Month: July 2008

I realized some years back that the reason we have heroes in movies is really that there are so few of them. We truly do want unbending honesty, and heroic defenders, and powerful people who fight for truth and justice.

But they’re next to impossible to get in real life. Instead we get … George W. Bush. Jesse Jackson. Britney Spears. People who can’t even aspire to be flawed heroes, because though they possess flaws in abundance, they don’t have the required heroism. They’re just people — famous ones, but not very good ones.

The other side of the thing holds true, though, too. Some of the bad people we see in movies are there because there are so few of them.

For instance, when’s the last time you heard of a real Mad Scientist? I’m guessing pretty close to never. They make it into the movies because they almost don’t exist in real life, and so filmmakers feel free to use them as convenient boogeymen.

Continue reading “Hello, Clarice.”

Once more onto the soapbox, dear friends:

I had a friend who had 40 sled dogs. And oh boy, did they ever LOVE pulling those sleds! You could see it in how eager they were to get in harness. They leaped, they wriggled, they screamed to get into harness and start pulling.

I took my own two dogs out for hikes – off leash – in true wilds twice a day, in the woods, along mountain trails, along creeks, and on remote dirt roads.

One summer I started taking one of his sled dogs, my favorite, with us. At first, Walter was afraid of everything on the walks. He shied away from a creek barely a foot wide, and finally crossed it by jumping over it about four feet in the air. He didn’t even know it was water – it was several days before I could get him to drink from the creek. When he finally dipped his muzzle into it, then put a foot into it, he splashed and ran in it like it was the most exciting thing he’d ever seen.

Continue reading “Sauron II: Cheated Dogs”

PZ Myers complained that atheists don’t have any good pamphlets. Here are some I designed a year or two back.

atheist-flyer.pdf

Okay, that’s it.

I just read a story in the Washington Post about a new CBS TV show, “Greatest American Dog.”

Look, to begin with, I don’t like “reality” TV. I don’t watch it. But I’m okay with it if a bunch of idiots want to go out on national TV and eat cow anuses or climb out on narrow beams above pits of broken glass, all for the remote chance of winning money. Not only do I think they’re more than welcome to do that, I know they don’t even have to care about my opinion. I’m fine with it, seriously. For all I care, as long as they’re adults, and they’re freely choosing to do those stupid things, they can all wind up in wheelchairs. Yeah, it would hurt me to see something like that happen to a fellow human being, but tragedies happen every day and I don’t think I have any right to interfere in other people’s private decisions. Heck, I’m the guy who thinks suicide should be legal. And at least they get a chance at the money, unlike all those people who have crippling injuries while skateboarding or riding motorcycles.

Continue reading “The Eye of Sauron Looks Down and Sees … Dogs”