As someone who is hopeless at learning languages, I have a deep admiration for those pick up new ones with seeming ease. I am even more impressed by those who provide simultaneous translations, able to achieve the incredible feat of listening to a stream of words entering their heads in one language, translating it in their brains, and then sending the message out in a different language, all the while having a fresh stream of words entering. [Read more…]

Even those people who treat speed limits as merely suggestions and stop signs as saying ‘slow down and look before you go’ tend to take stopped school buses with flashing lights seriously. You simply know that there’ll be hell to pay if you don’t stop and if some school child gets hit as a result. [Read more…]

I hate talking on the phone. For a long time, I resisted getting a cell phone until I was persuaded about its value in an emergency, so I got a cheap one that does not have a contract plan and for which I can pre-pay and that I rarely use. [Read more…]

A little Shih-Tzu dog found itself somehow stranded on a remote small land bank about to be engulfed by the rising tide. Fortunately, an endurance rower who was training for an event spotted the dog and even though he was already exhausted was able to row over to the bank and rescue the frightened dog and take it ashore. [Read more…]

I will be traveling for the next few days to attend a college reunion in Washington DC and so blogging may be light since my access to the internet may be spotty as well as me being busy meeting up with old friends whom I have not seen for decades. Unfortunately due to Hurricane Sandy, some of them have had their flights cancelled and so cannot attend.

Blogging should be back to normal by Monday.

I woke up this morning to see that a huge pine tree that was right next to our house in the backyard had toppled over. Fortunately it missed our house and the garage and the power line. It did knock out our telephone line so now I have no landline phone and hence no internet access at home, since I use DSL. [Read more…]

Dan Barker, a former preacher turned atheist and now co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, will be speaking on the topic of the separation of church and state on Thursday, Oct 25th, 7:00-9:00pm in the 1914 Lounge in the Thwing Center on the CWRU campus. Thwing Center is at 11111 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland just east of Severance Hall.

The event is organized by the CWRU chapter of the Center for Inquiry and is free and open to the public.

Although I started blogging on January 26, 2005, I joined the FreethoughtBlogs network just this year, on January 10. I noticed that yesterday, I had reached the one million mark in page views since I came here.

Of course, that is small compared to many other blogs but I am personally very gratified by the level of interest. Thanks to all those who have visited and also to those who have taken part in the discussions in the comments. It has been fun and I hope to continue the relationship for a long time.

Conservationists in Kenya got a report that a baby elephant had fallen into a well. The problem was how to get it out with just a rope and an off-road vehicle. [Read more…]

Fellow Freethought blogger Greta Christina has been having a run of unfortunate setbacks in her life recently. Her father just died after a long illness and then almost immediately afterwards she was diagnosed with endometrial cancer that requires surgery and will cause her to curtail much of her writing and speaking (which is the source of her income) during the period of surgery and recovery.

Greta is, typically, hanging tough and being upbeat about her situation but she is also realistic that at this time she needs help so she is reluctantly holding a fundraiser to help tide her over just during the period of her treatment, until she can get back to writing and speaking full time again.

Any help that you can give her will be greatly appreciated.