Take a break from the amorphous thread for something pretty.

(Current totals: 10,849 entries with 1,092,105 comments.)

Excitement in Morris—big thunderstorm just blew through, taking out trees up & down the street, including one that came within inches of annihilating my car. The power is out, & it may be a while before it comes back.

No tornadoes, at least, but the worst part is that it hit while my wife is driving home, and now she’s very late…and of course her cell phone is off, and probably buried in that mess in her bag. Grrrr.

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She’s made it home! And the power just came back, 20 minutes before Futurama! See, Jesus really does love me.

…then Jeffrey Goldberg and the staff of The Atlantic have a personal message for you.

Oh, my. The tone!

A site called Progressive Nation is pleasantly surprised by the results of a Fox News poll.

Is it possible that even the center-right tilting viewing audience of Fox news programs is also open to significant upgrades of gay civil rights? That is what a surprising new, unscientific survey of a Fox web audience seems to be showing.

With pleasure, I direct you to this interesting Fox News online poll in which at the time of this posting 300,499 votes had been cast.

I hate to break the news to them, but that poll was pharyngulated and also hit hard by bots. Sorry. That’s the thing about online polls — people want to believe them when the results go their way, but they’re entirely untrustworthy either way.

Well, Auburn, actually. I’m visiting family this week and mainly holing up in my mother’s house to type. She doesn’t have an Internet connection, and no nearby wireless. It’s like moving into the backwoods, so I’m going to be a bit throttled for a while. But I shall get much done!

I’m entering this brief note on my iPad 3G, which I’ve found to be bit flaky with MovableType. This may manifest itself as a blank entry, in which case I’ll be very frustrated and you won’t even know it.

At least the sun is shining and there are mountains and trees and oceans around here, even if this Internet thingie is glitchy.

If you’re going to Dragon*Con this year, you might want to look into this other event: a Star Party at the Emory University observatory. You’ll get to hang out with cool people and learn stuff about the sky, and proceeds will also benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

At least when it comes to quackery, it is. An informal analysis of relevant stories on homeopathy reveals some sad results:

• Fox news returned a total of 20 news stories; 5% were favorable towards homeopathy, 50% were unfavorable, and 45% were neutral.

• NPR returned a total of 8 news stories; 12.5% were favorable towards homeopathy, 50% were unfavorable, and 37.5% were neutral.

• The Huffington Post returned a total of 77 news stories; 68.83% were favorable toward homeopathy, 14.28% were unfavorable, and 16.88% were neutral.

Fox and NPR don’t really have a horse in this race, so their percentages (based on some small numbers) probably just reflect a casual bias in the popular culture, unfortunate as it is. HuffPo looks like they’re flogging quackery pretty hard, and almost certainly intentionally.

Unless they’re imprecatory, and from the other side. Christopher Hitchens has made an announcement.

I have been advised by my physician that I must undergo a course of chemotherapy on my esophagus. This advice seems persuasive to me. I regret having had to cancel so many engagements at such short notice.

Medical treatment is the best course of action in these sorts of events.

We have achieved victory in the great beard debate, reaching the goal of £1500, and also the votes for beards have a dominating lead over no beard. The Trophy Wife™ is relieved.

We aren’t quite finished, though — the poll will remain open for another week, and those sneaky bare-faced people might still pull together a bunch of votes and snatch victory from our grasp. Just in case, I’m mobilizing the Australian hordes with this awesome beard on the face of Ned Kelly.

Ferocious!

The beard-or-not donations seem to be fading…we’re at 86% of the goal. Clearly you need inspiration, and here it is: the fabulous Captain Nemo.

Notice also yet another reason for the beard: it expresses our yearnings for the glorious appendages of the cephalopod. We can’t have tentacles, but at least we can recognized the beauty of dangly bits hanging off of our heads.

By the way, I have to address a base canard that I have been hearing from many poorly informed women: that the beard is scratchy and unpleasant. Not true! This is a confusion spread by those men who shave, and who reduce their natural beards to a coarse stubble. It’s the bare-faced men who have abrasive chins! The beard, when allowed to grow, is soft and silky, like the pelt of a baby rabbit — soothing to the caress, gentle when cheek-to-cheek, and capable of feathery tickles when cheek-to-other-bits. The only way those clean-shaven scoundrels can achieve such softness is by slaughtering baby rabbits, hacking their skins off, and plastering the bloody fur to their perfidious faces. They are disgusting barbarians.

Save the baby rabbits. Help the children of Barnardo’s grow up to cultivate downy beards of their own. Donate and vote for the beard.