Real Life Revisited
There’s no way people actually still get whooping cough in this day and age, is there???
There’s no way people actually still get whooping cough in this day and age, is there???
“Ahhh, beer. The dark elixir of life itself. Nothing is so sweet, so majestic, so–”
“–so useless. You know, anyone with half a brain would’ve actually built their metallic clockwork companion with at least some kind of alcohol consumption ability if he’s meant to be a glorified drinking buddy.”
“Meh, Mr. Pendulum. MEH. I need to adjust your joviality cog when we get home.”
“Right, and what did you do last night?”
“I saved the world from intergalactic forces of evil.”
“Again?”
“Yeah, but this time I did it on hard.”
Briefly:
PZ has been getting death threats. By the buttload. (I actually sent a letter of support to him and his university President, from my deathbed, so it’s obviously an issue that matters to people.) He posted 2 of them (with full IP headers) on his blog one day. One was authenticated as coming from an employee of 1800Flowers.com who was subsequently fired. Then, her husband confessed to having sent the email. And seems to feel no remorse for having gotten his wife fired. Read more here at Pharyngula, here via Greg Laden, or even here, at Network World.
I’m pretty much flattened by some sort of killer plague. Been flat on my back 2 weeks and counting. 4 doctors, 4 different diagnoses. First 2 said I was fighting pneumonia, last 2 said lungs were clear. Felt good about the last 2 doctors, thought I was making progress, new suite of symptoms developed later that night. At a loss.
Had to push back my dissertation defense. In the middle of buying a house and I’ve slept through 99% of it. Thank goodness for Joshua dealing with it all. Sapped most of my energy going over the first draft of the housing contract. Had 5 pages of clarifications needed on vague legalese. (Joshua had 1 question.) I’m either insane, or my brain misses thinking. Maybe both.
I’m missing deadlines like nobody’s business and I can’t do much about it. Only getting short bursts of time to sit up during the day, spent mostly trying to keep up on email explaining why all my work is so late. I have my laptop on most of the day and the extent of my blogging is generally via twitter, where I whine about my illness and watch the world scroll by.
I know I generally keep this space academic (in every sense of the word) and I’ll continue to throw links up (bad use of words there) whenever I can. But once I’m done being so sick, and at least vaguely caught up on my work, I’ll be returning this space to its previous glory where commentary dominates mere link mining. The switch to the latter was intentional and necessary at the time, but I’ll be redesigning and actually, you know, blogging again as soon as possible. In the meantime, if any of you know magic or have an in with any alleged dieties, please put in a good word for me. I’m really just so tired of being sick and not working. Pity not needed, but I feel some personal obligations to keep this space active and felt an explanation was warranted. Hopefully I’ll be back to my usual snarky self soon enough.
From CNN.com:
KANSAS CITY, Kansas (CNN) — Army Spc. Jeremy Hall was raised Baptist. Like many Christians, he said grace before dinner and read the Bible before bed. Four years ago when he was deployed to Iraq, he packed his Bible so he would feel closer to God.
He served two tours of duty in Iraq and has a near perfect record. But somewhere between the tours, something changed. Hall, now 23, said he no longer believes in God, fate, luck or anything supernatural.
In March, Hall filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, among others. In the suit, Hall claims his rights to religious freedom under the First Amendment were violated and suggests that the United States military has become a Christian organization.
Hall isn’t seeking compensation in his lawsuit — just the guarantee of religious freedom in the military. Eventually, Hall was sent home early from Iraq and later returned to Fort Riley in Junction City, Kansas, to complete his tour of duty.He also said he missed out on promotions because he is an atheist.
The saddest part is that the current administration has jaded this entire country so thoroughly that the outrage people should feel about this rolls right off their backs. The only people feeling outrage are the Christians, for being discriminated against. Obviously, they’re under attack here.
I’m just out of words for this sort of thing. Maybe I’m having a particular down spell (and fighting off pneumonia certainly isn’t helping) but I’m sort of just ready to give up. I think reason and rationality have lost in this country. And I don’t know if there’s any place left in the world for us.
Read the rest of the CNN article here, if you can stomach it.