Don't stop: just keep running.

Today is the Nineteenth of January. On this day in 1808, Lysander Spooner was born.
In 1809, Edgar Allen Poe was born.
In 1839, Paul Cezanne was born.

In 1935, the first brief was displayed in a Marshal-Fields department store window in Chicago, during a blizzard. The display was ordered to be taken down because it was silly to show such skimpy underwear on such a cold day, but before the display could even be taken down, six hundred pairs were sold. Thirty thousand would be sold in the next three months. The world would never be the same.

In 1977, snow fell in Miami, Florida, and the Bahamas. First time ever.

You know, I am optimistic about Obama's presidency, but I'm no fool. In spite of my rhetoric here, I am realistic about the future.

I'm not expecting single-payer, universal coverage health care. No, the homeless and poor are still going to suffer and die of ultimately-curable illnesses.

I'm not expecting gay marriages. I'm not expecting a roll-back of Bush's abuses of the environment, or of the Endangered Species Act, or marked improvements in air quality, or water quality, or even gender equality in the workplace.

I'm not expecting him to handle Afghanistan any better either: he has, after all, promised to "win" there, whatever that means (hint to President Obama: ask Alexander the Great about central Asia).

I'm just excited because -for the first time ever-- we have a visible, tangible reason to believe that anyone can make it here.

When you hear the dogs behind you, just keep running.


That being said about my beliefs, I remain fascinated by, but agnostic about UFOs, especially in light of the recent flap of sightings. I'm so intrigued by them: if they are from space, then that's interesting in and of itself. And if they're not from space, then that's more interesting still: what the hell are they? If they're illusionary or hallucinations, then what is it in the human makeup that makes us see them? And then makes us interpret those visions as Visitors from Space? And if they're not hallucinations or visions or visitors from space, then what the hell are they? Honestly people, I can't see how anyone could not be interested.

Here's another.