His Myth books totally disrespected the conventions of fantasy. He might not have been the first cynic to tear down those stodgy tropes, but he was the first one for me, and my world was a little more hilarious afterward. Thanks.

@16,

I'm afraid that Rosey Grier has forever subdued my skepto-reflex where enormous ex-athletes and thread are concerned.

Where would Bill Russell buy thimbles? How would he thread a needle? You've got to ask the tough questions. This is why I'll never be a scientist!

I found out later that this "every other thread" knitting technique is called a "multi-pick" weave, and that it was designed by Bill Russell, the player-coach of the world champion Boston Celtics.

Umm, what?

I have to say... I did NOT know that.

@Aaarrgghh,

what if we never find proof of god's existence -- as would be the case if god did not in fact exist? is the atheist's belief still a leap of faith?

Many things will be clarified in the last days. For now, a position of absolute denial (of gods or fairies) isn't warranted. There's no evidence that they don't exist. That doesn't mean they exist, it just means we don't need to think about it.

I know the difference between belief and non-belief...it couldn't be clearer. Perhaps faith is like Potter Stuart's obscenity ("I know it when I see it"), but I can't distinguish between the various flavors of non-belief (agnostic, atheist, skeptic, etc...). They all seem like atheism to me. Am I wrong?

I'm not a believer, btw. I consider myself an atheist. If someone could put the Touch of Death on me...it would almost be worth them doing it just to know that it could be done. But it would be really unexpected. Am I a "Touch of Death" agnostic? I don't think so...

@Arkizzle,

Wait, if atheism is indifference then what is agnosticism? Is it like coming home to find a pie in the oven, where you can sort of smell it and it looks really sweet but you have no idea what's inside?

Isn't faith an either/or position? Where's the middle ground? And don't give me that Atheists deny the existence of God/Fairies/Libertarians bit...I don't take any negative positions and I don't have to defend them.

I like pie, btw.

@#45, TENN...

Atheists say there is no God.
Theists say there is a God.
Agnostics say there may or mayn't be a God, but they cannot know.

Any "atheist" who claims to know "there is no God" is a believer, I think. How could you hold such a view without a leap of faith?

If an 'agnostic' says "may or mayn't" they're non-believers. Not deniers, not "give me Godlessness or give me death" militant enemies of faith, but...atheists. There's nothing in-between, regardless of our desire to avoid the stigma of atheism by inventing new terms.

Agnostics are a waste of good vocabulary.

@XODARAP, #31...

Example: In the debate about the existence of God, it is the AGNOSTIC, not the atheist, who is a skeptic. A skeptic, by definition, RESERVES judgment as to whether the fact in question is true or false.

There are no agnostics. There are believers(going with faith where evidence will not take them) and non-believers(evidence only, everything else in the "I don't know/don't care category). Faith is a binary concept...you have it or you don't.

Agnosticism, as far as I can tell, was invented to let ambitious atheists join exclusive social clubs.

@Antinous, It's weird to me how so many people require a clearly delineated line between humans and everything else in existence.

If you are human, then human intelligence is the only type you've got. That's the moat, and the wire. We can't ask the fish what it thinks. We can only observe and ponder, and pick bugs from each other's hairy backs. You aren't a fish and don't think like one, no matter how much sushi you eat.

I should read the whole article (but then I'll get bored, give up, and re-read my Archie comics), but from what I've read hear...why can they count again?

If I see a group of two people next to a group of three people, I don't need to count them to figure out which is the larger group. Size is obvious, grouping is obvious... That fish can do what babies do doesn't make me like sushi any less.

Counting? No, not unless I actually read the piece. But what are the odds? In the words of HST, "Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll."

I read manuscripts for a living. Well, sort of a living. Try reading 50k words on your cell in one go. Have an aspirin.

The ink is the thing. These are, and will continue to be, standalone devices. The Kindle, with its EV-DO connection, is a half-step device, bridging the gap between now and a time soon to come when broadband cellphone/computers will be in every pocket.

Need to read a brief/memo/manuscript/novel/any other bloody printed thing? Have to pay for your own paper/ink cartridge? Not interested in staring at your cell phone/lcd monitor for the next six hours? Just get on your Near-Futurephone and download the file, transfer to your e-ink reader via bluetooth/wifi/other local wireless protocol, and...that's it, really.

They're coming, and they'll be pretty cheap. A couple of ink cartridges-cheap, anyway.

Long ago I downed a liter of vodka. The first half was over an hour, the second half was in 90 seconds. Though I was already drunk, it was like being drunk on top of that, a great rising wave of intoxication that broke over me in the last 15 minutes of my night.

When I woke up I was lying on my side, in my bed, with a trail of vomit leading from my mouth to a pool on the floor. The thin foam mattress was entirely soaked with my sweat. A mate from my work stopped by to check on me and said he'd been by earlier, knocking on the door, but had been unable to wake me.

I'm quite sure that's the closest I've ever come to death. Pride is a killer...

@NE2D:

Power /= Interest

This was an abuse of power. Did they send a cease and desist notice? Did they send out a press release notifying the community that there would be a crackdown on illegal gaming? How much extra cash does the Dallas PD have lying around that they can put together a swat team for a VFW takedown?

Somebody will get promoted over this, mark my words!

@Wil,

I think we expect people, including bloggers, to tell us the truth as they see it. I was raised with a fantasy notion that "journalists" should report the "facts," scrubbed of personal content to the best of their ability, and this is what we don't expect from our bloggers, or from each other.

Facts are fine, until the scrubbing of opinion leads to an apathy of judgment. This is Joe Klein's problem, as I see it: He has been scrubbing his own judgment out of the picture for so long that he lacks the ability to substitute his own good sense for someone else's information, when that information is clearly ridiculous. One might say that he's been lobotomized by the scalpel of cynicism.

As for TPM v. Powerline, they are both laden with opinion and personal judgment, and we as readers are better for it in both cases. Would you want the fellows at Powerline to hide their idiocy behind a veil of objectivity as Fox and other traditional media types are wont to do? We're better off, perhaps, just ridding ourselves of the objectivity myth and letting the opinion pages have at each other with their own versions of the story, and may the most factual win.

I like Joe Klein. He writes readable, cogent pieces that do a nice job of humanizing his subjects. He expresses his opinions well and, when on television, seems like a really decent guy. Maybe it's the beard, which makes him look like a Rabbi Santa Claus. Whatever.

If Klein has a problem, it's credibility. It wouldn't be a big deal to me, except that my traditional notion of journalism really emphasis credibility as a keystone trait. So he's not much of a journalist.

I think he'd make a hell of a blogger, though, if he can make that transition. Until he escapes the expectations of truth which hound all mainstream media types, he'll never be able to properly express himself.

"Copying the text of an email as part of a reply, for example, is almost certainly both fair use and authorized."

This seems like exactly the sort of baseline assumption that is true only up to the point where the technology exists to allow copyright holders to enforce their claims. It's not the "grace of fair use" but the benign ignorance of corporate interests which allows most of the traffic John discusses to go unpunished. If they had the technology, the will, and the economic incentive to punish this behavior, wouldn't they be able to do so? Under the present rules?

I remember reading about Dr. Kanazawa's thesis in Psychology Today some months ago. I couldn't quite put my opinion of his work into words at the time, but fortune smiled on me just now when I glanced down the BoingBoing page and saw this "older" link:

FLOATING TOXIC PLASTIC GARBAGE ISLAND TWICE THE SIZE OF TEXAS.

That's about right.

Scalia should recuse himself on account of his born-again virginity.

Conflict of Disinterest?