The title of this stereoscopic card is “The Spot an Angel Deigned to Grace.”  It’s part of the Keystone Eye-Skill Training Series, and shows Loch Katrine, in Scotland.  Please click on it to see it full-size. (Posted by Doug Skinner)

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The debate over gay marriage is, perhaps, misguided.  Rather than extend the franchise, why not just scrap the practice? I admit that I’m biased against marriage by observation of my parents.  It seemed to be an arrangement in which a male alcoholic slumped in a chair, binge-drinking and channel-surfing; he had a whistle around his neck to call an unhappy female, who waited on […]

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A holiday weekend marred by beautiful autumn weather and massive transit disruptions didn’t keep the curious from turning out for the Ullage Group’s presentation, “Straight Talk About Hoaxes.” Anthony Matt’s multimedia exegesis of the 1969 “Paul is Dead” hoax was a rousing success. Original tapes of radio shows and phone calls, furnished by the DJ […]

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Today is Robert Browning’s birthday.  If he were alive today, that beard of his would be even longer. I suspect few read him today; I don’t know the statistics.  If so, it’s a pity.  I cracked him open not long ago to examine his portrait of a spiritualist, “Mr. Sludge the Medium,” and have been reading him […]

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[Darwin continues to munch on a birthday cake with 200 candles; and we continue to cheer him on with my talk on his cultural impact.  We’re now in the full cry of the Cold War, watching the Scopes Trial be rewritten as “Inherit the Wind.”  Oh dear.]  In fact, “Inherit the Wind” departed so much from […]

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[Yes, Virginia, there is a Charles Darwin; and we continue to fete his bicentennial by serializing my talk on the impact of his theories on American culture.  Have a seat.] A few days after the Scopes trial had pooped out, Bryan died.  Mencken exulted, “We killed the son-of-a-bitch,” and ran a rather nasty obituary, calling […]

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[Open wide, for another tasty dipperful of my talk on the apparently ceaseless squabble between Darwinians and anti-Darwinians.  I gave this talk at a couple of Fortean conventions a few years back; I’m posting it here to celebrate Darwin’s bicentennial.  See the earlier dippersful for more details; meanwhile, the Scopes trial is in progress.] The Scopes trial […]

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[We continue to mark Darwin’s bicentennial by doling out my talk on his cultural wallop.  So far we’ve run through some misconceptions, the melancholy tale of the brontosaurus (to whom we will return), and the background of the Scopes trial.  We’re ready to meet some of the principals.] Bryan is such a complex character that it’s a […]

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[We continue to mark Darwin’s bicentennial by serializing my talk on the cultural impact of his work.  So far, we’ve touched on some of the popular misconceptions of his ideas, and on the flurry of legislation leading up to the Scopes Trial in the U.S.] Meanwhile, paleontologists, like dirty little kids, had been scrabbling in […]

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[We resume the serialization of my talk on the cultural hurly-burly that greeted Darwin’s theories.  As we open this section, our animal friends are really going at it.] Lions and tigers make ligers and tigons; camels and llamas make camas; antelopes give taxonomists nightmares.  Mules have been known to foal baby mules; yaks, bison, and […]

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