Wayward Landlubber

     Over the Christmas holidays a friend of mine gave me a book. In a time when one of our two political parties would rather burn books it is important to acknowledge the importance of passing on knowledge by people smarter than us, namely writers with the necessary knowledge to inform us within their area of expertise. The name of the book is, Signature In The Cell,  and it deals with intelligent design, a concept of which I am suspicious. The author, Stephen C. Meyer is a PhD in the philosophy of science and is director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. A quick Google tells me that the Discovery Institute's raison d'etre is to spread the concept of intelligent design, which would mean to my understanding, they have moved on from discovery and wish to promote it, as if it has not been promoted already. I am not merely suspicious of intelligent design, i dont see how it can make sense.  I should also reveal that I hav...

     Truth, it seems, is far more complicated than we have been led to believe. There is no "truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" as admirable as that may sound. Mark Twain is often quoted, saying: there are "lies, damned lies, and statistics".  This may comfort the MAGAts who do not know that he was a satirist who made jokes about their intellectual forefathers, but what would they know of truth? Statistics takes you deeper into the truths than mere lies or damned lies, those often spread by Tucker Carlson. The truth may be, that it's not what you know but how much you know, that delivers us the better truth. Or the bitter truth.      As a young man in my mid 20's I had the opportunity to learn SCUBA diving and carried both PADI and NAUI certifications. From those lessons I martriculated a little farther thanks to a couple guys whose boat could often be seen in front of the Ala Wai Dive Shop. They were members of the Hawaiian Malacologica...

    I'm pretty sure that I worked with a member of the Weather Underground years ago. I say this cautiously because it is supposition, not outright fact. A supposition based on clues he provided in our infrequent conversations.       It was the late 70s and I had taken a job at Salishan Lodge as a bartender in the Lobby Lounge. The owners, the John Grey family, took better care of their employees than they were required to, and one of those employee benefits was a hot meal in the lunchroom in the late afternoon before the night shift went to work and as the day crew was coming off work. Good food in a common room. There was this guy I'll call Scott who tended bar in the banquet department and allowed the day bartender in the lobby lounge to take a break. We had had some conversations and eventually politics came up. Scott was very conservative and was a vocal supporter of Ronald Reagan's presidential run. He was also a chain smoker, I was a reformed smoker and y...