the city’s delightful and quirky food carts! YUM! Multiculturalism! Sadly the carts were closed for business on this Saturday night....
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It’s Time to Have a REAL Discussion About Vaccines and Why They Are Not Super Impressive Things by Bill Maher 5th Hour Science/REAL TIME Dr. Shermer is wrong that vaccines are amazing things of science. I don’t think they are “amazing” all. Quite the contrary. I think they are “un-amazing.” I say this as someone of higher...
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I’ll let the man speak for himself. BTW, a Los Angeles doctor recently told me that, in the last few weeks, many otherwise healthy 20- and 30-something people were entering his emergency room with the swine flu.  An alarmingly high percentage of the un-vaccinated ones were leaving in body bags. I imagine such body counts don’t bother Bill...
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I’ve been anti-Bill Maher for a few years now, ever since POLITICALLY INCORRECT transitioned from a unique and contrarian TV show to a vehicle for the no-brain comments of whatever four ABC sitcom actors the show was able to book at the last minute. A more notable flashpoint, though, occurred in the early 2000s. Maher said something...
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Recently, a letter to the editor in SKEPTIC Magazine got the creaky gears of my brain going in pretty rapid fashion. A joint response by Mark Robert Waldman and Andrew Newberg to a Steve Salerno piece critical of the positive-thinking and self-esteem movements takes Salerno to task for excoriating the powers of optimism. Though Waldman and...
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CLEANING OUT THE LINK CAGE 10/16/09 Michael Shermer politely schools the braying jackass Bill Maher. Marc Lamont Hill provides a brief list of overrated white people. Brett Favre is conspicuous by his absence. Frog expert delighted to have a two-inch, penis-shaped mushroom named after him. Look at this fucking hipster. Apocalypse Cakes brings you recipes for the end. I...
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Some stray images floating about in my JPEG drawer. The wife found this one on a Russian social media site: This fresh little guy comes from the Coast to Coast A.M. photo archives: If not Fred Bear, then who? Japanese Sinatra album: Russian magician, hiding furtively behind a dove: You’re awesome!
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I’m tired of Oprah’s shtick. “What’s that,” you say? “But you’ve got to respect someone who has made so much money doing what she loves!” No, I don’t. And given that Fatface has used the whims of the credulous, the naive and the stupid to generate her billions, she doesn’t deserve an ounce of my respect....
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As a wandering political agnostic, I’m married to no one ideology. I generally say I’m Libertarian, but only by default (unrelated: I have an idea for a Libertarian super-hero — he’s nigh omnipotent but doesn’t help out too much ‘cuz he wants to be left alone on his float boat. He doesn’t care for...
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