Recent Comments

1. 16 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Also where Constantine was declared Emperor of Rome in AD306 by his troops. He later became the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity. It was a political decision, not dissimilar to orangeman embracing the fundamentalists of today.

2. 21 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Yes – a cynical and opportunistic strategy, but it had no bearing on the defeat of Japan.

3. 22 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   This is not to denigrate those who fought there, but Normandy was not where the Nazis were defeated – that happened on the eastern front courtesy of the Red Army. All D Day really accomplished was stopping Stalin’s forces from reaching the Atlantic. I would argue that that was a good thing, but the Germans had already lost their war. Now the war against Japan was still raging and that was won with no Red Army assistance whatsoever. However, the Brits in Burma and the Aussies in New Guinea and other (now) Indonesian islands certainly contributed.

4. 2 months ago on Bloom County

   Translations by humans of texts written by humans based on the myths of their time. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world similar events were occurring, just with different Gods involved. Humans have always needed stories to explain existence. Today the stories are based on observations, measurements and experiments that can be repeated with the same results – that’s what we call science. Gods are no longer necessary.

5. 2 months ago on Bloom County

   Better a philosophy based on science than one based on mythology.

6. 2 months ago on Bloom County

   13.7 billion years is the best estimate of the age of the universe based on astronomical measurements. It may be older, it is certainly not younger. The number of stars in the universe is also an estimate, as is the number of grains of sand. Both numbers are huge. The age of the earth at 4.5 billion years has both astronomical and geological measurements to strongly support it and the hominid fossil record just keeps on expanding year after year with the new finds confirming that upright walking apes go back 100,000’s of years in their evolutionary history.These scientific facts will be adjusted if new discoveries warrant such changes, but the overall picture will not change. The universe is very, very, very big and has been here for much, much, much longer than humans. If you believe that it is all the work of some supernatural something, has been done just to produce us and that this something has a personal interest in each and every human inhabitant of this planet, your brain works very differently than mine.

7. 2 months ago on Bloom County

   The universe is 13.7 billion years old. There are more stars in it than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of this tiny insignificant speck we call Earth, which has only existed for 4.5 billion years.Modern Humans have been here for about 200,000 years. Given these facts, belief in a personal god is completely irrational.

8. 2 months ago on Doonesbury

   There are 4 graphs that I used to show to my students: human population growth in the last 2000 years, fossil fuel combustion since the start of the industrial revolution, the Mauna Loa CO2 concentration graph and global average temperature since meteorological recording began. They tell a tale and it’s not Lavendar’s.

9. 2 months ago on Doonesbury

   Agree that it’s the best job in the world, and, lucky me – the parents are still great kids as well.

10. 3 months ago on Pearls Before Swine

    The only country we have to fear invading us is our neighbour to the south. They would not tolerate any other country getting a foothold on the North American continent.