Our next Get Together is Saturday Feb 12th at 4:00PM in Ginger.
We’re planning some big things for this month so you’re definitely going to want to come out!
As you probably know, the 12th is Darwin Day, so let’s have a bit of a celebration!
Sixty-six years ago today, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated. While it might have provided some catharsis to bulldoze the site, scholars and survivors alike are glad that it has been left mostly alone. Now called the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, it looks much as it did during the war years, where more than one million Jews were cycled through and murdered.
For the past several days I’ve been wondering if I should write an article about the shooting in Tuscon. If I do post something, what would I write about? I spent days trying to find the right thing to say and if I say anything at all. Then several several friends had tweeted an excerpt from the Daily Show that talked about the shooting. Many people had been calling him “the sanest person in America right now”. I watched the clip, and if he’s not the sanest, he’s definitely the most rational at the moment.
One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War began, we’re still fighting it — or at least fighting over its history. I’ve polled thousands of high school history teachers and spoken about the war to audiences across the country, and there is little agreement even on why the South seceded. Was it over slavery? [...]
It was a good movie. Don’t get me wrong. Plus it’s one of the few movies that did a good job of translating graphic novels to a movie. I am of course talking of V for Vendetta. The film came out in 2006 and grossed $70 million. It became an instant cult hit and annoyed me in the following ways:
The idea that the United States has always been a bastion of religious freedom is reassuring—and completely false when compared with the historical record.
On this day in 1798, President signed The Alien and Sedition Acts into law, making it illegal to criticize the government, any elected official or any appointed official. At that time France and the United States were in a heated conflict. Just 22 years earlier they were allies in American Independence. The conflict put a [...]
Mark Twain’s autobiography is being released in it’s entirety for the first time. He had decreed that it was not to be published until 100 years after his death. He had died in 1910 at the age of 75.
The holiday weekend marks 234 years since Thomas Jefferson’s draft of The Declaration of Independence was adopted. This morning NPR, as they have for the past 22 years read it aloud over the air. Hearing the text over the air reminded me of how many people have been referring to this document and even waving [...]
