http://www.occams-razor.info Insightful essays on subjects trivial and profound Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:58:35 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I am back in Northern Virginia after having spent nearly a week in Salt Lake City attending the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I am glad I went. Never have I packed so much learning and fellowship into so short a time a time. I probably cannot afford ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/07/the_religion_of_the_21st_centur.html (I am in Salt Lake City attending the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I have attended a lot of seminars and worship services and heard a lot of sermons. Although not an ordained minister, in the spirit of this extraordinary week of learning, I offer my own sermon ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/06/the_illusion_of_fidelity.html Salt Lake City is one of the great cities to arrive at by air. You descend over the tops of the Rocky Mountains. You feel like your plane may scrape one of the summits, and then gently descend into the Salt Valley. Even in late June you can still see ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/06/unitarian_universalists_invade_salt_lake_city.html Well, this is cool! I am blogging from 35,000 feet. Granted, the first 10,000 feet are still not Wifi accessible, but perhaps that will change too. For $12.95 I can buy myself about three hours of high speed Internet access, at least on selected Delta flights. Other carriers are probably ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/06/blogging_at_35000_feet.html Some of you may have been wondering when I was going to talk about the civil unrest underway in Iran. Like many of you, I have been too caught up in events there to give it much analysis. Moreover, I do not know that much about Iran other than what ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/06/irans_metamorphosis.html One of the reasons to read The Huffington Post is to get your celebrity kicks. I have to confess I don’t care too much about what celebrities are doing, Jewel Staite being the possible exception. Yet, it was on Huffpost that I read about the latest celebrity yo-yo dieter, in ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/06/the_ten_percent_solution.html I am still trying to figure out this Twitter thing. Its success is counterintuitive. I can see why it is interesting to follow a conversation, but its 140-character limitation (made necessary by the maximum of 160 characters allowed in cell phone text messages) would seem a fatal liability. Granted, it ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/06/following_jewel_staite.html I would hope most of these points on health care reform would be obvious, but based on the debate in Congress, apparently not. Just as there is no free lunch now for health care, there will be none after we are done reforming health care. It is going to cost a ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/06/things_i_know_about_health_care_refor.html For most of us the current recession, already the longest lasting recession since the Great Depression, is an unpleasant reality. 345,000 jobs were lost in May, which raised the official national unemployment rate to 9.4%, the highest in over a quarter century. While the trend is improving, this is still ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/06/financial_winners_and_losers.html What is it with America's fixation on superheroes? It seems we generate superheroes in infinite combinations and many of them prove their moxy by eventually leaping off the comic book page and into our local cinema. That is the case of Iron Man, but at least Iron Man, like Spider-Man, ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/06/review_iron_man_2008.html If you pay attention to the news you have read about the murder of Dr. George Tiller. He was gunned down yesterday at his church in Wichita, Kansas by alleged murderer and "prolifer" Scott Roeder. Tiller was one of a small number of surgeons willing to provide late term abortions. ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/06/can_being_prolife_be_anti-life.html I am feeling a bit like Peter Pan these days. Peter Pan was the only male I knew who regularly wore green stockings. I understand that during the Middle Age, men also wore stockings. These days though men who wear stockings are either getting in touch with their feminine side ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/05/the_agony_of_the_feet_part_two.html Being fifty-something like me definitely has some drawbacks. Things I used to take for granted, like going a day without some aches and pains are now exceptions rather than the rule. When you are middle aged, every day you are playing a game of whack-a-mole with your health. Solve one ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/05/extreme_makeover.html So I am at the Gold’s Gym listening to a Marketplace Money podcast. I am hearing all the details of the new credit card law freshly signed by President Obama this week. The law was certainly overdue, given the egregious ways banks lately have been unilaterally raising interest rates, changing ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/05/socialize_your_money_and_join_a_credit_union.html Something very odd happened last month. For the first time in sixteen years of living in our house, we got through April virtually dandelion-free. Truly, it was weird. One year ago, as happened for the previous fifteen years our lawn was engaged in the vital business of growing dandelion seeds and ... http://www.occams-razor.info/2009/05/the_wearing_of_the_green.html