The Big List #16

• Atheists Unite!

Richard Dawkins and his new book - and yet another link-heavy Cosmic Log blog. I’ve only read articles about and by Dawkins, but none of his books. I’m terribly fascinated, though. I got The God Delusion from the library, but had to take it back before I got around to reading it. Perhaps once I get some of my own books read and disposed (see below), I’ll get around to Dawkins.

• Joe Biden Under the Radar

Excellent article on Joe Biden and what he contributes to the Obama administration. Everyone knew Obama would be an improvement over Bush; and while it makes sense that Biden would be an improvement over Cheney, Biden has his own idiosyncracies that are...well, not quite as criminal as Cheney’s - but potentially irksome, nonetheless. Nice to know that, so far, he has not taken up the mantle of the Sith that might have been passed down to him over at OEOB.

• Needful Things

Most excellent post by Roger Ebert on how books can fill up the spaces in one’s life - and take on a life of their own. I freely admit to a love-hate relatioship with my books. On the one hand, I’m never at a loss for something to read. On the other hand, they take up a hell of a lot of space. Every year I tell myself I’m going to pare it down - and yet, every year, the stack of books I accumulate is bigger than the stack that I read and set aside to sell.

• I Smell Sex and Candy

Esquire article on how surges in vampire popularity coincide with surges in “carnal crisis,” and also about how the current surge has to do with young straight women wanting to have sex with gay men - or so the author says. The first part of the theory is more interesting, and the only downside here is that the article is only about 1000 words. A much longer treatment of this idea would be terribly interesting.

• And Just To Be Fair...

HOPE artist Shepard Fairey was disingenuous about which AP photo he used to create that Obama poster. Surely you’ve seen it, right? Liberals and Democrats are never going to come anywhere near the level of total suckage that the conservatives and GOP have achieved since Herr Reagan was sworn in - but that doesn’t automatically make all of them good, either. I could probably do a better job pointing out gaffes on the left, but honestly - who picks on their own side as much as they pick on the other side? Exactly. The problem with the right is that they have both the ideology and the methodology wrong; the left, when they err, usually only errs on the methodology.