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I’ve been giving the matter some thought. Of course, it’s thought filtered through rage, frustration, and disappointment, but nonetheless, I’ve been giving the matter of how to vote in November a great deal of thought. Of course, I don’t want to jump the gun. People in Pennsylvania, New York, Wyoming and a whole bunch of other states have yet to weigh in and I would encourage Democrats in those states to go ahead and vote for Bernie, but I realize it would take a miracle at this point for him to win, especially as he’s no longer campaigning for it. But, I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to how I could best use my vote.
I had been thinking I would write Bernie Sanders in- with a big, fat magic marker and perhaps a few expletives. Of course it would be a wasted vote, but it would make a statement and make me, personally, feel a bit better. But now, I am reconsidering. Of all the people out there trying to tell me how to vote, there is only one group whose logic actually makes sense, and is not morally reprehensible.
That is why I will be voting Green. I do this in the hopes that other Bernie supporters will do this as well, and the Green party will gain enough votes to be on the ballot in all 50 states in 2024.
I still would like to see a new 3rd party, one dedicated to Berniecrat principals, but that’s not going to happen between now and this November.
So, Green it is.

There’s one I’ve seen on Facebook several times now, there’s a big triangle composed of many smaller triangles and a few rhomboids, and all you have to do is say how many triangles you could see. I think the correct answer was 12, but maybe it could have been higher.
Anyway, just for the heck of it (I often take these tests, almost never share the answers), I answered 136 and hit the old submit button.
“Willie,” it said, “you are a true and noble friend, you never give up on your dreams, blah, blah, blah”, just like it did for everybody else.
It’s not only not an accurate profile, it’s not even an attempt at one. It’s not artificial intelligence, it’s a talking doll with two or three programmed responses.
Really, how much computer intelligence would it take to respond to a clearly, wildly incorrect answer with “You’ve got to be kidding” or “What are you, some kind of wise guy?”
Or, what about a program that actually examines your profile, and your correspondence, and gives you some kind of useful psychoanalysis? Admittedly, as soon as I type that I realize the craziness of it. If people are crazy the last thing in the world they want is a computer saying “you are clearly delusional and need to lower your expectations in life” or “stop doing so many drugs.” Not to mention the privacy issue.
But I also see the benefits, and the possibilities. Completely objective, anonymous psychoanalysis for the masses.

I’m seeing quite a few Christian posts in my feed, which is obvious both because it’s Easter, and because you always see some. Ardent Christian’s tend to be like cat people, they post frequently and the quality of their content matters far less than just the point they want to hammer home.
On the one hand, I wish all people celebrating Easter to have a happy Easter, and all the Christian people I know personally are good people, so I apologize in advance for any offense this blog may give, but…
I also believe that organized religion is a curse, a tool that has been used by powerful interests for literally millenia to suppress people and support authoritarian regimes, to gin up support for wars and to excuse human failings. It is my deeply held belief (Yes, belief. Other people have other beliefs and just because I write a blog every day doesn’t mean I’m always right, or even know what I’m talking about) that society would be better off without it.
But, I don’t want to fight it head on. That’s antagonizing too great a percentage of the population for no good reason. I see religion in the same way I see race. These are concepts which, a thousand or two thousand years from now, if the human race is fortunate enough to still exist, will no longer be around.
All human beings 2,000 years from now will be such a mish-mosh of blended DNA that it simply won’t matter anymore. There will be a wide range of skin tones and facial features, but it will be a range, rather than a groupment.
Likewise religion. They aren’t gaining many new converts, because the old stories are obviously, now that we know about things like the vastness of space, and the big bang, and microbes, most people are focused on living a long and prosperous life and spending time in prayer, chanting magical words to an invisible being does not have the same appeal it did a thousand years ago.
Like race, it will continue to slip a little bit with each generation until, at some point in the future, it will be a side note. We don’t need to hurry that day. We don’t need to spend a lot of time debating that point. It’s just the way I think the future is going to unfold.
Happy Easter.

One of the reasons people have been slow to accept the reality of global warming is that people don’t understand the difference between geological time and real time. It’s also the reason so many people (in the U.S. at any rate, not many other countries seem to have that problem) don’t accept evolution.
But, there is no real difference between real time and geological time except scale. In the same way, people don’t understand the difference between the distance between Earth and its moon and the distance between Earth and the nearest star that’s not the sun. They are both space, and can be measured in numbers of units of distance.
However, the universe keeps expanding and life keeps evolving, whether people can understand it or not. Science keeps expanding, too. Will it be fast enough to save us all?
In Australia, scientists have made a really amazing discovery. There are skinks in Australia, of many different species, and the three-toed skinks around Sydney lay eggs, while the ones in the area of Darwin give birth to live babies, or maybe it’s the other way around.
But, recently, a mama skink gave birth to….wait for it….3 eggs and one live baby. Scientists are not sure if this is an egg laying species evolving into a live birth species or the other way around, but either way it’s a missing link in the evolutionary chain. Whereas global warming is now happening in ‘real time’ (i.e. orders of magnitude faster than geological time, like that moment shortly you get off the ski-chair and you’re suddenly moving way, way faster than you are comfortable with), so is evolution, apparently.
How scary is that? They are evolving to live birth within one generation, soon they will be walking upright and making tools.
Sure, human beings dominate the Earth today (and are doing a shit job of it, truth to tell), but how much longer?

If you’ve never watched Arrow on Netflix, and you hate spoilers, you might want to skip today’s blog. There are a couple of major spoilers. I feel this is justified a)because I have a point to make, and b) because it’s really just another dumb superhero fantasy, hardly great literature (although the two incidents I am about to talk about do show a serious reflection on ethics and morality), and if you never watch this show, you won’t be missing all that much. Your life will not be diminished, your cultural awareness will not be stunted in the same way it would if you’d never seen, for instance, Star Trek or Harry Potter, and c) I’m giving you the spoiler alert in advance. Stop reading here, or carry on. Your choice.
When Oliver was on the island, he was captured by a serious bad guy, I think his name was Ivo or something like that, who threatened to kill one of two women – Sarah, his girlfriend’s little sister he’d been shtooping on the sly, or Shadow, the mysterious Chinese martial arts master.
Oliver had to choose (I never saw Sophie’s choice. I just can’t bring myself to watch holocaust movies, but this was sort of that) and he chose Sarah, and was afterwards troubled with guilt and nightmares over Shadow’s death.
Another guy they were on the island with was Slade Wilson, who became sort of a superhuman after he’d been injected by Ivo with the Mirakuru drug, and he had always been in love with Shadow.
Well, flash forward many years later Slade tracks Oliver down in the real world, and manages to somehow kidnap Oliver’s ex-girlfriend (Sarah’s older sister) and Oliver’s mother, and he confronts him with the same choice again. This time, however, Oliver refuses to choose and Wilson kills his mother.
But Oliver is guilt free and also, the audience doesn’t mind too much because his mother really was a duplicitous snake, who had cheated on his father and later engaged in a plot to destroy the poor part of town with an earthquake machine so developers could move in and make a lot of money, and then she ran for mayor.
Moral of the story: When they say you have to choose, don’t choose. Either way something bad is going to happen, but you can continue to fight crime and evil and maintain your secret identity with a clear conscience.