 Weather reached a record-breaking 84 degrees in my area of Michigan, the Mitt State. This time of year, we are usually still wearing out mitt-ens. It was the hottest March day ever on record in the state, continuing a record blitz of early and mid-summer temps followed by a much milder than normal winter. The blue herons never left to fly south.
The stretch has been wonderful. The spring peeper frog started chirping a week ago. The mosquitoes are just hatching but the daffodils, crocus, even the forsythia, are already in full bloom. The robins are back and so are the red-winged blackbirds. Full story »
 The smoldering ruin of Rush Limbaugh dramatizes one political truism: seemingly impregnable fortresses are most vulnerable to suicidal implosions. Despite decades of volcanic vitriol, no outside force had yet penetrated Rush’s propaganda bubble chamber, full of pretend entertainment. No doubt, the fall of the Dittohead Dynasty reflects both the gratuity of Limbaugh’s latest abuse and the wholesomeness of the victim. For the record, Sandra Fluke’s noble decency stared down a serial miscreant. After all, other fringe charlatans haven’t suddenly lost 140 sponsors, nor did some new-found Democratic charge deter Rush’s grotesque buffoonery.
Though the bully pulpit resides in the White House, shifty, snarling bullies still sneer their way to fame and fortune. Full story »
 So. What do you get when an agnostic bordering on atheism has a crisis of faith? That would be me. A significant chunk of my self-identification as an agnostic, a rather defining label to affix to oneself if one can define by negation, involved an active choice to specifically not believe in god, God, G-d, or gods, or goddesses, or spirits or angels or demons or ghosts or souls and a whole host of other things in which to rationally disbelieve.
To see myself inclined to believe, if only in fits and starts, is to have a knee-jerk reaction in the other direction. For were I to believe, ultimately, in the irrational, and for the most subjective and indescribable reasons at that, I may have to seek the grounds for a personal ethics in a manner already subject to an extreme of doubt, wherein some other nebulous and unproven reality dictates the rules of the game here. I’ve tried this approach, and when challenged, I ask the same, “and why should it be so?” as I ask of philosophy.
Full story »
In case you missed it, today is Vernal Equinox 2012. From everybody here at S&R, may your day and your night be of approximately equal duration… :)
Photograph: Stonehenge Aotearoa, New Zealand. Click image for more.
 Last summer I did some thinking about Mr. Obama and the 2012 election. Specifically, would voting for him again be a good idea? I offered up several scenarios where I pondered ugly realities – long and short term – and concluded:
In the end, I don’t live in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida so my vote isn’t likely to count. In that case I’ll be safe enough casting a protest vote for whoever lands on the Green ticket. If it turns out that Colorado winds up as a battleground state in a tight election, then I have some hard-core soul-searching to do.
Ultimately, though, I can’t shake the feeling that something dramatic, something earth-shaking, something seismic aimed at the very heart of the system is going to be required to break the cycle of corruption and incompetence and butt-ignorance that shapes the course of American political and economic life.
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 The prevailing argument among our brilliant crew of writers here at S&R lately over our public discourses v. those of our opponents goes something like this: some of us want to take the high road in public discussion of the issues; some of us want to go into the same attack dog mode that our opponents use; and some of us, as Sam Smith so eloquently notes in his post on the matter:
… some of us watch the debate with a good measure of conflict in our souls. We think about it, we test the implications, we agonize over it, all because we appreciate the complexities of politics and culture and we understand the human, emotional and spiritual costs as well as we do the collective, physical, economic ones.
Today Scholars & Rogues honors our 50th masthead scrogue, Samuel L. Clemens of Hannibal, MO, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain – arguably (though I don’t think there can be much argument) America’s greatest writer. Full story »
 Former English Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken his share of beatings here at S&R, and I’m grateful to my colleague Wufnik for periodically reminding us all what an invertebrate git Wee Bambi is. In the grand scheme of things (you know, helping his Mac Daddy George Bush invade Iraq, resulting in the pointless deaths of … well, the estimates vary, but range as high as a million-plus, many of them civilians) today’s news is piddling, but it nonetheless confirms what we have long known about Teflon Tony.
Nobel peace prize winner defends law criminalising homosexuality in Liberia: In joint interview, Tony Blair refuses to comment on Liberian president’s remarks supporting anti-gay laws
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  Like a bizillion other people, I’ve caught snippets of Night of the Living Dead on late-night AMC while channel surfing, but I’ve never stopped for more than a few seconds. There’s something so quintessentially “B-movie” about any given thee-minute segment of the movie that keeps it from being too enticing (and that coming from a guy who generally loves old B-movie monster pics, too).
But watch George Romero’s seminal zombie movie from start to finish and a creepy excellence somehow manifests itself. Night of the Living Dead rises up beyond B-movie status into something enduring and chilling—and like the zombies themselves, it just keeps coming at you. Full story »
 In the brilliant movie Chinatown, the cornered, luckless hero (Gittes) demands the villain’s motivation:
Gittes: I just want to know what you’re worth. Over ten million?
Cross: Oh my, yes!
Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can’t already afford?
Cross: The future, Mr. Gits – the future.
So drives today’s Republican providential villainy: at home, the conscious, cynical wholesale demolition of modern, secular, middle-class America – overseas, smashing medieval, non-Christian states that offend its entitled vision of the future. Sacrificing one White House race works if it sullies the waters of governance, seizes the Senate, and holds the House: onward rightwing soldiers marching off to ’14 and ’16 wars. Full story »
 Originally posted 3.17.08 and re-posted each St. Patrick’s Day.
