Walter J. Semerau, 1907-1996
"Just because some amateur telescope makers have no advanced degree in physics, they imagine they can't do the job and thereby miss a front seat at one of nature's best shows. A number of experts have commented favorably on the performance of my instrument. It certainly cannot be credited to my formal education. My ( Read more... )

Fragment of a poem from a dream, attributed therein to Jack Parsons:

he brought you the ear-capped amber bag of despair

awkward and awful, I know, but I didn't exactly write it, and there's an Enochian note in there...

hamsexy.com has eaten up half my day at least.  It's not what you might think, and it's as "safe for work" as most interweb tomfoolery ( Read more... )

As administered in the Western Church today according to the rite of the Roman Ritual, the sacrament consists (apart from certain non-essential prayers) in the unction with oil, specially blessed by the bishop, of the organs of the five external senses (eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands), of the feet, and, for men (where the custom exists and the ( Read more... )

Scott Adams nails the weakness of the folk-skeptic bastardization of Ockham's Razor (“the simplest explanation is usually correct” ) as a rhetorical device:

I call this problem Adams’ razor, and it goes like this: “The explanation that you believe is correct will always seem simplest to you.”

How many times have you heard someone argue that ( Read more... )

it's about math this time
( so if you don't want to know )

I'm really pleased with the responses to my next-to-last post, which are all great and even brilliant, but I'm swamped until the end of the month so I will have to wrap up my thoughts on that subject later ( Read more... )

By the way, the cat quite deliberately tried to kill the dog this morning by knocking a 15-oz can off the kitchen counter onto him. She narrowly missed his head. I have no idea how we would have explained it if the little monster had managed to brain him.

Quite often latter-day gnostics will choose to emphasize, first and foremost and sometimes to the exclusion of any other teaching, that gnosticism does not require an intermediary between the individual and God.  This is just a warming-over of the Protestant doctrine of the "priesthood of all believers", which the Catholic Encycopedia charmingly ( Read more... )

( the newest member of the household, picture behind cut )