Is it possible to die of a sentimentality overdose?

Just asking. I inherited this great big pile of 8mm film recordings made by my grandfather and father in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s, which were pretty much unviewable — have you got an 8mm projector lying around? So I dropped them off at a Walmart Photocenter along with $650 to have them converted to digital. They’re sitting in Seattle right now, and I thought it would be a while until I could see them…but, you know, digital, so I just got an email saying I could view them over this thing called the internet.

Oh my god.

There’s my childhood, laid out in grainy, poorly lit, soundless, washed-out color. Christmases and camping trips, my great-grandparents alive again, my grandfather looking hale and sober, my grandmother middle-aged and strong, my father digging clams and picking up his kids, my mother in her 20s looking good, and all my siblings back again. I only had a few minutes to skim through these hours of film, but later I’ll have to watch them thoroughly and wallow in the old days.

Here, for instance, is me hugging my late brother sometime in the early 1960s.

If I’m found dead, drowned in a puddle of tears later this week, you’ll know what happened.

I’m going to upload these many recordings to YouTube to make them accessible to the rest of my family — no one else in the world will care but these are like jewels of ancient cinematography to me.

Travel the world! See exotic foreign places!

My son occasionally sends us photos from his location in the Middle East. I thought living in a small rural town in the Midwest was a little less than stimulating, but here’s sunset in Kuwait.

It looks a little strange because there’s a sandstorm about to blow in. The next day…

Next time we get a blizzard or whiteout, I’ll look at that and think, “it could be worse” (which is a very Minnesota thing to say, by the way.)

Busy day

It’s that time of year when my wife’s garden bears fruit and it’s my turn to get to work in the kitchen. I get to spend my day rendering tomatoes and peppers and onions and garlic into sauce.

Then I have to prepare a lecture that tries to answer the question, “where did prehistoric people think humans came from.” Fortunately, we have a prehistoric historical document.

I thought capitalism & private enterprise would make space travel more efficient

I’m such a fool. You’d think competition and privatization would improve the space program, but now we’ve got multiple examples of corporate failure.

I’ve mentioned the embarrassment of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which seems to be a total piece of junk. It got astronauts up to the International Space Station, but it’s so untrustworthy that they’re considering using SpaceX to rescue them.

Except…Boeing and SpaceX space suits are incompatible. The astronauts might be stuck up there for as much as 8 months, or they can chance it and descend in a capsule with no suits. It’s probably OK. They have an old-fashioned fix: prayer.

Meanwhile, another billionaire has stepped up and is buying a trip into orbit. This is not just a joyride, he says, they’ve got a serious scientific purpose. That purpose is unclear. They’re going to go into a high orbit on a SpaceX Dragon capsule, high enough that it will pass through the Van Allen belts, and while they’re there, Jared Isaacman and one of the crew will go on a tethered spacewalk, exposing themselves to increased radiation. I don’t know why. It seems to be more of a daredevil gimmick.

Extra bonus stupidity: the Dragon capsule does not include an airlock, so they’re simply going to vent all of the atmosphere inside the capsule, forcing the other 3 crewmembers to sit in their spacesuits so Isaacman can go outside and wave at the camera. Yay! Decompression is fun!

Can we just put NASA back in charge? Bring back the grown-ups to run the show.

Keep Bill Maher away from kids

I avoid watching anything to do with horrible old Bill Maher, but here’s a video of people talking about Bill Maher. It seems he has a segment called “Bill Maher talks to kids” which you might imagine is an attempt at being avuncular and wise, but no…he strolls out carrying a drink, sits down and makes some innuendo about Viagra, talks about porn, and suggests that these 8-16 year old kids are trans, because he has these assumptions that young people are all transitioning. It is the creepiest thing you’ll see today, I hope.

These aren’t secret clips and outtakes from the show — Bill Maher actually took the whole hour long segment of an icky old drunk guy talking about sex and porn, and laughing at gay and trans people, and intentionally put it on the internet for everyone to see. Will HBO do anything? Nah. Free speech! It’s not bad if it’s heterosexual grooming.

Did you know that Kamala Harris is a communist?

Some billionaires told me so.

Meanwhile, the communists I know are all saying “Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and the rest: We don’t need your “promise of America”—we need a revolution to put an end to your system” and are pointing out that Harris and Walz are “putting the joy in genocide”. I guess they aren’t real communists? I should listen to Trump & Musk when they tell me what communism is?

It’s all so confusing.

It’s always a good time to be an atheist

The Intelligent Design creationists had a discombobulating conversation that they thought was brilliant, but just left me wondering what planet they live on. They were discussing when it was a better time to be an atheist, and apparently it was in 1890, when being an atheist would prohibit you from entering a major university.

Jay Richards: The fact that we now talk about the universe as having an age is a significant update from a century and a half ago. It leads to new questions. Is it unique? Was there one beginning? Can we talk about the beginning? But that’s a different sort of situation. And so, I think if you’re thinking in terms of worldviews, I would much rather be a materialist where everyone assumed the universe was eternal than be at a moment in which virtually everyone, whether skeptic or believer, says, “Well, the universe has an age, so it’s got a finite past.”

Peter Robinson: You’d rather be a materialist in the 1890s…

Jay Richards: Exactly.

Peter Robinson: Than today?

Jay Richards: Yes, and I think it’s much easier to be a theist when standard cosmology says “Well, the universe hasn’t always been here.” It’s no longer a good candidate for an ultimate explanation if it had a beginning.

Jay Richards is not an atheist, of course, which makes one wonder about his ability to see the world from the perspective of an atheist. But OK, he considers himself an authority on the godless. That does not surprise me at all.

As an atheist and a materialist, though, I can say pretty definitely that the better time to be a materialist is when we have more information about the material world, which ought to be obvious. The big difference between scientists and the clowns at the Discovery Institute is that we welcome new information and aren’t trying to force-fit the universe into a mold decided upon by ancient civilizations.

So our universe had a beginning? We happily filed that data away with all the other facts about the material nature of the world. There’s nothing in that observation that implies a supernatural or magical origin — in fact, to the contrary, what led to that conclusion is physical observation and measurement, and physicists, not theologians, are exploring the 13.8 billion years of its existence.

News for Jay Richards: the Big Bang is not evidence for Jesus. It’s a bad time to be a theist when your god is getting squeezed into smaller and smaller gaps, and godless science is doing a better job of explaining how the world works than your holy book.

I am a fake midwesterner

Every year about this time I feel like an imposter. I have lived here for 24 years, my mother was born here as were both of my grandmothers, but never once have I attended the Minnesota State Fair. This is a Big Thing around here, and I’ve never even been tempted.

Worse, a huge feature of the fair is the long list of featured foods, which includes a horrifying quantity of deep-fried awfulness. I’m sorry, but Deep Fried Ranch Dressing?

Ranch dressing filling made with ranch seasoning, buttermilk and cream cheese in a panko shell, deep-fried and dusted with ranch powder. Served with a side of hot honey sauce crafted with Cry Baby Craig’s hot sauce. (Vegetarian)

It’s vegetarian! I think it’s how plants kill herbivores, though.

That’s the apotheosis of Midwestern culinary excellence, and just thinking about it makes me queasy. I don’t even like regular ranch dressing (another thing that flags me as a foreigner), but deep frying it just makes everything worse.

You’ll have to look at the list and let me know if anything looks appealing at all. Maybe the Chile Mango Whip, and the paella looks normal.