I won’t be wearing green today.
Don’t get me wrong – like many Americans, I’ve got plenty of Irish blood in my veins, and I’m quite happy to celebrate that heritage.
But this St. Patrick thing… Sadly, very few people have stopped to think about exactly what they’re celebrating, or whom. Patrick is credited with leading the Christianization of Ireland and it’s said he “drove the snakes out” of the place. That, of course, is metaphorical. The serpent was an ancient druidic symbol of wisdom, and the thing that was literally driven out (or killed and buried in the ground of) Ireland was the vibrant, centuries-old culture of the Celts. Full story »
 I just love serendipity.
Seemingly unrelated events: For a couple of weeks now, I’ve been wracking my brains over my next post on the subject of critical thinking. In email a while back, I had an exchange with someone over the importance of identifying the actual issues. Regarding recent posts at Scholars & Rogues, I’ve been on the brink of reply but left grasping at some inchoate…something. There was a word. Right there. At the tips of my tongue and fingers. And it was gone, along with the sense or structure of anything I might add. Then tonight it hit me. I searched. As luck would have it, this gold nugget from almost exactly five years ago popped up, only to reveal itself as perhaps the most generally relevant thing I’ve read in a fair while.
First Chapter: Framing the Debate by Jeffrey Feldman Full story »
 Earlier this morning Chris offered up a post entitled “Why are environmentalists missing a mild-weather opportunity?” It raises a pragmatic point about how the climate “debate” plays out in the public sphere and is well worth a read. Go ahead – I’ll wait.
Predictably – and by “predictably,” I mean that last night I e-mailed our climate guru, Brian Angliss, and said “when Chris’s post lands, here’s what’s going to happen,” and it has played out as though I had scripted it; the denialists have jumped on the post in an attempt to cast Chris and the rest of the S&R staff as “hypocrites.” One prominent anti-science type wants you to believe that the message is “we know weather isn’t climate, but let’s lie to people anyway!”
Like I say, as predicted.
The truth is that Chris’s post is part of a larger context. Full story »
 by Chip Ainsworth
My first memory of watching a Grapefruit League game is when I was 10 years old in Pompano Beach with my father. The Washington Senators were playing a team at a ballpark so nondescript it was the home of the local high school team. We sat on metal benches next to a pitcher named Jim Duckworth and the game was tied after nine frames. “No charge for extra innings,” said the PA announcer.
Today spring training is big business. At Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, fans pay the same prices for hot dogs and beer they do at big league parks. A lower box seat for a premium game against the Red Sox cost $36. Throw in all the other costs — food, beverages, parking and a program — and the price tag tops out at about $100.
Travel writer John Gunther once wrote how to see Europe on five dollars a day; here’s how to see baseball in Jupiter for fifteen dollars a game. Full story »
 [Update When I corrected the number of documents that Heartland authenticated on March 15 from eight to seven, I missed a few other places where minor corrections and updates were needed. I've updated this first section to make it clearer that Heartland authenticated the seven internal documents that were published.
See also the 3/19/12 Editor's Note at the bottom of the post.]
Today is March 16. 31 days ago, on Valentine’s Day, eight seven internal Heartland Institute documents that revealed the Institute’s 2012 budget, 2012 and 2011 donors, and their plans for climate disinformation for the coming year, were published without permission. 21 days ago, Massachusetts Representative Edward Markey, ranking member on the House Committee on Natural Resources, gave Joseph Bast of The Heartland Institute a deadline of today to authenticate those eight seven documents.
[Correction: When this post was written, Heartland's response to Markey had not yet been published. However, Heartland did respond to Markey's requests. The following section has been updated accordingly.]
Bast and The Heartland Institute refused to comply with Markey’s request and deadline. As such, we can now assume that Heartland’s silence means that
On March 15, Bast and The Heartland Institute responded to Markey’s request. Their response confirms that:
- the seven internal documents are authentic;
- those documents are accurate and correctly describe the subjects contained within the documents; and
- those documents have not been changed since they were obtained and published.
Full story »
 There’s still time for one more doozy of a snowstorm before winter gives up its ghost, I tell myself—although the next storm we get will be the first. We’ve had hardly any snow at all here this winter, which is saying something considering that I live in western New York, famous for the thick bands of lake-effect snow that pummel us every year. This year, not so much.
Everyone’s talking about it—what a mild winter we’ve had. How little snow has fallen. How warm it’s been. Everyone. And it’s not just here; it seems to be all across the country.
I can’t help but wonder about the missed opportunity: Why hasn’t someone been using the mild weather to bang the drum about climate change? Full story »
 You know that guy who comes over for the dinner party and then just will not leave? Everybody else goes home and he’s still there, talking about this hot girlfriend he had at camp one summer in high school. You drop hint after hint and he wonders if you have any more beer. You change into your pajamas and yawn in his face and he takes off his shoes and socks. There is no hint that he can be persuaded to take. You know that guy, and so do Republican voters.
Even in the Deep South, Newt Gingrich keeps gimping home in last place. It’s more than clear to anyone paying even a little attention that he is not regarded as viable by Republican voters, but even after 27 losses in his last 28 tries, he refuses to bow out. Full story »
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